Tablet
PC Expectations: The
Sky’s The Limit
Every
since Bill Gates first started showing glimpses of a Tablet PC in
his keynote presentations, Microsoft and other software and
hardware vendors have been hyping the market, offering teasing
hints of the glories to come.
The
problem with this sort of peep show, of course, is that it builds
up very unrealistic expectations, unlikely to be supported by
what’s actually shipped anytime soon, if ever.
(Remember the Newton?)
Microsoft
seems to have realized that and has told analysts that a Tablet PC
isn’t for everyone and that it expects fairly modest sales for
early models. That’s
likely given their small advantages over existing laptops and
their substantially higher prices.
For
that you get mainly a different operating system that offers some
interesting possibilities about how text, handwriting, and
graphics can be entered, processed, and stored.
Don’t expect highly accurate handwriting recognition
(remember the Newton), but do expect being able to take non-linear
notes, complete with diagrams, arrows, inserts, etc.
Doctors
and other mobile works could like Tablet PC’s for form-fill-in
applications, but they’re big and pricey.
A software vendor who specializes in mind-mapping
(brainstorming/decision-making) software (Mindjet)
is thinking of a Tablet PC version of its software to meetings,
but we’re not sure how many companies (especially in these days
of careful IT spending) would be willing to pop for more expensive
hardware.
HP
recently hired Alan Kay, father of the DynaBook (the
great-grandfather of the idea of a portable, personal computing
device), leading a number of press and analysts to speculate on
whether the Tablet PC (HP will build one) could be a DynaBook.
I wrote to Peter
Coffee of eWeek when he speculated on the subject noting that:
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DynaBook
assumed user programmability.
We still don't have a USER'S programming language as
opposed to one for programmers.
That is, one that's entirely non-procedural and
requires no learning of a new kind of language.
I'd prefer that it simply understand English (or
French or Arabic).
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Our
ideas of what we'd expect to do on a personal, portable
computing device have increased exponentially in the
intervening years since Alan Kay thought up the DynaBook,
thanks to GUI's, color, and the Internet, so the amount of
power one needs to not disappoint (and the amount of skill
to manage that complex environment) is much higher.
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To
connect such computers in a collaborative fashion would
surely require near-zero-cost ubiquitous broadband -- we've
got the dark fiber to support it, but not the common
technology at the interface level, at least in the U.S.
Maybe HP should start its experiment in some more
civilized place -- like Finland or Japan?
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Coffee
points out that Kay built amazing tools that allowed the brightest
programmers of their day (30 years ago) to build incredible stuff,
but it was scarcely anything for ordinary users (or even ordinary
programmers).
I’d
bet that Alan Kay will have plenty to contribute to HP in 2003,
but making a Tablet PC into a DynaBook isn’t likely to be it. I’m hoping he’ll come up with some brand new ideas about
how to use current and future technology in exciting ways we
haven’t thought of yet.
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