Surface Pro obviously, but the concept of a highly-accurate stylus has become standard in Galaxy Note and Galaxy Tab as well. Android now supports multiple users and multiple accounts (Windows8 and WinRT always supported this feature).
There is no reason why Tablets _can't_ evolve into general purpose computing devices. It is simply a Human-computer interaction problem.
AutoCAD has listed touch-support. The future of content creation can be revolutionized by tablets, if only we had open enough minds to see the potential.
That clip is 1.5 minutes long. I can handle any annoying thing for a minute and a half. But I can not see any way that would be sustainable for an entire day (week, years) of coding. I doubt I will ever give up my physical keyboard.
Your drawing example makes perfect sense though. We started with the Wacom tablets and such since it very closely matched what it was like to draw on paper. But there was a certain amount of disconnect since the drawing surface was separated from the actual image you saw. So it makes sense that the next step would be to draw directly onto the display.
The AIDE programming environment was more of a proof of concept video, rather than an actual methodology to programming. No, we cannot program effectively on tablets with touch / pen yet. However, I bet that we will one day create a UI design program on the tablet (drag and drop perhaps? Gesture based?) that is more natural.
At least, more natural for programming tablet applications.
There is a major advantage when you can do the whole compile / link / debug process on a single device. When the programming cycle becomes compile / link / upload / debug, you lose a bit of productivity.
Besides, many tablets support a dock by now. Transformer book, T100, Galaxy series... even iPads have those crappy Bluetooth keyboards that go kaput whenever the 2.4 GHz spectrum gets overloaded. (No seriously, a dock makes things much better).
So at the end of the day, yes, a tablet that is a tablet 99% of the time, but then you can just plug in a keyboard, or perhaps use a docking device, is frankly the future.
It is much easier to keep one master device, rather than a Tablet, Laptop, and Desktop. If one device can satisfy all of those without issue, then it will replace all three... much like how the Smartphone replaced the Rolodex, PDA and cellphone.
Exactly. Which is why I said I doubt I'll ever give up my physical keyboard. It doesn't have to be attached... it just needs to be real (not virtual). :)
One of the challenges of stylus' and tablets are the technology just isn't there. I've not tried the Note yet but the Wacom stylus on the IREX Illiad V2 has been the closest thing to what I want, my current best approximation is the JotScript and its not there yet in terms of lag or accuracy. So much to get right, and so cheap to just use a pen to draw in a notebook.
I agree with you that there is probably some sort of evolution that will work, but its not there yet for me.
Wacom has been making styluses for many years. They have perfected the art, and their best-of-the-best perfectly mimics the most complicated and intricate of pen movements. (including pen angle, rotation, thousands of levels of pressure sensitivity, multi-pen and so forth).
The Surface Pro and Galaxy Note use the cheaper "Bamboo" class Wacom styluses, which "only" have thouands of levels of pressure sensitivity. (but fail to keep pen angle and rotation in check).
Nevertheless, if you've only used iPad crap styluses, you're in for a treat. Both the Surface Pro and Galaxy Note know whether or not your "finger" is on the screen, or if it is a stylus. In fact, you can use both. Your palm does NOT mess up the advanced Wacom styluses on these tablets. Its totally on a different league than JotScript.
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Anyway, the stylus is only one more tool that I hope will become standard issue for tablets. But that isn't the part that matters. What is important is for Tablets to continue to accelerate and become more and more useful.
Before the past couple of months... Tablets were nothing but toys. They were as you said, but portable screens with a little bit of smarts to them.
But the industry is moving on. They are marching towards progress, and eventually, content creation will become a real thing.
If you need a little bit of imagination to take you where we're going... it is currently possible (with enough hardware / software), to capture an object with the Surface Pro's camera, import those images into a 3d model, manipulate the model and then print it using the Makerbot 3d Printer.
Fortunately for those of us who wish to push the boundaries of computing, some companies are willing to go in that direction.
Content Creation Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCKWn1zjejE
Surface Pro obviously, but the concept of a highly-accurate stylus has become standard in Galaxy Note and Galaxy Tab as well. Android now supports multiple users and multiple accounts (Windows8 and WinRT always supported this feature).
There is no reason why Tablets _can't_ evolve into general purpose computing devices. It is simply a Human-computer interaction problem.
Programming on a Tablet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XmxtIDWI_E
AutoCAD has listed touch-support. The future of content creation can be revolutionized by tablets, if only we had open enough minds to see the potential.
http://cadablog.blogspot.com/2013/03/whats-new-in-autocad-20...