5 ms·

I am not surprised. What we think of today when we say "tablet" is a first-class computing device and I am of the opinion few people want a plurality of such d

by bhauer 8y ago

I am not surprised. What we think of today when we say "tablet" is a first-class computing device and I am of the opinion few people want a plurality of such devices in their life. This is due to what I call the "yet another application platform dilemma." At some saturation point, few people want the mental burden of adding the care and feeding of another device to their life. Few people want to manage numerous devices each of which requires installation and configuration of applications, processing of notifications they've seen elsewhere, and irksome routine updates. Multi-device living is exhausting when each device is a first-class application platform that (out of necessity) assumes it may be your exclusive piece of technology. A few years back, I argued [1] that we have forgotten an alternative definition of tablet, a device category that—were it executed well, and with today's capabilities—would be sufficiently compelling that I would buy several for my household: > In the early 2000s, Microsoft experimented with mobile display panels in a tablet form factor called "Smart Displays." ... Smart Displays provided access to your desktop computer via Wi-Fi. With their poorly executed hardware, short-sighted licensing limitations in Windows XP, immaturity of the RDP protocol, high prices, and essentially no marketing, Smart Displays were a certain failure from the start. > But theirs was a trajectory for tablets that has since been lost to history. They existed to bring your singular computing environment to you, wherever you were, in a convenient form factor. That singular computing platform with multiple views model is what I have wanted essentially my whole life. I've called it "PAO" (Personal Application Omnipresence) [2] for the last several years. I believe it's a model that could be highly compelling if executed broadly by a tech titan willing to try something different. [1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/why-tablet-sales-are-falling http://tiamat.tsotech.com/why-tablet-sales-are-falling [2] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao

jeroenhd 8y ago
FINALLY, someone who had the same idea as me. I've actively looked for ways to do something like this and even considered setting something like this up in a quick and dirty way (by abusing X forwarding over the internet across devices; probably the closest I'll get to making this system work without modifying every program on my computer). The sheer inefficiency of getting my email on my phone, laptop, PC and tablet across several apps without any of them communicating between them is driving me mad. I have an overpowered gaming machine in my room and a slow, old Samsung tablet near my bed. If I want to read something in bed, I'll have to suffer through the slow Chrome browser with all of its lag and lack of hardware accelerated decoding while there's a machine with incredible graphical power available _right there_. I'd love to turn my tablet into a thin client for my PC, but that requires a mix of slow or unstable remote desktop apps. In my mind, this concept would also have other devices help with the workload. For example, when my server is busy running compilers, my laptop can kick in and help out with some of the work by doing the Javascript for my tablet. This makes the work more complicated, but combines the power of my collection of personal devices into a single platform. I really hope someone or some company can help the world move this way. It's been done before in part back when thin clients were the latest hit and after the last few years, responsive design has been normalized to the point combined systems like these have a real chance of becoming the next thing in computing. Sadly, I fear the moment this becomes popular the general population will just pick a cloud-based solution so they don't need to set up an application server, which gives companies like Amazon and Google even more power and data then they already have.
digi_owl 8y ago
I remember those smart displays. As i recall, they didn't go anywhere because MS could not get their licensing scheme to work with it. Because their Windows Home license assumed one active user pr PC, but people assumed that with the smart display one family member could be on the couch while another was typing at the keyboard. But when you undocked the smart display, all other displays connected to the PC blacked out.

by bhauer 8y ago

jeroenhd 8y ago

FINALLY, someone who had the same idea as me. I've actively looked for ways to do something like this and even considered setting something like this up in a quick and dirty way (by abusing X forwarding over the internet across devices; probably the closest I'll get to making this system work without modifying every program on my computer). The sheer inefficiency of getting my email on my phone, laptop, PC and tablet across several apps without any of them communicating between them is driving me mad. I have an overpowered gaming machine in my room and a slow, old Samsung tablet near my bed. If I want to read something in bed, I'll have to suffer through the slow Chrome browser with all of its lag and lack of hardware accelerated decoding while there's a machine with incredible graphical power available _right there_. I'd love to turn my tablet into a thin client for my PC, but that requires a mix of slow or unstable remote desktop apps. In my mind, this concept would also have other devices help with the workload. For example, when my server is busy running compilers, my laptop can kick in and help out with some of the work by doing the Javascript for my tablet. This makes the work more complicated, but combines the power of my collection of personal devices into a single platform. I really hope someone or some company can help the world move this way. It's been done before in part back when thin clients were the latest hit and after the last few years, responsive design has been normalized to the point combined systems like these have a real chance of becoming the next thing in computing. Sadly, I fear the moment this becomes popular the general population will just pick a cloud-based solution so they don't need to set up an application server, which gives companies like Amazon and Google even more power and data then they already have.

digi_owl 8y ago

I remember those smart displays. As i recall, they didn't go anywhere because MS could not get their licensing scheme to work with it. Because their Windows Home license assumed one active user pr PC, but people assumed that with the smart display one family member could be on the couch while another was typing at the keyboard. But when you undocked the smart display, all other displays connected to the PC blacked out.