Michael Gartenberg on “doomed” Tablet PCs

Today Michael Gartenberg shares his thoughts on the trials and challenges of pen computing and Microsoft’s Tablet PC initiative in particular.

Let’s face it, he’s right. Tablet PCs are in a bit of a lull right now. It’s not just that there are other interesting things going on like with iPhone’s or netbooks–though this is very true–it’s that Tablet PCs aren’t being promoted or explained or marketted or designed or built or developed for the way a vibrant Tablet PC market would really need.

As a strong believer in natural input like pen and ink–there’s still much to do and I’m quite excited about what might come next. There are some Tablet features that have found a home, but things are still evolving.

One of the first things I want to challenge is Gartenberg’s view of what a Tablet PC is. With technology being what it is, the concept that “a great Tablet is a great notebook” has made sense over the last few years. I don’t believe that anymore, but I see Michael does. I think it’s time to take Tablet design further–in particular focusing on slate style designs. The iPhone and iPod Touch are super small versions of this approach. The Kindle is an alternative approach. Point is, very light slates can produce some compelling experiences–with ink, with touch, with speech/sound. Sure, I’m not talking simply in terms of Tablets as sole, primary computers, I’m talking about complementary devices. But that’s where I now think the Tablet technologies are. And I think it’s one great home for pen and ink too.

I do agree with Michael’s suggestion that Tablet’s in education make sense. It’s a natural. Challenge is Tablets or notebooks or whatever get into pricing issues and content issues real quickly when it comes to wide adoption in schools. Prices for today’s PCs being what they are, it looks like Tablet features as a premium for schools, prices things out of the market. That’s the catch.

What I’ve been wondering about is if someone could build a more focused, simple reading/consumption device for education that also had pen input and the like for simple interaction. I’m not talking in terms of a heavy animation-focused device, but something more akin to lightweight interaction. Make something slate-like such as this for $200 and you could have a great primary reader for let’s say K-8 which supports pen input for the student doing their homework, etc in ink.

As students get older, fuller capable notebooks or Tablets then could be added to the school program–kind of like what schools do today. Besides I think schools could more naturally integrate in interactive reader-like devices than let’s say generic PCs today because readers are more classic book oriented than let’s say a PC is which can do almost anything.

In a different direction, I also think Microsoft has missed an opportunity with ink to make it more general. What do I mean? I think the current pen and ink approach is too business-oriented. Yes you can write notes in let’s say Journal, but you can’t sketch–and I mean sketch like you can on paper. There are no primitives to let you paint with synthesized oils or watercolor or whatever. There are art apps that’ll let you do it, but the primitives aren’t there. That’s unfortunate becuse it reinforces the ink for handwriting process which so much of the current Tablet is built around. There’s more to “ink” than this. Drawing and painting are first class citizens too, aren’t they?

Now along these lines, I’d also say that the browsers are holding back pen and ink adoption too. A notebook with great Tablet features is going to have a killer experience with ink in the browser. There’s not much out there at this time and IE is lagging in so many areas still I don’t see this getting addressed any time soon. So in terms of general purpose use, pen and ink and browsers aren’t there yet.

All of this being said, there are some very exciting things coming in Windows 7 that at least for the short term may give a little boost to the Tablet markets. First, there’s the math recognition. It’s not a full SDK at this point, but it is a user dialog that can convert handwritten math equations to symbols that can be injected directly into apps like Word. It’s an amazing tool. As a developer I hope someday I can leverage the math recognizer even more, but I’ve got to say as a user it’s quite impressive in its current state.

Now as to touch, it is kind of true that touch is taking a lead right now in Windows development. It should. Some things are much, much more natural to do with touch than in terms of using a pen. Sure if the UI is small a pen or pointer can help out, but what that really points out is how poorly the interface is designed. A great UI won’t need that precision.

While at the hospital the other week I watched some nurses use a Motion computer and pen input for filling out forms while on rounds. The pen is OK for some things, but what they really wanted was let’s say an onscreen keyboard that they could type details in quickly or pick items from without to much precision when using a pen. The pen for input was OK, but they wanted more. While watching them using the Motion slate they had, I could see why.

And touch brings us back to hardware realities. Smooth touch or multi-touch is not quite there. It’s close, but for larger devices, it’s marginal. Some of the issues I think just have to do with good manufacturing practices, some to do with good design, some to do with firmware quality, but I think things are going in the right direction. Right now the state of the touch market is a little here and there, but hopefully it’ll settle down and touch will shine as I expect it will.

So in conclusion, what does it all mean for Tablet PCs? Well, I think Michael Gartenberg has some good suggestions: make and market Tablet PCs better and focus on markets such as education. OneNote on a Tablet is a great companion package today. That’s the part to do now. However, the bigger dream of Tablet PCs is still ahead of us and for that I want to see more, ultra light slates.

Maybe once Intel gets their next generation, even lower-powered Atom processors in the fab, the dream Tablet PCs will begin to emerge. Of course, better displays, better OS, etc, etc, etc, will be needed too. Yes, there’s still lots of innovation to do.