Today’s fanning of the Apple tablet bonfire: text entry. How do you do type on a 10” tablet? Every such device seen so far, including the dreck demoed at CES 2010, struggles with this, and badly. The definitive analysis has already been written by Macworld’s Dan Moren, and I’d just like to add one thought.
Let’s assume the rumor about Steve Jobs’ being “extremely happy” with the tablet is true. This could be for one of two reasons:
- He’s happy because the tablet is awesome, or
- He’s happy because he got it his way.
I’m talking about the side of Steve Jobs which came up with Mr. Macintosh; the side which signed off on Apple’s parade of lousy mice. I know Jobs is supposedly a new person these days (if he ever was, for longer than any of us sometimes are, the pigheaded freak people sometimes describe.) I know he has an awesome team of No-men ready to give his goofy ideas a sanity check.
But tell me, isn’t Steve Jobs just the type to walk out on stage this month, show a beautiful new handheld computer, and then go something like,
“So, how do you type on it?
*beat*
“You don’t. Nobody types anymore! So we thought, what if you could talk to your computer.”
It’s unlikely. Lord, it has to be. But I’m keeping my expectations in check. Courage.
