...in, uhm, 2007. It really did make a huge splash at that show: in addition to MacWorld naming it best of show, I love this article from Ars Technica called "ModBook Rules MacWorld." It's easy to see why - this is the super cool thing that Apple should have released this year...if not last year...if not before. Yeah, yeah, laptops get all the buzz right now, but I'm telling you, tablets have been rocking the PC world for years because for a dramatic part of the laptop market, tablets work so much better. By such a long shot it's ridiculous.
Perhaps not for most folks here, but nobody here, including me, is in anything more than a teeny tiny niche of the market, even with the Apple ecostystem. So when I tell you that tablets are better than laptops for a large part of the market, "large part" by definition excludes us. :-)
(BTW, our boy Gates is on record saying that the tablet form factor will surpass all others....of course he said that would happen by 2006. Yeah yeah, evil empire, borg, whatever. The man knows something about selling massive numbers of things.)
One of the easiest ways to understand the ModBook is as a cross between a laptop with a rotating screen, and a Newton on nuclear-strength steroids: touch sensitive screen designed by Wacom, handwriting recognition that actually WORKS, 25% higher contrast ratio than any MacBook, a bigger screen and faster processor than the Air, GPS, and on and on.
As for the Newton part, the CEO of Axiotron is the guy who KILLED Newton, so if nothing else, he has a good idea of what DOESN'T work. And along the way, he's picked up on some things that do. Here's a more recent Ars Technica article, an interview with said CEO, Andreas Haas.
One of the most interesting things about this story is that Apple signed these guys up as an official Apple Proprietary Services Provider, and have made clear that they're just not interested in tablets.
"Apple just isn't interested in this type of thing, and that's why we're fulfilling that need. We're thrilled about it, and we are not going anywhere."
Of course the folks at Digital Voodoo and Matrox probably said the same thing, so whatever.
In any case, I think one of the things this shows is that Apple is only marginally interested in expanding its reach into new markets in the computer biz. Even if it's not at all useful to YOU, I think that the ModBook will be around longer than Air, which I think is destined to join Mac models like The Cube on the list of interesting failures.
Digg it
The modbook iterests me..
Hey Tim,
I like many others am totally underwhelmed by the MacBook Air. I'm not going to even begin to try to make any predictions on what's going to happen to the product from a business/success standpoint since I've proven to be miserable at predictions. The Modbook, on the other hand, totally interests me for reasons I'm not exactly sure about. I think that Axiotron has a great design team and the product looks like it might actually be able to deliver on what it promises. There's no doubt that right now it serves a very niche market - but I can think of a few way that a tablet mac might actually find a home in my production workflow - especially in ways where a MacBook Air wouldn't. I've thought too, why doesn't Apple just buy up the company like they've bought so many others? It is beginning to seem clear that they just have no interest in making a product like that.
Oh, and about Gates, when I've heard recent interviews from him you really get the sense that he still absolutely 100% believes that tablets are as great and as important as they were when he was initially touting them years ago, and that he sees the fact that they haven't been adopted en masse as one of his biggest failures. He also openly admits that they could have done a better job in marketing them and getting people to see how useful they could be. I do believe that there is a future ahead for tablet devices, he just was overly optimistic on how life changing they would be. Because of that, Gates seems like he's a lot more reserved about his surface computing ideas, although you can tell he's every bit as excited about it as with other technologies he's sparked.
-Paul Escandon
Oremus Productions
http://www.oremusproductions.com
Outdoor Channel
-Lead Editor
Bill Gates isn't alone...
I used to work for years in the satellite/cable television industry back in the 8os and early 90s. People thought that every home would be wired with high-speed cable long before now and that cable would be where television was streamed, not from satellites. In meetings that I was in during many of the old TVRO conferences, etc., they talked about "micro-casting" across cable and how little micro-channels would proliferate on cable and would bring highly focused pay-per-view interest-specific broadcasting to homes and business by the year 2000. It didn't happen. In fact, it's only marginally and arguably happening to a degree, at present.
But guys like Charlie Ergen (at Echostar, home of Dish Network) have brought things a long way from where they once were. I remember when he first told me and some of the people with him at dinner one night, what he was going to do with launching Echostar 1 and 2 in the days ahead. I knew he was a go-getter and that he would accomplish great things but I never thought he'd pull off what he has today.
I think that Bill Gates is right that tablets will one day be very common in the world of computing.
Things take so long because it's a tough thing to change people's long entrenched habits.
But like you and Tim, I'm definitely interested in the Modbook.
Best,
Ron Lindeboom
The computer for Link, Julie and Pete
I was going to make a Mod Squad joke in my first post, but didn't want to keep going. :-) Although it turns out that Link is a very cool name for the computer age. Sounds like some kind of super hacker or something.
Anyway, thanks for the Bill update, Paul. He's obviously right that it's taking longer than he thought...but I still think he's right about it becoming the dominant hardware platform.
Part of this is aided by seeing my wife whip around her OQO mini computer. It's crazy fast, more than amply powerful, and cute as a freaking button...all in black so it's also sleek. And it's a real computer -- comes with Vista Ultimate pre-installed -- I've come to really love Vista, btw -- and while the screen is obviously too small to run an NLE, it more than exceeds the specs of any NLE I've seen.
I'm veering off topic, except to say that there are many, many computing platforms that Apple is never going to be interested in, because computing isn't their primary business anymore. And regardless of what my opinion of tablets is, it doesn't matter. They really are a big deal, and I agree Paul, a more interesting and useful alternative to a MacBook than an Air.
Remind me to tell you a story about those handheld checkout devices you see in the Apple stores some time.....
BTW, anybody notice that Air costs more than a nicely outfitted MacBook? (The 13 incher is still probably my favorite Mac ever...just can't use it for heavy lifting.) Or only $200 less than a MacBook Pro? That said, there's a well established precedent for Apple customers paying more, for less power, than they maybe should, just to have something really cool. Cf, the Cube.