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Jobs Finally "Happy" With Unannounced Apple Tablet
All the whispers of an Apple tablet PC seem to be culminating in a flurry of rumors suggesting we may see one as soon as next month. Sources inside Apple are saying that Jobs is finally "happy" with the device after being involved in every detail of bringing it into the light of day. As a side result of these rumors, it seems that Apple stockholders are also getting a bit of Christmas cheer with a significant bump in stock price.
We will see if Apple's habit of actually rethinking their user interface and user interaction methods can bring some life to the tablet market. I think expecting users to use a stylus with the traditional tiny user interface elements in Windows was a problem holding back the form factor.
However, I have faith that people will come up with plenty of reasons to hate the new hardware when it appears.
It came out last summer that Jobs was intimately involved with every detail of bringing the tablet to market. It seems that the device has finally gotten Jobs's seal of approval: when asked if the tablet rumors were true, a senior Apple executive gave The New York Times a rather coy reply. "I can't really say anything," he said, "but, let's just say Steve is extremely happy with the new tablet."
Translation: the only button is a power button, it has a battery-sucking colour screen as opposed to an e-ink display, it requires itunes on a mac or PC to use, the only Apple-approved way to run programs is via an app store, it has a non-user-replaceable battery, and it will cost upwards of $1000.
Here's what I want a high quality, fast and truly usable tablet for : medical care. It should be possible to walk into a patient's room carrying a clipboard sized device that resembled a giant iphone. You should be able to call up medical records, imagery, and the rest with no detectable latency. (because the tablet should use push downloading : each tablet is assigned to a particular doctor or nurse. The table would cache all medical records for each patient assigned to that doctor or nurse, and if a new report comes out for one of those patients, the tablet should automatically download it over the hospital's wireless network)
It should use a glass topped display, like the iphone, so that you could use caustic chemicals to sterilize the surface. The medical industry has enough money that if this product cost $1500 it would barely be noticed as an expense. (especially if it could boost efficiency)
Apple has as good a chance to make this happen as anyone. Medical users would be running custom software for this tablet, so there's no need for it to be windows compatible. While displaying large 2D images like X-rays will require some CPU horsepower, it's still entirely possible for a low power CPU to do the job. And apple's superior user interfaces and integration with hardware mean that it will be cheaper and easier to train doctors and nurses to use this device.
The biggest technical problems I foresee are back end problems, problems with the EMR software, and battery life.(hospital IT departments tend to fuck things up. If they bought a bunch of apple tablets, they probably wouldn't build and maintain the back end servers and wireless AP correctly)
Also, such a tablet will probably be quite fragile, and fairly heavy.
Remember, YOU (the typical slashdotter running Linux with a windows box for games on desktop machines) are not the intended users for this tablet. YOU probably sit at a desk all day. You have enough technical expertise that tinkering is fun for you, and you don't mind the idea of a tablet on kludgey, cheap hardware that is running open source software.
I take it you've never used a notebook or a sketchbook then (you know, the kinds that are made of paper)? Or, god forbid, a Wacom Cintiq (Here's a hint, most cintiq users don't mount it flat on a table or standing up at a right angle to the floor).
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Of course -- "most" people buy the iPhone because its sexy, not because it's usable... so what do I know...
Well, for one thing you apparently don't know why people really buy an iPhone - the success of the apps store indicates that usability matters a lot to people. I'd also argue that the same design principles that make the iPhone "sexy" are also what's made it such a useful little gadget.
I've got an iPod Touch rather than an iPhone, but the same argument applies. Having one well-designed device that serves as my hyperfocal distance calculator, my "on the go" email checker, play-games-on-the-train machine, and even (in a pinch) allows me to run a vnc session over ssh is a plus in my book. Having tried other poorly-thought-out solutions (*cough* windows mobile *cough*) (*cough* multiple Linux desktop environments *cough*), I'd say it's pretty obvious design significantly affects usability.
But don't let reason get in the way of your narrative.
#DeleteChrome
Yes, I can do that, but my point is that you have to position yourself in a certain way to use it properly.
The same holds true for a book. Or a cellphone. Or your dick. Hopefully you can figure all these out.
Except that people have been doing it for years and it's been a perennial flop as far as a commodity / high selling product is concerned. Tablets have made limited traction in some vertical applications - from the examples I've seen in the medical arena, the hardware / software integration has been totally half assed.
Windows 7 might change that a bit since it supposedly has native tablet / gesture functionality built in as opposed to somebody kludging up some XP drivers, but I think a lot of people are hoping that Apple somehow significantly improves on the usability of said tablet form factor.
I personally think it will be too cutesy to be really functional and it will be limited by using the iPhone interface instead of the full blown OS X package. It will sell like hotcakes and there will be 350 Slashdot articles on it by the end of 2010.
If it exists, of course. If not, we'll just have about 300 articles.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!