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Apple's mythical tablet: the text's the thing (from Macworld)

### Apple’s mythical tablet: the text’s the thing

Posted on Jan 11, 2010 12:36 pm by Dan Moren, Macworld.com

Even professional skeptics like me are reaching the point where we have to admit that Apple is probably about to release some sort of tablet device, even if there’s little consensus about what it will look like or precisely what niche it will fill. Me, I find myself wondering about one aspect of the tablet idea in particular: text entry.

Wait, wait, wait. We’re talking about a revolutionary new device that will let you watch videos, play music, and probably even control your own squadron of death robots (not included), and I’m worried about something as mundane as text entry?

Well, yeah.

As unexciting as it might be, text entry is still a huge part of the way we interact with our computers. The iPhone has relaxed that dependence somewhat—after all, we spend most of our time tapping, flicking, and pinching—but even it can’t escape the old QWERTY keyboard, even if it is merely virtual. But we need it for sending text messages, writing e-mails, even entering our login credentials on Twitter or our mobile banking site.

If rumor proves true, the Apple tablet will boast a screen in the 10-inch range. I have a hard time picturing how I would enter text on a device of this sort. Obviously, I’ve got no insider knowledge of what the tablet will look like, as I’m sure will become readily apparent the moment it’s actually released. Still, I’m curious enough about how I’m going to use this device, that I spent the time painstakingly making up calculating the odds on the different ways you might enter text on Apple’s new device.

Integrated physical keyboard – Steve Jobs’s antipathy for buttons is well-documented. Why does he wear turtlenecks and sneakers? No buttons. Given the success of the iPhone and iPod touch’s virtual keyboard and the advantages it confers (infinitely customizable layout, easy localization, no moving parts), it would be utterly baffling to see Apple take a step back with the tablet. Odds: 500 to 1

Wireless physical keyboard – Being able to use one of Apple’s shiny Bluetooth keyboards in conjunction with the tablet is marginally more reasonable than an integrated keyboard—then again, we’ve been hoping for Bluetooth keyboard support for the iPhone since before it came out. And Apple probably doesn’t want to promote the idea that the device itself is so inherently limited that it requires an accessory in order to do something as basic as text entry. Odds: 750 to 1 (for Bluetooth only); 75 to 1 (Bluetooth as an option)

Virtual keyboard (iPhone version) – If you’re an iPhone owner, you’ve probably gotten pretty accustomed to the device’s virtual keyboard—I can type out even medium-length missives on it without too much trouble. But let’s cut to the chase: I’m never going to use it to write my next novel, or even my next 700-word article. My MacBook keyboard beats it for text entry, er, hands down for reasons as simple as the ability to type with ten fingers instead of two.

Furthermore, there’s the question of how one would use an iPhone-style thumb keyboard on a device with a 10-inch screen. You can’t hold it in landscape orientation and use your thumbs to type—they won’t reach the full width of the screen (unless Apple does something wacky like putting half of a QWERTY keyboard on each side of the screen). Portrait mode raises similar problems: try holding up a letter-sized magazine and “typing” on it—not exactly comfortable. What if you hold it in one hand and type with the other? Slow and inefficient, even if you get good enough to type with more than one finger in hunt-and-peck style. Odds: 50 to 1 (standard iPhone keyboard); 10 to 1 (something clever like that split keyboard model)

Virtual keyboard (MacBook version) – Okay, so if an iPhone virtual keyboard won’t work, what about a full QWERTY-style virtual MacBook keyboard that you can type on with all ten fingers? Well, size is an issue: cramped keyboards are the worst thing about netbooks, and Apple loves its full-size keyboard (as Jobs specifically said when he announced the MacBook Air). Also, ever tried touch-typing on a hard surface? Hope you like fingertip bruises. And let’s not forget there’s a reason they call it touch-typing. When there are no actual keys to feel, it’s going to be a bit more difficult—you’re going to have to stare at the keyboard to make sure you’re hitting the right keys (although, to be fair, leveraging the iPhone’s auto-correct could help partially solve this problem). Then there’s the ergonomic issue: you’ll have to put the tablet flat on a surface to type on it, and it also means tilting your head down to see what’s on the screen—that’s no good for anybody but your chiropractor. Odds: 300 to 1

Stylus – The stylus was a great idea back in the days of the Palm Pilot and the Newton, when everybody still used pens all the time, but we’ve moved on, folks. I mean, have you seen kids’ handwriting these days? Aside from appealing to the hardcore Newton aficionados out there, I doubt that Apple wants to evoke the ghost of that particular device. Not to mention styli are easy to lose. That said, Apple has had a handwriting-recognition technology called Inkwell squirreled away inside OS X since Jaguar, though right now it’s only really useful if you’ve got a graphics tablet or are using OWC’s ModBook. It wouldn’t be impossible for them to have dusted that off and given it an update to today’s technology. Odds: 200 to 1

Finger-based – When Apple introduced the iPhone, it made a leap from using a mouse pointer as a cursor to using your finger as the pointing device. Why not use your finger to write text as well? You can’t lose it like the stylus, and again, you can probably use that Inkwell technology to recognize handwriting. But writing is a lot slower than typing, and your finger is far less precise than a stylus. Odds: 75 to 1

Voice recognition – Every Star Trek nerd—yours truly included—has probably gone through a phase of trying to use dictation and voice-control software on their Mac, usually with mixed results. It works great in certain scenarios, but ever try to use voice control while watching the game, with your buddies yelling in the background? And if you think the world is creepy enough as it is with people wandering around yelling into their Bluetooth earpieces, wait until they’re not even talking to other people. Plus, do you really want to speak your Google searches out loud? I thought not. Then again, the Dragon Dictation app for the iPhone has been surprisingly good in my brief usage of it and Google has added voice-input throughout the Nexus One, so maybe the terrifying future is closer than we might think. Odds: 100 to 1 (by itself); 10 to 1 (as an option)

No text entry – Seems crazy, right? But maybe it’s crazy like a fox. Wouldn’t it be just like Steve Jobs to come out and proclaim that you just don’t *need *text entry on the new Apple tablet? After all, who needs to type things in when the tablet knows everything? Want to look up the weather? The tablet knows where you are. Read your e-mail? The iPhone can sync your accounts from your computer—why not the tablet? Want to watch videos, read books, listen to music? It’s all there, easily browsable by title, artist, genre, album, and so on. But if you want to reply to messages, well, that’s what your iPhone or MacBook is for. Perhaps you could even sync frequently-used snippets of text (for example, your name or your address) via Mobile Me or some other service, and then paste them in as necessary. But then again, this might be a little too revolutionary, even for Steve Jobs and his button-massacring ways. Odds: 150 to 1

And now for something completely different – Everybody likes to watch Steve Jobs pull a rabbit out of his hat—especially if he’s not even wearing a hat. (Did I just blow your mind?) Will it be nose-based text entry? Psychic text entry? Camera-based lip-reading? Sub-vocal voice recognition? There are so many possibilities that it wouldn’t surprise me to see something that we’d never even thought of. Odds: 20 to 1

Now, while these odds are obviously the result of careful thought (and a college statistics class that I took ten years ago), it goes without saying that I wouldn’t traipse down to the local bookie with your piggy bank and a claw hammer. However, were I the kind of person to place the occasional flutter, I’d lay down my money on Steve Jobs coming on stage on January 27 and unveiling a device that supports a few of the above options.

Just so long as none of them involve buttons.

via [macworld.com](http://www.macworld.com/article/145609/2010/01/tablet_text_entry.html?lsrc=rss_main)
Great points raised here. People keep saying that a software keyboard on a tablet would be better, because it would be bigger. Whoever says this hasn’t thought it through much, though.

Take anything the size of a comic book, hold it upright like you would a tablet device and try to type with your thumbs. Making the keyboard larger isn’t going to help here. You won’t be able to reach all the keys easily, especially in landscape mode.

And people who think you’re going to lay it flat and type like a regular keyboard with all ten fingers are forgetting that this is supposed to be a “mobile” device. Therefore, using it standing up needs to be not only possible but comfortable, and you ideally should be able to control many functions with a single hand.

My guess is that Apple has some new fangled way to enter text that no one else has dreamed up yet. And “boy have they patented it.” It’ll be some form of a virtual keyboard, but there will be a twist.

Palm still needs PR advice

I recently wrote a rather glowing article about Palm’s announcements at CES this week. I still agree with everything I said, including my final comment, that it was a marketing mistake to make those announcements when it did.

Remember that quote that Apple fans love to repeat over and over again, back when Ed Colligan was running Palm? “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” Ed was out of a job not long after that blunder.

Well, it seems like Palm still needs PR advice in general, which is probably the downside of hiring a CEO who worked for Apple Engineering.

Jon Rubinstein, according to several accounts, said in an interview this week that not only does he not own an iPhone; he’s never even used one.

This kind of statement is dumb on so many levels.

FIrst, the likelihood that Rubinstein has NEVER used an iPhone at all is about 2%. So, most likely he’s full of crap. Not that that’s a bad thing to be during an interview. You just need to be full of crap for the right reasons.

Second, statements like this always come off as arrogant, and the last thing Palm wants to be in its current weakened position is arrogant. This reminded me so much of all those guitar players in the eighties who claimed they never listened to Eddie Van Halen. Give me a break.

Third, if your goal is to design the best phones possible, wouldn’t you at least want to know what your competition was up to? Wouldn’t you want, as a CEO, to know exactly why the experience of your phone is so much better than the competition’s, so you could talk about it eloquently during an interview? Steve Jobs didn’t just use Treos, Blackberrys, etc. before his company released the iPhone. He put up a slide during his keynote and explained exactly why they sucked compared to his phone.

Fourth, and most importantly, you handed every tech journalist the wrong headline: “Rubinstein claims to have never used an iPhone.” Instead of “John Rubinstein shows off new Pre phone, Verizon partnership at CES.” Rubinstein actually put the competition’s name into the headline, instead of his own.

Most of what Palm is doing right at the moment is a very methodical mimicking of its biggest competitor. Denying this is silly. The only thing stopping Palm from being more successful right now are the kinds of bungled PR moves demonstrated during this interview. They should pilfer a high-level exec from Apple’s PR/Marketing department as soon as possible.

So what’s the appropriate response to that question? “I played around with an iPhone for a little, though I’ve never owned one. At Palm we approach our design…” Just admit the obvious, change the subject, and move on. Doesn’t this guy ever watch politicians?

I don't know why I bother writing about tech sometimes. Ihnatko always says it so much better

Thoughts on what an Apple tablet should be – or not

I won’t be writing a full-on “predictions about Apple’s upcoming tablet” article, because I can’t do it any better than he just did. I agree with all of it, and I have nothing to add. So I think I’ll just go back to work now.

"Smartbooks?" Really?

Is there no one with any creativity in the tech industry anymore? It’s bad enough that Microsoft and the entire tech press has taken to calling tablet computers “Slates” now, based on an unlikely Apple rumor. Now, word on the street is that netbooks that run on mobile OSes like Android are being dubbed “Smartbooks.” Get it? It’s a netbook that runs on a smartphone OS.  Cute.

Ars Technica wrote up a piece about many of the “smartbooks” being showcased at CES this week. The complaint is that the current crop “lacks polish.” Well, of course it does. These are machines being designed BEFORE their manufacturers can copy Apple’s version.

There are now two main types of these devices out there on the market. Ones that run full-fledged desktop OSes like Windows or Linux, and ones that run mobile phone OSes like Android (which, in essence is just Linux, too, albeit a pared-down Linux). Neither of these strategies works, of course, because in one case you’re trying to shoehorn a much too-powerful OS into a small form factor and low-speed processor, comparatively, and in the other case you’re taking an interface designed for a tiny screen and many other limitations and running it on a much bigger machine with more power. 
The tablet/mid-size form-factor machine that Apple introduces in a few weeks is very likely to do neither of these things, as [John Gruber](http://daringfireball.net/2009/12/the_tablet) suggested a while ago. I agree wholeheartedly with him. Apple’s Tablet (whatever it’s called) will have a UI designed specifically for it. That’s the reason why Apple will be successful where others fail. It’s the “polish” that’s missing from all these other devices at CES this week.
Tech companies are still making the mistake Microsoft has continually made over the past decade. You can’t just take the product you’ve already made, put it in a new box and expect people will buy it. You need to start every product discussion with “Why does this thing need to exist?” Then, by all means, utilize what you have that already fits that purpose, but also be ready to create something new whenever what you already have doesn’t fit that function. The core of OS X was a great foundation for a phone OS. Desktop OS X’s UI was not a good UI for a phone. So Apple leveraged what it had for the core, and created its own new UI. The tablet will be no different. 

I agree with Microsoft (and snow is predicted in Florida)

Ars Technica is quoting Microsoft’s Robbie Bach today, suggesting that Google’s move to make its own branded phone while still distributing Android to partners is a mistake.

I couldn’t agree more. And who would know this better than Microsoft, the company that screwed its Plays for Sure partners with the Zune and suffered greatly for it? As I’ve said many times, Google is following a strategy that clearly failed for Microsoft. And now even Microsoft is agreeing with me. 
In other news, [snow is predicted in Florida](http://www.weather.com/). Not exactly hell freezing over, but close. 
Ars’ Emil Protalinski suggests that this move is not the same as Microsoft’s, of course, because Android is free, while Microsoft always charges licensing fees. True, but I do think that fuzzing up the brand by having some phones simply running Android while others are stamped with the official “Google” seal of approval is a crappy business model. If you’re Joe Consumer, and you have the choice between two phones, one that is called a “Google” phone, and one that is called a Droid, how would you know that they’re both running the same software, or that the Droid phone will be able to run some of those apps you already bought for your old Google phone? It’s confusing, and it gives clear favoritism to certain manufacturers. 
And there’s also the fact that Google specifically said it never intended to brand its own phones. What’s to stop them from charging for the OS five years from now? Who wants to be dependent on an unpredictable partner? Someone who can pull the rug out from under you at any moment? Ask Dell, HP, Compaq how they feel about the way Microsoft has treated them over the years.
Maybe that’s why Samsung has decided to develop its own OS. And Palm stopped licensing Windows Mobile for its own custom OS. 
The idea of licensing an OS, free or not, is getting antiquated. Too many bad memories out there. Apple’s model of controlling both the hardware and software makes a lot of sense.