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Comment by j_col | Hacker News Reader

I have a tablet too, but it's just a toy for consuming media and web content. I do my real work on a PC, and will continue to do so until it becomes possible to install web servers, database servers, interpreters and IDEs on a 10" tablet, regardless of what Steve Jobs or this hack for Ars tells me.

> My essential software tools include a fully functional Web browser, an IM client for communicating with writers and other editors, some way to access IRC (the "office" part of our virtual office lives), an e-mail client, a Twitter client, an RSS reader, and a simple writing app that an export clean HTML.

See above, some of us have more demanding requirements from our computers.

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The problem isn't just the power or closed ecosystem, it's the form-factor. Try typing in code, or even just shell commands, with any soft keyboard. Unfortunately, we need too many symbols for it to work.

So the real problem is building a mobile computer on which you can quickly enter text and symbols. I'm currently building a prototype of a folding tablet, about the size of a novel, that allows touch-typing. As your fingers grasp it and hold onto the back, they naturally fall on the home row of a split keyboard. Haven't actually gotten it together but will post pictures and an ergonomic explanation when I do.

I wish instead of following Apple's "plate of glass" interface someone had went with the "keyboard first" approach. It sounds like you are headed in that direction. I really thought Blackberry would be the one to do it, but they went with the crowd. I guess I was hoping for a true successor to the Psion Series 3 & 5 lines.

Can you comment on what you liked about the Psion? I'm afraid I never saw one and from photos I'm unclear how the interface worked. I'm currently doing research on the history of mobile UI and this is a big hole I hadn't thought about.

Small, quick with an ok keyboard and amazing battery life. It worked fine for the day. It was sort of the spiritual successor to the TRS-80 Model 100. There are some videos on youtube that give a feel for the interface better than I can write.

I don't think you will ever be in the market targeted by an iPad. Some people (me included) will always need trucks. On the other hand, I can see about 90% of the people around me being able to use and iPad right now to replace their current computer needs.

You're right. Compromises need to be made in order to keep the iPad efficient in the way it was originally designed and it's pretty unlikely that it will ever become a mobile coding workstation like the GP wants. Why you're being down voted is beyond me.

Is the hardware capable of letting you do coding and what not? Sure. But at the limitation of keeping it appealing to the masses? Probably not.

It's simple. There is more money to be made on the average consumer than the much rarer programmer/power user.

If you don't like that then I guess you should be happy there are alternatives that maybe one day will do what you want. But as it stands, not even Android (the "power user" OS, if you want to even call it that) doesn't even do what you want without rooting it.

Point is, what the GP wants isn't really something we'll see for the time being. Being cranky about it isn't going to change things.

Letting users opt-out of a walled garden is hardly much of a "compromise" at all.

And really, that's all you'd need to do to satisfy me.

No, I fully agree with the GP, but I certainly could see myself "in the market".

The hardware is perfectly capable of what I would need to use it for. However, the software unnecessarily cripples it. I don't see why I shouldn't be able to get a piece of hardware because other people don't want to use the software that I use.

Remove the artificial limitations and I'd buy one no problem. "Not in the target audience" be damned.

The "artificial" limitations are what keeps the iPad performant. If you loaded a web server, database, etc. on it, it would fall over and be truly unresponsive. It is a package.

I would imagine someone will build a tablet (Microsoft seems to be on that trail) that will fit the needs of developers / power users. Truthfully, I am surprised there is not such a tablet offered by a company producing Android tablets.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/23/lenovo-thinkpad-x201-tabl...

That is a pretty recent example. They have been offering tablets that run traditional OSes with traditional specs for years.

Talk about a reality distortion field. I was doing things that would supposedly "knock over an ipad" almost 2 decades ago on bargain-bin hardware.

have you seen http://www.textasticapp.com/ ?

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