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Story I was told from someone who worked on the early-2000's "Tablet PC": Microsoft's team originally produced a new touch-first interface that wasn't entirely
by ken 8y ago
Story I was told from someone who worked on the early-2000's "Tablet PC":
Microsoft's team originally produced a new touch-first interface that wasn't entirely different from the eventual iPad. They took it to various corporate customers, and the response was unanimous: it needs to run Real Windows or it has no future. Facepalm. So they went back to Redmond and changed it to be Windows on a touchscreen. It met all stated customer requirements, technically, but of course it was clumsy and people didn't really see the benefit over a laptop, and it never took off.
Sounded to me like the classic "faster horse". It's not so much that they needed to make everything a PC, and more that they were such experts at enterprise sales that they didn't have confidence in their own new ideas.
- michaelt 8y agoMy work issued me a pre-iPad tablet computer, the NEC Versa Litepad. I agree with what you said, but part of the problem was resistive touchscreens just weren’t very good.
- kristianc 8y ago> Microsoft's team originally produced a new touch-first interface that wasn't entirely different from the eventual iPad. They took it to various corporate customers, and the response was unanimous: it needs to run Real Windows or it has no future. Facepalm. So they went back to Redmond and changed it to be Windows on a touchscreen. It met all stated customer requirements, technically, but of course it was clumsy and people didn't really see the benefit over a laptop, and it never took off. This is not so obviously wrong. It's fairly well acknowledged that the biggest barrier to the iPad becoming a general computer for most people is iOS. It's unclear that the answer is 'Windows on a touch screen' but it's also equally clear that Apple hasn't done anything like enough to make iOS work for the larger form factor.