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Why Tablets Haven't Taken Off In Business
An anonymous reader writes "On PC World's blog, Keir Thomas suggests reasons why tablets have never taken off in business, and explains how Apple's iPad was able to waltz in and steal the entire market. It's all about giving users freedom to figure out how useful tablets can be, he says, rather than forcing them into narrow usage scenarios: 'There's a lot to be said for having faith in users to make best use of their computer, without pushing and pulling them in ways you think are best for them.'"
>> why tablets have never taken off in business
No cupholders.
"It's all about giving users freedom to figure out how useful tablets can be, he says"
Umm, aren't people buying these *because* the software ecosystem is more locked down and controlled than a traditional computer is? To a lot of people that is an advantage if it reduces their risk of malware.
Something seems backwards. There are far less restricted machines out there, but people prefer the iPads instead of those.
The reason the tablets we've had since the 90's never really caught on was because they didn't do enough beyond what a notebook did to justify the difference in price.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I'm not sure I'd say the iPad has "stolen the market". Nearly every presentation I've been in/been a part of still has a laptop as the primary source of information. An ipad is great to carry around if you're just trying to get email. If you're trying to do any real work, it fails miserably.
The reason the tablet never took off is because it's just a more expensive, less powerful laptop. The iPad isn't REPLACING the laptop anytime soon. Hell, it isn't even REPLACING the tablet. The people who have adopted the tablet will continue using it. Everyone else will continue using their laptops for 99% of their business oriented tasks, and keep their iPad's around when they don't want to lug around a full laptop, and don't need to get any "real work" done. If I'm going on an overnight trip to attend a meeting where I'm not presenting, you bet your ass I'll probably just grab an iPad for the flight to watch movies and check email. If I have to get any work done, I'm taking a laptop.
I would be willing to bet the reason most business users have picked up an iPad is the same reason I have: 10 hours of movie playback. I can watch movies for almost my entire trip to Sydney on one charge. You aren't getting anywhere close to that with anything else on the market today.
So that's why the first tablet that doesn't let you do everything a laptop would succeeded?
More like it succeeded because it was the first tablet that wasn't just a laptop with the keyboard hacked off.
You don't carry a full PC tower around with a display, a keyboard and a mouse. You buy a laptop.
You don't walk around with a laptop in your arms while trying to use it, you buy a tablet computer.
There's also the fact that Apple didn't try to force the desktop UI interface into the iPad, they used one that was designed as a touch interface from day one.
Apple may lock it down for the average user, but not for ENTERPRISE. Who within some minor boundaries (No using the enterprise program to build your own app store to sell to others, and no using it to write software that does it's best to harm the cell phone network) are free to develop and distribute within their business whatever they'd like.
I was more confused by the attempted assocation between Apple and freedom.
If you're buying an iPad or iPhone and think that you can run something that didn't come from the App store, you should have done better research. For many people what Apple produces is sufficient. For those who want features that Apple doesn't provide, there are other options. I see no point in complaining that a device doesn't do what you want if you're never going to buy one in the first place, buy something else.
...hipsters don't have jobs.
Kill all hipsters.
I was given to understand that the reason the Ipad hasn't succeeded in a business environment is because the Windows based Tablet already dominates that market. I know the local hospital purchased a ton of tablets recently when they underwent a huge remodeling.
Except that's not what the article or the summary say. It is about how the iPad is supplanting those traditional tablets.
It isn't the first time the article has been full of shit. I work in 2 government departments, they bought a stack of ipad's with the assumption that the intitial trial would lead to full scale rollout and do as the article suggested. It took all of about 3 weeks before most of the 30 trial ipads been returned to IT (think the number stands at 22 returned) and they went back to laptops/tablets. The Ipad is nice but it just isn't a good work tool, it is something for entertainment.
well that, and in 8 yers MSFT developed ONE and only ONE tablet application.
Every other application required a keyboard to be really useful. MSFT never ported things like office or outlook to a tablet interface. Apple redesigned their mail, web browser, etc applications. MSFT designed one Note and left it at that.
Where was the outlook for tablet interfaces? how about excel? The problem with tablets before apple, wasn't processor or battery, but the fact that if you weren't using a keyboard or mouse the interface was a royal pain in the ass to use.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Yeah but what "market" are we talking about here? I've walked around a lot of enterprises and I haven't seen many tablets, Windows or otherwise. My understanding has always been that except for individual enthusiasts, the markets (plural) for Windows Tablets have traditionally been verticals -- healthcare, oil and gas, things like that. These aren't Compaq tablets that you order from Tiger Direct, either; they tend to be purpose-built, ruggedized devices. I don't really see the iPad worming its way into those markets with any great speed.
And even if iPad has "stolen the entire market" -- a statement I choose to interpret as saying that people who have bought iPads are happy with them and have no plans to switch to something else -- how big is that market really? I hear vague statements about iPad sales. I live in the City of San Francisco and I've maybe seen 2-3 iPads out in the wild. Maybe most people keep theirs at home, I don't know -- but you would think that if mobility is such a big factor in why people are buying these things, I'd see more of them around town. By comparison, I feel safe to assume that just about every single person I pass on the street has access to a laptop, or at the very least a desktop PC or Mac. The iPad's true market presence does not seem very significant by comparison.
Breakfast served all day!
Actually no one is more equal than another. An enterprise or private user can pay the fee and write all the code they want for their own device(s). Only when they want to distribute to the app store do any rules come into play. What enterprise is going to put their apps for internal use on the app store anyway?
Spoken by somebody with young eyes and fingers. Get to a certain point in life and 'just the bigger screen' is not a phrase that makes sense.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Use one for awhile, then post.
When you say, "I can't fathom" or "I can't understand," what you're really saying is "My mental model of reality is flawed in a way that brings it into conflict with what I see and hear around me." You can't fix this condition by complaining incredulously about it on Slashdot. You need to use an iPad for a few hours and see what you think after that.
I don't even own or want one of their locked-down shiny objects, but I've used the iPad enough to understand why it's a good fit for the wants and needs of a lot of other people.
Just a guess - you're not the target market. How about an 79 year old woman with bad hands, bad eyes and not much computer savvy?
That's my mother - who, after years of trying every single computerized gizmo that my brother and gave her (and failing rather dramatically) has fallen in love with her iPad. As have her neighbors at her Assisted Living place. We gave her the iPad a couple of months ago - I just visited the place and now there are perhaps a dozen of the things crawling around the place. The old folks are browsing the web, playing Mah jong, doing email and all those other fancy things (the home has a nice wireless setup). They're perfect for people that can't handle a 'real' computer and don't want / need a smartphone. The bigger screen is a big deal for some folks.
There are more things in heaven and earth, jhigh, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. The fact that Apple has sold millions of these things indicates that they know a teensy bit more about the market than you (or the rest of your rather narrow minded ilk) do.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Spoken by a fucking moron.
There was another issue with tablets before. If a device is too heavy it fails in a lot of usage scenarios. Compare the weight of the iPad with the Microsoft tablet devices. The iPad still has one issue: it has low precision input compared to a regular pencil. It is a minor issue for the usage scenarios they propose, which consist of consuming content, however this still leaves content creation off the table.
Apple succeeded because of marketing, not because of superiority of their product
Keep telling yourself that. It's a harmless-enough delusion compared to many others you could have chosen.
Anyway, do you have a job that requires you to walk around while also having access to a lot of information at the same time?
I would probably have paid twice what my iPad cost if you had shown me what it could do as a VNC client. Even if it couldn't surf the web or play pinball or read e-books, it's still worthwhile as a VNC controller. Much easier to use at a crowded workbench than a laptop.
The ignorance of the youth is strong in this one.
No, it's not. The article makes some good points, sure. But the real reason the iPad succeeds where other laptops fail is that it's the first tablet that didn't suck. Every tablet before it has had a resistive touchscreen and a swivel-hinge keyboard, with the CPU under the keyboard. The iPad has the CPU with the display, and no keyboard. If you want a keyboard, you buy an external one.
Every tablet before the iPad had a hard drive. Hard drives are big, and draw a lot of power. That is, they suck.
Every tablet before the iPad had an Intel CPU. Intel CPUs are big, and draw a lot of power. That is, they suck.
Every tablet before the iPad ran Windows. Windows is designed for PCs. For tablets, it sucks.
Every tablet before the iPad weighed in at over three pounds, because of the Intel CPU, the hard drive, the hinge, and the battery required to support all that. You couldn't hold them in your hands unsupported for ten minutes, much less an hour--you'd have to cradle them. They were designed to do too many things, so they sucked at the one thing tablets really need to do--replace a pad of paper or a book.
Every tablet before the iPad had a battery life of maybe five or six hours, if you were really careful, and two or three, if you weren't. The iPad's battery will last through a full work day of full time use. It doesn't suck.
That's why it's the first tablet to succeed in the market.
Bwahahahaha! You're trolling, right? I'm a huge believer in open source software as a political movement, and as a basis for a free society, but are you *seriously* proposing that it's easier to use than the App Store? *Seriously*? Have you ever *used* the App Store?
I'd *love* to see a Linux distro that's as easy to use as the iPad. Let's fork Qt and build one!
Wow. Just... Wow. If a prerequisite to being old and wise is to first be young and stupid, you are destined to become Methuselah.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Young man, it will happen to you too. Sometime between your thirtieth and fortieth birthday you will start to notice it. Your hairline will be receding. Your corneas will be less flexible so maybe you'll start to need glasses. Small injuries will start taking longer to heal. Your joints will start to hurt more often and longer. You might be able to fool yourself for a while, but even with the best of exercise, care and nutrition your will not be the same at 50 as you were at 30. Age is coming for you, as it does for us all, and it will humble you too.
What can you do with an iPad that I can't do with linux on any other tablet from 5 years ago?
A normal everyday person can use the iPad. A slashdot reading geek is required for "linux on any other tablet from 5 years ago".
Once you get that through your thick nerd skull, you too will grok the enlightenment.
You should really look at yourself in the mirror. You're clearly holding the exact position you accuse me of holding, in reverse. But hey, I'll play along and clarify.
What can one do with an iPad that I can't do with an alternative?
1) Pull it out of the box, and within 1 minute have almost any book on my screen and read it for 10 hours straight without a charge. On the living room couch.
2) Setup an Apple ID, and then have any of hundreds of thousands of pieces of software on my device in one click, usually for only a couple dollars or less.
3) Let my 2 year old daughter use it with no supervision, and her actually be able to open her apps and navigate with no issues.
4) Give it to my father to browse the Internet or play with apps, and not have to tell him how to use it. And he won't break it.
5) Spend 0 time setting up or maintaining it. It really just works.
6) Have access to an enormous amount of software designed specifically for a touch screen, much of it extremely high quality.
I could keep going, but i think i've made my point. I enjoy using it.
Must be from all the American semen pumped into your great grandmother during WWI.
Yeah, you and much of the Slashdot crowd don't really understand marketing. It seems that 'marketing' is equated with 'advertising'. Not in the least. Apple is actually a very good at marketing, but not in the limited way some seem to understand it. Apple didn't 'create' the market for the iPad, they discovered it. Big difference. Once found, they created a product that would appeal to that market. Not as simple as a PDA, not as unwieldy and complex as a laptop. Then they told people about it.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon