“Apple recently stated that it sold 15 million iPad tablet computers in 2010. With competition rising from the Google Android ecosystem, the upcoming BlackBerry Playbook, and surely from Microsoft, too, it’s easy to believe tablets are the future dominant form of mobile computing,” Evan Koblentz writes for Minyanville. “But you’d be wrong.”
“Tablets as we know them will remain hot for a couple of years, and then will fade away, forever marginalized into niche status,” Koblentz writes. “Price, size, and historic trends are the reasons why.”
“There are two ways tablet vendors can break their historic cycle of failure and keep the tablet experience alive. First, tablets’ best features such as multitouch screens could be incorporated into laptops with either fold-under or slider-style keyboards, resulting in a converged portable computer that some buyers may find more useful,” Koblentz writes. “Second, smartphones could be designed to unfold into tablets — the new dual-screen Kyocera Echo does just this– thereby retaining pocket size, smartphone price, and a more enjoyable viewing experience.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Unsurprisingly, historians are always looking backwards. This tends to produce some seriously stuck-in-the-box thinking. It also might explain why this article, published today, reads as if it’s years old. Koblentz’s big mistake is obvious: Using Microsoft’s and others’ impressive string of failures to predict the future of a different market created by Apple Inc.
Apple fully understands the history of tablet computing. That’s why they broke from it and are therefore not doomed to repeat it.
Mr. Koblentz, you’ve just been iCal’ed. We’ll return annually to revisit this article and see how it compares to reality. In the meantime, go get yourself an iPad, you sound like you’ve never touched one.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs, right after unveiling iPad 2 on March 2, 2011:
I’ve said this before, but thought it was worth repeating: It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. That it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing.
And nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices.
And a lot of folks in this tablet market are rushing in and they’re looking at this as the next PC. The hardware and the software are done by different companies. And they’re talking about speeds and feeds just like they did with PCs.
And our experience and every bone in our body says that that is not the right approach to this. That these are post-PC devices that need to be even easier to use than a PC. That need to be even more intuitive than a PC. And where the software and the hardware and the applications need to intertwine in an even more seamless way than they do on a PC.
And we think we’re on the right track with this. We think we have the right architecture not just in silicon, but in the organization to build these kinds of products.
And so I think we stand a pretty good chance of being pretty competitive in this market. And I hope that what you’ve seen today gives you a good feel for that.
…and in other news, a snarky smart-assed nerd ass-hat MDN threader explains why computer historians are old farts who should be stuffed into
steamer trunks, shipped to the Ukraine and forget about.
Was this guy born a moron, or did he learn to be one in school?
“Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.”
Winston Churchill
If this “computer historian” looked at Apple’s history he would know that naysayers were misguidedly predicting the GUI, mouse, iPod, iPhone and iPad would be fads at best. His prediction does not tell us that tablets will go away; if anything, in his scenario laptops would be changed to be more like tablets.
Does anybody really care what he says
Laptops with multitouch screens have existed for somewhere around two years now, haven’t they? But nobody really cares about them.
Tablets with fold-out keyboards have consistently failed to catch on with consumers for roughly two decades.
And this Evan Koblentz guy calls himself a computer historian? I thought knowing computer history would be prerequisite, but I guess not.
Also, “Kyocera Echo” and “price, and a more enjoyable viewing experience” in the same sentence? Is he practicing to be a stand-up comedian? Because just look at the thing: http://www.echobykyocera.com/
It gives you the awesome choice of either one small 3.5 inch screen, two small 3.5 inch screens displaying different things simultaneously giving you the highly sought-after experience of holding two handsets at once(“Now you don’t need duct-tape!”), or both screens together displaying a single image with an awful black stripe in the middle. That’s more enjoyable than a normal tablet how? Is this one of those jokes where the setup IS the punchline?
You want history, turkey?
…Take a time capsule trip to the future and write about the ‘all can do’ tool of the times that everyone has strapped to them: the holographic time rendering iPad… Now go write about the iPad’s history and early days and don’t forget to mention the cluless writer who wrote the above linked article.
Hit whore. Ignore.
Evan Koblentz is not-much-of-a computer historian, saying:
“… The Epson HX-20 (1982) and Tandy Model 100 (1983) were all the rage.”
That comment is silly.
Meanwhile he leaves out:
1) The Newton (as -hh pointed out)
2) Palm (!!!) and Palm wannabes.
3) The fact that “Tablets” are NOT ‘hot’.
What is HOT is the iPad, end of story.
There are no other successful tablet computers. So far the iPad has no competitors. Wannabes are merely wannabes.
Conclusion: This article is a laughable and ignorable FAIL.
I still think this is the future:
http://www.yankodesign.com/2009/04/29/macbook-touch-maybe-just-maybe/
historians second guess the past and are usually totally wrong about the future
the future is NO keyboard, no mouse, nothing to get in the way of expressing yourself to a computer system – not a crock of slide-out keyboard served with a dash of convertible touch screen – geez
Here’s one thing they completely screwed up: “Second, smartphones could be designed to unfold into tablets — the new dual-screen Kyocera Echo does just this– thereby retaining pocket size, smartphone price, and a more enjoyable viewing experience.” This states that it ‘retains pocket size’. Ok, you might be right, but that tablet better be really, REALLY thin. ‘retaining smartphone price’ is another argument of theirs. Wait a sec, isn’t the screen the really expensive part? Plus, you’re going to need more processing power for more screens… Finally, the article states that there will be a ‘more enjoyable viewing experience’. So you’re telling me that having a damn hinge down the middle of your screen makes it more enjoyable to look at? What!?