While Fanboys Breathlessly Await Steve Jobs’s Apple iTab, They Should Probably Thank Bill Gates Too
by Kara Swisher
Posted on October 5, 2009 at 8:10 AM PT
Way back in the fall of 2001, when BoomTown was but a less-aged version of myself, I attended a keynote speech at the now-defunct Comdex show in Las Vegas, where Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates continued to bang the drum for one of his long-running obsessions: The tablet computer.
“The tablet takes cutting-edge PC technology and makes it available whenever you want it, which is why I’m already using a tablet as my everyday computer,” Gates said at the time to the audience gathered at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. “It’s a PC that is virtually without limits and within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America.”
Well, that did not happen.
But Gates did keep his promise about using a tablet–he kept on doing so and also harping on the topic all the time, with Microsoft even releasing a giant tabletop Surface several years ago and supporting multitouch in the coming Windows 7.
I recall Gates talking about the idea of how important the tablet is on innumerable occasions, more than any single concept I can recall.
It is ironic, then, that all the hype has suddenly and firmly coalesced around the particulars of the tablet that Apple (AAPL) will be unveiling in the coming months.
And now that CEO Steve Jobs is back fine-tuning the whole shebang, the obsession has moved into overdrive, punctuated only by endless stories about every single new app for the iPhone and fights over some of those new apps for the iPhone.
It’s a complete aside, but how ironic is it that Apple has somehow managed to make Google (GOOG)–the Skynet of the Internet–seem like a victim over this Google Voice shrillathon?
Back to the Apple tablet, which is playbook hype for iconic computer giant.
Besides being a secret project everyone in Silicon Valley seems to know about, the coming device is enjoying full-on breathless reportage of every single possible button and every possible feature, with every single bit of functionality parsed, dissected, masticated and spat back out.
But let’s be honest–in the end, this Apple tablet is probably going to be some kind of giant, sleeker, more glorified and doubtlessly niftier version of the iPod touch, called the iTab or the iPad or the iAmSoCoolAren’tI?, at three times the price.
Now, as it turns out, Microsoft (MSFT) is also at work on a table device, this time called the Courier.
This development became known recently after a demo video of it in use was somehow “leaked”–three guesses about which software giant in Redmond, Wash., put that out, and the first two don’t count!–to Gizmodo.
It seems to be some kind of tablet mixed with a journal mixed with a day planner, with a hinged two-page look. Digital writing and a stylus are involved, but also lots of touchscreen action.
Well, I say, good for Microsoft, and perhaps for Gates, who has now mostly disengaged himself from the day-to-day particulars of the behemoth he built, including the Courier.
Nonetheless, in all likelihood, Apple will still garner the most buzz in this tablet faceoff and will, more than likely, sell more.
A delicious irony, given that in their fascinating and long-running rivalry, it has usually been Jobs playing the hopeless dreamer and Gates the one who makes bank from the dreams of others.
No longer, which should make this round between Microsoft and Apple the most interesting of all.
Speaking of dreaming of dreams, it is always a good time to post the video of Susan Boyle singing “I Dreamed a Dream”:
Comments
Oh please, spare us. We have nothing to thank Bill Gates for. His tablet has been a total flop because MSFT has a real problem with execution, integration, reliability, ease of use, etc. etc. etc. Further, Apple was way ahead of the curve in this space with the Newton. They were just too far ahead of their time. The same can’t be said for Bill and his lackluster team – can you say Vista?
Posted by Mike Lane at October 5th, 2009 at 10:04 amThis is not the whole truth.
Jerrold Kaplan formed Go Computing – the first pen-based computing company. This was just as Windows 3 was getting off the ground – the publicity surrounding go, the fact that Bill Campbell, the highly-successful hi-tech exec became their CEO, and the general developer enthusiasm threatened Microsoft at a crucial time.
Microsoft pulled out all the stops – claiming they had a tablet os (vaporware) and engaging in every nasty practice it could think of to shutdown Go. I knew the product manager of the “tablet computing” project. His biz plan consisted of two words “Kill Go”.
Kaplan sued MS afterwards, but it was too little too late.
So don’t go patting Bill on the back.
Posted by Ashok Khosla at October 5th, 2009 at 11:20 amHey Kara,
I think that your post only proves that every brilliant ‘invention’ is derivative of what came before it.
As Federico Faggin of Intel once said, “The hard part lies in actually making the idea work.”
Specific to Microsoft, they failed because their vision of the tablet was always a derivative bolt-on of Windows (hardware, connectivity limitations aside), a failure to define a software user experience, and grow an ecosystem around same.
This is the same thing that makes Courier cool but a “show me” question mark.
With Apple’s version, we can readily say that 85K apps will run on that form factor in a compelling fashion, that the ecosystem (dev tools, app store, content partners) is already in place, and whatever re-think logic needed to make this a successful platform is core to Apple’s operational DNA.
With Microsoft, every device hammer looks like a Windows nail to them, and culturally (except for XBox), that seems to preclude their ability to re-invent.
Mark
Posted by Mark Sigal at October 5th, 2009 at 11:49 am–
Innovation, Inevitability and Why R&D is So Hard
http://bit.ly/Y8kcH
Doesn’t Susan Boyle look a lot like Terry Jones used to when he played a middle aged British housewife?
I’ve heard Bill Gates is trying to get an autographed original of the Ten Commandments. That may have something to do with his tablet obsession. So far he’s only been able to get 5-10, but as that where the signature is the other half will be hard to verify.
Apple and Microsoft have this in common: They both tried tablet computing too soon.
It may STILL be too soon.
Some problems I can think of:
Readability in all light conditions. OLPC and a couple others have somewhat solved this. But a device your going to carry around constantly must be readable in sunlight and other not-ideal conditions.
Anyone using this as their primary computer is doing a lot of consuming and not so much creating. Will they ever be able to make these things act as a keyboard? I don’t care about handwriting recognition. I can type faster and HATE handwriting. Microsoft has shown in their hilarious demo the sad state of voice recognition… I think it went something kill “Kill my aunt NOW”.
Finally touch screens get scratched, and smudged, and broken and some people have a lot of trouble wt the digital gymnastics of cut-and-paste, even when the OS providers get around to providing such capabilities.
I think this is a game of chicken, with everyone afraid to go first, because those who already went first, got killed.
Meanwhile Sony and Amazon have pretty good readers that could easily be made to browse the web, play music, and download specialized content. Oh, wait they already do that. Now if Sony or Amazon or someone else would just make them do it a little bit better, we could increment our way to the perfect tablet PC. No need to search for the Holy Grail.
Posted by Mac Beach at October 5th, 2009 at 3:47 pmHow about a shout out to John Scully then, since we are handing out thanks, for introducing us to the Knowledge Navigator in 1987?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhrMRPpxl0c
Posted by Ken Cheng at October 5th, 2009 at 8:04 pmMentioning the Xerox PARC connection is kind of like beating a dead horse (who came up with that analogy?) But this quote from Andy Hertzfeld on the Folklore website about Steve Jobs confronting Bill Gates about the original Microsoft Word UI seems apropos. (http://preview.tinyurl.com/2t6wv)
Gates’ response
“Well, Steve, I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”
Posted by David LaBerge at October 6th, 2009 at 3:46 pmexecution is everything…ideas are cheap
Posted by Sam Harrison at October 7th, 2009 at 12:22 pm