Why web pads, internet tablets and ultra-mobiles aren’t the same thing
Ari Jaaksi famously announced the walkaround web in November 2005 when he pointed out that surfing wasn’t stationary any more than phone calls were. Cellphones had untethered calling, and a device like the first Nokia Internet Tablet meant the internet was available anywhere we were. We didn’t need to go to a computer in a specific location to get to the web any more than we needed to find a payphone to make a phone call.
Henceforth, we could carry our web-access with us, the same way we carry our phones. Ari said it all when he wrote: “I surf in trains, in cafeterias, at airports, even while driving. I can go online anytime and anywhere I want.” He called his observations “bold” but they were in fact revolutionary in understanding how this changes not computing, not using the web, but how we organize our lives.
Long before I heard of the Nokia 770, I used a small, keyboardless WiFi-enabled tablet to access the internet from Bryant Park in New York City. The notion of the web away from the desk antedated Nokia’s efforts by many years. By my count, it produced at least eight web pads (the contemporary term) prior to the 770, all of which failed to establish themselves.
My most complete experience was with the Screen Media FreePad, from a Norwegian outfit. The FreePad had a 10.4-inch screen, 800 x 600 resolution, built-in WiFi and “cordless telephone services”; and it ran an embedded Linux. No disk drive; if you wanted, you could attach a USB keyboard.
The rest of FreePad’s hardware was feeble by today’s standards but practical for 2000. Even back then the group I was working with expected to buy the FreePad for just $800 (in quantity).[1]
Eight years ago, and only $800. WiFi was in its nascent stages then, but if you were describing an organization-wide device (as we were) and not a personal weblet,[2] that probably wasn’t what kept the FreePad from succeeding.
I just read a post that I think others would be interested to see. In a thread about the MyPaint application, forum member MobileDividewrote that “[MyPaint] and Numptyphysics have redefined my tablet use over the last few days.”
MyPaint and Numpty Physics have one thing in common — they let us use the Internet Tablet as a tablet. Sketching can never be done gracefully with a mouse. Even graphics tablets — hand on the tablet, eye on the screen — have a disconnect. So sketching your idea right on the screen — or painting it — is, well, transformative.
Unlike other graphics programs the IT has seen so far, MyPaint focuses on brush controls, rather than image-editing, enabling the full range of styles a pressure-sensitive tablet can capture.
When we talk about the Internet Tablet as being revolutionary or transformative, it’s because everything in its conception — display, open platform, size and weight, price — serves to free us from the constraints our desk/laptops have imposed on us.
So, thanks are due to Martin and Anders and Tim and Erin Catto* for these specific versions of these great applications. And to the Nokia seers who conceived the Internet Tablet.
I have some computer smarts, but sometimes I’m baffled by the Nokia Internet Tablet.
There are some things I just don’t understand about the tablets (or their OS or the pre-installed apps):
Why I can’t construct a playlist in the Media player?
You’d think this would be a no-brainer. I just want to grab 5 or 6 of the 80 songs on my N810 and play them together, even though they’re by different artists on different albums.
Why isn’t connecting to my PC via Bluetooth really easy?
Sometimes I’m at my office, where WiFi is verboten. I want the tablet to use my PC’s direct connection to the internet — I’ve done it plenty of times laptop-to-laptop in meetings where only one person was plugged into the wired network. Why isn’t this a snap with the NIT?
Why is Linux made so hard?
OK, it’s clear that Nokia doesn’t want to support unsophisticated users with all the things that can trip them up in Linux.
But why doesn’t File Manager have a simple switch (Show hidden) that lets me see the whole contents of my drive? Even with the trick of adding a symbolic link to root (or any directory), I still can’t see hidden directories (eg, whose name begins with a dot).
Which leads me to my next question:
Why can’t I easily add fonts to my tablet and use them in the browser?
Right. I had to make a /home/user/.fonts/ directory and mail myself a font and then jump through command-line hoops to put a simple font on my tablet. And go through contortions to tell the browser to use it. (Except I haven’t succeeded in that yet. Emoticon with amazed look of disbelief here.)
Might as well ask the real puzzler here:
Why can’t OS2008 et al just let you be root when you need to?
If us unsophisticates need so much protection against our careless actions, shouldn’t we be wearing goalie gloves when we handle scissors? Why isn’t there just a switch that says, “It’s OK. I’ll take the consequences. Just please let me make a directory or use apt-get without having to acquire developer-class knowledge.”
Heck. That’s the deep side. But what about the glam cam that arrived with the N800?
Why isn’t there a face-to-face cam call capability yet?
It’s only the most amazing possible use of this walkaround-web device — unlimited cam calling via WiFi without having to sit in front of an anchored webcam.
It’s visual IM — just leave the call connected and talk when you want to talk. It’s IM taken to the next dimension.
Btw, don’t tell me this is here. My wife has the N810 and I have an N800 loaner from Nokia, and we can’t manage it. It needs to be click-simple and using Skype.
Why does upgrading the OS obliterate every manually installed app I’ve put on my tablet?
I know, if I go from Windows XP to Vista (and I haven’t), I’d have to re-install my apps. But every upgrade and patch in WinXP is managed without that requirement. Shouldn’t it be possible in this marvelous Linux world?
Why can’t the application memory be extended to one of the memory cards?
Is swap the extent of this? You know, I’m willing to risk the possibility that my flash card will get the same spot written to 100,000 times and fail.
Yeah, there are more things I don’t understand about my tablet’s design. Just getting the answers to Why not a model with a keyboard? and How can you call it an internet tablet without handling Flash and YouTube? have really lowered my orneriness. I won’t pick and pick and pick.
On the other hand, it’s your turn. What behavior or aspect of the Internet Tablet makes no sense at all to you?
Added later:
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* Tablet-to-tablet cam calls via Gizmo apparently arrived during my recent period of submersion. I’m happy, even if it isn’t Skype. (I mean: even if the five friends I know with VOIP all use Skype instead of Gizmo.) Me-to-wife cam-IM is plenty great
There have been recent heated discussions on the availability, quality, and installation problems of Internet Tablet apps. Maemo.org Downloads lists hundreds of available apps but let’s face it, a big chunk of Internet Tablet users don’t even know what ‘Maemo‘ is — what more a maemo.org downloads page. Application Manager provides a partial list of installable apps with not much information on what the apps are and what they do. Often times, app-specific libraries and add-ons are mixed together with the main apps themselves, adding to the confusion. Oh, and then there are the apps that won’t install due to missing libraries, etc., etc.
What improvements can be made?
Participate in the poll and join the discussion.
How would you change Maemo.org Downloads and Application Manager?
Saying goodbye to the old flame (a gone-to-seed Thinkpad):
I’m sorry, so sorry. I know I have spent many hours with you, spent hundreds of dollars treating you to all the best money could buy. I have made sure you had everything you have needed in the years we have been together. I even loved you enough to load Linux instead of Windows.
I’m sorry, so sorry I do not spend as much time with you as I once did but I must be honest. I have found a new love. My new love is thinner, prettier and more fun….
I’m sorry, so sorry. I’m not trying to rub it in but this Nokia N810 does nearly everything I once needed you to do.
I was just looking at the post Reggie made about free wallpaper from the Maemo UI team and wondering why the “Thanks!” feature here at ITT isn’t used more.
I realized I have a lot of thanks to give.
Thanks to Reggie for starting this site, for making it a place I want to visit daily, for spending so much of his time doing the admin tasks like hooking up the news items to the forums and redesigning the layout, for all his efforts on behalf of us ITT users.
Thanks to Ari Jaaksi and his crew at Nokia for bringing us an affordable sensational tablet, for continually improving it, for welcoming user and blogger input to make it better, for partnering with the open-source community on this endeavor, giving back and building tools for others to use.
Thanks to the Nokia higher-ups who allowed this skunkworks initiative to prove its worth then moved it into the corporate mainstream of the N-series and Forum Nokia.
Thanks to Quim Gil for being our advocate inside Nokia and for keeping us informed on what’s going on inside the pale.
Thanks to Nikolay Pultsin (aka Geometer) and Mikhail Sobolev for their tireless development of FBReader, the fabulous e-reader for the Nokia internet tablets (as well as many other platforms now).
Thanks to Daniel Gentleman, aka Thoughtfix, for his reporting on so many aspects of tablets of all sorts.
There are others in our community who have brought much insight to the forums here, posted great information in times of desperate need, ported apps or made them from whole cloth. I encourage all the members here at ITT to add the specific people they want to thank to this list.
At GigaOM, Alistair Croll explains what the Nokia Internet Tablet is all about — positioning Nokia to be completely ready for the open, walkaround web*. It’s not about selling more devices and making money now, but owning the market later.
Croll cites Nokia’s Anssi Vanjoki, EVP of multimedia, as pointing to the overwhelming need outside of the U.S. for web access to be primarily handheld and not tied to a desk. (And not tied to a single carrier for one-person/one-phone telephony.)
Nokia sees that closed platforms cripple the ability to compete in the coming world. Hence its commitment to Linux (as contrasted to Apple’s approach with the iPhone). And more critically that, basically, everyone will want to access the web from anywhere, at any time. Hence the computer that you walk around with had better be suited for the web (800 pixels wide) and light enough to carry everywhere (8 ounces or less).
This strategy explains such disparate events as the accelerated release cycle (three NIT’s within 20+ months), the size- and price-discrepancy compared to the UMPC, and Nokia’s support of the open-source community.
Nokia is taking the long view, Croll says, and when the walkaround web is firmly fixed in place, Nokia will be farther along on the learning curve making the devices we will all want. And be most firmly situated in the public’s mind as the company that gets it.
I just did a quick price check at PriceGrabber and you can surprisingly now get a Nokia N800 internet Tablet for just $235.60 shipped. The cheapest price on the list (before tax and shipping) is just $224.
It is already quite a steal to get the N800 at this price, considering it can be flashed later on with OS 2008. It would be interesting to see how low it goes for.
I haven’t held a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet in my hands, but it seems to me it represents some very astute decisions on the part of the Nokia team.
The 770 and N800 tablets have the largest, highest-resolution screens of any device in the pocket-carryaround category. That comes from an awareness of the high frustration that accompanies surfing the web on a too-narrow screen.
From day one, we’ve been asking how can Nokia take advantage of their units’ display advantage?
Well, having used a Nokia-loaner GPS unit for several months, I can testify that one thing that benefits greatly from a larger, higher-resolution screen is looking at a map, especially traveling at 65 mph when you can’t spend more than a moment or two glancing at it.
So building in GPS has a surface logic anyone can appreciate. But that’s not what I think is astute.
Walt Mossberg, writing for the Wall Street Journal, hit the nail on the head:
[T]he iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer. [Emphasis added.] Its software, especially, sets a new bar for the smart-phone industry, and its clever finger-touch interface, which dispenses with a stylus and most buttons, works well ….
Maybe it’s beginning to sink in that there’s now a category of devices fitting in-between PDA’s and notebooks. They’re computers, and they’re something else. (Not every-thing else.) Apple’s iPhone and the Nokia Internet Tablet are just the first, best exemplars.
The iPhone doesn’t have a hard drive or a keyboard. It commits huge resources to its gorgeous screen and flexible OS. It’s driven largely by realization that we all want a walkaround web.
Same for the Nokia Internet Tablet.
No, they’re not competitors (except for people’s discretionary income). What I see, though, is that — different as they are — each conceptualizes the same insight. That’s why I wrote, back in January, that the iPhone validates the Internet Tablet.
