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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.'"
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.
...hipsters don't have jobs.
Kill all hipsters.
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!
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.
The ignorance of the youth is strong in this one.
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.
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.