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Comment by jjindev | Hacker News Reader

One wonders if the tablet (or small tablet) isn't really just the last good form. We've spent decades building towards it. Time to stop and enjoy.

(That and make tablets cheap enough to be ubiquitous)

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Not even slightly. I don't think there is one last good form. The future is a variety of devices. Despite the rise of tablets, I still code using a desktop machine with multiple monitors, and I wouldn't ever trade it for a tablet.

I'm looking at the progression of form. The paperback book did not kill the newspaper, but it was kind of the bottom end. "Tiny books" are a novelty.

So yeah, development is serious work like stocks trading and you want a big interface like the Wall Street Journal.

I've never found a use for a tablet myself. My phone is fine for Kindle reading and anything else I'd use a tablet for. Past that I use my Macbook Pro Retina which is barely heavier than a tablet anyway and has a nice keyboard. Glass/watches are handy because they don't have to be taken out like a phone/tablet/laptop.

I'm counting my phone (4.25" diag) as a small tablet. I don't have a bigger one myself, but I see them, especially at parties, in the hands of children. Their ubiquity is growing.

I can see room for more devices, fitness bands, etc., but as sensors rather than media. I'm just not seeing them beat the form of the book, magazine, tablet.

I mean wrist-watches kind of overloaded their interface after time, date, and dive depth. It was technically possible to put a microfilm reader in a wrist watch, but a paper copy of National Geographic was just so much nicer.

I'd be willing to try a heads-up travel guide, but a cheap and light one in my pocket might be all I need.

OK, maybe running with a HUD would be fun, current pace, previous pace on course ....

Maybe with a "ghost" feature like from Mario Kart where you can see a representation of your previous runs on the course and compete with them.

Tablets may be a dominant form for quite a while, but how can you possibly think tablets are all there will ever be?

The UI in the NCC-1701-D is basically thousands upon thousands of mounted iPads with a really, really advanced version Siri installed.

I'd be OK with that kind of future.

Yeah but don't forget what else was in that future. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT-wfcujaNE Wouldn't you at least want to try it out?

Yes, definitely something that became a mainstream product less than five years ago is The Final Innovation.

when I can write the software for the tablet on it, and get one with a beefy processor (which only fires up to max when on AC power), I might think about it. Right now, I need an ultrabook to do that.

(and no, I'm not interested in the MS Surface Pro, Windows 8 is terrifyingly poor by all accounts.)

Make them usable in bright daylight while you're at it.

That's possible today with e-ink tablets, like the Kindle.

The trick is to have both reflective displays and responsiveness.

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