12 ms·

Wozniak: Tablet is the PC for 'normal people'

84 points by alphadoggs 16y ago

ThomPete 16y ago
Yes it is and there is a very simple reason. The tablet removes abstraction between the user and the interface elements to be interacted with. The engineers who invented the touch screen has done more for the field of usability than any UX or usability expert could ever hope for. Now the big question for me is. Will apple forget about the enterprise market?
- dman 16y ago
  Completely agree. They do need to solve the text input problem though. I have had to consciously reduce my usage of the ipad since it seems to put me in read mode vs write mode.
  - buro9 16y ago
    There's less of a text input problem on the iPad than there is on a mobile phone. Since I've used smartphones with software keyboards I find myself in the habit of replying only when I get home, the phone becoming little more than a notification device. At least on the iPad I respond a little. I find myself seriously considering a blackberry again. I'd miss the software but know my response rate whilst mobile would soar.
    - joebadmo 16y ago
      I actually find Swype on my android phone to be easier for text input than the iPad. My wife also puts down the iPad and grabs her iPhone when it's time to reply to emails. She doesn't like full ten finger typing on it and she can't thumb type on it like on her phone.
      - glhaynes 16y ago
        For me, the iPad 2's Smart Cover's ability to prop it up makes all the difference. I end up using it for lots more "laptop replacement" tasks because it's so much easier to type on with the Cover folded back.
        joebadmo 16y ago
        My wife has an iPad 1 with a similar case (Incase or Belkin, can't remember which), but she still doesn't like typing on it. My theory is that it's partly ergonomic, but partly a matter of expectations. A phone is a completely different form factor, so you don't expect an experience that has any sort of fidelity to using a physical keyboard (also the keys are closer together). On an iPad-sized virtual keyboard, you hit a sort of uncanny valley, wherein it feels like a bad version of what you're used to, instead of a totally different thing. But that's pure conjecture. The input thing is why I'm bearish on tablets in general. I like not just having a physical keyboard because it's faster and feels better, but I also like that there's a portion of my hardware that's dedicated to input. On an abstract level I feel like it is a more egalitarian paradigm, to put my ideas on the same starting level as everyone else's. It's like having upstream and downstream parity. Maybe that's silly, but it's how I feel.
  - mambodog 16y ago
    I have fantastical thoughts of some kind of surface that can alter its shape to provide the tactile feedback that touchscreens are lacking... though these thoughts will likely remain in the domain of science fiction.
    - asynchronous13 16y ago
      There's already touch screens out there with tactile feedback. They don't physically alter shape, but they vibrate at specific frequencies to mimic the feel of button presses. Seems like tactile feedback would be very useful for driving applications.
  - InclinedPlane 16y ago
    It's not a big deal. As the tablet matures eventually you'll just be able to connect a usb/bluetooth keyboard to one, when necessary.
    - krevis 16y ago
      What do you mean "eventually"? The iPad has worked with Bluetooth keyboards since day one.
      - roc 16y ago
        I do wonder how long it will be until an actual iPad/iPod/iPhone computing dock surfaces. That is, one dock connection that supplies power, feeds an HDMI display and connects a keyboard, transforming the ipad screen into a sort of oversized trackpad. optionally with some context sensitive controls. With that, when people want a more traditional computing experience, they just carry their device over to the desk, dock and get on with it. The only real missing part is OS-wide awareness of such a dock, so that the UI can shift to being more keyboard-friendly [1]. I believe even the existing dock API could effect this on a smaller scale [2] if Apple greenlit a third party to build one. [1] Using a bluetooth keyboard with the iPad is pretty weak, due to the lack of consistent navigation support. e.g. alt-tab/cmd-tab sorts of behaviors, arrowing through pick-lists, universal tab/shift-tab support, etc. [2] Each app would have to look for said dock (and not just on startup) and the OS still wouldn't be integrated, which would limit things a bit.
        gnaffle 16y ago
        The existing iPad Keyboard dock supports connecting power and an external display through the 30-pin connector on the back. I'm guessing it'll work with the new HDMI connector as well, although I'm not sure. I don't think making the iPad a trackpad for an external display would work well, however, since the iPad does not have a cursor and the GUI is not designed to be used with one (try the iPhone/iPad simulator on a Mac to see how it works). Making it work as a 1-1 mapping from the iPad to the external display is what the current HDMI connector gives you anyway.
- angusgr 16y ago
  The engineers who invented the touch screen has done more for the field of usability than any UX or usability expert could ever hope for. Which is interesting in itself because for the first 30-odd years of touchscreens they were largely a usability nightmare for anything more complex than simple multiple-choice buttons (and even then, often sub-par.) Partially due to technological limitations (low-res resistive screens), but partially because traditional interface abstractions don't translate at all well. It took clever UX engineering around touchscreens for them to get past the gimmick factor and become useful and immersive mainstream computing interfaces.
  - ThomPete 16y ago
    Agree. But this was only possible due to proper processing power. The instant feel of the iPhone GUI flow makes all the difference.
- anon1385 16y ago
  I'm reminded of Alan Kay talking in 1987[1] about GRAIL (Graphical Input Language) on the RAND Tablet, which he calls the first "data tablet": "When I saw that, and used it for half an hour in 1968, I felt like I was sticking my hands right through the display and actually touching the information structures directly. This was the first system I'd ever used, and practically the only one since, that I've called truly intimate. It was this degree of intimacy that was so important in a user interface." Interestingly he mentions that one of the reasons for the creation of the RAND Tablet was that their economists and other computer users complained that they couldn't type. [1] http://www.archive.org/details/AlanKeyD1987 http://www.archive.org/details/AlanKeyD1987 Alan Kay: Doing with Images Makes Symbols GRAIL part starts at about 23:40
michaelpinto 16y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook
- dvdhsu 16y ago
  Alan Kay, the one behind the Dynabook said: >"When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it’s the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you’ll rule the world." http://www.edibleapple.com/alan-kay-on-the-iphone-and-the-ipad-sorta/ http://www.edibleapple.com/alan-kay-on-the-iphone-and-the-ip...
muhuk 16y ago
"We've never had an argument," he said. "We're just in different places, and we're different people." Jobs was interested in running a company, while Wozniak was and remains an engineer at heart.
jbigelow 16y ago
I'm sorry but tablets being for "normal people" sounds out of touch. My dad is a 58 year old fire fighter, he couldn't have been any less of a "computer person" yet he emails, manages his iTunes/iPod, and can stalk me on Facebook with ease (too much ease in fact when it comes to FB). And to top it off, he has done all this on a.... Windows PC, I type that without a shred of irony but many will read it as such. Face it, ATMs mostly run a custom UI on top of a Windows kernel, Police cruisers all have laptops attached to the dash, the US Postal Service will be out of business sooner rather than later because email and by extension the PC has been for "normal people" since the turn of the century. Anybody who hasn't interfaced in someway or another with a PC (regardless of OS) at some semi-regular interval over the last 10 years probably won't discover a need to now just because of the increased portability of the tablet form factor.
- bonch 16y ago
  So your dad knows how to use Outlook, iTunes, and Facebook. Can he install applications? Update drivers? Install Windows security updates as they come out and keep his anti-virus up to date? Tablets remove all that stupid maintenance crap, and that's why they are PCs for normal people.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    You still need to know how to use iTunes to use an iPad. Additionally, you generally don't need to know how to update yur drivers or antivirus. Those get updated automatically on Windows. The only thing you need to know how to do is install applications. Which 95% of the time is to double-click setup.exe or install.exe. I'm the tech support guy for my extended family. I support around 30 or so computers. What I've found interesting is over the past year or two is that support calls have dropped to about one every other month. And they're no longer things like, "My computer isn't working." They're more like, "How do I know that the backup program will work when I need it?"
    - bonch 16y ago
      If you think you don't need to know how to update drivers or maintain antivirus software on a typical PC, then your experience isn't typical of the majority of users or the poor sobs who do technical support for them. On a tablet, there is no running an installer executable. You just tap. Uninstallation is also just a tap. It's undeniably superior.
photophotoplasm 16y ago
I have trouble believing even "normal people" will want to use the tablet for anything except casual use. The desktop computer's monitor/keyboard/mouse setup is too efficient to be fully replaced by the touch screen. Not saying that tablets won't find their own niche, but they aren't suited for heavy workloads that increasingly large numbers of "normal people" need to do on computers. The biggest legacy of tablets is going to be how the ideas behind them influence desktop computers. I'm expecting most consumer operating systems to become more "appliance-like" and more tied to services provided by their developers. The success of iOS makes it almost inevitable that this model will be ported to the desktop.
- jpravetz 16y ago
  Correct. I have two 'normal' people in this house, and neither of them could or would get their work done on today's iPad. They are on Macs. For them, and myself as IT support person, the most interesting feature of the iPad might be the app management model and anything that makes maintaining the OS and applications (not just 'apps'), plug-ins and other resources (eg. fonts) easier.
- ugh 16y ago
  I think many normal people use their PC at home much, much longer for "casual use" than for work. So, I would reverse your assessment, the PC will keep its niche for the odd non-casual use at home but tablets will absolutely dominate when it comes to what people use home computers for the most, casual things.
- gnaffle 16y ago
  For what _most_ people actually do, which is email, browsing and word processing and other productivity work, I'm having trouble believing that a tablet won't work equally well. Maybe future tablets will be larger than 10" or support multiple displays, or multiple tablets working together, or maybe with external keyboards added, but except for niche tasks (graphic design which is often mouse/pen based) or CAD, I think they are a big step forward. That doesn't mean that advanced users won't stick to the desktop interface. People said the same thing when the mouse became popular and the keyboard / command line interface dominated. I still use the command line interface every day because it's very efficient at what I do, but I do acknowledge that most people nowadays never will.
dkarl 16y ago
My seventy-year-old dad still isn't at ease with Windows after fifteen years of having Windows PCs at home, but he's a master of his iPad. However, he still uses Windows for email and posting on the web, because he hates typing on the touch screen. He tried the keyboard I got him for the iPad, but it ended up gathering dust on a shelf somewhere. My dad might be stuck in the pre-computer age, but he isn't stuck in the pre-keyboard age. He knows what a decent keyboard is. The keyboard is one of those things that people don't want to give up. The folks talking about the iPad being the PC for "normal people" are looking forward to a future where nobody except nerds uses a computer before the age of eighteen. It's premature to speculate what a computer for "normal people" ought to look like until the definition of "normal people" stabilizes. Technological and economic development is changing the definition of normal people every day.
- edge17 16y ago
  To your point, Steve Jobs made a similar comment at D8 - Jobs: “When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. … PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people. … I think that we’re embarked on that. Is the next step the iPad? Who knows? Will it happen next year or five years from now or seven years from now? Who knows? But I think we’re headed in that direction.” http://d8.allthingsd.com/20100601/steve-jobs-session/ http://d8.allthingsd.com/20100601/steve-jobs-session/
  - ThomPete 16y ago
    One thing that I really appreciate about Steve Jobs is his honesty in these matters. He could have ventured on saying that the iPad is the next step that would have been very marketingish. Instead of speaking in certainties he treats his own products with a respect for reality and critical thinking. Just imagine if more CEO's would actually participate in honest discussion about their products like this.
rtaycher 16y ago
Am I the only one who doubts a lot of the magical usability of touch interfaces?
- othermaciej 16y ago
  No, doubting the magical usability of touch interfaces is still a very popular viewpoint, and until recently was conventional wisdom amongst almost anyone in the know. Touch interfaces actually do work pretty well though. Direct manipulation is just more engaging.
  - joebadmo 16y ago
    I agree that direct manipulation is engaging and intuitive, but I think it has fundamental ergonomic issues when you're talking about doing any sort of long-term, serious work. When you get to screen sizes that we're all using now at work, a handheld device is no longer feasible, and a large touchscreen monitor is silly for the same reason that whizbang Minority Report/Kinect interfaces are silly: you arms get tired very quickly. This fantastic video comes to mind: http://10gui.com/video/ http://10gui.com/video/
    - othermaciej 16y ago
      The context here is devices that are small and light enough to be reasonably handheld - i.e. tablets and phones. It's not yet clear to me if touchscreen will ever make sense for larger-screen devices, certainly you do not want to interact using touch with a vertical surface for any length of time. However, using an iPad for "long-term, serious work" is just fine. So I don't think you should equate large screens with serious work.
      - joebadmo 16y ago
        Yeah, I suppose it depends. I tend to feel cramped and annoyed at having to manage windows whenever I'm on anything smaller than 2 monitors < 19" or something equivalent. I think the 10GUI idea linked above is great because it's intuitive enough and still robust. The intuitiveness and engagement of the iPad is great, but I find it restrictive (the input bandwidth is limited by the direct manipulation paradigm). I think it's fantastic for people who have trouble understanding or don't particularly feel the need to spend time learning the intricacies of indirect manipulation, but I don't see that as a problem for my generation (cusp of X/Y) or subsequent ones.
atirip 16y ago
I find it hard to believe (me included) that anybody capable of having hacker news account is qualified to discuss about "normal peoples" computer usage.
donnyg107 16y ago
I think the ipad will only reach a point in which is has potential to push PCs out of the market once it no longer needs to be tethered to a pc for regular use.. Keyboards, size, and general interface are all this people acclimate to, but only being able to move things to the ipad from a PC? You can't get around the necessity for the PC there. When the ipad starts to feel more like its own device, I could feasiblly see Wozniak and Jobs' vision becomming reality. But till then, its a dependent device with a great UI.
asknemo 16y ago
From my experience, most tablet users use the tablet for 1)videos 2)really casual games 3)random browsing - not particularly PC-ish in my opinion. To say 'Tablet is the PC' is in some way less accurate than saying 'Tablet is the new TV' or 'Tablet is the best mobile browser'.
- arethuza 16y ago
  Exactly - I don't think having an iPad had changed the amount of time I spend sitting in front of a desktop PC or laptop. But it has changed how I watch video, read books and get my news over breakfast.
- city41 16y ago
  But for "normal" people, videos, casual games and random browsing is what a PC is for.
tybris 16y ago
I guess normal people get bored with their "PC" quite easily.
TeMPOraL 16y ago
What about out-of-the-office work applications? Storage rooms, hospitals, factories, delivery - everywhere you have to walk around with information instead of sitting by your desk. I can imagine (I don't know if anyone actually tried this) a facility with many (company-owned) tablets that people exchange between themselves instead of paper reports and forms, much like PADDs in Star Trek.
brisance 16y ago
This is entirely anecdotal and may not be representative of everyone else's experience, but since the launch of iPhone and iPad, I have yet to receive a frantic, middle-of-the-night-my-iOS-device-crashed call. Sure, there are the odd hardware failures here and there (typically one of the buttons is no longer responsive, or the touchscreen fails to register touches in one part of the screen) but overall, it has been pretty stress-free for my role as the "family tech support guy". So yes, I would tend to agree the iPad might just be what the tech industry needs to get more people interested in computing.
- LordBodak 16y ago
  One concern I would have, with more people using iPads instead of computers, is the middle of the night "I dropped my iPad and now it won't turn on, how do I save my data?" call. Apple really needs to get on the ball with some sort of backup that doesn't require plugging it into a PC.
  - bluekeybox 16y ago
    I imagine this is what their NC data center is for.
drdaeman 16y ago
Let's consider that "normal" people play games. Sure, there are gaming consoles of all sorts, but this does not change a fact there are a lot of games on PC. You can't effectively play - for example - 3DFPS on tablet. Well, you could hook up keyboard and mouse, but there any difference from desktop PC. Except for tablets have less powerful hardware than any typical "gaming" PC. Let's consider "normal" people work. Even throwing out possibly "non-normal" jobs with high hardware resource demands (like photorealistic 3D graphic artists, or CPU-intensive engineering calculations), but even a secretary won't do any good on tablet. Touch screens are fine for tweeting, but are no good for editing a sufficiently large document. Inverview summarized: iPad advertisement, nothing to see there.
MrFoof 16y ago
I'm a nerd's nerd. After the dot-com bust I used to collect SGI, DEC and Sun hardware. I cut my teeth on a Commodore 64 and also VAX VMS (in a DECNET cluster). I built my own PCs from 1992 through 2007. I work currently as a data warehousing consultant. My primary computer at home is now an iPad 2. Yes, I have a computer with a 27" display and tons of memory and four cores and a GPU suitable for playing new games, but it doesn't matter much because it's been collecting an awful lot of dust. As long as I can get my paws on another one, my parents are getting one as a joint Mother's/Father's day gift, because I doubt they'd touch their iMac much anymore. "I think we'll need a new input method in the coming proliferation of touch ui based devices." I don't. I type at 80-90% of the speed as a physical keyboard. And the thing that slows me down is having to switch keyboard pages for numbers and symbols -- otherwise I'm probably closer to 95% of my typing sped. I bang out frighteningly long emails on an iPad with no loss of efficiency. If it was bad, I wouldn't hesitate to go to my desk that's less than twenty feet away. The only thing that solves the input problem is a physically larger space for a larger virtual keyboard, and improvements to autocompletion algorithms and dictionaries. And time -- aren't there people who can type at furious rates on a Blackberry? There are, but they weren't that fast on Day 1. Can I program on an iPad? No. Actually, I can't do a lot of things on the iPad, but all those things are what I consider "work" -- I don't do image retouching to relax, nor do I relax by entering metadata for media, write applications, nor model databases. For everything I do that I consider "play", the iPad does all of it. Brilliantly. Computers are for work. Tablets are for play. Most people's computing tasks are in the latter category, and for that reason, tablets (or at least the iPad) will succeed. This isn't coming from a septuagenarian either -- I'm barely in my 30s.
- Hominem 16y ago
  I am the same way. My iPad never leaves my sight. I even surf on it while I am sitting in front of computer compiling code.
  - beej71 16y ago
    sigh I guess I'll just never get it. I have an iPad sitting right here, but I don't use it for a damn thing except testing. I surf the web on a desktop computer--while it's compiling code, even--and choose that experience 9 times out of 10 over surfing on the iPad (or any tablet or phone for that matter). Surely I'm not the only one who feels this way.

84 points by alphadoggs 16y ago

Yes it is and there is a very simple reason. The tablet removes abstraction between the user and the interface elements to be interacted with. The engineers who invented the touch screen has done more for the field of usability than any UX or usability expert could ever hope for. Now the big question for me is. Will apple forget about the enterprise market?

dman 16y ago
Completely agree. They do need to solve the text input problem though. I have had to consciously reduce my usage of the ipad since it seems to put me in read mode vs write mode.
- buro9 16y ago
  There's less of a text input problem on the iPad than there is on a mobile phone. Since I've used smartphones with software keyboards I find myself in the habit of replying only when I get home, the phone becoming little more than a notification device. At least on the iPad I respond a little. I find myself seriously considering a blackberry again. I'd miss the software but know my response rate whilst mobile would soar.
  - joebadmo 16y ago
    I actually find Swype on my android phone to be easier for text input than the iPad. My wife also puts down the iPad and grabs her iPhone when it's time to reply to emails. She doesn't like full ten finger typing on it and she can't thumb type on it like on her phone.
    - glhaynes 16y ago
      For me, the iPad 2's Smart Cover's ability to prop it up makes all the difference. I end up using it for lots more "laptop replacement" tasks because it's so much easier to type on with the Cover folded back.
      - joebadmo 16y ago
        My wife has an iPad 1 with a similar case (Incase or Belkin, can't remember which), but she still doesn't like typing on it. My theory is that it's partly ergonomic, but partly a matter of expectations. A phone is a completely different form factor, so you don't expect an experience that has any sort of fidelity to using a physical keyboard (also the keys are closer together). On an iPad-sized virtual keyboard, you hit a sort of uncanny valley, wherein it feels like a bad version of what you're used to, instead of a totally different thing. But that's pure conjecture. The input thing is why I'm bearish on tablets in general. I like not just having a physical keyboard because it's faster and feels better, but I also like that there's a portion of my hardware that's dedicated to input. On an abstract level I feel like it is a more egalitarian paradigm, to put my ideas on the same starting level as everyone else's. It's like having upstream and downstream parity. Maybe that's silly, but it's how I feel.
- mambodog 16y ago
  I have fantastical thoughts of some kind of surface that can alter its shape to provide the tactile feedback that touchscreens are lacking... though these thoughts will likely remain in the domain of science fiction.
  - asynchronous13 16y ago
    There's already touch screens out there with tactile feedback. They don't physically alter shape, but they vibrate at specific frequencies to mimic the feel of button presses. Seems like tactile feedback would be very useful for driving applications.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  It's not a big deal. As the tablet matures eventually you'll just be able to connect a usb/bluetooth keyboard to one, when necessary.
  - krevis 16y ago
    What do you mean "eventually"? The iPad has worked with Bluetooth keyboards since day one.
    - roc 16y ago
      I do wonder how long it will be until an actual iPad/iPod/iPhone computing dock surfaces. That is, one dock connection that supplies power, feeds an HDMI display and connects a keyboard, transforming the ipad screen into a sort of oversized trackpad. optionally with some context sensitive controls. With that, when people want a more traditional computing experience, they just carry their device over to the desk, dock and get on with it. The only real missing part is OS-wide awareness of such a dock, so that the UI can shift to being more keyboard-friendly [1]. I believe even the existing dock API could effect this on a smaller scale [2] if Apple greenlit a third party to build one. [1] Using a bluetooth keyboard with the iPad is pretty weak, due to the lack of consistent navigation support. e.g. alt-tab/cmd-tab sorts of behaviors, arrowing through pick-lists, universal tab/shift-tab support, etc. [2] Each app would have to look for said dock (and not just on startup) and the OS still wouldn't be integrated, which would limit things a bit.
      - gnaffle 16y ago
        The existing iPad Keyboard dock supports connecting power and an external display through the 30-pin connector on the back. I'm guessing it'll work with the new HDMI connector as well, although I'm not sure. I don't think making the iPad a trackpad for an external display would work well, however, since the iPad does not have a cursor and the GUI is not designed to be used with one (try the iPhone/iPad simulator on a Mac to see how it works). Making it work as a 1-1 mapping from the iPad to the external display is what the current HDMI connector gives you anyway.
angusgr 16y ago
The engineers who invented the touch screen has done more for the field of usability than any UX or usability expert could ever hope for. Which is interesting in itself because for the first 30-odd years of touchscreens they were largely a usability nightmare for anything more complex than simple multiple-choice buttons (and even then, often sub-par.) Partially due to technological limitations (low-res resistive screens), but partially because traditional interface abstractions don't translate at all well. It took clever UX engineering around touchscreens for them to get past the gimmick factor and become useful and immersive mainstream computing interfaces.
- ThomPete 16y ago
  Agree. But this was only possible due to proper processing power. The instant feel of the iPhone GUI flow makes all the difference.
anon1385 16y ago
I'm reminded of Alan Kay talking in 1987[1] about GRAIL (Graphical Input Language) on the RAND Tablet, which he calls the first "data tablet": "When I saw that, and used it for half an hour in 1968, I felt like I was sticking my hands right through the display and actually touching the information structures directly. This was the first system I'd ever used, and practically the only one since, that I've called truly intimate. It was this degree of intimacy that was so important in a user interface." Interestingly he mentions that one of the reasons for the creation of the RAND Tablet was that their economists and other computer users complained that they couldn't type. [1] http://www.archive.org/details/AlanKeyD1987 http://www.archive.org/details/AlanKeyD1987 Alan Kay: Doing with Images Makes Symbols GRAIL part starts at about 23:40

michaelpinto 16y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook

dvdhsu 16y ago
Alan Kay, the one behind the Dynabook said: >"When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it’s the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you’ll rule the world." http://www.edibleapple.com/alan-kay-on-the-iphone-and-the-ipad-sorta/ http://www.edibleapple.com/alan-kay-on-the-iphone-and-the-ip...

muhuk 16y ago

"We've never had an argument," he said. "We're just in different places, and we're different people." Jobs was interested in running a company, while Wozniak was and remains an engineer at heart.

jbigelow 16y ago

I'm sorry but tablets being for "normal people" sounds out of touch. My dad is a 58 year old fire fighter, he couldn't have been any less of a "computer person" yet he emails, manages his iTunes/iPod, and can stalk me on Facebook with ease (too much ease in fact when it comes to FB). And to top it off, he has done all this on a.... Windows PC, I type that without a shred of irony but many will read it as such. Face it, ATMs mostly run a custom UI on top of a Windows kernel, Police cruisers all have laptops attached to the dash, the US Postal Service will be out of business sooner rather than later because email and by extension the PC has been for "normal people" since the turn of the century. Anybody who hasn't interfaced in someway or another with a PC (regardless of OS) at some semi-regular interval over the last 10 years probably won't discover a need to now just because of the increased portability of the tablet form factor.

bonch 16y ago
So your dad knows how to use Outlook, iTunes, and Facebook. Can he install applications? Update drivers? Install Windows security updates as they come out and keep his anti-virus up to date? Tablets remove all that stupid maintenance crap, and that's why they are PCs for normal people.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  You still need to know how to use iTunes to use an iPad. Additionally, you generally don't need to know how to update yur drivers or antivirus. Those get updated automatically on Windows. The only thing you need to know how to do is install applications. Which 95% of the time is to double-click setup.exe or install.exe. I'm the tech support guy for my extended family. I support around 30 or so computers. What I've found interesting is over the past year or two is that support calls have dropped to about one every other month. And they're no longer things like, "My computer isn't working." They're more like, "How do I know that the backup program will work when I need it?"
  - bonch 16y ago
    If you think you don't need to know how to update drivers or maintain antivirus software on a typical PC, then your experience isn't typical of the majority of users or the poor sobs who do technical support for them. On a tablet, there is no running an installer executable. You just tap. Uninstallation is also just a tap. It's undeniably superior.

photophotoplasm 16y ago

I have trouble believing even "normal people" will want to use the tablet for anything except casual use. The desktop computer's monitor/keyboard/mouse setup is too efficient to be fully replaced by the touch screen. Not saying that tablets won't find their own niche, but they aren't suited for heavy workloads that increasingly large numbers of "normal people" need to do on computers. The biggest legacy of tablets is going to be how the ideas behind them influence desktop computers. I'm expecting most consumer operating systems to become more "appliance-like" and more tied to services provided by their developers. The success of iOS makes it almost inevitable that this model will be ported to the desktop.

jpravetz 16y ago
Correct. I have two 'normal' people in this house, and neither of them could or would get their work done on today's iPad. They are on Macs. For them, and myself as IT support person, the most interesting feature of the iPad might be the app management model and anything that makes maintaining the OS and applications (not just 'apps'), plug-ins and other resources (eg. fonts) easier.
ugh 16y ago
I think many normal people use their PC at home much, much longer for "casual use" than for work. So, I would reverse your assessment, the PC will keep its niche for the odd non-casual use at home but tablets will absolutely dominate when it comes to what people use home computers for the most, casual things.
gnaffle 16y ago
For what _most_ people actually do, which is email, browsing and word processing and other productivity work, I'm having trouble believing that a tablet won't work equally well. Maybe future tablets will be larger than 10" or support multiple displays, or multiple tablets working together, or maybe with external keyboards added, but except for niche tasks (graphic design which is often mouse/pen based) or CAD, I think they are a big step forward. That doesn't mean that advanced users won't stick to the desktop interface. People said the same thing when the mouse became popular and the keyboard / command line interface dominated. I still use the command line interface every day because it's very efficient at what I do, but I do acknowledge that most people nowadays never will.

dkarl 16y ago

My seventy-year-old dad still isn't at ease with Windows after fifteen years of having Windows PCs at home, but he's a master of his iPad. However, he still uses Windows for email and posting on the web, because he hates typing on the touch screen. He tried the keyboard I got him for the iPad, but it ended up gathering dust on a shelf somewhere. My dad might be stuck in the pre-computer age, but he isn't stuck in the pre-keyboard age. He knows what a decent keyboard is. The keyboard is one of those things that people don't want to give up. The folks talking about the iPad being the PC for "normal people" are looking forward to a future where nobody except nerds uses a computer before the age of eighteen. It's premature to speculate what a computer for "normal people" ought to look like until the definition of "normal people" stabilizes. Technological and economic development is changing the definition of normal people every day.

edge17 16y ago
To your point, Steve Jobs made a similar comment at D8 - Jobs: “When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. … PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people. … I think that we’re embarked on that. Is the next step the iPad? Who knows? Will it happen next year or five years from now or seven years from now? Who knows? But I think we’re headed in that direction.” http://d8.allthingsd.com/20100601/steve-jobs-session/ http://d8.allthingsd.com/20100601/steve-jobs-session/
- ThomPete 16y ago
  One thing that I really appreciate about Steve Jobs is his honesty in these matters. He could have ventured on saying that the iPad is the next step that would have been very marketingish. Instead of speaking in certainties he treats his own products with a respect for reality and critical thinking. Just imagine if more CEO's would actually participate in honest discussion about their products like this.

rtaycher 16y ago

Am I the only one who doubts a lot of the magical usability of touch interfaces?

othermaciej 16y ago
No, doubting the magical usability of touch interfaces is still a very popular viewpoint, and until recently was conventional wisdom amongst almost anyone in the know. Touch interfaces actually do work pretty well though. Direct manipulation is just more engaging.
- joebadmo 16y ago
  I agree that direct manipulation is engaging and intuitive, but I think it has fundamental ergonomic issues when you're talking about doing any sort of long-term, serious work. When you get to screen sizes that we're all using now at work, a handheld device is no longer feasible, and a large touchscreen monitor is silly for the same reason that whizbang Minority Report/Kinect interfaces are silly: you arms get tired very quickly. This fantastic video comes to mind: http://10gui.com/video/ http://10gui.com/video/
  - othermaciej 16y ago
    The context here is devices that are small and light enough to be reasonably handheld - i.e. tablets and phones. It's not yet clear to me if touchscreen will ever make sense for larger-screen devices, certainly you do not want to interact using touch with a vertical surface for any length of time. However, using an iPad for "long-term, serious work" is just fine. So I don't think you should equate large screens with serious work.
    - joebadmo 16y ago
      Yeah, I suppose it depends. I tend to feel cramped and annoyed at having to manage windows whenever I'm on anything smaller than 2 monitors < 19" or something equivalent. I think the 10GUI idea linked above is great because it's intuitive enough and still robust. The intuitiveness and engagement of the iPad is great, but I find it restrictive (the input bandwidth is limited by the direct manipulation paradigm). I think it's fantastic for people who have trouble understanding or don't particularly feel the need to spend time learning the intricacies of indirect manipulation, but I don't see that as a problem for my generation (cusp of X/Y) or subsequent ones.

atirip 16y ago

I find it hard to believe (me included) that anybody capable of having hacker news account is qualified to discuss about "normal peoples" computer usage.

donnyg107 16y ago

I think the ipad will only reach a point in which is has potential to push PCs out of the market once it no longer needs to be tethered to a pc for regular use.. Keyboards, size, and general interface are all this people acclimate to, but only being able to move things to the ipad from a PC? You can't get around the necessity for the PC there. When the ipad starts to feel more like its own device, I could feasiblly see Wozniak and Jobs' vision becomming reality. But till then, its a dependent device with a great UI.

asknemo 16y ago

From my experience, most tablet users use the tablet for 1)videos 2)really casual games 3)random browsing - not particularly PC-ish in my opinion. To say 'Tablet is the PC' is in some way less accurate than saying 'Tablet is the new TV' or 'Tablet is the best mobile browser'.

arethuza 16y ago
Exactly - I don't think having an iPad had changed the amount of time I spend sitting in front of a desktop PC or laptop. But it has changed how I watch video, read books and get my news over breakfast.
city41 16y ago
But for "normal" people, videos, casual games and random browsing is what a PC is for.

tybris 16y ago

I guess normal people get bored with their "PC" quite easily.

TeMPOraL 16y ago

What about out-of-the-office work applications? Storage rooms, hospitals, factories, delivery - everywhere you have to walk around with information instead of sitting by your desk. I can imagine (I don't know if anyone actually tried this) a facility with many (company-owned) tablets that people exchange between themselves instead of paper reports and forms, much like PADDs in Star Trek.

brisance 16y ago

This is entirely anecdotal and may not be representative of everyone else's experience, but since the launch of iPhone and iPad, I have yet to receive a frantic, middle-of-the-night-my-iOS-device-crashed call. Sure, there are the odd hardware failures here and there (typically one of the buttons is no longer responsive, or the touchscreen fails to register touches in one part of the screen) but overall, it has been pretty stress-free for my role as the "family tech support guy". So yes, I would tend to agree the iPad might just be what the tech industry needs to get more people interested in computing.

LordBodak 16y ago
One concern I would have, with more people using iPads instead of computers, is the middle of the night "I dropped my iPad and now it won't turn on, how do I save my data?" call. Apple really needs to get on the ball with some sort of backup that doesn't require plugging it into a PC.
- bluekeybox 16y ago
  I imagine this is what their NC data center is for.

drdaeman 16y ago

Let's consider that "normal" people play games. Sure, there are gaming consoles of all sorts, but this does not change a fact there are a lot of games on PC. You can't effectively play - for example - 3DFPS on tablet. Well, you could hook up keyboard and mouse, but there any difference from desktop PC. Except for tablets have less powerful hardware than any typical "gaming" PC. Let's consider "normal" people work. Even throwing out possibly "non-normal" jobs with high hardware resource demands (like photorealistic 3D graphic artists, or CPU-intensive engineering calculations), but even a secretary won't do any good on tablet. Touch screens are fine for tweeting, but are no good for editing a sufficiently large document. Inverview summarized: iPad advertisement, nothing to see there.

MrFoof 16y ago

I'm a nerd's nerd. After the dot-com bust I used to collect SGI, DEC and Sun hardware. I cut my teeth on a Commodore 64 and also VAX VMS (in a DECNET cluster). I built my own PCs from 1992 through 2007. I work currently as a data warehousing consultant. My primary computer at home is now an iPad 2. Yes, I have a computer with a 27" display and tons of memory and four cores and a GPU suitable for playing new games, but it doesn't matter much because it's been collecting an awful lot of dust. As long as I can get my paws on another one, my parents are getting one as a joint Mother's/Father's day gift, because I doubt they'd touch their iMac much anymore. "I think we'll need a new input method in the coming proliferation of touch ui based devices." I don't. I type at 80-90% of the speed as a physical keyboard. And the thing that slows me down is having to switch keyboard pages for numbers and symbols -- otherwise I'm probably closer to 95% of my typing sped. I bang out frighteningly long emails on an iPad with no loss of efficiency. If it was bad, I wouldn't hesitate to go to my desk that's less than twenty feet away. The only thing that solves the input problem is a physically larger space for a larger virtual keyboard, and improvements to autocompletion algorithms and dictionaries. And time -- aren't there people who can type at furious rates on a Blackberry? There are, but they weren't that fast on Day 1. Can I program on an iPad? No. Actually, I can't do a lot of things on the iPad, but all those things are what I consider "work" -- I don't do image retouching to relax, nor do I relax by entering metadata for media, write applications, nor model databases. For everything I do that I consider "play", the iPad does all of it. Brilliantly. Computers are for work. Tablets are for play. Most people's computing tasks are in the latter category, and for that reason, tablets (or at least the iPad) will succeed. This isn't coming from a septuagenarian either -- I'm barely in my 30s.

Hominem 16y ago
I am the same way. My iPad never leaves my sight. I even surf on it while I am sitting in front of computer compiling code.
- beej71 16y ago
  sigh I guess I'll just never get it. I have an iPad sitting right here, but I don't use it for a damn thing except testing. I surf the web on a desktop computer--while it's compiling code, even--and choose that experience 9 times out of 10 over surfing on the iPad (or any tablet or phone for that matter). Surely I'm not the only one who feels this way.