jkOnTheRun: Tablet PC a no-brainer?

Apparently great minds think alike.

Lora Heiny posted a link to this story, and asked what it would take to make the Tablet PC a no-brainer to buy. This was my response ...

I was arguing with Terri Stratton about this just the other day. The Tablet PC doesn't have a killer app yet. It takes too long for people to "get it". Weeks, in some cases. Sales people don't sell it because they don't get it either.

Allow me to digress for just a second ...

When Nintendo released the DS, I was one of many that thought that a touchscreen was a gimmick, and nothing more. I was told that Nintendo is a company that innovates, and that there were certainly some gameplay ideas that would make the touchscreen into something more.

I stubbornly insisted that it was horse manure. PocketPC and Palm devices have had touchscreens for years, and there has been little in the way of innovation. They use the stylus as a mouse and nothing more.

Then Nintendo released Nintendogs. And I "got it". Using the microphone, you can talk to the dog. Using the stylus and touchscreen, you can pet the dog. You're interacting in the same way as many other games (a mouse would have worked), but the stylus becomes a more natural extension of your hand. Nintendogs achieves a level of transparency that the Tablet has yet to find.

We need a killer app. We need something where someone picks it up and INSTANTLY "gets it". What's that app going to be? I have no idea, but I (and everyone else) will know it when we see it.

Sure enough, James Kendrick comes out and said pretty much the ame thing, except using a different example. But I'm going to challenge him on one point ...

The program I would find very appealing is a collaboration tool that totally supports ink, audio and video.

Ink isn't going to get the job done. Ink is what's holding us back. The problem with the Tablet PC is that it's far too difficult to explain why ink is important, and why we should want it. There's a reason why the first thing people do when writing on a Tablet PC is convert the Ink to Text ... even though the application (OneNote, for example) can read that ink just fine! Ink is far superior, but you can't explain why simply enough (it has to do with the mental link that's established when you read your own handwriting, etc, etc) ... so we need a new paradigm. As long as we keep thinking of the stylus as a pen, we're holding ourselves back. The stylus needs to be an extension of the hand, a way to achieve the same level of transparency that Nintendo has with Nintendogs. When that happens, anyone could spend five minutes with a Tablet on a display, and they'll understand why it's useful. Salespeople will better understand it, and thus, be able to SELL it better.

We're techies. We understand why Ink is cool. Try to explain that to a layperson, and their eyes will glaze over. But as Nintendo is learning, throw a cute puppy in there that you can pet and talk to, and you'll have them in the palm of your hand.