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5 Reasons Tablets Suck, and You Won't Buy One
Crazzaper writes "When the iPad was announced, a lot of people who didn't care about tablets came out to bash Apple's new device. These same people said 'I would have bought it if it had a full OS,' but in reality full OS tablets existed before the iPad rumors even started. This article gives an interesting perspective on why this happened, and argues that there's five big reasons why more powerful tablets exists but no one cares."
1. Tablets Are Niche Devices
2. Full OSes Were Always There, Yet Those Who Complained That The iPad Doesn't Have One Still Never Bought One
3. High-End Hardware Specs Sometimes Don't Matter
4. Interface, Interface, Interface
5. Lack Of Tablet Apps
That would require quite a breakthrough, either in battery or processor tech.
Apparently we have that. The new ARM processors when put with the new hardware decoders are capable of this, as we'll see. Apparently Apple was waiting for just this breakthrough to enable this platform and as soon as it was able, made it.
The HP one will run Vista apparently on Intel Atom. I don't have high hopes they'll deliver as much battery life, though the platform will be very interesting. I would still rather have an Android slate with Snapdragon, and probably put a real Linux on it. I hear there are at least 150 models of that coming our way here soon.
When it's time, it's time. It seems now it's time for this.
Let's just try to remember that all of these things aren't about the widget - they're about the needs and desires of people, and what they can do with it. That, to me, is what's so frustrating about the Apple tablet. They're putting their business needs in the way of people's full exploitation of the device's potential, or allowing their cellular partners to do so. We'll have none of that nonsense on the Android version, or on the HP slate once Windows is wiped off and replaced with a decent OS.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Is that it's not an open platform. It doesn't matter that much to me that it isn't the sake as a desktop OS X install, I am OK with that.
My issues are:
Just got a Hp Tm2. Capacitive multitouch screen + Wacom pressure-sensitive digitiser screen + huge multitouch trackpad. I added a 3-button scrolling trackball for my own UI preference. 10 watt CULV dual-core CPU. Dual boot Ubuntu and Win7, with each virtualising the physical partition of the other on-demand, and virtual XP and OSx86 just for kicks. Yes, the basic screen UIs such as Gnome and Win7 File Explorer are less than optimal for finger manipulation. But there are so many replacement apps and shells that this is not really an issue. And the ability to avoid the mouse/trackball unless absolutely necessary and directly interact with the objects on screen is both amazing and liberating. I suspect that many of the people who diss on TabletPCs simply haven't really used one, or have not yet found a compelling reason to use one or haven't really looked very much. Personally, I use wanted a tablet for the immediacy of interacting directly on the screen, and the amazingly convenient comic book/ebook/media viewer it enables. I'm no stranger to mechanically disintermediated UIs -- was using a light pen in the early 1980s and a mouse since the Mac came out in the mid-80s -- but after a few years of a touchscreen phone/PDA I simply knew my next PC had to have touch. The irony is that with some deep discounting and some coupons, my TabletPC cost less than the higher-end iPad will cost, *and* it can easily run 1080p from both MKV/AVC and Flash with ease.
Da Blog
I don't know about the polish of the OS, but it's GNU/Linux, so the sky is the limit: http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/touchbook/
You can buy it without the keyboard.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
You say 'always', but HP has produced $800 tablets for years now. I upgraded one and spent $1200, but that's still half of your $2500.
So, why didn't they catch on?
The digitizer is just so-so
The processor is crap and can't really handle digitizer input at full speed, even if the digitizer wasn't so-so.
It's heavy. You imagine holding it on one arm and drawing with the other, like you might a clipboard... This will not happen for more than a couple minutes.
It's touch-screen as well as having a digitizer. In theory, the touchscreen disables when the pen is near the screen, so your hand doesn't accidentally draw. In reality, the distance has to be too close, and you end up messing things up constantly.
It's heavy. You imagine reading books on it, but it's simply a pain to move around while you're reading.
It's hot. That processor, as weak as it is, produces so much heat that you'll think twice about setting it on your lap.
Did I mention that it's heavy? Seriously. Everything you think you want to do with it will fail because it's just heavy.
So, why do I expect the iPad and its competitors to succeed?
They won't be heavy. Just like an iPod Touch or iPhone, it'll be a nice light-weight device that only does what it needs to: Display content!
Decent book-readers are already $200-300 anyhow. (And they used to be $500.) For the media capabilities in a better tablet, the extra price is justified.
You can run your already-existing mobile apps. The iPad will use your iPhone apps, and the Android devices will supposedly use your Android apps you've already bought. On all other computers, you're expected to repurchase your apps when you have multiple devices. (I've always thought this was a stupid policy. A person can only use 1 computer at a time anyhow, so just let them install it multiple times.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I have a lot of friends who absolutely love their netbooks, many have netbooks, laptops and desktop pcs. I own one 2 laptops atm but never saw the point of a netbook, it is too big to be realistically more portable than my Macbook pro. This is where the iPad fits and where others failed to do their homework. It has all the features that most people actually use on their netbooks.