Looking at Google’s Chrome OS demos today, I noticed a giant omission that bodes ill for its future: it’s not optimized for touchscreens.
Chrome looks like a nifty version of a desktop OS, like a version of OS X or Windows, that pulls a lot of data from the cloud. Yeah, it’s slick, thoughtful and forward thinking, at least in one sense: Cloud apps are clearly the future, so why not the OS also?
But it looks like a traditional WIMP OS (window, icon, menu, pointing device). Why isn’t Chrome optimized for finger controls? The future of computing is mobile devices; and the future of mobile devices is touchscreens. As far as I can tell, Google didn’t mention touch at all, and none of the press asked about it.
Google says the Chrome OS will be launched by this time next year, by which time Apple will probably have reinvented the mobile computing experience with a multitouch tablet.
Apple’s tablet will do for netbooks what the iPhone did for cell phones — make the competition look hopelessly antiquated, whatever OS they run. Google says the UI is still under development and is subject to change; they’ll have to change it radically if they want a chance of competing with Apple, which has already adapted Snow Leopard for touchscreens.
Like Steve Jobs says, quoting hockey player Wayne Gretzky, Google needs to be aiming for where the puck’s going to be, not where it’s at now.
The video above shows why tablet computers are so exciting. Using your fingers to directly manipulate objects onscreen (as opposed to hitting radio buttons with a stylus pen) is clearly a powerful and intuitive way to interact with our machines.
The video shows a demo of BumpTop, a 3D desktop overlay for Windows 7. As you’ll see, it makes the computer desktop just like a real physical desktop. It’s pretty magical. Just look at the way photos are cropped — by chopping them with your finger!
“Whilst I’d love it if Apple were looking at doing exactly this, I find it unlikely,” he says.
But Collingridge does think there’s huge opportunity in reinventing the ebooks as “digital books,” and that Apple’s tablet presents some interesting UI opportunities.
If Apple has learned anything from the iPod, it’s that a modern consumer electronic device is a three-legged stool: hardware, software, and media that fills it.
Apple doesn’t want to launch a tablet without media to consume on it. This is the mistake Apple made with the Apple TV: It’s a great piece of hardware and software, but the content isn’t there yet (especially the paucity of Hollywood movies).
So Steve has set out to persuade publishing houses, magazine companies and textbook publishers to make interactive books and magazines that make sense on an interactive, multitouch device. Here’s the key paragraph from Lam’s story:
“Some I’ve talked to believe the initial content will be mere translations of text to tablet form. But while the idea of print on the Tablet is enticing, it’s nothing the Kindle or any E-Ink device couldn’t do. The eventual goal is to have publishers create hybridized content that draws from audio, video and interactive graphics in books, magazines and newspapers, where paper layouts would be static. And with release dates for Microsoft’s Courier set to be quite far away and Kindle stuck with relatively static E-Ink, it appears that Apple is moving towards a pole position in distribution of this next-generation print content. First, it’ll get its feet wet with more basic repurposing of the stuff found on dead trees today.”
But what might this “hybrid content” look like?
One clue comes from Enhanced Editions, a U.K. startup founded by former-book industry executives that seeks to marry technology with traditional print publishing. “We have long-since seen the destiny of the latter bound to its embrace of the former,” the company says.
The company’s Research Lab built a remarkably similar device in 2008 called Codex. And in the real world, the Microsoft tablet is not quite as slick as the demos make it look.
ZDNet’s Mary-Jo Foley is reporting that Courier is more than a concept: it’s an “incubation project” slated for a possible mid-2010 release. Also, Microsoft is “leaning toward” building the hardware itself, like the Xbox, to speed the device to market, and presumably offer competition to Apple’s rumored tablet.
Check the video and pictures after the jump to see what it actually might look like in real life.
Gizmodo has another mockup video of Microsoft’s Courier tablet concept showing how the device might be used for creative work.
The heart of the system is an “infinite journal,” an interactive work area that’s used to store and work on photos, handwritten notes and messages from colleagues.
But in four minutes of video, there’s just the pen. Fingers are used for navigation, but all the input is via pen and handwriting recognition. There’s no virtual keyboard to be seen.
It’s a pretty compelling vision of how a touchscreen device might be used in real life. I’m half convinced, but I can’t help feeling it won’t work. A tablet device has to be multitouch, not pen-based, otherwise it’s going to be mainstream flop. History has shown, pen-based systems are niche products. The future is fingers.
The Apple tablet is 10.7-inch device that runs the iPhone OS and is ready to go, subject to Steve Jobs’ final approval, iLounge reports.
Citing a rock solid source with a proven track record, iLounge says the “iPad” looks like a jumbo iPhone with a curved back and an approx. 720p touchscreen. The device will be announced on January 19 and ship in May or June — the delay is designed to build iPhone-like hype.
It will come in two configurations: One with built-in 3G networking and another without. “Think of the 3G version as a bigscreen iPhone 3GS, and the non-3G version as a bigscreen iPod touch,” iLounge says.
The device is not designed for a work or productivity. It’s for media consumption.
“It’s a slate-like replacement for books and magazines, plus all of the media, gaming, app, and web functionality of the iPhone and iPod touch,” iLounge says. “It is not meant to compete with netbooks. It’s an iPhone OS media player and light communication device.”
And Steve Jobs is 80 percent likely to give the green light for a January 19 launch.
Don't call it a comeback. The Newton and iPhone @http://www.mediabistro.com/mobilecontenttoday
After a 15-year hiatus, Apple has taken Newton Tablet developer Michael Tchao back into the fold.
Tchao, once part of the original Newton team, will now be a vice president of product marketing.
Steve Dowling, the Apple spokesman who confirmed the hire did not say exactly what the man who helped create the grandfather of PDAs will be doing in Cupertino.
The NYT speculates that he’ll be helping define the market for an Apple tablet; though they can’t resist calling the Newton a “groundbreaking but failed personal digital assistant. ” (Most other takes, including ours, say the product was axed when Steve Jobs returned.)
It’s not such a big jump from the Apple tablet to Tchao’s most recent gig, serving as general manager of Nike Techlab, which designed armbands and running shoes to integrate with iPods.
It’s just as easy, for now at least, to speculate he’ll be doing more in-house integration with these devices.
“… you’ll never own a Microsoft Courier device,” he writes in his latest column. “It’s not real now. It’s not going to be real in the future. And even Microsoft does eventually make it real, it will fail in the market and you won’t buy one.”
As Elgan points out, the “leaked” photos and video of the device are pure CGI; Hollywood-style special effects that look great as mockup photos and demo videos, but may not be possible to build.
“Everything is awesome when it doesn’t have to actually be manufactured, sourced or developed at an affordable cost,” he writes. “It’s special effects wizardry, not software or hardware design.”
In edition, Elgan notes that a pen-based tablet is doomed to failure. He calls Microsoft’s repeated attempts to force pen-based devices on the market “crazy,” citing Windows for Pens in the 1990s, pen-based Tablet PC and Ultra Mobile PC, and Windows Mobile devices with pens. “I don’t think pens have any role in mass-market devices of the future — certainly nothing that could compete with an iPhone-like Apple Tablet,” he says. We agree – pens are a throwback. The future of multitouch tablets and PCs are finger-controlled.
But where Apple’s device will be designed for your fingers, Microsoft’s includes a pen! WTF? Is this the nineties? Has Microsoft learned nothing from the iPhone at all?
Yeah, Apple’s tablet will also support a pen. For detailed graphics work, and maybe even text input, a pen will work better than your fingers, but the primary input device?
Says Giz:
“The Courier user experience presented here is almost the exact opposite of what everyone expects the Apple tablet to be, a kung fu eagle claw to Apple’s tiger style. It’s complex: Two screens, a mashup of a pen-dominated interface with several types of multitouch finger gestures, and multiple graphically complex themes, modes and applications.”
Codenamed Courier, it has two multitouch 7-inch screens joined by a central hinge, which has a single iPhone-like “Home” button. It’s a late prototype, Giz says, and may have nifty hardware features like inductive pad charging.
But if you have to use a pen to control it, it’s fucked.
