Windows 8, Tablet and Netbook PC’s and touch screens !

The big news is out. Microsoft is showing off Windows 8 and the new touch screen UI.

Not bad, if you view your tablet PC as an oversized smart  phone or if you only plan on using your tablet for fun stuff like watching videos or checking out your favorite photos. One blog noted in one video how when the person demonstrating it pulled up an actual Windows app (I think it was part of MS office) that they fudged their way through it, because the app didn’t respond well to touch.

There is an inherent flaw in the next generation of tablet PC’s and netbooks and that is limited real estate. What do I mean ?

First a 10 inch screen is quite small and this means the screen resolution is quite low.  One of the reasons desktops over the years got bigger and bigger screens is because the more space one has to work in the more you can do. Now to make things worse, when you add touch you have a big problem. A mouse is a very fine tuned input device and it allows yoo to move at a pixel level. A mouse is so good that you can even control where you click within 1 or 2 pixels. Now I don’t know about you, but my fingers are pretty big and a finger is going to cover a very large area (64 x 64 pixels or more). How accurate can you be with that ?

Software UI’s will have to be reworked so they can respond to the large input device (your fingers), which means you will lose valuable real estate on the screen. Button controls will have to be bigger. Drop down lists and menus  will have to use more vertical space per row, so a finger can differentiate between each row. The popular UI’s in advanced applications like Microsoft Office will have to be reworked to deal with this real estate problem.

While Tablets and Netbooks may be a “hot ticket” for consumer usages (watching videos, etc.), they will lag in the business world because they won’t handle more fine tuned tasks as well as a desktop or a good sized laptop.

What is needed is better UI design by developers to compensate for the small real estate of a tablet or netbook. Applications will have to be intelligent and take different resolutions (and input devices) into consideration.

I am excited about tablets and netbooks, but there are a lot of challenges to hurdled before they can truly be productive. I visited a store and got a look at the IPad and I wasn’t impressed. You see, I don’t use computers for a lot of consumer based stuff. I do watch a few online videos, but I don’t play many (if any) games and while I do surf the web a lot, I do it more for research than I do for fun stuff. This means that I am very conscious of things like how fast I can do things, how much information I can get on the screen (I have a 20 inch LCD monitor). When I browse the web, IExplorer gets bogged down because at times I have 10, 15 and even tabs going (each with a web page). Call it information overload. The point is that productivity is critical to me (I am a programmer).

One example of how picky I am is the keyboard I use. The keyboards that most computers come with today are simply garbage IMO. I use a very old, IBM keyboard which has those amazing “real” keys like the old typewriters used to have. The feel of my good old IBM keyboard has no match today. The keyboard is probably 20 years old. Now I can type on this keyboard twice as fast or better than any other new keyboard. Now imagine what it will be like when we start typing using touch screen keyboards (emulates a keyboard). At least netbooks have a real keyboard (and some are not too bad).

I do not see how you can write a single application which is designed to take advantage of each PC type (Tablet, Netbook, Desktop) without a lot more effort in UI design. Programmers will have to work harder to build such software. They will have to find ways to do things in a more unique way. To make things worse, what franework will programmers use for these new devices ? Win32 API, MFC, dot.net, WPF, Silverlight, HTML5 , Flash ? Windows software development has become a nightmare of choices. Now imagine what will happen when Windows is running on ARM.  Not all development tools were designed for working with ARM. Forget writing code in assembler. Too many choices and no definite direction to go in.

In the effort to make things better, backward compatibility is often lost and sometimes destroyed on purpose. This makes little sense. Millions of man hours of software development (and code) are simply thrown in the trash for the sake of  “something new”. Rather than build on the past, it is often thrown away.

One thing lacking today in the software and computer industries is “common sense”. If it is “shiny” people will buy it, even if it is not practical. This is sad, because computers have a real benefit when used properly. While many view computers simply as a better way to watch TV (videos), there are so many other practical uses for computers in business, research, medicine. This is where Tablet and Netbook PC’s have a real potential, but sadly UI design in software may not keep up with the new devices so they reach their full potential. Not all applications are meant to be used on a Tablet or a Netbook. Applications need to be designed specific to Tablets or Netbooks. Programmers will have to rethink UI design.

So let’s see how Windows 8 turns out!

So how are most people today using the existing Tablet and Netbook PC’s ? That would be worth investigating.