Steve Jobs, Before the iPad, On Why Tablets Suck 279
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Edible Apple: "Apple didn't release the first tablet computer or even come up with the idea for tablet computing itself. If anything, Microsoft, and Bill Gates in particular, were championing tablet computers years before the iPad was released. In this video clip from the first All Things D conference in 2003, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs explains to Walt Mossberg why Apple, at the time, wasn't keen on tablets and more specifically, why Jobs felt that stylus computing and handwriting recognition were inherent failures."
Re:This is news how? (Score:4, Interesting)
We also know that Apple has some experience in trying to pioneer handwriting technology (the Apple Newton, I think it was) and are therefore well acquainted with the challenges involved (power requirements, error rates, CPU overheads, etc). That knowledge-base has existed for Apple for a long time now. Yes, technology has progressed, but if you can squeeze N% more out of a modern CPU for the same power input then Apple can easily run the numbers to see if N% is enough.
This doesn't mean Apple will always be right. Hell, the fact that they pushed the Newton and the Lisa out into the marketplace before the products were useful is evidence that they can be mistaken. What it does mean is that they've good cause to be cautious and they've actual real-world data to work from. They may be reading the numbers wrong, but I'm confident that they're actually taking the time to read them.
(Compare that to Bill Gates' notion that the Internet was a fad. He had no experience in networking at all, he had no numbers to crunch, he made an arrogant remark without basis and it was obvious at the time that that was what it was. Networking had been emerging for longer than he'd been in computing and was on an exponential growth curve. By the time Microsoft was ready to deal with IPv4, next-generation technologies were already being developed because the sustained demand was too great. IPv6 stacks were actually being released for Windows before Microsoft's IPv4 stack was integrated - and that's even after Microsoft took most of their network code from the BSD tapes.)
Re:Then again... (Score:2, Interesting)
Well my 3rd gen iPod's battery lasted about a year and a few months before I couldn't get more than 30-45 minutes on a charge, just long enough to be out of warranty of course, and of course I didn't buy Applecare so that meant I had to hand over $99 to Apple and wait 3 months for them to send it off to replace it. Of course, I purchased a 3rd party battery online for all of $10 dollars and replaced it myself in a whopping 3 minutes, the majority of which was spent wrestling the case apart since they make it as hard as possible to do this because, uh...buy Applecare? Luckily I did though, since, big surprise, Apple sued the manufacturer of that battery into oblivion not long after.
Maybe build quality has increased as of late (although I doubt it very highly considering the same fucking people make them) but either way, no replaceable battery is a huge failing. Anyone that falls for that bullshit is stupid. There is absolutely no legitimate reason they have for not allowing customers to replace their own batteries when they inevitably stop holding a charge, so fuck them (and anyone else that plays that game).
Re:And they were (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is that the "stylus" and the "keyboard" are two different markets, and you can't serve both of them properly.
I come from the art community, one of the bitching points about the iPad is that the capacitive screen makes it completely unusable for drawing any more fine than fingerpainting.
The flip side is that the on-screen keyboard eats too much of the screen real estate. So the tablet is NOT a desktop replacement, but there is no reason why it can't do either of these better. The iPad can be used with a bluetooth keyboard, that solves one problem, what about the desire to make it graphics-tabletly? Wacom. Wacom owns the patents to every useful graphics-tablet system. And they are expensive. The latest think Wacom has released is the Inkling, essentially a blackbox that you clip to any writing surface, and a pressure sensitive ballpoint pen. Great idea! That proves you can make something small and portable that could be paired with the iPad... only it's not iPad compatible. Maybe next year.
Apple knows the average person doesn't want to add 200$ to the device to make it a real graphics tablet "tablet", but wacom's older patents are due to run out any time now and they could full well include something built into the screen to allow special lightweight stylus's to be used on a higher resolution model.
Like, the super-gadget version should have a keyboard and digitizer stylus, but neither of these are necessary for the vast majority of what the current iPad model is used for... video, books and websites. multitouch/stylus/gyro games are very limited (in fact most PC games from Japan would work nicely on the iPad if they weren't all pr0n.)