Steve Jobs' Prescience (Or: Who Wants A Stylus?)

It's funny because the desktop syncing is probably the worst part of the ecosystem. They didn't even attempt to make it work on Linux (fine, its a niche, but they also actively made it more difficult for open source software to work with newer models) and iTunes for Windows is one of the crappiest pieces of software on Windows, and that's saying something.

it's better at most non-geeky things than your macbook pro. i know because i own both.

A few kindles?

It's no longer 2003.

A Macbook Pro equivalent back then was a lot more than $1800.

An iPhone equivalent would have been really expensive and it would have had a 10 minute battery life. Combined WiFi+GSM chip sets were still new back then. Wireless data plans were running at around £2 per megabyte (packet) or a max of ~50kbps (channel at 1.5c/min+).

Trying to build a useful tablet, with wireless capability, with the money left over in the electronics budget of the average consumer, after paying for a MBP and an iPhone? Not possible.

There would have been too many compromises for Apple at the time, whereas in 2010 they can do a pretty good job at it.

You may not need or want one. I think the bigger point is our ideas about portability are evolving. In the late 80s people who wanted a portable computer were happy with 10-15lbs machines that were basically portable desktops. Throughout the 90s we started to get something that looked like a modern laptop but still too heavy an expensive for most people to carry around. In the mid-00s we get the modern version of a laptop. ~5-8lbs, wireless connectivity, fairly inexpensive. In the last few years we're seeing the shift towards even smaller machines. Inexpensive <5lbs net books with wireless connectivity standard. So maybe the next step is <2lbs tablets. The trend of evolution is pretty clear: Smaller, more connected, lighter, cheaper, better battery life. For lots of people a MacBook Pro is no longer the ideal of portability. It's a heavy integrated desktop that has to be plugged in every 3 or 4 hours to keep working.

In my case, I was caught in the flood of Nashville and lost all my electronics. The next day I bought an ipad to do email, get on the internet, play a few games and read whatever books I had saved in dropbox or my work computer. I even was able to find some youtube videos on how to (try) and repair some of my stuff. Still couldn't save my motorcycle, though. The ipad has been fantastic and only $500.

There is the argument of "Why not just buy a netbook for $200?" To that question, I suggest you go try out an ipad and remember that you aren't going to do any coding on it. It's a pretty fantastic machine.

That being said, I am a computer programmer in a Vanderbilt research department. At some point I will have to pick up a laptop just to do some real coding work (and SC2 when it drops). For everything else, I love my ipad.

did you ever use a stylus? painfully unsexy in a pocket protector kind of way.

the stylus was a big reason why app interfaces were so terrible. it allowed lazy manufacturers to strap a pressure-sensitive screen onto a notebook and call it a tablet pc. crappy hardware disinterests great software developers.

I would love it if it had digital ink. Handwriting recognition means nothing to me but the ability to digitally add handwritten notes would make me buy the iPad. I was disappointed with the cancellation of the Courier.

If the iPad had digital ink and the ability to digitally markup documents with ink it would be the killer educational device.

Do handwriting interfaces have more traction in China, Japan, and Korea?

There's one reason I'd want a stylus on the iPad (or any other tablet device), and it's not for handwriting.

It's for sketching. Diagrams, wireframes, or just a squirrel in the park. Give me a simple sketching program - think Painter Light. Let it synch to a repository on my desktop. Let me use the tablet as an actual tablet via bluetooth when I'm actually at my desk.

I would probably pay bank for that.

Yes, but for now it's too close to the mouse. Multitouch needs to mature first.

Several companies sell a stylus for iPad, just not Apple.

Just think of all the employees that roll-up to those 500 CIOs who just had themselves a little giggle.

My favorite quote from the interview was "...one day we realized that death would eventually take care of this."

Still the user would have to learn a new way to write. Not great especially when you consider that things such as Dvorak have failed to get traction.

This is something I've considered before as well; in fact, I wonder why we aren't forced to learn it in school, considering we spend years in school, going to lectures and taking down notes of people talking as quickly as we can write.

In terms of computing, though, I think it would suffer many of the problems of handwriting recognition - wobbly lines, different sizes of people's writings, pens lifting off the page at different times - and some more of it's own.

For instance, Pitman shorthand comes in different versions - every few years they change the standard to try to make it more concise. Many of the shapes are in relative positions so the same thing above/on/below the line have different meanings, and the extra informational signals such as dots and dashes can be left off by more advanced people without changing the meaning.

Worse than that is that it's short because it's phonetic - so not only does the computer trying to recognise it have to do everything it does for handwriting recognition, but it also has another layer to do first - what sounds are you using and what words are you trying to write from them? Instead of (pen strokes -> words), you get (pen strokes -> phonetic sounds -> words). Also, Pitman shorthand is pressure sensitive - light strokes for unvoiced sounds and heavy strokes for voiced sounds, IIRC.

Worse even than that, it's short because it allows you to leave information out where you know what it will be and to develop your own shortcuts where useful to you. You might abbreviate your name to "Sh" with {name indicating symbol}, or use "em eff ing" for manufacturing, or have a symbol for "Our newest product" or write "would like know b prices" for "we would like to know your best prices".

So now you have pen strokes -> sounds -> filling in missing sounds -> words -> filling in missing words -> text.

Seems useful for taking notes in a hurry and then writing them up in full yourself the same day or week, less useful for writing for other people or future reference, and even less useful for computer recognition.