The coming revolution

It seems pretty obvious to me that the current range of tablets out there are merely the first stirrings of a revolution. Those of you old enough to remember the first tablets will remember Windows-powered, heavy and quite slow products that were little more than the standard operating system with pen-add-on.

How things have changed. In April this year Apple released the iPad, which was as near to a Star Trek tablet as anyone had come up with – and along with the iPhone it helped change Apple’s fortunes. Almost immediately other manufacturers started to claim they had alternatives in the works yet even today there isn’t anything to really compete with the iPad, mostly it’s just promises and demos. That is about to change.

The new upgrade to iPad – IOS4.2 – gives iPad proper multi-tasking, unified mailbox and a host of other features including the ability to stream video to their new Apple TV box (which I have to say is quite nice). Meanwhile the Samsung Galaxy Tab is already in the shops (with a smaller screen size and so not necessarily in the same marketplace) and there are others creeping out of the woodwork. By Christmas you can count on a range of tablets from many manufacturers being available. But will they compete?
 
The currently available Android tablets (with the exception of the Samsung) by and large use an earlier version of Android which won’t handle Flash (but then neither will the iPad, though there is an App that attempts to address that) and even Google themselves have apparently said that Android 2.2 is not optimised for tablet use – it seems the manufacturers are rushing in regardless and there is always the NEXT version of Android.

Windows 7 is an option on some tablets but it’s worth bearing in mind that Windows needs a lot more power than some of the alternatives and so it’s going to take a fairly fast piece of hardware to make Windows fly on a tablet and that usually means reduced battery life or some other compromise. Windows 7 is also not optimised for large fingers! There are other operating systems but I’m guessing the key players will be Apple, Android and perhaps Windows.
 
I’ve been using my iPad pretty much every day now since it came out in America in April and I’m still getting the better part of 10 hours between charges. I attend a lot of business meetings and I’ve been able to virtually eliminate carrying paper around with me while business colleagues lean to one side due to heavy briefcases full of paperwork. The Apps for reading documents really do work well. Meanwhile everyone seems to be jumping onto this particular bandwagon with magazines and newspapers offering tablet versions of their publications and for the first time it all just seems to work – at least for iPad users who already have Richard Branson’s new publication and with more to come.

It remains to be seen if the 4.2 upgrade will be sufficient to keep buyers this Christmas going for the iPad despite its lack of camera or ability to handle Adobe Flash properly – of course then there’s the rumour mill which has it that an iPad 2 is around the corner which would address one of these issues. One things is for sure, THIS time there’s a revolution going on – the tablet  concept has a bright future ahead of it  - WHO’S tablet will be the winner? – well, that’s anyone’s guess! IBM had the first PC but look where we are now!