Steve Jobs, Before the iPad, On Why Tablets Suck

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Edible Apple: "Apple didn't release the first tablet computer or even come up with the idea for tablet computing itself. If anything, Microsoft, and Bill Gates in particular, were championing tablet computers years before the iPad was released. In this video clip from the first All Things D conference in 2003, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs explains to Walt Mossberg why Apple, at the time, wasn't keen on tablets and more specifically, why Jobs felt that stylus computing and handwriting recognition were inherent failures."

Comments

Yeah well...

[GameboyRMH]

That was before he accidentally stumbled into the goldmine that was iOS (remember he didn't want to allow any apps at all at first) and his earlier arguments were made moot by a tsunami of cash.

This is news how?

[Mensa Babe]

We all remember what Steve Jobs was saying that Apple had "no plans at the current time to make a tablet." We are now 9 years in the future so it is hardly "the current time" that he was referring to. I know it is fashionable here on Slashdot to make fun of Apple but this time there is nothing to laugh at. He was talking about how tablets suck, not that people won't by them, and quite frankly I can only agree with him.

Re:This is news how?

[jd]

We also know that Apple has some experience in trying to pioneer handwriting technology (the Apple Newton, I think it was) and are therefore well acquainted with the challenges involved (power requirements, error rates, CPU overheads, etc). That knowledge-base has existed for Apple for a long time now. Yes, technology has progressed, but if you can squeeze N% more out of a modern CPU for the same power input then Apple can easily run the numbers to see if N% is enough.

This doesn't mean Apple will always be right. Hell, the fact that they pushed the Newton and the Lisa out into the marketplace before the products were useful is evidence that they can be mistaken. What it does mean is that they've good cause to be cautious and they've actual real-world data to work from. They may be reading the numbers wrong, but I'm confident that they're actually taking the time to read them.

(Compare that to Bill Gates' notion that the Internet was a fad. He had no experience in networking at all, he had no numbers to crunch, he made an arrogant remark without basis and it was obvious at the time that that was what it was. Networking had been emerging for longer than he'd been in computing and was on an exponential growth curve. By the time Microsoft was ready to deal with IPv4, next-generation technologies were already being developed because the sustained demand was too great. IPv6 stacks were actually being released for Windows before Microsoft's IPv4 stack was integrated - and that's even after Microsoft took most of their network code from the BSD tapes.)

Re:This is news how?

[VGPowerlord]

By the time Microsoft was ready to deal with IPv4, next-generation technologies were already being developed because the sustained demand was too great. IPv6 stacks were actually being released for Windows before Microsoft's IPv4 stack was integrated - and that's even after Microsoft took most of their network code from the BSD tapes.

I'm going to have to say you're wrong.

Windows 95, released in August 1995, integrated an IPv4 stack. The first IPv6 RFC, RFC1883, was posted in December 1995. It was replaced in December 1998 with RFC2460.

Neither feature was included with the iPad, So....

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess this shows you how clear and consistent Steve Jobs' vision has been on this topic?

Re:And they were

[Radical Moderate]

Bingo. Rather than just port over their desktop OS (hello, Microsoft), Jobs waited until they had developed something that actually worked on a tablet. And yes, I did own a Windows tablet...and no, I don't miss it.

He lacked vision

[blair1q]

he's right about handwriting, and keyboards, and email

but email wasn't the killer app

the phone was. when Apple skipped tablets and turned phones into computers (i mean, when it decided Palm's ideas could be slightly improved and packaged in boner-inducing ways), it dived right in.

and email started to decline and texting grew. because texting is just email you can tolerate to write at 2 cps, and was already on phones.

and, interestingly, phone calls have died as well. because the phone-computer idea wasn't about calling people, it was about having that whole package of computing and connectivity in one pocket instead of two or three.

then, once the small-form-factor touchscreen interface device got popular, it was a natural transform to pull on its edges to make it, simply, a bigger version of the same thing. hence we're back to tablets. which aren't notebooks without keyboards; they're smartphones with extra spatial extent.

and i doubt that jobs saw this coming in 2003. all he saw was that tabletized notebooks were bollocks. which they were.

Apple enlarged a cellphone; MSFT shrunk a PC

[peter303]

The user interface is more compact on a cellphone, not bloated like on a PC. A fortuitous discovery Steve probably made after 2003.

Re:And they were

[betterunixthanunix]

The real failure of tablet computers was not as simple as "hurr durr they used a stylus." Desktop OSes are still designed for computers with keyboards; the mouse is only useful for launching programs and using files created by others. When it comes to writing an email, chatting, etc., the keyboard is still king; Steve Jobs was right on, and the truth of his statements has not changed. Modern tablets are winning because they run software that was designed to be far more graphical and "consumption oriented" -- a physical keyboard is not terribly important, and the software keyboard that is available is "good enough" for what people use their tablets for.

MS hardly the first. GRiDpad, GO, even Wang Labs

[dpbsmith]

Microsoft doesn't deserve much credit, either. Microsoft was thought to be late to the tablet party. Conceptually, the credit should go to Alan Kay for the "Dynabook." The 1989 GRiDpad was the first real product, and there was an immense amount of buzz around GO! Computing's 1992 PenPoint. Microsoft really just genned up "Windows for Pen Computing" as a sort of me-too response to PenPoint. Wang Labs had something called "Guide" (after the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) which got lost in the collapse of the company; the people working on it went on to found a company called, if memory serves me, Arthur Dent, but I don't know what happened to it.

Apple deserves credit for the iPad in much the same way as it deserves credit for the GUI... and Edison deserves credit for the electric light, and the Wright Brothers deserve credit for the airplane. None of them really "invented" these things, none of them were really the first, and most of the technology was in the air waiting to be commercialized. But in each case they were the first to make it to market with something that didn't suck--with a finished, usable, "perfected"--to use an old-fashioned word--product.

Didn't really contradict himself

[mewsenews]

Microsoft and Gates' vision of tablet computing back then was a full desktop operating system with a stylus and handwriting recognition.

Steve Jobs pointed out in 2003 that even done very, very well, handwriting recognition still sucks.

The iPhone, a mini tablet released in 2007, had an operating system built ground up with a touch interface (no stylus), and when it came to text input it popped up an on-screen keyboard (no handwriting recognition).

The article closes with Jobs acknowledging that tablets would be good for reading articles (I saw a project on hack-a-day where someone built an iPad bracket into their kitchen so they could read recipes), and joking that tablets are a niche market.

Microsoft's tablet efforts in 2003 were worse than niche market, they were failures. Apple blew the market wide open by not following the same path.

Re:that guy should play poker

[shadowfaxcrx]

What mistake? Handwriting recognition at the time sucked. Hell, it still sucks. Tablets were emphasizing writing stuff rather than typing stuff.

Note the iPad uses a touch-screen keyboard, not handwriting. I don't really see an inconsistency with what Jobs said then and what Apple is building now - and that's coming from a guy who is anything but an Apple fan.

Re:that guy should play poker

[plover]

I am fully of the opinion that right now, Apple could announce today a slick white electronic toothpick for $300, and there'd be lines outside apple stores nationwide tomorrow morning demanding the new iPic.

I just called my Apple Store, and they say they've never heard of the iPic! Where do I have to go to get one? Where did you get yours? Are they on eBay yet? Will they come in black?