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Apple Archive

The Tablet PC

- 2002.10.30

Apple NewtonWhen I think of the word tablet, I think of chocolate. Somehow tablet doesn't equate itself very well with computers.

It also seems to me that consumers won't be too interested either, despite Microsoft's big push for a Tablet PC version of Windows XP. You've got to ask yourself this first: What does a tablet PC offer that hasn't either already been tried - or that you can't do on your existing computer with a graphics pad?

Microsoft wants everyone to go out and buy one of these new tablet PCs, which are supposedly the "great new thing." I wonder, because I seem to recall another company offering the same thing several years ago.

Yes, our friend Big Blue offered its IBM ThinkPad in a "tablet" version for a while. Nice idea, but the never caught on. They had a model where you could write directly on the screen, and also a model that looked like a standard laptop, but you could flip the screen down to use it as a tablet. These weren't too popular, and IBM scrapped the idea.

Plus, software was a problem. Oh, they worked okay with Windows 3.1... but try and upgrade and you were stuck with some broken functionality.

What would you be doing on a tablet PC anyway? Maybe a little writing, perhaps some drawing. But why go out and buy a new PC to do that? You can do both of these things with a graphics pad, and if you're using OS X 10.2 on a Mac, you've already got built in handwriting recognition.

This type of thing seems to be all the rage these days - at least, that's what the computer manufacturers want you to think. Sony already offers a PC where you can fold the screen down and draw directly on it. I have yet to hear of someone buying one of these (although, if you did buy one, I'd be curious to know what you think of it).

It seems that other companies are offering tablet functionality whether consumers want it or not.

Should, and will, Apple go along with them? Apple has a history of waiting for its users to be running around complaining about something that they don't offer before they actually do offer it - CD burners, Combo drives on the PowerBook G4, and the 17" iMac (eMac) are recent examples.

If Apple does decide to make a tablet PowerBook, it will probably wait to see how other companies are doing at selling their stock and what features they are including. Is this a critical thing for Apple to get involved with before it misses the boat again, like it did with built-in CD-RW drives? I believe that it is not. Tablet computers are a nice idea, sure, but right now it's hard to say whether or not they will catch on, and Apple shouldn't be entering markets where it isn't completely sure that it can sell machines and compete successfully.

Do consumers really want tablet PC's? That's a question only sales figures can answer.

In the meantime, I'm off to get my tablet of chocolate.

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