The tablet has been around for quite a long time. Ancient civilizations in the geographic region of Mesopotamia used a clay tablet to record and catalog data. These tablets were typically arm length in size and had inscriptions that were built of angles and edges. The wedge like nature of this script has led archaeologists to call the clay tablets as cuneiform (from cunei in Latin).
Tablets were used by the Sumerians due to ample supply of clay. This was in contrast to the Egyptian civilization where papyrus was used. Clay tablets continued to be used by the successors - the Babylonians and the Assyrians.
The tablet as a form factor has been in vogue since quite a while!
More important is the fact that these early attempts at writing as a means of communication led to the development of language. With sounds attached to words and symbols. In a recent TED talk, Mark Pagel describes how language has been the discriminator, the crucial factor that allowed humans to develop and nurture technology. Language and by extension any form of communication allows collaborative learning and cooperation. Learning from each others experiences. That is what separates us.
That has been the principal force behind mobile technologies and platforms.
Communication. Collaboration. Cooperation.
Even the history of PC tablets is quite interesting. Not many know that in 1989, Samsung manufactured a tablet for a company named Grid Systems Corporation. The tablet was called Gridpad and was derived from Samsung's Penmaster. It was a novel concept then and introduced us to touch screen interfaces operated by a pen/stylus.
Samsung's tryst with the tablet too has been for quite a while!
The PC tablet evolution subsequently fell into the hands of various companies, including GO, Fujitsu, Microsoft and of course Apple. The new revolution has now begun with Samsung and Google. An important difference between then and now has been the Internet. While there might not be much use for a stand alone tablet beyond cataloging, the possibilities are endless when a tablet is linked with the Internet. It becomes an unsurpassed innovation.
A disruption. Of behaviours. Of interactions. Of our lives.
It becomes the ultimate disruptive innovation.
But wasn't the Netbook supposed to be the great enabler. Well, yes, but the netbook did not provide a different user experience. It became a low end laptop with the same nuances that people wanted to get rid of. Like reading in cramped spaces. Inability to browse the web without a keyboard. Portability. Rather than adding value it took away from users what they were accustomed to with a laptop. This is amply evident in sales figures for Netbooks vs touchscreen devices. In 2010 there was a decline in netbook sales. And it was not small. 40%.
The Netbook is dead. Long live the Tablet.
Fast forward. August 2011. Today. It's a battle of giants. It's a bipolar world again. The philosophies of the approaches are different. One has embodied open innovation. The other continues to innovate within closed doors defying theories of innovation. Is it an aberration? Resting on one man's vision, not sustainable in the long run. Well, only time will tell. For me, I believe that open innovation will succeed. And this is evident at the pace the Android has evolved. From Froyo (Frozen Yoghurt) to Gingerbread to the recent version named Honeycomb.
What happens when two disruptive innovations combine? It becomes a galactic scale super nova.
It becomes a Galaxy Tab.
The recently launched 10.1 which is marketed as the 750 in India is the latest innovation from the Samsung stable. The specifications are very enticing. Enough muscle. Enough grey cells. Enough storage. Enough, actually more than enough to enable you - to collaborate and communicate and innovate.
From hardware and design the slimness of the device is both functionally as well as aesthetically valuable. It is truly a tablet - a tablet the Sumerians would envy. A tablet that would hold their entire library of clay tablets. On one machine. In my opinion, from the portability perspective 500 odd grams and the extreme slimness is a definite win for the user. The primary purpose why I would like to own a tablet is portability. And, I don't want to lug around some heavy fat piece of hardware, do I?
I concur with other opinions in the blogosphere. The design of the Galaxy Tab 750 is an engineering marvel. Like I mentioned before, the tablet's success is deeply tied to the Internet. And, with this model comes a browser with support for flash enabled sites.
From the view of technical specifications, the 750 is powered by a dual core Tegra 2 processor. Well, basically what it translates into is better video and web performance and also enables better multi tasking. I see that the NVIDIA processor will be standard specs for all Android tablets today - as it helps take the user experience to the next level. The network specs are all state of the art - what one would expect from a state-of-the-art device. I still however would have loved to see a few USB slots though.
With 1 GB RAM and multiple ROM sizes, it's quite sufficient to say that you wont be wanting for memory for now. But as the tablet evolves in future this would seem very much frugal. The same that we see now for Laptops which are equipped with 8 GB RAM.
What this tablet provides you additionally is the TouchWiz UX. It is difficult to provide an opinion without experiencing one. But a rather descriptive review I found from the Android Community speaks well of the new interface. The new interface is very important for the Tab and for telling the hyper-loyal Apple community, there are far better alternatives ;-)
The Honeycomb comes with a lot of new features including resizable widgets, USB support, support for pointer devices via Bluetooth! All in all, I think the theme here is better usability. A better end-user experience.
What else do I like? It is difficult to be more particular without having your hands on one :-) There are the Samsung hubs. I particularly dig the thought of integrating all my messaging in a single interface. So the social hub is a big win for me. That is the communication enabler. And with the extensibility provided by the apps functionality would not be impeded. For me watching videos (YouTube, TED), reading ebooks in either epub or pdf format, writing books/articles and video chatting is what I would use it for. And of course the occasional games and last but the most important, get on the WWW.
Devices such as the Samsung Tab 10.1 enable. They have the potential to disrupt the way we have been accustomed to interact with mobile computing. They free us from constraints. And provide us - a galaxy of possibilities.
To doctors, they enable patient review, medical history at their fingertips. To lawyers, they provide easy access to legal information and their cases. To children, it becomes their schoolbag that contains their textbooks and notebooks and their games. To businessmen they enable collaboration and communication. To creative artists they provide a digital canvas. At home the television is personal again. To writers and avid readers a plethora of books...and so on the list goes on.
The possibilities are endless. An impact similar in magnitude to early writing on clay tablets and the development of language. The electronic tablet marks the second revolution.
Next is what?
That's certainly a Samsung & Android biased post about tablets... I'm not sure I'd say "The new revolution has now begun with Samsung and Google."
ReplyDeleteI think the current revolution began with Apple and the iPad. Not necessarily the first tablet, and certainly based purely on specifications, not the fastest, biggest, most powerful or most flexible. But it was the first one that was turned from a concept or niche toy into a viable product.
Samsung and Google, with Android aren't really revolting, they're evolving a bit from that, but copying tremendous amounts...
On a day-to-day basis, I see more Apple portable devices around New York City than any other one brand. Maybe there's more total Android phones, from a multitude of manufacturers than iPhones, but more iPhones than any other single brand of phones. More iPods than any other things I recognize as MP3 players. And more iPads, both the original and the 2, than any other tablet. By a long shot.
In terms of laptops, walking through a park with wi-fi, by the window of a coffee shop, or glance around on the subway trains, and probably at least 75% of the laptop screens visible are brushed aluminum with a bitten apple lit up. Yesterday on the train home from work, there were two people just at that one end of it with Apple laptops on their laps, doing whatever they were doing. And no other laptops of any kind visible.
I know that as an open source enthusiast, Android is what you'd really like to succeed, but hardly anyone's making Android devices that simply work as smooth and effectively as the devices Apple's making.
And next year there might be competition from Microsoft... Microsoft, at least, says their new Windows 8 will be the best tablet operating system out there. Of course, we'll see, they have a history of being late and failing with hand held devices...
The problem with Apple is that the sustainability of innovation. In innovation theory it has been often debated how this will play out in the long run. What if - Steve Jobs is no longer around. Are these success stories his decisions. Can Apple continue the momentum?
ReplyDeleteI agree Apple is very popular in your part of the world and perhaps Europe. However the costs of ownership are appalling and only cater to the premium market. It's not and never will be a disruptive force.
I see there a strong role for Android based tablets which will match if not surpass in the coming years the capabilities of the iPad. The iPhone 4 saw enough criticisms and the iPad too has had it's share. I do not think it is the utopian device that will create a paradigm shift for humanity. The paradigm shift will occur when the bottom of the pyramid is involved. There I see a great future for Android.
About Microsoft, I don't think they are even relevant today, HP with its WebOS platform is worth looking at.
Some additional reading for you Kevin.
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2011/04/of-apple-and-android-running-scared/index.htm
We'll have to see if Apple can sustain its innovation and product design once Steve Jobs is gone. I read somewhere (I forgot where) that Apple already has a few years of things in the pipeline, so the impact wouldn't be felt immediately.
ReplyDeleteI'm definitely a fan of Apple, and have been using their gear since the early 80's when I got an Apple //e, on which I learned quite a bit about computer programming and hacking and things. So, I've got a bit of an attachment (I'll admit, I like the old rainbow colored logo instead of the monochrome ones they use now).
Some of the Android tablets already surpass the iPad in terms of capabilities. And I think that only appeals to a small segment of the market. For most of us, the higher capabilities aren't worth having a tablet that simply doesn't work smoothly.
My own experience with Android so far sucks. I don't know where to divide the line between the Adam tablet hardware/firmware and Honeycomb, but as an overall experience, it's nothing at all like the iPad.
With the Adam running Honeycomb (and not an Adam-specific one, since Google hasn't released Honeycomb as open source yet, only to a few manufacturers, so the Adam image was based on ASUS's version of Honeycomb) little things, like scrolling aren't as smooth as an Apple device.
The keyboard software couldn't keep up with my clumsy touch-screen typing, so it missed a lot of my typing. It often clicked when I intended to scroll, taking the first touch on the screen instead of understanding my goal.
Half the time it won't download emails from Gmail, but just spins the spinner indicating it's doing something and hours later it still doesn't have my emails, and that's within a foot or two of the router, so I know the wi-fi signal is fine.
Using Google+ I first found the "nearby" stream feature on the Adam and the Google+ client. It was cool, but after the initial time it never again figured out where I was and always says "cannot connect to server".
The font in most apps in Honeycomb, email, web browser, etc. isn't nearly as readable as the default fonts used by Apple on the iPad, so it's more of a strain to see what's on the screen.
Having two web browsers installed means having to pick which browser I want it to use, even if I'm already in one, almost every time I click on a link. Really, really annoying. Can't it tell that I probably want to use the same browser I'm already running, if I clicked a link in a page inside that browser? Is it that stupid?
Almost definitely Adam and not Android in general, it requires daily charging, with the same usage as my iPad gets that requires approximately monthly charging (or weekly with heavy use...)
Having used both devices, side-by-side, the Android one was just a bad experience, as a user...
Had to split this into two to post...
ReplyDeleteAnd at least here, the higher-end Android tablets are in the same general price range as the iPads, with the Motorola Xoom at the upper end, costing more than an equivalent iPad. So, it's not just that iPads are for the premium market, so is any Android tablet that doesn't have a ton of 1 and 2 star reviews...
As for your paradigm shift, yeah, low cost Android tablets might be it. But the beginning of the shift is from higher-end devices, and the low-end ones that get into the bottom of the pyramid are mostly follow-ups and cheaper copy cats, that wouldn't likely exist if the the fancier ones didn't hit the top and middle of the pyramid first.
Sort of like how dumb phones are catching up in India. A few years ago, the upper and middle classes had cell phones. Once the smart phones started coming out, the dumb ones got cheaper and now the servants, maids and street sweepers all have dumb phones and communication is expanded (if only they wouldn't have been yelling into them under my bedroom window, though...)
On the other hand, a few street vendors here in New York City have lost my business because of their cell phones. As a customer, I want them to pay attention to me, not talk on their cell phone when I'm trying to do business with them. There was one guy whose attention I couldn't even get so I could buy a pretzel from him. Another one was yapping away on his phone and served me the wrong thing and I told him "look, if you're not going to pay attention to your customers, customers like me are going elsewhere, good bye..." and I left and he never even slowed down his cell phone conversation...
Anyway, this weekend I saw people using iPad 2's as digital cameras. Big, unwieldy cameras that they were aiming all over to take photos. Weird looking... I'm curious about how good the pictures came out on them.
I looked at that blog post you linked to... It's more about trademark than patent or IP... Based on protecting a brand image so people don't mistake other company's items for your own. Sometimes that can get a bit weird, like when I worked for a company with a misspelled name, the misspelling used as trademark protection...
I can see Apple's point. iPads are almost instantly recognizable everywhere due to their shape and color. If Samsung is making one that looks like an iPad to people not directly facing the screen, Apple wants protection... They want Samsung to change something visually about it so it doesn't look like an iPad. They don't want me, as an observer, to see people cursing their iPads and think "oh, iPads must suck" when in actuality it's a Samsung the user is cursing.
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI cant write so much. So let me address most of your points in as short as possible :-)
Yes, I know your rather disappointing Adam experience. But that's precisely what Honeycomb has set out to solve. It has been rewritten for tablets so that people stop cribbing about the end-user experience. Sadly, I do not own a Galaxy Tab and have never touched an iPad. So I cannot share any experiences with you. However, I think post Honeycomb, the gap in the user experience between iPads and Android powered devices will bridge.
Based on technical reviews of the Galaxy Tab on the web, the battery life is comparable between the iPad and the Galaxy Tab.
Whether the beginning of innovation is at the top or the bottom, depends from product to product. Solar powered lanterns for example were innovations aimed at the bottom of the pyramid. While it would be possible to build cheaper less powerful devices based on the Android platform, I do not see that happening with Apple's platform. For the simple reason. It's not open.
Before you begin the argument that even the Android Honeycomb is not open, I hear news that the GPL/LGPL part of the Honeycomb source code is already committed to the open source repository. Whether Google continues its commitment to the open source model, only time will tell.
I do not think we are monkeys. That we cannot differentiate between an iPad and a Galaxy Tab. Frankly, I do not buy that argument. And, it is clear that copyrights need to be on the basis of real differentiators and not on fundamental things. Next, we might see Apple copyrighting the act of listening to music using ear plugs!
The madness has to stop some place.
Unfortunately, my Android experiences have primarily been with Honeycomb, designed for tablets, but not for my tablet...
ReplyDeleteI think part of the problem is that the people porting Honeycomb to the Adam didn't have access to the source straight from Google, but had to go with the source from Asus...
For making Android open source, Google is in a tight position... If they make it all open source, then anyone can come along and use it, creating a really rotten tablet based on Android. People buying that would end up hating Android and associate Google with poor quality stuff. So, they're sort of stuck, if they make it open source they lose control of their reputation, but if they want to maintain quality products with their name on it, they need the control they can't get by opening source...
As for that lawsuit, it's a trademark, not copyright issue... While I'm okay being identified as a monkey, imagine some less tech oriented person going to a store to buy a tablet and the Samsung and Apple ones looking very similar. A slick salesman could just show both of them and say "they're the same thing" when they really aren't, but they look quite similar. In my example, imagine being on a moving train, not looking directly at the screen, Apple is protecting themselves so I don't think someone else's Samsung is one of theirs. I didn't quite get it either, till I read an article about it that said the lawsuit mentioned "trade dress" and then it made sense.
Samsung could've easily made a tablet that looked different. Imagine if they made it red plastic that stuck up above the level of the screen? They didn't have to make it visually look so much like an existing, successful product from a competitor...
Well, back to work for me...
Amazing post Aniruddha. I am aware of the tablets used by Harappa and other civilizations but connecting the same and building an entire history of tablets was quite informative. Enjoyed your post thoroughly. Good luck for the contest.
ReplyDeleteI wish you a lot of Happiness which is just a TAB away!
I do agree the notepad is dead.. Long live the tablet.. You have posted a beautiful post.. All the best for the contest.. Here is My Life
ReplyDeleteSomeone is Special
Gaurav - I'm happy to hear that you enjoyed the post as much as I enjoyed researching and writing about it. Perhaps you may want to promote the post :-) Thanks for the link to your entry. Will read it tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteSomeone is Special - Thanks a lot for your compliments. I will read your entry tomorrow.
Nice blog entry. Please visit my blog entry and promote it if you like it.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.indiblogger.in/indipost.php?post=73796
Thanks :)
Deepak - thanks for your feedback!
ReplyDeleteAniruddha, I do not know much about tablets modern or Harappan, but your post is simply fantastic. Good luck for the contest. :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks a ton Sudha. It means a lot to me.
ReplyDeletesorry..i linked the wrong post above :D
ReplyDeletehere is the right link for my entry ---
love in the times of 'samsung galaxy tab'
cheers!
whoaa!! guess im having a weird day today...the first 'wrong' comment did not even appear :-/
ReplyDeletewrt your post , i had written---
i agree with you that the tab has conquered the notepad.
best of luck for the contest! :)
(phew! i hope murphy doesn't weird me out anymore..lol)
Chill pri. All the very best to you too!
ReplyDeleteNice post and writeup. I love your simple blog design. DECENT. All the best.
ReplyDeleteYou can check out my posts too and appreciate if you could comment on my blog and or promote on indivine. .
http://www.indiblogger.in/indipost.php?post=72762
http://www.indiblogger.in/indipost.php?post=72849
BTW, already promoted your post too.
Lots of Informations...well researched post
ReplyDeleteI like the dialogues in the comment section too
..Promoted :)
Read mine Change needed for Fuels Hikes
Thank you Uma. Glad you enjoyed the discussion.
ReplyDeleteThanks Raj. I'm a sucker for colourless templates. Happy to read that you enjoyed the post.
ReplyDeleteLoved the comparison with the Harappan tablets! And the parallel that this tablet will revolutionize civilization in the same way.Don't necessarily agree with that, but interesting take!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.indiblogger.in/indipost.php?post=74428
Thanks Swapnil. The comparison is with the Sumerian tablets and not the Harappan ones. The point I was making is that tablets and paper promoted writing and the development of language. And, as Pagel puts it across in his TED talk, it has been language that haCs differentiated us from other species. The electronic tablets takes language (loosely interpreted as a means of communication) to the next level. Leading to unprecedented levels of communication.
ReplyDeleteWould love to hear more of your thoughts on why you do not necessarily agree :-)
Hi Aniruddha
ReplyDeleteYour article is like link between history and bright future. You started with ancient civilization and talked about many possibilities with Tab. All the best
If you like my blog, you can promote it.
http://www.indiblogger.in/indipost.php?post=73406
Manish V. Panchmatia
Hey Manish - thanks for your comments. Yes, I was researching our obsession with the tablet and then stumbled on to a fascinating literature of archaeological tablets and how they changed our life. I strongly believe that tablets of the future will have an effect of similar magnitude on our lifestyle.
ReplyDeleteHaha. A blog with actual opinions and feelings about the tab. Welcome sight! :) Do check A Knight's Tale - Sir Samsung Galaxy Tab 750 as well!
ReplyDeleteYes, it does get repetitive, doesn't it. Glad to hear you think different and hope you liked it too.
ReplyDeleteWoo hoo, Aniruddha. Congratulations... I am so happy.
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