Well, first off, it doesn't seem to be a tablet. This is a book form factor so perhaps it's their take on a dual screen netbook. Beyond nitpicky semantics, I think a dual screen with wide gutter between them is so limiting as to make it nonsensical as a consumer device. (maybe this isn't positioned as a consumer device ...?) When you are really working or reading, usually you will want to maximize the active window, esp on a small hand held device. So here, you can't ... or if you can you have a huge dead stripe down the middle ... epic fail there. Using a hinged device as a camera seems awkward at best, obviously this isn't going to be your main camera I guess. The still photo seems to show a media library open on the left and some sort of page open on the right with the invisible hand scribbling tiny notes on it. Seems like a big waste of screen space to have the left side devoted to all those large thumbnails while you're trying to do some work on the right side.
I skimmed a few of the many replies and have to say that I'm amazed that the animated demo elicited excitement among some. So you can drag snippets between an address book and a map, or between a webpage and scrapbook - big whoop. We've been dragging things from window to window for ages, so does dragging from screen to adjacent screen really get you all cranked? Right now, there is a little app for sharing photos between iPhones, where you put them side by side and drag from one to the other, just like in this demo. Only, its here now.
I dunno, seems very fuddish and like a vaporware 'leak'; keep the troops moral up kind of thing. Thats fair, standard MS playbook.
Gizmodo says they are final stages. If true they were making it before this "mockup" appeared anywhere. I wouldn't use that argument, after all lots of people here want a dual-screen from Apple. What would you have said then? Personally I never liked the dual screen idea, in any form.
I see Apple going the "slate" route. And eventually giving the Pro books touch displays, with some sort of clever swivel thingy.
Having two screens brings down battery life, and whatever way you look at it adds complexity on some level. This whole dilemma isn't an easy one to solve, which is why it hasn't been solved yet.
Video is pretty awesome. Here's to hoping that Apple and M$FT duke it out pretty heavily in this arena, then the ultimate winner is us, the consumer!
Thing is. If Microsoft releases this and doesn't 3rd party it, watch out. This will be huge. The video was great. Remember. Take a lok at their mobile 6.5 more like osx then win is so if they potted the 6.5 and made some changes, this could be very doable.
While the video was amazingly cool, the UI didn't really do anything that revolutionary that makes me think this can't be done. Other than it being extremely snappy, there really isn't anything there that looks too far fetched. Battery life would be a concern with 2 screens though.
Thing is. If Microsoft releases this and doesn't 3rd party it, watch out. This will be huge. The video was great. Remember. Take a lok at their mobile 6.5 more like osx then win is so if they potted the 6.5 and made some changes, this could be very doable.
Ok, I'm curious to know, what was great to you in the video animation ...
I saw the clip but wasn't wowed. Tell me what I missed ...
There is no actual concept or innovation here. The booklet concept is a no-brainer, we would all come up with this and more in a few minutes around a white board.
The decision-making starts with the UI metaphors. A few 8-year olds would come up with the lame stuff from this video which only appears to work because the activity was so simple. Add a full set of Apps and suddenly it gets hard.
Nothing going on here and this is not the result of an R&D team, just some employee asked to make a video to generate some marketing interference.
This may be vaporware, but it is EXACTLY what I've been thinking about for years - back when tablets first came up. I don't like slates, I like books and this is a real iBook!!!!
Two screens with different functions! Years ago I was thinking one would be color and HD and meant for images/video, while the other would be for touch typing or writing with stylus and possibly eInk.
The best form factor is the paperback book - different sizes - and the video shows great UI elements.
I've ragged on MS and can not imagine buying a Windows machine, but this is the one thing that would cause me great angst - if MS had this and Apple just had a 8 inch iPhone!
I want THIS!!!!! And I know LOTs of computerphobes who would jump at this and leave laptops behind for ever.
Like you, I have thought about a similar concept except that with Apple's ability to go portrait or landscape mode, why not a 2 screen (hardcover book size) that shows left & right pages in landscape mode but top screen( computer view screen) bottom screen being virtual keyboard with a button to turn it into a second view screen ? That would cover all bases, i.e. .... e-book reader, plus all iPod Touch abilities and macbook computing abilities .... one device to do everything
Like you, I have thought about a similar concept except that with Apple's ability to go portrait or landscape mode, why not a 2 screen (hardcover book size) that shows left & right pages in landscape mode but top screen( computer view screen) bottom screen being virtual keyboard with a button to turn it into a second view screen ? That would cover all bases, i.e. .... e-book reader, plus all iPod Touch abilities and macbook computing abilities .... one device to do everything
This is as shown in the previous posters photo of the OLPC concept. So then you are talking about a laptop sized device and a lot more battery drain. Not to mention screen real estate waste for much of the time. Key to a tablet will be managing the screen real estate in a smooth and efficient manner.
Perhaps a designer or video editor has a lot of need for two screens, but they wouldn't be using a handheld device to get that kind of work done.
And hey, as an aside - a new global initiative for Apple - OTOK ... One Tablet, One Kid.
That's what this room said about Google Anroid & Google OS. Maybe Old Dogs can learn new tricks. Surface has rocked since it was in concept and table format.
Put it on a multi surface tablet (planner) and it's nothing short of brilliant.
Do some research on Surface. Apple has nothing that even comes close to comparing with it.
Thing is. If Microsoft releases this and doesn't 3rd party it, watch out. This will be huge. The video was great. Remember. Take a lok at their mobile 6.5 more like osx then win is so if they potted the 6.5 and made some changes, this could be very doable.
Huh? Somehow we got from "the video was great" to "this could be very doable" with a brief touchdown at WinMo 6.5. I'm overcome with vertigo.
Really, people who are enthusing over the video or, worse, somehow imagining that the video represents some kind of challenge or threat to Apple: stop.
You must stop, the madness threatens to kill all kittens on the internet at once.
1) The video depicts a rendering of a device. There is no prototype hardware.
2) The video depicts a rendering of software interaction. There is no software, even alpha software.
3) Most importantly, the video of the nonexistent hardware and software depicts a couple of best case use scenarios, wherein flicking info from one screen to another or cutting and pasting via a graphic routine makes sense.
It is actually very easy to make impressive videos of such blue sky thinking when one does not have to account for real world coding, data interaction, and use scenarios. If you think for a moment about how one might actually use such a device, outside of a tidy little "I'll start a little file on a particular cool urban job thing that I do, and sequentially acquire content that works with that", you'll realize that what is shown doesn't remotely account for even a fraction of what people use digital devices for.
For instance, I could make up a little movie where I'm watching a movie on the left pane and murmer "Ooh, that suit jacket is just the color I've been looking for for my new kitchen paint", then pause the video, draw a little circle around the jacket, and flick it to the right, where the device somehow knows I'm interested in "color" and immediately launches a web browser with a Bing search to show me where to buy just the paint I want. Then I tap the vendor name to automatically order that very paint.
Which would be cool if it weren't so contingent on a lot of contrived notions about what it is I'm doing. Like I say, best case use scenario.
My guess is this is an in-house video of the kind of "forward looking" design concepts that any tech company is typically batting around, some of which may even make it into some MS products, at some point.
But imagining that this video represents a soon to ship product that Apple ignores at their peril is really just insane.
Huh? Somehow we got from "the video was great" to "this could be very doable" with a brief touchdown at WinMo 6.5. I'm overcome with vertigo.
Really, people who are enthusing over the video or, worse, somehow imagining that the video represents some kind of challenge or threat to Apple: stop.
You must stop, the madness threatens to kill all kittens on the internet at once.
1) The video depicts a rendering of a device. There is no prototype hardware.
2) The video depicts a rendering of software interaction. There is no software, even alpha software.
3) Most importantly, the video of the nonexistent hardware and software depicts a couple of best case use scenarios, wherein flicking info from one screen to another or cutting and pasting via a graphic routine makes sense.
It is actually very easy to make impressive videos of such blue sky thinking when one does not have to account for real world coding, data interaction, and use scenarios. If you think for a moment about how one might actually use such a device, outside of a tidy little "I'll start a little file on a particular cool urban job thing that I do, and sequentially acquire content that works with that", you'll realize that what is shown doesn't remotely account for even a fraction of what people use digital devices for.
For instance, I could make up a little movie where I'm watching a movie on the left pane and murmer "Ooh, that suit jacket is just the color I've been looking for for my new kitchen paint", then pause the video, draw a little circle around the jacket, and flick it to the right, where the device somehow knows I'm interested in "color" and immediately launches a web browser with a Bing search to show me where to buy just the paint I want. Then I tap the vendor name to automatically order that very paint.
Which would be cool if it weren't so contingent on a lot of contrived notions about what it is I'm doing. Like I say, best case use scenario.
My guess is this is an in-house video of the kind of "forward looking" design concepts that any tech company is typically batting around, some of which may even make it into some MS products, at some point.
But imagining that this video represents a soon to ship product that Apple ignores at their peril is really just insane.
Hi guys, there were some questions on the hardware earlier in the thread (I hope you are still reading) that I can help with.
1. Touch screen sensitivity: The screen is intended to include limited pressure sensitivity. It won't be the same level of fidelity like a wacom tablet, but it will have some measure of pressure sensitivity below the primary screen layer.
2. Bullware: Some of the features make look futuristic, but nearly everything you saw is already in use in Win 7, Surface and MS Research. I'll go through a few examples that I've written up else where.
The most common question I've seen is the issue of flicking items across the screens. This come from the physics API driving Microsoft Surface. There's a three part demo of it up on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLI1JtymEVo). I do not believe the physics engine was included in Windows 7 (except for some small things, like gesture bouncing), but the rest of the features I talk about should be there. ... Update: Looks like I was wrong. Inertia and Manip are in there now. You can find more information here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...8VS.85%29.aspx
Task-aware Copy and Paste: During the video you'll see an example of a clipper application using a gesture to activate a copy and paste feature. The gesture features can be enabled in any Windows 7 install. For programmers you can explore it via the WM_TOUCH API. It's a good idea to start playing around with this if you're interested in the tablet. Try writing your own clipper application!
The flicking object ability has been variously available to Windows developers for a long time (if horrible). I'm sure a few of you remember Win32 OLE/COM horrors. .NET uses WCF which is not... as horrible to program for (It's XML-based). The examples you saw were just simple mockups of the capabilities of applications that interact via WCF. Aka, dragging a user name onto Google Maps hands her address. GM receives the address and refreshes to the address.
Just a note, if you have multiple addresses it will do the same thing SYNC does, aka, ask if you'd like to see their home location or office location.
I hope that clears up some questions. If you have any just poke me, and I'll see what I can find.
Ah, let me make a small correction. The -capabilities- are there. The software is not (that I'm aware of). It is possible to write what you saw though, I did not see anything that was not supported; though, there was some weird interactions.
Comments
Now MS is copying OLPC? or XO2?
What next?
Sheesh!
Get original guys....
I skimmed a few of the many replies and have to say that I'm amazed that the animated demo elicited excitement among some. So you can drag snippets between an address book and a map, or between a webpage and scrapbook - big whoop. We've been dragging things from window to window for ages, so does dragging from screen to adjacent screen really get you all cranked? Right now, there is a little app for sharing photos between iPhones, where you put them side by side and drag from one to the other, just like in this demo. Only, its here now.
I dunno, seems very fuddish and like a vaporware 'leak'; keep the troops moral up kind of thing. Thats fair, standard MS playbook.
Gee...
Now MS is copying OLPC? or XO2?
What next?
Sheesh!
Get original guys....
Gizmodo says they are final stages. If true they were making it before this "mockup" appeared anywhere. I wouldn't use that argument, after all lots of people here want a dual-screen from Apple. What would you have said then? Personally I never liked the dual screen idea, in any form.
I see Apple going the "slate" route. And eventually giving the Pro books touch displays, with some sort of clever swivel thingy.
Having two screens brings down battery life, and whatever way you look at it adds complexity on some level. This whole dilemma isn't an easy one to solve, which is why it hasn't been solved yet.
Video is pretty awesome. Here's to hoping that Apple and M$FT duke it out pretty heavily in this arena, then the ultimate winner is us, the consumer!
Thing is. If Microsoft releases this and doesn't 3rd party it, watch out. This will be huge. The video was great. Remember. Take a lok at their mobile 6.5 more like osx then win is so if they potted the 6.5 and made some changes, this could be very doable.
Well, I'm not sure they've quite perfected it, but they shouldn't get credit for it as an innovation of theirs.
They're working on it. Credit where credit is due, I always say.
Thing is. If Microsoft releases this and doesn't 3rd party it, watch out. This will be huge. The video was great. Remember. Take a lok at their mobile 6.5 more like osx then win is so if they potted the 6.5 and made some changes, this could be very doable.
Ok, I'm curious to know, what was great to you in the video animation ...
I saw the clip but wasn't wowed. Tell me what I missed ...
Ok, I'm curious to know, what was great to you in the video animation ...
I saw the clip but wasn't wowed. Tell me what I missed ...
The Apple logo
The decision-making starts with the UI metaphors. A few 8-year olds would come up with the lame stuff from this video which only appears to work because the activity was so simple. Add a full set of Apps and suddenly it gets hard.
Nothing going on here and this is not the result of an R&D team, just some employee asked to make a video to generate some marketing interference.
This may be vaporware, but it is EXACTLY what I've been thinking about for years - back when tablets first came up. I don't like slates, I like books and this is a real iBook!!!!
Two screens with different functions! Years ago I was thinking one would be color and HD and meant for images/video, while the other would be for touch typing or writing with stylus and possibly eInk.
The best form factor is the paperback book - different sizes - and the video shows great UI elements.
I've ragged on MS and can not imagine buying a Windows machine, but this is the one thing that would cause me great angst - if MS had this and Apple just had a 8 inch iPhone!
I want THIS!!!!! And I know LOTs of computerphobes who would jump at this and leave laptops behind for ever.
Like you, I have thought about a similar concept except that with Apple's ability to go portrait or landscape mode, why not a 2 screen (hardcover book size) that shows left & right pages in landscape mode but top screen( computer view screen) bottom screen being virtual keyboard with a button to turn it into a second view screen ? That would cover all bases, i.e. .... e-book reader, plus all iPod Touch abilities and macbook computing abilities .... one device to do everything
Like you, I have thought about a similar concept except that with Apple's ability to go portrait or landscape mode, why not a 2 screen (hardcover book size) that shows left & right pages in landscape mode but top screen( computer view screen) bottom screen being virtual keyboard with a button to turn it into a second view screen ? That would cover all bases, i.e. .... e-book reader, plus all iPod Touch abilities and macbook computing abilities .... one device to do everything
This is as shown in the previous posters photo of the OLPC concept. So then you are talking about a laptop sized device and a lot more battery drain. Not to mention screen real estate waste for much of the time. Key to a tablet will be managing the screen real estate in a smooth and efficient manner.
Perhaps a designer or video editor has a lot of need for two screens, but they wouldn't be using a handheld device to get that kind of work done.
And hey, as an aside - a new global initiative for Apple - OTOK ... One Tablet, One Kid.
Maybe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKn1f...eature=related
Hhhhaaaahhhaa good one!
No wonder no one at ms delivers if you get through the experience officer then it's the execution officer, bang bang, chop chop!!!
That's what this room said about Google Anroid & Google OS. Maybe Old Dogs can learn new tricks. Surface has rocked since it was in concept and table format.
Put it on a multi surface tablet (planner) and it's nothing short of brilliant.
Do some research on Surface. Apple has nothing that even comes close to comparing with it.
Nothing that they have disclosed to the public...
Thing is. If Microsoft releases this and doesn't 3rd party it, watch out. This will be huge. The video was great. Remember. Take a lok at their mobile 6.5 more like osx then win is so if they potted the 6.5 and made some changes, this could be very doable.
Huh? Somehow we got from "the video was great" to "this could be very doable" with a brief touchdown at WinMo 6.5. I'm overcome with vertigo.
Really, people who are enthusing over the video or, worse, somehow imagining that the video represents some kind of challenge or threat to Apple: stop.
You must stop, the madness threatens to kill all kittens on the internet at once.
1) The video depicts a rendering of a device. There is no prototype hardware.
2) The video depicts a rendering of software interaction. There is no software, even alpha software.
3) Most importantly, the video of the nonexistent hardware and software depicts a couple of best case use scenarios, wherein flicking info from one screen to another or cutting and pasting via a graphic routine makes sense.
It is actually very easy to make impressive videos of such blue sky thinking when one does not have to account for real world coding, data interaction, and use scenarios. If you think for a moment about how one might actually use such a device, outside of a tidy little "I'll start a little file on a particular cool urban job thing that I do, and sequentially acquire content that works with that", you'll realize that what is shown doesn't remotely account for even a fraction of what people use digital devices for.
For instance, I could make up a little movie where I'm watching a movie on the left pane and murmer "Ooh, that suit jacket is just the color I've been looking for for my new kitchen paint", then pause the video, draw a little circle around the jacket, and flick it to the right, where the device somehow knows I'm interested in "color" and immediately launches a web browser with a Bing search to show me where to buy just the paint I want. Then I tap the vendor name to automatically order that very paint.
Which would be cool if it weren't so contingent on a lot of contrived notions about what it is I'm doing. Like I say, best case use scenario.
My guess is this is an in-house video of the kind of "forward looking" design concepts that any tech company is typically batting around, some of which may even make it into some MS products, at some point.
But imagining that this video represents a soon to ship product that Apple ignores at their peril is really just insane.
Think of the kittens.
Nothing that they have disclosed to the public...
Apple is much more tight lipped than MS about concepts for future products.
So many hostile people around here...
Er.. I think he was just explaining the truth of the situation.
Huh? Somehow we got from "the video was great" to "this could be very doable" with a brief touchdown at WinMo 6.5. I'm overcome with vertigo.
Really, people who are enthusing over the video or, worse, somehow imagining that the video represents some kind of challenge or threat to Apple: stop.
You must stop, the madness threatens to kill all kittens on the internet at once.
1) The video depicts a rendering of a device. There is no prototype hardware.
2) The video depicts a rendering of software interaction. There is no software, even alpha software.
3) Most importantly, the video of the nonexistent hardware and software depicts a couple of best case use scenarios, wherein flicking info from one screen to another or cutting and pasting via a graphic routine makes sense.
It is actually very easy to make impressive videos of such blue sky thinking when one does not have to account for real world coding, data interaction, and use scenarios. If you think for a moment about how one might actually use such a device, outside of a tidy little "I'll start a little file on a particular cool urban job thing that I do, and sequentially acquire content that works with that", you'll realize that what is shown doesn't remotely account for even a fraction of what people use digital devices for.
For instance, I could make up a little movie where I'm watching a movie on the left pane and murmer "Ooh, that suit jacket is just the color I've been looking for for my new kitchen paint", then pause the video, draw a little circle around the jacket, and flick it to the right, where the device somehow knows I'm interested in "color" and immediately launches a web browser with a Bing search to show me where to buy just the paint I want. Then I tap the vendor name to automatically order that very paint.
Which would be cool if it weren't so contingent on a lot of contrived notions about what it is I'm doing. Like I say, best case use scenario.
My guess is this is an in-house video of the kind of "forward looking" design concepts that any tech company is typically batting around, some of which may even make it into some MS products, at some point.
But imagining that this video represents a soon to ship product that Apple ignores at their peril is really just insane.
Think of the kittens.
Exactly.
Thank you.
1. Touch screen sensitivity: The screen is intended to include limited pressure sensitivity. It won't be the same level of fidelity like a wacom tablet, but it will have some measure of pressure sensitivity below the primary screen layer.
2. Bullware: Some of the features make look futuristic, but nearly everything you saw is already in use in Win 7, Surface and MS Research. I'll go through a few examples that I've written up else where.
The most common question I've seen is the issue of flicking items across the screens. This come from the physics API driving Microsoft Surface. There's a three part demo of it up on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLI1JtymEVo). I do not believe the physics engine was included in Windows 7 (except for some small things, like gesture bouncing), but the rest of the features I talk about should be there. ... Update: Looks like I was wrong. Inertia and Manip are in there now. You can find more information here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...8VS.85%29.aspx
Task-aware Copy and Paste: During the video you'll see an example of a clipper application using a gesture to activate a copy and paste feature. The gesture features can be enabled in any Windows 7 install. For programmers you can explore it via the WM_TOUCH API. It's a good idea to start playing around with this if you're interested in the tablet. Try writing your own clipper application!
The flicking object ability has been variously available to Windows developers for a long time (if horrible). I'm sure a few of you remember Win32 OLE/COM horrors. .NET uses WCF which is not... as horrible to program for (It's XML-based). The examples you saw were just simple mockups of the capabilities of applications that interact via WCF. Aka, dragging a user name onto Google Maps hands her address. GM receives the address and refreshes to the address.
Just a note, if you have multiple addresses it will do the same thing SYNC does, aka, ask if you'd like to see their home location or office location.
I hope that clears up some questions. If you have any just poke me, and I'll see what I can find.
Note: I do not work for Microsoft.
(Flicking through the photos is pretty obnoxious)