Article
Why I Don't Care About Apple's Rumored Tablet
Future-Sam collides with past-Sam every time I tap an old computer monitor. I've done this multiple times in the past month. Most recently, I was helping a grammar-challenged student with a term paper at the 826 Seattle tutoring center, and I lifted my pinky to insert a badly needed Oxford comma
at a spot on the screen. Didn't work. The teen laughed at me.
I felt silly for a moment, but I know how the tech world will soon unfold. Fast forward six years, and students will laugh for a different reason: to mock teachers who search computer desks cluelessly for a mouse.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="442" caption="Apple's official invite to its January 27 product reveal"]
[/caption]
Could be sooner than that, even. The input revolution has landed, dumping motion controllers, balance boards, and touch screens all over Great Gadget Civilization. So I should be ecstatic about this week's Apple rumors as a harbinger of the tech future, right? Current belief is that Apple CEO Steve Jobs will announce a "tablet" next week—a thin, portable computer, potentially with a 9.6" multi-touch screen , that eliminates the need for mice and keyboards.
Well, so what? Microsoft attached itself as a ringleader of the tablet PC revolution two weeks ago at Vegas' Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and the world didn't stop spinning then, either. We don't need Apple and its perky advertising dancers to show us the future. The Windows-branded tablets, if anything, will touch on the true input revolution: not features, but accessibility.
Touch screens have been around about as long as computer mice. Hell, Epcot Center had such screens in the '80s (FUTURE WORLD!). What took so long was the perfect storm of screen tech advances (LCD screens, multi-touch programming) and consumer demand.
The latter erupted when manufacturers blitzed the poorly wired majority of the world with cell phones. Result: Production centers in places like China and India could afford to jack up production of basic LCD screens; hopscotch a few steps, and you've got cheap multi-touch screens and cheap microprocessors that make today's tablet PCs an actual, affordable entity. And our obvious demand will keep this tech cheap.
Apple was first out of the gate with a game-changing portable music player. Same with their game-changing touch-screen phone. But the input revolution is not theirs to own anymore, not so long as other touch phones and tablet computers compete with choice and cost options, two of Apple's biggest thorns. Let's not forget Microsoft's no-touch streak, either. So I'm napping on this one. Wake me when Steve Jobs shows up to install a microchip in my brain.
I felt silly for a moment, but I know how the tech world will soon unfold. Fast forward six years, and students will laugh for a different reason: to mock teachers who search computer desks cluelessly for a mouse.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="442" caption="Apple's official invite to its January 27 product reveal"]
[/caption]
Could be sooner than that, even. The input revolution has landed, dumping motion controllers, balance boards, and touch screens all over Great Gadget Civilization. So I should be ecstatic about this week's Apple rumors as a harbinger of the tech future, right? Current belief is that Apple CEO Steve Jobs will announce a "tablet" next week—a thin, portable computer, potentially with a 9.6" multi-touch screen , that eliminates the need for mice and keyboards.
Well, so what? Microsoft attached itself as a ringleader of the tablet PC revolution two weeks ago at Vegas' Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and the world didn't stop spinning then, either. We don't need Apple and its perky advertising dancers to show us the future. The Windows-branded tablets, if anything, will touch on the true input revolution: not features, but accessibility.
Touch screens have been around about as long as computer mice. Hell, Epcot Center had such screens in the '80s (FUTURE WORLD!). What took so long was the perfect storm of screen tech advances (LCD screens, multi-touch programming) and consumer demand.
The latter erupted when manufacturers blitzed the poorly wired majority of the world with cell phones. Result: Production centers in places like China and India could afford to jack up production of basic LCD screens; hopscotch a few steps, and you've got cheap multi-touch screens and cheap microprocessors that make today's tablet PCs an actual, affordable entity. And our obvious demand will keep this tech cheap.
Apple was first out of the gate with a game-changing portable music player. Same with their game-changing touch-screen phone. But the input revolution is not theirs to own anymore, not so long as other touch phones and tablet computers compete with choice and cost options, two of Apple's biggest thorns. Let's not forget Microsoft's no-touch streak, either. So I'm napping on this one. Wake me when Steve Jobs shows up to install a microchip in my brain.
