Isn't the form factor just terrible for that tho? It always seemed to me that Tablets are an excellent form for consuming information. Content creation, on the other hand, is best left to our laptops and keyboards that we already have.

So a docking station for a tablet makes sense (effectively changing the form factor back to something more traditional). Holding the thing with one hand while typing with the other really doesn't so much. I think that's ok, the context dictates how you use the device.

Apple didn't stop making Macbooks for a reason:)

People have been using paper as a content creation medium for millennia; there clearly isn't anything inherently anti-creation about the tablet form factor. Tablets are only bad for content creation if you consider 'content creation' to mean traditional creative computer software. Photoshop CS5 would be terrible on an iPad, yes, but that doesn't preclude the future existence of equally deep and compelling tablet image editing software (for example).

I class things like "writing an email" as content creation too, and it doesn't look like a pleasant experience on a tablet. You could write a sentence using one hand whilst holding it in the other, but if you want to write a paragraph or two, you really need to put it down on a surface and then hunch over the device to type down on it. I say "hunch", because the screen is flat rather than at an angle when you place it on a surface, unlike a laptop.

I'm not considering the fact that you can plug a tablet into a hardware keyboard because if I had a tablet I certainly wouldn't want to carry a keyboard round with me just in case.

I'd rather just carry my laptop around for content creation, and use a combination of my laptop and mobile phone for content consumption.

I really hope somebody comes up with an innovative solution to add a hardware keyboard to a tablet. Something along the lines of a very thin hidden internal keyboard which you can pull out of the bottom, and then bend to an angle so you can place it flat on a surface with the screen angled towards you. I'd barely need a laptop anymore then.

Have you played with the latest version of android's voice tools? They're amazing. Content creation should only be regulated to existing modes of input (keyboard) only if we don't come up with better input methods.

I agree completely. New inputs beyond QWERTY need to be developed. The tricky part I think is getting people to use new methods. I think things like 8Pen are a good start, however.

Android's swype(sp?) feature improves accuracy of words, but still takes awhile to type a sentence.

It's still obviously far slower than an actual fullsize keyboard , but for a smaller form size hardware keyboard (such a phone), I've actually found Swype to be faster. It completely blows the on screen keyboard out of the water, but I was never that fast at that. I was a major fan of hardware keyboards before swype (in fact, it's why I got a Droid instead of another Android phone), but I'm beginning to find myself becoming faster on Swype than an actual phone keyboard, and that's even with a 2+ year headstart of using hardware keyboards.

However, this all depends on the size of the tablet. If it was laptop sized (with Fn keys to allow for slightly smaller size even), I'd probably take the keyboard over Swype, but it would really depend on where I was typing. Swype is designed to be used one handed, and would be perfect for when you can't just set your tablet down. If the keyboard would be netbook sized, I might actually take Swype over it most all of the time.

Plug in a usb keyboard, this is not a platform limiting problem, it's just a problem for certain existing form factors.

To followup: today multi-touch tablets are primarily consumer luxury devices (toys if you will). But as mobile OS's mature and move into the business market this will change. Tablets and tablet OS's will be used in businesses. And yes, this will expose some of their current weaknesses, but there are straightforward solutions to many of them.

For example, a docking station in the form of a monitor stand which turns a tablet into a monitor for a traditional mouse & keyboard. Or, laptop/netbook form factors with attached keyboards (this is not a new form factor, there are already touch screen tablets of this sort).

What makes the new generation of tablets novel is not merely their particular physical characteristics today, it's the method of interaction, the simplicity of the interface, and the simplified and streamlined methods for managing applications. All of those things will still be relevant if you add a mouse and keyboard.

> ssntnece

Did you use it to type this comment?