Re: [NTLK] The "iMoleskine" ?

Of all the manufacturers, Apple have probably the best chance at the
moment to make a real, workable, and above all sellable, tablet
device. As a hardware and software manufacturer, they don't have to
compromise on the "lowest common denominator", they can target the
sotware to specific hardware, and vice versa. On top of that, they
have a very, very, solid underpinning in OSX, and proven experience in
making devices that effectively hide the OS "mechanics" with the
iPhone, iPod, and even the Newton.

I don't see the current iPhone platform as being Newton v2, but it's
definitely a step along the way.

Whether you love or hate OSX, it has the capability to provide the
underpinnings of an absolutely *blinding* tablet device. Not some
godawful "desktop shoehorned into a palmtop", but a real, honest-to-
goodness tablet device as befits a son of Newton. A paradigm-busting
combination of hardware and software, a real machine for the rest of
us. Much of what's there, in fact, makes more sense as part of an
"user-opaque" device, rather than the current "desktop" approach.

Spotlight - as has been pointed out, this makes little sense when you
know where things are on your machine. If you make user (and even
programmatic) access to the filesystem opaque, it makes a lot more
sense.
Metadata - a baby almost thrown out with the bathwater during the move
to OSX, and one never truly exploited by any OS, this is a perfect
partner for omnipresent search. And OSX's support for metadata,
although underutilised in its desktop incarnation, is better than it's
ever been.
Filesystem notifications - New with Leopard, and pretty much only
currently used for Time Machine, this makes it possible to know
exactly what's changed on a filesystem between 2 points in time, and
thus, what needs synchronising. That could be very handy for a
portable machine.
Omnipresent scripting ability could be used to build something very
like the Newton's assistant, but going further, far further.
ZFS is coming, and this can remove the artificial barrier of "this
data is on this disk". Combined with curernt technology one can
imagine a tablet device that automatically and seamlessly forms part
of your desktop when "docked", backs itself up as part of your desktop
(and leaves its backups there so you can use that data on your desktop
even when your tablet is not around)
"Write anywhere" could be used, along with a decent cursive recogniser
to provide a newton-like interface, or, with bluetooth devices for a
more "conventional" approach.

Taken to its logical extreme, this could really become the "compute
anywhere" machine. "dock" it with a desktop machine to use a bigger
screen, and potentially to use the other facilities of that machine as
well ( extra processing power and memory through the magic of fat
binaries, dvd/cd media via drive sharing a la macbook air, etc).

The UI challenges to do something like this would be considerable, but
really could break the WIMP / filesystem view stranglehold, push
computing out of its current stagnation, make computing more
accessible, more usable. People laughed at the original Macintosh
interface, called it a toy. Now pretty much every computer uses a
derivative of that interface. People laughed at the iPhone, at its
lack of buttons. How many iPhone knockoffs have been launched since
then?

To be fair, something like this could fall flat on its face, too.

Simon

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Received on Tue May 20 06:38:10 2008