Boy, Microsoft and Apple have certainly done a number on all of us. I remember when OS was the back half of a Disk Operating System. Now an OS according to both MS and Apple is a graphical user interface as well.

Let’s start the revolution by writing a GUI that provides just a front end and make the DOS or the HOS (hardware operating system) a separate and distinct guy. Make the HOS do the basics and just add support as new types of hardware become available. Make the HOS a once every 10 years upgrade. Make several GUIs that run on the same HOS – a web surfin’ emailin’ IMin’ idiots GUI; a light weight mobile oriented touch GUI; a desktop GUI that’s easily vertical market customized.

Just some thoughts after spending all weekend working with IFilterGraph2, IMediaControl, IMediaSeeking, and everbody’s favorite, IVMRWindowlessControl9.

Regards,
Alan

The buzz of a new Apple Tablet mixing multitouch (a leap forward than iPhone) and handwriting is the thrue way to real success. With a really good virtual keyboard and well integrated, it could be a real winner.

http://www.looprumors.com/index.php?apple-itablet-the-mac-communicator

I owned a HP TC1000. “Poussif” Transmeta and so noisy ! At this time, the Samsung Q1 (2 GB RAM) and a iPhone are mine. The first lack of better interfaces for touch and go. On 7′ screens, where are comfortable virtual boutons for thumb clicks, thumb zoom, and virtual trackpad ? When the standard virtual Keyboard is locked, the software around is cramped. And when it is floating (with tweak to get it), anything is boring to manage. No this feeling with the iPhone, so nice to manipulate. Note that all my PC at home are with XP or Vista. It’s my first Apple machine…

So interface is the heart of new pleasure or new pratices around next UMPC generation. OS like Vista and software need more engenering for that. Bad exemple Vista Explorer has no icons for cut, copy, paste.. availables in XP Explorer ! I think Apple OS free resolution for Leopard is a big piece of new puzzle and multitouch screen too. I like short sessions on web with iPhone and Safari, i disliked it with my Asus MyPAL 610 and Windows Explorer. For Sam Q1, i use a very tweaked Firefox.

And 1024 x 768 is the minimal screen resolution we need for many softwares on UMPC 7′/ 9′.

A lot of great points above.

I’m “half-in” with Woadan with a touch specific OS. Basically I see the benefits for the consumer but I see the massive costs for the developer (for what is now a smaller market). I still can’t see why OS developers (linux/symbian/MS/apple) don’t appear to be capable of preparing stripped down versions for mobile devices (I don’t want anyone piping up about iphone or touch because until that OS is on a ultra macbook and we see how it copes with enterprise usage its just a pretty menu system for a phone and pmp). – I think part of the problem is that every device seems to come with xGB free so noone feels the limited constraints of developing and coding so that the end product is measured in kb rather than mb/gb!!

Tablet OEMs are scaling back because the market place is changing, rapidly… slates were gaining significant traction in medical and manufacturing businesses, but were barely breaking the surface in general office based businesses. They thought that they would have the jump on the kids of tomorrow in education with the advent of the paperless office… but the paperless office hasn’t arrived and all the while they kicking out $1000 convertibles, ultra’s have hit the $200-400 bracket. The kids of tomorrow want cheapness rather than a new paradigm.

Personally, I think that the OEMs should have taken a more agressive approach. If the EEE (and inevitable cheaper derivatives) dominate the education arena then that will be another generation who will look at you like a wild man when you suggest touch or ink. They should be unrolling slates to every nursery they can for as cheap a price as possible. That’s where kids are learning how to write, they shouldn’t be targeting the kids at uni, who type essays but kids who are learning how to write in the first place… This should be done with a view to creating a whole generation who either type or ink they should be competing with the pen and paper and not the laptop.

Now that rant is off my chest, the future of tablets depends on OEMs getting cheap (sub $100 slates) in the hands of every child in nursery education.

Motion didn’t even try to broaden the market for the LS800 even as UMPCs were being introduced and second and even third generations have been offered. If I’m spending a couple grand on a computer, it has to be possible for it to be my main computer, and nothing with a 40 gig hard drive could possibly replace a laptop or desktop. A person could work with the LS1600 or LS1700 as their main computer. Apple’s been offering iPods with more hard disk space. The LS800 is a gorgeous computer, and I was never in their market, unfortunately.

It’s so frustrating to look at a market that’s so close to being terrific: videos of the HTC Shift alternately make the inking look awkward and the keyboard; ditto the Fujitsu U810, though the P1610 looks brilliant. While the HP 2710p represents a real breakthrough in hardware and design, you can’t even find it on the consumer website.

But until inking is more integrated into the operating system, and not just feeling like an add-on, and in the programming, partly to see the ink side by side with text sort of the way GoBinder was able to put handwritten appointments and tasks side by side with text, it’s going to be for geeks. You couldn’t circle or draw arrows between handwritten calendar items in GoBinder (not blaming them, they were way ahead of their time–I lived in that program more than any other for a long time).

Handwriting recognition is HUGE, but pen computing hasn’t developed much beyond the Palm. I still can’t write a note to myself on an email the way I’d write a note to myself on an envelope and see it without an add-on software that still requires opening the email (instead of roll over or just seeing it). I can’t see from a calendar item if I’ve written notes on it or if it hyperlinks to OneNote. These seem obvious to me.

Crisp, lovely, saturated advertising won’t change these frustrations. We’re still at the nascence of this technology, where nobody quite knows what it should even look like, the way cars, telephones, and airplanes were in their early days.

Steve

I just took both tablet and UMPC to a conference where I had one hour sessions (I wasn’t a presenter) on IT in community colleges. I’m great with my tablets, but this was one frustration after another with inking and waiting for Outlook and OneNote, and I didn’t even try to mind map. Microsoft absolutely has handwriting recognition in a workable space, but as usual, their software makes far too large of demands on even the best hardware. The more powerful active digitizer dragged when I needed instant responses, and the UMPC requires such care to avoid vectoring, it’s ridiculous.

Why should anyone beyond the dedicated want one?

It looks like Apple did an outstanding job with touch screens, but not connectivity and handwriting, and Microsoft has done an outstanding job with handwriting recognition and pretty good with connectivity that requires periodically closing and restarting bluetooth, and hitting “Repair wifi” button, but not the smooth integration of handwriting with these things. For example, why should someone trying to enter information with a stylus onto a Google page require a lecture and demonstration on the TabTIP to look up where I can buy Nikes or where the next competitor of Starbucks is?

At my college, I know of four of us with tablets out of three to seven hundred instructors, three hundred full time, seven hundred part time (roughly), and there are none on campus for use in the library where they do have laptops for in-house loan.

But there’s a learning curve. I’ve been in meetings at the conference with other people holding both UMPCs and Tablets, but most used paper, and the paper looked easier. It shouldn’t have been, but to leaf through a legal pad or a notebook is as smoother than jumping from a page of OneNote, even if they’re all in the same section, and then jumping to Outlook and wait for a Contact to open, or task to modify, or event to be added; some things are effortless, such as adding a To Do from OneNote, but so many others are hurry up and wait. Some of the presenters had difficulties getting stuff up on the projectors.

College students, including my son who just went off as a freshman this fall out of state, I couldn’t convince to take a tablet to take notes in class. One or two at most have a laptop in my classes in any semester, and zero have ever had a UMPC or a tablet, but they do have games machines.

We need instant on, longer battery life, but more importantly a way to tap the Google text entry point and start writing, and tap gently, not poke, move from program to program as effortlessly as a touch iPod, etc.

At my own pace I can get it done, but I not only wouldn’t bother to get one for my mother, I couldn’t explain to her what the advantages are in a way she’d care. My son sees, understands, and doesn’t care.

These are business machines for meetings, but they ought to be indispensable to the student market.

UMPCs arent consumer items. They sell like tablets. To vertical markets and to professionals or early adopters that have a need or interest in their unique features.I dont really see those markets going away at all.

A new 4-5″ MID segment wont really affect tablets either.

BTW Woadan. I dont think making a touch OS from the ground up will make much difference. The apps all have to change too and you’re not likely to see finger friendly web apps for some time either! A finger friendly UI will help with launching and configuring the OS but most of the work needs to go into apps.

Steve

(nodding my head with the posts above)

I think when you get back to it, though, we need James’ vision of a new OS built from the ground up. And to go along with that, more apps that are written either specifically for inking, or at least to make good use of inking capabilities.

Maybe the makers know this and that is a part of their decision.

Woadan

I have seen some UMPC’s at Fry’s the Samsung the tiny Fujitsu and from time to time they have some tablets, but imho until a fire is lit under the buyers about why they want this and how cool it is just having them to play with will not prompt a sale. Having the consumer and I include business buyers as consumers start to demand that cool thing that will change their life and their business asking for a product changes what the retailer will carry.

While I agree with the sentiment, and the fact that there could definitely be more marketing, etc for the platform, I would clarify a couple points. As an above poster, I have seen HP’s convertibles in Best Buy, Circuit City, Office Depot and Micro Center. I have also seen Lenovo’s in Micro Center. Gateway convertibles were in Best Buy for a while, but I think they are just online now. However, in the UMPC format, the only store that I have seen one physically in, within the past 6 months is Micro Center. BB had them for a while, and they got pulled off the shelf, my CompUSA closed (as did most throughout the country) and I have never seen a UMPC in a Circuit City. Personally, I think there is room for both platforms, but neither will live up to their potential until consumers can play with them….

In this part of the world, most people have never heard of Tablet PCs and UMPCs. Whose fault is that? (Not mine!)

What’s even more sad is the fact that almost all UMPCs are not ink friendly. If OQO went out of business where would we be?