My friend Angus recently posted his excitement at the arrival of a Google Nexus 7 4G tablet and the prospect of weeks playing with new apps. And I was left with a strangely hollow feeling.
I should love tablets. I’m a geek who loves gadgets and gaming. More than that, I’m a geek who loves it when technology just works – despite the fact I choose PCs over Macs, I only really want to have to tinker with things when the fancy takes me, not because every time I try to do something there’s a problem.
Last Christmas, I even bought my parents an earlier Nexus – it made sense for them to have something which they could use for basic browsing, was lighter to carry around the house than a laptop, and didn’t require them to call me regularly for technical support. It made so much sense, that they even ended up buying another to have one each.
Why I don’t like tablets, Part One:
I’m separating out the personal and ideological reasons for disliking tablets. Personally, I just can’t find a single use case where I need or prefer a tablet.
For working and anything involving typing, I want a keyboard. I’m not averse to swiping and texting, but for anything longer than a tweet, it just becomes hassle. Aside from the fact I’ve built up a fairly decent typing speed over the years, and it’s very much linked to my thought process as a writer, I particularly hate trying to make corrections to earlier words on a touch screen as I endlessly prod my smartphone only to see it highlight the space in front, behind, above or below the error…
For gaming I have a games console, and am in the process of sorting a gaming PC rig. I’ve played a number of tablet games with my son, and although they’re OK to pass the time, they’re not as immersive an experience, and analogue sticks still work far better than motion controls, accelerometers, or trying to swipe a screen previously used by a sticky-fingered child. I want amazing graphics, multiplayer and precision from games, not a clumsy free-to-play mechanic.
For reading I have a Kindle. And I love it dearly. No apps, multitasking, or distractions away from the work I’m reading. It holds a huge number of titles, updates wirelessly, and has a massive battery life. Job done.
If I want to stream movies etc, then I have a 2nd monitor which is big enough to rival the TV in my living room, and the money spent on a tablet would equally fund a better office chair, which then also benefits me during the working day.
And when I’m on the move, I have a smart phone. It’s fairly modern, runs Android and a few different apps that I actually need when I’m out, and that’s it. Do I need a huge range of apps and a 7″ screen to distract myself during the average commute or when I’m sat in a coffee shop waiting for a meeting?
Finally, the one very good reason for me looking at notebook PCs, and then ignoring tablets is simple. A portable work device is only useful, if I can connect it to projectors and TVs to share presentations etc, and without any hassle. But the times that’s useful and I don’t need the additional functionality of a laptop anyway is rare…
Why I don’t like tablets, Part Two:
I know that theoretically anyone can make any technology do whatever they want with a little effort. But I can’t help thinking that my son is brighter than I was at his age, more accustomed to technology than I was at his age, and yet much more of a passive consumer than I was at his age.
My 5th birthday was celebrated with a 48k ZX Spectrum. And over the course of the next few years I dabbled in BASIC with programs supplied in magazines like Your Sinclair and Sinclair User, desperately hoping the code would have time to run before I had to go to sleep.
I’m not a studious programmer or hacker, and I still regret not spending more time learning to actually code in the past, but I’ve picked up enough to at least have a grasp of the possibilities. I had a very good understanding that people could make these boxes do things by entering numbers and letters, even if they were a step removed from me.
Whereas my son is far more passive and accepting that apps come fully formed from somewhere, and that’s how they have to be used. Partly that’s a sign of the times – if I’d been able to download Plants vs Zombies without having to type hundreds of lines of code, then I would have probably been the same.
Apps and the tablets which run them feel like an evolutionary dead-end concentrating on more elegant ToDo lists and monetisation strategies for free-to-play games. Especially compared to the opportunities of wearable computing and 3D printing to impact on lives, which are two technologies.
There are so many exciting new technologies and opportunities which convince me I’m not simply a curmudgeon aging to the point I’ve lost enthusiasm, but I’ve yet to see any programmers doing any serious work on a tablet beyond using it as an additional monitor. Or uses or opportunities which wouldn’t have been possible on a PC or a smart phone, without blocking the view of 20 people when you hold your tablet in the air to take a photo or video.
I’d love to be convinced otherwise, but tablets are the worst example of spoonfed computing for me, and the sooner we stop falling in love with apps and app stores, the better…
I completely agree with all the reasoning Dan… my wife and son use their tablets and I don’t have any need (or desire) to use them – my HTC android smartphone is enough for that “desire” while on the road.
So pleased to know it’s not just me!
Hi Dan,
I think it’s good to have options. I don’t really use my iPad, but I use my iPhone a fair bit. Some iPad apps that I find interesting include:
iA Writer: a simple writer app without distractions. I think the theory is great – I feel like writing a blog post without the distraction of email, Twitter, Facebook etc is something I should value more – but after a few tries, I found myself blogging on my laptop again. Even with an external keyboard (the Zagg Folio accessory is quite nice) I still prefer typing on a laptop.
Prompt: for SSH access to servers. Nice idea, but it’s quite painful to use for any length of time. Handy if you need to get onto a server urgently, but I’m not a sysadmin, so this happens very rarely. I think I’d do better just to carry my laptop around anyway, in case I need to jump onto a server.
Hootsuite: well, it’s a nice idea once again, but I think the main issue here is the lack of multitasking. And this is really where tablets fall short for power users. We run more than one thing at a time. You can’t have apps side by side. The OS doesn’t really allow you to, and there’s not really enough space to do it. Right now, I have TweetDeck on an external monitor while I’m commenting on your blog. I like that.
I’d say that “power users” include people such as hardcore gamers (beyond casual gaming apps – not that I’d knock those, as I love them), musicians, video editors, graphic designers, and web developers. I’m sure there are many more people who do better with a high-powered desktop with big screens.
Sometimes, I do pick up the iPad to play a game, or to browse the web if I’m just lazing around on the sofa. I don’t do this very often though. I think once the novelty wears off, the initial buzz of having a tablet fades away. I’ve heard people who get by with a tablet and a smartphone, but it clearly doesn’t suit everybody.
Hi Ben,
I think we’re pretty much in agreement – I love having a decent smartphone, and there are a number of things it enables. Photography, maps, location recommendations etc are all great, and apps are fine for simple tasks like checking social networks quickly etc, or a 1-2 line email reply as needed.
But as you say, most apps on a tablet are essentially a crap version of something which works well on a second monitor etc (I also run Tweetdeck, Hootsuite etc on a second monitor, and tempted to move to a 3-screen in the office in the near future).
Most of the dedicated power users and geeks I know end up saying they use their tablet to occasionally surf the web or kill 5 minutes on the sofa etc, and obviously that’s fair enough, but it just seems a bit of a waste that there’s so much hype, expectation and R&D being thrust into tablets as ‘end of the PC’ and all that cobblers, when essentially it’s taking up the same level of interest as a £4 magazine would while you’re waiting for a TV show to start…
I use Hootsuite as well and when I try to change some scheduled text on my android smartphone it won’t let me do it… useless to me.
You do make some very valid points there Dan but I think you (and your commenters) are coming at it from completely the wrong angle. You are looking at the tablet use as a power user who already has a large selection of devices that are in locations that are very practical for you and also you have use cases that are not suited to tablets.
Most people though are not in your situations and for the average person starting up a pc and sitting in a separate room where the machine is. Laptops are a better solution but you still have to boot it, it’s heavy and it burns you’re lap. As your parents will no doubt attest they are the perfect device for the home user.
As for games? Most people aren’t interested in full on console games, they just want a bit of distraction on the commute or while the wife watches soaps and tabldts are perfect for that. They are easy to use, cheaper than pcs, can be turned on and off instantly and don’t have to constantly be plugged in to make them useful.
Personally, I have a stonking laptop which I use for work and video editing but at work it is docked to two large monitors so not very portable. I use the tablet for taking quick notes in meetings where a laptop would also present a barrier between people, I also use it as a teleprompter for shoots. We do a lot of shoots on location and here the tablet gets used to read and edit the Google Drive Scripts which is way better than using paper.
At home we have a laptop but I rarely use it because of the reasons laid out above. Until I got the tablet I did most of my sofa browsing on my phone and the tablet is so much better than that.
Obviously if I want to do any serious computing I get the laptop out but for everyday use, the tablet is king. And that’s without even mentioning the superiority of many apps over browser based options.
Finally I’m afraid your argument about tablets making people lazy is simply rubbish. Firstly your exposure to the Spectrum code might have made you curious about writing your own programs but have you ever done it. Plus, in what way does using a laptop expose you to more code than a tablet? Surely you still download complete apps unless you have started getting in to compiling your own from source code since I last saw you. If anything I’d say using an android tablet that is infinitely customisable will make you more prone to fiddle under the hood than most pc users as demonstrated by the large number of people running rooted and ROMed devices.
You might not like them or see a need for them but the massive growth in popularity (nearly 20% of traffic to our site) has got to be driven by a proven demand rather than just fashion.
Hi Angus – just to make it clear, I wasn’t knocking your enthusiasm, and wish I shared it in some ways.
As I said, it’s a personal view, and I did purchase a tablet device for my parents because it’s more useful for them to use than their PC – and most people don’t necessarily live alone with a home office setup, but the numbers of people working from home is increasing….
But I still disagree on some of your points. A PC or laptop with an SSD can boot as quickly as a tablet, and older tablets do feel increasingly sluggish, like the Samsung Galaxy my son regularly uses.
They’re also not cheaper – a notebook PC is around the same price as a tablet, and if the focus of R&D and operating systems like Windows 8 etc wasn’t so focused on the tablet aspect, Moore’s Law etc would suggest PCs would have continued to drop in price for comparative power.
Most tablet games do require a wifi connection for you to make those important F2P purchases, and again, a current gaming console is around the same price as a tablet, and can also boot fairly quickly.
I do see your point regarding the psychological barrier around note taking in meetings on a tablet rather than a laptop, but that’s always struck me as a slightly odd social convention – the use as a teleprompter is a good one, and reminded me that I did see the business value in tablets when our COO at Absolute Radio was in Australia and Skyped in for meetings etc as we could just carry him around the office on an iPad.
But surely if it’s a teleprompter, Skype screen and note taker, we’ve reached the zenith of tablet development?
And I do take issue with your dismissal of tablet laziness. I haven’t written my own programs from scratch, but I’ve certainly copied a fair bit of BASIC in my time. I’ve also learned enough to be more than dangerous with HTML, MYSQL etc, due to spending a lot of time working on WordPress sites, and working with designers and developers on the same.
I’m not suggesting that anyone using a PC will become a programmer and anyone on a tablet will become a lazy sheep, but it’s a lot easier to pick apart a WordPress site, or start looking at open source code via GitHub etc than it is to pick apart an App which comes as a package from an App Store, and if rooting was a sign of activity, then the number of rooted and unlocked smartphones would have already led to the biggest number of active users the world has ever seen…
And I’m surprised at you citing popularity as a justification for something, considering the Daily Mail is the most popular newspaper online. Across the sites I run, mobile and tablet audiences have grown massively, and responsive design is integral to everything we’re doing now – but that’s people mostly passively using tablets to check social networks, stream audio and video, surf the web etc.
And that’s fine as a personal choice for someone to spend their time, but my point is that it distracts the progress that can be made on devices that can promote active usage, and potentially influences our kids to believe that software is something that comes packaged and delivered, rather than created by a bunch of hardworking humans somewhere, and that can be explored, examined and tinkered with…
Apologies if that lot was a bit unstructured – just had to deal with my offspring deciding to jump out of bed to sleep on the floor for some odd reason…
It’s good that nowadays we all have our choices, beginners as well as power users: smartphones, tablets, notebooks, hybrids, etc.
As Dan pointed out in his title: “Modern tablets are rubbish (FOR ME…)”…
I understood that Dan (in his article) meant tablets are of no use for him as the advanced user, so we are all on the common ground on that one, I believe, if we look this tablet topic from this perspective in this article.