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Why Everyone Has High Hopes For Apple Tablet
waderoush writes "The deafening roar of anticipation around Apple's expected 'iSlate' announcement on January 27 is strange, to say the least, given the public's utter apathy about tablet computers to date. What's going on? Xconomy's analysis makes three points. 1) Previous tablet makers have shown little imagination around UIs and how a touchscreen changes things. 2) With the iPhone, Apple has shown what's possible in this regard. 3) There's latent demand for a mobile computing device that's smaller and lighter than a laptop but has more screen real estate than a smartphone — something reminiscent of a Star Trek tricorder or PADD. Hence the hopes for the iSlate — which are so high that it may be difficult for even Apple to meet them."
I think it's safe to say the Apple Fanboys have high hopes, but Apple has a number of things going against them:
1) Android quickly catching up with Apple in terms of usefulness and it's working across a large set of diverse devices. ChromeOS will only make Apple's problem worse
2) If the expected price of $1000 is to be believed, it'll be a real turn off for anyone looking for a low cost MID. You can buy two (or three) netbooks for that price.
3) Let's be clear, if it's not e-ink or similar, this is in no way competition for the Kindle/Nook/Sony eReader
Tablet shmablet. Do you see the ads on TV for the Dell computer with touchscreen? Can you imagine the hurt you would be in after an hour or so with your arm raised up off the desk to reach the screen?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
No, people haven't liked tablet PCs because what they've seen are useless tablets that can't convert to laptops. Others have seen too many heavy tablet PCs by companies like Acer that suck. Lenovo Thinkpad tablets are the best the industry has to offer.
For this new tablet to succeed, it will need to be lighter, yet allow people to install third party applications.
One think I've noticed is that websites are poorly optimized for gesture-based navigation? If any novel UI implementations are going to come out of an Apple tablet, this is probably the place to look.
Ok here is my take on it...
If it can't fit in my pocket then I won't be buying it. I would like a device that is like old scrolls and roll out. Folding it neatly into my shirt pocket when I don't use it. At most four times larger than a ball point pen.
Anything else is stone-age.
And it's not like Apple and its pet media does the same damn thing with each product release. I can hardly wait for the testimonials about how the press releases alone cured someone's impotency or hair loss.
I really just want an iPhone/iPod Touch on steroids
Why? Seriously, I would like to know. What would you use it for? A very large music player? A web browser that has no keyboard and likely is only useable in your house where you (presumably) have a desktop/laptop. Movies might be a good idea for it... I really don't know what this is supposed to be used for.
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>Mac is still, and long will be the favorite computer of most graphicians/artists.
What are you saying? That people who engage in fantasy, and who have a preference for style over substance prefer Apple products?
That seems a little infalmatory! :O (I am a [graphic] artist).
Photoshop on Windows does everything that it does on a Mac, except that it generally requires less money to do so (on similar or better hardware). There must be a reason other than 'Photoshop'.
Maybe it's the social-psychological aspect that buying something made by Apple has: perceived enhanced status.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
The iPhone is why I have low hopes for an Apple tablet. Apple has demonstrated that they're willing to turn computing back 30 years and put stupid restrictions on their devices for the sake of control. I don't trust them to make a tablet that's open and has all of the capabilities that a device like this should have.
The majority of PAD users aren't going to give 2 flips for photoshop, per se. For the most part, they'll be doing what people do now. Email, IM, shopping, surfing. Writing and now, reading.
You fail to realize that it has an influence on the people who aren't artists. Average people look at Macs and PC's and think that Macs are the fun computers and PCs are the work computers, why is that?
Because the people who WORK on the Macs are the people who draw for a living, compose music, make videos, etc. They are the people who have the jobs Cubible Joe wish he could have (and are obviously successful enough at it to afford apple products).
This "Niche Market" is what drives alot of other people to Apple.
Apple knew they'd be releasing after CES, so they had to play the expectation game to depress sales of competing products. Would you buy a tablet now if you knew that a company that has a track record of being a game changer is going to release a tablet? We know the design will be elegant, and we know through patent searches their tablet could have some interesting features. What will it do? Think of what market they haven't disrupted? That is a clue to the possible functions of the tablet. Will they even release a tablet? We won't know until the Steve says "one more thing."
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I am completely on board with this concept because if it is anything like what I imagine I could use it to replace the reams of worthless legal pads and loose note papers I have strewn all over my desk. I need to take notes on something the size of a pad of paper, preferably be able to use a pen/stylus to freehand, and now with the ability to easily catalog, date, and label the notes this is a dream come true.
As a bonus I imagine you could pop up a little virtual keyboard on it and use it to work on little side projects on a train/plane/etc. I would also not be completely honest if I didn't acknowledge the star trek TNG angle and the warm fuzzy feeling it gives me...life imitates art.
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
A problem that utterly destroyed the work of amateurs like DaVinci, Michaelangelo, and Raphael, right?
Well, yes, it can, and more -- by zooming in. And also by utilizing technologies such as bezier and spline curves. Methinks thou protests a bit too much. Also, even if you are stuck with the type of drawing you describe, it doesn't mean that others will be.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
...but Apple's been known to make fairly large mis-steps before in other areas (camera in the nano, not the Touch; Apple TV; Newton; one-button mouse; etc)
For the record, I don't see the problem with the one-button mouse.
I suppose it's a problem for people with just one hand, but given that you have control and command and option keys on the keyboard, I've never seen why it's important to put more buttons on the mouse.
People that want more buttons on the mouse can buy third party mice. Mac OS has supported them since MacOS 8.
I can't honestly see anyone investing much more energy in handwriting recognition. Who writes anything anymore? Not to mention the added irritations of a stylus, loosing it, using something else, scratching the screen, etc.
On screen keyboard instead please.
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
Congratulations, you got to show off your uber-geekiness by bringing up a bunch of esoteric examples that the article missed. Gold star for you. Now, do you have anything to say regarding the actual *points* in the article?
My friend is doing a graphic arts diploma and he doesnt even know anyone who cares about this.
Then tell your friend, from someone who's been a graphic designer for two decades, that he's an idiot. If he can't imagine an iTablet (or whatever it's called) also serving as a wacom tablet-type thing, which is a graphic designer's dream toy, then he's not going to be long for this career. If he can't imagine the possibilities that something like this provides someone who works with digital artwork, then he isn't creative enough for this business. I'm not saying this thing _will_ change the graphic design world but to not be able to imagine how it _could_ change how graphic designers work is pretty sad for someone who's working towards a degree in the field.
A gazillion iPhone/iPod sales are a good indicator that if you broadcast it, the viewers will come.
Uh huh. It's got to be the hype not the fact that the iPhone and IPods are useful products. My view is that the hype doesn't sell more product for Apple, it sells the product faster. So two years in, they might be at a sales volume that they'd otherwise reach a few months later. That has concrete financial advantage to Apple (among other things a faster product cycle and the time value of revenue coming in a bit earlier), hence they'll never stop doing it.
But none of that means we have to take the cycle of hype seriously. Nor does it mean that Aplle doesn't have a stable of pet media. A story titled "Why Everyone Has High Hopes For Apple Tablet" is absurdly biased towards Apple. Last I checked, we haven't been lusting for this sort of thing.
"never do anything in front of the client, this devalues your work".
Basically if you could do something that "would do" for the client in front of them, then they wouldn't see the value in paying you 10x the amount to do the same thing but in "higher quality."
A client generally doesn't realise that what you just did took 15 years of experience + 15 minutes. They only experience the 15 minutes, and put a value on that.
>Apple enters the market with their own device, which has a bunch of features that may or may not have been seen in other devices, but on the whole is a very well integrated package. Somehow, they saw a way to make the product work.
This really shows a lack of knowledge of Apple's history.
1. The Newton. Palm made this work. Not Apple. Later on Apple copied the Treo format (phone + PDA) Palm made popular and merged it with a virtual keyboard.
2. Apple Pippin. Failed game/multimedia console. Nintendo64 and PS2 got it right.
3. Power Mac G4 Cube. Failed on the market. Infamous for cracking case. Now, there's no shortage of small cube PCs. The PC world got this right.
4. Apple QuickTake. Failed digital camera. Everyone gets this right.
5. Macintosh TV. Failed TV/PC combo. Now TV is just a PCI card away or done with steaming/downloading.
6. Apple's "Hockey Puck" USB Mouse. No one gets this right because its such a bad idea.
7. eMate. Low cost Newton based PC. OLPC and others get this right.
Apple tries a lot of things and they fail more often than they succeed. The idea that theyre the ones who can fix the tablet market is a bit of stretch. Heck, I like tablets, but I understand their limitations, especially in regards to keyboards/inputs. Perhaps it will have something like the iwheel.
The major problem I have with the mac in regard to this is look at the chunk of documentation that requires you to hold down meta keys to access the second mouse button context menu - or even if your not using the context menus you still have to have a lot of hands to use the apple/option keys to access stuff - its very involved.
Back when the powerbook only had the one ctrl button on the left hand side of the keyboard made for a miserable experience actually just using the OS - essentially it requires two hands to use the track pad whereas my PC its not nearly as involved (which meant - you couldn't have the powerbook sitting on the side of your desk - you pretty much had to use it square in front of you to get any work done). I have no idea if they fixed this in newer apple laptops (putting another ctrl button on the right hand side - which would be a cludge at best), but its the major reason I'll never ever ever get another Apple laptop - that and the overheat issues with the macbook pro.
Oddly enough all this could be solved by putting another button on the trackpad ;).
WTF? Wanting to be a rockstar is like wanting to be a GD? Haha right. A rockstar is a millionaire who tours the world. A GD is the sad looking guy in your office who shares a loft with 5 other artists in a bad part of town.
Dont just lump a bunch of games together and say "See, these are all the same."
>Those jobs that Macs do particularily well...
Its software, not magic. It runs on an OS. Photoshop runs just fine on my XP machine. Nothing magical happens when it runs on OSX. Well, your wallet gets lighter.
It is just PR firms hyping it up, combined with "technology" journalists that know little about journalism, less about technology, but love Macs because that's what the news room has.
The really funny thing to me is that they act like this tablet is something new and amazing. No, not at all actually. Tables PCs have been out for years. In fact Windows 7 has quite good tablet features integrated right in to it. Install it on a tablet system, or add a tablet to a desktop (there are desktop tablet input devices made by people like Wacom) and it turns on a whole bunch of related features like text recognition and so on. There are also convertible laptops. One of our professors uses those. They have a tablet screen, but a normal keyboard and touch pad. You can use them like a normal laptop, or twist the screen around and close them with it exposed and use them like a tablet.
This isn't a case of them boldly forging in to a new market, this is them releasing a device that has been around for years. As such all I've seen is PR/fanboy hype, and little in the way of genuine enthusiasm.
If Apple hasn't even announced the damned thing yet, then why are we calling it the "iSlate"? Has slashdot really sunken so far as to making up product names for products that don't even exist? What is wrong with just saying "speculated Apple tablet"?
Hell, even just saying "iTablet" would be more bearable...
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Just like there are musicians who tour around all over town in a broken down van trying to get by doing public gigs at the local bar.
There ARE a margin of very successful Artists and Graphics Designers to reflect how many successful rockstars there are.
You think the guys who worked on Avatar got half your salary?
You think the guys who do Blizzards Concept art don't get paid?
I personally know graphics designers who drive Ferraris simply because they can colour co-ordinate web pages better than I can.
If you have never looked at art, and wished that you could produce something of the same quality, then that is one characteristic you don't share with alot of people.
I hear this all the time from mac people and I don't get it. Sure maybe it's not that hard to use a second hand and it's not THAT big of a deal but why stick with it at all? What's the benefit of using two hands for an operation that only takes one on a proper mouse?
>Who writes anything anymore?
Mathematicians, Engineers, Physicists, and basically anyone in a technical field of work or study have to resort to writing because inserting mathematical or engineering symbology on-the-fly while typing is very tedious at best.
I love typing, and I am very fast at it, and it worked great for all of my liberal arts studies.
But for the real work, I have to use pencil and paper.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
And as far as computers go, Macs are niche market. The majority of human activity has little to do with the direct creation of art.
I work for a federal government agency and the developers (myself included) ALL use Macs with more on the way. It's not a niche, it actually works for us. "Macs are a niche market" is a phrase from previous 2006.
So a '8 to 12 percent' gain on identical hardware is not 'serious'? May I have '8 to 12 percent' of your annual paycheck, please?
This was always a sticking point for me in the Mac vs Windows debate. Windows users complain about the one button mouse as if it's a crippling feature, when in fact, the MacOS UI was designed with a one button mouse. Granted, once you go to third party apps like, say, photoshop or UT2004, you're longing for the right click, I suppose, but it does make it a less cumbersome interface for MacOS itself, as well as apps designed for the environment to have only the one button.
I work tech support for a windows heavy environment, and the bottom end users are so mind bogglingly confused about the two buttons that it's laughable.
"Click on the icon"
"Right click or left click?"
"If I say click, I just mean left click"
"Ok, it brought up a menu.."
"No, you right clicked on it, use the left button"
"Oh.. Now i have a properties window"
"No, you left clicked the menu.. not the icon.. close that and start over"
"Ok, I have the menu up again, now what? I right click on properties?"
"... bring it in, I'll do it"
Yes, I completely agree.
I used to have a sign above my workbench, with various "rates"
Bench Work: $50/hr
Bench Work, while you wait: $60/hr
Bench Work, you watching me: $75/hr
Bench Work, you helping me: $100/hr
I was serious about it too. The fact of the matter is, me doing the work is one thing, me training/teaching is another. And I explained it as such. You want my expertise, then you're gonna have to pay for it.
What I do is not difficult, it just takes knowing what to do and when to do it (or not do it). It took a great deal of effort on my part to learn everything I know.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
1) Previous tablet makers have shown little imagination around UIs and how a touchscreen changes things.
Previously, a tablet maker had to write drivers and shitty little programs to make their touchscreen work with an existing OS. However, you can't really make a tablet work well using a windowing system designed for a mouse and keyboard; you just can't. Buttons work well, but titlebars don't, menus often don't (concealed by your hand), things like alt texts don't, you can't mouse over screen edges to make hidden menus pop up or do similar things, there are trouble with any parts of the system when you have to get the pointer to something a few pixels wide, etc. So unless improved features are built into the OS, or you hack an open windowing system like X/KDE/Gnome to accommodate it, using existing OSes is a bad idea.
It requires someone like Apple or Microsoft to modify a full OS enough to really natively support a tablet, and Microsoft doesn't get that sort of thing. They're decent at making things work and they don't look terrible, but they don't innovate, and I think they know it as much as anyone. Apple is the only one who could reasonably be expected to completely rethink their OS enough to accommodate a new paradigm like that.
I am in a CS graduate program, and nobody in our department is talking about this -- not even the dozen or so Apple fanboys.
You just did!
Just like the iPhone and iPod Touch flopped?
Apple haters eschew logic.
... but even in the older powerbooks, there were third-party utilities that gave you the ability to right-click by hitting a certain spot on the trackpad (vs. a dedicated button). And as mentioned, the new MBPs just use the two-finger-tap gesture (or click a certain corner of the trackpad) to render a right-click.
I agree that Mac laptops used to be at a disadvantage with respect to this... but now with the multi-touch trackpads I think they're ahead of the game.
Welp, you're right, there's a million art-styles. Conceded. But, you do have two people now who have painted with screen devices telling you it's not all sunshine and roses.
And the exact same thing can be said for any medium. That's ANY. MEDIUM. That sort of makes the two people whining about tablets-as-drawing-pad into people who haven't trained themselves how to use THE MEDIUM. Painting isn't painting. Acrylics!=oils!=watercolors!=gouache. Pencil!=pen and ink!=chalk!=graphics tablet. REAL artists know this and compensate. Whiners blame their tools.
Let me make a few clarifications to an otherwise good post (Also, I take issue with your use of the X got this right remarks):
The Newton Message Pad 100 came out in 1993. The last Newton Message Pad 120 was discontinued in 1996. The original Palm Pilot (which I still have laying around here somewhere) was introduced in 1996. US Robotics learned from the experience that Apple and Go corporation had in the market previously. Graffiti which was developed prior to the introduction of the PalmPilot was what gave US Robotics an advantage in the PDA market. Its simplified strokes eliminated most of the entry errors encountered with the Newton and Go..
The Treo was created by Handspring (who defected from 3COM) not Palm. The Treo was neat and the addition of the thumb keyboard was a blessing (Grafitti was ruining my handwriting). Palm proved to be its own worst enemy after acquiring Handspring (Why would you spinoff your OS?) and lost significant market share to blackberry and Windows Mobile. I never felt like the Treo lived up to its full potiential. I always felt that the Treo was a PalmPilot with a phone strapped to it, instead of a truly integrated appliance.
The iPhone which, everyone would like to quickly point out, differentiated itself by being consumer oriented with an App Store and tight integration with iTunes, Google Maps, and Safari. Blackberry, Palm and now Google are trying to catch up...
So item 1 just proves that technology is cyclic and an evolutionary process based on past attempts (ie. Go -> Newton -> Palm -> Treo -> iPhone -> ?).
Items 2, 4, and 5 were from Sculley trying to push Apple IP into other markets without much of a game plan much less a marketing scheme.
As for #5 - After almost 17 years has passed since the Macintosh TV was discontinued, I would hope that by now we would be able to get a PCI or USB TV tuner that works... Don't forget the time period that these products were introduced.
At around $1600 in 2001 money, price killed the G4 Cube since it was $200 more expensive than the Power Mac G4. The cracking case was not that big an issue (amplified mostly by legend).
The Apple Mac Mini continues where the G4 Cube left off, and at a much lower price. I think we should re-evaluate your "PC world gotten this form factor right" remark. If anything, I think it's more accurate to say that the success that the Mac Mini enjoyed luring the first wave of "switchers" was what prompted the PC market to move to a more compact form factor. A form factor that the PC market has yet to master (IMHO).
Steve Jobs learned a valuable lesson on not trusting graphic artists with everything...
I don't think I understand your criteria here.
1. The eMate created the low cost "laptop" educational appliance. It died when Steve Jobs pulled the plug on Newton in Feb 1998. Branium came up with a similar product using Windows CE to pick up the market that Apple abandoned.
2. The OLPC takes advantage of the dramatic price drop low powered processors experienced since 1998 and OLPC is a non-profit using donations to f
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
My first response was "Everyone, really? I don't have high, medium, or low hopes. I don't need another expensive, stylish fadgadget. Really.
But reading TFA got me thinking... previous tablet offerings have kinda sucked. What I really need is something with netbook capabilities at a netbook price but in tablet form, and I haven't seen anything yet that wasn't half-assed or too expensive or both.
When Apple comes out with a tablet, regardless of what it's like or how much it costs, there will be huge numbers of Apple fanbois lining up overnight to acquire one, which should have the effect of finally waking up interest from other manufacturers, which leads to the possibility that one of them will produce something actually useful at a reasonable price. So it's all good. Go, Apple. Blaze the trail so others can pave it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Part of Apple's problem is that they've never been able to admit when they're wrong. They were wrong with the 1 button mouse. They've been wrong many times. They often get away with their mis-steps because, even though they're not practical, they're appealing and attractive (G4 cube).
The one button mouse is the equivalent of having training wheels on your bike. Everyone can ride a bike with training wheels. Well, then why do we make bikes without training wheels? They're limiting after you make the initial leap of learning balance. The one button mouse is great for those who have never used a computer, but then the limitations start to kick in. The fact that they've just recently released the mighty mouse (which again seems to be a mis-step) is their way of realizing their mouse might not cut the mustard with modern users needing more control over their computer. The fact that everyone I know who owns a Mac uses a Microsoft or Logitech mouse speaks volumes....and a lot of these people are old school mac folk too.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
You make it sound like trying and failing is a bad thing! Trying and failing is great, as long as your successes outweigh your failures!!! Well also the failures give you clarity about how to do it better :-)
1. The Newton. 1993 16-17 years ago - iPhone and iPod Touch got this right
2. Apple Pippin. 1995 14-15 years ago - Never sold by Apple, but some would say iPhone and iPods are taking bite of this market
3. Power Mac G4 Cube. 1999 10-11 years ago - Mac mini got this right
4. Apple QuickTake. 1992 17-18 years ago - iPhone and iPods will continue to bite into this market
5. Macintosh TV. 1993 16-17 years ago - Apple continues to experiment
6. Apple's "Hockey Puck" USB Mouse. 1998 11-12 years ago - Apple continues to experiment
7. eMate. 1997 12-13 years ago - iPhone and iPod Touch got this right
I remember the 90s they were a fun decade, along time ago.
Having said that, I have serious doubts about the iSlate/iBook or whatever they want to call it, expectations are way, way, way to high and although I think this market is the future of laptops I'm just not sure Apple will get it right enough :-)