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Hardware Makers Unhappy With Tablet Sales
rocketjam writes "According to The Register, hardware manufacturers, tired of continued low sales of the much-hyped tablet PC, are beginning to speak out, complaining that Microsoft has not marketed the platform enough and has over-priced licenses for its Windows XP Tablet Edition. The predicted demand for the devices has not materialized; faced with the tablet's premium pricing, consumers have continued to opt for lower-priced notebooks."
If you have ever tried to use a tablet, you will probably come to the same conclusion we have. They suck as a form-factor. They are undoubtedly cool, but in the long run, they really don't let you do any serious work.
I have worked with both the Fujitsu-Siemens as well as the Compaq tablets, have run Linux as well as Windows on both, and they simply get in between yourself and serious work.
The interface requires too much attention of the user, and the handwriting recognition, while pretty good on Windows, also requires too much attention. On Linux you would have to use some palm-type strok business, or even better, the excellent Dasher application.
Besides specialist applications, such as in hospitals for example, the form factor only really comes into its own during meetings, but it simply does not (yet) offer the simplicity of the two primary office tools: The humble pen and paper.
This is not a marketing or cost issue, it is a form-factor issue. They are cool, but all our demo and test models have their novelty worn off, and are currently going unused. At least we did not pay for them.....
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
And lo, let me preach unto thee the ten commandments !
...
Er - hang on a minute, my tablet just crashed
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
M$ did a lot of marketing for the tablets. I keep seeing ads for them, and they have a big section on their web site.
the real reason that it hasn't caught on might also be that the digitizers and or the windows GUI handling aren't good enough to make using the touchscreen and the stylus an acceptable user experience.
we have these things at my lab (for multimodal HCI studies), and while the handwriting recognition of Win Tablet isn't too bad, clicking on things in the GUI is way too unreliable. the windows GUI doesn't allow ambiguous inputs (selecting an area rather than a point), as they would occur with a finger and as they do occur when the digitizer isn't good enough. here, either the GUI should become more robust (= fault-tolerant) or the digitizers should become better. probably both. (tried with a top-notch acer centrino tablet!)
other issues with the tablet is the sheer size and weight of these things. still waiting for apple to come up with a really thin tablet that you actually WANT to take anywhere. at the moment, the tablet's i have seen suffer from over-weight, clunky-ness, short battery-life...
my prediction is that in a couple of years these problems will be solved and people will enjoy clicking on items directly (and maybe handwriting) rather than using a stupid trackpad...!
It says the total cost difference between a tablet and comparable notebook is about $200. Of that amount only $30-$60 is due to hardware, the rest is the extra software licensing cost. That is a $140-$170 premium for Windows XP Tablet Edition. To me, for a machine that costs a few thousand, even a $200 difference does not seem that much. Or maybe people just haven't gotten used to the technology enough to make it a worthwhile purchase yet?
It is sad, we have arrived in a day and age where it seems as though every new technology that comes around the block needs to make it big in the first couple years , or it is considered a failure. Real improvements in productivity don't happen that way. They can take many years before the returns are actually realized. The people who use the technology don't learn it overnight. In fact, it is only now that many companies are finally starting to see a decent return on their investments in technology in the late 1990's.
Er, pardon me for being thick, but what's this got to do with MS? You decided a Windows OS was best for your hardware, not Microsoft. If it's too expensive Use Something Else; it's a free market out there. Why should Microsoft pay to advertise your product for you?
If you had decided on Linux, would you have expected Linus Torvalds to launch an expensive advertising campaign for your benefit? Who advertised your car? Was it the car manufacturer, or a manufacturer of one of its components?
As for the price of licencing Pen, er, Tablet Windows, perhaps they should look around for alternatives? (Say, what ever happen to GRiD anyway?)
Sounds like sour grapes: "Wah, Microsoft isn't pushing our market enough! And they put a gun to our heads to make us use Windows!" Sell enough computers for Microsoft to care guys.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
My department ordered three Tablet PC's about six months ago for 3 of our maanagers. This has resulted in a change none of the employees expected but certainly enjoy. The managers have become the defacto note takers at meetings. None of them have spoken too loudly about benefits of the tablets.
I am Lord Snowbeam. Heed my call!
The tablet PC is partly driven by the same misguided notion that has driven many failed PC hardware and software developments: the belief, on the part of an older generation of CEO's, that there is something demeaning about using a keyboard.
Up to the 1980's, keyboards were associated with secretarial and clerical staff, who were paid less and ranked lower socially than executives. Executives had no skill in keyboarding and were proud of it. The mantra was "I have people to do that for me." The result, unfortunately, was that the decision-makers never got any gut experience in the feeling of keyboard interaction or the power and suitability of the keyboard as a human-interface device.
So, you have all those stupid fantasies of machines that you "will just talk to in English," and the continuing search for handwriting recognition.
Ever since all the bright young MBA's started using Excel and Powerpoint you'd think people would know better. Sure, the upper-mid-level people play the game of "my-laptop-is-shinier-than-yours", but I have still seen upper management eyes gleam at the idea of not needing to use a keyboard. They give lip service to the legitimacy of the keyboard, but in their hearts they feel that a high-ranking person should not be using one.
It's silly. A tablet PC is like a PC with a mouse but no keyboard (yes, I know there is a keyboard buried inside). It's an impoverished communications channel, and no matter how cleverly you design it, it will never be as comfortable, efficient, or powerful as a channel that includes a keyboard or a keyboard-like modality.
It would be far better to research improved, more convenient, more portable keyboard subtitutes (type in the air and let lasers track your fingers, or whatever) than to continue down the silly path of trying to express a human-computer dialog solely with a continous two-dimensional line.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
From Pen Computing Magazine #22, June 1998
Why Did Apple Kill Newton?
(C)Copyright 1998 David MacNeill
Early Friday morning, February 27, 1998, Apple Computer made official what the Newton cognoscenti had strongly suspected for six months: the Newton handheld computing platform was dead.
The rather terse press release gave the basic facts: Apple will cease all Newton OS hardware and software development, no more products will be made after the existing stock is depleted, and Apple will continue to provide support to users. Brief mention was made of development of a new low-cost Mac OS-based mobile device in the future, but no details were offered. But the most galling omission was the lack of an answer to the question on the minds of hundreds of thousands of shocked, angry Newton owners: Why?
Before I attempt to answer this question, let's take a quick tour of the mercurial five-year career of Newton. This will serve to prepare you for the several explanations we will be considering.
A brief history of Newton
During its turbulent five-year life, Newton technology was close to death several times, yet always managed to survive. Department heads came and went, but the essential concept of the personal digital assistant (PDA) was too compelling to die easily: A small, inexpensive, pen-based computing device that would accompany you everywhere, and that would learn enough about you to make informed assumptions about how to help you keep track of the myriad little bits of information we all must carry. It would be simple enough for anyone to use, a true computer for the rest of us.
I was fortunate to participate in the Newton beta test program and to co-author and deliver the training materials used to launch the product. The moment I saw that beta unit my life changed, and I wasn't the only one. I still remember the excitement of holding a pre-release Newton NotePad (as it was labeled then) in my hands for the first time, said Clinton Logan, ace developer for LandWare. Truly unique products like that don't come along very often.
For those of us who bought into this vision, it seemed like the future was arriving ahead of schedule. Like the buyers of the original 128K Macintosh, we gladly paid the high price of admission just to participate in this achingly cool dream that had taken physical form. We loved it and made it work for us in ways unanticipated by its creators, which is the true measure of great computer design.
What is Newton ?
Newton had an identity crisis from the very beginning. Former Apple CEO and Newton champion John Sculley first showed the prototype to the press in Chicago on May 1992, where he described not only the device but also their platform strategy. A central theme in Apple's advertising and promotional materials at the time repeatedly used the phrase What is Newton? Some have suggested that Apple never actually answered this question to anyone's satisfaction.
Consider the name change. The product was originally called the Newton NotePad to suggest its personal assistive features, but that was later changed to MessagePad to emphasize the product's communications capabilities.
We had always intended for Newton to be a platform, not just a product, said former Newton Systems Group chief Gaston Bastiens, now CEO of Lernout & Hauspie, an eminent speech recognition company. Unfortunately, all the press took away with them was the handwriting recognition aspect, which was over-emphasized. The whole thrust of Newton was to be a personal communicator as well as a personal assistant. From a conceptual point of view, John was absolutely right. The infrastructure for two-way wireless at the time was not there; we all knew it was a couple of years away, but it was always part of our platform strategy.
John Sculley generally gets both the credit and the blame for the origi
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
Friend: Let me give you my new number. Got a pen?
Me: Uh, hang on a sec. Let me get out my tablet. Just have to boot it up here...just a minute more. Okay. I've got to open Outlook... New contact...new number. Damn, it's not recognizing my handwriting. Wait, wait. Okay. Done. Now let me give you my number.
Friend: *writes it on back of hand with a pen that costs a quarter, never needs to be recharged, and fits in a shirt pocket*
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
2) Too expensive. Even the tablets with keyboards (yes, some of them have keyboards) are much more expensive than a comparable laptop.
3) Short battery life. See point 1, above.
4) Fragility. You're carrying around a color LCD plus digitizer (i.e., $$$). You're writing on it. It's collecting dust and dirt. Pity about that scratch, crack, ding ...
5) False mimicry. The parallax between screen pixels and moving pen point makes it really, really clear that you're not using a pen on paper.
I don't really understand what people are complaining about myself. I have been using one (Motion M1200 now M1300) for 10 months and love it. When I'm sitting at my desk it is using the keyboard mouse. Pick it up and use the pen. The pen takes a little getting used to but it really works for everything other then programming and command line (but you can use it for both of those with a little effort).
:-).
Once I combined mine with a small portable scanner I found the amount of paper clutter in my offices to go down to a bare minimum (almost made me look like a type A person
I think people don't give it a fair try. It may be expectations, price or a combination of both. Any way you cut it though, this style unit does work for a number of people much better then a laptop.
Just try writing on a tablet PC with one hand while holding the damn thing in the other. You can't do it. You'll be searching for a table in no time, and probably have to sit down too, because there's no table high enough to use while standing. And if you try holding it with your elbow, it's at the wrong angle for writing. Clipboards work because they're light enough that they don't require much leverage to hold with a grip.
You need something that fits in the palm of your hand, and that means six inches wide at the most.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Woah.
Apple's Steve jobs had previously mentioned that the tablet market was non-existant.
Specifically, here's what the westion was, and his answer to that:
M: A lot of people think given the success you've had with portable devices, you should be making a tablet or a PDA.
J: There are no plans to make a tablet. It turns out people want keyboards. When Apple first started out, "People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this." "We look at the tablet and we think it's going to fail." Tablets appeal to rich guys with plenty of other PCs and devices already. "And people accuse us of niche markets." I get a lot of pressure to do a PDA. What people really seem to want to do with these is get the data out. We believe cell phones are going to carry this information. We didn't think we'd do well in the cell phone business. What we've done instead is we've written what we think is some of the best software in the world to start syncing information between devices. We believe that mode is what cell phones need to get to. We chose to do the iPod instead of a PDA.
The full interview is avilable here.
Who's seriously going to want to write their word documents? I type about 5x faster than I can possibly scribble with a pen, and with fewer errors to boot.
But I'm dying to get one of these to draw on!
Maybe if they bundled some of the better pressure sensitive pens and photoshop and painter instead of office, they'd find that people were more interested in using them as digital sketchbooks. I know some people say the digitizers aren't up to it, but from what I've read on tablet pc forums, it depends on which one you get. The ones with the newer Wacom based digitizers are supposedly pretty good if you're using one of the decent Wacom pens, which are all interchangeable with the crappy ones bundled with the tablets.
Maybe they should try pitching them more towards art students, and maybe try to bring the prices down a bit. I wish apple would make one of the convertable flip-over type tablets because I'm betting they could get it right on the first try. It's probably the only way I'd ever consider buying a mac, but I'd buy one in a heartbeat if they did it.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Just another great example of Microsoft failing miserably whenever they attempt to Innovate. It just goes to show you having billions of dollars in your warchest still can't match the innovation of smaller companies and groups like Apple and some of the projects found on Linux. -First it was 1993 The Microsoft Home software series (180 Software titles that flopped) -Then it was Microsoft Bob. -The ActiMate Plush toys of '97 (They turned into something from a B Horror movie when they got low on batteries) -Buying out WebTV and bundling IE and MSN with it because it might actually take off and Microsoft would have no control over it. -PocketPC is still the minority in the handheld market, and is having major issues making inroads in the Corporate Markets. -The over-hyped Microsoft "Orange" SmartPhones were dropped by the carrier even before production began. -The XBox failed to produce profitability or market dominance as "expected." -Tablet PC's a new take on a recycled idea yielding poorly designed and fragile PC's with mediocre tablet software that is nearly impossible to draw or write in script with. -And of course Windows still sucks, forcing the majority of discerning computer users to continue using alternatives. With many countries switching or thinking about switching to Linux some of us should start changing our tune about the end of Apple to singing about the beginning of the end for Microsoft. And just like Apple, just because we sing it doesn't mean it has to happen right away. Microsoft just has too many fingers in too many pies to do a sufficient job at all the markets they have extended into. Think the last years of the Roman Empire where they had over-extended. And soon the trampling hordes of the Linux Visigoths will be knocking on Big Redmond's door.
Something intelligent here.