Jobs Finally "Happy" With Unannounced Apple Tablet 303
All the whispers of an Apple tablet PC seem to be culminating in a flurry of rumors suggesting we may see one as soon as next month. Sources inside Apple are saying that Jobs is finally "happy" with the device after being involved in every detail of bringing it into the light of day. As a side result of these rumors, it seems that Apple stockholders are also getting a bit of Christmas cheer with a significant bump in stock price.
Let the H8 begin! (Score:4, Insightful)
However, I have faith that people will come up with plenty of reasons to hate the new hardware when it appears.
Jobs is happy with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
It came out last summer that Jobs was intimately involved with every detail of bringing the tablet to market. It seems that the device has finally gotten Jobs's seal of approval: when asked if the tablet rumors were true, a senior Apple executive gave The New York Times a rather coy reply. "I can't really say anything," he said, "but, let's just say Steve is extremely happy with the new tablet."
Translation: the only button is a power button, it has a battery-sucking colour screen as opposed to an e-ink display, it requires itunes on a mac or PC to use, the only Apple-approved way to run programs is via an app store, it has a non-user-replaceable battery, and it will cost upwards of $1000.
Re:Jobs is happy with it? (Score:4, Insightful)
..and it already has legions of people already exclaiming that this is the best device yet, despite the fact that nobody has seen as much as a drawing yet.
Then again, how did Windows Vista get all those rave reviews?
Exactly :-)
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's what I want a high quality, fast and truly usable tablet for : medical care. It should be possible to walk into a patient's room carrying a clipboard sized device that resembled a giant iphone. You should be able to call up medical records, imagery, and the rest with no detectable latency. (because the tablet should use push downloading : each tablet is assigned to a particular doctor or nurse. The table would cache all medical records for each patient assigned to that doctor or nurse, and if a new report comes out for one of those patients, the tablet should automatically download it over the hospital's wireless network)
It should use a glass topped display, like the iphone, so that you could use caustic chemicals to sterilize the surface. The medical industry has enough money that if this product cost $1500 it would barely be noticed as an expense. (especially if it could boost efficiency)
Apple has as good a chance to make this happen as anyone. Medical users would be running custom software for this tablet, so there's no need for it to be windows compatible. While displaying large 2D images like X-rays will require some CPU horsepower, it's still entirely possible for a low power CPU to do the job. And apple's superior user interfaces and integration with hardware mean that it will be cheaper and easier to train doctors and nurses to use this device.
The biggest technical problems I foresee are back end problems, problems with the EMR software, and battery life.(hospital IT departments tend to fuck things up. If they bought a bunch of apple tablets, they probably wouldn't build and maintain the back end servers and wireless AP correctly)
Also, such a tablet will probably be quite fragile, and fairly heavy.
Remember, YOU (the typical slashdotter running Linux with a windows box for games on desktop machines) are not the intended users for this tablet. YOU probably sit at a desk all day. You have enough technical expertise that tinkering is fun for you, and you don't mind the idea of a tablet on kludgey, cheap hardware that is running open source software.
Re:And the price... (Score:3, Insightful)
I take it you've never used a notebook or a sketchbook then (you know, the kinds that are made of paper)? Or, god forbid, a Wacom Cintiq (Here's a hint, most cintiq users don't mount it flat on a table or standing up at a right angle to the floor).
/Mikael
Re:Jobs is happy with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I haven't read anyone who actually liked apple products say anything of the sort. All I've read in this thread so far are people who are complaining about imagined features they have pulled out of their asses, as you've pointed out, nobody has seen anything yet.
If Apple's past design decisions are any guide, the only thing I feel confident saying is that Apple has likely spent a tremendous amount of time and money designing the interface and it will likely be fairly intuitive and easy to use, but it's far from certain. It could just be an ipod touch, but bigger. This will certainly have some interesting applications, especially if they use a display that can be read in direct sunlight. I believe it likely that for applications they will follow their (mind-blowingly) successful app store but who knows. This is Apple we're talking about, they aren't the leader in innovation in the PC market for nothing and it's hard to imagine Jobs getting excited over an overblown ipod touch, but he has tried to sell us polished turds before so who knows.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Apple doesn't do well with big, clunky Enterprise customers who have their own agendas and ideas (AT&T notwithstanding)
2) Medical systems DO run Windows. Sorry, but it's true. Some of them are coming off of IE 6 as we speak. Some of them. Now, the trend towards making everything run in a browser might mitigate that somewhat, as long as the browser isn't IE 6.
3. If you run the software in the browser, then you are at the mercy of whatever idiot UI got slapped on to the software at the last moment. If you've worked with medical software, you will quickly realize that nobody spends any time getting the interface even remotely correct.
4. For Apple's vaunted strategy of tightly coupling the app with the hardware to work out, you have to have a dozen goofball vendors agree to do things the same way. Not going to happen in our lifetimes.
But keep smoking what you're smoking and don't Bogart that joint!
Re:Jobs is happy with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Jobs is happy with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: the only button is a power button, it has a battery-sucking colour screen as opposed to an e-ink display, it requires itunes on a mac or PC to use, the only Apple-approved way to run programs is via an app store, it has a non-user-replaceable battery, and it will cost upwards of $1000.
The scary part? Despite all that, it'll probably still embarrass all of the other companies that have tablet products.
Re:Jobs is happy with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
making it look nice is 90% of the battle. most consumer devices are far from user friendly. you want to know why the iphone is a smashing success? it has an interface that is designed for the screen that it is displaying on. the ipod? the simple interface is very easy to use and learn.
while other companies duplicate the hardware side, they always fail to design an interface that is simple to use. Or they resort to skinning an interface that isn't simple to use. (every version of win mobile) Palm pre, and chromeOS are both unique. Chrome more than likely won't have proper multi touch support even though it should be easy to install. Palm Pre is suffering the same fate the iphone did when it was first released. no native apps, all web apps.
Re:Jobs is happy with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
With all due respect, I'm not even sure how to characterize that statement -- "oversimplification" itself seems to be an oversimplification.
If anything, what the iPhone, iPod, and even Mac OS itself demonstrates is that it is a long way from some skunkworks lab at a buttoned-up company to designing and implementing a game-changing product. How is it that even after Apple comes out with its products that its competitors' ripoff copies often look so second-rate by comparison?
But, you go ahead and believe what you want.
Re:Tablet Prediction: (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course -- "most" people buy the iPhone because its sexy, not because it's usable... so what do I know...
Well, for one thing you apparently don't know why people really buy an iPhone - the success of the apps store indicates that usability matters a lot to people. I'd also argue that the same design principles that make the iPhone "sexy" are also what's made it such a useful little gadget.
I've got an iPod Touch rather than an iPhone, but the same argument applies. Having one well-designed device that serves as my hyperfocal distance calculator, my "on the go" email checker, play-games-on-the-train machine, and even (in a pinch) allows me to run a vnc session over ssh is a plus in my book. Having tried other poorly-thought-out solutions (*cough* windows mobile *cough*) (*cough* multiple Linux desktop environments *cough*), I'd say it's pretty obvious design significantly affects usability.
But don't let reason get in the way of your narrative.
Re:Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
That does sound great. Someone wrote an app for that, but unfortunatley it was rejected. When the folks at Apple realized that it was for medical use and that someone might see the words "penis," "areola," or "clavicle" the app was not allowed to be sold in their store. Since it is not officially blessed by Apple you cannot use it even though you purchased the damn thing and presumably are an adult. Now be quiet, go browse the web like a nice doctor, and move along.
Re:Jobs is happy with it? (Score:1, Insightful)
That's what innovation IS: taking something established and making it better. Of course, these days the word is thrown around with abandon in an attempt to turn its meaning into "invent". But that's not it.
Re:Jobs is happy with it? (Score:2, Insightful)
How is it that even after Apple comes out with its products that its competitors' ripoff copies often look so second-rate by comparison?
Patents.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you even used a Mac?
I don't even know what the point of reading Mac threads on Slashdot is though. I used to think Mac fanboys were the most annoying people on the planet... until I started reading what their equally ignorant detractors had to say.
Ruggedised laptops... seriously? Apple? Gee, I wonder when Ferrari will start making dump trucks.
Re:And the price... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I can do that, but my point is that you have to position yourself in a certain way to use it properly.
The same holds true for a book. Or a cellphone. Or your dick. Hopefully you can figure all these out.
Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Jobs is happy with it? (Score:3, Insightful)
And it's pretty obvious you've missed the point, just like the GGP.
There's a segment of the nerd population that looks at a product and thinks they see a 'superior' product. And they just can't understand why it's not popular, even though it's clearly superior as it's got feature X, Y, Z and Æ while getting 42 hogsheads per millisecond. It's pretty obvious who is missing the point here...
Re:Jobs is happy with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can say that again. We bought a Panasonic house phone set, and the UI sucks eggs. For example, there's a "speaker" button to turn on speaker-phone mode. However, the same button doesn't turn it off. (It's not broken because there are multiple handsets). I never figured out how to turn off speaker mode (the manual was lost). It's as if they don't do any real UI testing. They bang out a design and as soon as it merely works they ship it. And don't even get me started about Windows.
Apple is one of the few companies that really gives UI's any thought. This is because doing such is expensive compared to hardware and raw programming. Hardware design and manufacturing can be shipped to some 3rd-world nation where they pay like $1/hr. However, you can only work on and test the UI *in* the target market, where you have to pay people many times more. Thus, it's far more expensive. The result is gadgets with a jillion features, but crappy UI integration.
Apple will likely grow because they are the only company with a reputation for caring and I don't see anybody else trying to shift into the same niche. At best, they wait and then copy Apple.
Re:Jobs is happy with it? (Score:2, Insightful)
How is it that even after Apple comes out with its products that its competitors' ripoff copies often look so second-rate by comparison?
Patents.
Um, in case you haven't been keeping up, Apple LOST the "Look And Feel" legal battle over a decade ago. So, sorry, that isn't the reason.
Someone could market a device indistiguishable from an iPhone/iPod Touch, with an OS that was indistinguishable from an iPhone/iPod Touch, and that actually ran iPhone/iPod Touch apps (as long as it didn't do the Palm trick and attempt to fool iTunes into thinking it was an iPhone/iPod Touch), and Apple couldn't do a thing about it.
The REAL reason that the imitators' products all look and act like ass compared to Apple's products is much simpler than that: Persistence Of Vision and Attention To Detail.
Apple has it, and all the "me-too" knockoff companies do not.
Period.
Re:Jobs is happy with it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, it's a "fetish", and makes me completely insane, to state that I'd rather press a button that I can feel actually click, instead of wiping my fingers across a smudgy screen and not being able to interact with it without staring down at the screen like an ape.
I've used touchscreens on everything from POS terminals to cash registers to tablets to iphones. Without exception, they all suck. Touchscreens are an answer to a question nobody asked.
Re:Jobs is happy with it? (Score:1, Insightful)
And that, quite literally extended, indicates that Windows is vastly superior to OS X, both of which are light-years beyond Linux!
Thank you for supporting my point. Yes, Windows is superior in ways that really matter to the purchasing public. When you've got the vast majority of the market-share consciously making the decision to purchase one over the other, then yes, it does have an advantage, possibly several. The DS, Game Boy, Wii, PS2, Palm Pilot, VHS, etc, all 'technically inferior', yet had an advantage that made a big difference.
Frankly, this shouldn't need to be explained to a nerd. Superiority is in the eye of the beholder and as a registered visitor to this site with a +2 karma bonus, you already know that. People like you put up with incomplete software and go through numerous work-arounds just because it's 'free'. People like you use niche browsers that the web has difficulty supporting. People like you make noise about obscure music file formats and jump through extra hoops to use them even though the market has had a hard time finding a home for them. You know all about having specific reasons for choosing a particular product so really have no room to complain about others that do. So settle down. There's a new episode of Doctor Who, log out of here and go watch it.
Re:Jobs is happy with it? (Score:2, Insightful)
blah blah look & feel patents aren't valid etc
I didn't say "Look & Feel" patents. I said patents.
Re:not earth shattering. (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows 7 might change that a bit since it supposedly has native tablet / gesture functionality built in as opposed to somebody kludging up some XP drivers, but I think a lot of people are hoping that Apple somehow significantly improves on the usability of said tablet form factor.
I personally think it will be too cutesy to be really functional and it will be limited by using the iPhone interface instead of the full blown OS X package. It will sell like hotcakes and there will be 350 Slashdot articles on it by the end of 2010.
If it exists, of course. If not, we'll just have about 300 articles.
Re:Let the H8 begin! (Score:2, Insightful)