A great discussion on the future of home computing A great discussion on the Tablet PC market
At the late iPhone deliberation the Apple founder was asked what the progression of IT was, and the Apple boss retorted that he thinks that the evolution of the PC will be built on touchscreen slate tablet pc.
His rationalisation was that everyone is at the moment employing tablet PCs for example satnavs, touch phones, touchscreen terminals amongst additional devices. The future pattern presently is that PCs are being implemented for researching information in preferance to data entry.
Slate Tablet PC Sales Growth
2008 1.6M units
2008 - 3M Tablets sold
2010 4M units projected
Skeptics OTOH protest that prophesising the fate of the text entry devices is akin to yearning for the fall of the freight in the automotive business, even though tablet PCs finish with character entry devices, they are still impossible designs to enter vast quantities of text. And the detecton of voice is at the moment more or less in its infancy.
Whatever the redundancy of the key input devices is likely or not, it's evident that Apple inc has a lot betting on it materialising, as their pair of umpteen latest releases have finished with the keypad permanently.
Nevertheless what appears obvious is that a growing number of instruments are employed for internet surfing for procastinating. Facebook & Twitter have cut down the amount of text from being distributed everywhere per email, furthermore majority of internet surfers rarely need to enter a significant amount of text.
However, what we do know though is that tablet PCs have been in use in the commercial sector long before Apple corp leared about tablet pcs, Industrial touch pad machines have been in deployment since early 2000, Touch Screen devices are logical because keyboards are in theory more prone to damage more than touch screen computers and exposed to breakage and water damage meanwhile well built tablet PC systems can be easily secured from grazing and damage from overuse.
Another thing that Apple has implemented right is the tablet PC technology down to perfection, preliminary touch screens and in deed some more recent tablet pc systems are still restricted to a touchscreen pen, the Apple iPad and iPhone are ridiculously more accurate when used with fingertips. Apple have leaped over a giant obstacle as the stylus dependancy was singly most compelling variable restricting slate tablet pcs in the past from going popular.
Further enhancements that are expected are clever mechanisms for enabling key input onto a tablet pc without resorting to carrying around a gigantic keyboard. Possibly by way of a very slim acrylic device with a full scale keyboard or a infra red ghost keyboard which shines on on a table which functions by observing your finger locations.
Will the slate tablet pc ignite the decline of the conventional pc? Who can tell, I'm assuming time will be the teacher. In any case whatever fruitions I will eternally be the first to jump onto the most recent innovations and happy to witness what trend thetablet pc sector goes.