The Apple Tablet’s Linchpin
Dan Moren, nicely expressing my biggest concern with any Apple “Tablet” that even slightly resembles everyone’s guesses:
Wait, wait, wait. We’re talking about a revolutionary new device that will let you watch videos, play music, and probably even control your own squadron of death robots (not included), and I’m worried about something as mundane as text entry?
Well, yeah.
Text entry is the second-biggest limiting factor of the usefulness of different computing-device portability classes. (The biggest is size: how likely is it that you’ll have the device with you when you want to use it?)
This doesn’t apply to media players, so if that’s primarily what The Tablet is supposed to be (which would be disappointing, but not unlikely), they can get away with a low-usefulness, on-screen touch keyboard. But for The Tablet to be a useful general-computing device, text input needs to be faster and easier than what even the best on-screen keyboards have been able to offer so far.
A friend of mine expressed his skepticism of the Apple tablet’s potential success over this very reason. Previous attempts at tablet computers have been universally plagued with text entry systems that made the user experience more pain than convenience.
The reason I’m confident that Apple’s tablet won’t be a failure is that they wouldn’t be releasing such a product without a workable solution for this very fundamental problem. Dan Moren runs down the problems with each of the traditional or obvious solutions (physical keyboard, virtual keyboard, stylus, etc.) and ends up at the same place I do: assuming that Apple’s solution is something completely obvious, but, as their track-record indicates, simultaneously ingenious.
