Needleman writes, “What you can do with a screen-only computer gets really limited when you expand the device beyond pocket size. There are two big limitations. First, you need a keyboard for doing real work. At least most people do.”
MacDailyNews Take: Daring Fireball’s John Gruber said it best:
A hardware keyboard is a significant selling point for only one group of customers: those who already own a phone with a hardware keyboard, and that group is a niche. A nice niche, but a niche nonetheless.
Here’s why. Most normal people have yet to buy their first smartphone. That’s why the stakes are so high — it’s a wide open market frontier, but it won’t remain that way for long. Normal people aren’t planning to do much typing on their new smartphones, and they’re probably right. Any smartphone QWERTY keyboard, software or hardware, is going to be better than what most people are used to, which is pecking things out on a phone with a 0-9 numeric keypad.
I type far better on my iPhone than I expected I’d be able to, and that seems to be true for everyone I know who owns one. The only people who struggle with the iPhone keyboard are those who are already accustomed to a hardware smartphone keyboard.
Please see also: Palm Pre users complain about lack of virtual keyboard – July 09, 2009
Needleman continues, “And typing on the screen, even if you can do it, is an ergo disaster. Either you have to keep your hands up in the air (if the computer is mounted vertically in front of you) or you have to hunch over your screen to see it… While a tablet may be great for browsing the Web and viewing media, it’s too big to replace a phone and too limited to carry around as a work computer.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: First, a pair of headphones with a mic – just like the ones that come with iPhones today, prove that the “too big to replace a phone” issue is already solved. Second, the “too limited to carry around as a work computer” is – like everything else in Needleman’s article – simply a criticism of current Windows-based tablet PCs, that understandably, and for all of the reasons and limitations that Needleman covers in his full article, never caught on with a wide audience.
It is, of course, impossible to apply Needleman’s criticisms to an “Apple tablet” not only because nothing at all concrete is known about the device , but because Apple historically doesn’t simply enter markets with new products; Apple’s new products redefine and/or create new markets.
It’s when Needleman starts proclaiming things as if they’re a done deal instead of a nebulous rumor that he gets in trouble. For example: “If Apple releases a tablet in the rumored $700 to $800 price range, it will die. Not because people won’t love it and lust for it, but because they won’t be able to justify it.”
Rafe, you really can’t say that “it will die” when you don’t yet know what “it” is. People who prejudged the rumored “iPhone” based upon the so-called “smartphones” available just before Steve Jobs unveiled the actual iPhone didn’t fare too well, either.
Call us crazy, but if it were us, we’d wait to see exactly what Apple has cooked up, what it’s capabilities will be, what its form factor is, and how much it will cost before writing and publishing articles about its viability.
In the meantime, Rafe, you’ve been iCal’ed.