Comments on: Tablets Revisited http://equima.pfpfree.net/2009/tablets-revisited/ More techno ramble - but with a twist! Mon, 19 Jul 2010 07:14:44 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: insanity http://equima.pfpfree.net/2009/tablets-revisited/comment-page-1/#comment-707 insanity Mon, 05 Oct 2009 02:48:16 +0000 http://equima.pfpfree.net/?p=85#comment-707 First thing to point out: you and John have different ideas of what "perfect" is. It sounds like he is talking perfect as in "can do absolutely everything I desire"... where as your definition of perfection is more "has reasonable bang for buck"... you make this rather clear when you start bringing in board complexity and design complexity as issues. John's definition of perfection is ignoring these as implementation issues. So, excusing that definition discrepancy... the next thing to be a little careful of is some of your generalizations sounds disctinctly similar in nature to Bill's (alleged) statement that 640K is enough ram for everyone. The multitouch and video comments seem... well... a little short sighted ;-). How many multitouch interfaces are in existence at the moment? In every day use for me... the answer is about 0. So until we see some examples of these, it is a bit premature to rule out the whole area of interface design as "gimmicky". I suspect the mouse was originally though of as gimmicky until Windows 3.1 showed how it eased navigation and reduced the barriers for entry into the computer realm... I definitely agree though that we do need more thought on where tablets can be effectively used. I suspect the lack of adoption up to now is still related to high purchasing cost, high power costs, and still very clunky technology. Thinner, lighter and cheaper will be what is required for these devices to start replacing paper in any form. First thing to point out: you and John have different ideas of what “perfect” is. It sounds like he is talking perfect as in “can do absolutely everything I desire”… where as your definition of perfection is more “has reasonable bang for buck”… you make this rather clear when you start bringing in board complexity and design complexity as issues. John’s definition of perfection is ignoring these as implementation issues.

So, excusing that definition discrepancy… the next thing to be a little careful of is some of your generalizations sounds disctinctly similar in nature to Bill’s (alleged) statement that 640K is enough ram for everyone. The multitouch and video comments seem… well… a little short sighted ;-) .

How many multitouch interfaces are in existence at the moment? In every day use for me… the answer is about 0. So until we see some examples of these, it is a bit premature to rule out the whole area of interface design as “gimmicky”. I suspect the mouse was originally though of as gimmicky until Windows 3.1 showed how it eased navigation and reduced the barriers for entry into the computer realm…

I definitely agree though that we do need more thought on where tablets can be effectively used. I suspect the lack of adoption up to now is still related to high purchasing cost, high power costs, and still very clunky technology. Thinner, lighter and cheaper will be what is required for these devices to start replacing paper in any form.

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