Wozniak: Tablet is the PC for 'normal people' | Hacker News Reader

Wozniak: Tablet is the PC for 'normal people'

networkworld.com

84 pointsalphadoggs75 comments

My seventy-year-old dad still isn't at ease with Windows after fifteen years of having Windows PCs at home, but he's a master of his iPad.

However, he still uses Windows for email and posting on the web, because he hates typing on the touch screen. He tried the keyboard I got him for the iPad, but it ended up gathering dust on a shelf somewhere. My dad might be stuck in the pre-computer age, but he isn't stuck in the pre-keyboard age. He knows what a decent keyboard is. The keyboard is one of those things that people don't want to give up.

The folks talking about the iPad being the PC for "normal people" are looking forward to a future where nobody except nerds uses a computer before the age of eighteen. It's premature to speculate what a computer for "normal people" ought to look like until the definition of "normal people" stabilizes. Technological and economic development is changing the definition of normal people every day.

Yet for the first time normal people like your dad and my parents and other family members can figure most things out themselves. My dad have both iPad and iPhone and for the first time he figures out stuff on his own, he have had phones since they came out back in the late eighties always asked me about the most "easy" things. The input problem isn't solved yet but for most cases it just works.

Does this mean that ChromeOS devices netbooks and pcs are the PC for normal people? Time will tell I guess.

I think we'll need a new input method in the coming proliferation of touch ui based devices. Something like the old quickwriting research project perhaps. I have no idea how one brings about a social skill change like that. I suppose Palm did pretty good with their writing system. But in any case, I think if you just look at the problem the answer is a new input method for this form factor. How you get people there I have no idea.

Good point, we really need a new text input method for a touch-centric world. On-screen QWERTY keyboards are inconvenient and especially slow. Something that allows for really fast typing using fingers only, no stylus should be required.

The lack of a good solution to that is the only thing holding me back from using a tablet. I'm mainly a producer not a consumer so I really need to be able to type text quickly...

seen Dasher? http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/

Nope, hadn't seen that one yet. Could be interesting, thanks.

Swype is still an on screen qwerty keyboard, but it's much much quicker. You can essentially mash the keyboard (swipe around haphazardly, actually) and get exactly what you want for longer words. Shorter words are trickier, but it's amazing at getting long ones correct, and thus makes typing much quicker and painless.

Does it work on larger keyboards? I would imagine that it works great in smartphone keyboards because the swipe distances are so short but on tablets the keyboards are nearly the size of a normal keyboard. I can touch type on those.

I don't really like word-completion based schemes (the first thing I disabled on phones was the T9 typing for SMS) for the following reasons:

- I type in multiple languages (both programming and human). Systems with word-completion are generally based on a single language and need a context switch and separate dictionaries.

- You have to be very alert to what appears on the screen. You cannot blindly/mechanically type something and be sure that you get what you want, unless you know the entire dictionary.

To your point, Steve Jobs made a similar comment at D8 -

Jobs: “When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. … PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people. … I think that we’re embarked on that. Is the next step the iPad? Who knows? Will it happen next year or five years from now or seven years from now? Who knows? But I think we’re headed in that direction.”

http://d8.allthingsd.com/20100601/steve-jobs-session/

One thing that I really appreciate about Steve Jobs is his honesty in these matters.

He could have ventured on saying that the iPad is the next step that would have been very marketingish. Instead of speaking in certainties he treats his own products with a respect for reality and critical thinking.

Just imagine if more CEO's would actually participate in honest discussion about their products like this.

I'm pretty sure that in the beginning all cars were cars.

Does _anyone_ bother to fact check on Hacker News?

The first cars were not trucks, they were carriages. And your 35 horsepower Mercedes in the 1900s was not being bought by farmers but was being purchased by wealthy urban dwellers. The word "truck" by itself did not even refer to a motorized vehicle until the 1930s. Cars started out as a post-agrarian weakly powered luxury good for passengers before they ever became heavy duty farm implements, SJ's narrative is backwards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck

Step outside of the reality distortion zone, please.

This is a good point, but the condescension really doesn't help.

Some of us appreciate bullshit-free communication.

I once met a “normal guy”: he was really really lonely.

Normal people are people you don't know very well.

The friendly touch UI does help, but the real reason seems to be that iPad is a much simpler system compared to Windows or any other full OS.

Google is doing the same thing with ChromeOS: how simple can we make this thing while still being useful?

> The keyboard is one of those things that people don't want to give up.

Product idea #1 of the day: a clicky, compact Model-M-style keyboard for iPad. Extra plus points if it comes in Selectric colors.

I'm sorry but tablets being for "normal people" sounds out of touch. My dad is a 58 year old fire fighter, he couldn't have been any less of a "computer person" yet he emails, manages his iTunes/iPod, and can stalk me on Facebook with ease (too much ease in fact when it comes to FB). And to top it off, he has done all this on a.... Windows PC, I type that without a shred of irony but many will read it as such.

Face it, ATMs mostly run a custom UI on top of a Windows kernel, Police cruisers all have laptops attached to the dash, the US Postal Service will be out of business sooner rather than later because email and by extension the PC has been for "normal people" since the turn of the century. Anybody who hasn't interfaced in someway or another with a PC (regardless of OS) at some semi-regular interval over the last 10 years probably won't discover a need to now just because of the increased portability of the tablet form factor.

So your dad knows how to use Outlook, iTunes, and Facebook. Can he install applications? Update drivers? Install Windows security updates as they come out and keep his anti-virus up to date? Tablets remove all that stupid maintenance crap, and that's why they are PCs for normal people.

You still need to know how to use iTunes to use an iPad.

Additionally, you generally don't need to know how to update yur drivers or antivirus. Those get updated automatically on Windows. The only thing you need to know how to do is install applications. Which 95% of the time is to double-click setup.exe or install.exe.

I'm the tech support guy for my extended family. I support around 30 or so computers. What I've found interesting is over the past year or two is that support calls have dropped to about one every other month. And they're no longer things like, "My computer isn't working." They're more like, "How do I know that the backup program will work when I need it?"

If you think you don't need to know how to update drivers or maintain antivirus software on a typical PC, then your experience isn't typical of the majority of users or the poor sobs who do technical support for them.

On a tablet, there is no running an installer executable. You just tap. Uninstallation is also just a tap. It's undeniably superior.

Why does he need to use Outlook? He uses Yahoo mail. He managed to install iTunes. The printer installed without a hitch via the HP software. Windows updates install themselves these days unless you disable it.

My mom is paranoid about viruses and installed Symantec, but the paranoia also ensures that they don't click on weird crap coming thru email. Sidenote: my mom upgraded the laptop herself from Vista to Win7 without bugging me, praise jeebus!

PCs aren't mystical, I don't know if the expertise of maintaining them is some kind of totem that geeks cling to but hearing about problems with them is the exception instead of the rule these days.

If you think problems with PCs is an exception to the rule, you're living in a dream world. The point is that, on a tablet, your parents wouldn't have had to go through the hassle of installing slow antivirus software or "manage to install" things. Installation and uninstallation is so simple that the PC method of multistep installers and uninstallers immediately looks incredibly archaic.

There are other tasks like managing photos, watching and editing movies, installing third-party software, and more that I bet your parents have trouble with or flat-out avoid on a PC. These things are easy on an iPad. Not to mention the constant threat of malware, no matter how paranoid your mom is.

If there's a totem that geeks cling to, it's the fear of the PC going away and the fantasy that PCs aren't overly complicated to an embarrassing degree, or that everyone can magically learn how to use PCs if they'd just spend hours every night on them like geeks do. It's symptomatic of a real lack of perspective when it comes to how the public deals with the standard PC. You and I think they're easy because we spend most of our time on them. They are our living or our hobby. Most people aren't like that.

I think you are confusing tablets as a form factor with tablets as they are currently implemented today. There is no reason pcs can't remove all that stupid maintenance crap as well. (In fact it is on list of startups that Ycombinator is looking to fund.) And it is entirely possible that tablets can become just as cumbersome in that regard.

If there's no reason PCs can't remove that crap, why haven't they?

Why does the fact that the input mechanism is a finger instead of a mouse affect installation of applications, installing security updates, and updating drivers?

These are two completely independent factors.

There is nothing magical about a touch screen that instantly removes all the complexity in an operating system: you're drawing false correlations. "This tablet X is easier to install applications on than this computer Y. Therefore, touch interfaces make installing applications easier."

I didn't imply at all that it was the touchscreen that makes tablets easier. I thought by the examples I gave that it was clear I was talking about the simplified paradigm of a typical tablet--a centralized store to purchase, install, and update apps; a fullscreen, one-app-at-a-time interface; no antivirus, antispyware, defraggers, registry cleaners, and so on; and a highly mobile hardware device that comfortably rests in your lap and requires no hookup or peripherals to run.

I have trouble believing even "normal people" will want to use the tablet for anything except casual use. The desktop computer's monitor/keyboard/mouse setup is too efficient to be fully replaced by the touch screen.

Not saying that tablets won't find their own niche, but they aren't suited for heavy workloads that increasingly large numbers of "normal people" need to do on computers.

The biggest legacy of tablets is going to be how the ideas behind them influence desktop computers. I'm expecting most consumer operating systems to become more "appliance-like" and more tied to services provided by their developers. The success of iOS makes it almost inevitable that this model will be ported to the desktop.

Correct. I have two 'normal' people in this house, and neither of them could or would get their work done on today's iPad. They are on Macs. For them, and myself as IT support person, the most interesting feature of the iPad might be the app management model and anything that makes maintaining the OS and applications (not just 'apps'), plug-ins and other resources (eg. fonts) easier.

I think many normal people use their PC at home much, much longer for "casual use" than for work. So, I would reverse your assessment, the PC will keep its niche for the odd non-casual use at home but tablets will absolutely dominate when it comes to what people use home computers for the most, casual things.

For what _most_ people actually do, which is email, browsing and word processing and other productivity work, I'm having trouble believing that a tablet won't work equally well.

Maybe future tablets will be larger than 10" or support multiple displays, or multiple tablets working together, or maybe with external keyboards added, but except for niche tasks (graphic design which is often mouse/pen based) or CAD, I think they are a big step forward. That doesn't mean that advanced users won't stick to the desktop interface.

People said the same thing when the mouse became popular and the keyboard / command line interface dominated. I still use the command line interface every day because it's very efficient at what I do, but I do acknowledge that most people nowadays never will.

Yes it is and there is a very simple reason.

The tablet removes abstraction between the user and the interface elements to be interacted with.

The engineers who invented the touch screen has done more for the field of usability than any UX or usability expert could ever hope for.

Now the big question for me is. Will apple forget about the enterprise market?

Completely agree. They do need to solve the text input problem though. I have had to consciously reduce my usage of the ipad since it seems to put me in read mode vs write mode.

There's less of a text input problem on the iPad than there is on a mobile phone.

Since I've used smartphones with software keyboards I find myself in the habit of replying only when I get home, the phone becoming little more than a notification device.

At least on the iPad I respond a little.

I find myself seriously considering a blackberry again. I'd miss the software but know my response rate whilst mobile would soar.

I actually find Swype on my android phone to be easier for text input than the iPad. My wife also puts down the iPad and grabs her iPhone when it's time to reply to emails. She doesn't like full ten finger typing on it and she can't thumb type on it like on her phone.

For me, the iPad 2's Smart Cover's ability to prop it up makes all the difference. I end up using it for lots more "laptop replacement" tasks because it's so much easier to type on with the Cover folded back.

My wife has an iPad 1 with a similar case (Incase or Belkin, can't remember which), but she still doesn't like typing on it. My theory is that it's partly ergonomic, but partly a matter of expectations. A phone is a completely different form factor, so you don't expect an experience that has any sort of fidelity to using a physical keyboard (also the keys are closer together). On an iPad-sized virtual keyboard, you hit a sort of uncanny valley, wherein it feels like a bad version of what you're used to, instead of a totally different thing. But that's pure conjecture.

The input thing is why I'm bearish on tablets in general. I like not just having a physical keyboard because it's faster and feels better, but I also like that there's a portion of my hardware that's dedicated to input. On an abstract level I feel like it is a more egalitarian paradigm, to put my ideas on the same starting level as everyone else's. It's like having upstream and downstream parity. Maybe that's silly, but it's how I feel.

I have fantastical thoughts of some kind of surface that can alter its shape to provide the tactile feedback that touchscreens are lacking... though these thoughts will likely remain in the domain of science fiction.

There's already touch screens out there with tactile feedback. They don't physically alter shape, but they vibrate at specific frequencies to mimic the feel of button presses. Seems like tactile feedback would be very useful for driving applications.

It's not a big deal. As the tablet matures eventually you'll just be able to connect a usb/bluetooth keyboard to one, when necessary.

What do you mean "eventually"? The iPad has worked with Bluetooth keyboards since day one.

I do wonder how long it will be until an actual iPad/iPod/iPhone computing dock surfaces.

That is, one dock connection that supplies power, feeds an HDMI display and connects a keyboard, transforming the ipad screen into a sort of oversized trackpad. optionally with some context sensitive controls.

With that, when people want a more traditional computing experience, they just carry their device over to the desk, dock and get on with it.

The only real missing part is OS-wide awareness of such a dock, so that the UI can shift to being more keyboard-friendly [1]. I believe even the existing dock API could effect this on a smaller scale [2] if Apple greenlit a third party to build one.

[1] Using a bluetooth keyboard with the iPad is pretty weak, due to the lack of consistent navigation support. e.g. alt-tab/cmd-tab sorts of behaviors, arrowing through pick-lists, universal tab/shift-tab support, etc.

[2] Each app would have to look for said dock (and not just on startup) and the OS still wouldn't be integrated, which would limit things a bit.

The existing iPad Keyboard dock supports connecting power and an external display through the 30-pin connector on the back. I'm guessing it'll work with the new HDMI connector as well, although I'm not sure.

I don't think making the iPad a trackpad for an external display would work well, however, since the iPad does not have a cursor and the GUI is not designed to be used with one (try the iPhone/iPad simulator on a Mac to see how it works). Making it work as a 1-1 mapping from the iPad to the external display is what the current HDMI connector gives you anyway.

I was suggesting the OS be updated so that a trackpad-friendly UI mode could be created. As-is, I agree, it's not useful at all.

The thrust of my wonder about a possible docking solution was towards a real, actually good, option.

The engineers who invented the touch screen has done more for the field of usability than any UX or usability expert could ever hope for.

Which is interesting in itself because for the first 30-odd years of touchscreens they were largely a usability nightmare for anything more complex than simple multiple-choice buttons (and even then, often sub-par.)

Partially due to technological limitations (low-res resistive screens), but partially because traditional interface abstractions don't translate at all well.

It took clever UX engineering around touchscreens for them to get past the gimmick factor and become useful and immersive mainstream computing interfaces.

Agree.

But this was only possible due to proper processing power. The instant feel of the iPhone GUI flow makes all the difference.

I'm reminded of Alan Kay talking in 1987[1] about GRAIL (Graphical Input Language) on the RAND Tablet, which he calls the first "data tablet":

"When I saw that, and used it for half an hour in 1968, I felt like I was sticking my hands right through the display and actually touching the information structures directly. This was the first system I'd ever used, and practically the only one since, that I've called truly intimate. It was this degree of intimacy that was so important in a user interface."

Interestingly he mentions that one of the reasons for the creation of the RAND Tablet was that their economists and other computer users complained that they couldn't type.

[1] http://www.archive.org/details/AlanKeyD1987 Alan Kay: Doing with Images Makes Symbols GRAIL part starts at about 23:40

This is entirely anecdotal and may not be representative of everyone else's experience, but since the launch of iPhone and iPad, I have yet to receive a frantic, middle-of-the-night-my-iOS-device-crashed call.

Sure, there are the odd hardware failures here and there (typically one of the buttons is no longer responsive, or the touchscreen fails to register touches in one part of the screen) but overall, it has been pretty stress-free for my role as the "family tech support guy".

So yes, I would tend to agree the iPad might just be what the tech industry needs to get more people interested in computing.

One concern I would have, with more people using iPads instead of computers, is the middle of the night "I dropped my iPad and now it won't turn on, how do I save my data?" call. Apple really needs to get on the ball with some sort of backup that doesn't require plugging it into a PC.

I imagine this is what their NC data center is for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook

Alan Kay, the one behind the Dynabook said:

>"When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it’s the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you’ll rule the world."

http://www.edibleapple.com/alan-kay-on-the-iphone-and-the-ip...

Let's consider that "normal" people play games. Sure, there are gaming consoles of all sorts, but this does not change a fact there are a lot of games on PC. You can't effectively play - for example - 3DFPS on tablet. Well, you could hook up keyboard and mouse, but there any difference from desktop PC. Except for tablets have less powerful hardware than any typical "gaming" PC.

Let's consider "normal" people work. Even throwing out possibly "non-normal" jobs with high hardware resource demands (like photorealistic 3D graphic artists, or CPU-intensive engineering calculations), but even a secretary won't do any good on tablet. Touch screens are fine for tweeting, but are no good for editing a sufficiently large document.

Inverview summarized: iPad advertisement, nothing to see there.

I'm a nerd's nerd. After the dot-com bust I used to collect SGI, DEC and Sun hardware. I cut my teeth on a Commodore 64 and also VAX VMS (in a DECNET cluster). I built my own PCs from 1992 through 2007. I work currently as a data warehousing consultant.

My primary computer at home is now an iPad 2.

Yes, I have a computer with a 27" display and tons of memory and four cores and a GPU suitable for playing new games, but it doesn't matter much because it's been collecting an awful lot of dust. As long as I can get my paws on another one, my parents are getting one as a joint Mother's/Father's day gift, because I doubt they'd touch their iMac much anymore.

"I think we'll need a new input method in the coming proliferation of touch ui based devices." I don't. I type at 80-90% of the speed as a physical keyboard. And the thing that slows me down is having to switch keyboard pages for numbers and symbols -- otherwise I'm probably closer to 95% of my typing sped. I bang out frighteningly long emails on an iPad with no loss of efficiency. If it was bad, I wouldn't hesitate to go to my desk that's less than twenty feet away. The only thing that solves the input problem is a physically larger space for a larger virtual keyboard, and improvements to autocompletion algorithms and dictionaries. And time -- aren't there people who can type at furious rates on a Blackberry? There are, but they weren't that fast on Day 1.

Can I program on an iPad? No. Actually, I can't do a lot of things on the iPad, but all those things are what I consider "work" -- I don't do image retouching to relax, nor do I relax by entering metadata for media, write applications, nor model databases. For everything I do that I consider "play", the iPad does all of it. Brilliantly.

Computers are for work. Tablets are for play. Most people's computing tasks are in the latter category, and for that reason, tablets (or at least the iPad) will succeed.

This isn't coming from a septuagenarian either -- I'm barely in my 30s.

I am the same way. My iPad never leaves my sight. I even surf on it while I am sitting in front of computer compiling code.

sigh I guess I'll just never get it. I have an iPad sitting right here, but I don't use it for a damn thing except testing.

I surf the web on a desktop computer--while it's compiling code, even--and choose that experience 9 times out of 10 over surfing on the iPad (or any tablet or phone for that matter).

Surely I'm not the only one who feels this way.

From my experience, most tablet users use the tablet for 1)videos 2)really casual games 3)random browsing - not particularly PC-ish in my opinion. To say 'Tablet is the PC' is in some way less accurate than saying 'Tablet is the new TV' or 'Tablet is the best mobile browser'.

Exactly - I don't think having an iPad had changed the amount of time I spend sitting in front of a desktop PC or laptop. But it has changed how I watch video, read books and get my news over breakfast.

But for "normal" people, videos, casual games and random browsing is what a PC is for.

Am I the only one who doubts a lot of the magical usability of touch interfaces?

No, doubting the magical usability of touch interfaces is still a very popular viewpoint, and until recently was conventional wisdom amongst almost anyone in the know.

Touch interfaces actually do work pretty well though. Direct manipulation is just more engaging.

I agree that direct manipulation is engaging and intuitive, but I think it has fundamental ergonomic issues when you're talking about doing any sort of long-term, serious work. When you get to screen sizes that we're all using now at work, a handheld device is no longer feasible, and a large touchscreen monitor is silly for the same reason that whizbang Minority Report/Kinect interfaces are silly: you arms get tired very quickly.

This fantastic video comes to mind: http://10gui.com/video/

The context here is devices that are small and light enough to be reasonably handheld - i.e. tablets and phones.

It's not yet clear to me if touchscreen will ever make sense for larger-screen devices, certainly you do not want to interact using touch with a vertical surface for any length of time.

However, using an iPad for "long-term, serious work" is just fine. So I don't think you should equate large screens with serious work.

Yeah, I suppose it depends. I tend to feel cramped and annoyed at having to manage windows whenever I'm on anything smaller than 2 monitors < 19" or something equivalent.

I think the 10GUI idea linked above is great because it's intuitive enough and still robust. The intuitiveness and engagement of the iPad is great, but I find it restrictive (the input bandwidth is limited by the direct manipulation paradigm). I think it's fantastic for people who have trouble understanding or don't particularly feel the need to spend time learning the intricacies of indirect manipulation, but I don't see that as a problem for my generation (cusp of X/Y) or subsequent ones.

Not at all. My own experience with iPhones and iPads has been awful, with the touch recognition being finicky and the lack of force-feedback making it nearly impossible to use.

The core problem boils down to the exact same reason why the Wii's interface is terrible: it forces you to make much larger, slower motions -- motions that can easily be misinterpreted and have very low accuracy -- instead of spending 0.05 seconds tapping a key or clicking a button.

Tablets are another fad like 3D movies. They're popular with a lot of people, but in the end, they just give everyone pounding headaches.

The fact that the interface is a fat finger instead of a mouse does not magically make the interface any easier to use. What mobile devices (not just tablets) have demonstrated is the power of simpler operating system user interfaces -- not that touch screens magically make everything a million times better. This will be the primary legacy of tablets, not the touch screen.

Of course, not everyone seems to get pouding headaches from 3D movies, and not everyone finds the touch interfaces finicky to the point of being impossible to use. Extrapolating from your own experience to conclude they are a fad is a bit shortsighted.

From my experience with iPhone/iPad, the people who "think" that the touch interface required precise input are the ones that end up with lots of spurious inputs, because they use very light and "careful" touches that are misinterpreted instead of letting the input prediction do its work.

I do agree that there is a lot to be done regarding keyboard input, but even the keyboards seems to work OK for most people.

I've been thinking about this. Touch-only devices have lots of appeal, but fall short for a significant number of use cases. Slide-out keyboard + touch (+ mouse?) seems better.

I think the ipad will only reach a point in which is has potential to push PCs out of the market once it no longer needs to be tethered to a pc for regular use.. Keyboards, size, and general interface are all this people acclimate to, but only being able to move things to the ipad from a PC? You can't get around the necessity for the PC there. When the ipad starts to feel more like its own device, I could feasiblly see Wozniak and Jobs' vision becomming reality. But till then, its a dependent device with a great UI.

I find it hard to believe (me included) that anybody capable of having hacker news account is qualified to discuss about "normal peoples" computer usage.

What about out-of-the-office work applications? Storage rooms, hospitals, factories, delivery - everywhere you have to walk around with information instead of sitting by your desk.

I can imagine (I don't know if anyone actually tried this) a facility with many (company-owned) tablets that people exchange between themselves instead of paper reports and forms, much like PADDs in Star Trek.

    "We've never had an argument," he said. "We're just in
    different places, and we're different people." Jobs was
    interested in running a company, while Wozniak was and
    remains an engineer at heart.

I guess normal people get bored with their "PC" quite easily.

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