I’ve been asking for four years who would be first to ship the future of computing, a real desktop tablet: Apple, Microsoft or Google?
The WIMP (windows, icons, menus and pointing devices) interface you’re using right now was invented during the Nixon administration. It’s old.
With the incredible success of the iPad, the world is definitely ready for the next evolutionary leap into the future, which will of course be desktop touch tablets. Google and Microsoft have already revealed how they’ll make their transitions. Yet Apple has revealed nothing. Will tomorrow be the day?
Today, next-generation interfaces — with multi-touch, physics and gestures (MPG) — are available only on mobile devices. Apple started it with the iPhone in 2007. Today, MPG has become the universal standard for mobile devices, from the uber-popular iPad, to Android phones and tablets to BlackBerry and HP-slash-Palm-slash-WebOS gadgets (coming soon).
All the main OS companies face a monumental challenge: How to you transition what is now considered a mobile user interface onto the desktop to run full-powered desktop applications?
The challenge is magnified by the following:
- Many users don’t know they want desktop tablet computing. When confronted with the idea, many claim to oppose it. People hate change, and radical change is always rejected at first.
- Companies are selling the current generation of operating system — and the hardware, peripherals and third-party applications that go with them. Announcing too aggressively could take the wind out of current sales.
- The most likely next-generation systems should probably run both current MPG mobile apps, plus current WIMP applications designed to be used with mice and keyboards. How do you design such a system in a way that doesn’t end up being a big clunky mess?
So what’s a tech giant to do?
Google and Microsoft have both revealed their plans for transitioning to desktop tablets without explicitly announcing them.
Google announced in May a new version of Android that “runs everywhere.” Code-named “Ice Cream Sandwich,” the next generation of Android will work seamlessly on devices of any screen size. The new Android will support USB peripherals and very powerful processors. Google doesn’t make Android devices, of course, and relies on partners to design and build them. I asked Google’s director of engineering for Android whether there is anything preventing hardware makers from making, say, 41-inch screen-size desktop Android tablets, and he told me with a smile: “No, there isn’t.”
Microsoft revealed their plans for the big transition this week in a “demo” video of the upcoming Windows 8. It turns out that Microsoft will use the exact same strategy to move people from WIMP to MPG that it did to move users from DOS to WIMP back in the early 1990s. The next version of Windows will actually run the desktop tablet, touch-optimized “shell” by default. The surprising (even shocking) bit: Even people using WIMP computers with mice and keyboards will get the touch interface! So their strategy is to lead with form, and make function optional. It’s a bold strategy, and in my opinion, quite a brilliant one.
We can expect Google’s next-generation systems hitting by the end of the year, and Microsoft’s next year.
Apple, meanwhile, has revealed nothing. Will they do so tomorrow at the hotly anticipated WWDC? Expectations are that Apple will unveil Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud. Interestingly, these are the core components of desktop tablet computing.
We already know that Lion is designed to prepare users for desktop tablet computing. In fact, Apple’s teaser page for Lion sports the tag line: “The power of Mac OS X. The magic of iPad.”
The OS will include some new and sophisticated touch gestures — right now the expectation is that those will be executed on the Magic Trackpads or MacBooks’ Multi-Touch trackpads. But it’s obvious that all these gestures will be moved to on-screen direct touch when Apple is ready. Lion will also offer easy expansion of windows to full-screen mode, which is a common feature of all known MPG interfaces, including iPad, Android Ice Cream Sandwich and Windows 8. iPad’s auto-correct will appear in Lion. The Mac scroll-bar will be replaced by the iPad scroll-bar, which appears only when needed.
A range of possibilities exists regarding Apple’s announcements tomorrow about the future of desktop tablet computing. At the boring, disappointing end of the spectrum would be the revelation of nothing. “Oh, and one more thing: Nothing!” But at the other end of the spectrum, the possibility exists that Apple will actually announce a desktop tablet Mac.
No, really! It could happen.
The reason I hold out hope for a desktop tablet Mac announcement tomorrow is threefold:
- Apple both enjoys and is actually capable of surprising people.
- Apple was and is miles ahead on touch tablets — destroying the industry by being clearly best and first — and will want to repeat that performance with desktop tablets.
- Apple could be ready. Lion-based desktops will already have most of the features require of a desktop touch tablet. They’re all-in-one systems already. The OS has the gestures, the app store, the full-screen mode and all the rest. Apple would need only to add a touch-capacitive screen to the iMac, and lay it down at a drafting-table angle on the desktop. Oh, and it would need the iOS interface, which would be the most challenging problem.
The most likely event will be somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. Like Google and Microsoft, Apple may reveal the future without announcing it. Regardless of what Apple does or does not announce tomorrow, 2012 is shaping up to be the Year of the Desktop Tablet.
Given Apple’s lead in the development of all elements of MPG computing — gestures, interfaces, hardware design, app functionality and others — it seems unlikely that the company will allow itself to be beat to market by the likes of Google and Microsoft. Apple is so close to the future of computing, you can almost touch it.
(Image courtesy of Michael Powers.)
57 responses to “How Will Apple Bring iOS to the Desktop?”
I doubt your theory. (No Offense) Mine is that they will go the motion gestures route (ie. instead of touching the screen directly, they will point at it from off the screen). A great example is the way you navigate the Xbox menu using Kinect. Jobs has already expressed his feelings against touchscreens on desktops, so my best guess is they will try motion gestures if they move away from the mouse at all.
I doubt your theory. (No Offense) Mine is that they will go the motion gestures route (ie. instead of touching the screen directly, they will point at it from off the screen). A great example is the way you navigate the Xbox menu using Kinect. Jobs has already expressed his feelings against touchscreens on desktops, so my best guess is they will try motion gestures if they move away from the mouse at all.
The question I have regarding desktop tablets is: “To what problem is this supposed to be the answer?”
Maybe I’m missing the obvious, but I see absolutely no case for a product like that other than it being “fresh” and “cool”, but I don’t think that’s enough.
What do people usually do on their desktop? I’d say the most important things are the following (with the more practical system in brackets):
– Media consumption (tie)
– Web browsing (tie)
– Office applications (WIMP)
– Multi tasking (WIMP)
– Gaming (WIMP)
A clear victory for WIMP. Where’s the unique selling point of MPG?
Why?
What problem would this solve? Your graphic shows a rather extreme application for a large touch interface, not one that fits most of us.
The tablet as envisioned by Apple in the iPad, succeeded because it wasn’t some horrible freak hybrid like the ones that had been on the market for years using Microsoft’s tablet OS.
What task or actions do you find yourself needing a “desktop tablet”?
The iPad and iOS was designed for devices that were handheld and used in a different way than seated at a desk in front of a larger computer. The interface problems in working with very large stationary screens are well-known.
Here are a couple of fun facts:
1. Laying a screen at an ergonomic angle reduces the visible surface area.
2. Having a screen in the upright position is ergonomically inefficient and causes ‘gorilla arm’.
3. A mouse or a trackpad is the ideal way to interact with a screen much larger than the range of motion of your wrists. A mouse amplifies motion and allows the cursor (your virtual finger) to go from one end of a 24″ display to the other with the tiniest of motion.
I’m sure we’re going to enable future desktop devices with aspects of touch, but not try to rework the entire interface like iOS. A hybrid seems to totally miss the point of iOS and Apple’s approach to things.
No. Nobody wants to be waving their arms around all day to use their computers. Not happening.
while a touch screen computer for general consumer use may happen at some point I don’t think this is the year for it.
It seems pretty obvious that the iOS like options in Lion were added to appeal to those PC users that got iphones and/or ipads. They are used to that style so having it on the computer in some form or fashion is a way to drag them into Mac OS. Perhaps later those same features will go touchscreen. But it will be some time away and probably mainly for kiosk systems etc. At least the first go around. The touchscreens, etc are not even close to ready for ‘real’ use. EspecIally pro use
This is ridiculous. I can move my thumb and go to any part of the screen I want. A tablet interface is fine for the road. As a professional writer, I want a keyboard and pad. I need ergonomics, not aerobics.
The larger history of computer interfaces involves the application of growing computing power to make the computer work harder to speak the language of the user. We live in a physical world where we reach out and touch things to move them. Mice and trackpads are abstractions that stand between us and directly manipulating on-screen objects. An entire generation of kids with iPads and iPhones are being programmed to love multi-touch computing, and they’ll never want to use a clunky old mouse.
I doubt Apple will bring IOS to the Desktop, thats a bad business choice. Whats the point of an iPad if an Apple Laptop, esp. Macbook Air can run OS X and IOS at the same time?
If they were to put IOS on the Mac, I’d rather have a Macbook Air anyday
The GUI as seen by many is an abstraction as well (i.e. Stephenson’s excellent book In the Beginning Was the Command Line).
This entire generation that loves multi-touch computing (count me among them) use it in very specific circumstances where it makes sense: Touch works great for interfaces that are in your immediate personal space. It’s a different animal entirely when you try to apply it to much larger systems that are in a fixed or have limited movement.
As far as the ‘it’s what the kids are into’ argument: Rather than assuming that the success of touch means that we’re going to try to Frankenstein desktops with it, I think the natural evolution is to look at how we’re going to push more and more applications into the handheld device space. I spend more time on touch devices like my iPad and iPhone then I do my desktop.
I’m more interested in what the typical office productivity application would look like in 10 years. How will we rethink things like email, documents and spreadsheets when we interact with handheld devices more often than desktops? How will things like voice affect those systems?
Trying to go backwards isn’t the solution in my mind. I absolutely believe touch is a paradigm changer. But we have to look at the whole interface from the GUI to the device and not just think we can paste it onto iMacs and have the same evolution.
Has everyone seen the Jeff Han demos from five years ago? I think it’s hard ask “what’s the point?” after seeing these demos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
The iPad is popular because of its interface, and because it’s an elegant appliance. I can’t accept the argument that people don’t want the thrill of the iPad with bigger screens and more power.
So you a) believe PC interface innovation is over; or b) PC interfaces will evolve, but in a direction other than multi-touch?
So you a) believe PC interface innovation is over; or b) PC interfaces will evolve, but in a direction other than multi-touch?
Moving your arms, and reaching out and touching and manipulating things is what human beings are designed to do. When you drive a car, make or eat dinner, make something with your hands or, in the case of California’s governor, grope the maid, what you’re doing is intuitively reaching out and doing something with your hands and arms.
The idea that humans were designed to sit rigidly at a desk and barely move is difficult to accept. Yes, it’s what WIMP computing has trained us to do, but it’s not natural.
I don’t see the convergence of OS X and iOS happening around the user interface. It has to happen in software. I expect to be able to buy an Apple device running iOS X, and it looks and works the same on my iPad or my notebook. Not only will my iPad use the same iWorks files as my MacBokk, it uses the same iWorks! Or MS Office or Photoshop. Why do I give a rattus rattus’ derriere if it’s touch screen or mouse or trackpad? Hell, I should be able to prop my iPad in a stand and use a BT keyboard and mouse, if that’s more productive!
THAT’s the key to a meaningful convergence of OSes: a single, common software base, not what type of input device I use.
At this point I lack the imagination to see anything better than WIMP on the desktop. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that innovation is over.
Didn’t Apple announce the interface last year?
http://store.apple.com/us/prod…
Magic Trackpad.
I completely agree with your assessment Andrew and not Mike Elgan’s. The touch screen concept is convenient on a small device and limited by the length of easy, non-strenuous reach. A large desktop trying to use this approach would be exhausting to use for any length of time, although might make it as an exercise device for building up the upper body. A large nearly flat surface like that displayed in the article’s image would be difficult to view and would be a step backwards from current usability.
I’m writing this while viewing the page on my 30″ Apple Cinema Display, and I can just imagine what it would be like using a 30″ desktop tablet: tiring, quickly irritating and not much fun within only a few minutes of use. With my keyboard and trackball (Kensington) I can zip to any portion of my large screen at will, and with my Wacom drawing tablet I can retouch in Photoshop all day without fatigue, so no Mike Elgan, the desktop will NOT be simply a scaled up touchscreen tablet, just like the most successful tablet was not just a scaled down desktop interface.
If anything, the future of the desktop lies in the direction of even larger vertical screens with some interesting variations of Apple’s trackpad device, where gestures over a small-ish surface will translate into touches on the big screen. As for keyboards going away, I don’t see this happening completely until the voice control/artificial intelligence is a fully developed and workable technology.
Exactly. Its more intuitive, and the gestures dont have to be wildly “waving their arms”. It can be something simple like having a camera below the monitor so that it could see you make gestures just above the keyboard, or even actual sensors on the keyboard like in a recent Apple patent.
I agree that this is where we are heading with desktop computing, and I can’t wait. Just there is no way it is coming tomorrow … I’d say 2013ish.
I’m not sure even voice control will obviate the need for keyboards. Imagine having to dictate all your text, with pauses to think and real-time alter the text being unnatural, with no apparent easy way to edit the text and move sentences around, with everyone in the office needing to talk at their computers all the time, etc. When it comes to putting one’s thoughts together, is speaking even easier than typing/writing? There’s a good reason that speeches are written ahead of time…
Language and the alphabet are the ultimate abstractions (hence we need to spend years learning them), and yet they are the most powerful and the widest adopted tools at our disposal. Human beings are fine with abstractions, provided the abstractions make sense. Interfaces should not try to emulate the real world, but to bridge our needs (whether direct or latent) with our newly-developed capabilities. I would agree with Andrew that simply porting handheld device interfaces to desktop devices makes no sense – both the needs and the capabilities are too different (much less scope for the P part of MPG on desktop devices, for instance). Of course, this is not to say that the new capabilities developed for MPG devices will not be made available for the desktop, and that the desktop experience 20 years from now will still be traceable to Windows 95 (or whatever)…
It’s nice that Mike Elgan and yourself have the courage of your convictions enough to put them out there, but… no. Sorry, just… no.
We’ll definitely see aspects of the MPG interface incorporated into, and possibly superceding, parts of the current WIMP interface, and sooner rather than later, but holding your arm out in free space (i.e. so called “gorilla arm’) is an absolute ergonomic nightmare. Yes, we hold out our arms on steering wheels, but you’ve just highlighted the opposing point really – holding your arms out in free space to drive a car tires you out in an absolutely miniscule fraction of the time you can drive with your arms rested on a physical wheel.
Seriously, this isn’t some hypothetical thing: spend the next ten minutes holding your arm up and waving around over your desktop screen. Spend the next 15 minutes. Spend the next half an hour. Spend the next hour. Spend a day… what? You didn’t get past half an hour? Not even 15 minutes? Whodda thunk it…
Matthew’s suggestion of having a camera below the monitor to see one making gestures is a also bit silly:
1) How is something like that (i.e. a proposed solution to the clear ergonomic/human interface impossibility of large touch screens) that not a complete subjugation of what’s actually being proposed by the original author?
2) And how is that not just another illogical abstraction on much the same level as the WIMP you’re dismissing?
Touch screen works beautifully in the smaller, portable form factor. Tethering it to larger static computing setups is inherently flawed and filled with human-interface contradictions.
It is a very exciting time in the IT industry. What with interactive gaming (Nintendo Wii as well as others) and multi-touch devices IT is becoming truly interactive!
As a child I always imagined what life would be like with these kinds of devices and they’re here already!
Now we wait for the next big leap but how will this actually work in the real world. It’s all very well having touch devices but what about for word processing or a designer building a 3D model. Our peripheral devices have been designed and slightly evolved to achieve these tasks at maximum efficiency.
I have no doubt that these issues can be addressed in a way my mind can not fathom so I wait with excitement at what will come to market.
As a Creative Apple Consultant I can only but imagine what solutions I will be bringing to the table in the future!
http://bit.ly/CAD4MAC
I disagree with the gaming one. Gaming is much better on an MPG interface.
the only limitation of a desktop tablet is your imagination. Lets say you have it built as a coffee table. You could run almost everything in your house with it. Control lights, heat, air, or even start your washing machine, dryer or dishwasher. someone rings the front door. click, and your checking them out with a security system. you could stream movies to any tv in the house. Microsoft could have done this with the surface but decided to only direct this toward businesses not consumers.
Steve’s got to be killing himself for passing on Kinect. Imagine an AirBook with SSD, Thunderbolt, and Kinect? Game over.
Also, while Apple has its great following and end users that will buy anything Apple puts out, Mike, in his article seems to forget one simple fact. While Apple has, and I quote, ” The OS has the gestures, the app store, the full-screen mode and all the rest….”, there is one simple thing that Apple does NOT have and that is the real software that industry and businesses use everyday. Engineering software, AutoCad, petroleum software, etc…. In today’s real world, nearly every Mac user loads Bootcamp or Parallels or some other software to run the MS stuff that the real world runs on. So while they continue to make a gazillion bucks on new cool stuff, for Apple to make any significant dent, they have to have the software, and unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view), they don’t. There has to be a significant mindset change for software developers to make something like this occur and I don’t see it happening anytime soon.