10 ms·

I never really got tablets - too big to be portable and crippled by the lack of usable input devices. My 11" Macbook Air is just about as portable as an iPad, b

by mjt0229 13y ago

I never really got tablets - too big to be portable and crippled by the lack of usable input devices. My 11" Macbook Air is just about as portable as an iPad, but is way easier to use, not just for streaming, but even for coding, etc. Of course, I've been wrong about things before and I'm not really a typical consumer user, but I just can't imagine a future for tablets with phones getting as good as they are, and small laptops being as slim and powerful as they are.

grecy 13y ago
Have you ever seen a child use a tablet? It's mind-blowing to see a 3 year old use one better than their parents. I don't think tablets will ever replace laptops, but that's not the point of consumption is it. They'd rather you buy a laptop for "work" a tablet for "consumption" and a phone, and...
- geuis 13y ago
  Yes it is, but as you said, a 3 year old isn't trying to get work done. What we need to see is how the kids first using phones from 7 years ago are doing with tablets and their ilk now in school. That's your earliest cohort of 10 year olds first exposed to the iPhone.
  - ako 13y ago
    Yes, and watching tv or reading a book you are also not getting any work doen. What's the point? Computers are no longer just about getting work doen. For many, computers are more about entertainment and communication, than about work.
    - bphogan 13y ago
      I've long argued that we, as tech folks, are not the target for tablets. The target for tablets are the Facebook Messenger folks. the people who want to watch videos and surf the web, chat with others, etc. You know, the same folks Dell was able to con into paying $600 for a computer that needed GeekSquad to fix it every six months because computers are so unfriendly to non-technical people. Tablets, especially ones with curated app stores, solve that problem. And people who are not techies love that.
      - mturmon 13y ago
        True. Many of the comments nearby (personal testimonials) are missing the point. If we're talking about the tablet market, we do need to talk about kids, grandma, and average people who want to be entertained. Not nerd hobbyists who are frustrated by the shortcomings of tablets relative to general-purpose computers. These feelings matter to us, but in a discussion of the market, they are irrelevant.
- Zancarius 13y ago
  > Have you ever seen a child use a tablet? Or your mother? Seriously. It's actually kind of amazing. I got my mum one a couple of years ago and she's hooked. She literally doesn't leave the house without it if she's going anywhere that involves some manner of waiting. Touch input is something far more intuitive to someone in her generation (so it seems with my meager sample size of one) than mouse/menu-driven input. Granted, I still have to occasionally show her how to perform certain actions on the device, but save for the first few weeks, that's now quite rare. I think the thing with tablets is that they function for some adults as a replacement for casual use--browsing, e-mail, videos, etc; a consumption device, as you stated--but not for content creation. My mum still uses her computer to send e-mail, for instance, but everything else she does on her tablet. Maybe it's because she's a touch typist, but I suspect there's something about a keyboard that's a very difficult thing to replace.
  - rtpg 13y ago
    >Touch input is something far more intuitive to someone in her generation (so it seems with my meager sample size of one) than mouse/menu-driven input I would imagine most people find touch input more intuitive than mouse input, if only for the reason that it accomplishes the same thing but better(at least on an intuitive level). A mouse is like a pair of chopsticks. Sure, after a while, you can coordinate it pretty well, but it's still a lot easier to build a house of cards directly with your hands than with chopsticks. I desperately want every screen to be a touch screen. There is no more direct way of the "indicate something on a screen " action than touching it. Even precision issues due to fingers being pretty big usually get solved through decent heuristics or new gestures. The only place that's still iffy is text editing. But even there some things (rapidly , but roughly, going to a spot in your text) that could be a great help.
    - Loughla 13y ago
      With enough of a screen, text editing is not bad either. I didn't realize how terribly I wanted a touch screen for work until I worked with excel on a touch screen with a keyboard. It was unbelievably fast. With my left hand I could poke cells, the equation and scream around doing that. Meanwhile, my right hand was typing letters and numbers. It was like the first time I heard the Beatles. I was laughing to myself while working on the departmental budget. It was so good that I sit at my desk at work now and just grump at the damned stupid screen.
- chris_mahan 13y ago
  Two weeks ago, I went to a birthday party for a kid we know. His dad works for google and there are a lot of tablets in the house. I was outside eating barbeque, then went inside, and not hearing any noise, went into the kids playroom thinking they were all asleep. All five were sitting on the sofa playing the same game of minecraft. There was a nexus 7 on the floor that had evidently been drained of battery. My son had plugged his in (I carry a micro-usb cord and converter in my pocket for events like this). Their ages: 5 to 9. They played for an hour solid, only speaking to each other to discuss in-game stuff, like: how do you make arrows, or who has strings... Not once did they ask parents for help.
- bad_user 13y ago
  I have a 3 year old, he likes my iPad, but I don't get the fascination of people with children that are "using one better than their parents". Are they using it for anything useful? Are they reading emails? Are they browsing websites? Can they search YouTube for their favorite cartoons or songs? So what the hell are we talking about anyway? Moving stuff around the screen and opening their favorite game? I don't see how that's in any way fascinating. My son likes to draw on the iPad btw. But he's way more happy when we draw things pencil on paper. Just something to consider - being able to use a device, doesn't make it useful.
  - memracom 13y ago
    My 6 year old daughter has an iPad 1 which she appropriated from mum. She has taught me gestures that I didn't know about, and that you can click the button twice to get a menu of running apps and shut down ones that are slowing things down. She figured out on her own, that the URLs announced on the kids TV channels can be typed into the browser and she works her way through these sites, saves high scores, wins prizes (pages to print and colour) and so on. Just yesterday something new came up on one channel and she grabbed her iPad to look up that channel's schedule page to see if it was a schedule change or just a short that they sometimes play between programs. And she draws all kinds of stuff in a kind of story mode, kind of like the way the Olympics opening ceremony unfolds a story. And she plays some games (only free ones and I decide what to install). These aren't drawings that she saves, because she is continually erasing and redrawing, but sometimes she does draw things and saves them into the gallery. I downloaded a selection of free drawing apps based on review sites that list stuff like X Great Apps for Kids. She sets up reminders for events in her life including school field trips. Personally I never use calendaring programs so she just figured this out on her own. And she worked her way through Settings experimenting and asking questions about anything that she did not understand.
    - bad_user 13y ago
      What drawing apps have you installed that you can recommend? The one I found for my son is terrible - sluggish and shows an annoying top banner serving ads completely unrelated to kids or drawings.
sanswork 13y ago
For me the form factor is better for any situation where I don't have a table to set a laptop on and my primary task is consuming data. In public transit, in bed, etc. If I have to enter data tablets are pretty much always out as I hate on screen keyboards and getting an extra one means you might as well just get an ultraportable laptop and if I have a tablet to set something on the benefit to form factor doesn't come into play since I'm not holding the device.
geuis 13y ago
You know, that's all people say is that "I'm not an average consumer". If everyone isn't, then who is? Averages lie. Show me a bell curve any day.
- mjt0229 13y ago
  What I really should have said was that whenever I use myself as an example of the "typical consumer", I'm inevitably making a wrong decision based on some idiosyncrasy.
- BlackDeath3 13y ago
  How many people make a point of saying "yes, I am indeed your average consumer"?
  - bcbrown 13y ago
    I would venture to say that the average consumer doesn't take part in online discussions about the behaviors of average consumers.
    - BlackDeath3 13y ago
      My point exactly. Can you say "sampling bias"?
- Dirlewanger 13y ago
  The average consumer is not posting on a website talking about their spending behavior. The lot of us may be "average" with things like, say, automotive purchases and whatnot, but given that this website has a tech slant, it's fair to say he's not the average consumer, at least not when it comes to consumer electronics.
rhizome 13y ago
An MBA is easier than an iPad to use for coding? Crazytalk.
coldtea 13y ago
>I never really got tablets - too big to be portable and crippled by the lack of usable input devices. Surfing and reading on the crapper. No need for input devices. Well, and tons of other stuff besides, depending on your age and interests. Almost every niche, from astronomy geeks to musicians has lots of great apps for tablets. Entry to mid-level director? Tons of filming assistance can happen on a tablet, from storyboards to digital clappers. Musician? Guitar tuner, practice accompaniment, guitar amp emulation (with a small adapter), audio recording, synth engine, notation display and tons of other stuff. Graphic designer? Tons of high quality drawing apps, from bitmap to vector to natural style brushes. Photographer? Tethered shooting, library management and rating your shots post-shoot, etc. The list goes on depending on your interests, work and hobbies. Those are just areas relevant to mine. And of course the core utilities for everyone: writing, snapping photos, web surfing, reading books, reading comics, doing calculations, keeping notes, watching movies, office apps, etc etc.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  > Musician? [..] audio recording Are the D/A converters of tablets really that good? Honest question since I have no idea. From my limited experience, there is a huge difference between inbuilt ones and something external that sends the converted signal to the 'puter via USB or firewire... or is that just because desktops have a lot more interference? GPU, CPU, the fact that it's plugged into an electrical socket etc... but I imagine a tablet with everything crammed real close together might have similar problems... ? > Photographer? Tethered shooting, library management and rating your shots post-shoot, etc. For tethered shooting I can see how portable instant feedback for persons you're photographing, or things you're photographing for other people, would be super nice. But full-blown library management? Again, I never tried it, but I just can't imagine doing it without a keyboard and mouse, since I need to be able to tweak the RAW conversion settings; pretty much all photos look bad straight out of the camera, so to know if something might be a keeper I need to make at least rough adjustments. That is also a lot more fun (read: less horrible) with a decent CPU... of course, if you're on the road it would be way better than nothing, but for most of my use, I'd rather wait until I get home and then do it better and quicker.
  - 13y ago
rayiner 13y ago
Most laptops are not macbook airs. Purely from a lack of required maintenance point of view, an iPad is a huge step up from an equivalently priced PC for someone who just needs email Facebook and web.
icebraining 13y ago
iPads are particularly big tablets; your Air certainly isn't as portable as my Nexus 7. I can carry it on my pocket (which means I take it everywhere), take it out on the train for reading or watching a video without losing the details of the picture, do a quick SSH to a server without needing to sit at a table or scroll endlessly, etc. They don't replace my laptop, but for my family members, a tablet per person plus a single home desktop is enough to replace a laptop per person.

by mjt0229 13y ago

grecy 13y ago

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

geuis 13y ago
Yes it is, but as you said, a 3 year old isn't trying to get work done. What we need to see is how the kids first using phones from 7 years ago are doing with tablets and their ilk now in school. That's your earliest cohort of 10 year olds first exposed to the iPhone.
- ako 13y ago
  Yes, and watching tv or reading a book you are also not getting any work doen. What's the point? Computers are no longer just about getting work doen. For many, computers are more about entertainment and communication, than about work.
  - bphogan 13y ago
    I've long argued that we, as tech folks, are not the target for tablets. The target for tablets are the Facebook Messenger folks. the people who want to watch videos and surf the web, chat with others, etc. You know, the same folks Dell was able to con into paying $600 for a computer that needed GeekSquad to fix it every six months because computers are so unfriendly to non-technical people. Tablets, especially ones with curated app stores, solve that problem. And people who are not techies love that.
    - mturmon 13y ago
      True. Many of the comments nearby (personal testimonials) are missing the point. If we're talking about the tablet market, we do need to talk about kids, grandma, and average people who want to be entertained. Not nerd hobbyists who are frustrated by the shortcomings of tablets relative to general-purpose computers. These feelings matter to us, but in a discussion of the market, they are irrelevant.
Zancarius 13y ago
> Have you ever seen a child use a tablet? Or your mother? Seriously. It's actually kind of amazing. I got my mum one a couple of years ago and she's hooked. She literally doesn't leave the house without it if she's going anywhere that involves some manner of waiting. Touch input is something far more intuitive to someone in her generation (so it seems with my meager sample size of one) than mouse/menu-driven input. Granted, I still have to occasionally show her how to perform certain actions on the device, but save for the first few weeks, that's now quite rare. I think the thing with tablets is that they function for some adults as a replacement for casual use--browsing, e-mail, videos, etc; a consumption device, as you stated--but not for content creation. My mum still uses her computer to send e-mail, for instance, but everything else she does on her tablet. Maybe it's because she's a touch typist, but I suspect there's something about a keyboard that's a very difficult thing to replace.
- rtpg 13y ago
  >Touch input is something far more intuitive to someone in her generation (so it seems with my meager sample size of one) than mouse/menu-driven input I would imagine most people find touch input more intuitive than mouse input, if only for the reason that it accomplishes the same thing but better(at least on an intuitive level). A mouse is like a pair of chopsticks. Sure, after a while, you can coordinate it pretty well, but it's still a lot easier to build a house of cards directly with your hands than with chopsticks. I desperately want every screen to be a touch screen. There is no more direct way of the "indicate something on a screen " action than touching it. Even precision issues due to fingers being pretty big usually get solved through decent heuristics or new gestures. The only place that's still iffy is text editing. But even there some things (rapidly , but roughly, going to a spot in your text) that could be a great help.
  - Loughla 13y ago
    With enough of a screen, text editing is not bad either. I didn't realize how terribly I wanted a touch screen for work until I worked with excel on a touch screen with a keyboard. It was unbelievably fast. With my left hand I could poke cells, the equation and scream around doing that. Meanwhile, my right hand was typing letters and numbers. It was like the first time I heard the Beatles. I was laughing to myself while working on the departmental budget. It was so good that I sit at my desk at work now and just grump at the damned stupid screen.
chris_mahan 13y ago
Two weeks ago, I went to a birthday party for a kid we know. His dad works for google and there are a lot of tablets in the house. I was outside eating barbeque, then went inside, and not hearing any noise, went into the kids playroom thinking they were all asleep. All five were sitting on the sofa playing the same game of minecraft. There was a nexus 7 on the floor that had evidently been drained of battery. My son had plugged his in (I carry a micro-usb cord and converter in my pocket for events like this). Their ages: 5 to 9. They played for an hour solid, only speaking to each other to discuss in-game stuff, like: how do you make arrows, or who has strings... Not once did they ask parents for help.
bad_user 13y ago
I have a 3 year old, he likes my iPad, but I don't get the fascination of people with children that are "using one better than their parents". Are they using it for anything useful? Are they reading emails? Are they browsing websites? Can they search YouTube for their favorite cartoons or songs? So what the hell are we talking about anyway? Moving stuff around the screen and opening their favorite game? I don't see how that's in any way fascinating. My son likes to draw on the iPad btw. But he's way more happy when we draw things pencil on paper. Just something to consider - being able to use a device, doesn't make it useful.
- memracom 13y ago
  My 6 year old daughter has an iPad 1 which she appropriated from mum. She has taught me gestures that I didn't know about, and that you can click the button twice to get a menu of running apps and shut down ones that are slowing things down. She figured out on her own, that the URLs announced on the kids TV channels can be typed into the browser and she works her way through these sites, saves high scores, wins prizes (pages to print and colour) and so on. Just yesterday something new came up on one channel and she grabbed her iPad to look up that channel's schedule page to see if it was a schedule change or just a short that they sometimes play between programs. And she draws all kinds of stuff in a kind of story mode, kind of like the way the Olympics opening ceremony unfolds a story. And she plays some games (only free ones and I decide what to install). These aren't drawings that she saves, because she is continually erasing and redrawing, but sometimes she does draw things and saves them into the gallery. I downloaded a selection of free drawing apps based on review sites that list stuff like X Great Apps for Kids. She sets up reminders for events in her life including school field trips. Personally I never use calendaring programs so she just figured this out on her own. And she worked her way through Settings experimenting and asking questions about anything that she did not understand.
  - bad_user 13y ago
    What drawing apps have you installed that you can recommend? The one I found for my son is terrible - sluggish and shows an annoying top banner serving ads completely unrelated to kids or drawings.

sanswork 13y ago

For me the form factor is better for any situation where I don't have a table to set a laptop on and my primary task is consuming data. In public transit, in bed, etc. If I have to enter data tablets are pretty much always out as I hate on screen keyboards and getting an extra one means you might as well just get an ultraportable laptop and if I have a tablet to set something on the benefit to form factor doesn't come into play since I'm not holding the device.

geuis 13y ago

You know, that's all people say is that "I'm not an average consumer". If everyone isn't, then who is? Averages lie. Show me a bell curve any day.

mjt0229 13y ago
What I really should have said was that whenever I use myself as an example of the "typical consumer", I'm inevitably making a wrong decision based on some idiosyncrasy.
BlackDeath3 13y ago
How many people make a point of saying "yes, I am indeed your average consumer"?
- bcbrown 13y ago
  I would venture to say that the average consumer doesn't take part in online discussions about the behaviors of average consumers.
  - BlackDeath3 13y ago
    My point exactly. Can you say "sampling bias"?
Dirlewanger 13y ago
The average consumer is not posting on a website talking about their spending behavior. The lot of us may be "average" with things like, say, automotive purchases and whatnot, but given that this website has a tech slant, it's fair to say he's not the average consumer, at least not when it comes to consumer electronics.

rhizome 13y ago

An MBA is easier than an iPad to use for coding? Crazytalk.

coldtea 13y ago

>I never really got tablets - too big to be portable and crippled by the lack of usable input devices. Surfing and reading on the crapper. No need for input devices. Well, and tons of other stuff besides, depending on your age and interests. Almost every niche, from astronomy geeks to musicians has lots of great apps for tablets. Entry to mid-level director? Tons of filming assistance can happen on a tablet, from storyboards to digital clappers. Musician? Guitar tuner, practice accompaniment, guitar amp emulation (with a small adapter), audio recording, synth engine, notation display and tons of other stuff. Graphic designer? Tons of high quality drawing apps, from bitmap to vector to natural style brushes. Photographer? Tethered shooting, library management and rating your shots post-shoot, etc. The list goes on depending on your interests, work and hobbies. Those are just areas relevant to mine. And of course the core utilities for everyone: writing, snapping photos, web surfing, reading books, reading comics, doing calculations, keeping notes, watching movies, office apps, etc etc.

PavlovsCat 13y ago
> Musician? [..] audio recording Are the D/A converters of tablets really that good? Honest question since I have no idea. From my limited experience, there is a huge difference between inbuilt ones and something external that sends the converted signal to the 'puter via USB or firewire... or is that just because desktops have a lot more interference? GPU, CPU, the fact that it's plugged into an electrical socket etc... but I imagine a tablet with everything crammed real close together might have similar problems... ? > Photographer? Tethered shooting, library management and rating your shots post-shoot, etc. For tethered shooting I can see how portable instant feedback for persons you're photographing, or things you're photographing for other people, would be super nice. But full-blown library management? Again, I never tried it, but I just can't imagine doing it without a keyboard and mouse, since I need to be able to tweak the RAW conversion settings; pretty much all photos look bad straight out of the camera, so to know if something might be a keeper I need to make at least rough adjustments. That is also a lot more fun (read: less horrible) with a decent CPU... of course, if you're on the road it would be way better than nothing, but for most of my use, I'd rather wait until I get home and then do it better and quicker.
- 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago

Most laptops are not macbook airs. Purely from a lack of required maintenance point of view, an iPad is a huge step up from an equivalently priced PC for someone who just needs email Facebook and web.

icebraining 13y ago

iPads are particularly big tablets; your Air certainly isn't as portable as my Nexus 7. I can carry it on my pocket (which means I take it everywhere), take it out on the train for reading or watching a video without losing the details of the picture, do a quick SSH to a server without needing to sit at a table or scroll endlessly, etc. They don't replace my laptop, but for my family members, a tablet per person plus a single home desktop is enough to replace a laptop per person.