[deleted]
Tablets
11–20 of 262 posts
Re: Tablets
#12The real thing that makes these "tablets" interesting is the number of features they have packed into them. The "ease of use" that people are talking about when referencing Apple's products is just a part of Apple's marketing for their devices. Android (and Maemo and MeeGo and etc) devices are much more capable and much more hackable. Why the praise for such a bland device such as the i-OSes when there's an awesome O…
"Capable" and "hackable" are completely different than "ease of use". Apple really does have great ease of use (for normal people), and part of how they get it is by reducing the other two.
Re: Tablets
#13The naming convention for these goes back to some research at Xerox PARC http://www.ubiq.com/weiser/testbeddevices.htm
Ubiquitious Computing is upon us, and much like the PC revolution, it will have been invented at Xerox and perfected at Apple.
Re: Tablets
#14I think a really disrupting and interesting field will be tablets as replacement for textbooks in education. The possibilities to create amazing educational material are endless.
On the other side, you have textbook publishers, who generally learn a lot of money with ever slightly changing editions and will do a lot to not see that income stream dying...
Re: Tablets
#15I think they're still just computers, and will be thought of as such. Sure, they're computers you hold in your hand, not the kind that sit on your desk. Gaming consoles and set top boxes are morphing into general purpose computers too. Those are computers that sit on a table near the TV. But they're all computers the same.
Re: Tablets
#16Replacing keys sounds like an interesting idea, but on one hand you have the problem that the tech needs to be rock-solid (if github is down I get mildly annoyed. If I can't get my door to open, I freeze to death) and you are competing against an already established technology that works really well (rfid tags) and isn't very expensive.
That said, I would love to hear more about your idea, if possible.
Re: Tablets
#17This is absolutely right. My company been working on a medical device accessory for the iPhone and the possibilities the "tablet" form factor are amazing.
Lower Cost Structure - In our industry (diabetes) you give away hardware to get ongoing disposable revenue. This hardware is expensive to produce and develop. Plus you spend a lot of effort on areas that don't add much value e.g. reinventing the wheel re: display drivers. This completely changes the economics of the industry.
Higher Product Quality - By taking advantage of the core Tablet attributes like color touch screen display and processor you can do things feature wise that would be prohibitive with custom hardware. The amount of "ooohs" we get showing off our iPhone UI vs the current LCD one is staggering.
New Revenue Opportunities - Again our business has thrived on a single revenue stream, the disposable test strips. With connections to the web all manner of "virtual good", subscription services, and other digital business models get opened up.
Overall it is a huge win for both user and entrepreneur and is going to fundamentally change a bunch of hardware businesses.
If you want to see our product, here is a nice review (http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662351/blood-glucose-monitor-fo...)
Re: Tablets
#18Doesn't the etherealization of hardware mean that we won't be referring to tablets, mobile devices, or laptops at all?
Isn't the only difference between an iPad and iPhone the screen size. So really, we're starting to refer to these devices based on size rather than power/memory/speed.
Re: Tablets
#19Developers have used the accelerometer in ways Apple could never have imagined. That sentence is one instance of this sentence: Developers have used in ways could never have imagined. What better argument for open standards, APIs, and community cooperation?
Doesn't the fact that the iPad is itself a closed...errr, integrated...system counter your argument?
I'm all for open standards, API's and community cooperation of course. I just don't think that Apple is necessarily the antithesis.
The fundamental difference between Apple's position today to Microsoft's monoculture of the previous decade lies in their motivations.
Apple wants to make great stuff.
Microsoft wanted to control the world.
btw PG: I rfs8.html is not on the rfs.html page yet.
Re: Tablets
#20I think they're still just computers, and will be thought of as such. Sure, they're computers you hold in your hand, not the kind that sit on your desk. Gaming consoles and set top boxes are morphing into general purpose computers too. Those are computers that sit on a table near the TV. But they're all computers the same. http://luigimontanez.com/2010/the-computer-for-the-room/
"Computers" still get viruses, require backups done by the user to be safe from data loss, have out-of-date software packages (each with its own broken update mechanism), take ages to boot up, are clunky and slow...the list goes on.
Sure, none of those are specific to the "computer" form factor. But they are all things that people think of when they think about their desktop computer (some mac and linux users excluded, of course: but that's still only 10% of the computer-using population). NONE of those items I just listed are problems with any "Tablet" computer.
The form factor is different, but so is the very model of user software and computing.