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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."
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.
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!
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
The tablet as currently conceived by Microsoft and its hardware partners is not much of an innovation. What would be truly innovative would be simply to add touch screens to laptops. I don't know how many times I've watched a computer neophyte look at a dialogue box with a big, fat "OK" button at the bottom and not have the slightest notion what to do.
On the other hand, the Palm, followed by WinCE/PPC clones, achieved tablet PC status years ago and is the true innovator in this area.
Consider how far the laptop/desktop family is from being a true appliance, and how close the Palmtop family is.
To use a laptop, you must do the following steps:
- open the clamshell, locate the little power button and turn it on.
- watch as it comes to life; little LEDs light up, and after a minute or so you see the Windows splash screen.
- Wait until you see either a login screen or the actual desktop (depends on versions of Windows, how configured, etc.)
- Wait another minute or so while all the little proggies in the System Tray initialize and load. Watch Yahoo Messenger announce, irrelevantly, that it is logging you in.
- If you were savvy enough to understand "hybernation", you may have skipped a couple of these steps, but why should a user have to know the difference between hybernating and shutting down?
- Optionally, see one or two "Windows Update" messages pop up that you don't understand and aren't interested in.
- Now, find the application you are seeking--typically, your word processor, spreadsheet, PIM, or browser. It may be represented by a little icon among a sea of icons on the desktop, since you don't know anything about folders and other tricks to keep things clean. Or, it may be hidden somewhere deep in the Start menu; for example, Start->Programs->Adobe->Acrobat->Reade r (or something like that).
- Watch the application's splash screen announce its existence. Then, the application comes up. Now, at last, you can get to work, though you must play by the rules of the application.
- When you are done working, you can't simply close the computer; you must "save your work", a task which neophytes do not understand. You don't need to "save your work" when you turn off your television; it remembers what channel you were on last time. Yet, you must do this mysterious thing with your wordpro/spreadsheet or else you will "lose your work", something your long-suffering computer literate friends will angrily scold you about.
- Now, you shut down the system, either by Start->Shutdown->Turn off Computer, or by pressing power switch (in recent hardware and Windows versions) or by closing the clamshell (in recent hardware).
With the Palm/PPC, your main obstacle is finding your app amongst the icons. Chances are, you're using one of the apps bound to a hardware button anyway; just press Calendar, the thing pops on and poof! you're looking at today's schedule. No fuss, no muss. Just point at the thing you want, start writing on it, etc.
I believe the so-called Tablet PC will go away soon and we will, one hopes, see what little innovations it did possess finding their way into conventional laptops where they belong, minus Microsoft's hefty royalty overhead.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.