10 ms·

Do You Wanna Touch

225 points by co_pl_te 14y ago

daurnimator 14y ago
I've had an 11" laptop/tablet with a touchscreen for a couple of years now... (Gigabyte T1125N; I didn't even realise it was a tablet when I bought it) The novelty of the touchscreen wore off after the first month.
- dsirijus 14y ago
  For almost 4 years I've had and still do as my primary computer a Tablet PC (HP 2730p), no touch, but with stylus. I still use it and will probably use it in every aspect of it until it dies on me. Touch is maybe cool and natural and whatnot, but stylus is useful. I can actually account for how much money stylus option had brought to my wallet.
- dagw 14y ago
  Until it died a couple of years ago I had an IBM Thinkpad x41 tablet PC for several years. I loved that thing and switched between tablet and laptop mode all the time when using it. I now have an 11" Macbook Air, and while in many ways it is the best laptop I've ever owned, I sorely miss not being able to swivel the screen around and turn it into a tablet. My next laptop is definitely going to be some variation on the theme tablet/laptop hybrid.
StavrosK 14y ago
Does anyone have a good description of the keyboard he describes? I haven't seen any details so I don't know how the Surface works, I didn't very much understand the post.
- codeulike 14y ago
  The TouchCover, a very thin pressure sensitive keyboard cover: http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-GB/accessories/touch-cover http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-GB/accessories/touch-cov... There is also a TypeCover, slightly thicker and has physical keys: http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-GB/accessories/type-cover http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-GB/accessories/type-cove...
  - StavrosK 14y ago
    Oh wow, that's a good idea! Damn. Very nice. Thanks for the clarification!
    - codeulike 14y ago
      Also bear in mind the Surface has a kickstand so it stands up on its own
Newky 14y ago
I loved this article as it clearly demonstrates Jeff's love of all hardware. There is no real hatred for any brand here, and he complements all the major devices while remaining objective. One comment I would make is regarding this, "I knew that the Nexus 7 was really working for me when I gave mine to my father as a spontaneous gift while he was visiting, then missed it sorely when waiting for the replacement to arrive.". I know that Jeff is above my pay bracket, but even still, this makes me wonder what sort of money stream this is, if he can simply hand away Nexus 7's. I earn a respectful living but that sort of money is still substantial enough that I can't afford to simply give one away.
- Jabbles 14y ago
  He gave it to his father. That's a bit different from handing them out on the street. I imagine he's doing quite well though.
  - SquareWheel 14y ago
    After reading his post on quality chairs, I have no doubt he is well off. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/07/investing-in-a-quality-programming-chair.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/07/investing-in-a-qual...
    - masklinn 14y ago
      Not sure why, you don't need to be rich to want a good chair when you spend hours on end in one. Of course you do need a bit of disposable income, but it's a question of priorities and necessities. I've been foregoing cars for a decade now because I try to live close to work in places where there is sufficient access to public transportations, it's a hassle for some things (going back to the family, fetching "big" groceries) but it avoids other issues and saves money which I can spend on more books or a better chair. I got myself a humanscale liberty a few years ago, I found it a good investment and amortized over the years I've owned it, it hasn't been that expensive. More expensive than getting a $20 chair every year, but it still looks and feels mostly brand new.
AndrewDucker 14y ago
I find the same thing with writing anything longer than a couple of sentences, and that's the major reason I've stuck to a laptop. I love my phone - and I could see me wanting a tablet as well as my laptop, but I definitely want the laptop, so the tablet becomes an "If I have the spare money" item.
- WiseWeasel 14y ago
  In the six months since I got a tablet, it's my laptop which has become superfluous. I also have a nice desktop setup, and there is now no reason for me to use the laptop. When I'm out and about, I can count on one hand the number of times I thought it would be a good idea to bring the laptop since I got the tablet, and I never actually used it. A good ergonomic desktop setup for productivity and a tablet and smartphone for mobile use is all I really need. If I regularly had to be productive in multiple locations without a desktop handy I might feel differently, but I don't.
digitalengineer 14y ago
I don't get it. The Surface is cool becasue of the keyboard? Logitech made the iPad keyboard some time ago. That's all there is to it to help you type like on a laptop. Review: http://9to5mac.com/2012/06/29/review-logitech-ultrathin-ipad-keyboard-cover-will-kickstart-your-transition-from-consumption-to-creation/ http://9to5mac.com/2012/06/29/review-logitech-ultrathin-ipad...
- joe_fishfish 14y ago
  Likewise, Asus' eee Transformer Prime has been around for a while now. While somewhat pricey for an Android tablet it's still a lot better value than the Surface.
  - desigooner 14y ago
    It also depends on execution. However bad surface RT is, I'm sure it won't be as frustrating to use as an Asus transformer (both the initial version as well as the prime). I've used both of those for a week only to return them without 2nd thoughts.
  - taude 14y ago
    I have an external blue tooth keyboard for both my iPad and droid phone. Not having it integrated into the device is clunky, at best. Especially considering my keyboard and stand take up more space than the tablet itself. It's not elegant. Would love to see Apple come out with a sexier, more integrated, slim keyboard cover. Also, multi-tasking on the iPad blows, hard. It's better on my Android phone. My neighbor got an Asus Transformer (the T300 model or what ever it was called). It's definitely slick and I could type quite well on it. Can't wait to see how the Win 8 RT app ecosystem plays out, because I like a lot of things MSFT is doing with their multi-tasking and side-by-side apps. Having good multi-tasking hot-keys on the keyboard is a big boost in productivity. Get me a good RDP client on it and I could find it very useful for a lot of work scenarios.
- dfox 14y ago
  I remember many strikingly similar designs as these "new" concepts of Windows 8 tablets being presented 10-15 years ago as new concepts of computing devices powered by Windows CE Handheld PC Edition (with some of them being actually manufactured then).
hrktb 14y ago
This post feels too short for the argument he is pushing. If the surface is a laptop killer, what is radically different about it compared to the other countless tries of putting a keyboard with a touchscreen ? I am asking genuinely, because I haven't touch or seen one yet. So far the reviews aren't stellar, there seems to be the same shortcoming as before (always moving between the keyboard and the screen to type and click on things), and the software doesn't seem to push the limits of what you can do on a tablet. My question would be, my parents hated using an iPad with a keyboard, would they be better off with a surface?
- taude 14y ago
  He's not arguing that The Surface is a laptop killer, he's arguing that the hybrid touch/keyboard idea is a laptop killer.
  - sixothree 14y ago
    Still a very weak argument. I look at the ways I use a laptop and none of them would be served any better by a touch device.
    - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
      What it comes down to is that eventually it's better to have 1 thing than 2 things that serve a similar purpose. Many (most?) computer people today have 2 things because the gap is too great. Eventually the gap closes a little, and although it will never close completely, it is better to have 1 thing than 2 things, so you make compromises. I think that is what Jeff is saying here, the gap is closing just a little, and eventually a tablet becomes good enough as a PC.
      - sixothree 14y ago
        That's a much better argument. Tablets are sofa consumer devices; notebooks are desktop work devices. Surface is trying to bridge that gap. But we should not kid ourselves this is not a laptop replacement, it's a tablet improvement.
swah 14y ago
I spend boatloads of money (this is Brazil) in an ipad telling me it was a productivity device, but its really a consuming device. The more I use touch devices, the more I realize the superiority of mice: I really hate how my finger gets in the way on the ipad. Meh.
Revisor 14y ago
I welcome this new type of device - a small touchscreen with an optional keyboard (and a mouse?) - warmly. But I would like the future to happen with open systems, not some US corp acting as a gatekeeper for all my content.
subb 14y ago
What about doing actual work? This revolution of touch, which has come to desktop with Windows 8 and Ubuntu, scares me a bit. First because I feel that professionnals that use computers daily are not really considered and second because with touch devices, the emphasis is on consumption rather than creation.
S4M 14y ago
Couple of thoughts: - not everybody can buy like Jeff all the new devices and get rid of the ones that don't stick, that's rather a special way to choose devices. - I like Jeff's reasoning with the upsides and downsides of a lack of keyboard: the keyboard sort of gets in the way to do spontaneous things but for now the non-physical keyboards are not good for writing and editing long chunks of text. So it makes me wonder: wouldn't a tablet with a stylus and some good hand writing recognition software beat? After all, you can see a touchscreen as a better mouse - an evolution of the mouse, if you want. And if you want to write some text, like an email, doing it with your hand writing doesn't look too bad. Maybe it will really beat the keyboard for writing in Chinese or Japanese (disclaimer: I can't write yet in those languages). Of course if you want to use those devices to write code, it will be damn hard to implement the equivalent of the keyboard shortcuts for an hand-writing system.
- snogglethorpe 14y ago
  > Maybe it will really beat the keyboard for writing in Chinese or Japanese It seems very unlikely, at least with Japanese. In my experience, a typical Japanese native speaker (who is accustomed to the computer) can enter text with a keyboard an order of magnitude faster than they can write it. The difference becomes a bit less stark with tiny keyboards on phones or whatever, but even there, most people these days are a bit shaky when it comes to writing complicated kanji anyway... >< Writing has other benefits of course, e.g. that you can easily enter a character which that you don't know the pronunciation of (which is why it's commonly supported for dictionaries), so it's a useful feature to have even if it's not the primary input method.
dkhenry 14y ago
He is right about the future of interaction being touch + keyboard. I have been using my Transformer Prime for about a year now as a laptop replacement. It doesn't do everything I ask of computers ( but then again neither would any laptop ), but it does have this great interaction where I can switch between windows with the Honeycomb switcher app ( replaces alt-tab ) I can swipe between tabs in the terminal and use the touch screen to scroll back text. It is still the best device for reading any E-mails and its good at writing all but the longest. However the coup de grâce of it is that I can use it for 12 to 18 hours without even thinking about plugging it into something. I can leave it unplugged for weeks and come back to a decent charge on it, and to my knowledge the only time I have ever turned it off was when I flashed CM10 on it. If the surface can provide those kind of experiences then I think its just a matter of time until it becomes a standard piece of kit for computer users.
- padobson 14y ago
  I couldn't upvote this hard enough. I've been using my Transformer Prime for 10 months, and it has changed the way I do many things. I still do my consulting work on a laptop, but almost all of my side-project coding is done from my Prime. I can sit on my couch, with my feet up for 6 hours and code - and like you say, still have 10 hours of battery life for gaming or email or web surfing thereafter. I couldn't think of a more comfortable development experience. The money line of Atwood's post about the future, though, is this one: And I'm beginning to wonder about my desktop a little, because lately I'm starting to I think I wanna touch that, too. I don't know that individual touch computing on a desktop will ever be a good idea, but I've been thinking a lot lately that a 42in Android tablet would make a ton of sense. Think of everything you use a whiteboard for to the Nth degree. Gathering around a large touchscreen to communicate ideas, allowing others to manipulate parts of the screen with wireless keyboards, and providing office-wide or household announcements and reminders just makes a ton of sense to me. Personal computing has already gone touch, it's time for group computing to go touch too.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    Another vote for the Transformer Prime + keyboard dock. One of the best kept secrets in mobile computing.
TeMPOraL 14y ago
While I personally love touchscreens and want to see them everywhere, I think we can't ignore the limitations of this type interface. For instance, it would seem that Bret Victor doesn't like Jeff's touch future, and has some interesting things to say about it: http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/ http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...
smallegan 14y ago
The thing that frustrates me most about these devices with keyboard covers with or without kickstands is that I can't sit on the couch and use it on my lap. It isn't a LAPtop replacement, it is a portable computing replacement.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- hollerith 14y ago
  You can use it in your lap: you just have to use the on-screen keyboard rather than the keyboard cover. That would probably not crimp my style because when I am too tired to get off the couch and move to a table or desk, I am also probably too tired to do a satisfactory job at writing anything longer than a tweet.
kijin 14y ago
> How wonderful it is to flip open the Surface and quickly type a 4 paragraph email response when I need to ... And switching between the two modes of interaction – sometimes typing, sometimes touching – is completely natural. OK, let's assume that the Surface's keyboard completely solves the problem of not being able to write properly. That still leaves us with the problem of not being able to point properly. I can't even imagine how the touchscreen could ever rival the precision of the mouse as a pointing device. The average adult human finger is simply too thick to select 5 characters from the middle of a word displayed in 10 points, or to drag a Photoshop layer 1 pixel to the right. Even a conventional trackpad on a cheap laptop has better precision than your finger does, though good luck finding actual graphic designers who prefer trackpads to actual mice. Styluses (styli?) aren't much better, unless your stylus is sharp enough to damage the screen. The fact that touchscreens don't allow you to fine-tune your aim before you click makes it even more difficult to achieve precision. How do we address this issue? How do we make touchscreen devices useful for those who need spatial precision? What would be the most natural way to add precise pointing abilities to a tablet computer without compromising the advantages of the touchscreen? Carrying around a cordless mouse doesn't seem to be a particularly elegant solution. What do you think? Is touchscreen+keyboard the future of personal computing, or is there always going to be a place for mice as specialty items for graphic designers and some other professionals?
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  The Surface keyboard has a trackpad. That just moves the problem from hardware to software though. How do you make a single UI that is equally fit for touch and mouse? I doubt that you can. But it probably doesn't matter, touch is going to win and we're going to be stuck with mice being a second class input.
  - kijin 14y ago
    > How do you make a single UI that is equally fit for touch and mouse? Yep, that's the question I was trying to raise. Having a mouse in addition to a touchscreen not only looks redundant to those who don't need precision clicking, it also causes a potential conflict between different UI paradigms. When touch is the primary input, every UI element needs to become big enough to touch with fat fingers, so you usually end up with UIs that look like they were designed for kindergarteners. You simplify and hide features until you upset every "power user". When the mouse is the primary input, on the other hand, the added precision allows you to cram more clickable elements into small spaces, possibly freeing up more screen real estate for other things.
ari_elle 14y ago
Does anyone here also feel like an outsider because you - no matter how other people love it - just won't get used to touch (or for some reason you don't want to) ? I wouldn't mind my current notebook [1] having a touch display (additionally), but i still wouldn't use it that often i guess (and i wouldn't pay extra for it). I really have to try the Keyboard of the Surface though, but knowing me - very picky about keyboards - i don't think i could work with it. [1]: Thinkpad T 520
- kijin 14y ago
  Case in point: I have very dry skin. The tip of my fingers will crack and bleed unless I use a copious amount of hand cream. As a result, every touchscreen I use becomes a greasy mess of smudged fingerprints. I also hate scrolling and zooming, because rubbing a finger across several inches of plastic irritates my skin much more than simply moving a mouse around and clicking from time to time. So, regular screen + keyboard + mouse for me.
needle0 14y ago
No physical keyboard doesn't always mean immediate large-scale writing failure for all people. I think some people either just get used to it for extensive prose, or don't. In Japan, the keitai-novel - novels written by young authors often entirely using featurephone numpads - has gotten past its initial craze and appears here to stay as an established genre. Even for other genres, there has been a recent example of a self-published science fiction novella scoring high in the just-started Japanese Kindle/Kobo sales rankings, having its majority written on an iPhone. I imagine the general populace will gradually get accustomed to using a non-physical-keyboard device for extensive text input, especially as more kids emerge experiencing the touchscreen as their first and only input device. (And the aforementioned author wasn't even that young - IIRC he's around 40!)
programminggeek 14y ago
I recently got the ultraslim logitech ipad keyboard cover and it is pretty awesome. I could really see a future for tablet+keyboard devices for a lot of people. Apple doesn't really need to promote this as their core feature because it's just an optional setup, but MSFT could propel the tablet keyboard market forward in very interesting ways. Very cool.
duggan 14y ago
I'm still looking forward to Minority Report style interfaces for the desktop, like https://leapmotion.com/ https://leapmotion.com/ Probably not the best model for mobile interaction, but there's plenty of seats free at the man-machine interface table.
shasta 14y ago
Does anyone make a multi-touch keyboard? This seems like it would be a great input device for performance users (e.g. programmers). And by "multi-touch keyboard" I mean a keyboard with physically pressable keys that, when not pressed, lay flat and can detect finger locations.
- saraid216 14y ago
  A coworker has one, but I don't actually know who made it. I asked once, but I think they said it had been discontinued. I'll try to remember to ask again tomorrow.
- jvm 14y ago
  Apparently the TouchStream was beloved by its users before its designer, FingerWorks was bought by Apple along with all their patents and the device was chucked down the memory hole: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks
richardlblair 14y ago
The thing I appreciate the most about this write up is that he blatantly calls out other reviews/reviewers.
sergiotapia 14y ago
I want to buy this device, but it's not available in my country (Bolivia). :(
bsimpson 14y ago
I'm not sure how to feel about tablets. Even as a life-long Mac guy, I bought a TabletPC in 2005 because I wanted a pressure-sensitive drawing tablet that was embedded into the display. The most striking thing for me was how nice it was to be able to sit on the couch and read a webpage in portrait mode, but having to unfold the keyboard to be able to go to a new URL (or hunt/peck on the onscreen keyboard) was a disaster. When Nokia announced its pocket-sized tablet in 2006, I was very tempted to buy one until I realized it wasn't pressure sensitive. Drawing on a digital device with an infinite color space is awesome, but being able to tangibly interact with information is a phenomenal achievement. Hell, I even built a homebrew version of the Microsoft Surface (table) to explore the possibilities. In spite of my enthusiasm over the last decade, the tablets I've seen all feel like they slow me down. Not only are they computationally underpowered, but they're just slower to interact with. Moreover, I worry about the ergonomics of it all. My fingers tend to feel a bit chaffed if I spend too much time with a tablet. I wonder if others have this issue. I love the idea of the tablet. I want to love the execution, but nothing I've seen has made me want to integrate an iPad/Surface RT into my life. My MacBook just works better for me.
archagon 14y ago
If the world moves to touch computing, what's going to happen to PC gaming? Traditionally, PC gaming has been popular because PCs get used for many other things besides gaming. If most people switch to touch devices for their primary computers, will there still be enough people building gaming rigs for developers to care about that market? I'm sure the big console manufacturers would love nothing more than to move everyone over to consoles, but this would signal the downfall of indie games, certain kinds of first-person shooters, real-time strategy games, simulators, and many other genres. I would be devastated to see this happen.
elorant 14y ago
One thing I never see mentioned regarding tablets is what happens if you suffer from RSI symptoms. Moving your hand around the screen all the time or typing on hard surfaces sounds like a ticket to more pain.
ALee 14y ago
My mother still cannot use the iPad I bought for her. She still uses a laptop, but her typing is atrocious. It's not her fault, she wasn't trained to use a QWERTY keyboard like the rest of us and she's an immigrant. She can however, speak somewhat understandable English. As we move toward devices that fit into how human beings naturally interact, I think a necessary evolution is going to be voice recognition, but not as we think of it. I don't think it'll be as clunky as it is now, but much more like giving commands and discussion to another human being. I could be wrong. More kids text message now than ever use their cell phones, so perhaps a keyboard is necessary as the article says.
RandallBrown 14y ago
>This is a version one device from a company that has never built a computer before Why do people keep saying this? Microsoft has been making the Xbox and tons of other hardware for years. They know how to make things.
fudged71 14y ago
I will always cringe when I see people use 'laptops' and touching the screen. It's become instinctually painful.
cjoh 14y ago
It seems like with a keyboard "dock" the Nexus 10 might be the lightest "retina" laptop available at 25% of the price as the new 13" Retina Macbook Pro.
- jvm 14y ago
  I believe this is what you are looking for: http://eee.asus.com/en/transformer-infinity/features http://eee.asus.com/en/transformer-infinity/features I've never used one but a lot of people on HN seem to swear by them.
  - cjoh 14y ago
    Except it's more expensive, and the screen and CPU are not as good.
    - jvm 14y ago
      I know, I'm waiting for the refresh. All told it's $200 extra counting the keyboard dock but I consider that totally worth it, especially since there's an extra battery pack in the keyboard.
marshray 14y ago
Disclosure: recently accepted a position at MSFT. I think I'm starting to "get it", in that Windows 8 (perhaps moreso than Surface) may have a big effect on how we use computers. After using a Surface for a day or two, I've caught myself a few times trying to tap on my other LCD screens. For some reason, this didn't happen even after using Android tablets, even with docking keyboards.
amorphid 14y ago
I played with the MS Surface RT yesterday at an MS kiosk in a mall. I really liked the keyboard option. It was the first touch device I've seen that made me consider buying a tablet. I didn't like it enough to buy it, but it is an idea that is definitely headed I'm the right direction. I can't wait for technology to mature a bit more.

225 points by co_pl_te 14y ago

I've had an 11" laptop/tablet with a touchscreen for a couple of years now... (Gigabyte T1125N; I didn't even realise it was a tablet when I bought it) The novelty of the touchscreen wore off after the first month.

dsirijus 14y ago
For almost 4 years I've had and still do as my primary computer a Tablet PC (HP 2730p), no touch, but with stylus. I still use it and will probably use it in every aspect of it until it dies on me. Touch is maybe cool and natural and whatnot, but stylus is useful. I can actually account for how much money stylus option had brought to my wallet.
dagw 14y ago
Until it died a couple of years ago I had an IBM Thinkpad x41 tablet PC for several years. I loved that thing and switched between tablet and laptop mode all the time when using it. I now have an 11" Macbook Air, and while in many ways it is the best laptop I've ever owned, I sorely miss not being able to swivel the screen around and turn it into a tablet. My next laptop is definitely going to be some variation on the theme tablet/laptop hybrid.

StavrosK 14y ago

Does anyone have a good description of the keyboard he describes? I haven't seen any details so I don't know how the Surface works, I didn't very much understand the post.

codeulike 14y ago
The TouchCover, a very thin pressure sensitive keyboard cover: http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-GB/accessories/touch-cover http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-GB/accessories/touch-cov... There is also a TypeCover, slightly thicker and has physical keys: http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-GB/accessories/type-cover http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-GB/accessories/type-cove...
- StavrosK 14y ago
  Oh wow, that's a good idea! Damn. Very nice. Thanks for the clarification!
  - codeulike 14y ago
    Also bear in mind the Surface has a kickstand so it stands up on its own

Newky 14y ago

I loved this article as it clearly demonstrates Jeff's love of all hardware. There is no real hatred for any brand here, and he complements all the major devices while remaining objective. One comment I would make is regarding this, "I knew that the Nexus 7 was really working for me when I gave mine to my father as a spontaneous gift while he was visiting, then missed it sorely when waiting for the replacement to arrive.". I know that Jeff is above my pay bracket, but even still, this makes me wonder what sort of money stream this is, if he can simply hand away Nexus 7's. I earn a respectful living but that sort of money is still substantial enough that I can't afford to simply give one away.

Jabbles 14y ago
He gave it to his father. That's a bit different from handing them out on the street. I imagine he's doing quite well though.
- SquareWheel 14y ago
  After reading his post on quality chairs, I have no doubt he is well off. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/07/investing-in-a-quality-programming-chair.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/07/investing-in-a-qual...
  - masklinn 14y ago
    Not sure why, you don't need to be rich to want a good chair when you spend hours on end in one. Of course you do need a bit of disposable income, but it's a question of priorities and necessities. I've been foregoing cars for a decade now because I try to live close to work in places where there is sufficient access to public transportations, it's a hassle for some things (going back to the family, fetching "big" groceries) but it avoids other issues and saves money which I can spend on more books or a better chair. I got myself a humanscale liberty a few years ago, I found it a good investment and amortized over the years I've owned it, it hasn't been that expensive. More expensive than getting a $20 chair every year, but it still looks and feels mostly brand new.

AndrewDucker 14y ago

I find the same thing with writing anything longer than a couple of sentences, and that's the major reason I've stuck to a laptop. I love my phone - and I could see me wanting a tablet as well as my laptop, but I definitely want the laptop, so the tablet becomes an "If I have the spare money" item.

WiseWeasel 14y ago
In the six months since I got a tablet, it's my laptop which has become superfluous. I also have a nice desktop setup, and there is now no reason for me to use the laptop. When I'm out and about, I can count on one hand the number of times I thought it would be a good idea to bring the laptop since I got the tablet, and I never actually used it. A good ergonomic desktop setup for productivity and a tablet and smartphone for mobile use is all I really need. If I regularly had to be productive in multiple locations without a desktop handy I might feel differently, but I don't.

digitalengineer 14y ago

I don't get it. The Surface is cool becasue of the keyboard? Logitech made the iPad keyboard some time ago. That's all there is to it to help you type like on a laptop. Review: http://9to5mac.com/2012/06/29/review-logitech-ultrathin-ipad-keyboard-cover-will-kickstart-your-transition-from-consumption-to-creation/ http://9to5mac.com/2012/06/29/review-logitech-ultrathin-ipad...

joe_fishfish 14y ago
Likewise, Asus' eee Transformer Prime has been around for a while now. While somewhat pricey for an Android tablet it's still a lot better value than the Surface.
- desigooner 14y ago
  It also depends on execution. However bad surface RT is, I'm sure it won't be as frustrating to use as an Asus transformer (both the initial version as well as the prime). I've used both of those for a week only to return them without 2nd thoughts.
- taude 14y ago
  I have an external blue tooth keyboard for both my iPad and droid phone. Not having it integrated into the device is clunky, at best. Especially considering my keyboard and stand take up more space than the tablet itself. It's not elegant. Would love to see Apple come out with a sexier, more integrated, slim keyboard cover. Also, multi-tasking on the iPad blows, hard. It's better on my Android phone. My neighbor got an Asus Transformer (the T300 model or what ever it was called). It's definitely slick and I could type quite well on it. Can't wait to see how the Win 8 RT app ecosystem plays out, because I like a lot of things MSFT is doing with their multi-tasking and side-by-side apps. Having good multi-tasking hot-keys on the keyboard is a big boost in productivity. Get me a good RDP client on it and I could find it very useful for a lot of work scenarios.
dfox 14y ago
I remember many strikingly similar designs as these "new" concepts of Windows 8 tablets being presented 10-15 years ago as new concepts of computing devices powered by Windows CE Handheld PC Edition (with some of them being actually manufactured then).

hrktb 14y ago

This post feels too short for the argument he is pushing. If the surface is a laptop killer, what is radically different about it compared to the other countless tries of putting a keyboard with a touchscreen ? I am asking genuinely, because I haven't touch or seen one yet. So far the reviews aren't stellar, there seems to be the same shortcoming as before (always moving between the keyboard and the screen to type and click on things), and the software doesn't seem to push the limits of what you can do on a tablet. My question would be, my parents hated using an iPad with a keyboard, would they be better off with a surface?

taude 14y ago
He's not arguing that The Surface is a laptop killer, he's arguing that the hybrid touch/keyboard idea is a laptop killer.
- sixothree 14y ago
  Still a very weak argument. I look at the ways I use a laptop and none of them would be served any better by a touch device.
  - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
    What it comes down to is that eventually it's better to have 1 thing than 2 things that serve a similar purpose. Many (most?) computer people today have 2 things because the gap is too great. Eventually the gap closes a little, and although it will never close completely, it is better to have 1 thing than 2 things, so you make compromises. I think that is what Jeff is saying here, the gap is closing just a little, and eventually a tablet becomes good enough as a PC.
    - sixothree 14y ago
      That's a much better argument. Tablets are sofa consumer devices; notebooks are desktop work devices. Surface is trying to bridge that gap. But we should not kid ourselves this is not a laptop replacement, it's a tablet improvement.

swah 14y ago

I spend boatloads of money (this is Brazil) in an ipad telling me it was a productivity device, but its really a consuming device. The more I use touch devices, the more I realize the superiority of mice: I really hate how my finger gets in the way on the ipad. Meh.

Revisor 14y ago

I welcome this new type of device - a small touchscreen with an optional keyboard (and a mouse?) - warmly. But I would like the future to happen with open systems, not some US corp acting as a gatekeeper for all my content.

subb 14y ago

What about doing actual work? This revolution of touch, which has come to desktop with Windows 8 and Ubuntu, scares me a bit. First because I feel that professionnals that use computers daily are not really considered and second because with touch devices, the emphasis is on consumption rather than creation.

S4M 14y ago

Couple of thoughts: - not everybody can buy like Jeff all the new devices and get rid of the ones that don't stick, that's rather a special way to choose devices. - I like Jeff's reasoning with the upsides and downsides of a lack of keyboard: the keyboard sort of gets in the way to do spontaneous things but for now the non-physical keyboards are not good for writing and editing long chunks of text. So it makes me wonder: wouldn't a tablet with a stylus and some good hand writing recognition software beat? After all, you can see a touchscreen as a better mouse - an evolution of the mouse, if you want. And if you want to write some text, like an email, doing it with your hand writing doesn't look too bad. Maybe it will really beat the keyboard for writing in Chinese or Japanese (disclaimer: I can't write yet in those languages). Of course if you want to use those devices to write code, it will be damn hard to implement the equivalent of the keyboard shortcuts for an hand-writing system.

snogglethorpe 14y ago
> Maybe it will really beat the keyboard for writing in Chinese or Japanese It seems very unlikely, at least with Japanese. In my experience, a typical Japanese native speaker (who is accustomed to the computer) can enter text with a keyboard an order of magnitude faster than they can write it. The difference becomes a bit less stark with tiny keyboards on phones or whatever, but even there, most people these days are a bit shaky when it comes to writing complicated kanji anyway... >< Writing has other benefits of course, e.g. that you can easily enter a character which that you don't know the pronunciation of (which is why it's commonly supported for dictionaries), so it's a useful feature to have even if it's not the primary input method.

dkhenry 14y ago

He is right about the future of interaction being touch + keyboard. I have been using my Transformer Prime for about a year now as a laptop replacement. It doesn't do everything I ask of computers ( but then again neither would any laptop ), but it does have this great interaction where I can switch between windows with the Honeycomb switcher app ( replaces alt-tab ) I can swipe between tabs in the terminal and use the touch screen to scroll back text. It is still the best device for reading any E-mails and its good at writing all but the longest. However the coup de grâce of it is that I can use it for 12 to 18 hours without even thinking about plugging it into something. I can leave it unplugged for weeks and come back to a decent charge on it, and to my knowledge the only time I have ever turned it off was when I flashed CM10 on it. If the surface can provide those kind of experiences then I think its just a matter of time until it becomes a standard piece of kit for computer users.

padobson 14y ago
I couldn't upvote this hard enough. I've been using my Transformer Prime for 10 months, and it has changed the way I do many things. I still do my consulting work on a laptop, but almost all of my side-project coding is done from my Prime. I can sit on my couch, with my feet up for 6 hours and code - and like you say, still have 10 hours of battery life for gaming or email or web surfing thereafter. I couldn't think of a more comfortable development experience. The money line of Atwood's post about the future, though, is this one: And I'm beginning to wonder about my desktop a little, because lately I'm starting to I think I wanna touch that, too. I don't know that individual touch computing on a desktop will ever be a good idea, but I've been thinking a lot lately that a 42in Android tablet would make a ton of sense. Think of everything you use a whiteboard for to the Nth degree. Gathering around a large touchscreen to communicate ideas, allowing others to manipulate parts of the screen with wireless keyboards, and providing office-wide or household announcements and reminders just makes a ton of sense to me. Personal computing has already gone touch, it's time for group computing to go touch too.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  Another vote for the Transformer Prime + keyboard dock. One of the best kept secrets in mobile computing.

TeMPOraL 14y ago

While I personally love touchscreens and want to see them everywhere, I think we can't ignore the limitations of this type interface. For instance, it would seem that Bret Victor doesn't like Jeff's touch future, and has some interesting things to say about it: http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/ http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...

smallegan 14y ago

The thing that frustrates me most about these devices with keyboard covers with or without kickstands is that I can't sit on the couch and use it on my lap. It isn't a LAPtop replacement, it is a portable computing replacement.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
hollerith 14y ago
You can use it in your lap: you just have to use the on-screen keyboard rather than the keyboard cover. That would probably not crimp my style because when I am too tired to get off the couch and move to a table or desk, I am also probably too tired to do a satisfactory job at writing anything longer than a tweet.

kijin 14y ago

> How wonderful it is to flip open the Surface and quickly type a 4 paragraph email response when I need to ... And switching between the two modes of interaction – sometimes typing, sometimes touching – is completely natural. OK, let's assume that the Surface's keyboard completely solves the problem of not being able to write properly. That still leaves us with the problem of not being able to point properly. I can't even imagine how the touchscreen could ever rival the precision of the mouse as a pointing device. The average adult human finger is simply too thick to select 5 characters from the middle of a word displayed in 10 points, or to drag a Photoshop layer 1 pixel to the right. Even a conventional trackpad on a cheap laptop has better precision than your finger does, though good luck finding actual graphic designers who prefer trackpads to actual mice. Styluses (styli?) aren't much better, unless your stylus is sharp enough to damage the screen. The fact that touchscreens don't allow you to fine-tune your aim before you click makes it even more difficult to achieve precision. How do we address this issue? How do we make touchscreen devices useful for those who need spatial precision? What would be the most natural way to add precise pointing abilities to a tablet computer without compromising the advantages of the touchscreen? Carrying around a cordless mouse doesn't seem to be a particularly elegant solution. What do you think? Is touchscreen+keyboard the future of personal computing, or is there always going to be a place for mice as specialty items for graphic designers and some other professionals?

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
The Surface keyboard has a trackpad. That just moves the problem from hardware to software though. How do you make a single UI that is equally fit for touch and mouse? I doubt that you can. But it probably doesn't matter, touch is going to win and we're going to be stuck with mice being a second class input.
- kijin 14y ago
  > How do you make a single UI that is equally fit for touch and mouse? Yep, that's the question I was trying to raise. Having a mouse in addition to a touchscreen not only looks redundant to those who don't need precision clicking, it also causes a potential conflict between different UI paradigms. When touch is the primary input, every UI element needs to become big enough to touch with fat fingers, so you usually end up with UIs that look like they were designed for kindergarteners. You simplify and hide features until you upset every "power user". When the mouse is the primary input, on the other hand, the added precision allows you to cram more clickable elements into small spaces, possibly freeing up more screen real estate for other things.

ari_elle 14y ago

Does anyone here also feel like an outsider because you - no matter how other people love it - just won't get used to touch (or for some reason you don't want to) ? I wouldn't mind my current notebook [1] having a touch display (additionally), but i still wouldn't use it that often i guess (and i wouldn't pay extra for it). I really have to try the Keyboard of the Surface though, but knowing me - very picky about keyboards - i don't think i could work with it. [1]: Thinkpad T 520

kijin 14y ago
Case in point: I have very dry skin. The tip of my fingers will crack and bleed unless I use a copious amount of hand cream. As a result, every touchscreen I use becomes a greasy mess of smudged fingerprints. I also hate scrolling and zooming, because rubbing a finger across several inches of plastic irritates my skin much more than simply moving a mouse around and clicking from time to time. So, regular screen + keyboard + mouse for me.

needle0 14y ago

No physical keyboard doesn't always mean immediate large-scale writing failure for all people. I think some people either just get used to it for extensive prose, or don't. In Japan, the keitai-novel - novels written by young authors often entirely using featurephone numpads - has gotten past its initial craze and appears here to stay as an established genre. Even for other genres, there has been a recent example of a self-published science fiction novella scoring high in the just-started Japanese Kindle/Kobo sales rankings, having its majority written on an iPhone. I imagine the general populace will gradually get accustomed to using a non-physical-keyboard device for extensive text input, especially as more kids emerge experiencing the touchscreen as their first and only input device. (And the aforementioned author wasn't even that young - IIRC he's around 40!)

programminggeek 14y ago

I recently got the ultraslim logitech ipad keyboard cover and it is pretty awesome. I could really see a future for tablet+keyboard devices for a lot of people. Apple doesn't really need to promote this as their core feature because it's just an optional setup, but MSFT could propel the tablet keyboard market forward in very interesting ways. Very cool.

duggan 14y ago

I'm still looking forward to Minority Report style interfaces for the desktop, like https://leapmotion.com/ https://leapmotion.com/ Probably not the best model for mobile interaction, but there's plenty of seats free at the man-machine interface table.

shasta 14y ago

Does anyone make a multi-touch keyboard? This seems like it would be a great input device for performance users (e.g. programmers). And by "multi-touch keyboard" I mean a keyboard with physically pressable keys that, when not pressed, lay flat and can detect finger locations.

saraid216 14y ago
A coworker has one, but I don't actually know who made it. I asked once, but I think they said it had been discontinued. I'll try to remember to ask again tomorrow.
jvm 14y ago
Apparently the TouchStream was beloved by its users before its designer, FingerWorks was bought by Apple along with all their patents and the device was chucked down the memory hole: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks

richardlblair 14y ago

The thing I appreciate the most about this write up is that he blatantly calls out other reviews/reviewers.

sergiotapia 14y ago

I want to buy this device, but it's not available in my country (Bolivia). :(

bsimpson 14y ago

I'm not sure how to feel about tablets. Even as a life-long Mac guy, I bought a TabletPC in 2005 because I wanted a pressure-sensitive drawing tablet that was embedded into the display. The most striking thing for me was how nice it was to be able to sit on the couch and read a webpage in portrait mode, but having to unfold the keyboard to be able to go to a new URL (or hunt/peck on the onscreen keyboard) was a disaster. When Nokia announced its pocket-sized tablet in 2006, I was very tempted to buy one until I realized it wasn't pressure sensitive. Drawing on a digital device with an infinite color space is awesome, but being able to tangibly interact with information is a phenomenal achievement. Hell, I even built a homebrew version of the Microsoft Surface (table) to explore the possibilities. In spite of my enthusiasm over the last decade, the tablets I've seen all feel like they slow me down. Not only are they computationally underpowered, but they're just slower to interact with. Moreover, I worry about the ergonomics of it all. My fingers tend to feel a bit chaffed if I spend too much time with a tablet. I wonder if others have this issue. I love the idea of the tablet. I want to love the execution, but nothing I've seen has made me want to integrate an iPad/Surface RT into my life. My MacBook just works better for me.

archagon 14y ago

If the world moves to touch computing, what's going to happen to PC gaming? Traditionally, PC gaming has been popular because PCs get used for many other things besides gaming. If most people switch to touch devices for their primary computers, will there still be enough people building gaming rigs for developers to care about that market? I'm sure the big console manufacturers would love nothing more than to move everyone over to consoles, but this would signal the downfall of indie games, certain kinds of first-person shooters, real-time strategy games, simulators, and many other genres. I would be devastated to see this happen.

elorant 14y ago

One thing I never see mentioned regarding tablets is what happens if you suffer from RSI symptoms. Moving your hand around the screen all the time or typing on hard surfaces sounds like a ticket to more pain.

ALee 14y ago

My mother still cannot use the iPad I bought for her. She still uses a laptop, but her typing is atrocious. It's not her fault, she wasn't trained to use a QWERTY keyboard like the rest of us and she's an immigrant. She can however, speak somewhat understandable English. As we move toward devices that fit into how human beings naturally interact, I think a necessary evolution is going to be voice recognition, but not as we think of it. I don't think it'll be as clunky as it is now, but much more like giving commands and discussion to another human being. I could be wrong. More kids text message now than ever use their cell phones, so perhaps a keyboard is necessary as the article says.

RandallBrown 14y ago

>This is a version one device from a company that has never built a computer before Why do people keep saying this? Microsoft has been making the Xbox and tons of other hardware for years. They know how to make things.

fudged71 14y ago

I will always cringe when I see people use 'laptops' and touching the screen. It's become instinctually painful.

cjoh 14y ago

It seems like with a keyboard "dock" the Nexus 10 might be the lightest "retina" laptop available at 25% of the price as the new 13" Retina Macbook Pro.

jvm 14y ago
I believe this is what you are looking for: http://eee.asus.com/en/transformer-infinity/features http://eee.asus.com/en/transformer-infinity/features I've never used one but a lot of people on HN seem to swear by them.
- cjoh 14y ago
  Except it's more expensive, and the screen and CPU are not as good.
  - jvm 14y ago
    I know, I'm waiting for the refresh. All told it's $200 extra counting the keyboard dock but I consider that totally worth it, especially since there's an extra battery pack in the keyboard.

marshray 14y ago

Disclosure: recently accepted a position at MSFT. I think I'm starting to "get it", in that Windows 8 (perhaps moreso than Surface) may have a big effect on how we use computers. After using a Surface for a day or two, I've caught myself a few times trying to tap on my other LCD screens. For some reason, this didn't happen even after using Android tablets, even with docking keyboards.

amorphid 14y ago

I played with the MS Surface RT yesterday at an MS kiosk in a mall. I really liked the keyboard option. It was the first touch device I've seen that made me consider buying a tablet. I didn't like it enough to buy it, but it is an idea that is definitely headed I'm the right direction. I can't wait for technology to mature a bit more.