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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."
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.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
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.
The user interface is more compact on a cellphone, not bloated like on a PC. A fortuitous discovery Steve probably made after 2003.
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.
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.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
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?
John