The A-Z’s of tablets: Why tablets hold so much potential
12:52 PM, Jan 20th, 2010
9 Comments
The A-Z's of tablets
Now that technology is here and already being used in plenty of variations, yet people still aren’t sold on tablet technology. Many question why evolve (or devolve depending on your view) into tablets when there are already laptops and netbooks about? Why hack off easy input ability in exchange for form factor? While both of these are valid questions, tablet proponents sometimes feel that their love isn’t being completely expressed to the clamshell heathens. And if there’s one word that could sum up why tablet-heads are so enthralled by this new niche, it would be potential.
There’s a lot of potential in tablets — no one can deny that. The main debate is if any company will be able to unlock that potential and offer it to consumers at a reasonable cost. A lot of people think that will happen next week when the Apple Tablet or iPad or iSlate or iDontCareWhatItsCalledIWillBuyItRegardless is announced. While we’re not convinced of that, Apple will certainly provide the kick in the pants to validate tablets and boost them into the mainstream.
Still, why tablets? What do tablets offer than other forms of computers don’t? Here’s our A-Z’s on tablets.
Accessibility
Tablets have provided the reason to reevaluate how we interact with computer devices. Due to its limited form, companies have had to figure out new ways of data entry and on screen navigation. The typical computer operating systems aren’t practical for tablets. Touchscreen interaction needs larger icons and hit boxes for finger input and can’t offer the pixel selection that a traditional mouse can.
Smart phones helped lay the ground work for this new version of accessibility but it still needs to be improved upon. Operating systems like Android and Linux variations (like Jolicloud) offer a much better system for interaction. While some may see this as a “dumbing down” of interface there’s a significant trade off — it’s intuitive.
Touch-based interaction is something everyone can figure out. It’s not imposing like traditional computer interaction can be to new users. You see something you want to interact with? Touch it. There is no learning curve or time spend figuring out which buttons do what on an input device. Multi-touch and gesturing is based around natural movement. Want to zoom in on an image? Touch two fingers to the screen and move them apart. Want to go forward or back while surfing the internet? Flick forward or back with your finger as if turning a page.
Touchscreen tablets are the most accessible form of computing we currently have. It may be seen as lowering the bar in some cases, but it provides an interface that nearly anyone can use with a very low learning curve.
Education
And that’s why tablets are the perfect device for education. Look at the tools we use now in schooling. We have textbooks for each class, pens, pencils, paper and book bags and lockers to help store it all. Yet a tablet can provide a replacement for all of that.
Tablets will soon replace eReaders for eBook reading. There were two advantages to traditional eReaders in the past — they provided paper-like displays for reading and were very energy efficient. But with new screen technologies like Mirasol, LiquavistaColor and Pixel Qi, all of those advantages can be included in a tablet with the added benefit of color displays. Students will begin using tablets to read electronic textbooks. These eTexts will even have the added benefit of offering additional content to the student such as videos, charts, audio recordings, more pictures and updated content. Think of how easier it will be to for students to learn if you can see an interactive timeline of World War 2 complete with audio of Roosevelt’s declaration of war against Japan, video footage of the Pearl Harbor aftermath and a Google Earth type representation of the island hopping campaign that brought the war to mainland Japan?
In addition to electronic textbooks, students could use their tablets to research, write and upload reports directly to the class database. The portability affords them to take it with them to each class and home to work on homework. In addition, tablets could provide the ability to record lectures, download notes for review and all manner of other learning applications.
Entertainment
This is currently a tablet’s most used application. Mobile internet devices are built specifically for two things — playing media and surfing the internet. Still, tablets have yet to unlock the full potential of streaming media. Namely that of interacting with your other entertainment devices.
We’re on the right path. Samsung is building HDTVs that wirelessly couple connected displays to a tablet controller. You can stream media from your tablet to your TV instantly or even pull down channels being displayed on your TV to your tablet (for that quick but desperate bathroom break). Another example is Apple TV. Why should Apple TV be it’s own product? Why can’t it be included as part of their tablet? Plug in a simple HDMI-connected receiver to your TV and use your new tablet to watch, download and control all the media available through iTunes through streaming.
Input
This is the obvious weakness of tablets at this time. QWERTY keyboards have been a necessary part of every computer since Eniac’s successor Binac in 1948. Of course people are afraid of a computer that doesn’t offer a QWERTY keyboard — they’ve been attached for over 60 years and QWERTY input has been a staple for over 130 years. People look at tablets and say “you shouldn’t try and reinvent the wheel” with virtual keyboards and they’re right. Tablets shouldn’t even mess with the wheel — they should go straight on to inventing the jetpack.
Voice recognition has grown with technology to the point where it’s fairly accurate, easy to use and adaptive. While it still has a long way to go, applications like Google voice search and Dragon Dictation (both available on the iPhone) and tablets like the Lighthouse SQ7 already use this input very well. If people want to make smaller devices (like the personal wrist computer we’ve dreamed about since childhood) we need to come up with new input methods. Voice recognition is but one of those possibilities. And until Apple develops the iThink, telepathic input is a long way from happening.
Mobility
One of the obvious benefits of a tablet is its mobility. If the iPhone has shown us anything its that mobility is a necessary feature. Using WiFi and 3G to connect to the internet on the go is nearly the entire point of having a computer in the form of a tablet. Sure, there needs to be more steps taken to increase wireless hotspots and make 3G and 4G connections more prominent, but we’re heading in that direction. Baring a massive EMP that erases all electronics we should hit blanket coverage for urban areas in the next few years.
Productivity
This is a feature that is often overlooked in tablet devices given that they currently are looked at as a “lounging” technology. But why do they have to be? Why can’t professionals use tablets to replace their desktops, laptops and conferencing devices? There’s no reason they can’t.
All it takes is for someone to make a capable tablet. The other part is making these tablets work in different environments. Say you take your tablet with you everywhere you go. It’s your constant companion and your only computer. You open, read and modify work documents on the commute in the morning. When you get to the office you dock your tablet to a keyboard and charging device. This dock could even have increased computing similar to Lenovo’s IdeaPad U1 Hybrid. You work on the tablet as you would your desktop all day. When you leave for the day, you take your fully charged tablet with you. That night you surf the internet, catch up on your reading or watch streaming video from Hulu.
The tablet has the potential to be the most productive device ever created — it just needs a manufacturer to make one with that purpose in mind.
Reading
Digital reading is a trend that won’t be going away. In fact, it will only grow larger and larger. The print industry is on a slow and steady decline that will eventually result in hospice care and its sad passing. Currently we have eReaders popping up everywhere to try and grab a piece of the burgeoning eBook market, but soon this too shall pass.
As we mentioned before when talking about education, there will soon be no need for eReaders as a dedicated device. Reading digital magazines or eBooks will be a natural feature of most tablets. And they’ll do it better, faster, in color and at a reasonable price. The only hope eReaders have of existing is to lower their price to a sub-$200 level. Even then it’s questionable that they’ll survive.
Versatility
This is what we consider the most important feature of tablets. It can, if made right, do nearly everything. Read, communicate, video conference, surf the web, stream video, listen to music, work on it — best of all it’s small enough to take it with you wherever you go. The form factor is brilliant and based off something familiar. It’s flat and thin which represents nearly every portable object we carry with us outside of computers. It’s a natural progression. Don’t fight it.
Zeitgeist
While admittedly zeitgeist is here to fulfill the ‘z’ promise in the A-Z title, it does fit. For those unfamiliar with the term, Zeitgeist means “spirit of the times” and there’s practically nothing more talked about, more envied and that holds more promise than tablets right now. Tablets will be zeitgeist for some time now and with good reason. Now we just need someone to fulfill all the potential that tablets have to offer by actually building one.
Is this tablet going to fold or roll up so it fits in a pocket? Is it going to be able to sustain the damage a seat belt might put on it? Is it going to be priced competitively with the present e-readers? Is it going to be easy on the eyes? Will it be able to do everything the iPhone can do? Will it be health safe or not emit any EMF to interfere with humans or other animals? Will it have input ability that does not emit sounds to interfere with others around it?
My personal experience with touch screens is less than stellar. My personal experience with voice input is worse than useless.
Come back with this argument in 10 years or so when all the bugs are worked out. I will not predict whether the latest attempt at a tablet will be an amazing success in the wake of a lot of failures, but then most predictions in the past have been wrong anyway. I will wait and see, but I am not holding my breath.
When I first started reading this post and found that your first point was on accessibility, I was really excited. However, I quickly realized that you did not mean accessibility in terms of accessible to all, including people with blindness or low vision. Voice recognition offers some promise to users who are unable to see what appears on the screen (so cannot efficiently touch and interact with it), but I wonder if there is a tablet that is more accessible (in my sense of the word) than the others. It is extremely useful for people with low vision to have access to emerging technologies, so please, let’s all continue to talk about accessibility issues of all kinds!
Thanks.
you only understand how neat a laptop is until you have one. my tablet is y companion for the last 10 years, i cannot do without it in my work ( am a teacher): it is light, slick and,thin but above all, it allows me to switch from typing to writing with a stylus. I drag my files with the stylus and it is faster than dragging them with a mouse; it is also practical for some od my students who prefer to hold a pen than type… and when you want to share something with someone, you just turn the screen and enjoy together.
I think that tablets are still a compromise appropriate for media consumption as well as some niche markets. Like it or not, people can use a keyboard without thinking, and that’s important. Text input is difficult without a querty keyboard.
To me, the answer is simple. Tablets and netbooks will be here until we arrive at our “true” mobile destination… convertible tablets. This may not be as simple as the netbook form factor with a convertible screen. It might have exotic screen technologies and flexible (even bendable) form factors.
But when the battery and “guts” of the device don’t dominate the form anymore, we’ll see a very light and portable device that takes only what space is needed for the screen and a slim keyboard and a small battery. With a range of screen sizes and with some really creative “transformer” mechanisms, it will be able to serve as a notebook and a tablet without compromising, so you get the best of both world.
I really don’t understand why it needs to be either clam shell or tablet. Why not both? Plus other exotic forms as well once screens and circuitry are flexible. I like slate tablets. But I don’t want to give up Querty keyboards either. I think that’s not something odd, but what most consumers would really want if they weren’t so expensive/heavy/thick/awkward/etc.
And while I’m on the topic, I worry about the durability of current tablets. I don’t feel safe throwing them in a thin cushioned case and then into a bag or luggage. So how about a hard shell like we saw for a while on calculators that slides on and off – it could even have a slim keyboard on the inside. That’s another way to get the best of both worlds – stand up the tablet and have a separate keyboard. But it’s the case, so it’s not something else to carry around, and (if heat dissipation requirements allow) if could even be attached on the bottom when using the device as a slate.
Bottom line – the whole slate or clamshell discussion is a temporary one caused by the lack of maturity of the hardware. It’s too slow, heavy, expensive, power hungry, bulky, etc. Once it’s not dominating the form factor anymore, we won’t have to stress over such things. We’ll be able to have our mobility and eat it too!
I don’t think eBooks will disapear and I don’t think that any tablet PC will replace them, and I belive this because of the screen technology used.
ebooks with its eInk technology are far superior for reading than LCD or LED technology used in current laptops and tabletPCs. Most people don’t like to read in LCD/LEDs because it is tiring to the eye due to the low dpi, low refresh rate and retroilumination.
eInk in eBooks solve all these issues with no refresh rate (once displayed the image stays on the screen without needing further refresh cycles), high dpi and no retroilumination. The “only” disadvantages are no color capacity with current technology but possible on paper and no animation capability which I understand is a design “feature” because animation with no refresh rate I found it impossible or extremely complex.
In resume, eInk is far superior for book reading but cannot be used in tablePCs and LCD/LEDs screens used on tablePCs are not good enough (by design also) to be accepted by the masses for book reading. I forsee then, that both devices will be living together for years to come at least until a new screen technology is created and mass produced.
@Bob, regarding the “hard shell” cover w/ keyboard – Motion Computing already makes this for their tablets.
@Jorge, as the blog post states, new, 2nd gen, screens are starting to filter out (e.g., Mirasol, LiquavistaColor and Pixel Qi). These screens will solve the issues you state and ultimate lead to the phasing out of e-readers, unless they become uber cheap.
Until now, tablets have lacked graphic processing power. With updated screen technology and GPUs (e.g., Tegra 2)tablets will be able to server multiple roles better. There still is a lack of “killer app”, however. Perhaps education use will be the killer app.
Within the iPad v. Kindle state of affairs, this provides the publishers one thing of a negotiating lever ?X if Amazon won??t budge on their terms/conditions, I??ll attend Apple. Etc.
Not Bad, thanks for posting!