So, we have the iPad out and about for a while now, doing its thing, most likely selling well. Of course, others want a piece of that pie as well, so we see tablets pop up all over the place, most of which are either ultra-low budget junk or vapourware (how that’s Adam coming along, Notion Ink?). Earlier this year, Steve Ballmer proudly held up HP’s Windows 7-powered Slate – but then, HP bought Palm, canned the Slate, promised a webOS tablet, and then resurrected the Slate as an enterprise product. Now we have a video of the Windows 7-powered Slate. Let’s compare it to Samsung’s detailed overview of its Galaxy Tab, and see ever so clearly why HP canned the darn thing in the first place.
There haven’t been many sightings of the Windows 7-powered Slate since Ballmer held it up at the beginning of the year, so getting this up close and personal with the thing is kind of interesting – in a sad kind of way. Let’s just look at the video, and see if you can spot why, exactly, after having seen the iPad, HP ditched this thing and bought Palm.
The device itself is absolutely beautiful, if you ask me. Interesting design, especially the back, and it looks well-built and sturdy enough. It even has a dedicated control+alt+delete key – probably because domain logons require the venerable three-finger salute. Like I said – this is an enterprise product.
Anywho, where it goes wrong is the software aspect of it all, obviously. As outstanding a desktop operating system it is (best currently available – by far, in my opinion), Windows 7 absolutely sucks so hard as a tablet operating system. Sure, it has some nice touch-focussed features, but for the most part, all the user interface elements are simply way too small to comfortable deal with using only your fingers. HP realised this, and bought Palm.
Now, let’s take a look at the first serious iPad competitor. It’s from Samsung, and it’s the big brother of the highly successful Galaxy S-line of Android smartphones. The Galaxy Tab, as it’s called, also runs Android, but is decidedly larger (7″ display). It’s lighter and smaller than the iPad, which I found to be heavy and clunky, its large display necessitating lots of movement of your hands to cover the entire display.
The following video comes from Samsung, and in a little over nine minutes, it details just about anything the Galaxy Tab has to offer. Compared to the Slate, this is a very touch-oriented user interface, taking its fair share of cues from the iPad (Apple legal, are you awake? Dumb question, of course you’re awake).
This clearly shows the difference in thinking between Samsung (working upwards from smartphones) and pre-Palm HP (working downwards from desktops). Suddenly, it’s become quite easy to see why HP invested in Palm and the webOS, instead of chugging along with Windows 7 or a custom skin on Windows Smartphone Embedded Mobile Compact CE PocketPC.
Still, the Slate is intriguing in that it can be used for quite a few things – it’s a standard netbook machine without a keyboard, after all. I’m not sure what those things are yet, but I’m sure lots of geeks are already brimming with ideas.
The Win7 as tablet thing just doesn’t quite work, as you say, even if it’s a decent desktop OS.
Alternately, the Samsung tablet seems more reasonable, which it should be given that they seem to have ripped off every feature they could (including the look of opening a book, page turning, coverflow knock-off for their media player, the look of the calendar, the home screen swiping, etc., etc., etc.) from the iPad. Jeez. “Gentlemen, start your copiers!” doesn’t need to be aimed at Microsoft this time around.
Not that the icons and interface elements look as nice on Android, but if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I guess Apple should be awfully flattered.
Uhm, dude. Page turning wasn’t invented by Apple. It was invented about 2000 years ago when the first codex as invented.
Even the computer-based page flip animation isn’t *that* new:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwqi9HnN17w
(it’s around the 1:50 mark)
OK, thanks for the insight Thom, did you know Apple didn’t invent the hand either? Not even the hand gesture I’m thinking of right now!
They didn’t invent the computer, the tablet, the mouse, etc. either, in case anyone out there is wondering.
The BeOS demo is cool too. I don’t think the implementation looks that similar to what the touch-based page turning on the iPad looks like, whereas I’d say the Tab/Android version looks remarkably similar to the one on the iPad, from how it curls under your finger to having the back side of the flipped page kind of showing through what’s on the front side. And when the guy in the demo touched a book and it zoomed in/open, it looks just like the iBooks book opening animation. I’m not saying Apple came up with zooms animations either, before anyone gets concerned.
To be clear, I’m not arguing for patents on this type of stuff, just saying it’s very flattering to Apple to suddenly have everyone working hard to try to make it look and work the same way. Given the interface, hardware, and function being implemented you will end up with similar solutions, but that’s just amazing coincidence to happen to have the ‘print though’ effect and a number of other similarities independently right after your competitor comes out with the apps, particularly given the traditional lack of polish like that from other companies. You’d probably expect different results if asking 2 artists to paint the same landscape too.
The fundamental concepts are identical – simulation of a page flipping by mapping a 2d surface onto a 3d object.
True, and by the same token, companies like Calameo and Issuu are probably both flattered that Apple has followed their lead with the iPad’s ebook UI.
It’s been available for 2 decades already; nothing new.
My sister’s storybooks on CD-ROM included page turning animations … on Windows 3.1, back in the 80s. These were even interactive stories (Mercer Meyer and Berenstein Bears) where you could interact with the characters, not just flip pages.
The fact that people are hung up on page animations just boggles my mind. It’s true that those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it as if it were new.
I wholeheartedly agree that Windows 7 just doesn’t work as a touch-based OS. As a tablet OS WITH A STYLUS, it’s great. But using your finger? Not so much.
I also really like Android. I recently replaced my Palm Pre with a Galaxy S and so far the experience has been wonderful. But sometimes I will pull out the Pre and play with it and I realize…WebOS just rocks. I really wish that platform matured and more/popular apps were developed for Web OS AND it was installed on faster hardware.
Looking at all these tablet OSs, iOS vs Windows 7 vs Android vs WebOS, I believe WebOS is the one mobile OS at the moment that really is the best for a net-connected touch appliance (because HP is not just thinking about tablets in regards to WebOS). WebOS has the better multitasking aspect (hands-down), development is a lot more focused on web-app development than the other platforms(android=java, iOS=obj. c), AND I think the overall user experience on WebOS is just as good, if not better, than iOS or Android.
Regardless, I am still putting all of my eggs(i.e. saving up those funds) in the hope of a WebOS tablet with good hardware, movie streaming capabilities, and all the other good stuff. Honestly, I don’t care if it has feature X that is BETTER than the iPad. As long as it’s up to Par, I would gladly take WebOS over iPad or Android.
But, if my WebOS tablet dreams never come true…Android tablet, here I come.
I’m very interested to see what a Pre tablet looks like as well. I think HP certainly made the right move in picking up webOS in order not to end up being just another Android/WinMo7 hardware vendor, and if they can execute it will be good for everyone. Pre/webOS actually has innovative ideas that don’t look like a somewhat less polished Apple knock-off.
Yes, webOS is (still) a great user experience. I hope HP does well with (and by) it.
I’m quite impressed with the MeeGo tablet user experience, though. I especially like the near-endless vertical area (sort of multi-desktop, but without the borders) with quick scrolling on the right, and the app / document quick-scrolling on the left. This makes great use of wide screens, IMHO.
Of course, the remarkable openness is nice, too. 🙂
The ipad looks like a novelty ipod touch, I crack up when I see people using it with a serious expression.
I could actually see some current ipad owners switching to the Galaxy just for the Flash.
A lot of smaller news affiliates still use Flash and don’t care about Jobs and his little war. People who I have talked to about this think Jobs is insane and don’t see what the big deal is.
Glad you’re so easily amused & entertained.
What is it about the iPad that brings out such strongly polarized viewpoints? If you don’t like the darned thing, don’t buy it. No need to make fun of people who do like it.
It’s a side benefit from having a sense of humor.
I find it funny because it looks like a novelty item. Sorry if that gets your panties in a bundle.
Nice!
Seems Microsoft paid Capcom to come up with that name…
Windows 7 is the best OS?
I… wow.
Anything I could say would be something you’ve heard before.
And in related news, Ford make the best cars and McDonalds was just awarded a 3rd Michelin Star.
Nothing wrong with ford
cheap and reliable in my experience.
That is kind of a lame myth from the 90’s.
http://www.thecarconnection.com/marty-blog/1037296_consumer-reports…
Right. Two people in a row have now conflated ‘best’, with ‘most reliable’. Oy vey.
You were playing on a common stereotype, you did not pick Ford for any other reason.
And Big Macs are made to be served in 5 minutes, not win awards.
Which stereotype would that be again? I can think of many one might associate with Ford: the gas guzzler, the blue collar ute, the superfluous SUV, the ‘chick’s car’ hatchback, the ‘bogan’s pride’ hatchback/sedan…
or maybe, just maybe, I was playing upon the idea of Ford vehicles being generally average, pedestrian, boring, indistinct, plastic and plain old mediocre, for the purposes of making a f–king joke.
Don’t mistake your lack of perspective and imagination for some telepathic insight into the mind of someone else. Besides being arrogant, it just makes you look stupid when you inevitably fail to consider a myriad of likely contingencies.
Ooh, you’re a sharp one, you are. Ever consider that that was the joke?
Edited 2010-09-24 17:47 UTC
Yawn.
Of course you didn’t mean anything, you were just showing that popularity does not equal quality by example of products that are negatively stereotyped with unrefined mainstream taste. No implications there at all.
Funny how Android is being snapped up by the mainstream but I don’t see anyone here questioning its quality based on popularity.
You have no sense of humour.
Oh please, we both know you’re not cool; if you were, you wouldn’t be here.
No, that wasn’t what I was ‘showing’ at all.
Evidentially not, given your continued failure to comprehend a simple facetious point.
Uh huh… run this by me one more time. You think these premises are the same?
You go from stating that there’s no relationship, to stating that there’s an inversely proportional one. You go to the trouble of setting up a strawman, then proceed to a non sequitur. No wonder you’re having so much trouble: you can’t even follow your own bullshit to it’s logical conclusion, let alone anyone else’s.
For what it’s worth, I agree. Windows 7 was the OS that finally made me more or less completely ditch Linux on the desktop.
Strange how it was Windows 7 that has made me go the other way. It just kept getting in my way where XP or Server 2003 just didn’t. Those builtin group policies that you can’t change were the last straw (Well you might but I couldn’t be bothered by then to find out how) so I gave it up as a bad job. IMHO, Win 7 is even more ‘Broken by Design’ than previous versions.
So we’ve ditch Windows (Apart from one Server 2003 system for support) in my small business. We are a total Linux/Unix/OSX shop now and boy do I feel better for it and not just in the wallet.
Then MS has gone and changd the MSDN licensing as well. I really feel sorry for you MS only guys.
Who said I’m MS only? Server side I’m all unix all the time. My phone runs Linux. And I’ve worked with a couple of embedded projects which where Linux. Basically Linux is great for everything except the desktop.
Well, that could be any number of things, but few of them actually have anything to do with the quality of the underlying OS.
It’s more about the applications available for the OS (yes, those are different issues. The Cobra was(and is) an awesome car. There’s fsck-all for parts available for it relative to modern ones, but it’s a great car).
You can buy a 1990s Taurus and find near-free parts all day (buy another one with a different problem, as they all have one thing or another dying by now). Doesn’t make it a great car compared to other cars.
I just thought ‘OSnews’ should be able to distinguish better…
EDIT: Mismatched parenthesis.
Edited 2010-09-24 16:17 UTC
Well if it was all about application compatibility then he probably would have been using XP.
A lot of users here who have plenty of Linux experience would still rather run Windows or OSX on the desktop even if they only used OpenOffice and a browser.
Maybe you should figure out why that is instead of coming up with smug analogies.
Your nickname is appropriate.
The galaxy tab looks very appealing with its bigger form factor and can be used as a phone.
I hope they will be successful in selling that product.
I mean its a phone and a tablet. what else could you ask for you have dell streak for a smaller tablet form factor but a bigger one would be good.
i hope they have a hard shell cover for the galaxy tab and a cool carrying case so that you can protect it when your on the go.
I am really trooling on the galaxy tab demo. just to say the most demeaning thing i could say. sorry.
Oh BTW this is a nice article. I have not been visiting osnews.com as frequently as I was in the past but its good to see facebook and twitter enhancements are available.
I’m just looking forward to seeing a modern tablet for the DIYer, that I can install my own OS on.
The idea of using MeeGo on a tablet is real nice –
http://www.slashgear.com/meego-tablet-could-be-the-real-deal-019259…
A hardware button dedicated for Ctrl-Alt-Del!
This thing is a joke.
Adding a skin to Windows 7 won’t work.
Microsoft’s lingering inability to give up it’s Windows Everywhere strategy has killed its ability to compete in the new tech phase.
If you want a touch based tablet that actually works and will sell then you need an OS completely written and designed for touch. This means rethinking much more than just the physical differences between a mouse or finger interaction mechanism.
It goes deeper, it profoundly effects stuff like the whole desktop/folder/file metaphor.
Tablets and touch are new things and we are entering a new era.
A Ctrl-Alt-Del button isn’t a bad idea at all (certainly not “a joke”), if you understand hardware. That’s called a “Non-Maskable Interrupt” (NMI), and it can’t be intercepted or spoofed by non-OS software. Press that button, and the OS-assigned function (typically login / unlock) *will* run.
In an environment where security matters (e.g., “the enterprise”), that’s invaluable. My amazement is that every environment isn’t treated similarly.
If you need a ctrl-alt-del key in the first place then you’ve failed.
Kind of like how Steve Jobs said you’ve failed if, when you implementing multitasking (for the iPhone), you need a task manager as well.
I can understand its utility on a machine used by power users doing heavy work but it is particularly unsuitable for a “consumption device” intended for everybody.
…which this device isn’t.
This is an enterprise device. Domain logons require ctrl+alt+del. This makes PERFECT sense, and is NOTHING to snicker over.
Why on earth would you use a tablet for the enterprise? I mean, what is the use case here?
To show off with a keyboard-less netbook that shines, probably.
Well, that worked with cellphones, so it could work with the netbook…
Actually, a good use for it would be one of the things that apple shows in one of their ads – a display for MRI results.
I would expect for a real heathcare place to use that, the device ( not the app ) would have to have a real login and then pull the images from a server.
OK, I get that you know nothing about security, and didn’t follow my post at all. What I don’t get is why you chose to spout an irrelevant quote by Steve Jobs (on user interfaces of all things), as if that has the slightest relationship to my point.
“Power users” aren’t the only users who need security. Those doing “heavy work” are the only users who need security. The prevalence of botnets should make that clear to you; that it doesn’t should worry you.
Now, go learn something about security and why it matters. You’ll be glad you did.
Well, I’d have loved such a hardware feature on my grandma’s eMac running Mac OS 9 ^^ It was not powerful enough to run OSX, and would crash so often than even hitting the keyboard keystroke became cumbersome in the end…
We’re both joking about old memories. Modern and mature desktop OSs like Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.4 are both reliable enough (I’ll avoid talking about 10.5+ as far as reliability is concerned). During all that time I’ve spent handling computers running Win7 RTM and OSX 10.4, I never had to kill a single application using the task manager.
This button is not about killing applications (which is now handled through ctl+shift+esc by the way). It’s about switching users, as some pointed out. The ctl+alt+suppr has been turned to a way to do that since the XP pro days…
…however, we agree there. Touch input on windows 7 is a joke. Years of pixel-based button sizing and positioning won’t disappear that easily. For a single operating system to work on both touch-based to… content-consumption devices with poor input resolution and desktop computers, it requires deep changes in the GUI toolkit. And microsoft hasn’t done those yet, afaik.
I don’t agree with that. A single operating system can work on a wide range of platforms. Its APIs just have to be flexible enough. As an example, Linux runs on embedded devices, and it’s still the same old Darwin that’s at the heart of iOS and OSX with its fellow Cocoa API that has just received a few touch-oriented tweaks.
In fact I think it’s possible to make portability work at an even higher level than the kernel and low-level API layers, though proving it (or failing to do so) will take me some time. Flash 10.1 is already an interesting step in that direction, though it’s not ready yet.
Again, this is arguable. In my current experience of OS development, it’s only at a very high level that the way you interact with the device actually starts to matter. And even at that level, things can go smoothly, provided that the OS was made with all means of interaction in mind. As an example, an OS that has automatic widget resizing and relevant widget deletion when running low on screen size or input resolution could theoretically run both on a desktop PC and a tablet. It would however fail at fully exploiting the capabilities of a 3D interface like those we might see in the future.
Not really. In real life, a desktop is a rectangular area where you find stuff that you’re working with. You’ll find a virtual equivalent of that on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Android, WebOS, Symbian, and iOS. The sole difference is whether you favor a file-based interface (like the current Mac OS desktop) or an application-based interface (like Windows 3.1 did). In the former, you can access and manage the information stored on your computer in a quicker and easier fashion, which is nice for work and other creative tasks. The latter kind is more useful for leisure tasks like gaming that don’t create any kind of useful information.
New ? No. They are just a new spawn of consumption-oriented computing, logically following previous work on DAPs, PMPs, video game consoles, and cellphones by trying to unify them all in a single device, just like desktop computers have unified many information-processing tools in a single cheap tool. And contrary to the desktop which opened a full world of opportunities compared with those tools they replace, tablets currently don’t improve any of those concepts much, except in the web browsing area.
Wake me up when you see a gaming device with a three-dimensional display or mean of interaction. When you see a PMP which actually makes you *feel* inside the movie you’re watching through neural connection. When a phone allows people to meet in a virtual world, feeling like they’re actually back together. When people can transmit thoughts reliably over a large distance, or discover what happens exactly in their brains when they dream.
THAT’s change. Touch input is just a good-old bidimensional pointer on a bidimensional screen, only one with low input resolution in exchange of the output flexibility needed to make all of that work on a single device. Nothing to get crazy about. I don’t see a new era there, just a shiny spawn of our good old consumption society dating back from the opening of the first supermarket back in the middle of the 20th century
Edited 2010-09-24 16:09 UTC
I’m one of a handful of weirdos who actually like .NET development so I can possibly see a Win7 powered slate as being a useful machine. Essentially it would be like using a netbook except that I can plug in any keyboard I like (rather than the crappy netbook KB) and can start coding away. When I’m not coding then I can use it for some basic mail and surfing related stuff. It may not have the polish of Android or iOS but I can guarantee the Slate will be more hacker friendly than any other device.
If .NET is the only draw, I’m sure someone will get Mono ported to Android soon enough.
You can use it already on iOS via MonoTouch or Unity.
Probably so, but not everyone likes Mono or it’s development environments. Not to mention that Mono has only really done a good job of implementing C# while others like VB.NET are seriously lacking. The other issue for me is that I like the idea of coding on the same machine that I will run my apps on so unless there will be a native IDE that runs on Android then it will be useless to me. I have been a long time supported of Apple but the concept of needing two separate systems (desktop/laptop + handheld/tablet) for development is entirely too cumbersome and cost prohibitive for me.
The one of the new features of C# is that you don’t have to develop with MonoDevelop to run on Mono.
You should really work on not coding on the platform that your apps run on, because compiling/unit testing anything of size on embedded/tablet/new_small_hotness_whatever, will be painful.
I’ll avoid saying anything about VB.NET as I don’t know anything about it, but I’d say, from a commercial standpoint at least, you don’t want Microsoft deciding if you need to totally rewrite your app if you’re going to keep selling it in the future.
It’s lighter and smaller than the iPad, which I found to be heavy and clunky, its large display necessitating lots of movement of your hands to cover the entire display.
Yeah Thom, it weighs a ton at a pound and a half.
I think the iPad is anything but clunky, and unlike 7″ tablets, you can actually type comfortably in portrait mode. 7″ will be far too tight for that.
This article is a good indication of why I avoid OSNews these days; it’s more blog than news, and generally it’s just opinion pieces of why Apple/MS/Google/evil company of the day doesn’t make good products in the eyes of the editors.