The Future is Tablets? Probably..........

[Dr. Righteous]

There are few "gadgets" that get my attention. Something has to be ultimately practical and make things easer for me.
The advent of Tablets is something I was looking forward to. Long before the iPad I mused about a computer that was no bigger than the screen itself that was touchscreen, supported wi-fi, bluetooth, etc. So one could sit in their easy chair and use such a device for intent browsing, reading, and even playing games, use Skype, etc. Then came the iPad and now there is a plethora of like devices. In my opinion this will be the household computer of the future. The need for a desktop PC or even a laptop will go away.
Need to type a letter? Place the tablet next to you bluetooth keyboard. But I also expect voice recognition technology go accelerate and you will be able to clearly and accurately dictate what you want to the device. Data storage will more and more rely on cloud storage. Even hard core gamers will switch to tablets because future iterations will have very high performance and offer 3D screens.

I have noticed in many Sci-Fi movies and TV shows a similar device was common, looks like this was a prediction that will come true.

 

[Joe Average]

Been saying this since I was oh, maybe 5 years old (more or less) and watching Star Trek back in the early 1970s - yes I'm an old bastard and getting older and more bastardly by the day. There will come a time, probably not in the my lifespan, where voice and finger-control (or body-part motion) will be the predominant form of getting "data" into a computer.

Since we've come from a past where data existed primarily in written form, there has been a "changeover" period the past few decades where all that written or printed textual content has been slowly input into digital form by one method or another (typing it in, scanning it in, voice transcription software, etc). There will come a point where data simply isn't done in analog anymore - every new piece of information will be that way from the start of it's lifespan, whether it's spoken, typed (keyboard is analog of course but the info is digital as soon as it's typed), touched, pointed at, recognized, and consumed in purely digital form.

We're almost at that point presently, but all you have to do is find a newspaper or magazine, or open your mailbox and find all that junk to know we're still a long way from a total digital ecosphere for data and information. The Earth only has so many trees, and even replanting them in protected forests just isn't cutting it as more and more people are born and take up more and more space, consuming more and more "stuff."

The iPad wasn't the first, nor has it "done tablets the right way" as many people are mistakenly believing... far from it, and it's still far from being the best - there simply can't be such a device, ever, for every single person. It just happens to be the most popular because of the slick packaging and Apple's marketing department.

Old news to someone like me, but it sure does seem to be a hot topic for "n00bs" these days.

 

[Dr. Righteous]

The iPad wasn't the first, nor has it "done tablets the right way" as many people are mistakenly believing... far from it, and it's still far from being the best - there simply can't be such a device, ever, for every single person. It just happens to be the most popular because of the slick packaging and Apple's marketing department.

Old news to someone like me, but it sure does seem to be a hot topic for "n00bs" these days.

Agree, I only cited the iPad because it was the first commonly known device of this type. I myself wouldn't own one. But the unique thing about a tablet device is it's accessibility.
You don't need to know how to use a mouse or type or for that matter use any device . You just touch what you want on the screen. You are not sitting at a desk covered with "equipment"; you are in your easy chair, or in a coffee shop, or wherever. But consider the texting "short hand" that is annoying to most on the receiving end. What is it really?
It is data compression. And a computer can decipher "R U 4 real" to "Are you for real" pretty easily.
Most computer users have long since gone from a desktop PC to a laptop. I'm not including a geek like myself who has several PC with linux, windows, etc, and a laptop with a dual boot. But the average person. Most have a laptop they primary use for work, and they take their work home on their laptop. Just as this replaced the desktop PC for most people, the tablet will replace the laptop.
I also think there will be an interface for vehicles. Just place your tablet on the mounting station on the dash, it connects to a cell based internet connection. It is all your communications, you navigation, you music player etc, etc. When you get to where you are going, pick it up and take it with you.
This will become as common place as any other technology we have become accustom to.

 

[Joe Average]

If you're looking for one device that can pretty much do all that and potentially more, the Motorola Atrix, just announced at CES, could be that device or at least the very first one of its particular breed - ONE device that fulfills a shitload of roles.

It's a cell phone.
It's a smartphone.
It's a GPS receiver.
It's got dual cores.
It has HDMI ready to roll.
It's a portable media device.
It's dockable into a "laptop" form factor.
It has a native high resolution display (540x960 portrait)
It can dock and work with a full blown keyboard and mouse.
It's the more powerful device of its kind and it's just the first.
It's useful in pretty much any situation: home, mobile, vehicles, etc.

At this point, calling it a "smartphone" is a bit misleading, this is truly the first superphone in my opinion. The only downside to this monster of mobility?

It'll be sold with service by AT&T.

 

[Cat1yst]

Im going to disagree with you here. A laptop is able to fit heatsinks for more powerful components, along with a physical keyboard. Even supposing that virtual keyboards become better and even to the point where its as interactive for touch typists such that productivity can be increased, you still question the availible screen space post large virtual keyboard. Note here that the whole point of a tablet is one peice. So for the viability of a tablet to takeover a laptop in the portable productivity market, youre gonna need a pretty big tablet. Then you have to factor in weight, power consumption, and form factor of the large screen, and that brings down the portability benefit of the tablet.

Replace? No. Gain greater market share than? Possible

 

[tlee]

i will disagree with you tablets have limits, and what i was gonna say cat1yst basically got it, there will always be desk top and laptops, tablets are nice i dont like them but they are a great device i will admit, can they play games well sure they can, but can they play games with great graphics, nah, maybe sometime in the future they will but laptop is so much easier imo, i have my big 17 inch screen, with the keyboard attached i just fold it up and go on top of that i can play numerous games

 

[Joe Average]

I think the point that so many miss here is always the same: the point isn't to be able to do all the hard work that requires all the incredible processing power on the tablet itself, it's to use the tablet as a way of accessing/controlling/delegating/etc all that power remotely.

While not the best example of this particular situation, it's applicable nonetheless:

Go watch an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation - and I use that series as the ultimate example since on Star Trek (The Original Series) the "tablets" were basically clipboards that didn't serve much purpose.

On ST:TNG, the PADDs (Personal Access and Display Devices), the massive computational power to get work done wasn't in the PADDs themselves, regardless of how large they were (and PADDs came in a wide variety of shapes and sizes) - they were simply ways of accessing the incredible "horsepower" of the FTL-capable (that's Faster-Than-Light) main processing core on the ship, or in the home, building, workplace, city, space station, etc.

That's what we're moving towards, in the big picture: access anywhere anytime for any purpose, which we are sadly quite far from at this point even in spite of wireless technology and everything related to it moving forward at such a rapid pace.

I've got a quad core monster PC here at home and while I could be sitting at it right now typing this on the relatively slow keyboard even though I can bang out 115 wpm, I'm not - I'm standing in my kitchen, making dinner for my Wife and I, and I'm dictating this into my HTC HD2 smartphone that is running Android 2.3 Gingerbread (an OS the device was never designed to run, of course). Sure it flubs a few words now and again but, considering how I'm actually participating and responding with this voice ability changes the game rather dramatically.

"And that's all I have to say about that... quite literally since I'm dictating this post." (smiley added by hand, however)

 

[corrupted223]

/hijack
And what program are you using for dictation?
sorry I just had to ask, I have been looking for something that would work well, thanks JoeA.

 

[Serpico]

Sure is!

Last week I was at CES. This isn't about seeing all of the incomplete "me-too" products on the floor, it is about the fact that I packed light and didn't even bother bringing a laptop, I just packed my iPad and my Kindle. Awesome!

At CES, one of the big things in home AV this year was AirPlay integration. Marantz, B&W, even fancy pants companies like McIntosh were showing off airplay compatible receivers, speakers, and pre-amps. This gives you total control over your home theater via iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch without any extra devices like an AirPort Express, AppleTV, or computer running iTunes, it all goes straight to the AV equipment. It was super cool, and it is a huge hit to companies like Crestron and their $15,000 touchscreen home theater integration/automation packages. Thanks to these powerful mass market devices, it so much cheaper and easier to do it better now.

Finally, the future: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvxSSGUtTYA

Really cool

 

[mycomputersucks]

i think joeaverage is the closest. tablets might replace netbooks but real mobile users would need laptops. dictation is cool but the business/gov world will never use it. the spoken word can easily be overheard, hehe.

tablets are devices meant to supplement existing hardware. i can see a household w/ multiple tablets for daily use but there will still be a need for some centralized computing. i foresee home servers being much more popular in the next 10 years. cloud is nice but bandwidth will always be limited. people will still want their content locally, ISPs will probably prefer that as well, haha.

it wouldn't surprise me if the home servers move to the living room completely. MS has plans for the kinect that are beyond the xbox. the average home user has their pc for content consumption. MS could release a device that handles tv/dvr, all content serving/storage as well as gaming. and all controlled w/o the typical input devices.

 

[heatlesssun]

Some slates are MORE powerful than your average laptop: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004HKIIFI/ref=ox_ya_os_product

The battery life isn't that of a mobile OS device but at 2.5 lbs this is a LOT of laptop. No built in keyboard but all that requires is a design change to give it a detachable keyboard. There have been Tablet PCs with that type of design, will be again, and there there's the Lenovo hybrid Android/Windows laptop/slate and the Asus Transformer

Laptops and slates are going to essentially morph in the same device smaller slates will come with better docking options.

 

[legendz411]

If you're looking for one device that can pretty much do all that and potentially more, the Motorola Atrix, just announced at CES, could be that device or at least the very first one of its particular breed - ONE device that fulfills a shitload of roles.

It's a cell phone.
It's a smartphone.
It's a GPS receiver.
It's got dual cores.
It has HDMI ready to roll.
It's a portable media device.
It's dockable into a "laptop" form factor.
It has a native high resolution display (540x960 portrait)
It can dock and work with a full blown keyboard and mouse.
It's the more powerful device of its kind and it's just the first.
It's useful in pretty much any situation: home, mobile, vehicles, etc.

At this point, calling it a "smartphone" is a bit misleading, this is truly the first superphone in my opinion. The only downside to this monster of mobility?

It'll be sold with service by AT&T.

I will be selling the two iphones I have to fund my purchase of this Atrix.

There is not phone available thats better