VisiCalc's Dan Bricklin On the Tablet Revolution 185
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.'"
killer (Score:2)
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I disagree. We are slowly migrating to using iPads (and Android tablets) in the field for many of our users. They still have the ability to use a laptop, but 90% of what they do can be done on an iPad (including printing/scanning). Part of our business involves getting signatures from customers out in the field. Carrying a laptop and signature tablet is more cumbersome than the iPad. They still have laptops, but those are more stationary than anything else these days. I think you are going to see iPads more
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Carrying a laptop and signature tablet is more cumbersome than the iPad.
That may be true, but unless your iPad has a resistive touchscreen, you're going to find that capturing signatures is an exercise in futility.
Capacitive touch screens are terrible for writing. They're horribly imprecise -- and, no, those fat-finger styluses don't magically give you more precision.
I expect that a proper business-oriented tablet will use a resistive touch-screen, hybrid resistive/capacitive (See RIM's patent), or some other technology that improves precision significantly over the current po
Talent. (Score:3, Funny)
If the guy who gave people a reason to buy a computer says this, it must be true.
New killer app for Bricklin... (Score:5, Funny)
Angry Burds the mobile killer app? (Score:2)
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Am still waiting for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
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That depends on what you mean by 'in the past'.
Anyone and their hamster could (and did) write games for the Apple II, Commodore 64, Spectrum, and the other 8 bit machines.
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5 years later (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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"Your honor, members of the jury, I have but two words to explain the plaintiffs' injuries. Just two words that describe the depth and gamut of his problems. These two words are not the fault or at the behest of my client, they are as a result of the defendant's own actions."
"Angry Birds."
"I rest my case."
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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.
There's a little-known business phrase out there called 'best tool for the job'. Where I work, for example, many people have Wacom Tablets even though the vast majority of the world only has a keyboard and mouse.
I really don't understand this attitude towards tablets. We all love our smartphones to the point that we've maintained a flame war for 5 years, but a bigger version of that device comes, it turns out to be really popular, but no no no it must be doomed.
Nerd Hipsterism. Gotta love it.
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Not to mention that weird nose handle thing on the eyeglasses everyone will need.
Re:5 years later (Score:4, Informative)
*shrugs*
Voice / tablet interfaces are useful, but far less efficient for entering a large amount of information over short period of time.
Voice interfaces, for dictation or programming, need a tremendous amount of work. Command-voice interfaces, like Siri, have been around forever, and we already know they work.
i have a netbook? dont need tablet (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Re:i have a netbook? dont need tablet (Score:5, Funny)
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Backup material from Dan (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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OMG! Now we know who "Anonymous Coward" is on Slashdot! It's Dan Bricklin! Man, he sure posts a lot...
(Sorry, Mr. Bricklin, but I couldn't resist the joke. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance.)
All those things worked on tablets 15 years ago. (Score:2)
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I'm pretty sure that Apple sells more iPads in a year than all Betamax decks ever produced.
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Re:All those things worked on tablets 15 years ago (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:All those things worked on tablets 15 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:All those things worked on tablets 15 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
old tablets UIs too messy (Score:2)
Apples [perhaps accidental] innovation was to consider them enlarge smartphones.
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Form factor the killer app? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Not any more (Score:2, Interesting)
They are poor e-readers compared to digital paper systems
That was arguably true before the new iPad.
Now that is no longer true. The iPad is now superior to e-Ink, it has greater resolution, better color and much better touch interaction (which yes is important for the mechanics of reading on a text reader).
Re:Not any more (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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My Kindle is lighter, doesn't need backlighting, has a low-glare screen, and gets nearly a month of battery life.
A tablet is better for reference books, but I'd rather use an eink reader for novels.
It's your failure. (Score:3)
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Of course, a tablet is quite awkward compared to a smart phone, yet does not do much more than one if you're comparing them both to a real computer.
For my personal electronics, if it doesn't easily fit in a pocket, I'm not going to lug it around. And at home I've got instant access to real computers at every location I spend a significant amount of time, so with the possible exception of bathroom visits I have yet to find a situation where a pad would be the most appropriate form factor.
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I seldom lug mine around with me on a daily basis, but in the living room, kitchen, bathroom the larger screen makes it much more usable than a phone is.
Unfortunately, with a wife, 7 year old and a 80 pound dog, having a computer in every usable location is not even negotiable in my household, let alone practical.
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One of the last shuttle flights, as the shuttle crew left the station and they were sealing up the airlock hatches, a black laptop was prominently on screen and open, taking up a lot of space. One the space station crew did something quick with it at one point, but as you'd expect had to carry it in one arm as he typed or trackpad-ed around with the other.
Right there is an example where a touch tablet would have made a lot of sense. Not necessarily an iPad, but certainly one without a stylus. Of course they
Killer, until you need to type something... (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as they still even make netbooks (Score:2)
Visicalc in software history (Score:2)
Isn't Viscalc the first program with a license explicity noting, "We can't say it works for sure. And you can't sue us if it doesn't." IIRC, it was because of fears some P. Eng. would use it in designing a bridge or automotive brake.
I'm open to correction on this one.
Size Matters (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Size Matters (Score:4, Funny)
flaw in your analogy.
A tool belt will let me run around screaming, "I'M BATMAN!" while punching people in the face.
Re:Size Matters (Score:4, Insightful)
For me personally, the Swiss army knife (smartphone) is just fine.
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those horseless carriages are just overpriced toys (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:No, its still an expensive toy. (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
Re:No, its still an expensive toy. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Actually, I would think that CAD/CAM would be a perfect use case for a touch screen. The iPad might be a little small for most people (although I know a kitchen designer who uses an iPad) but for really industrial uses how about a Microsoft Surface?
Re:No, its still an expensive toy. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Go ahead, try and write a thesis on your iPad.
There's an app for that (at least if you're in math).
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tex-touch/id377627321?mt=8 [apple.com]
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Oops, it appears that one needs an external program to complie the source files.
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You could write a thesis on a an iPad, you just need a bluetooth keyboard.
I have written research posts for an online university course (taking a masters degree) using the on-screen keypad. Granted, it took MUCH longer than it would have on my desktop with dual 24" LCD displays. It took about 3x as long as it would have on my laptop, but the form factor allowed me to work while my mother was shopping for shoes (my parents were visiting from Canada and she wanted to do some shopping). Plus, the battery la
Re:No, its still an expensive toy. (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Re:No, its still an expensive toy. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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.
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Re:No, its still an expensive toy. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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 t
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So a
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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.
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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.
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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 t
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Eventually the processor, the display, and everything else will be "good enough" for anything anybody wants to use a tablet for.
...
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.
To paraphrase -- The killer app for the tablet will be an air keyboard.
The air keyboard will probably still be QWERTY still predominate. Input technologies are zombies.
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To paraphrase -- The killer app for the tablet will be an air keyboard.
Only if you mean "killer app" as in one that will kill the popularity of tablets. Otherwise it's exactly the opposite of what I meant.
You want to rest your hands [zdnet.co.uk] while performing input for long periods, and get tactile feedback [overclock.net] from a keyboard. Neither is possible with an air keyboard, and you get both gorilla arm syndrome plus an uncertainty in typing.
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You do realize that the new iPad screen is likely bigger than your home monitor? 2048x1536 is a lot of room...it's more space than any laptop currently on the market. And if the complaint is the physical size then send the display to an external monitor or TV.
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I believe GP was referring to actual physical real estate. 2048x1536 is kind of useless on a 10" screen.
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Thats where connecting it to an external monitor or TV comes in...it works wired or wireless. The point is there is plenty of room to get stuff done...especially if your comparing it to a netbook.
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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?
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But you can pick up your external monitor and use it on the train to wotk?
Re:No, its still an expensive toy. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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.
Re:No, its still an expensive toy. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Re:No, its still an expensive toy. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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?
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The idea would be to have 1 powerful server that would serve multiple users. One box to maintain, upgrade, and update. One box to store you files, one box to install programs on. Think of it like a mini-cloud. Obviously the average home doesn't have 10 users, but the average classroom, library, place of business does (and yes, I think tablets can have a role to play in a business setting, used along side PCs and laptops).
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If the machine is powerful enough to serve ten users, will it be easy enough to deploy in such a setting?
Re:No, its still an expensive toy. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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The World Wide Web browser was the killer app that turned PCs from being novelties for geeks into something everyone wanted to have. "I don't know what the 'web' is, but I want to check it out." - common people.
I fully expect the same for the tablet, though I doubt it will ever be as popular as the Web on the cellphone which is nice and compact, plus always on your person. Tablets might find a niche for students taking notes, but I doubt it (it's easier to just use pen and paper especially for writing for
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For me, this is the killer app. For more than 30 years, I've organized my life in a little three-ring binder filled with 8.5 x 5.5" paper. Addresses, phone numbers, to-do lists, how-tos for things I do infrequently, key paragraphs for papers that struck me while I was sitting in the park waiting for a kid, and voluminous (in total) notes including formulas, sketche
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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 table
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What you're missing is that a tablet is, by and large, an appliance. It has few user-serviceable parts, and its app ecosystem is intentionally locked down to make it hard for people to stray outside the lines of safe computing. This isn't true for any PC.
The reason this matters is that the average person is not that great at safely using a PC. Not everybody is a sysadmin; not everybody knows how to check the checksums of a downloaded piece of software against a known source of checksum info to determine
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There isn't a "killer app" because they're basically more limited multipurpose computing devices. Every app a tablet could run, a PC could already run, and the good ones are already invented and quite refined for existing UI paradigms.
The reason Apple is selling gads of iPads is that they address a question you don't quite understand. The question is: Does a tablet replace a PC (desktop or laptop). For you the answer is no because you have all sorts of uses that requires a PC. For people who don't use a PC other than surfing, email, and FaceBook, the answer is yes. For those people, they might want a new UI as keyboard and mouse is more difficult to use if you are not sitting down.
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Your comment about "novel features" is precisely the problem with keeping the inventive momentum going that Bricklin mentions.
The odds of the next "killer app" of any kind coming from people like you or me who have preconceived notions of what a "computer" is and how it gets used are slim to none. It's not that we aren't creative enough, but that our thinking is marred by too much baggage about what should be done. We already have this mental list of "rules" about what good UI design is, what people wa
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The ipad (because that's what we really mean by "tablets" here) is a new kind of computer, but it doesn't replace the existing kind of computer, because it doesn't have a keyboard. Touch is great for certain kinds of things, and keyboards are great for other kinds of things, and it simply doesn't make sense to do anything text-heavy on a touch interface.
Smartphones didn't replace computers. Tablets won't replace smartphones. "Post-PC" doesn't mean the PC is going away; it means the PC is no longer the sole
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Irony huh... let's see.
*sings* It's like getting the see-heecond post, when all you wanted was the first.
Yup, irony.
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Hmm, how ironic :(
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Oh bitter, bitter ironies...
#39365465 - timestamped 1 minute earlier
From Dilbert Newsletter 49.0 -- InDUHviduals Humor Break [freerepublic.com]
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."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Meh. Like anyone who's not on slashdot knows anything about... um... anything.