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Our Love Affair With the Tablet Is Over

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Re: Our Love Affair With the Tablet Is Over

#111
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to argue the author's point you would also need to be carrying around a 5" phone. He is pointing out the trend of more people using their phones for what they used to use their tablets for. I'd be interested to know if you have a 5" phone and whether or not you think it replaces the features of your tablet in any way.

Speaking for myself, no, my smartphone does not replace my tablet. The amount of screen realestate lost when going from 11" to 5" is just too much. It makes reading hard (particularly with less than perfect eyesight), movies too small, and all of the real time communication that comes with a phone is vying for my attention all the time. Now then, if I could make calls over a bluetooth headset connected to my iPad, I'…

My HTC One (4.7") has more or less obliterated my Nexus 7 usage.

Re: Our Love Affair With the Tablet Is Over

#112
Adding myself tove the crowd "still in love \w my tablet" :)

My work laptop stays at work. At home, I have one windows machine, with steam and nothing else.

Youtube, movies, articles, pdf-s, music ... all in my nexus7.

I stilll even use my kindle for reading longer texts (20+ pages)

Maybe the reason for all this, is that I am still in love with my nokia 3720c dumbphone :P Battery on standby for a week, water, dust and shock resistant.

So in general, you are probably right, for most people in the near future, smart-phone will be their primary personal computing device and laptop their work-horse.

But there will be people like me, wanting to have their computing capabilities more fine-grained.

Re: Our Love Affair With the Tablet Is Over

#113
post #65

Although I own three tablets, my love affair with the tablet as it exists today never really took off the same way it did for so many consumers. The primary reason is that I do not believe that tablets should be first-class computing devices. Tablets, and in my opinion, the entirety of what we today call "mobile," should be subservient to a general computing model of personal omnipresent applications [1]. Put more co…

I've never been able to get my thoughts to fall in line before reading this. I have absolutely no use for a tablet with a powerful PC and android phone, I just never really knew why I didn't have a use for one.

It's one more commitment in my life. I need to make sure it's up to date, I have to install and tweak my settings, I have to make sure that it works the way I want it to first. THEN I get to actually enjoy it. I have to make sure that what someone else has determined I want actually becomes what I want.

Re: Our Love Affair With the Tablet Is Over

#114
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you ever seen a child use a tablet? Or your mother? Seriously. It's actually kind of amazing. I got my mum one a couple of years ago and she's hooked. She literally doesn't leave the house without it if she's going anywhere that involves some manner of waiting. Touch input is something far more intuitive to someone in her generation (so it seems with my meager sample size of one) than mouse/menu-driven input.…

>Touch input is something far more intuitive to someone in her generation (so it seems with my meager sample size of one) than mouse/menu-driven input I would imagine most people find touch input more intuitive than mouse input, if only for the reason that it accomplishes the same thing but better (at least on an intuitive level). A mouse is like a pair of chopsticks. Sure, after a while, you can coordinate it pretty…

With enough of a screen, text editing is not bad either. I didn't realize how terribly I wanted a touch screen for work until I worked with excel on a touch screen with a keyboard. It was unbelievably fast. With my left hand I could poke cells, the equation and scream around doing that. Meanwhile, my right hand was typing letters and numbers. It was like the first time I heard the Beatles. I was laughing to myself while working on the departmental budget.

It was so good that I sit at my desk at work now and just grump at the damned stupid screen.

Re: Our Love Affair With the Tablet Is Over

#115
My 12 year old boy uses it as his main computing device despite having an iMac on his desk. Often times I'd walk in on him where he is reading wikipedia, watching youtube, or using it as a second screen while he plays video games. To him it is a computer and his computer is a small tv. I think it is a generation thing.

edit: and it isn't just a brand/technology thing, he uses the Surface RT that we have in the same manner. Which leads to be believe that computing should be as mobile and suited to the task as possible.

Re: Our Love Affair With the Tablet Is Over

#116

There is an interesting commonality here, everyone "grew up" with computers. Tablets aren't computers, they are smart displays, and that dissonance seems to grind sometimes. The Kindle/Nook concept of a tablet is pretty straightforward, keep it as cheap as possible and let be your portal into a bunch of pre-created content. I used my iPad and my Nook HD this way, I've got 45 books I carry around in my messenger bag t…

Some of us wish for Tablets to be more than just a portable screen.

Fortunately for those of us who wish to push the boundaries of computing, some companies are willing to go in that direction.

Content Creation Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCKWn1zjejE

Surface Pro obviously, but the concept of a highly-accurate stylus has become standard in Galaxy Note and Galaxy Tab as well. Android now supports multiple users and multiple accounts (Windows8 and WinRT always supported this feature).

There is no reason why Tablets _can't_ evolve into general purpose computing devices. It is simply a Human-computer interaction problem.

Programming on a Tablet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XmxtIDWI_E

AutoCAD has listed touch-support. The future of content creation can be revolutionized by tablets, if only we had open enough minds to see the potential.

http://cadablog.blogspot.com/2013/03/whats-new-in-autocad-20...

Re: Our Love Affair With the Tablet Is Over

#117
post #65

Although I own three tablets, my love affair with the tablet as it exists today never really took off the same way it did for so many consumers. The primary reason is that I do not believe that tablets should be first-class computing devices. Tablets, and in my opinion, the entirety of what we today call "mobile," should be subservient to a general computing model of personal omnipresent applications [1]. Put more co…

I agree with you (especially about Microsoft.) I've been saying for years that there is a killer opportunity for Microsoft in the enterprise: develop a single platform for serving applications that serves a tablet view to tablet users, a desktop view to desktop users and a mobile view to mobile users. Basically, enable the hell out of BYOD because the PC is disappearing. They can make the money they lose in Windows licenses back on the server side: if the PC industry is pushing all the workload and complexity to the server, the costs should go there as well.

Basically, it should be RDP/VDI but the entire interface adjusts to the device you're using it on. They have a great touch interface in the Metro (or whatever they're calling it) -- their mistake was forcing users with a mouse and keyboard to use it as well. I suspect that a lot of Microsoft's tablet shenanigans have been because they were trying to make the Surface happen. IMO the better tactic for them to take would have been "We don't care what platform you access your business applications from, as long as your app servers are running Windows."

Which is basically exactly what you're saying. So I agree with you.

Re: Our Love Affair With the Tablet Is Over

#118
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever seen a child use a tablet? It's mind-blowing to see a 3 year old use one better than their parents. I don't think tablets will ever replace laptops, but that's not the point of consumption is it. They'd rather you buy a laptop for "work" a tablet for "consumption" and a phone, and...

> Have you ever seen a child use a tablet? Or your mother? Seriously. It's actually kind of amazing. I got my mum one a couple of years ago and she's hooked. She literally doesn't leave the house without it if she's going anywhere that involves some manner of waiting. Touch input is something far more intuitive to someone in her generation (so it seems with my meager sample size of one) than mouse/menu-driven input.…

It's not only the touch input, but the simplified model of how apps work in general. "One app running at the time and filling the whole screen." That matches the mental model of the most people. Traditional multitasking window GUI can be really confusing for people who have not grown with it,
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