We all have been professing / agonizing about the Apple’s imaginary Tablet PC (at least to this date), for a while now. I have these lingering thoughts bouncing in my mind, but Before I write this allow me to inform you that I am a Mac and Windows Software Developer and 80% of my work is done in Windows and the rest of the time I port the applications that I build on the Windows platform to Macintosh OS X. So I use Visual Studio 2008 as well XCode 3.2 as my primary tools on PC and Mac, receptively. At home I use both systems and I own Macs and PC. Having said that – here are a few thoughts about Tablets:
1.) What if there is no Apple Tablet coming on the January 27 Media Event? Apple has never said that a tablet device is forthcoming! So it can’t be Apple’s fault if we makeup imaginary devices in our minds and babble about it! We can’t blame them, or can we? Are these controlled leaks by Apple’s marketing juggernaut?
2.) If no Tablet is introduced on this Media Event, will Apple’s credibility be damaged? If Apple never revealed / insinuated about such a device, how could their credibility be hurt? A fair question, isn’t it? Though, I am sure if Apple don’t deliver a tablet device of some kind – their so called ‘HALO’ will be tarnished, even with their core customers. All because of hype level.
3.) Do we ‘really‘ need a Tablet? Most of us have desktop and laptop computers with a few notebooks and Smartphones thrown in there for good measure! So what are you going to do with a tablet that you can’t do with your 10″ Netbook? Better yet, what can you do with a Tablet that you can’t do with your MacBook Pro 13″, if you are a Mac user or a Sony VAIO 12″ system, if you are a PC user?
4.) Does the small form factor and light weight on a tablet justify the purchase of it? With the advent of the Netbooks, this is not true anymore. My MSI Wind that can run Windows 7 as well as Hackintoshed OS X, can perform all those tasks very well and it’s light enough to be taken just about anywhere and the screen size is larger in comparison to a Tablet, since large sections of the tablet screen area will be used to display UI virtual devices (i.e. Virtual Pointing device – Virtual Keyboard – Cursor controls, et al).
5.) If Apple has no Tablet PC to be introduced on 27 Jan’s Media Event, will there be riots? Geeks running in the streets rampant and there will be street fights with the ‘Tech Police’? Will there be candlelight demonstration’ in front of every Apple Store with Geeks singing “We shall over come…”? The answer is no – no and definitely no!
6.) Microsoft, to her credit, came out with the Tablet PC in 2004 with a specific version of their OS, Windows XP for Tablet Computing, and OEM companies follow along by introducing Tablet PCs of all kinds and shapes and forms. In reality, it never caught-on and it just fizzled out.
7.) A bigger credit goes to Apple for introducing Newton, a handheld device that is considered to be the Grandfather of all PDAs & Tablet PCs, in Feb 1998. To this date, newton is being used by many – Not just as a novelty device, but as an actual tool. As well know, Mr. Jobs somehow saw Newton as the Devil’s device and killed it promptly as soon as he went back to Apple (second coming of Jobs, verse One – lOl).
8.) Hand-Writing recognition – Ink writing can play a big roll in the future of these devices, but why? I though we were getting away from the Pen / Pencil & Paper! Voice Computing and Gesture processing would be the name of the game.
9.) One area that the Tablet computing would be greatly appreciated is to lower the usage of paper (Tree killing) and hopefully move ‘printed text’ to Tablet systems (i.e. Apple iPad or Kindle). Books – Text Books – Periodicals – Newspapers can easily and efficiently be moved to these devices and updated regularly via their networking system (WiFi – MyFi – 3G & 4G). Imagine all the paper work that the medical community produces annually be moved to this media. In education, student & teachers move all their paper material to PDF format and use it on these devices instead of actual paper. Can you imagine how much money a student would save through buying their books in this format? Students and teachers can be carrying ‘all’ their books with them ‘all’ the time without breaking anyones backs and without the need for Jack carrying jill’s books all the way up the hill. With this processes, we will be saving millions of trees a year and that would be great for the environment.
More to come…
Safari 5: Apple has released a new version of Safari that seems to be more compatible with the HTML5 than any browser on the market. The WebKit rendering engine has also been updated. Here is a list of new and improved functionality in Safari 5.0
