![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
) is that I don't see a reason why. I barely see a reason for an iPad without more third party apps to motivate me, so why would I want a 15" tablet running OS X unless it had a seriously specialized interface and purpose? I have never seen one of these 15" Modbooks in the wild, I reckon most people don't see a reason either, not over a normal Macbook.BTW, very fascinating article on Mr Brass from 2000, here he talks about his vision for tablets. He was years ahead of the curve: http://www.seattlepi.com/business/bras11.shtml
It would be funny if true, but I doubt it. Apple has had tablets in development since the mid-80s. They had a G4 based tablet in development that they canned in the late-90s because it would have been way too expensive to produce, too heavy, and with no battery life. Pointless, why not get a notebook instead? Instead they released the iPod. Years later, a tablet is still too expensive given the available technology. Instead they take that R&D and apply it towards the iPhone. All of their tablet R&D and multitouch acquisitions clearly trickled down to other mobile products, but the arrival of fast ARM processors and the groundwork laid by the iPhone and app store finally made a large screen tablet a viable product from a cost, ergonomic, performance, and software standpoint.
Again, a conspiracy type thing would be hilarious, but I doubt it, especially since he's putting his nuts out there so publically. First, if he was working with Apple then he just would have joined as an employee. Loads of people from Microsoft and other companies have ended up there, and vice-versa. Second, if he had secretly collaborated with Apple on a tablet and iPhone, shouldn't he just have kept his mouth shut instead of writing a controversial article in the frigging New York Times? That's painting a pretty big target on your back, especially if industrial espionage is a possibility.
Nah, I think he's just venting frustrations at a company where he was a small fry. People do it all the time.
You're consistently missing his point (which I don't necessarily agree with). He's not talking about a note-taking application, he's talking about the whole system being usable with only a stylus. Entering filenames, search queries and so on. But that's not even the point either, it's bigger than that. Handwriting recognition was big then, everyone tried to do it, Palm had the great graffiti scheme, WinCE had handwriting recognition that sorta worked once you learned how to trick it and so on. It took some getting used to, but it was working for lots of people and he saw a niche then for the kind of product iPad is today. But instead of trying to develop something around this concept, management decided not to embrace the concept fully and integrate it into a cohesive system, made a half-assed effort, and it failed. Unsurprisingly. I'm not sure if he's trying to draw a parallel with iPad's lack of a stylus or not, he doesn't seem to take a stand on whether he thinks it will be successful, but it seems maybe slightly more than coincidence that he brings this up.
He would have seen OneNote 2003 which was not robust, not reliable and begged for the 2007 refresh. It was a nice concept but One2003 was too problematic to be a serious office component. I'd wager most people on this forum have never even heard of it let alone see it. Most people were also not using tablets at the time either which OneNote was designed to work with.
The supposed unification of messaging, web resources and multimedia was not a natural process from the standpoint of the interface and frequently led to disorganized notebooks that negated the supposed benefits of the design.
I'm consistently amazed at the garbage people will go through just to complete a simple task because the marketing hype told them it was a good thing.
RTFP....
I compared the maturity of the Linux desktop RIGHT NOW to Windows 95