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VisiCalc's Dan Bricklin On the Tablet Revolution
snydeq writes "Dan Bricklin, the co-creator of the PC revolution's killer app, weighs in on the opportunities and oversights of the tablet revolution. 'In some sense, for tablets the browser is a killer app. Maps is a killer app to some extent. Being able to share the screen with other people — that it's a social device — also might fit the bill. I think that for tablets, there isn't and won't be one killer app for everyone. It's more that there are apps that are killers for individual people. It's the sum of all those that is the killer app. This has been true since the original Palm Pilot.'"
The Palm was the killer app. They sold the company right around the time they killed it.
If the guy who gave people a reason to buy a computer says this, it must be true.
Some apps are WYSIWYG. Some others are WYSIWTF.
I'm writing a new app that will revolutionize Dan Bricklin's life. It will randomly insert the word "killer" into every sentence he writes, thus cutting his workload in half!
5 years later, the first lawsuits began. They were small ones at first, easily dealt with. However over time, they began to merge, and become larger.
The lawsuit's content? Repetitive Stress Injury, from using a tablet for more than an hour a day. With a regular computer, you have a mechanical or membrane keyboard cushioning your fingers, allowing you to work for hours without ill-effects (allowing for a standard positioning of hands). Tablets, on the other hand, have a hard glass screen which you are tapping away at. It will later be revealed that the executives of these prominent companies had performed studies that showed RSI would become an issue after too much use, but went ahead with the product's launch anyway.
Among the suffering were legions of secretaries, data entry specialists, and college students. Programmers, despite their fondness for technology, were not readily known to suffer from this injury, as they are far enough off the fashion wagon to plug an ugly keyboard into a tablet when needed.
I am John Hurt.
I don't think they will be doomed. Eventually the processor, the display, and everything else will be "good enough" for anything anybody wants to use a tablet for. The the prices will start to come down. Already you can get some seriously overspec'ed tablets for $300. What happens with the iPad 3 level of tablet only costs $300, or even $200. It will end up becoming something that just about everyone has, like a DVD player, or an MP3 player, or a TV. People will just buy them because even something really cheap will be something that accomplishes quite a bit.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
i have a netbook.
it goes everywhere i go.
i sleep with it.
i shower next to it.
i take it to the bathroom with me to pass the time.
i can do anything i want on it
i can code a new OS or the latest game on my netbook
i can play real games on it
flash lets me surf the nastiest pr0n sites
why do i need a tablet?
Just FYI: My comments about "social device" in the InfoWorld interview relate to the fact that a 10" tablet is easily usable by one person while a few other people watch. It isn't "between" you and them the way an open laptop is or a phone held in front of your face. The actions you are doing (tapping, dragging, pinching) are easily followed by the other person unlike a keyboard and mouse where what you are doing isn't as obvious or direct. I first mentioned this in http://danbricklin.com/ipad1.htm .
The "lots of apps is a killer app" comment (and the reference to the Palm Pilot which was based on an interview I did with Palm's head) comes from the essay I wrote in 2006, "When the Long Tail Wags the Dog" (http://danbricklin.com/tailwagsdog.htm). It explains why "There's an app for that" was such an important selling point for Apple.
Finally, more recently (a little over a year ago) I wrote "Is the Apple iPad really "magical"?" (http://danbricklin.com/magical.htm)
-Dan Bricklin
Eventually the processor, the display, and everything else will be "good enough" for anything anybody wants to use a tablet for.
You're forgetting input devices and UI. Go ahead, try and write a thesis on your iPad. You'll see why PCs will always be superior pretty quickly.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
they're basically more limited multipurpose computing devices.
That is exactly why they are NOT doomed. Most people do not want, and never wanted, a "multipurpose computing device". Most people wanted a limited, easy to use, safe content consumption device. That's what a tablet gives them.
Make no mistake: tablets will take over as the world's primary computing device. If you do not see this, you do not understand human nature.
Eventually the processor, the display, and everything else will be "good enough" for anything anybody wants to use a tablet for.
Some of the things I use computers the most for are writing books, software development and darkroom work.
I like to do these things when travelling too, but I can't see how a tablet would be well suited for either. Even with an external keyboard and mouse (and then, why not use a laptop?), the screen is just too small, if it's still going to be usable as a tablet.
Add that touch screens are not well suited to any kind of prolonged activity, no matter what it is. Remember the gorilla arm syndrome, and why tablet PCs failed the first two times they were introduced.
I find the form factor to be the "killer app". Holds/handles like a book, but does much of what you might want to do on a computer, without having the awkwardness of even an ultralight laptop.
I get into countless arguments with people who INSIST that a laptop/netbook/macbook air is "the same" but that just hasn't been my experience in trying to sit on the couch, fly on a plane, ride in a car, etc and use the same devices.
There's no debate that those platforms have greater computing potential (keyboard/mouse, OS choices, HDD, yadda yadda). But they all still need to be opened up, generally lack the battery life of an iPad (even my 2 year old iPad 1 still goes 2-3 days without needing charging) and just aren't as physically useful as a tablet.
I won't write my thesis on an iPad (although along with a wireless keyboard it has more memory, a better screen, better performance and more storage than the Otrona Attache that I did write my thesis on - ah, Wordstar....) but I would use it to look up patient med lists, vital signs and the like.
The electronic clipboard is really here. Don't underestimate clipboards.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
...longer than a search query in Google. And then you reach for your terrible Bluetooth keyboard/dock with it's equally-terrible leatherette cover and try to juggle the thing on your lap, all the while wondering why you didn't just get a thin laptop or a netbook.
body massage!
I believe GP was referring to actual physical real estate. 2048x1536 is kind of useless on a 10" screen.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
A tablet is not suited to those things. However, those things are not what the vast majority of people use computers for.
Tablets are just fine for checking your Facebook, watching YouTube and Netflix, sending emails, and playing the sorts of games most people play.
I know a few people who have ditched their home internet and just have an iPad and a 3G wifi hotspot. It's all the computer they need, and it carries easily. Heck, it fits in a good-sized purse.
I still don't understand why no one has done a thin client tablet, with the real horsepower being a server, or even just server software, sitting on your home network somewhere. Most everyone has a desktop or laptop with multiple times more computing power than a tablet. Use wireless N to get the speeds you need for input and display and you could have 10 tablets for $50 each running off a single PC shoved in a closet somewhere. Yeah, no portability, but portability isn't the be all end all for many users.
To a certain extent, the form factor is more novel than the features.
Personally, I find it more comfortable to browse google maps when I can scroll and zoom with my fingers and be sitting in a comfy chair. Same goes for reading web pages. Hell, I once used mine to review a 1000 page PDF document for a proposal our company was working on -- and I did it in a lawnchair in the backyard for some of the time.
Being able to watch a movie on a plane is far easier with a tablet than a laptop -- I know this because my boss and I were on the same flight a few months ago, and when the guy in front of him reclined, there wasn't enough room to keep his laptop fully open. On the next trip, he'd gotten himself an iPad and is loving it.
Unless you think the smart phone is also a novelty because you can do the same and more with a PC, I fail to see why the tablet is any different. It's a scaled up version of the same thing. I don't want a smart phone because I already have a tablet, and I'm not that interested in one. I know people who already had smart phones who don't want a tablet for pretty much the same reason.
I can lie down on my sofa to play games, read an ebook in bed, surf the web from my lazy boy or my lawn chair. I can also get quick wireless in most airports and when I visit family. So, for just a quick email to the wife while I'm traveling or even checking my company email, it's very convenient.
I didn't buy it to do 'work' on; I've got a desktop and a laptop for that -- it's mostly an entertainment device, and most people buying them know that. If you don't expect it to do the same things as your PC, you don't really feel it's missing something. I find I use mine entirely differently than I would my desktop.
I predict you'll be proven wrong about the long-term viability of the form factor, because most of the people I know have some form of tablet (HP, Apple, Android ... you name it), and all of them get a lot of usage out of them.
I travelled for business about 9-10 times over the last 14 months -- every time I had both my iPad and my laptop, and in all cases I only ever used the iPad. Mostly because the iPad is much more portable, has way better battery life than my laptop, and lets me get to the things I need much more quickly (since it takes about 5 seconds to turn it on and connect to wi-fi).
Slashdot is a horrible representative sample for this kind of thing ... because most of us are looking to do much more exotic things than most consumers. But most people, most of the time, are much more passively consuming stuff and just noodling about on the web. For that, a tablet is a really good choice.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I can see two crucial differences. Firstly, technology has improved. The tablets now are lighter, slimmer and have higher resolution screens than any before. The batteries last longer, and they pack the processing power to easily stream video. Plus we have wireless everywhere, which makes them more useful still, and they even cost less (Yes, even the iPad cost less than my old tablet of a previous generation!). Secondly, Apple... they are masters of marketting. They took the tablet, a tool for geeks, and made it cool. Their brand alone sold the iPad - had exactly the same product been made by HP or Dell, it'd never have caught on so well.It's possible that just the power of their marketing could get tablets established long enough to stick.
Unless a tablet can batch render to the same degree as my 128,000 node cluster I built in the basement, it's totally useless and of no use to anyone, anywhere, at anytime, EVER!
I drank what? -- Socrates
A Desktop PC is like a big tool box, a laptop is like a tool belt, and a tablet is like a leatherman. What would you rather to carry around all day?
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
VMWare View, RDP Lite, and iSSH apps lets you handle a real machines through a tablet but then that's just remote computing. There's also an iPad app that lets you use your iPad as an additional screen of a desktop system. I'm not sure I've seen anything that will let you work with local files on a tablet but do the crunching on a desktop system.
What I'd like to see is a tablet dock that includes GPU's, external monitors, full range of peripherals, and storage, but is still based on the tablet OS; not just sync'ing. That'd be cool.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Of course I understood human nature; I'm smarter than 99% of humanity and what I want is obviously what everyone else needs as well. 'Cause I is smart.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Am still waiting for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Well, therein lies the rub.
We all saw the HP tablet -- it was a dog that eventually HP themselves was selling for about $99 to their employees to clear it out.
My brother's tiny little off-name Android tablet is cool enough, but has a fairly low-res display and seemed to have some warts (the clock stops when it's turned off, I kid you not; how hard is it to keep the clock going?). Can't speak to the Samsung or other Android based tablets since I've never had a chance to play with one.
My wife's Playbook -- well, the browser crashes all of the time, there's not much software available for it, and usually when she turns it on she has to wrestle with it to get it to connect to our wi-fi, or occasionally hard-boot it as the whole thing locks up. She's getting to the point where she might stop using it. Which is sad, because when I bought it for her at Christmas, it was a really sweet deal and thought she'd get some use out of it.
What Apple did was to actually produce a polished product that worked when they released it. Microsoft is playing "me too" as usual and trying to build something. HP released a turd and then discontinued it. RIM hasn't yet caught up yet. The Android marketplace comprises so many different devices that I'm not even sure you can compare them to themselves.
So, I'm just not convinced that another of the candidates could have released "exactly the same product" ... because they don't seem to be doing it yet. I will say this for Apple, by the time they release it, it actually has been tested and works. A lot of products get released which shouldn't be considered anything more than a beta release.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
For mobile computing the form factor just isn't there at a 10" screen. If I'm out and about, I'll be using my phone. The screen is small, but it's portable. If I'm at home want to get something done, I'm going to set my phone on the desk and link it wirelessly to a 24" monitor, keyboard and mouse.
The recent Ubuntu on Android demo is where I see things going. You bring your computer with you everywhere you go and use the touchscreen for convenience or use whatever input and output devices are around when you need more capability and a real OS.
I need to preface my comments with the face that I only have an Asus Transformer Android tablet. I don't have an iPad and haven't used one, therefore the following comment may be incorrect.
The problem with using my tablet for any serious content creation, like writing a thesis, is that the applications provided are, in my opinion, shit. My Asus Transformer has the keyboard and I use a bluetooth mouse. However, trying to use something like Documents to Go is a total pain in the ring. The spreadsheet side of things isn't any better than the word processer. Tried using the Google Docs App on an Android tablet? Also shit.
And browsers, which are meant for consuming content, also largely shit. I have Dolphin, Opera and Firefox Beta all installed. I have to use all three at different times to effectively load various sites. Then they will frequently crash, which is shit. They're also slow when compared to my desktop browser.
I use a product called Hootsuite to manage multiple social network presences, for work. In a browser this is a brilliant service. The App on Android is shit.
The best thing about my Android browser is the default mail client and its ability to connect to an Exchange server, which I am yet to master with Thunderbird. Skype also works better than Skype for Linux.
Overall, my tablet experience has been pretty poor, and I'm not convinced by the whole App mindset. My Transformer gathers dust most of the time, and may end up on eBay soon.
Brought to you by the author of such childrens' classics as "Some Kittens can Fly!" and "All Dogs go to Hell."
Thats where connecting it to an external monitor or TV comes in...it works wired or wireless.
Doesn't that defeat the purpose of a tablet? Why not just use a desktop?
The assumption that tablets will outsell PCs within a decade is based on current growth rates remaining steady. That's a pretty big assumption.
Because tablets are a relatively new device they are currently in a growth market phase of their life cycle. Once the market has reached a saturation point (and we don't know where that saturation point is), then it will enter the same type of market that PCs are in: where people are buying replacements when their old one wears out.
Of course you might be right in that all you have to do with a tablet is hook it up to a keyboard and mouse (whether bluetooth or something else) and you've got a useful, but if that's the case why not just hook up your phone to a bluetooth keyboard, mouse and display and have something even more portable?
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
Thesis writing is a fair example of doing real work on a PC. You might be correct in that doing real work with a PC is a niche. But that doesn't help anyone argue that tablets are anything but toys.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You're missing the point. You can connect all the peripherals you want, when you want them
But you're still hobbled by a toy UI. Real work requires crossreferencing data, literature, documentation, and your own notes. This isn't feasible on a tablet.
That seems to be the model people want.
I'm not surprised that people want tablets. They're toys. People like toys.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Why use a tablet at all in such a case? I guess if you had ten users your setup might make sense, butwhy not just use desktops?
Yeah, no portability, but portability isn't the be all end all for many users.
Then why use tablets?
Failure to envision appropriate and unique uses for the device is a failure of your imagination - not a failure of the device. There are plenty.
The problem with reading books on an LCD display isn't the resolution. It's the fact you're staring at a light bulb the whole time.
My e-ink reader is only 600 x 800, no higher a DPI than some of my LCD-screened gizmos, but it's FAR easier on the eyes.
Also, I fail to understand why 'touch interaction' matters. My reader has a button for next page and a button for previous page, well placed, and a D-pad for navigating menus. What more does it need?
those horseless carriages are just overpriced toys and they'll never amount to anything. For serious work, I'll take a horse and carriage any day!
seriously, you guys ought to listen to yourselves sometime.
Oh bitter, bitter ironies...
#39365465 - timestamped 1 minute earlier
From Dilbert Newsletter 49.0 -- InDUHviduals Humor Break
I've also learned recently that "ironic" means anything you want it to mean. Example:
Me: "I heard that Bob was killed by a meteor."
Induhvidual: "Wow. That's ironic."
Me: "Why is it ironic? Was he an astronomer?"
Induhvidual: "No, it's ironic because, you know, what are the odds?"
Me: "So anything unlikely is automatically ironic?"
Induhvidual: "No, it also needs to be bad."
Me: "This conversation is ironic."
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Oops, it appears that one needs an external program to complie the source files.
Speaking as a professional CNC programmer, I'd say the touch screen interface is lacking for the application. Most CNC programmers I know, myself included, use two of the largest screens they can get their hands on to maximize screen real estate. There's an awful lot of data that you have to get from the computer to your head. We also tend to use Space Pilots and the like for view control, and high end trackballs (or mice for some) for fast but precise selection (no, not that line, I meant this one!) I also prefer to set a bunch of hotkeys and use keyboard access to menu commands because then I can keep my mouse pointer close to the geometry I'm selecting, which makes it much faster. I can then get rid of most of the toolbars and free up more screen area. I think trying to do CAM on a pad would be an exercise in frustration.
Secondly, Apple... they are masters of marketting. They took the tablet, a tool for geeks, and made it cool. Their brand alone sold the iPad - had exactly the same product been made by HP or Dell, it'd never have caught on so well.It's possible that just the power of their marketing could get tablets established long enough to stick.
People who still reduce Apple's strength(s) to marketing will never understand why they have been successful. Apple has always been about polish. Geeks here on Slashdot might put up with mundane tasks to get something working but the general public does not. Every step it takes to do something makes it a negative in their mind.
I had a Diamond Rio player when the first iPod came out. Technically it was a higher capacity version of the Rio if you want to reduce it down. But in the mundane daily tasks of operation, the iPod kicked the crap out of it.
To rip and encode MP3s required me to find and use two different programs. Apple had iTunes. To sync my device required multiple steps and another program. Even then you could mess up the syncing. With iPod, just plug it to your computer.
When I got an iPod around 2005, my brother got a Dell MP3 player. At the time he disparaged my choice. A year later I asked him where his Dell was. He kept it in a drawer because it was too much of a hassle to keep it synced/use it. I used my iPod for years until I replaced it with a smart phone.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I can't pick up my desktop and use it on the train to work. Decoupling isn't just for code.
Remember ... why tablet PCs failed the first two times they were introduced.
Because Microsoft tried to cram a desktop interface on a tablet. Now they're trying to cram a tablet interface on the desktop, which will likely blow up on their faces just the same.
Circumcision is child abuse.
On my iPad, I have a database with my entire reference library available for download and viewing. I also have note-taking applications. And a perfectly functional word processor that works fine with a bluetooth keyboard.
A spreadsheet on a 10" screen is simply impossible to use.
We use a notebook with a 17" screen in the field because we have to be able to read what's on the freaking screen and enter data into those tiny cells. A tablet just wouldn't work.
People who still reduce Apple's strength(s) to marketing will never understand why they have been successful.
Here I want to both agree with you and disagree with you. That people who reduce Apple's strengths to Marketing will never understand why they are successful is true, but not because that is false, but because they have no idea of what marketing is. Marketing is not advertising. Marketing also includes figuring out what the market wants, building a good product to appease the market, and then presenting it, including advertising, to the market so they buy it. It is a combination of telling the people what they want along with the fact that it is actually what they want. Apple is successful 'because of marketing', but the people who use that phase usually have no idea what even wikipedia says about 'Marketing".