“Well Apple fans needs a new device every few years like an addict who needs a new high with a larger dose or different weed” This was what I thought when Apple announced iPad back in January 2010.

For the last six months, many electronics consumers are excited about the arrival of the new(?) category devices – tablets. Though the concept is nothing new, the latest avatar use best of the breed technologies – touchscreens, longer battery life, more power and memory and a strong ecosystem of applications and content. All forms of media is going agog over the Apple’s announcement – some excited, some disappointed but mostly talking about this. Instead of going deep into the technology details, I wanted to touch upon few things like social aspects, economics and media impact of such devices.

There is certain group we call early adapters/ Apple fanboys/ Kool Aid-geeks who will but anything that starts with an ‘i’ and sold by Apple’. Let us keep them aside and talk about regular consumers. What would they look for in a tablet and how will they use it? One thing that occurs to me whenever I use iPhone either at my office or my couch is – screen size. Many times I find that the full browser in the iPhone is underutilized due to the smaller size. It has great form factor, usually responsive though I might like a little more processing power and longer battery life, and importantly literally unlimited choice of applications.  But to read any thing using Safari or mail apps, is a royal pain. Now ipad is literally 3 times the diagonal width of iPhone. Will that be good enough for our needs? We will see.

Extensibility – As we all know, with iphone 3G,  Apple showed the world, that hardware and OS are only so much. It is the applications that matter.  With at least 150K potential applications  that can be readily used, the ipad is truly powerful.  I think we can easily replace, many special devices from POS terminals to FedEx delivery guys terminals with special apps. The sky is the limit I think.

Economics – Today we have to spend $300 (in US) for any decent net book.  If we consider a typical net book buyer and their primary reason to buy such a computer, it is usually to check email (web based probably) , browse Internet,  chat, view photos and social media. May be watch few movies though the integrated video cards are usually sloppy.  All these can be done in an ipad elegantly but more. In my opinion, spending that extra $200 (some say Apple tax) may be worth it, particularly, if the plan is to buy now. If we can wait for 8 more months, I expect to see tablets from HP, HTC and Motorola (and Nokia) with more power and battery life, better built in accessories like webcam for less than $300. Buy it or wait, still worth it than Net book. For enterprises, the low cost barrier and high usability should be a very good deal.

The TCO for a typical laptop (say from Lenova), costs enterprises anywhere from 2K to 3k with 2 years warranty, plus high cost software. My guesstimate the same for a tablet will be 60% of that or laptops. Plus less shoulder pains for the workers carrying them.

Social Impact – Amazon, in a way, paved way for these sub 10″ tablets with it’s best selling Kindle. I did not use it much, but it says something if it is the best selling item on their site.  Apple added multi-touch, and I am sure Android will polish it and perhaps make it better as well as open source it.  I will not be surprised if tablets replace typical laptops people carry around. For example, at my work I use Outlook 70% of the time, and remaining 30% all other apps including browsers, skype etc. All these and more can be done with a tablet. With such a potential for becoming ubiquitous, will the laptops become extinct? For example I did not see more than 20 CRT consoles in my entire work place. They got replaced by laptops or laptops with port replicators connected to keyboard, mouse and LCD consoles. Well we can get these for tablets like ipad now. And it is only beginning. Will school children just take one tablet instead of their entire bag of books? What about Doctors, sales people, executives? Why not?  Suddenly useful computing power. It doesn’t matter if I have a computer with 3 GHz processor in my home. And if it has only few free and purchased applications. With these tablets, and their apps price dynamics, we have very high utilization of mobile computing power.

Ergonomics Let us give it to Apple. They craft beautiful hardware. It is like an art and design philosophy.  But others are not far behind. I am very impressed by HTC, Samsung and Nokia.

What do readers think about tablets? Quick poll.

• What is your typical usage of personal computer?
• What are your thoughts on the tablets?
• Do you plan to purchase one?
• How do you want to use tablets, if you purchase one?
• Do you agree to what I wrote above
• Are there any other additional aspects we can cover around the tablets?

We are pleased to have RK Kuppurao, a veteran blogger with 250+ 280+ posts, write a post on this blog. Please encourage him with your comments. – Sukumar & Ganesh

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wenz d lst tym U rED gud eng? dont u tnk we ll shd taK mor tym 2 read w@ we read d wA dey shd B? w@ posibly justifies dis crunch of tym, nt 2 mention murdA of lang?

Where have the words gone? Where has the story gone? Where has the context gone?

As opposed to reading a story or have somebody having a plain conversation, we have lost ourselves in the hype of telegraphic communication. As technologies become advanced, sophisticated and affordable, it should allow for relaxed communication. By relaxed, I mean use of analogies, metaphors, comparisons etc…Because it is then possible to live the moment, reflect on your experience of life, reflect on the author’s (or the speaker’s) experience of life, have a “wah” moment and build mutual rapport – either interactive (speaking-listening) or non-interactive (reading).

Instead, we have given ourselves to believing that we don’t have time, words are expensive, story-tellers are boring and have permanently taken on the “cut to the chase” attitude.

SMS for example is great but has made people forget the beauty of words and sentences…kids have forgotten to spell words correctly.

Twitter helps make statements, but you can’t justify your statements, you cannot provide a build-up, you cannot say a story…because 160 is the limit….your urge to shrink your words increases, as the remaining characters approach zero…sometimes when you are done getting the message out of your system and find the remaining characters are “-14”, my gawd – the things we do to trim it down

You might say one shouldn’t be tweeting in that case. Now, who do you think is going to spend time reading a ¾ page blog on it? People want it faster, people want the summary – coz that is the only way they can swallow more. They want to be following 246 people on Twitter and read that many more tweets than read a well-written blog.

If I’d noticed how quickly social media tools became popular, I should know these are not going to change. We are not going to – all of a sudden – adopt a slow movement.

But all I ask of you is this – next time you write something, type “love” instead of “lv”. Next time you write/tell somebody a story, refrain from cutting to the chase. Remember, we are in no great scarcity of words (or time).

Wl U?

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You can read more of RK’s writings on his own blog at kuppurao.com

Prolog

The telcos have been talking about their 3 screens since last year. Interestingly,  Microsoft recently has started articulating the 3 screens and a cloud as their strategy (PC, Cellphone and TV being the 3).  Let me go out on a limb and lay it down – Microsoft’s’ 3 Screen Strategy is Dead on Arrival.  Stay tuned.

Obviously, Mobile Phones Rule

The rapid rise of the mobile phone market with 4.1B units in use worldwide is a phenomenon that everyone in the tech world is familiar with. And in case you are still interested in PC stats, they are expected to hit 2B only in 2014.

Similarly, everyone will agree that  iPhone, RIM..  have shown the immense potential of the smart phone at the high end.  That makes it is easy to see why Microsoft and others would pick the 3rd screen as the mobile.

But are Mobile phones sufficient?

Not quite.  And this is mainly due to the newly emerging scenarios of usage:

1. Curl on the bed and read an e-book.

2. Share photos and/or videos from the most recent vacation with a friend.

3. Have a Skype video call with someone across the globe.

4. Check facebook/twitter updates

Combined with some traditional usage – browse the web,  type up a short document or a presentation. And maybe there are  few more simple scenarios, none of which fit the mobile phone form factor, especially when you consider doing the above over an extended period of time.

Judging from the reactions to  my previous post on PCs, i don’t think PCs (as well as Macs) can be effective as well, although technically they can do all of the above except possibly no.1. Not to mention the enormous learning curves of PCs/Macs for the average user who is not tech-savvy.

The 4th Screen

Clearly a new type of device that can do all of the above is warranted. Will it be the much anticipated Apple iTablet or iPad or whatever?   To me Time Magazine’s concept video, embedded below,  nails it (though it omits  a video camera and not knowing its weight).

The 5th, 6th, Nth Screens..

I was talking to Priya Raju and she said something very interesting and insightful – why don’t we analogize screens to the clock face showing time. Now,  time has become a feature of many devices  starting from a car to a microwave oven.  So why not we have a cloud-backed screen in more devices? Why restrict them to 3 or 4 screens?

Epilog

What do you think? Do you agree that Microsoft’s 3 screen strategy is flawed (the cloud part of it seems correct though) ? What is your vision for the future?

Notes & References:

1. Scoble has some great thoughts on how Chrome OS could be targeting a new ~100$ device.  He takes the example of a computer in the kitchen to look at recipes that could use Chrome OS. I don’t agree with Scoble. i don’t think anyone wouldn’t want something as complicated as a PC in the kitchen even if it sports Chrome OS.

2. Sergey Brin on Chrome OS & Android Convergence . Interesting thoughts on how the mobile and netbook markets are converging.

3. Although the Amazon Kindle is a great device. I found it a tad heavy, preventing the curling on the bed with a book scenario,  and limited in scope and function for a device at its price point.

4. I found the Time Inc concept video via this article.

Kawaii – Japanese for cute is sweeping the Japanese marketplace. Hello Kitty is an example of cute products which has made it stateside. Many products like toasters, cell phones, flash drives and air-conditioners have been Kawaii-ed in Japan. Piers Fawkes of PSFK tells me that this has been going on for a few years now. <Via Hemispheres Magazine>

Now you know why Steve Jobs’s Keynotes are so good.