Tablets - Fighting an Unmeasurable Stick
The thing about any new technology is that there is always a reaction. However, unlike Newton’s law it is rarely an equal reaction. The pendulum swings from fawning to hyper-critical, but it is never measured. I suppose that is what the latest editorial on Engadget is, even though it professes a measured opinion at its outset. As I contemplate my own purchase of an iPad 2 from a few months ago, this ill-informed piece gave me an appropriate catalyst to frame my thoughts.
I say ill-informed because by the author’s own admission he has not “invest[ed]” in a tablet. I speak here not just of the iPad, but the form factor and its potential. The piece starts out simply enough, the author cannot find a reason why he would buy an iPad. The fact is that just may be the case. Then it turns stupid.
With qHD displays becoming the norm, most modern smartphones can nearly match even the highest-resolution tablet display. Pixel-for-pixel, I can see almost as much information in the palm of my hand[.]
I did not know that a rising pixel count will obviate screen space. Apparently hand-in-hand with the rise of pixel count is the rise in our ability as humans to discern more and more detail. However, I am not sure our fat fingers will evolve fast enough to hit the buttons and switches on these new-fangled high pixel screens. There is a reason that Apple raised the pixel count on the iPhone 4, but kept the relative size of objects the same. We can only see so much and there is a limit to the size of objects we as humans can interact with. So the pixels rose, but I failed to see more on my screen. No matter how high pixels rise, they will never obviate the necessity for a larger screen. A larger screen more objects, more text, more images, and more information - that is what a tablet brings. It does all of this without the bulk of a laptop or the failings of speed or battery attributable to the latter. The possibilities of screen size are best illustrated by the author’s next point: note-taking. I am in law school and I have spent an entire day taking notes on an iPad. I can tell you that it can be done with aplomb. Is a laptop a better tool for the task? A strong argument can be made there. However, the author seems to think a mobile phone is up to the task. I take notes in class, but I am not a stenographer. I need to process, write, and organize. I cannot do the latter two on a screen where half the space is taken up by a keyboard. Using OmniOutliner on my iPad, I can read the line before to determine if I need to create a new line or whether to append the information to the current row or a previous row. No number of pixels will account for the lack of screen space that a mobile phone brings along.
Ever tried taking a photo with a tablet? You’re guaranteed to get perfect facial expressions for tomorrow’s highlight image on Awkward Family Photos, but that’s about it. […] I also won’t argue that the “experience” of using iOS on a tablet is exemplary, but at most, it’s a novelty in my world.
The quote starts with a repudiation for using a tablet and then moves further into a invalidation of the “mobile” OS used to run tablets. It is an odd juxtaposition. At first the author praises the mobile OS of phones, stating that it can be used to accomplish the necessary tasks. However, taken into a larger form factor the same OS fails in some undocumented way. No one is asking the author to put a round peg in a square hole. Tablets have cameras, but no one is asking you to use it for your family photographs. Your laptop too has a camera on the front but that did not earn it a strike. The thing is the tablet gets a proverbial raw-end. It has to straddle two increasingly divergent goals, performing both the capabilities of a phone and a laptop to earn its place. The fact of the matter is that no one reasonable staked the tablet’s claim on either. The author himself admits this, albeit with an air of indignity, stating that “Marketers have stated from the start that a tablet is a ‘third device’”. In the author’s mind this is all a zero sum game of technological theatre.
I am going to put this all aside and tackle one point however, multi-tasking. Multi-tasking is a mythical beast, try as you might to conquer it there will always be a sliver just out of reach. Well, unless you are a laptop or a netbook. Apparently using iOS is a novelty in the author’s world, but it is a world without parameters. The goal posts are always moving for poor tablets. I really wonder how much multi-window multi-tasking the author gets done on a 10-inch netbook. I used a Dell mini 9 for over a year and I can tell you that I never had more than one window, fully expanded, on my screen at a time. When all you have is one application in view, does a tablet’s single application focus still stand inferior? The applications I used on the mini’s measly processing power and negligible battery life took longer to start and switch than on my tablet. Someone has yet to tell me why I should care about running in the background when the application I call starts instantly and in the same place as I left it. Yet, no, in the author’s world none of this is acceptable for his unmentioned needs. I wonder if Darren thinks that Chrome OS netbooks are tantalizing for consumers, I hear those things only have one window open at a time…
Apple, and everyone else trying their best to hawk tablets, would have you believe that there’s a huge hole in your technophile lifestyle that can only be filled by hauling around yet another contraption. I beg to differ.
Then there is the return to the fallacy that tablets have somehow been construed as a requirement. I hope that the sway of marketing in other areas of the author’s life weigh less heavily upon him or else he might feel the need to switch toothpaste constantly. No, apparently if you use Photoshop or Windows Movie Maker (the fact that you use said application sir is what makes it esoteric, not the kind of application) then the tablet realm is off limits to you. I should have kept that in mind when I edited together a home movie, with titles and transitions oh my, of my dog playing in the rain. The pure tactile, and dare I say primal, experience did indeed make me gasp at all the fuss. I think the author should have spent some time researching what tablets, maybe just iPads, can do and maybe he should have had a chat with Jim Lee on creating art on the iPad. I don’t think a reasonable person will argue that a tablet can replace a laptop for everyone. However, it would have been nice if Darren had looked at the various use cases he disparages before he swept aside an entire form factor. Oh, and just to be clear to the author who has not invested in an iPad, I have conducted research, typed up outlines, typed up notes, am currently organizing a wedding, edited a home movie, and even consumed said movie on the iPad. I outlined on the iPad my response to your post, which I consequently read on my iPad. I did not think I would do any of those things when I apparently lined up to buy it.
