The initial tablet market struck me as a very boomer focused device, one that made computing easy for a limited subset of tasks.
I think he's wrong that tablets have peaked. As the software and hardware on tablets catches up to the capability of a full laptop, they are a much more compelling device for use at home or at work. Content creation, software development and file management are still a challenge but these can be fixed.
I really hope the Surface and derivatives catch on in the enterprise, because I'm tired of lugging a 7lb laptop to and from meetings.
My yoga 2 pro has completely allowed me to replace two devices. The only possible advantage a dedicated tablet has would be size/weight, but I've yet to encounter that in my purely anecdotal usage
2-in-1 PCs are great, Windows 8 notwithstanding. I just got a Thinkpad Yoga and being able to work in tablet mode when I'm stuck in cramped seat on a train or plane is fantastic. I'm also encouraged by the return of pen-based digitizers. I know it's a small niche, but for designers and artists, it's quite nice.
I'm a Linux user and very much addicted to the CLI. For any kind of work, a tablet isn't really right for me. I'm getting by okay with two laptops at the office: An MBP that weighs at least 7 lbs and a 2.2 lb ThinkPad. All my work stuff is on my MBP which stays on my desk. I take my ThinkPad to meetings, and if I need to reference something off the MBP I simply ssh into it. That would be a pain without a keyboard.
So being a Linux CLI guy puts me at something like 1% of computer users. I agree that the tablet content creation interface can be fixed for most of the rest of the 99%. I expect that soon the only distinction between a tablet and a laptop is whether or not the keyboard is attached.
I am very much a Linux user and addicted to the CLI and my plethora of tools, doing heavy work (like compilation) on servers. I buy the lightest computing devices as I don't really need anything with a lot of processing power; so battery life and actual weight win it for me. I had a heavy MBP before I bought a Chromebook and I don't see me ever doing that again. As for tablets; I like to have them laying around for content consumption but for everything else I really do need a keyboard and I don't really know how that could be replaced. I tried the keyboards on tablets (including the surface 2) and they are a joke for coding imho.
Legacy, mainly. You're right, I'd be just as happy with an MBA or my ThinkPad and a bunch of server space. As a CLI user, that's an easy trade-off. I suspect it's slightly more difficult for GUI users to make the transition because applications are usually written with the expectation of running on a local machine. As the GUI moves to the web it will become irrelevant.
I really liked the desktop/phone combo in the movie Her. The main character buys an "Operating System" that sort of takes over his desktop at home and at work and also his phone. I don't know that it's something we'd want to call an OS the way Windows or Linux is an OS, but there's a lot of sense to a user interface that follows you on whatever device you happen to be using.
I wonder if there'd be any market for bringing back the keyboarded smartphone in the phablet scale - that is, something that splits the difference between a Nexus 7 and a Blackberry Q10. For people who need to type standing-up but don't want a tiny smartphone.
Then again, you'd still be restricted to thumb-typing, it would be hard to come up with a sweet-spot size that allows both thumb-typing and proper keyboard touch-typing - this is something the software keyboards excel at, since you get both form-factors by rotating the device.
I bought a tablet for travel because I don't really care if I have a smart phone or not. I didn't really think it would replace things with keyboards and I still really like it for travel.
The real problem is that cross device integration is so awful, hopefully the future has us configuring environments instead of devices (environment there being the software I want to see when I look at a small touch screen or the software I want to see when I look at a large screen with a keyboard).
I think the battery life is the one thing tablets are still great for, if I traveled a lot I'd consider owning one for long media playback sessions a necessity
I have to agree with that. We pretty much all grew up before touchscreens were widely available as they are now, and as such I think the allure of them was in their novelty. The more I use touchscreens, the more I realize how inefficient and inconsistent they tend to be (at least, the ones I've used).
I feel the opposite. Whenever I'm using a computer without a touch screen and the screen is close enough to touch (or in a convenient location to touch), I have to fight instinct to touch the screen. Sometimes it's just easier (for me at least) to jab your finger at the thing you want to click on than it is to move the mouse to it.
I think it's really context-sensitive. Some things work best with a touchscreen, I suppose. I do know one thing - I'd probably rather beat myself to death with a tablet than try to program (or type anything at all, for that matter) on it.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
Interesting. I'd never considered spreadsheet use, but that sounds like an area worth exploring for touch-based interaction. For some things, reaching out and "grabbing" (for lack of a better term) seems to be a more natural gesture than trying to isolate whether the UI expects left click, right click, or some permutation of drag + clicking.
I wonder now how much cross over will eventually occur between keyboard + touch interaction. One for input, one for manipulation. In essence, that merges the best of both worlds.
I've considered this. Multi-touch would be great for this. Pinch horizontally to shrink the selection, anti-pinch (I've never really though about what that motion of moving your fingers apart would be called) to expand the selection. Pinch vertically to be able to drag it around and drop it where you want.
I can't wait for a 28" touchscreen at my desk with some software to make the touch interface and excel, CSS and other random statistics programs work together a little better. It will genuinely make work easier, and make me more productive.
On the other hand a mouse is more efficient for pointing at things than anything else I tried - touching the screen, touchpad, etc... it's why when I'm working on my laptop, even though being on a MacBook I have a pretty good touchpad, I'm still attaching a mouse.
Same goes for the keyboard - no matter how big the screen real-estate is, it doesn't beat a physical keyboard, because a physical keyboard gives a tactile feel to your fingers and thus you can do touch-typing. My wife doesn't do touch-typing, she's just an ordinary user, but even she complains that things are hard to type on her 11 inch iPad.
Indeed there are applications that are more productive with a touchscreen, coupled with the possibility of carrying them around and looking at the screen while walking, it's a good combination - but for very different things.
It's not only the touch input, but the simplified model of how apps work in general. "One app running at the time and filling the whole screen." That matches the mental model of the most people. Traditional multitasking window GUI can be really confusing for people who have not grown with it,
I agree. I think that even for people who have some exposure to multitasking GUIs, a simplified UI can alleviate much of the mental overhead if they have a very specific goal in mind. In my mum's case, she has quite a lot of previous experience with computers, so her tablet is mostly for reading, looking up things of interest, watching videos or movies, etc. But as a consequence, her computer is relegated mostly to content creation.
I think that's a fantastic use case for tablets, too. Older users (60+) can benefit tremendously from their relatively small form factor and simplified UI; it's just a shame that they're largely neglected and under-served when you examine most of the advertising...
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
You can get external A/D/A converters, some of which are designed to just plug in to a tablet via a USB or proprietary connector, some of which are designed to house the tablet entirely, eg http://www.alesis.com/iodock
That said, even cheap converters are pretty good. Bear in mind that state-of-the-art analog tape recording only delivers about 12 bits of fidelity.
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.
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.
Not sure how a nearly 30% YOY increase in tablet sales for Q4 translates to a dead market, unless they thought tablets would end up as full replacements for existing systems. Few people are replacing their other computing devices for tablets, but obviously a large number of people see, and will continue to see, tablets as good secondary devices. I suspect, however, that replacement cycles for tablets will be longer than for phones (which cycle out on contracts) or PCs (driven by corporate platforming schedules).
Anecdotally, I lug around a smartphone, laptop, iPad and Kindle, but I can collapse the last three into the iPad for a lot of daily nontechnical tasks. (Hell, I can even prototype Python on it.) It's not a necessary part of my kit, but I'll keep one around for convenience alone.
I like tablets, but for very limited uses. They excel, especially for casual puzzle type games that respond very well to touch. For light reading they work fine as well.
Browsing the internet? Well not so great. Mobile versions of websites seem to be always wanting and a lot of web pages are too target rich making it way too easy to accidentally click on something like an advertisement or side bar thingy. And I spend too much time zooming pages and waiting for reflows as well. Overall a pretty irritating experience.
My love affair with the tablet isn't over: I love how it lets me browse the web, read books and magazines, and watch videos in bed after a long day. That's probably how most people use their tablets — secondary devices, mainly for entertainment. After a working day, I don't want to use a PC, and the tablet lets me use the web and other media comfortably, but I wouldn't try to actually use it for work beyond initially planning projects.
It's much more human, for lack of a better word — more intimate, more ergonomic — than a PC for (browsing the web|reading ebooks or PDFs|watching videos|making video calls).
Agreed. I'll even go as far as saying that away from work, my Nexus 7 quickly became my primary device. I dread sitting down at the laptop if I'm away form the office.
The existence of the tablet has (indirectly) made me more productive at work, too: Rather than reading articles that come through my RSS feed when I'm working (which is a vice of mine), I just add any interesting items to my Pocket queue, and read it that night (or later in the week) when relaxing at home. Not because I don't want to read the article right away (I usually want to)—but because I actually prefer to read on the tablet.
This is exactly how I use my tablet too. I use my computer all day writing code, so when its time to relax with some Netflix, or an ebook I grab my tablet instead. Its perfect for laying on the couch or in bed.
A phone definitely works in that case as well, but the tiny screen isn't as nice for reading and watching video. Not to mention by the end of the day my phone is usually mostly dead and its time to put it on the charger for tomorrow. So trying to use my phone in bed while its attached to a charger is annoying. The tablet meanwhile is charged up (and usually lasts a full week for me between charges, even during heavy Netflix usage).
Now we've got "phablets," which are bad at being phones (awkward and clumsy to carry around, and almost impossible to operate with one hand) and bad at being tablets (small screen for a tablet, inherently greater limitations on battery life)... ><
Really? You sound like most tech journalists two or three years ago, when the original Galaxy Note came out. They were sure embarrassed a couple months later when they turned out to be completely wrong about how popular it would be.
Try getting out of the iPhone bubble for a while - you'll find that in the real world, phablets are not just something that you make fun of.
I don't have an iphone. I have an Android phone which is larger (65mm width) than an iphone 5, but decidedly smaller than a phablet.
My phone is just on the edge of one-hand usability (I can mostly manage it but sometimes things get pretty awkward) and I often wish I had something iphone-sized instead, but choice is pretty limited among smaller Android phones (they exist, but tend to be old/slow/etc).
People I know with phablets use them like tablets (almost always with two hands etc). That's fine if you want a small tablet, but it isn't really an adequate replacement for a traditional smartphone. They're just different things.
It's a pretty important one, though. I have a Nexus 4 and if not for the big price difference and the fact that I wanted a phone without a contract, I would've gotten an iPhone instead. And one of the primary reasons is one-handed usability, because that is the primary use case for me. If I can comfortably use two hands, and if I want to, I'll use my tablet...
Based on observing people use their phones (as well as personal experience using mine), I think it's reasonable to say that one-handed operation is important for many people in various common usage situations.
E.g., I see huge numbers of people standing on the train using their phone with one hand (while hanging onto a strap with the other) or walking down the street, using their phone with one hand (while carrying a bag with the other), etc.
I have a non-geek friend who has a Note. She loves it.
She's already used to having to charge her phone every night, because while her old phone might've lasted 2-3 days it was easier just charging it every night.
She holds it two-handed, portrait, to text and interact with facebook, and did with a smaller phone too because she can type much faster that way.
She's comfortable reading on it.
It fits in her pockets fine.
I prefer my Nexus 4 + Nexus 7 as an approach, but for a bunch of people, yes, yay.
Sure, and there will likely be a big market for 6" phones for a good while to come - at least until EEG/eye-tracking controlled smart glasses replace them.
That said, I don't want a 6" phone. My Nexus 5 is too big. Just a bit smaller, and I'd be able to use it comfortably one-handed. I'd go 4" over 5" if there was an option with the price and performance I want, though 4.3" or 4.5" is probably perfect for me.
I have medium-small hands, and the Nexus 5 is hard to use one-handed. I made a case for it out of carbon fiber, and that improved things slightly by adding a bezel that sticks out from the screen by 1 mm or so. Its height is also at the upper end of what I want in my pockets. Unfortunately, the iPhone 5S is the only current/recent high-spec smartphone I know of that's the size I want, and I don't like iOS. When is Sony going to offer the Z1f outside Japan?
I dunno. I put in pretty long coding days, pretty much every day. The first thing I do when I get home is, turn on my desktop.
I loved my iPad when I first got it, but now it's relegated to an overly expensive kindle. I actually like to do things on my computing devices. Play (non-casual) games, do some stupid cat Photoshop, start a hobby project(right now it's a tower defense engine in the now defunct XNA). Tables can't support any of that.
I suspect you're being down voted because article is discussing the merits between 3 devices, PC's, tablets, and phones, with the conclusion that phablets are the win in the end (with some fairly feeble 'evidence'). The fact that all three affect some peoples circadian rhythm isn't overly valuable to the conversation. Form factor is the discussion, and you're talking about light sensitivity in insomniacs. Water is a solid at -30c at sea level is also true, regardless of whether people down vote me. And neither are relevant to the article or the discussion being had.
Not to mention that curling up with a small laptop the size of an iPad (MacBook Air 11'') is even more ergonomic because it has a built-in stand and doesn't need a cover. Close to the same weight, same size as an iPad, but a full laptop.
have you ever tried using a laptop in bed , in a similar position to if you were reading a book? It kinda sucks (yes, even the 11'' air). Tablets replace magazines, not computers (at least in the "position in which you're using it" category).
Why would you want a stand if you're going to hold it anyways?
In bed, I often lay on my side with my tablet locked to portrait orientation but it is standing horizontally with respect to the bed. This way, I don't need to support it with my hands to read, only need to use my hands when I need to scroll or pick something new to read.
In order to argue the author's point you would also need to be carrying around a 5" phone. He is pointing out the trend of more people using their phones for what they used to use their tablets for. I'd be interested to know if you have a 5" phone and whether or not you think it replaces the features of your tablet in any way.
Speaking for myself, no, my smartphone does not replace my tablet. The amount of screen realestate lost when going from 11" to 5" is just too much. It makes reading hard (particularly with less than perfect eyesight), movies too small, and all of the real time communication that comes with a phone is vying for my attention all the time.
Now then, if I could make calls over a bluetooth headset connected to my iPad, I'd drop my phone in a heartbeat...
I'm with you on that. Though actually my thinking is increasingly "dumbphone + tablet". Where the phone gets carried when I absolutely, positively, must be in contact (and the less that happens the better).
I think phablets may replace small tablets, but the real question is whether large tablets will replace laptops/desktops. That's where the growth market is for tablets if the software becomes powerful enough.
My Note II (and now Note III) completely killed my tablet use... or more properly put, replaced it. With the stylus and multitasking, feels more like a small tablet with phone capabilities.
My various tablets are now nearly permanently attached to my computers. I need them for writing / testing software, but that is mostly all they do these days, don't carry them around the house much, never carry them out of the house.
There is a whole gradient of mobile devices, from small PMPs to full-sized tablets. They all are essentially the same thing in different scales. The article seems to be saying that the use case for tablets is being supplanted by larger phones.
> The article seems to be saying that the use case for tablets is being supplanted by larger phones
... which seems a fairly silly thing to say. The exact same factors which attract people to larger phones -- bigger screen, bigger battery, other things like CPU power that more space helps with -- are also going to make "tablets" more attractive than "phablets" for some people and/or some situations (e.g., like many people, I have a "home tablet" which sits around my house, but I don't try to carry it around in my pocket).
I think phablets have a place as the very-small portable end of the tablet market, but they aren't a good replacement for traditional smartphones, because they're just too awkward. So the argument that they're a "good enough" one-device alternative to both phones and tablets doesn't seem very strong (it will certainly be true for some people, but it will not be true for many others).
[If you look at people using phablets, they tend to use them exactly like tablets: two hands for operation (whereas traditional smartphones work great with one), putting them down when not in use (people often just hold their phone), putting them in a bag instead of in a pocket, etc. They're tablets.]
My sentiment too, especially with airplay/chromecast (I use both iOS and Android), the value of the tablets is only going up for me. I happen to prefer Nexus 7 over iPad for reading books, but besides that iPad is my go-to device for non-work consumption.
With FaceTime use especially, iPhone form factor is not great. Same can be set for my old Galaxy Nexus with hangouts. iPad/Nexus 7 do way better in that department. iPad Air weight and form factor is especially better then the old iPad.
> My love affair with the tablet isn't over: I love how it lets me browse the web, read books and magazines, and watch videos in bed after a long day. That's probably how most people use their tablets — secondary devices, mainly for entertainment.
I am not surprised at all: a crippled, jailed, feudalized device that is too large to be carried in your pocket like a phone but far too limited to replace a laptop.
I don't think they'll go away. They're an acceptable "portable dumb terminal" for certain kinds of work or for people who only want web and e-mail and a few apps. They also really kick butt for point of sale terminals and similar kiosk applications.
I use my iPad all the time. From writing documentation to taking notes on projects I'm working on. I also use it for wire framing designs and for editing and passing on documents when I get an email and am away from my computer. I also do these things with my iPhone, but the iPad makes it a little easier with the larger screen.
So, some folks use them for one thing, and some folks use them for another thing (or not at all).
That's the story for basically every product that exists....so....
In other words, re/code is trying to build up their content by using fluff stuff like this - polarizing and gets page views by inciting flame wars.
I read all my comics on my tablet device. it is the perfect size screen / interface. I have the same marvel/dc app on my iphone and it's not the same experience. It tries to be, but the real estate makes it impossible to enjoy in the same fashion.
Why do things have to be boiled down into winner-take-all narratives? I feel that the public has no capacity for nuance anymore.
Look, the tablet has its place - usually situations that don't require high-bandwidth HIDs such as keyboards. The computer user of the future will have many devices spanning many different form factors. It's OK.
This seems like a weirdly narrow experience to base writing off tablets in general on. It also is contradicted by the massive volume of android tablets being specifically sold as tv replacements.
Seems like he's been deluded by taking numbers out of context.
Media's love affair with tablets is probably over. They have tried everything and not able to continue/recreate the monopoly they enjoyed with paper. Not on the web. Not on tablets.
This is just a rehashing of the netbook. As phones get bigger and/or something else replaces the need of casual consumption in a different or more appealing form factor, we'll say bye to the tablet as well.
The original (OLPC-derived) netbook was a thing of beauty.
Once Microsoft and Intel got their claws into it, it became a cheap PC with poor inputs that didn't do anything well (by design - an ARM/Linux netbook threatened the WinTel dominance of the day).
The more subtle point here about phablets being the death of tablets is, in my experience, dead on. People still addicted to their 7inch+ tablets simply haven't used a phablet.
I spent last year being much more impressed by single purpose devices anyway. Stuff like the latest eink Kindles, the Chromecast and so on. Curiously they all follow the same push style of content delivery, where it is pushed from the network to the device for focused consumption, and I can't help thinking this is the future.
I have an unshakable belief that the (iPad style) tablet market is almost completely driven by married men with young children at home, or who hide the fact that they masturbate from their wives.
My iPad is the my primary device for reading technical books, RFCs, and other PDFs. It is often an accessory to when I am working on my laptop. Rather than two different screens, one for development and one for reference info, the iPad fills that role.
It is also typically what we use for watching movies at night while heading to bed -- we have a decent digital media library.
I don't see the affair as being over, maybe the tablets people have are good enough for their current uses.
1. The Bad Experience cited is with Windows tablets. This ignores how hard it is to move a non-touch system to tablets.
2. He cites Netflix "losing momentum" on tablets. If this was true for media use on tablets in general, Amazon would not be pouring as much effort as they are into tablets.
Google has done a bad job marketing Android on tablets. Apple has done a great job with iPad. YMMV.
> If this was true for media use on tablets in general, Amazon would not be pouring as much effort as they are into tablets.
Amazon, unlike Netflix, is worried about being kicked out of the iOS ecosystem. Kindle (and all the other major eBook apps) already came close at least once. Unless Amazon was convinced that media use on tablets was going to collapse (not just plateau), they desperately need the deterrent and the insurance policy.
Once you hit the "content consumption from toilet" first world problem, the rest of the market actually would like a smaller device with the same connectivity.
That said, I'm a recent tablet user because with a Nexus7 and a Chromecast, my screen is actually big, 10 feet away and doesn't need me to hold it.
Someone who is actually in the trenches can probably answer this but my guess is that a lot of the newest and hottest apps tend to be released for phones first and then later on a tablet version comes along. The lowest common denominator is going to be the phone since so many people have them and I have to pull it out to be able to use app X. It might not be available yet for my tablet or it is and it's not as feature-packed or as easy to use.
The author is right. No one wants to hold their computer for extended use. The phablet is the right compromise, it does everything a tablet does and more while still being light, small and always with you. Also, having 1 device is much less expensive and cumbersome than having 2.
I rarely use the keyboard on my laptop. The laptop is part of a larger setup that involves a larger external monitor (with the laptop screen being the secondary display) and a wireless keyboard and mouse. I would love it if the laptop was just a tablet "docked" to connect to the monitor and keyboard/mouse. Then I could easily undock the tablet and use it as a tablet when I wanted to. But then plug it back in for a more "traditional PC" feel. Obviously it needs to be powerful enough for me to get my work done... and it would need to run the apps I need to get my work done.
Interestingly enough, you've pretty much described Microsoft's Surface / Surface Pro. I think, debacle about the x86 vs ARM (Win RT) confusion aside, they're onto something with the form factor and expandability.
My current personal use laptop is less than a year old. I'm hoping by the time I need to replace it things will have settled down a bit with the Surface... or some other device that fits the description comes along.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 284 ms ] threadI think he's wrong that tablets have peaked. As the software and hardware on tablets catches up to the capability of a full laptop, they are a much more compelling device for use at home or at work. Content creation, software development and file management are still a challenge but these can be fixed.
I really hope the Surface and derivatives catch on in the enterprise, because I'm tired of lugging a 7lb laptop to and from meetings.
So being a Linux CLI guy puts me at something like 1% of computer users. I agree that the tablet content creation interface can be fixed for most of the rest of the 99%. I expect that soon the only distinction between a tablet and a laptop is whether or not the keyboard is attached.
I really liked the desktop/phone combo in the movie Her. The main character buys an "Operating System" that sort of takes over his desktop at home and at work and also his phone. I don't know that it's something we'd want to call an OS the way Windows or Linux is an OS, but there's a lot of sense to a user interface that follows you on whatever device you happen to be using.
Then again, you'd still be restricted to thumb-typing, it would be hard to come up with a sweet-spot size that allows both thumb-typing and proper keyboard touch-typing - this is something the software keyboards excel at, since you get both form-factors by rotating the device.
The real problem is that cross device integration is so awful, hopefully the future has us configuring environments instead of devices (environment there being the software I want to see when I look at a small touch screen or the software I want to see when I look at a large screen with a keyboard).
I don't feel lonely, though. I have a keyboard.
You're not gonna hold your hand straight in the air for more than a 10 minute stretch.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
It was so good that I sit at my desk at work now and just grump at the damned stupid screen.
I wonder now how much cross over will eventually occur between keyboard + touch interaction. One for input, one for manipulation. In essence, that merges the best of both worlds.
I can't wait for a 28" touchscreen at my desk with some software to make the touch interface and excel, CSS and other random statistics programs work together a little better. It will genuinely make work easier, and make me more productive.
Same goes for the keyboard - no matter how big the screen real-estate is, it doesn't beat a physical keyboard, because a physical keyboard gives a tactile feel to your fingers and thus you can do touch-typing. My wife doesn't do touch-typing, she's just an ordinary user, but even she complains that things are hard to type on her 11 inch iPad.
Indeed there are applications that are more productive with a touchscreen, coupled with the possibility of carrying them around and looking at the screen while walking, it's a good combination - but for very different things.
I think that's a fantastic use case for tablets, too. Older users (60+) can benefit tremendously from their relatively small form factor and simplified UI; it's just a shame that they're largely neglected and under-served when you examine most of the advertising...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Averages lie.
Show me a bell curve any day.
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.
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.
That said, even cheap converters are pretty good. Bear in mind that state-of-the-art analog tape recording only delivers about 12 bits of fidelity.
They are good enough for casual use. But you can even get stuff like Apogee interfaces for your iPad with top pre-amps D/A.
>But full-blown library management?
Not full blown, mostly marking photos from a shoot, flagging, minimal edits etc, before they end up in your main desktop library.
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.
Anecdotally, I lug around a smartphone, laptop, iPad and Kindle, but I can collapse the last three into the iPad for a lot of daily nontechnical tasks. (Hell, I can even prototype Python on it.) It's not a necessary part of my kit, but I'll keep one around for convenience alone.
Also makes a great e-book reader.
Definitely not a laptop replacement.
Browsing the internet? Well not so great. Mobile versions of websites seem to be always wanting and a lot of web pages are too target rich making it way too easy to accidentally click on something like an advertisement or side bar thingy. And I spend too much time zooming pages and waiting for reflows as well. Overall a pretty irritating experience.
Data input? hehe, yeah right.
It's much more human, for lack of a better word — more intimate, more ergonomic — than a PC for (browsing the web|reading ebooks or PDFs|watching videos|making video calls).
The existence of the tablet has (indirectly) made me more productive at work, too: Rather than reading articles that come through my RSS feed when I'm working (which is a vice of mine), I just add any interesting items to my Pocket queue, and read it that night (or later in the week) when relaxing at home. Not because I don't want to read the article right away (I usually want to)—but because I actually prefer to read on the tablet.
A phone definitely works in that case as well, but the tiny screen isn't as nice for reading and watching video. Not to mention by the end of the day my phone is usually mostly dead and its time to put it on the charger for tomorrow. So trying to use my phone in bed while its attached to a charger is annoying. The tablet meanwhile is charged up (and usually lasts a full week for me between charges, even during heavy Netflix usage).
Yay?
Try getting out of the iPhone bubble for a while - you'll find that in the real world, phablets are not just something that you make fun of.
My phone is just on the edge of one-hand usability (I can mostly manage it but sometimes things get pretty awkward) and I often wish I had something iphone-sized instead, but choice is pretty limited among smaller Android phones (they exist, but tend to be old/slow/etc).
People I know with phablets use them like tablets (almost always with two hands etc). That's fine if you want a small tablet, but it isn't really an adequate replacement for a traditional smartphone. They're just different things.
E.g., I see huge numbers of people standing on the train using their phone with one hand (while hanging onto a strap with the other) or walking down the street, using their phone with one hand (while carrying a bag with the other), etc.
She's already used to having to charge her phone every night, because while her old phone might've lasted 2-3 days it was easier just charging it every night.
She holds it two-handed, portrait, to text and interact with facebook, and did with a smaller phone too because she can type much faster that way.
She's comfortable reading on it.
It fits in her pockets fine.
I prefer my Nexus 4 + Nexus 7 as an approach, but for a bunch of people, yes, yay.
That said, I don't want a 6" phone. My Nexus 5 is too big. Just a bit smaller, and I'd be able to use it comfortably one-handed. I'd go 4" over 5" if there was an option with the price and performance I want, though 4.3" or 4.5" is probably perfect for me.
I have medium-small hands, and the Nexus 5 is hard to use one-handed. I made a case for it out of carbon fiber, and that improved things slightly by adding a bezel that sticks out from the screen by 1 mm or so. Its height is also at the upper end of what I want in my pockets. Unfortunately, the iPhone 5S is the only current/recent high-spec smartphone I know of that's the size I want, and I don't like iOS. When is Sony going to offer the Z1f outside Japan?
I loved my iPad when I first got it, but now it's relegated to an overly expensive kindle. I actually like to do things on my computing devices. Play (non-casual) games, do some stupid cat Photoshop, start a hobby project(right now it's a tower defense engine in the now defunct XNA). Tables can't support any of that.
Overall, I agree with the article.
not for everyone though, as it emits light, and that is not what your body wants late at night. See example HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7057575
edit: I'm simply indicating staring at a screen late at night might not be all that good for us humans. Downvoting this doesn't make it any less true.
Sitting upright at a desk with a reasonably sized monitor placed at arm's length is much more ergonomic than curling over a tiny glossy screen.
Why would you want a stand if you're going to hold it anyways?
Now then, if I could make calls over a bluetooth headset connected to my iPad, I'd drop my phone in a heartbeat...
What's stopping you? I do this from Hangouts (which can make calls, at least in the US.)
(That said, yes, you can do this on android, with skype and a skype-in number.)
My various tablets are now nearly permanently attached to my computers. I need them for writing / testing software, but that is mostly all they do these days, don't carry them around the house much, never carry them out of the house.
http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/no-smartphones/
... which seems a fairly silly thing to say. The exact same factors which attract people to larger phones -- bigger screen, bigger battery, other things like CPU power that more space helps with -- are also going to make "tablets" more attractive than "phablets" for some people and/or some situations (e.g., like many people, I have a "home tablet" which sits around my house, but I don't try to carry it around in my pocket).
I think phablets have a place as the very-small portable end of the tablet market, but they aren't a good replacement for traditional smartphones, because they're just too awkward. So the argument that they're a "good enough" one-device alternative to both phones and tablets doesn't seem very strong (it will certainly be true for some people, but it will not be true for many others).
[If you look at people using phablets, they tend to use them exactly like tablets: two hands for operation (whereas traditional smartphones work great with one), putting them down when not in use (people often just hold their phone), putting them in a bag instead of in a pocket, etc. They're tablets.]
With FaceTime use especially, iPhone form factor is not great. Same can be set for my old Galaxy Nexus with hangouts. iPad/Nexus 7 do way better in that department. iPad Air weight and form factor is especially better then the old iPad.
That is how most people use their computers.
I don't think they'll go away. They're an acceptable "portable dumb terminal" for certain kinds of work or for people who only want web and e-mail and a few apps. They also really kick butt for point of sale terminals and similar kiosk applications.
So, some folks use them for one thing, and some folks use them for another thing (or not at all).
That's the story for basically every product that exists....so....
In other words, re/code is trying to build up their content by using fluff stuff like this - polarizing and gets page views by inciting flame wars.
Look, the tablet has its place - usually situations that don't require high-bandwidth HIDs such as keyboards. The computer user of the future will have many devices spanning many different form factors. It's OK.
Seems like he's been deluded by taking numbers out of context.
For the rest of us, it is so getting started.
Once Microsoft and Intel got their claws into it, it became a cheap PC with poor inputs that didn't do anything well (by design - an ARM/Linux netbook threatened the WinTel dominance of the day).
I spent last year being much more impressed by single purpose devices anyway. Stuff like the latest eink Kindles, the Chromecast and so on. Curiously they all follow the same push style of content delivery, where it is pushed from the network to the device for focused consumption, and I can't help thinking this is the future.
It is also typically what we use for watching movies at night while heading to bed -- we have a decent digital media library.
I don't see the affair as being over, maybe the tablets people have are good enough for their current uses.
1. The Bad Experience cited is with Windows tablets. This ignores how hard it is to move a non-touch system to tablets.
2. He cites Netflix "losing momentum" on tablets. If this was true for media use on tablets in general, Amazon would not be pouring as much effort as they are into tablets.
Google has done a bad job marketing Android on tablets. Apple has done a great job with iPad. YMMV.
Amazon, unlike Netflix, is worried about being kicked out of the iOS ecosystem. Kindle (and all the other major eBook apps) already came close at least once. Unless Amazon was convinced that media use on tablets was going to collapse (not just plateau), they desperately need the deterrent and the insurance policy.
And then there's this - http://thedoghousediaries.com/5608
Once you hit the "content consumption from toilet" first world problem, the rest of the market actually would like a smaller device with the same connectivity.
That said, I'm a recent tablet user because with a Nexus7 and a Chromecast, my screen is actually big, 10 feet away and doesn't need me to hold it.