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Bill Gates: Pen-Based Tablets Will Beat the iPad, At Least With Students

By John Brownlee (9:54 am, May 04 2010)

Bill Gates: Pen-Based Tablets Will Beat the iPad, At Least With Students

Apple’s iPad might have sold one million units in just a month, but that’s not impressing Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who thinks that the iPad’s touch-only input approach will ultimately lose to pen-based tablets… at least with students:

“Microsoft has a lot of different tablet projects that we’re pursuing. We think that work with the pen that Microsoft pioneered will become a mainstream for students. It can give you a device that you can not only read, but also create documents at the same time.

While I agree there’s a place for styluses with tablet computers (and, in fact, wish Apple would officially release a pressure-sensitive one for use with the iPad), Jobs is ultimately right: if uses have to reach for a stylus then a touchscreen device is a failure. I don’t think that changes whether you’re a casual user or a student.

The real reason Gates is saying styluyses are necessary for touchscreen devices has more to do with the fact that Windows 7, the operating system Microsoft would like tablets to run, was designed with mouse input in mind. A stylus does a better job at simulating a mouse than a finger, and Windows 7”s stylus support is more robust than its hatchet job multitouch. I wonder if Gates will change his tune when Windows 7 catches up with the iPhone OS, at least when it comes to touch.

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John Brownlee John Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in Hardware, iPad, News |

  • Fearless Fred

    John, I think the issue here is data input. For some market segments such as students, there are times where you’re wanting to make a lot of notes, sketches, annotations, etc, and that lends itself ideally to stylus input, rather than finger. Have you tried to write more than a few words with your finger? It ain’t easy! Likewise using an onscreen keyboard isn’t very ergonomic for more than a few sentences. As for sketching diagrams, etc, no way would I want to be trying to do that with a finger on a screen. Give me a stylus every time. I know this isn’t going to be popular with some of the fanboys out there, but having a touchscreen that can accept stylus as well as finger input is better than finger only input.

    Oh, one thing that may’ve been forgotten in all the iPad launch: How well does the screen work with artificial limbs? I know this can be an issue. Wouldn’t stylus ability make it more usable for those with disabilities? Just a thought….

  • charli

    @Fred. I think you have missed something. So did Gates.

    You can totally use a stylus with the iPad/iPhone is you like. You just don’t have to. The iPad fits your “touchscreen that can accept stylus as well as finger input is better than finger only input.”

    Unlike previous (and typically Windows based) devices where you had to have a pen because there was no finger mode.

  • Tomt

    Does Apple need to release a pressure sensitive one? Presumably a 3rd party could make a pressure sensitive stylus – something akin to the Pogo Sketch, but with pressure sensitivity?

  • http://deoclicianocgiportfolio.wordpress.com Deocliciano Okssipin Vieira

    So you cannot use a stylus on iPad?
    You can work yr iPhone with a sausage!

    AH, to Bill Gates iPad is not a productive tool.

    Perhaps bill Gates is the only person i “hate”. Yeah awful word but he seems to be the biggest dumb to be held as an important person.

  • http://deoclicianocgiportfolio.wordpress.com Deocliciano Okssipin Vieira

    @Fearless Fred

    For some reason Apple products are preferred by people with disability.
    And many disabled cannot hold a pen.

  • Fearless Fred

    Charli, my mistake, I should’ve been a bit clearer. I was taking issue with the comment :

    “Jobs is ultimately right: if users have to reach for a stylus then a touchscreen device is a failure.”

    I have a history with touchscreens, specifically having worked in 2 touchscreen device companies for the last 14 years. I’ve seen and helped develop touch devices ranging from the 2″ diagonal all the way up to >48″. I’ve also seen a lot of different applications and environments where touch is used (wackiest one would be a touchscreen on a submarine as a large map plot table!). Ergonomics plays a big part of the usability of a device and finger input, whilst great, intuitive, fast, etc, isn’t always the answer. Styli allow a lot finer control for when you’re writing/drawing/etc. I just think it’s wrong to say that a touch device that means you sometimes reach for a stylus is a failure.

  • John Brownlee

    Fearless Fred, the operative word their is *have.* If you *have* to reach for a stylus to work a tablet, it’s a failure. I’m not arguing that there isn’t a good place for styluses with tablets, just that they shouldn’t be the dominant form on input.

  • Fearless Fred

    John, ah, okay, I get what you mean now. I was reading it without the emphasis on *have* meaning a stylus only device. At least we’re all agreed! As for dominance of one form of input over the other, I guess that sort of depends on the application that the device (iPad, Tablet, phone, etc) is being used for. Some may want to mimic the idea of writing more than keyboard input purely as a user preference.

  • MMNW

    I have actually seen a student taking notes during a lecture using nothing beside his iPhone and his finger. He was damn fast with it. Just imagine what he could do with an iPad.
    Gates and others out there definitely underestimate young peoples willingness to leave behind old dogmas of how you should do your work. I guess someone as old as Gates just can’t remember how it was to be young.

  • http://philoserf.com/ Mark Ayers

    As someone who thought the TabletPC could have been great, who bought the first model Compac slate, a TC1000, and as the owner of an iPad, I can say the pen was great. Microsoft just failed to deliver, it failed to support hardware vendors, it failed to sell the API and the possibilites to developers. Microsoft just failed to deliver on pen based computing. Now I have an iPad and a Pogo Sketch pointer. It isn’t electronic ink, but then no one is using any magical revolutionary TabletPCs anyplace I can see. I already see iPads in the coffee houses and the meeting rooms.

  • Sam

    Bill Gates is such a dinosaur. Windows 7 looks a lot like Windows Vista that looks a lot like Windows XP. Of course Bill has to say the stylus is the way to go because MSFT hasn’t figured out a way to make an ACTUAL product with their touch technology. In terms of OS progression and innovation, don’t expect to see much of that at MSFT if Bill is paving the way.

  • kenseidave

    I agree with Fearless Fred to a certain degree. There are many instances where a stylus especially in pen form (not in the shape of a small sausage i.e. crayon) would be handy. That being said, ultimately the ipad was never really designed for serious data input anyway without the use of an external keyboard.

    Ultimately it depends on the students method of learning. Some type their notes as the lecture is in progress. Some just download the notes off the web when the lecturer has posted them (i.e. via their macbook pro). I personally can’t see a student seriously using an ipad for lectures. For that, I see a livescribe pen used in conjunction with a MAc and OCR as a much more valuable combination.

    The iPad has it’s place though. For storing textbooks, viewing lecture notes, slides, readings, online time tables, signing up for tute classes, etc. So a combination of a laptop and an ipad and maybe a livescribe pen would be the idea solution.

  • Jeremy

    I like where Fred is coming from. I looked into Apple’s old attempt at a tablet (The Newton series) and the handwriting conversion/ recognition was superb for a device created that long ago. I think they got it right with the Newton, it was just way before it’s time.

    I may be a bit biased, being a student, but if they could implement stylus interactivity like that into a device with the UI and finger friendliness of an iPad, I’d be sold.

  • Brian Smith

    I can see a stylus being needed for drawing or sketching and for signature, but otherwise, I agree that having the stylus as the default input device is an overall failure.

  • Kate

    Yeah, because Gates spent *so* much time as a student, he really knows what we want, right?
    As a student, the iPad is amazing. If I need it, I have the keyboard to use. If I want, I can grab one of the styluses the Apple store employees use to have customers sign their iPod touches after purchases.

    P.S. Since Gates has such a history of producing products people really want, we should really listen…..

  • ChuckEye

    Well, I had a friend who 18 years ago swore by his PenPoint OS tablet. Now, it seems the rest of the world is ready for such a device… (and, of course, back then it was even more important to be able to save gestured writing as bezier vector data rather than bitmaps, because the device’s storage was probably in the kilobytes…)

    I’m curious to think what Apple could do with Inkwell if they added it to the iPad’s APIs

  • WT

    Mr. Gates is quite accomplished in many areas but, IMO, predicting the future of technology has never been one of them.

    For example, he thought OS/2 was destined to be the most important operating system of all time back in ’87, and he predicted the end of spam within 2 years in ’04. He totally missed the importance of the Internet in the early days (but did a masterful job of correcting the course of the good ship Microsoft after he realized his error).

    Perhaps his 2001 prediction of the tablet computer being the most popular type of device is finally coming true. But, again IMO, the smart money seems to be betting on touch and voice input for these devices.

    When someone talks about a stylus all I think is “Palm Pilot”.

  • janet

    Stop hating on Bill Gates, he’s intelligent. He has his own opinions on how things are, just like us.

  • Loren

    For those that can get over political bias there are practical reason to use ipads and tablets. I carry both with me and use them both as much as each other. I would detail why but think that effort would be wasted on you lot. Get a job.

  • TRRosen

    Gates is as clueless today as he ever was.

    Look to current reality. Kids today are sending a hundred messages a day with their tiny phone keyboards. Do you really think they want to use a stylus? No way. Writing most letters takes several strokes. Typing any letter takes only one press.

    PS to paraphrase Steve “if you have to take notes then your already a failure”

  • thanx_Al

    Call me when it is real and not vaporware. Last two “Windows tablets” were and remain vapor.

  • http://hercules.gcsu.edu/~flowney Frank Lowney

    Computer input is the one area where advances are glacially slow to take hold. This slow pace is due more to human factors than to technology. People are naturally resistant to change. We still use QWERTY keyboard layouts long after the problem it was developed to address (keys jamming on a mechanical typewriter) went away.

    The full potential of finger (touch) input is yet to be seen. Imagine, for example, what text input would be like if we could get people to use shorthand (aka speed writing). The iPhone OS already supports this kind of input for Chinese and other idiographic languages. This is primarily a people problem.

    You might even point to this as a failure of our educational systems that teach us to be brittle and lacking in adaptive skills and attitudes.

  • http://joemacstevens.com Joe Stevens

    A stylus could be useful for sketching and note taking. When I finally get an iPad I am buying a stylus just for that.

  • Jeremy

    @TRRosen

    I much prefer the fluidity of writing with a pen-like device to typing on a virtual keyboard. Sure I can type out ‘hundreds of messages a day’ on my Droid’s physical keyboard, and the Swype virtual replacement makes the on screen solution almost as quick (for me, anyway), but I’d much rather write notes, and be free to use any and all the shapes and notations available when taking down a lecture or sketching a graph.

    I’m not saying I’m the norm, or that just because I like ‘actually’ writing more than typing on cramped physical/ virtual keyboard. I’d just venture to guess that a lot of people don’t want to be limited by the keys in front of them.

  • Ruth

    I have an iPad and a windows surface. While the iPad is a great product, I have found that the windows service is less easily lost.

  • http://www.mmcwatters.com/blog/ Michael

    Here’s an idea: how about a shorthand app for the iPad? Stenographers (court reporters) can keep up with most conversations in real time by virtue of their truncated by comprehensive keyboard. Sure, users would have to learn a new input language, but once they did, they could be faster with their fingers on a touch screen than a stylus or actual hardware keyboard. Just a thought…

  • http://www.zenfar.com Zenfar

    I just want a stylus today with my iPhone, I had trouble selecting the middle of a tweet that I wanted to add a space to. It kept wanting me to copy and paste or would auto-correct and add a period. The real problem with all of the Microsoft’s early tablets was they didn’t drop the keyboard and they were not as sexy thin as the iPad.

  • David W.

    I always wondered why Microsoft is so insistent that tablets must have a stylus. And, I believe you’re correct: Tablets need a stylus because Windows 7 isn’t entirely a touch interface. You need a stylus to emulate a mouse in those areas where Windows 7 reveals its desktop origins.

    Here’s the problem with a stylus: I am using the stylus to write. Now, I am doing something else that requires me to touch the screen. Maybe I am rearranging items on the screen. Maybe I’m going to another application. But, I need to get rid of the stylus. I could put it in my other hand, but what if my other hand is holding the device? I guess I could clinch the stylus between my teeth, but that’t not entirely sanitary (“Hey, BIll can I borrow your stylus? Ew… Never mind.”) or do I think my dentist would approve.

    That’s why the stylus fails. You can either have a stylus interface like the old Palm OS and Windows CE, or you can have a touch interface like the iPhone and iPad. You can’t have it both ways. And, it looks like the touch interface is winning out over the stylus interface. The great free market has spoken.

    By the way, kids today don’t write with a stylus, pen, or pencil. When they need to write something down, they type and they’re pretty fast at it too whether on a virtual iPad keyboard, a Blackberry Thumb keyboard, a desktop keyboard, or even a telephone keypad. I doubt these kids would know what to do if you gave them a pen (How do I type on this?).

    My kids have been using keyboards since they were in second grade and since the third grade wrote almost all of their papers. My middle son’s handwriting is so bad, that since the fourth grade his teacher allowed him to take a laptop to school and type all of his tests. He’s in college now and can probably type out over 70 words per minute. Why would he want a stylus?

  • Paul Linden
  • John

    @TRRosen

    …“if you have to take notes then your already a failure”.

    1. You are = you’re

    2. The act of writing notes can be a powerful reinforcing tool. The act of writing something down can help instill the thought in memory, even if the notes are not later referenced.

  • Hamranhansenhansen

    You can use a stylus with iPad. It’s an optional accessory. It’s not necessary, though, because you can draw a 1 pixel line with your fingers, the display is so sensitive. If you want to draw precisely on iPad you can do that very easily.

    At Apple Stores, you sign your credit card receipt with a stylus on an iPod touch.

    > notes
    > stylus input

    Nobody wants to hand write text. This has been proven by 10 years of terrible, terrible TabletPC sales. iPad has already outsold all of the tablets that had handwriting recognition, including all TabletPC, all Newton, and all of the others. Handwriting is incredibly slow. You can one-finger type on a virtual keyboard as fast as handwriting recognition.

    Bill Gates is very out of touch with the real world. He thinks students write longhand and want to do that on tablets. No, they all type, not only touch typing but also thumb typing. This is the 21st century. Catch up.

    > pressure sensitive

    … is off-topic. Both iPad and TabletPC lack pressure sensitivity. It’s possible it may come to iPad. Likely you would have a case you put the iPad into, and the case would track a pen with a nub that moves up and down. Essentially, you would be putting your iPad inside a Wacom Tablet.

  • IcyFog

    I doubt Windows 7 will ever catch up to the iPhone OS when it comes to touch capability.

  • Rissie

    Sadly the one feature that kept from buying an iPad was that I could not use it to take notes in my engineering class which limited how useful it could initially be to me as a tablet. I know the iPad is not primarily supposed to be used as a productivity device, but I know that the option to use a stylus for more precise control would definitely get more science/math/engineering students much more interested in the device. I mean how great would it to have all your text books, notes, and PDF’s from your professor in an ultra portable touch device? I guess I fell in love with a device that doesn’t exist yet *sigh*

  • Lance

    IcyFog wrote: I doubt Windows 7 will ever catch up to the iPhone OS when it comes to touch capability.

    Now, now, don’t be so harsh. Maybe they’ll catch to Apple (today’s Apple technology) by the time of Windows 9 (circa 2018).

  • Mexican Pedro

    “The Pen is Mightier than the Finger.” – Bill Gates, 2010

    “The finger is an amazing tool. Let me show you mine…” – Steve Jobs, 2010

  • Camperton

    I look forward to the iPad Pro with with 15″ screen and pressure sensitive stylus support. #pipedreams

  • tk

    I am looking forward to studying high level math and physics on an iPad. Also, painting with a brush is way over rated. Leonardo da Vinci was wrong: finger painting is much more expressive and convenient.

    A stylus is needed for serious, professional level creative work, as well as for people in science and engineering. Period.

    Steve Jobs knows this. Look for Apple patents and you will see lots of designs for note taking programs for the iPad. The problem is that he wants to control the technology behind his products. He will therefore NOT license Wacom’s technology. As soon as their patents expire, he might change his mind.

    You will see an official, Apple branded stylus on the iPad in less than 3 years, perhaps sooner. When this happens Bill Gates’ vision will have been fulfilled.

    My dream is an iPad like device with a stylus, Onenote, and Photoshop. In the meantime, I will have to settle for a Windows 7 device.

  • Hepburn

    “Both” is the obvious answer, and in an educational scenario the “3Rs” are as good today as they ever were (Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic); my 5year old loves to draw and to write; and learning how to use a *pen is a key part of his educational programme; why on earth is Jobs trying to take us back to the stone ages and insisting we draw and write with our fingers? The ideal solution for me is both; where the stylus is not necessarily a dedicated device but anything (you can lay your hands on) that can be detected with some sort of proximity detector. The ‘killer’ application for any Tablet is OneNote btw, so in fact I think Microsoft are way ahead of Apple today; but just not quite winning the war just yet …

  • ki

    I don’t understand why so many here insist on an either/or proposition regarding finger vs pen input. Clearly, all the rest being equal, a device that has *both* good touch and pen recognition is better than one that has only touch. As a professor, this is in fact the main limitation that prevents me from buying an iPad.

  • Kendra

    I guess I must be a very abnormal college student, because I actually enjoy handwriting for some things. It helps me remember them better, I am fast with it, and particularly when I am creative writing it simply feels better.

    Ideally I want an ipad with a pen-like stylus. Maybe I’m just old school.

  • Steph

    As an academic, I completely agree with Gates. Of course I want a device that can be operated using just my hand, but what I really want is something that replaces paper. Meaning I dont just care about input, but about performing long calculations by hand (and no, mathematica cannot do them for me). The same goes for taking notes, annotating papers or just commenting on papers and performing small calculations in the margins.

    And no, I do not want the kind of linear notes you can take by converting gestures into letters and all this silly crap. I want to be able to make notes in a non-linear fashion using any graphics I might draw by hand. Drawing with my finger is not fine grained enough.

    For science students this isn’t much different. There is a need to perform calculations by hand. If you never do this, then I’m not entirely sure what you’re learning really.

  • Scott Miller

    I disagree with the authors presumption that the purpose of the pen is to simulate a mouse. The purpose is to draw and write. Those things you cannot really do without the pen. Prior to multi-touch screens the pen could also do the mousing role as well. Now with multi-touch you can redesign the user interface to allow touch (big fat buttons and motion based inputs), however it does not eliminate that writting and drawing require the pen.

    The apple approach has always been to tell me that I shouldn’t be wanting to write or draw, however that ignores how I think and work.

  • Scott Miller

    Additionally, one can type with a regular keyboard MUCH faster than one can write. However, one can write faster than one can type by thumb or finger peck approach, which are required by all the onscreen keyboards I’ve experienced so far. This includes the ipad as well.

    I have money (a lot more than the ipad costs) for the next generation of device that gives my the pen and multi-touch and ubiquitous data connectivity. I am a thrid generation tablet pc user, and I perform real work. I have used them to design spacecraft, perform real complex engineering analysis, write code, write papers and presentations, do artwork, etc. I can’t do those things with the ipad (minus the finger painting applicaiton on the ipad commercials). There are real professional art based software packages that require a pen.

    Regards.

  • Vestalsoccer18

    this article is stupid. there are many reasons why i wouldnt buy an ipad, but not having a stylus to write with is close to the top of the list.

    • http://www.facebook.com/RobertSDaniels Robert Daniels

      the I pad is app driven. Jobs has left it up to the third party market to introduce a stylus to the i-pad. It has already been done.

  • Southhants40

    The most natural way to input data is to use some form of handwriting device.  Using a finger on its own is just yuck.

  • Southhants40

    The most natural way to input data is to use some form of handwriting device.  Using a finger on its own is just yuck.

  • LmD

    I agree with the comment made by Bill Gates. I am a student and I want a device I can take notes on with some kind of pen. I don’t want to be scribbling with my finger. The main reason I have not purchased a tablet yet is because I want one with this capability.