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The iPad vs. Microsoft's "Jupiter" Devices
harrymcc writes "A dozen years ago, Microsoft convinced major manufacturers to put Windows CE inside devices that looked like undersized touchscreen personal computers. The platform was code-named 'Jupiter' and shipped as Handheld PC Pro, and it flopped — it turned out that people wanted full-strength notebooks. But in retrospect, it was a clear antecedent of what Apple is doing — much more successfully — with the iPad."
It's actually quite funny to see how similar and in some aspects even better it is (and for a product 12 years ago!). Apart from the obvious (larger price and more weight), the older product actually has 12-16 hour life compared to iPad's 8 hour life. There's also dial-up modem (remember how bulky those were?), more apps, syncing software, and multitasking. 640x480 resolution and touch display.
Pretty awesome for a product in the 1998, considering it even beats iPad at some aspects. Oh and Windows CE also let you install any app you wanted (there was a lot of freeware apps too), not just something Apple didn't block from AppStore or where you have to pay for every app you want, no matter how simple task it does. And you also could program your own apps to it.
But what comes to current generation tablets, I'm waiting to see what happens with Courier. The two touch-screen booklike sure is something a tablet should look like. I mean, you're supposed to hold these with your hands and on top you, while laying on sofa or bed. It's a lot more natural to hold them like a book, either for browsing the internet while having a game or IM window on the other screen or just to read an ebook. The non-book feel of tablets has turn me off. I have a bad feeling they will want to go the Apple route and have only App Store-approved apps like with Windows Mobile 7, but I still hope for the best. The ability to have what applications you want or code your own is a really importantant one.
At least according to this site. Now how about some comparisons of the Courier versus the iPad!
My work here is dung.
Oh, forgot the link to how Courier looks like.
Modern systems like the Ipad(and various replicas using linux & windows) face entirely different issues. Older systems were incapable of most productive features at the time. PC's were used to do "power hungry" things like run excel and word. There was almost no way an older system could run those in anywhere near the same level.
Now even my G1 can read and let me edit spreadsheets. My blackberry as well. Also we live in the age of web 2.0 and cloud computing, most of the crap people do on the internet is pretty processor friendly.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
Can you believe that Apple is banning frameworks that create ipod compatible software???
Sorry Adobe. Sorry developers. Apple is about control and butsecks.
Steve Jobs and his evil empire Apple may impress the sheeple, but I was born free.
Just goes to show how stupid people actually are. Better doesn't always win. Better very often loses to market hype and brand recognition. Slap an Apple logo on any iGadget and people will buy it today even if they hated it 10 years ago.
Minutes since an iPad vs. something story is posted and still no "goodluckwiththat" to dear Microsoft? Get to work!
The way people use computers has changed over the past ten years. Say what you will about "the cloud," people spend more time on the Internet now.
Add to that the Apple magic of hardware-software co-development, widespread wireless access, a decade's worth of mobile chip and battery advancements, and you've got a totally different product.
(For that matter, look at Apple's Newton. Too far ahead of its time.)
are you being paid to believe on all that crap?
Hi, my name is Juan Saavedra. I do not understand why people follows apple that uses a legacy kernel OS architecture and not a modern Windows Ce one.
The reason the iPad is more successful than the Handheld PC Pro is because the iPad looks like a giant iPhone, while the Handheld PC Pro looked like a small laptop.
Microsoft is Jupiter and Apple is Uranus.
the older product actually has 12-16 hour life compared to iPad's 8 hour life
For the record, the iPad has a *minimum* battery life of ~10 hours. So if you play 720p video all day long, your battery is supposed to last about 10 hours, and reviewers have said that it stands up to the claim. Standby time is supposed to be 1 month.
Why do you think I absolutely dislike the window mobile 7 move to Apple like App Store and not allowing to run your own or freeware apps? Sometimes people can think on their and not be someones shill and see faults and goods at anyones products.
The iPad has a lot going for it, especially that you can get one for about 1/3 the price of that thing (if you convert the 1998 dollars, see eldavojon's post) and that you have wireless networking (a major plus).
I think a big part of this (and one that Microsoft has run into with their tablet attempts) is that of expectations. If it looks like a PC (because it has a keyboard), and acts like a PC (because the interface looks like Windows 95/98 did), people expect it to operate like a PC. They should be able to install normal software, it should be fast enough to do normal computer things, etc.
Netbooks ran into this too. They were cheap and cute, so people bought them. Then they found out that weren't "real" laptops and had 1 GHz processors, and were never going to edit video or edit 8 MP photos fast. The things looked like normal computers, but cheaper, so why not get it? Then they weren't happy. Now many "netbooks" are full computers that are just tiny. You can buy netbooks that cost $600+ instead of the early $200-$300. They are what people expect out of a laptop, only tiny.
Apple, on the other hand, made a device that is very clearly not a Macintosh. It does look like an iPhone, which is a plus since people see the iPhone as a appliance and not a computer. These two things add up to people seeing the iPad as an appliance and not a computer, which is exactly what Apple intends. It does what it does, and that's what it's supposed to do.
If Apple released the iPad with a fold out keyboard, people would compare it to another netbook or a normal laptop and criticize it for being so inflexible. I was actually very surprised that Apple is even making a keyboard dock, as it makes it look more like a laptop. The flexibility of being able to easily type a document on the road with the dock (or a bluetooth keyboard) must have been enough to overwhelm the worry, and I can see that being the case.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I'm pretty sure if Apple doubled the width and weight of the iPad to match, it could get, oh, 20 hours you think?
I don't know that you can say that Apple is doing it more "Successfully". The Newton sold like hotcakes when it first came out. Just because it got an initial rush of die-hard Apple fans and "early adopters" doesn't mean the product won't go the way of the Newton, too. I thing it's too early to call the iPad any kind of a success, just yet...
Form factor means a lot. Especially with mobile data devices. Apple's Newton was a nice device for what it did but it was no Palm Pilot.
Of course, folks who really liked the Newton would complain that the Pilots were no Newton.
The iPad has a lot of value added because wireless internet is everywhere.
Also the small weight difference counts for a lot.
$499 is still a little more than I want to pay, and I do care (unlike most people) that it is locked down.
But I would happily pay $300 for a similar device that is wireless only, the iPad is a temptation for me.
if it started at $999 no way in hell. Especially if it was attached to 1998's internet, the added value of the iPad is almost entirely that it is now a decade later, and th internet has more value than it did then.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
What?
Even Jobs' poop.
It's sad how people idolize a company.
Every review I read says that iPad meets or exceeds the 10 hour battery claim.
If you cherrypick features, you can make many things look similiar that really aren't. Just look how successful the Windows CE OS is to this day.
If the iPad and the follow-up proved anything, a checklist of features isn't the end-all be-all to devices, just like an accurate map isn't a replacement for being there and experiencing the place.
Just look how successful the Windows CE OS is to this day.
If you actually look at it and don't just look at the public marketing, I would say it's quite successful. It was used in millions of PDA's, mobile phones (and Windows Mobile is based on it too), embedded systems and most of the ATM's in the world.
Difference is that Apple markets you to believe they're more successful, while almost any other player including MS is more discrete about those and doesn't have major marketing campaigns to get their systems around.
It's similar in some respects, but not in several that really matter. One, don't take 3G/WiFi for granted, because that feature (obviously nothing unique to iPad) is a game-changer compared to wired networking. Two, 1024x768 is another game-changer, compared to 640x480, as anybody who is old enough to witness that transition should remember. Three, the content that you can consume, starting from music and video to the Internet itself, has also changed dramatically since 1998. Not to mention that the PV-5000 is also more than twice as heavy, twice as thick, and twice (more if you consider inflation) as expensive.
Geeks have a tendency to look at specs and see quantitative differences, but often it is more important to see if the quantitative difference is big enough to become a qualitative difference. For example, a laptop is not just a lighter all-in-one desktop with a battery.
No shit -- too much hairy vagina porn. shaved pussy ftw.
And there you have it folks. You expect a phone. When you see how well it does movies compared to your phone instead of how poorly it does compared to your computer, you're happy.
The interface simplicity also emphasizes this. We associate complicated interfaces with complex, difficult to use machinery. A 747 cockpit has a ridiculous number of switches, gauges & dials, a door just has a knob.
Mr Plow, that's my name, that name again is Mr Plow!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Monorail!
The old device only had an 8 hour battery life.
The iPad has greater than 9 and much less weight and size.
So what? I used to work on a mobile browser that literally sold hundreds of millions of units. The problem is that very very few of those browsers were ever used, so I personally still consider that a failure. Similarly, Windows Mobile in phones did not create an appreciable rise in mobile data usage, while the iPhone did to the point that AT&T's network was strained. That's just marketing? And Microsoft's response to Apple marketing is to start from scratch to build Windows Phone 7?
add a pound ti the iPAd, and you could double it's battery life.
The iPad is a fine way to read.
I don't own an iPad, and don't see myself every buying one, but I may get one of these:
wepad.mobi/en
For what the main drive for these are(cloud media interfaces), the tables style is the way to go. If you want to replace for Franklin, then the courier is the way to go.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I remember we had a demo of these. They seemed like a possible idea but they were kept out by management who have since wanted laptops in places where they are completely counter productive. I am aware of managers who have never taken their laptops out of their docking stations - using them as expensive and slow desktops. I can think of one who swopped his for his secretary's newly issued desktop PC.
Why were CE tablets blocked? They looked too like laptops but would have been used by the less important? I never did figure it out and have kept cynical thoughts to myself.
We now have various tablets and touch screen devices out there. The problem is that they run full blown Windows, They take too long to start and last no longer than any other laptop-like device. Also, they need a lot more care & management than CE devices might have Pity...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
They should have added this pic in the article too:
http://i660.photobucket.com/albums/uu328/marshall663/iPadvsRock.jpg
I wonder if the rock or the Jupiter can do any of these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gew68Qj5kxw
http://vimeo.com/10630568
I'm not trying to say that other devices couldn't do those things, say an Android based tablet, but that these comparisons are kinda lame and childish. Usually, they are made by those that don't like the iPad. Here's a novel idea: Don't buy one! Or, compare the ipad with Android tablets. Then we can have a good article and hopefully some a good discussion about the topics at hand. If the courier was in production or very close to it, it would be another good item to compare to. Till then, I'm pretty sure apple and some consumers (maybe the apple fanatics) are very happy with the ipad.
Ok, many things have changed to make the iPad successful (if you can even call it that).
1. Battery Technology has come a long way allowing you do actually do useful work with something small.
2. The iPad has a 1GHz low power processor! If that is not "laptop performance" of at least a couple years ago, I don't know what is?
3. Display technology has improved in leaps and bounds. This also contributes to the low power consumption.
4. Touch Screen technology has come a long way also which improves the user experience. I'm sure even the most expensive displays at the time of the "handheld PC" were not as good.
5. Embedded graphics accelerators...nuff said (not available for Handheld PC)
Also, I don't see businesses picking up iPads in droves to use them for corporate purposes. These are still consumer electronics sales by far. I'd like to see the total sales figures for non-cellphone, PocketPC/Windows Mobile devices which have actually been used corporate purposes. Honestly I think you are comparing apples and oranges (pun intended) using a time machine which just isn't fair. We'll see what the sales numbers are like when the fanboys and early adopters finish buying up the initial run of these devices...
Sure WinCE is used in millions of devices but none of them work very well.
Windows CE had ONE major problem it was never designed around a multi touch interface. It was basically a mouse touch which means you "click and drag" with your touch finger. WinCE and the related Applications held promise but failed to deliver a consistent user interface, designed for small screens, allow for mutli point touch and gestures, Oh and Not look like s standard desktop shrunk to a screen that a Command line interface would have a problem with usability on.
I repeat this over and over again a Tablet is not a desktop OS. you can't use a desktop application on a tablet and expect it to work well. You must shift the interface design away from desktop if you want your tablet to succeed. it is why Palm worked so well. it had a new interface. Windows CE, Mobile, all strived to look like windows Desktop and it was skinned horribly to hide that fact.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Apple shill. Yawn.
How many people you think use ATM's around the world a day compared to iPad? Add in the factor that they are commercial products and hence more pricey. Just because it isn't marketed more and you have more fanbois telling everyone how revolutionary, life changing and great it is, doesn't mean theres no significant use of the system.
What's interesting is that when Microsoft is successful and makes money selling a product that resembles something that's been done before, people say they stole the idea. When Apple successfully markets something that's been done before, we have to be grateful that they "finally did it right" and the pioneers were just idiots.
Making it a small fraction of the price in inflation-adjusted dollars might have something to do with it.
Nothing could ever compel me to spend $1000 in in '98 on a touch-screen computer (with a non-touch OS).
But $500 in 2010? Shit, I think I could dig that kind of cash out of my couch cushions.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Just goes to show how stupid people actually are. Better doesn't always win.
You're oversimplifying. "Better" is a relative term, it needs context to be meaningful. Apple does many things right that aren't easy to duplicate and can't be reduced as check-boxes on a feature comparison chart. Using a different context, I could say that iPad is actually "better", just because it sells more units.
Its 12-y/o technology. I dont love microsoft products but the fact that people are hating on a 12-y/o product in comparison to a 1month old one is ridiculous. Computers become obsolete while they are getting shipped, so 12-years is ages in technology. so chillax
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
If you really try to look at the Courier videos with an analytic eye you can't fail to see that this is just about "how to look good in a video". The user interface looks breathtaking -- because it is. There is no reason nor rhyme to the UI, it's a show of things you'd never discover how to use them on a real device. Every gesture and every touch and everything else does something different on every screen. Everything of this is convenient in the very moment it is done, yes. Because it's just a show-off and made to look this way, not to work in any way.
If there was one thing that teached me that MS is totally without anything real to offer it was this video. It's a concept of an artist, not more. Basically it's an ad for something that doesn't exist and can't exist in this form.
The price of Windows tablets were really restrictive to early adoption.
People see the tablet PC's as stripped down versions of laptops, so they should be priced accordingly. But instead the manufacturers priced them high to cash in on trendy new tech.
Add to the fact that they were either underpowered or too heavy, and there was no reason to buy them instead of a laptop.
A similar thing happened with the palm sized PC's. The early ones were very expensive. I bought a used Philips Nino and I think the retail on it was $700. Palm was really kicking butt because their units didnt try to do everything and were much cheaper.
But then manufacterers started taking the PIM features and integrating them with phones. Now they could amortize the high cost of powerful units over the term of a service contract. Viola! Everyone has a phone powerful enough to do 90% of their computing.
The question everyone is asking is whether or not Apple can continue the Ipad long enough for wide acceptance of the tablet.
Perhaps if windows tablet pc makers had stuck with the market and modified their products to fit demand, things would be different.
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
A modem is better than Wifi/3G? THANK GAWD I don't have to use those horrible devices anymore. If someone could just convince everyone to stop printing you'd have killed my pair of most hated devices.
I doubt there are more apps for WinCE than iPhone OS. My experience is WinCE typically doesn't run most Windows apps, or much of anything really. And writing apps for WinCE can be a real pain - at least as bad as developing for iPhone.
Both have syncing but iPhone can sync many files over the air with MobileMe, Air Sharing, etc. Doubt your modem can do that.
Multitasking is really overall a bad idea. Apple has gradually been adding it to iPhone OS in such a way as to keep it from totally screwing the pooch. For a few apps it's really justified but the vast majority it is just waste. Sounds as if Apple is getting it right. I doubt Microsoft did but I don't have any specifics on their implementation other than assuming it's normal WinCE.
640x480 is doable (not bad for back then really) but is certainly not better. Stylus driven is really not the same as a touch display. Even touch is nowhere as good as multitouch. My DS, video camera, still camera, and some older PDAs have stylus or single-touch and they really suck when your used to multitouch. Better than no touch though.
I'm not that impressed with that in 1998. I hand built a handheld computer at about that time that was smaller, had built in camera, mp3, and VoIP, local wireless and cellular wireless, and ran a full Linux OS. And I did that for a few hundred dollars as a stupid hobby project because I was annoyed at how limited my cell phone and PDA were. Again not as pimp as the iPhone but very close in concept. If Microsoft had been on the ball they should have brought us all a real iPhone-ish device a decade sooner.
Have you even used the App Store? It has thousands and thousands of free apps. And you can program your own apps pretty easily (could be a little better but helps protect the market from the spam Android gets).
I don't get book tablets. The reason my laptop isn't as good as a tablet is because it folds in the middle. Why take the worst feature of a laptop and put it into a tablet? If they do that they need to make it so you can use it in slate form when a book isn't a handy format but then they'll have extra bulk and weight for nothing. Doesn't really add up. Maybe make it so two slates can hook together to form a book that works in unison - that might have some uses.
I hope MS does have the sense to go the App Store route. It'll give customers a better experience. Is sure easier than managing a dozen DVDs, going to a dozen websites, and pulling a few things off random Flash drives to get your new computer setup. It would be cool if the App Store would let you save templates of what apps you have installed on different systems and re-install them on new systems all at once. Maybe the new enterprise tools will allow that.
There is certainly still room for improvement in the tablet market. While the iPad is pretty cool and is the closest yet to what I started working on making for myself so many years ago it's still far from perfect. I think eventually we'll see a merge between these lightweight desktops and what we think of desktop operating systems today to get something less restricted but easier and safer to use that will take over both markets (effectively remerging them). I think Chrome OS's idea of apps running in the cloud will get merged in there somewhat too although I tend to think the app will be on the device but heavy processes will run on the cloud when it's available to speed things up.
Still interesting that Microsoft played with the concept back then. To bad they never really took it all the way.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
The most essential difference between the iPad and the tablets PCs etc. that have come before is that Jobs and company have realized that the best way to sell the product is to take it out of the "computer" space. That way they don't have to compete with people's preconceived notions of what a computer is and what it should do. This isn't the first time they've done this. Think about it: the iPod wasn't sold as an MP3 player. It was sold as a way to carry all your music with you everywhere you went. Given the press at the time, it almost took an "I grock that" moment to recognize that the iPod was just a gussied up MP3 type player. Consider: the iPad is a "device" not a computer or a tablet. It lets the user download Apps, not run programs or even applications. It lets you consume content, not browse the web or even read. This is all just double speak, but recasting their product this way goes a long way to letting Apple frame the conversation in terms that they control. It also limits comparisons in customers' minds. Cheers, Bruce.
Bruce A. Knack
Silicon Surfers
You obviously haven't learned the rules of Slashdot:
If you happen to like something from Microsoft, you're a shill,
If you happen to like something from Apple, you are a cool techie.
If you happen to like something closed-source, you're a shill or a fascist.
If you happen to like something closed-source, but from Apple, you are still a cool techie.
Yeah, how does the battery hold up playing h.264 video on the "Jupiter" pad?
Oh yeah, that's right, it can't do it.
So one of the big selling features of the iPad... can't be done with that gizmo.
Okay, what does WiFi broadband surfing do to battery perfor... Oh.
Fine, how about when you turn on 3G for cell conne... Oh.
So, this is basically like comparing the Sony Walkman to the first iPod... Except that the Sony Walkman was an actual market success that people enjoyed owning.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Who says you can't use freeware apps? Why do you go bitching about things you've obviously not even used. You don't have to charge for App Store apps.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
The Toshiba had a 129-MHz Toshiba TMPR3912U CPU which is something like 2 to 3 orders of magnitude slower than the 1Ghz A4. Sure it functioned but would you use it? Value s not just what you pay but what you get.
You could say that in principle one could have made a Victorian mechanical turing machine into an ipad too.
Apple is what is known as an early settler. ("pioneers get the arrows, settlers get the land."). Apple is also an early adopter. (e.g. see Gui, mouse, postscript printing, .... ) Thus they tred right at the line between pioneer and settler.
How do they know when it's time to settle a market? Steve tells them the wine is ready now. Till then they make fun of the pioneers.
Apple and Jobs sometimes jumps the gun too ( see NeXT or Newton or apples game console if you even remember that).
Apple has more success lately, because it avoids the pitfall that most pioneers have in converting to settlers: undercapitalization. Apple has the resources to design things right and to set up ancilliary markets (see itunes) that an undercapitalized firm cannot. So for apple the wine is ready to serve early than the competition.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Well, the base charge for developer license and a Macintosh system limits freeware authors. They also need to submit it to Apple, pay their fee and hope it gets approved. If Apple rejects their app they have no way to give it to users. Is that the kind of closed computer systems you want to live with?
They are similar in some ways. But form factor and price are what is really important. I would readily pay 300 dollars for a well designed device that would let me surf(wi-fi), watch movies, and read e-books. The touch screen, good battery and flood of apps are all secondary. It was ahead of its time but the 999 price tag is what really made it tank. You will often see this with companies bringing out new tech and saying, "Oh well, no one wanted it." Yeah I guess no one wanted electric cars like they had in the 90's when a decent electric or hybrid would cost you the same as a BMW and probably drive like a Gremlin in need of a tuneup.
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
How is it that people conveiniently forget how much more expensive hardware was 10-20 years ago. My PC in the late 80's wouldn't hold a candle to an iPhone in processor, memory, storage anything. I payed nearly 5K for that beast, and it was the best money I ever spent. Hard drives used to cost hundred, if not thousands of sollars, as did memory... Saying the iPad is a 'better value' as compared to a 12 year old device is just moronic.
i went through most of my college years using a desktop and an HP Jornada 820
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/museum/personalsystems/0038/0038threeqtr.html
Ran win CE and had a PCMCIA slot and i used a Cisco Aironet card with it - in fact still have it on a shelf here.
it had the basic win CE office i could check e-mail it had craptastic version of IE (couldn't do much but i could do some things) it also had word processing and i could load an IRC client on it.
it had a very good 12-14h USABLE battery life so i could take notes all day (saved to the CF slot) and then do my home work on my desktop if i felt like..
i loved it - got into a wreck and the screen got damaged so i hunted down and bought another one - by that time HP had discontinued them. it was a precursor to the Netbook line
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
I love the slashdot groupthink! It's like it's never occurred to you that market research is something you can do, or that a product with better technology will lose to a competitor that doesn't break Mom's wrists and doesn't require a manual! "Obviously, it must be the cult of Apple!"
You might notice I made no statement about Windows Mobile in general, only that in phones it did not become a widely used mobile data device. All I'm pointing out is that "success" - a nebulous word - is better measured by actual usage, instead of counting the number of units sold. Accountants will count sales, but history will look at usage.
It's actually quite funny to see how similar and in some aspects even better it is (and for a product 12 years ago!). Apart from the obvious (larger price and more weight), the older product actually has 12-16 hour life compared to iPad's 8 hour life. There's also dial-up modem (remember how bulky those were?), more apps, syncing software, and multitasking. 640x480 resolution and touch display.
Pretty awesome for a product in the 1998, considering it even beats iPad at some aspects. Oh and Windows CE also let you install any app you wanted (there was a lot of freeware apps too), not just something Apple didn't block from AppStore or where you have to pay for every app you want, no matter how simple task it does. And you also could program your own apps to it.
It hardly matters how much better it is if it's frustrating to use. Greatest app X doesn't matter unless it's easy to use, which is what apple has really done well (partly by restricting the things us nerds love- hardware specs and openness).
I can't believe Slashdot is having a serious conversation comparing iPad's OS to Windows CE. Touch screens have been around forever. That's now what happened here. Have you even used Windows CE?
Caveat: I'm not a MacHead. I think the iPhone is a shiny toy that barely deserves to be called a phone. The iPad as it stands now is a rather lackluster first effort that would have failed immediately without Apple's mindshare behind it.
That said, the problem with Jupiter was not the concept. The buying public didn't just decide that there was no use for a tablet back then, but suddenly there is now.
The problem with Jupiter was that it ran WinCE.
The issue was pretty much the same then as it was when Microsoft very nearly missed out on the netbook explosion. Namely, Microsoft didn't have an (current at the time) OS with a sufficiently low resource footprint to run on the device. So they dust off WinCE, again, and consumers find, again, that WinCE has the same interoperability issues as any random free Linux distribution, except, you know, not free. Besides being ugly and less advanced than just about anything. And so the device, through no fault of it's own, fails in the marketplace.
And Microsoft learns again that the core reason we run Windows is that everyone else is running Windows, and some other OS, that looks like Windows but isn't really, is not going to fly.
They got the netbook market back partly through strategic decisions -- extending the life of XP -- but netbooks still had to become faster and more power-hungry -- bending the original paradigm a bit out of shape -- to allow Microsoft to compete in that arena.
Hardware and battery technology has improved, and Microsoft with Windows 7 seems to actually have gotten the message that you can't just pile on the bloat with each new release and expect Moore's Law to save you. I suspect there will be some new tablets limping along with Windows 7 Home on the market in a very short time. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if Microsoft blew the dust off WinCE and gave it one more go on the tablet form factor. Hope springs eternal, especially if you believe your own marketing copy.
However, on these devices, the real competition is from lighter weight operating systems with a sufficient collection of integrated applications, and these days that means Android or iPhone OS. As has been said many times in the past, the only product Microsoft has to compete in this area is (still) WinCE/PocketPC/WindowsMobile, and the user experience on that software platform is dismal. Windows 7 provides a sufficient experience, but is probably too resource hungry to run on a tablet of reasonable size and cost with reasonable battery life.
On the other hand, I thought for sure Microsoft was going to lose the netbook market, and here we are today with most netbooks running Windows. It'll be interesting to see what rabbit they pull out of their... um, hats... this time.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Why do we keep doing this, after almost three decades of developing the consumer electronics market? It's not just about HW spec technobabble, but it's more about what concrete functionality/service the device brings out of the box. Just tell me even ONE thing that the Jupiter did better than the iPad that made sense to my ludite parents and friends, that doesn't even mention batteries,CPU,RAM, screen, input, etc.
... but with a name like the ASUS Eee PC T91MT and next to ZERO advertising, no one will give two shits about it.
ASUS could have demolished any type of market for the iPad had this thing been given a catchy, memorable name and some ads spouting off about how it runs a real OS, runs the same real applications you use at home and in the office, has a real keyboard, and all manner of other "coolness" about it. In fact, they could even launch a campaign right now showing the iPad as a toy and their machine as something that people with real shit to do would use. ... instead we get a great little product that has a shitty name no one will attempt to remember (hell, I had to google it just to figure it out), no advertising, and no sales.
ASUS missed the boat, but I'd like to hope that someone back at their HQ would read this and figure it out...
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
How is it that people conveiniently forget how much more expensive hardware was 10-20 years ago. My PC in the late 80's wouldn't hold a candle to an iPhone in processor, memory, storage anything. I payed nearly 5K for that beast, and it was the best money I ever spent. Hard drives used to cost hundred, if not thousands of sollars, as did memory... Saying the iPad is a 'better value' as compared to a 12 year old device is just moronic.
Exactly. I remember I spent $4000 on a *desktop* computer back then. It was amazing and it had something around a whopping 300Mhz. It had awesome hardware and could run all the latest games. Should we also make a story how shit and useless that computer was and how idiot I was to buy it because now 15 years later theres a better product?
Just thought I would point out that there are THOUSANDS of _free_ (as in beer) apps in the App Store....
Also... you can program your own apps for your own iDevice as well. Anyone that registers and downloads XCode can make apps that they can use and distribute (in a limited way) to friends.
Finally... I'm not into the "hinged tablet" for one reason: how do you hold it in one hand and interact with it with the other? With a smallish book you can hold it in the middle in a somewhat awkward way... but for something substantial like two tablets tied together? I just don't see it. I suppose you could fold one half behind the other... but now it's twice as thick.
I don't think people have really thought about what it means to have to tablets tied together in that way...
That impression is what gets people to remember the product. As stupid as I think the whole "i" branding thing is, it left a mark for Apple that is associated with a certain vibe. It left an impression on the public.
I know that there's people that won't buy anything associated with Jobs, but there's millions of consumers that wouldn't buy a Mac that have picked up an iPod, iPhone, and will likely own an iPad.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
If I didn't know any better, I'd say there's a definite disturbance in the force. Google and Apple are rapidly accumulating negative karma with their heavy handed ways, and Microsoft is slowly being more interesting because they're "more open". Sad that "more opens" pretty much means I can install software without asking Steve Jobs for permission, or turning over my DNA to the Google twins.
I take it all back MS can be innovators, but in this case they were a little ahead of their time. I think the iPad and similar devices are getting close to a useful browser/book reader replacement but they will not be replacing my laptop any time soon. Most tasks I complete on a laptop requires a lot of typing and this is really slow on a touch screen compared to a real keyboard.
The real antecedent of the iPad, around 19 years ago.
you had me at #!
More apps? How many WindowsCE apps were made? There's tens of thousands of iPad apps, in addition to the 200,000 iPhone apps that work on it.
The iPad has syncing software and will mutitask this fall with the 4.0 OS upgrade
What are iPad's sales figures like? I haven't seen any. I can see a use for the iPad for certain people, but I'm on the side of the fence that says it won't do particularly amazing. Maybe better than AppleTV, but that's about it.
My webservers are still showing Safari and OSX user-agents being around 10%. It hasn't changed much since the iPad release, so IDK how much people are using it.
Unless they are entertaining their cats http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9NP-AeKX40
For example, a laptop is not just a lighter all-in-one desktop with a battery.
Actually for most purposes it exactly is, and that 100% hardware and software compatibility is what makes a laptop usable. It turns a laptop from 'annoyingly limited specialist device' to 'generic portable desktop environment' where you can guarantee that yes, you can run everything you can run on your desk machine.
Do you remember the bad days in the late 80s / early 90s when 'PC-compatible' meant 'not really compatible at all', when 'portable machine' meant you had a tiny incompatible screen which wouldn't run desktop software, and when things like specialist 'word processors' (hardware units, not software) were sold with their own proprietary disks and formats?
We've advanced a long way in portable technology since then, and the reason why we've advanced is that we standardised things so that laptops are identical to desktops in everything except software-irrelevant things like 'exact size of the screen and touchpad'.
This new Apple philosophy of 'buuuuut don't you see it doesn't have to be compatible because it's an entirely new class of device!' is actually a step way, way back to a time some of us dimly recall as The Bad Years.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
got rid of the crappy 1.8 hd, SSD now. Pens are pricy, tho
What, me worry?
Yeah, but does that 12-16 hour battery life include using the dial-up and playing music in the background? Can it even play music? Or is that what you get if you turn the screen down as low as possible and do nothing but type with one app open? How many apps are there that would work on that device?
I don't see how the Courier is more natural. Books suck compared to a single pane; ever noticed the way many people fold their magazines while reading them? The only reason books have two panes is because of the way they're made. People are used to them, but that doesn't mean they're more ergonomic or practical. The Courier simulates a quirk that is irrelevant on a digital screen. It looks cool, but I think the whole concept is just silly.
One thing I always notice - tech goes in a normal pattern. A device is introduced and flops. Later on another device comes along and does the same thing and succeeds. Look at this story or at Lotus Notes coming along and then the Web usurping it (Although I don't know if we can call Notes a "Flop"...), or personal robots appearing in the 80's then 20 years later Roombas being commonplace...
How much is Microsoft paying per post?
It's actually quite funny to see how similar and in some aspects even better it is (and for a product 12 years ago!). Apart from the obvious (larger price and more weight), the older product actually has 12-16 hour life compared to iPad's 8 hour life. There's also dial-up modem (remember how bulky those were?), more apps, syncing software, and multitasking. 640x480 resolution and touch display.
You would be far less impressed if you remembered what Windows CE, its multi-tasking, and its apps were like back then. You would wince (har har) even more if you remembered what LCD displays were like back then.
Windows CE, especially the 2x series, was half-assed and its apps would not impress you. Part of the problem is that internet wasn't ubiquitous like it is today. That's not the 98 tablet's fault. There's most of the usefulness of the tablet gone right there. Windows CE could multitask, but the apps didn't even have a close button! Basically you just used apps until it croaked and you had to reset it. If you guys thought Windows 95 was bad... hah. Try to imagine that without the Start Bar.
Oh yeah, forget about going to a web page and installing an app from it. You couldn't even do that on PocketPC successors years later. I'm not even certain they ever got around to supporting it with Windows Mobile. You had to download an app on your Windows machine, run the installer, then run ActiveSync to get the app going on your CE device. Make sure to know what sort of processor your machine uses, btw, so you know which one to install.
Forget using the net on it. Even if you did manage to somehow jam a cable into it and get it on the net, Internet Explorer on Windows CE was a joke then and it almost certainly wouldn't work now. No wonder the thing had good battery life, no wireless or video playback to drain it!
The LCD displays would drive you mad. They had no useful black level. They ghosted. They were desaturated. They'd flicker like mad if you touched them. You could technically 'touch' them but you wouldn't have the gestures that you do today. Even if you did, things would ghost so bad that you'd spend a good deal of your time scrolling to find a landmark. You can forget about watching video on it.
Your definition of 'better' only works if you really really really oversimplify the bullet points. The fact is if somebody handed you the Courier then handed you an iPad, the iPad is the one you'd find an actual use for. Probably more than one simply for the reason that it has a built in wireless connection.
Pretty awesome for a product in the 1998, considering it even beats iPad at some aspects.
Microsoft got its ass handed to them by the much simpler Palm Pilot back then. That should give you an idea of how 'awesome' it was to have all those features of multi-tasking, installing any app you want on it, and so on. Ultimately these things sell by what people envision themselves doing with them, not by their ingredients.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The biggest problem with laptops is the fact that they need a lap to sit on.
I've allways wanted something the size of an Ipod but previous tablet PCS were way too heavy to hold with one hand.
Smartphones are OK but the screen is way too small.
The Ipad makes a nice compromise between portability and usability. I just hope they stick with their product.
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
Wipe your behind with it, and get yourself a PC.
A laptop has more features than an iPad... such as USB ports... CD-DVDrom... oh and an actual keyboard, so you don't fingerprint the whole screen.
Life without walls.
Yeah, I like this point. Its not how "good" the hardware is, its about how useful it is. And that tablet would have been pretty useless.
Case in point: That tablet only supports 4096 colors. Thats going to look like crap, and no amount of insisting that its the best hardware money can buy will change that.
To put that in perspective, that's a whopping 16 shades of red,green, and blue to work with. You can pick up a crayonbox at Walgreens with more colors than that.
Who said it was better, and how? Specs alone do not "better" make. Plus it cost $999 back then which is like $1300 now. If the iPad, as it is, cost $1300, it would not be selling that well. If the iPad had a flimsy folding keyboard AND had an OS that was even MORE limited than what it has now (WinCE is MUCH further away from Win98 than iPhone OS is from OS X) AND required a stylus it wouldn't sell as well.
Why can't people accept that Apple makes great products AND markets them well? If their products truly sucked, across the board, they wouldn't sell as well no matter WHAT the marketing. In fact, they HAVE had products that sucked AND tanked, like the G4 Cube. That thing was advertised just as much as anything else but it cost $200 more than a comparably-specced, more-expandable PowerMac G4. The Cube's failure is PROOF that Apple does not operate outside the laws of economics. They don't *actually* serve drugged Kool-Aid; their customers are NOT ad-absorbing, check-writing, brainless zombies. But geeks seem to resent their success because they make things that people want to use, not what kernel-compiling Slashdotters think is cool.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The iPad had a great opening day. I'm skeptical about the longevity though without some major changes: lighter weight, for one. I found it too big to want to read without setting it down, but then it's flat against the table unless you're sitting with your knees up. Tricky.
In fact, they HAVE had products that sucked AND tanked, like the G4 Cube. That thing was advertised just as much as anything else but it cost $200 more than a comparably-specced, more-expandable PowerMac G4. The Cube's failure is PROOF that Apple does not operate outside the laws of economics
The G4 Cube didn't really suck. Taken by itself, it was a very slick piece of industrial design and made sense for a certain subset of computer users, namely people to whom aesthetics are important and expandability is not. I know it's hard for Slashdotters to accept but the majority of computer users don't give a whit whether their computer is expandable. They buy it, use it for as long as it continues to work for what they use a computer for (typically Web browsing, e-mail and light word processing) then get rid of it and buy another. They do care what the thing looks like, however. But, as you said, the Cube was overpriced, and the one time in my life I actually had the ear of a fairly high-ranking (from Apple, of course, probably C-level) industry executive for ten seconds, that's what I told him. This was about two days before the product launch. I was rewarded with a dirty look, but at least I was eventually proven correct.
They don't *actually* serve drugged Kool-Aid; their customers are NOT ad-absorbing, check-writing, brainless zombies. But geeks seem to resent their success because they make things that people want to use, not what kernel-compiling Slashdotters think is cool.
My friend, that's so right on target I can't even fathom why you haven't been modded down as a troll yet.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Can I come over and go through your couch cushions?
Look, the iPad is a consumer device.
Aimed for consumers.
People who consume video, surf the web, use Skype to talk to FB friends in other countries, read papers online, play games online (FB apps).
It's not a tech thing. It just WORKS. And that is the key difference - I've used one, it takes about 5 seconds to figure out how to use it.
That is NEVER true of MSFT products.
By the way, the EU has just been told (I watch foreign business news at night) that they will get the iPod a MONTH late due to US demand. ... the world has changed and the iPad won ... deal with it. oh, and Flash is dead (by the way, you're going to love HTML6 when it comes out)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Back then you were also paying $1500 for a brand new computer (normally without a monitor). Prices have dropped across the board.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
t the fact that people are hating on a 12-y/o product in comparison to a 1month old one is ridiculous.
You're right, of course, although no one is actually hating on the product as much as they are on the guy who's claiming it's better than an iPad.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Insightful?!!! This is troll bait.
Just goes to show how stupid this /. poser is. Slap an Apple logo on a device and all rational reasoning ability goes out the window.
The Toshiba had a 129-MHz Toshiba TMPR3912U CPU which is something like 2 to 3 orders of magnitude slower than the 1Ghz A4.
So the 1Ghz A4 is 100x to 1000x faster than the 129-MHz Toshiba TMPR3912U CPU?
It has to be at least three times that size!
Another project that was doomed before release, even though it promised instant-on, ultra lightweight and long battery life...
It's not the slick hardware and design. It's the company. All the things that are great about computing is controlled, limited, restricted and later sold to you at a premium and try to tell you it was their idea in the first place. Classic example is iPhone without copy and paste. Who else but Apple can haul out the bandwagon to celebrate "copy and paste" and get people to sing their praises?
*iPhone does everything I want! It's the perfect smart phone! Browses the web perfectly and smoothly. It does MS Exchange better than Outlook!" --my own brother.
"Does it do flash?"
"..."
It's not too much different than how most linux distros maintain their repositories. If Apple simply limited it to not approving malicious applications, it'd be fine. Having a single, easy to use and trusted source for your applications is a good thing, and sure beats downloading random crap from wherever on the internet and hoping that it doesn't send you personal information and credit card numbers to China or something.
What are those?
Prevents me from easily accessing the device?
Makes me move data through their crappy program?
Isn't able to access standard data external to the device?
Has a browser about as useful as Lynx?
Has greatly restricted app choice preventing me from fixing that myself?
Forces the user into web balkanizing "apps" because of arbitrary platform restrictions?
Has has poor multimedia format support?
Has greatly restricted app choice preventing me from fixing that myself?
Sells More -> Better is such a blast from the past.
It's what Lemmings used to say about MS-DOS.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Does he care? Does he miss Flash? If not, then it doesn't matter.
We allegedly had that with the Mac.
Now today since the cult has moved on, that entire notion must be disregarded.
The cult has to shout down the idea that a general purpose device could be suitable for mom.
It's like a line out of 1984...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If I was something that acts like a paper notebook, I can get one for 79 cents at Staples. There sure are some over-literal metaphors in this Courier video.
But, these are all the reasons that these devices did terribly...
I used WinCE / PocketPC / WinMo / whatever they're calling it this week to separate it from the previous generation for years, from 2001 until 2007 because I had to. It was terrible! (especially their idea of "muti-tasking") The proof is in the numbers; Apple probably sold more iPhones in the time it took me to reply to this post than all Jupiter devices put together...
Windows Phone 7: Because 1-6 were just practice.
I owned one, back in the day.
I assure you, the claimed 10-16 hour battery life is a ludicrous exaggeration. In reality, it was good for 4.5-6 hours on a charge.
(Battery life claims are a lot more conservative these days; I remember the first-gen Apple Powerbooks, where the PB100's claimed life of "two and a half hours" was closer to 40 minutes -- and they were by no means the worst of the bunch!)
Also: the thing was near-as-dammit unusable due to crappy design decisions. For example, WinCE 2.11 had the window "close" button right next to the "Maximize" button -- and the pen digitizer was inaccurate enough that if you didn't calibrate the screen very carefully you'd end up hitting "close" instead of "maximize" about 50% of the time!
> It's not too much different than how most linux distros maintain their repositories.
It's not even close.
Linux package managers allow for 3rd party repositories.
The leading "desktop usability distro" even supports individual users that want to package bleeding edge things.
Beyond that, you are not limited to the package manager. You can install any binary you like in a number of ways
including building it straight from source, using a Windows style binary installation package or just copying the
program to your machine and setting it to executable.
The only way you could come up with "not too much different" is if you have a cult follower mindset towards Apple.
This is another fine example of the cult denigrating the old to elevate the new.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Sure WinCE is used in millions of devices but none of them work very well.
My Dreamcast disagrees with you. But otherwise yes.
Yes, it's quite important that a laptop can be used for work like a desktop. However, my point is that the form factor allows a laptop to do things that a desktop cannot, so it's wrong to dismiss the weight difference as a mere quantitative difference. In fact, once it got light enough it became its own product category.
Yes, which is exactly my point. Those machines are lighter desktops, not laptops. That's why they're merely a footnote of history, instead of a vibrant product category.
> The iPad has a lot of value added because wireless internet is everywhere.
That's funny. I was just on the back porch futzing with the mobile version of Safari and it was just pathetic.
Sometimes I think the reason for all of the "apps" is just how bad mobile networking is. If you don't try to load a modern webpage kit-and-kaboodle but instead go through some "app" instead you might not realize how crappy 3G and wifi really is.
Like the MS-DOS cargo cult before it, the iphone/ipad is only really impressive to those without a good frame of reference.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
you, there is NO WAY it got 12-16 hours. More like 4 if you're lucky. What's more, the web browser (IE4 for CE) was obsolete and couldn't load 90 percent of web sites on the day it launched. Pocket Outlook couldn't actually talk to anything because it had zero authentication or encryption capabilities. And as for all those apps you could install... There were maybe a dozen or two that were compatible. The CE machines were spread out across SH3, SH4, MIPS, XScale, and a bunch of other CPUs, and many shareware authors only compiled for the platform they had. Plus screen sizes varied and apps often weren't easily compatible across them. Finally, you had ZERO connectivity because there were just about ZERO PCMCIA network or wireless manufacturers that actually released CE drivers. Cisco was one, so all you had to do was pony up $300 for the Cisco PCMCIA card instead of the $20 Chinese one on eBay that was supported by "real" Windows.
Don't be fooled. The iPad will do what the CE touchpads never did because (like the iPhone) the implementation and execution of the iPad isn't about the bullet list of features (which you just recited not realizing that they all sucked on these old devices) but about making sure that the features it DOES have DON'T SUCK.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Playing video all day long doesn't use much CPU, if any, since it's all offloaded to dedicated hardware. Doing something CPU intensive will drop that battery life below 10 hours easy.
We've had consumer available, general purpose computers since the mid 70's. If it were possible to make them so they were suitable for mom don't you think that might have happened by now? Wake up and smell the coffee. The WIMP interface and hierarchical file system were a step forward but it was never going to be enough. Apple has at least tried to break the mold and create something new, not just another form factor but with the same insufficient framework.
Trying to compare this dinosaur to a breakthrough current product has to be the musings of a demented mind. By the way, if you want to write programs for your own iPad then get off your ass, pay $100 for the developer program and hack away, instead of whining (directed toward earlier entries in this thread).
Flash content on the web represents a very large and significant portion of contemporary web experience. (And I can't believe anyone needs to state this.) The developing web standards are adopting most of the features presently provided by Flash. If a portion of the web experience is omitted, you know it is missed.
Some people will admit it when they made a buying mistake. Others will defend their purchase decision until the bitter end. In this case, yes, he cares. Others will not say so. But it definitely matters.
Whem Microsoft "breaks" the internet with its intentionally wounded implementation of HTML and CSS support, most of us understand the harm it causes. And when Apple holds functions and features back for ransom or just so that they can be a hero when they finally enable or allow them, their character is clear and obvious.
Once again, it's not the coolness or slickness that makes "us geeks" jealous. It's the harm to the consumer and to the technology marketplace as a whole that bothers us.
Did you ever actually use Windows CE in 1998? My employer gave me a ($600) machine to use, somewhere in the 1998-2000 timeframe. I spent an entire evening trying to enter a couple dozen names and addresses. Each time, before I finished, it would wedge itself and then dump all its storage. I tried a few more times over the next couple of weeks, but never succeeded. After the two weeks, I turned it back in and said I couldn't use it.
Windows CE was unusable, no matter what the hardware specs.
Pretty clearly a M$ fanboy here. How do you tell time? Because the last time I used my iPad and heard just anyone else talk about it, it had a 10+ hour battery life. Not to mention that battery life isn't relevant when comparing something with modern computing power to something from 1998. Oh, your Model-T gets 8 miles to the gallon and my Ferrari gets 7? The Model-T must be a better car... And if any Microsoft system past or present let you install any app or program you wanted, you were just increasing your chances that its going to crash. Thats the reason Apple regulates apps...to make sure that they are built using the proper programming language and are STABLE with the OS.
The base charge is $99 *per year*. What computer owner cannot afford that?
And if they are really doing open software, even if Apple does not accept the software they can just release it as an OS project and any developer can run it (or sell it in cydia).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hey look, now there's tablets even better than that for under $100!
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/293443154-cheapest-7inch-MID-with-touch-screen-wholesalers.html
Hmm... chinese crap. :P
I'm not sure that tablet is useful for anything, considering the OS.
In my experience, Windows CE (and particularly Windows Mobile) is horrible even by comparison to Apple's control-freak nature. They're about equally open, but at least the Apple device won't crash as often.
Then add the marketing: Apple has a large and fanatic fandom of hip gadget addicts. Microsoft is more popular with people who use computers less, and are unlikely to buy a lot of fancy little devices.
Flash content on the web represents a very large and significant portion of contemporary web experience. (And I can't believe anyone needs to state this.) The developing web standards are adopting most of the features presently provided by Flash. If a portion of the web experience is omitted, you know it is missed.
I've had ClickToFlash on my computer for months now and am only rarely forced to view the Flash content to use a site. As it turns out, Flash is used mostly for needless embellishments that add nothing to the content and ads. I don't miss either one at all.
Comparing Microsoft's intentional damage to actual Web standards to Apple's refusal to include proprietary additions is specious.
This ain't rocket surgery.
I repeat this over and over again a Tablet is not a desktop OS
One example I've been thinking about: pressing a button with a mouse vs. touchscreen. Mice are much more precise. It's a little arrow and the point is only 1 pixel wide. If the arrow's point is over something when you click on it, it can have accuracy down to the pixel. That's impossible with a finger. Instead of being able to hit a target the size of a pixel, you need the target to be at least... 1cm^2? Something in that neighborhood.
On the other hand, it's pretty hard to seek the button out with your mouse cursor. I mean, it's not really hard, we're all used to it, but it's more complicated that you probably recognize. Just the first step, which you probably took for granted: you have to find the mouse cursor's current location. Then you have to guide the cursor to the desired location, which means calibrating the motion of your hand to the motion of the cursor. It used to be that if the location was far away, you'd have to move to the edge of your pad, reset the mouse to the other side of the pad, and then move it again. So that was annoying. They've overcome that by putting some kind of acceleration variable in the mouse's motion-- the faster you move it, the more your cursor moves for moving the mouse the same distance. (If that last sentence doesn't make sense, this might help.)
So in both cases, before acceleration and after, it means that it's harder to hit a precise point with your mouse that is far away from your current mouse position than to hit a button that's close. That's part of the reason we have toolbars that cluster all the controls into a tight area, because seeking around for buttons that are spaced far apart is relatively hard.
On a touchscreen, however, the situation is much easier. Touchscreens aren't precise, but they're as easy as pointing, and you're much more coordinated with your finger than with your mouse. This means that while the buttons need to be bigger, you can exercise much more freedom in their positioning.
The difference in pressing buttons alone is enough reason why touchscreen application UIs should be designed rom scratch, and not just pulled over from desktop applications.
...and using yourself as a representative majority doesn't make for evidence to suggest that "Flash isn't necessary." Flash and/or technologies just like Flash are here to stay in the web. There can be no doubt about that. As the majority of the web is fluff and nonsense, it is irrelevant to point out that "flash isn't necessary." People want it. The W3C who famously doesn't usually listen to public opinion has managed to see the necessity of including Flash's features.
It's hardly specious. Apple's refusal is a pretty fair comparison. People notice and miss the missing bits.
I would take betting odds that you are wrong. Especially if we condense down all the iPhone paid/lite versions as well as all the 10/20/50/100/etc points in blahblah game junk.
-]Phreak Out[-
They've been doing these things for years.
Good thing they have had the ability to run Opera or any other browser they wanted then. Unlike some other company that restricts these things.
-]Phreak Out[-
Yes, which is exactly my point. Those machines are lighter desktops, not laptops. That's why they're merely a footnote of history, instead of a vibrant product category.
Sorry, but that wasn't my point at all. I was saying that those machines were not in fact lighter desktops because they didn't run the software that desktops could. They were a different class of machine, but they were broken because of that differentness, not enabled by it.
I understand what you're saying about form factors. What I'm saying is that form factors, to me, are less important (or at the very least, no more important) than the software a machine can run, because the software is what we use these machines for. (Actually it's the data; but the software is how we get at the data).
There's a tension between special-purpose devices and generic ones, and sometimes a special-purpose device breaks through to become something very special (like, say, the Palm) - but I'm arguing that being 'a new product category' is, in itself, a limitation rather than a feature. More and more, I think our devices are converging to be merely portals on our data-universe: to the extent that the device asserts its 'differentness' it gets in the way of being such a portal and becomes an impediment.
Perhaps that idea is wrong, but it has appeal to me.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Just goes to show how stupid people actually are. Better doesn't always win. Better very often loses to market hype and brand recognition. Slap an Apple logo on any iGadget and people will buy it today even if they hated it 10 years ago.
that may be true in terms of raw sales, but as a user, which one would you prefer, the more hyped one or the better one?
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
We've had consumer available, general purpose computers since the mid 70's."
Not really. The Apple II didn't come out until 1977 and didn't even have a floppy drive. Adjusted for inflation it cost about $4600.
If it were possible to make them so they were suitable for mom don't you think that might have happened by now?"
Yes, it happened about 25 years ago.
They've been doing these things for years.
Not until years after this device was released.
Good thing they have had the ability to run Opera or any other browser they wanted then.
You weren't going to run Opera back then. Also, Microsoft restricted development on that OS. One of the BFDs about version 3 or 4 was that access was granted to bits of the OS that weren't available before. That's what the Zaurus was a big deal to Slashdot.
In principal it sounds all nice and dandy. In reality it was a joke.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, me too. I wonder if it's worth putting a poll somewhere about
I can't believe just how more stable Safari is now that I've installed clickToFlash. Getting rid of flash was a great decision, and apparently I don't miss this "very large and significant portion of contemporary web experience" (by which I assume you mean crappy games, web-bugs, and annoying adverts...)
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Uh no. 1990 called to remind you about the megahertz myth.
does a 2Ghz i7 run faster than a 2Ghz P4? yes by more than a factor of 10.
processors have been increasing in flops/ghz than they have in ghz alone.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Playing video all day long doesn't use much CPU, if any, since it's all offloaded to dedicated hardware.
And the dedicated hardware is powered by pixie dust?
Right, that dedicated hardware that uses no energy to run.
Apple, taking the innovations of another company and implementing them to great profit? More major media outlets should be alerted immediately, since this has never, ever happened before now.
Yeah.
It is? That's good to know, thanks!
I'm tired. Yawn.
To clarify:
I do appreciate that devices are based around the task they do, and they need to be fit for that task. Sometimes that implies special-purpose tools for special tasks.
I think what I'm arguing is that the existence of a separate tool is itself a fairly heavy cost to pay, and wherever possible we should have a small number of simple, generic, universal tools with high value, rather than lots of low-value special-purpose tools.
Primitive societies, and wilderness explorers, would generally agree with this: a good knife, for instance, can serve many purposes. I think in many ways our 20th century experiment in mass industrial production was a bit misguided, in that it generated large numbers of overly-specialised tools and toys, and therefore a huge amount of mental confusion and physical garbage as a byproduct. The focus was on the producing and selling, not the using.
The general-purpose computer represents for me a chance to reverse this trend, to move back towards a culture where you might have one or two very powerful tools and use these for life. There seems little reason, to me, why the category of 'handheld or portable data network interface device' needs more than one representative. If we were paying the true costs for all the externalities of production, instead of consuming rare minerals and dumping them into landfill, I believe we would in fact be much more conservative about how many electronic devices we built, and much more liberal about the capabilities and reprogrammability of those devices.
There's a whole other reason, too, why I dislike this 2000s move back toward special-purpose devices and online social networks. Not just because I saw it before, in the 1980s before the Web, and it was an annoying mess then. But because there is a deeply social/political/cognitive aspect to the use of computing as a thought-enhancing tool, and I don't think we're currently taking this nearly as seriously as it deserves. The 1960s pioneers of personal computing, hypertext and networking - Douglas Engelbart, Stewart Brand, Alan Kay, Ted Nelson, Jacques Vallee for instance, and the later software freedom advocates such as Richard Stallman - all are very outspoken about how the intention of making the computer personal was to safeguard its thought-altering properties and give freedom of thought back to the user.
Which is to say, how we think is determined by the tools and languages we use, and computing is both a tool and a language. Not only are we creating a physically unsustainable system producing e-waste, but we really are treading in very dangerous cognitive ground when we start artificially restricting the usage of electronic tools to predetermined 'market categories'.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
If I remember correctly, WinCE was mostly used in a few games made in USA and it was on the disc itself, not the console. Most Japanese developers didn't use WinCE because it added an unnecessary layer between their game and the hardware.
About 3 kg of brown Zunes per post.
The "average user" visits things like YouTube or blip regularly, or sites with embedded video, so having that missing is significant. Yes, YouTube's now moving to html5, but again, these are average users, who won't understand the need to upgrade their browser AND go find the appropriate codec. And they don't understand whitelisting either.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Nice to meet you, tired. Is "yawn" the traditional greeting where you're from? If so, I greet you with the salutation of my people: "How's it goin', eh?"
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
I find yours a most disingenuous metric to measure by. Data plans were hideously expensive prior to the iPhone's release. Hell, in Canada, in the year the iPhone was first released in the US, it was $45/month for a 5MB data plan. The reason there was so much data usage for the iPhone is because it was sold with a good data plan for regular consumers.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
I saw some poor idiot scribbling away madly on one of those Wince devices at a meeting oh so many years ago. He sat there hunched over the thing, slaving away. I had a Handspring Visor, which was the same thing (in terms of using a stylus to input simplified characters) but with a smaller screen, and I knew better than to try that.
Fast forward to fall 2009. I saw a guy sitting at a pub with a thin metallic device enclosed in a leather folder. I asked him what it was, and he said it was a UMPC. "I just like to carry it around instead of a laptop," he said. Those are the only times I have seen any of Microsoft's tablet devices in the wild. Twice in 10 years.
I have a feeling I'll be seeing quite a few more iPads. Very soon.
Yes.
I have no problem keeping the kruft out that way.
If someone makes a good freeware app thats truely worthy of being ported, someone will offer to publish to the store for them. Truth of the matter is most people don't give a shit if they don't get some random freeware program because there is an alternative that may cost $2 instead of being free, but its probably better. (if it wasn't, someone would have bothered to port the free equivalent!)
So yes, for many people there is no problem living in that world.
It costs us more money to wade through all the various problems with shitty software than it does to just pay a little for some software knowing that most developers are going to maintain it in order to maintain their revenue stream.
Freeware is great, but really, anything you can find as 'freeware' probably has a better equivalent for very little cost.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Then again, the movement you will be making with the mouse will be smaller (with the acceleration and all) than the one required to touch a spot on the touchscreen.
And similarly to the difficulty of moving the cursor (which you've learned to do with 'hardware'), co-ordinating where your finger goes is more complicated than you probably recognize. Think about all the joints. ^.^
I kind of agree with you that the UI for touchscreen should be designed from scratch to get it more efficient, but I wonder how far can you can go without losing the already existing frame of reference to computers that helps people to use such devises.
It is what it is.
Why can't people accept that Apple makes great products AND markets them well?
Why can't others like you accept that not everyone likes what Apple makes and find them worse then what you seem to feel they are? If they where so earth shatteringly amazing, you would think that after 9 years of being made they would have more then 6% of the computer market. Some people do enjoy and love their Mac, and congratulations for them. Thing is, not everyone likes using OSX. For others like myself, they are very unstable (I've used 6 different Mac's, running OS's 10.4 thru 10.6. No lie, the first 5 crashed completely in the first 5 minutes. The last one lost all internet abilities when I went changing a few settings on a Bittorrent client and I wasn't in a root user account and a restart didn't bring it back, they had to spend a few hours fixing it. Want more examples of people having Mac issues then look at their forums). Telling people that if they have a Mac issue they just need to take it to their nearest Apple store isn't a good option either, since there are only around 220 in the US, and 14 here in Canada. The nearest one to me is almost a 2 hour drive away so taking it there isn't an option, nor is it for anyone else not living near an Apple store. Others can't justify the price to hardware differences, and 'surprise surprise' just being something is running Windows doesn't mean it's a crash-fest so many others have no issues using a Windows box.
But in retrospect, it was a clear antecedent of what Apple is doing -- much more successfully -- with the iPad.
About as much as a 13th century carriage is a "clear antecedent" to a Lamborghini. Yes, it has four wheels. One more author who either has no clue whatsoever about what the iPad actually is (note: "table computer" is not the answer) or who does, and simply wanted to drive up page views by throwing the currently hot topic "iPad" into a totally unrelated story.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The "average user" visits things like YouTube or blip regularly, or sites with embedded video, so having that missing is significant. Yes, YouTube's now moving to html5, but again, these are average users, who won't understand the need to upgrade their browser AND go find the appropriate codec. And they don't understand whitelisting either.
They won't have to. The automatic update feature included in every modern operating system will take care of the upgrade for them. Adobe and Flash developers need to face up to the facts of life--Flash will soon be obsolete. And, IMHO, the sooner the better.
This ain't rocket surgery.
If it were possible to make them so they were suitable for mom don't you think that might have happened by now?
Yes, it happened about 25 years ago.
Complete and utter rubbish. For the vast majority of individuals who do not have the luxury of tech support (formal or informal) you have shiny machines that start well and then decline as bit rot takes its toll. Maybe slightly less for Macs if you have easy access to an Apple Store when inevitably things start to go wrong.
Even a perfectly running general purpose computer is far more complex than most people really want to deal with. Of course there is a subset of the general population that is quite happy with them but the point is that it is a small subset. You may not believe that but it will become increasingly clear as better products become more generally available.
If the more hyped one gets more applications and is more useful in the end, then unfortunately you often end up preferring the more hyped one. It's a simple Betamax vs VHS choice. Even there, often "better" for you means something completely different from "better" for the people delivering them.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Flash content on the web represents a very large and significant portion of contemporary web experience
No, it doesn't. At least for me. I haven't used Flash on the web for months. Then again, I don't browse shitty websites. I guess if 90% of your web browsing is visiting shitty sites, you might see a lot more Flash.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Making it a small fraction of the price in inflation-adjusted dollars might have something to do with it.
Nothing could ever compel me to spend $1000 in in '98 on a touch-screen computer (with a non-touch OS).
But $500 in 2010? Shit, I think I could dig that kind of cash out of my couch cushions.
I think I want to come hang out at your house.
Be seeing you...
You can say that $999 then is the same as $1300 today, or you can say, that a low end laptop for the home market cost $2000 in 1998 (http://www.businessweek.com/archives/1998/b3563055.arc.htm) and a desktop did cost $1000. So you can say that PC prices has been halved or lowered more.
If you say a low-nd Desktop PC costs $350 today, then the iPad is 1.5 time as expensive (relatively) than the Jupiter was. And the Jupiter was half price of a cheap laptop. The iPad is more expensive. So here the iPad is relatively twice as expensive as the Jupiter was. So compared to the computer market the iPad is way more expensive than the Jupiter was.
Flash content on the web represents a very large and significant portion of contemporary web experience.
Not my web experience. I use a flash blocker, and rarely disable it. Mostly flash is used for ads on the sites I visit. Use it for YouTube, and the Adobe store (which for some bizarre reason has even the scrollbars in flash!). This is on a desktop computer where I can easily use flash if necessary, but I choose not to. Usually if I encounter a site which is all flash, I just don't bother - the biggest offenders are restaurant websites who were conned by some flash-only designer into having a flash only site.
Flash deserves to die and I'm sure we'll see it gradually fade away (like other plugins before it) as HTML grows to encompass all the things it could do. A lot of big sites are already planning to move to HTML for iPad (NYTimes, Time, YouTube etc).
I don't really want flash on a phone/tablet, particularly if I can't turn it off, and given the sales of the iPad and iPhone, it seems not many other people do either.
Whem Microsoft "breaks" the internet with its intentionally wounded implementation of HTML and CSS support, most of us understand the harm it causes.
Microsoft did this to replace an open internet with their tools, Apple are doing this to avoid the web getting locked in to closed Adobe tools - there is a big difference in motivation and effect in this case (though they are similar corporations in many other ways).
Sigh! Better is still not measured in features or Gigawhatever. How about better in the sense "a device that doesn't make me in a bad mood using it"?
I switched from a blackberry to an iphone, the blackberry didn't have flash either (do the current models?) but the iphone had a browser that was orders of magnitude better... I missed cut+paste for a while but i generally found the rest of the phones features much better, and i use it far more heavily than i did any previous phones i had.
On a desktop i generally browse with flashblock, and have found that the vast majority of flash content i encounter is just ads including the extremely annoying ones that include sound (having to hunt through 50 tabs looking for the one that just rotated to a noisy ad is EXTREMELY annoying). The few times i've ever allowed flash content, were primarily to play video but the iphone already has a dedicated app for youtube at least.
I also consider flash quite dangerous, there is finally some competition in the browser market now but there is still only one flash plugin, creating a dangerous monoculture for the blackhats to exploit.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
If you help me steal his couch we'll split it 50/50 ;)
And when Apple holds functions and features back for ransom
Or, to spin it the other way, when Apple is actively (and with some success) encouraging sites to support emerging web standards using HTML5 and ECMAScript in place of proprietary (and poorly implemented on non-Windows platforms) Flash...
We'd got into a stupid situation where the best way to embed video on a web page was to use a cumbersome system in which the video player was embedded in an applet running in a third-party VM.
Of course, Flash was also good for RIAs, animations, applets and casual games. I've done quite a lot of work in Flash - but I was getting totally browned off by Adobe's habit of introducing a totally new, non-backwards-compatible API/App framework with every release (plus a different API for Flex) instead of (e.g.) properly documenting and debugging the previous one. Switching to a different system sounds like an opportunity...
Of course, there's still the h.264 rights problem, but that's a fail for Flash (which was also migrating to h.264) too.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Yes, but one generally doesn't buy things with computers, and it terms of actual cost relative to inflation the iPad is a fair bit cheaper than the juipter.
A few days ago I browsed Apple's web store (looking at their current laptop offerings), and there the battery life was listed for "wireless browsing" as activity.
So indeed relative low overall CPU usage, sometimes working hard (loading page) and mostly idle (reading).
And I bet they will dim the screen when measuring those battery lives.
The dedicated hardware that uses less power than the CPU or there'd be no point in having it you drooling retard.
By being dedicated it is very good at doing a special task, and that means using far less power than the CPU would for the same task.
But can Microsofts device handle this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9NP-AeKX40 !
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The dedicated hardware that uses less power than the CPU or there'd be no point in having it you drooling retard.
Does it? I was always under the impression that the point of dedicated hardware was performance, not power efficiency.
Dedicated graphics cards for PC sure drink power like it was a refreshing drink and they were very hot.
"For the vast majority of individuals who do not have the luxury of tech support (formal or informal) you have shiny machines that start well and then decline as bit rot takes its toll."
You could say exactly the same things about Moms and cars.
They are great because there is no boot-up time. I bought 2 of the Sharp Mobilon Pro PV-5000 (http://www.pocketpcfaq.com/wce/21/HPCPropics.htm) for $100 each at office depot when they were being phased out. They are great for email and all those quickie internet searches that aren't worth the boot time.
@soppssa A lot of your commentary is riddled with inaccuracies, or else it would be interesting perspective. I mean, to just take one example... are you not aware of "free ware" in the App Store? Didn't Apple just introduce the iAd platform to help "keep free apps free"? There's a lot else I could comment on, but seriously? The less accurate your comments are, the more irrelevant they are over time when the facts bear out.
Yeah, I really mean just 802.11x networking though.
Anywhere I would use an iPad there is WiFi (not saying it's so for everyone).
The $499 version of the iPad is very compelling even, but too restricted for me, and a little too expensive (there's other cheaper toys I would rather buy).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
You could say exactly the same things about Moms and cars.
So does that make the point more valid, or less valid?
Yes, and the "unlimited" data plans are now also available to Windows Mobile phones, so why hasn't usage skyrocketed? Why does Microsoft feel like they have to rewrite Windows Mobile in order to compete?
Do women buy and drive cars?
Except the cost of Windows!
This happens all the time in tech, though I like seeing it pointed out for Apple products since Apple fanboys like to pretend they invented everything (my boss was just talking about how Apple decided to come up with MP3 and put it in a portable player... hrrrng...)
I don't know if I have the real originators here - someone can probably point out earlier, but... ...now they've made the iPad, which is like a dumbed down Newton, so it's all come full circle!
Apple made the Newton, which was a great idea, but too bulky, and it died in its niche.
3Com made the PalmPilot - which was a similar idea, but smaller and less powerful. It took off.
Handspring made Palm PDAs (loved my Visor...), and made the Treo, which was later bought by Palm, which was a company of its own by then.
Now Apple has made a phone that is also a very Palm-like PDA, but the timing was right, and look at it dominate!
I think borrowing of ideas like this is great - sure, the inventors should get some royalties, and patents have their place - but without the ability to use existing tech ideas like this, innovation will wither and die, and we'll be left with stagnated products that could have gone somewhere... but didn't.
It takes far less power than the CPU would take to do the same task, but that doesn't mean it takes no power. It doesn't even mean that it doesn't take a lot of power. It's just *less* power than the CPU.
Even with hardware support, decoding 720p H264 video will use up the battery about as much as anything. Maybe playing games would drain the power a little more, I don't know-- but then, there's hardware acceleration for the 3D rendering too.
Then again, the movement you will be making with the mouse will be smaller (with the acceleration and all) than the one required to touch a spot on the touchscreen.
Similarly, operating a touchscreen puts more strain on your arms since you're not resting your arms on your desk. Touchscreen operations might need to be shorter or more discrete. You might suppose that a person's hand will linger on the mouse, ready to respond to new input, but that touchscreen interactions should include a few gestures made all at once, and then rest.
These are all good examples of why touchscreen UIs might need to be significantly different than mouse-driven UIs.
And similarly to the difficulty of moving the cursor (which you've learned to do with 'hardware'), co-ordinating where your finger goes is more complicated than you probably recognize.
Right, but my point is that you are *considerably* more coordinated in controlling your arms than you in are in controlling a mouse curor. I don't care how much of a badass you are or how many years you've been playing FPS games, you're still more coordinated with your arms and fingers. You pretty well need to control all the same joints, but you then also have to adjust for cursor speed and cursor position. You probably overshoot your target all the time on your computer, though you might not realize it because it's so common. Unless you have some kind of disease or you're drunk, you probably don't overshoot with your fingers.
What you have to keep in mind is that you even subconsciously know the position of your fingers in space at all times. You can close your eyes and touch your nose. You can probably close your eyes and type a sentence. sitting with an iPad in your hands, I bet you could close your eyes and find the approximate center of the screen with your finger with a single poke. However, if you closed your eyes right now, without preparing or figuring out a clever strategy, I doubt you could move the mouse cursor to the center of your screen.
I just tried it myself: not even close. I might have been able to do it if I had at least figured out the starting point of my cursor before closing my eyes. As it was, I made a bad guess about my cursor's starting position and ended up in the top-right corner of my screen.
I wonder how far can you can go without losing the already existing frame of reference to computers that helps people to use such devises.
Maybe you lose the frame of reference that people have built up around "computers", but you potentially gain the frame of reference that people have built up around "touching things". I think that's why Apple encouraged developers to make their apps look like real physical things. Like the note-taking application looks like a notebook and the calendar app kind of looks like a date book. I think Apple is actively trying to strip away some of the computing conventions and replace them with real-world conventions.
I enjoyed your arguments, although I don't quite agree with your conclusions
Especially the one about accuracy. I'm pretty accurate with pen(cil), a lot more than with fingers alone. (mostly because they are huge in comparison). For example I can (and used to) write very tiny letters by hand... Nowadays I'm writing a bit more conventional sized text, but the point stands. Try writing on the table with your finger and consider the size of the text you would be generating. (And if I'm rambling, sorry about that, I'm having a break from coding and it's a bit late.)
And while I haven't spent all my life playing FPS games, I've played some, and (perhaps relatedly) I'm somewhat accurate with mouse. (Which is why I hate my current 'dual engine (laptop) laser mouse' since it's horrible and erratic). And having used computers and touchscreen things with and without stylus, I'm sure that I'm most accurate with mouse, and more accurate with stylus than with plain touchscreen.
And while most of the times it's great that you don't need to be accurate and can use your fingers for the task (for example, when changing a song on mp3 player), I don't think I'm ever going to buy an advanced touchscreen thing that doesn't come with a stylus. For example I want to use a 'pen' when writing handwritten notes (a real-world convention).
Maybe you lose the frame of reference that people have built up around "computers", but you potentially gain the frame of reference that people have built up around "touching things". I think that's why Apple encouraged developers to make their apps look like real physical things. Like the note-taking application looks like a notebook and the calendar app kind of looks like a date book. I think Apple is actively trying to strip away some of the computing conventions and replace them with real-world conventions.
I doubt that it's a case of stripping away computer conventions and more of a case of prettifying the applications. (I'm all for it.)
Oh. I'm most likely not a badass. ^.^
It is what it is.
And having used computers and touchscreen things with and without stylus, I'm sure that I'm most accurate with mouse, and more accurate with stylus than with plain touchscreen.
I think you probably mean that you're more precise with a mouse or stylus, which is to say that you can exercise finer control than you can with your fingers. That was one of my points in an earlier post-- the mouse cursor is precise down to about a pixel, whereas a finger is only price to about 1cm^2 (smaller than that, I guess... .25cm^2?).
So yes, a mouse or stylus will definitely beat a touchscreen in terms of precision. However, in terms of being able to hit various buttons at various places on the screen quickly and accurately, a touchscreen is probably best, followed by a stylus. But talking about it that way has brought up a different issue in my mind that we haven't even talked about: which interface is going to be best for allow you to hit multiple buttons at the same time? A multi-touch screen is the only option there. A mouse or stylus simply can't do it.
I doubt that it's a case of stripping away computer conventions and more of a case of prettifying the applications.
Well Apple specifically asked developers to not port the interface from existing desktop apps, but to model the look and interaction on real objects. Have you seen how you flip a page in Apple's ebook application? They're definitely thinking in terms of mimicking the interaction you have with real books, paper calendars, and pocket address books. It may not be explicitly thought out as "stripping away computer conventions", but I doubt that it's accidental. Apple's "prettiness" is usually not just about being pretty, but about creating a refined interface that's intuitive.
Yep, I was a big fan and user of the Jornada 820. I took mine overseas with me and recorded my daily research on it, but it was a very versatile platform. The nice keyboard and long battery life were outstanding features which sadly today's manufacturers apparently no longer care about.
...their customers are NOT ad-absorbing, check-writing, brainless zombies.
I was with you right up until this point.
The thing about Flash is, even if Apple included it, what would it accomplish? Other than playing video, we'd get nothing but banner ads (woo hoo!) and unplayable games. Think about it: what do most games require? Fast and accurate mousing and keyboarding. And clicking and dragging, and mouseout/mouseover/mousedown/mouseup events. So even if the iPad and iPhone supported Flash tomorrow, most of the content out there STILL wouldn't work. Look at this Slate demo closely. Note how the guy was very careful to demonstrate exactly ONE Flash game (at the 2:35 mark)--a slow-paced castle defense game that only required clicking. I could give that tablet to my kid and in 10 minutes he'd have a list of games that don't work.
And even if Apple isn't doing it for altruistic reasons, denying Flash on popular devices is actually HELPING the Internet by pushing us towards OPEN standards for video and interactivity. Think of it this way: you're a parent. Do you let your kids eat whatever they want? No, because then they'd eat only junk food, and lots of it. So you buy them good food and make them eat it, which is better for them AND saves you money. The only people who suffer are the junk food salesmen (Adobe) and even then they won't completely go out of business, because once your kids are older and move out of the house (buy a more general-purpose computer) they can do whatever they want.
"Whem Microsoft "breaks" the internet with its intentionally wounded implementation of HTML and CSS support, most of us understand the harm it causes."
There's a big difference between Microsoft refusing to support an OPEN STANDARD that is at the very CORE of the WWW (and anything else that renders HTML--email, locally stored HTML/JS apps, Help systems, etc.) and Apple refusing to support a DE FACTO standard that is controlled by exactly one company.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
How is 1024x768 resolution a "game changer"? It's horribly low resolution. Tablets with better have been out for years. You can't even watch 720p video native on that res (despite one of the iPad's top selling points being watching "high def video" which is impossible with it's decidedly low def screen res).
Well, the base charge for developer license and a Macintosh system limits freeware authors.
The base charge is $99 *per year*. What computer owner cannot afford that?
How much has your lack of reading comprehension cost you? You need an Apple computer running OSX to develop applications for the iPhone since Apple nixed all non-approved development environments. You need a $600 Macintosh and $99/year. Now, you want people to pay this to develop freeware? And why is it reasonable to have to pay $99/year to create freeware, anyway? If you want to develop for Android, the SDK is free and runs on a variety of systems. If you want to develop for Windows, you need an OS license ($99 from various sources) and a virtual machine (free.) Therefore the initial cost to develop for the iPhone is $500 more than for the currently-competing platforms, unless you already have a mac. But since most people don't, it's a valid argument.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How much has your lack of reading comprehension cost you? You need an Apple computer running OSX to develop applications for the iPhone since Apple nixed all non-approved development environments. You need a $600 Macintosh and $99/year. Now, you want people to pay this to develop freeware?
Ah, the insulting Apple Hater, succeeding only in showing what an ass he can be instead of arguing on the merits of his (and it is always a he, the inflammatory Apple Hater) arguments.
I could go on about how actually most programmers have macs these days, about how even $500 (with most of that cost a single time fee that gives you equipment you can use for anything) is nothing even to poor student developers (I know, I was one), about how the mention of cost of other platforms is eminently stupid because you kept out device and contract costs. But you obviously live to remain unconvinced, and would simply issue more insults and half-baked arguments. So I will say good day to you sir, and let you have the last response (since Apple Hating is very much like tourettes, where you feel compelled to speak even though it is to the detriment or your own image).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I could go on about how actually most programmers have macs these days,
citation?
about how even $500 (with most of that cost a single time fee that gives you equipment you can use for anything) is nothing even to poor student developers
It was a lot to me when I was a student.
about how the mention of cost of other platforms is eminently stupid because you kept out device and contract costs.
You don't need a device to develop for android or winmo. They give you a device emulator for free.
But you obviously live to remain unconvinced, and would simply issue more insults and half-baked arguments.
At least my arguments have seen a picture of fire.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
exactly, Steve Jobs could take a dump, label it iPood and somone would be willing to shell out a few hundered bucks for it