Incremental Blogger

Although it would have been cool for at least once for Bill Gates to use a Tablet PC during one of his keynotes, he at least doesn’t fail to mention them. In his final keynote as full-time Microsoft chairman at TechEd, Gates talks of Tablets and education:

“I think of every student having a device that avoids the need for paper textbooks. The Tablet device will let them take notes, record audio, connect to the Internet. It’ll be superior in every way and yet it can’t be purely keyboard based. It has to have this touch and pen as well.”

In case you’re wondering, he didn’t say much more about Windows 7 other than referring to the multi-touch demoed last week at D. He did add:

“We’ve also got the pen capability, that we’re taking to a whole new level in terms of easy recognition and how that is implemented in the hardware.”

Not sure if he was referring to Windows 7 here what’s currently available in Vista. My guess is the latter, but it’s hard to tell.

I was glad he finally is mentioning vision in more detail. This has been a very lacking aspect of Microsoft’s interaction strategy if you ask me. Surface, TouchWall and the like are all beginning to use cameras, though there’s lots more than can and should be done. I’d like to see a whole new vision processing capabilities added to the .NET Framework.

Today Microsoft announced that it would be extending the lifetime for Windows (XP we presume) for netbooks. It had already done so for ultra-low cost PCs, such as the Eee PC.

This leaves the UMPC and similar Tablet-enabled devices even further out on a limb as UMPCPortal points out as they are becoming even more expensive relative to other similar featured devices. I think Warner over at Gottabemobile hints at the product confusion too and reflects on how this all may shake out in the end.

Here’s the problem as I see it: Despite the fact that these low-cost devices are in part being targeted to students, there won’t be ink. There won’t be touch. There won’t be handwriting recognition. All of which make lots of sense for students. These great Tablet features are not included in XP Home, which is what Microsoft is giving breaks to OEMs on.

Now fortunately there’s Silverlight and I guess handwriting recognition can go through a server for these low cost devices, but this is not the ideal situation.

It’s disappointing to see Microsoft’s licensing shifts–that are clearly needed I know–potentially hurting Tablets/UMPCs in the education market at a time like this.

I think part of the problem here is that Microsoft sees the Tablet features more as a premium experience. Like the licensing issue with XP themselves, it needs to drop this and get over it. Tablet features aren’t premium. In fact, Tablet features should be mainstream, native features that are cross platform even (Silverlight, Messenger on the Mac, Office on the Mac). If Silverlight can inch this direction, I’m perplexed why Windows can’t across all its SKUs.

Here’s my plea for Microsoft: If you could just transfer the responsibility of ink and handwriting recognition from Windows and put in under the management of the .NET Framework team, I think developers, customers, and OEMs would all be better off.

Yeah, this is part of my continuing campaign to see Windows as having the core responsibility of saying “No” as part of its objectives of being more stable and secure and the .NET Framework, et al, as our path to the future. Move all the good stuff to .NET so we can get on with it. It’s the new API.

Someone is saying something somewhere, because there’s plenty of blog chatter this morning about “will Microsoft saying anything about Windows 7.”

The talk started with this CNet interview with Steve Sinofsky of Microsoft where he said Microsoft was taking a measured approach with Windows 7 communication.

I think Robert Scoble’s response sums up the thoughts of many on this: If you’re not going to say anything, I’m going to look elsewhere for something interesting.

Then on the Microsoft Windows Vista Team Blog, Chris Flores explains Microsoft’s lack of Windows 7 talk further, by explaining that indeed Microsoft is talking with software and hardware partners and that they simply didn’t want to overpromise.

But that’s not the end of it. No sooner had Microsoft said it wasn’t going to say anything, than some are suggesting that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer will be presenting some features of Windows 7 at the D6 Conference, which starts today.

Mary Jo Foley runs with this rumor and predicts that Microsoft will be talking about aspects of Windows 7, including touch.

Larry Dignan chimes in too with a bucket load of skepticism about Touch and Tablet PCs.

My take? Who knows what we’ll be seeing at D6 tonight (6:15PM Pacific Time). With both Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates on stage at the same time, I’d expect to see something very, very cool. Maybe a prototype of the consumer version of a Surface computer? Hmmm. Or maybe something that’s incrementally grown over the years within Microsoft? We’ll all be tuning in. From the D6 website it doesn’t appear that there will be a live video feed (where’s Scoble and his N95 when you need him???), but there is a page on the conference website for videos, so this is probably a good place to monitor.

Mary Jo Foley: “I’m hearing buzz that if Microsoft can manage to gag and tie temporarily its Chief Secrecy Officer Steven Sinofsky, the company might show off at D6 the touch technology that Microsoft is building into Windows 7.

As I and others have reported previously, it’s not just Windows Mobile 7 that is adding touch support; it is Windows 7, as well. There have been more recent leaks corroborating Microsoft’s plans to add touch support to Windows 7….

As I’m still not much of a Tablet PC fan, I must admit Microsoft’s desire to add touch to Windows is a bit baffling. Even one former Softie working to help evangelize the Tablet form factor noted that PC makers were none too keen on creating Windows machines optimized for touch.”

People aren’t interested in touch?? Heard of the iPhone?

This is a note to myself to add the Tablet PC Nursing blog to thredr.

I also need to rework the clustering algorithm for the Tablet PC topic. There’s not enough linking going on right now even though there are plenty of posts.

Likewise, in the Apple space just about everyone uses partial RSS feeds so I need to scrape more of the web pages directly.

I agree with Sumocat: the larger Wacom pens are nice to hold and use. The downside? They don’t fit anywhere to the case of the Tablet PC.

Jason O’Grady over at ZDNet is blogging that a Tablet Mac is to appear this fall. I’ve been hearing similar rumors for awhile too. But nothing has hit the market yet. Is the time coming soon though? I hope so. I think the market needs a little more shaking up. Competition is good.

Jason writes:

“A little birdy tells me that Apple will announce a 12 or 13-inch tablet in the fall of this year. Most likely in the September or October time frame. It will run the full Mac OS X and have a slot loading SuperDrive, an “iPhone-type” GPS chip and an Intel Core Duo processor, presumably Intel’s Atom.”

The size is consistent with one rumor I heard, although it doesn’t quite make sense since I’d expect an incremental step up from the iPhone. I’m thinking of something with a 5 to 7 inch display.

Jason doesn’t seem to have any hint as to the OS, which might be suggestive of the size. He says, “Whether it’ll be a based on the iPhone or MacBook form-factor remains to be seen.” A smaller device is more likely to have the iPhone OS versus a larger one. A larger device, though, might have an embedded OS if we’re talking about something super thin, such as a companion display with a built-in digitizer for your desktop or notebook. That might make a lot of sense. Apple’s been pretty good with creating well engineered products. Something thin would be another Apple wonder.

Oh, how I long for thinner Tablets. Could Apple be teaching the Tablet world how to make a slate?

Engadet is pointing to this Xentex dual hinged 13.3 inch “Tablet PC.” Wild. What will people think of next?

jkontherun has the news: MindJet, the makes of MindManager, have acquired project management company JCVGANTT. The big deal here is that both companies have been producing excellent Tablet wares.

In a post about the eBook design of the next-generation OLPC, John Biggs of TechCrunch thinks he’s figured out why Tablet PCs haven’t faired well, but an eBook design like this will.

“A laptop is an interactive tool. An ebook, even if it’s just a glorified, dual screen laptop, is a reading tool. That is why tablet PCs never took off in the mainstream: people don’t know what to do with a form factor that is clearly not a laptop yet is also clearly a powerful computer. There is no way to connect the act of “scratching out words on a tablet” to processing worksheets in a spreadsheet. Why doesn’t the iPhone have handwriting recognition? Because it’s a horrible way to talk to a computer, even now.”

First, I don’t see any reason why a dual-Slate eBook can’t be everything a Slate is and support interactive workbooks–not just read-only material. Second, most Tablet PCs today are convertibles and are pretty much indistinguishable to most people from standard laptops–outside of when the screen is folded down in Tablet mode. And third, the iPhone is a Slate form factor (no permanently attached physical keyboard) and not a full-fledged laptop and it’s doing quite well. So there’s more to all of this than simply whether something is a laptop or not, which has been the conventional wisdom.

Now in terms of handwriting recognition and pen input: What better place is there to support this than in schools? A very good discussion we should have is whether everything should be designed around the keyboard and mouse as our input devices in schools. Should we design programs so that typing an equation with a square root is as easy as typing a word? I can conceive of a program that does this, but is this really the best way to go? I don’t think so. Likewise, what about brainstorming and the arts and, well, doodling. Should everything be so keyboard focused? Again, I don’t think so, yet I can see a world like this evolving.

I’m betting, however, that as software becomes more interactive and devices with other forms of input more common, that we won’t see the keyboard and mouse as the best and only ways to interact with our content. After all, it’s the content that should be kind–not the keyboard, nor the mouse.

At today’s OLPC Media event, Nicholas Negrponte announced concept designs for the next generation device.

Wade Roush is blogging the event here and I’ve borrowed one of his photos of the proposed OLPC 2, shown below.

The small device will boast two touch screens that can be used as a two-page book, as a notebook-style keyboard/display combination, or a horizontal/slate mode.

Of course, this is a concept design and who knows what a shippable device will really look like. We all know how far Haiku got, for instance.

But I think this is going a good direction.

Very nice.

Laptopmag.org is at the event too and has some more pictures and a video of part of Negroponte’s presentation.

It all depends on how you look at the statistics, but numbers are showing how strong Apple sales are in the US. eWeek has the low-down. It’s something like this:

Apple owns 66% of the US retail market for $1,000+ PCs.

Note: this doesn’t count online nor enterprise sales. That would make the number much smaller.

But if that caveat doesn’t make much difference to you, then you’ll be really glad to know that Apple owns 100% of the MacPro line of PCs purchased on a Tuesday in U.S. cities with populations greater than 100,000 and with one or more.

Aren’t statistics amazing? I think this is another sign that WWDC is coming up, wouldn’t you say?

Actually, I think these stats are in part an indication of how much the PC channel has changed in the last several years. The OEMs are selling direct hurting most small shops as well as cutting into larger ones, such as CompUSA.

Tablet PCs got caught in this transition as well. For instance, go try to find a store that has a Tablet in stock. There are a few, but unless you’re in a big city, it’s unlikely you’ll find one. In fact, the bigger stores that still carry Tablet PCs probably, like Apple, own huge chunks of the U.S. retail market. Not hard to do when the numbers are so small and there’s not much competition.

As we approach WWDC, the Apple rumors and chatter is increasing. Just watch TechMeme for a day or so and you’ll see what I mean.

Yesterday there was talk of an Intel exec supposedly stating that Apple was going to come out with a larger iPhone device running an Atom processor. There was good reason to be skeptical. No one in the industry leaks information like this. Especially not in front of a crowd. There might have been something poorly stated, but I doubt it was meant to signal to the markets that there was a forthcoming product from Apple.

This won’t stop the Apple MID or mini-Tablet rumors though. I’ve heard them too–from “inside” industry people too. For a couple years now. Of course, in all this time, there’s not been a Tablet product, so my skepticism grows with each passing month.

Now what I imagine is happening is that Apple is working on various designs and ideas and some of these might be Tablet like. Whether they hit the market is another idea. That makes complete sense.

Apple is tremendously secretive, but my guess is that they’d give a public nod to what they are working on if the idea is going to be a big new direction for them.

So as of today we’re still in the same position we were in yesterday. Will there be a Tablet? A MID? An e-Book reader? Who knows. Stay tuned. The rumor mill has lots more to say.

Gottabemobile and JKOnTheRun are both point to this review of the ModBook slate Tablet from Axiotron.

Sounds like the reviewer wasn’t too sure of the Tablet concept and slates in particular–especially 5.5lb slates. Yeah, how I long for an updated NEC LitePad, but that’s another story.

The reviewer also isn’t sure whether the built-in Apple handwriting technology, called InkWell, is up to par. From my tests I’d agree. Vista’s handwriting reco beats it hands down.

I would agree with the implication of the article though: That a great Tablet has to be designed to be a great Tablet, not just modded together. So, if Apple were to make a Tablet I bet it could create an ever better one. That being said, for artists and those Mac users who are looking for a slate, the Modbook sounds like a pretty good choice. I’d really like to give one a spin.

File this under the Ignorable-Post category: I’m glad I’m not going to be attending TechEd 2008–(it’s out of my price range)–because if I were I’d be spending too much time and effort trying to figure out how to take along the multi-touch system we’re building.

Tablet PCs are so much more portable. I’m spoiled.