Wozniak: Tablet is the PC for 'normal people'

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/040411-wozniak-tablet-is-the-pc.html

by alphadoggs • 15 years ago

84 75 15 years ago

ThomPete4• 15 years ago

Yes it is and there is a very simple reason.

The tablet removes abstraction between the user and the interface elements to be interacted with.

The engineers who invented the touch screen has done more for the field of usability than any UX or usability expert could ever hope for.

Now the big question for me is. Will apple forget about the enterprise market?

dman• 15 years ago

Completely agree. They do need to solve the text input problem though. I have had to consciously reduce my usage of the ipad since it seems to put me in read mode vs write mode.

buro9• 15 years ago

There's less of a text input problem on the iPad than there is on a mobile phone.

Since I've used smartphones with software keyboards I find myself in the habit of replying only when I get home, the phone becoming little more than a notification device.

At least on the iPad I respond a little.

I find myself seriously considering a blackberry again. I'd miss the software but know my response rate whilst mobile would soar.

mambodog• 15 years ago

I have fantastical thoughts of some kind of surface that can alter its shape to provide the tactile feedback that touchscreens are lacking... though these thoughts will likely remain in the domain of science fiction.

InclinedPlane• 15 years ago

It's not a big deal. As the tablet matures eventually you'll just be able to connect a usb/bluetooth keyboard to one, when necessary.

angusgr• 15 years ago

The engineers who invented the touch screen has done more for the field of usability than any UX or usability expert could ever hope for.

Which is interesting in itself because for the first 30-odd years of touchscreens they were largely a usability nightmare for anything more complex than simple multiple-choice buttons (and even then, often sub-par.)

Partially due to technological limitations (low-res resistive screens), but partially because traditional interface abstractions don't translate at all well.

It took clever UX engineering around touchscreens for them to get past the gimmick factor and become useful and immersive mainstream computing interfaces.

ThomPete4• 15 years ago

Agree.

But this was only possible due to proper processing power. The instant feel of the iPhone GUI flow makes all the difference.

anon1385• 15 years ago

I'm reminded of Alan Kay talking in 1987[1] about GRAIL (Graphical Input Language) on the RAND Tablet, which he calls the first "data tablet":

"When I saw that, and used it for half an hour in 1968, I felt like I was sticking my hands right through the display and actually touching the information structures directly. This was the first system I'd ever used, and practically the only one since, that I've called truly intimate. It was this degree of intimacy that was so important in a user interface."

Interestingly he mentions that one of the reasons for the creation of the RAND Tablet was that their economists and other computer users complained that they couldn't type.

[1] http://www.archive.org/details/AlanKeyD1987 Alan Kay: Doing with Images Makes Symbols GRAIL part starts at about 23:40

michaelpinto• 15 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook

dvdhsu• 15 years ago

Alan Kay, the one behind the Dynabook said:

>"When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it’s the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you’ll rule the world."

http://www.edibleapple.com/alan-kay-on-the-iphone-and-the-ip...

muhuk• 15 years ago

    "We've never had an argument," he said. "We're just in
    different places, and we're different people." Jobs was
    interested in running a company, while Wozniak was and
    remains an engineer at heart.

jbigelow2• 15 years ago

I'm sorry but tablets being for "normal people" sounds out of touch. My dad is a 58 year old fire fighter, he couldn't have been any less of a "computer person" yet he emails, manages his iTunes/iPod, and can stalk me on Facebook with ease (too much ease in fact when it comes to FB). And to top it off, he has done all this on a.... Windows PC, I type that without a shred of irony but many will read it as such.

Face it, ATMs mostly run a custom UI on top of a Windows kernel, Police cruisers all have laptops attached to the dash, the US Postal Service will be out of business sooner rather than later because email and by extension the PC has been for "normal people" since the turn of the century. Anybody who hasn't interfaced in someway or another with a PC (regardless of OS) at some semi-regular interval over the last 10 years probably won't discover a need to now just because of the increased portability of the tablet form factor.

bonch5• 15 years ago

So your dad knows how to use Outlook, iTunes, and Facebook. Can he install applications? Update drivers? Install Windows security updates as they come out and keep his anti-virus up to date? Tablets remove all that stupid maintenance crap, and that's why they are PCs for normal people.

kenjackson• 15 years ago

You still need to know how to use iTunes to use an iPad.

Additionally, you generally don't need to know how to update yur drivers or antivirus. Those get updated automatically on Windows. The only thing you need to know how to do is install applications. Which 95% of the time is to double-click setup.exe or install.exe.

I'm the tech support guy for my extended family. I support around 30 or so computers. What I've found interesting is over the past year or two is that support calls have dropped to about one every other month. And they're no longer things like, "My computer isn't working." They're more like, "How do I know that the backup program will work when I need it?"

jbigelow2• 15 years ago

Why does he need to use Outlook? He uses Yahoo mail. He managed to install iTunes. The printer installed without a hitch via the HP software. Windows updates install themselves these days unless you disable it.

My mom is paranoid about viruses and installed Symantec, but the paranoia also ensures that they don't click on weird crap coming thru email. Sidenote: my mom upgraded the laptop herself from Vista to Win7 without bugging me, praise jeebus!

PCs aren't mystical, I don't know if the expertise of maintaining them is some kind of totem that geeks cling to but hearing about problems with them is the exception instead of the rule these days.

Yzupnick• 15 years ago

I think you are confusing tablets as a form factor with tablets as they are currently implemented today. There is no reason pcs can't remove all that stupid maintenance crap as well. (In fact it is on list of startups that Ycombinator is looking to fund.) And it is entirely possible that tablets can become just as cumbersome in that regard.

DarkShikari2• 15 years ago

Why does the fact that the input mechanism is a finger instead of a mouse affect installation of applications, installing security updates, and updating drivers?

These are two completely independent factors.

There is nothing magical about a touch screen that instantly removes all the complexity in an operating system: you're drawing false correlations. "This tablet X is easier to install applications on than this computer Y. Therefore, touch interfaces make installing applications easier."

photophotoplasm• 15 years ago

I have trouble believing even "normal people" will want to use the tablet for anything except casual use. The desktop computer's monitor/keyboard/mouse setup is too efficient to be fully replaced by the touch screen.

Not saying that tablets won't find their own niche, but they aren't suited for heavy workloads that increasingly large numbers of "normal people" need to do on computers.

The biggest legacy of tablets is going to be how the ideas behind them influence desktop computers. I'm expecting most consumer operating systems to become more "appliance-like" and more tied to services provided by their developers. The success of iOS makes it almost inevitable that this model will be ported to the desktop.

jpravetz• 15 years ago

Correct. I have two 'normal' people in this house, and neither of them could or would get their work done on today's iPad. They are on Macs. For them, and myself as IT support person, the most interesting feature of the iPad might be the app management model and anything that makes maintaining the OS and applications (not just 'apps'), plug-ins and other resources (eg. fonts) easier.

ugh2• 15 years ago

I think many normal people use their PC at home much, much longer for "casual use" than for work. So, I would reverse your assessment, the PC will keep its niche for the odd non-casual use at home but tablets will absolutely dominate when it comes to what people use home computers for the most, casual things.

gnaffle3• 15 years ago

For what _most_ people actually do, which is email, browsing and word processing and other productivity work, I'm having trouble believing that a tablet won't work equally well.

Maybe future tablets will be larger than 10" or support multiple displays, or multiple tablets working together, or maybe with external keyboards added, but except for niche tasks (graphic design which is often mouse/pen based) or CAD, I think they are a big step forward. That doesn't mean that advanced users won't stick to the desktop interface.

People said the same thing when the mouse became popular and the keyboard / command line interface dominated. I still use the command line interface every day because it's very efficient at what I do, but I do acknowledge that most people nowadays never will.

dkarl• 15 years ago

My seventy-year-old dad still isn't at ease with Windows after fifteen years of having Windows PCs at home, but he's a master of his iPad.

However, he still uses Windows for email and posting on the web, because he hates typing on the touch screen. He tried the keyboard I got him for the iPad, but it ended up gathering dust on a shelf somewhere. My dad might be stuck in the pre-computer age, but he isn't stuck in the pre-keyboard age. He knows what a decent keyboard is. The keyboard is one of those things that people don't want to give up.

The folks talking about the iPad being the PC for "normal people" are looking forward to a future where nobody except nerds uses a computer before the age of eighteen. It's premature to speculate what a computer for "normal people" ought to look like until the definition of "normal people" stabilizes. Technological and economic development is changing the definition of normal people every day.

ThomPete4• 15 years ago

Yet for the first time normal people like your dad and my parents and other family members can figure most things out themselves. My dad have both iPad and iPhone and for the first time he figures out stuff on his own, he have had phones since they came out back in the late eighties always asked me about the most "easy" things. The input problem isn't solved yet but for most cases it just works.

patrickaljord• 15 years ago

Does this mean that ChromeOS devices netbooks and pcs are the PC for normal people? Time will tell I guess.

jasonwatkinspdx• 15 years ago

I think we'll need a new input method in the coming proliferation of touch ui based devices. Something like the old quickwriting research project perhaps. I have no idea how one brings about a social skill change like that. I suppose Palm did pretty good with their writing system. But in any case, I think if you just look at the problem the answer is a new input method for this form factor. How you get people there I have no idea.

wladimir3• 15 years ago

Good point, we really need a new text input method for a touch-centric world. On-screen QWERTY keyboards are inconvenient and especially slow. Something that allows for really fast typing using fingers only, no stylus should be required.

The lack of a good solution to that is the only thing holding me back from using a tablet. I'm mainly a producer not a consumer so I really need to be able to type text quickly...

edge17• 15 years ago

To your point, Steve Jobs made a similar comment at D8 -

Jobs: “When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. … PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people. … I think that we’re embarked on that. Is the next step the iPad? Who knows? Will it happen next year or five years from now or seven years from now? Who knows? But I think we’re headed in that direction.”

http://d8.allthingsd.com/20100601/steve-jobs-session/

ThomPete4• 15 years ago

One thing that I really appreciate about Steve Jobs is his honesty in these matters.

He could have ventured on saying that the iPad is the next step that would have been very marketingish. Instead of speaking in certainties he treats his own products with a respect for reality and critical thinking.

Just imagine if more CEO's would actually participate in honest discussion about their products like this.

tybris2• 15 years ago

I'm pretty sure that in the beginning all cars were cars.

davidhollander• 15 years ago

Does _anyone_ bother to fact check on Hacker News?

The first cars were not trucks, they were carriages. And your 35 horsepower Mercedes in the 1900s was not being bought by farmers but was being purchased by wealthy urban dwellers. The word "truck" by itself did not even refer to a motorized vehicle until the 1930s. Cars started out as a post-agrarian weakly powered luxury good for passengers before they ever became heavy duty farm implements, SJ's narrative is backwards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck

Step outside of the reality distortion zone, please.

micampe• 15 years ago

I once met a “normal guy”: he was really really lonely.

mdemare• 15 years ago

Normal people are people you don't know very well.

blub2• 15 years ago

The friendly touch UI does help, but the real reason seems to be that iPad is a much simpler system compared to Windows or any other full OS.

Google is doing the same thing with ChromeOS: how simple can we make this thing while still being useful?

rbanffy• 15 years ago

> The keyboard is one of those things that people don't want to give up.

Product idea #1 of the day: a clicky, compact Model-M-style keyboard for iPad. Extra plus points if it comes in Selectric colors.

rtaycher• 15 years ago

Am I the only one who doubts a lot of the magical usability of touch interfaces?

othermaciej2• 15 years ago

No, doubting the magical usability of touch interfaces is still a very popular viewpoint, and until recently was conventional wisdom amongst almost anyone in the know.

Touch interfaces actually do work pretty well though. Direct manipulation is just more engaging.

joebadmo4• 15 years ago

I agree that direct manipulation is engaging and intuitive, but I think it has fundamental ergonomic issues when you're talking about doing any sort of long-term, serious work. When you get to screen sizes that we're all using now at work, a handheld device is no longer feasible, and a large touchscreen monitor is silly for the same reason that whizbang Minority Report/Kinect interfaces are silly: you arms get tired very quickly.

This fantastic video comes to mind: http://10gui.com/video/

DarkShikari2• 15 years ago

Not at all. My own experience with iPhones and iPads has been awful, with the touch recognition being finicky and the lack of force-feedback making it nearly impossible to use.

The core problem boils down to the exact same reason why the Wii's interface is terrible: it forces you to make much larger, slower motions -- motions that can easily be misinterpreted and have very low accuracy -- instead of spending 0.05 seconds tapping a key or clicking a button.

Tablets are another fad like 3D movies. They're popular with a lot of people, but in the end, they just give everyone pounding headaches.

The fact that the interface is a fat finger instead of a mouse does not magically make the interface any easier to use. What mobile devices (not just tablets) have demonstrated is the power of simpler operating system user interfaces -- not that touch screens magically make everything a million times better. This will be the primary legacy of tablets, not the touch screen.

gnaffle3• 15 years ago

Of course, not everyone seems to get pouding headaches from 3D movies, and not everyone finds the touch interfaces finicky to the point of being impossible to use. Extrapolating from your own experience to conclude they are a fad is a bit shortsighted.

From my experience with iPhone/iPad, the people who "think" that the touch interface required precise input are the ones that end up with lots of spurious inputs, because they use very light and "careful" touches that are misinterpreted instead of letting the input prediction do its work.

I do agree that there is a lot to be done regarding keyboard input, but even the keyboards seems to work OK for most people.

blub2• 15 years ago

I've been thinking about this. Touch-only devices have lots of appeal, but fall short for a significant number of use cases. Slide-out keyboard + touch (+ mouse?) seems better.

atirip• 15 years ago

I find it hard to believe (me included) that anybody capable of having hacker news account is qualified to discuss about "normal peoples" computer usage.

donnyg107• 15 years ago

I think the ipad will only reach a point in which is has potential to push PCs out of the market once it no longer needs to be tethered to a pc for regular use.. Keyboards, size, and general interface are all this people acclimate to, but only being able to move things to the ipad from a PC? You can't get around the necessity for the PC there. When the ipad starts to feel more like its own device, I could feasiblly see Wozniak and Jobs' vision becomming reality. But till then, its a dependent device with a great UI.

asknemo• 15 years ago

From my experience, most tablet users use the tablet for 1)videos 2)really casual games 3)random browsing - not particularly PC-ish in my opinion. To say 'Tablet is the PC' is in some way less accurate than saying 'Tablet is the new TV' or 'Tablet is the best mobile browser'.

arethuza• 15 years ago

Exactly - I don't think having an iPad had changed the amount of time I spend sitting in front of a desktop PC or laptop. But it has changed how I watch video, read books and get my news over breakfast.

city41• 15 years ago

But for "normal" people, videos, casual games and random browsing is what a PC is for.

tybris2• 15 years ago

I guess normal people get bored with their "PC" quite easily.

TeMPOraL• 15 years ago

What about out-of-the-office work applications? Storage rooms, hospitals, factories, delivery - everywhere you have to walk around with information instead of sitting by your desk.

I can imagine (I don't know if anyone actually tried this) a facility with many (company-owned) tablets that people exchange between themselves instead of paper reports and forms, much like PADDs in Star Trek.

brisance• 15 years ago

This is entirely anecdotal and may not be representative of everyone else's experience, but since the launch of iPhone and iPad, I have yet to receive a frantic, middle-of-the-night-my-iOS-device-crashed call.

Sure, there are the odd hardware failures here and there (typically one of the buttons is no longer responsive, or the touchscreen fails to register touches in one part of the screen) but overall, it has been pretty stress-free for my role as the "family tech support guy".

So yes, I would tend to agree the iPad might just be what the tech industry needs to get more people interested in computing.

LordBodak• 15 years ago

One concern I would have, with more people using iPads instead of computers, is the middle of the night "I dropped my iPad and now it won't turn on, how do I save my data?" call. Apple really needs to get on the ball with some sort of backup that doesn't require plugging it into a PC.

bluekeybox• 15 years ago

I imagine this is what their NC data center is for.

drdaeman• 15 years ago

Let's consider that "normal" people play games. Sure, there are gaming consoles of all sorts, but this does not change a fact there are a lot of games on PC. You can't effectively play - for example - 3DFPS on tablet. Well, you could hook up keyboard and mouse, but there any difference from desktop PC. Except for tablets have less powerful hardware than any typical "gaming" PC.

Let's consider "normal" people work. Even throwing out possibly "non-normal" jobs with high hardware resource demands (like photorealistic 3D graphic artists, or CPU-intensive engineering calculations), but even a secretary won't do any good on tablet. Touch screens are fine for tweeting, but are no good for editing a sufficiently large document.

Inverview summarized: iPad advertisement, nothing to see there.

MrFoof• 15 years ago

I'm a nerd's nerd. After the dot-com bust I used to collect SGI, DEC and Sun hardware. I cut my teeth on a Commodore 64 and also VAX VMS (in a DECNET cluster). I built my own PCs from 1992 through 2007. I work currently as a data warehousing consultant.

My primary computer at home is now an iPad 2.

Yes, I have a computer with a 27" display and tons of memory and four cores and a GPU suitable for playing new games, but it doesn't matter much because it's been collecting an awful lot of dust. As long as I can get my paws on another one, my parents are getting one as a joint Mother's/Father's day gift, because I doubt they'd touch their iMac much anymore.

"I think we'll need a new input method in the coming proliferation of touch ui based devices." I don't. I type at 80-90% of the speed as a physical keyboard. And the thing that slows me down is having to switch keyboard pages for numbers and symbols -- otherwise I'm probably closer to 95% of my typing sped. I bang out frighteningly long emails on an iPad with no loss of efficiency. If it was bad, I wouldn't hesitate to go to my desk that's less than twenty feet away. The only thing that solves the input problem is a physically larger space for a larger virtual keyboard, and improvements to autocompletion algorithms and dictionaries. And time -- aren't there people who can type at furious rates on a Blackberry? There are, but they weren't that fast on Day 1.

Can I program on an iPad? No. Actually, I can't do a lot of things on the iPad, but all those things are what I consider "work" -- I don't do image retouching to relax, nor do I relax by entering metadata for media, write applications, nor model databases. For everything I do that I consider "play", the iPad does all of it. Brilliantly.

Computers are for work. Tablets are for play. Most people's computing tasks are in the latter category, and for that reason, tablets (or at least the iPad) will succeed.

This isn't coming from a septuagenarian either -- I'm barely in my 30s.

Hominem• 15 years ago

I am the same way. My iPad never leaves my sight. I even surf on it while I am sitting in front of computer compiling code.

beej71• 15 years ago

sigh I guess I'll just never get it. I have an iPad sitting right here, but I don't use it for a damn thing except testing.

I surf the web on a desktop computer--while it's compiling code, even--and choose that experience 9 times out of 10 over surfing on the iPad (or any tablet or phone for that matter).

Surely I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Wozniak: Tablet is the PC for 'normal people'

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