notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

Competing with iPad

Everyone’s talking about the iPad, so I started thinking a little further down the road. After all, if windows and mice really aren’t the future of computing, and touch screens are, you’d hope there’d be more than one manufacturer of devices in Our Glorious Computing Future. At least, I hope there is.

So, who’d make them? I can tell you who won’t: anyone relying on Windows. Microsoft’s done very well out of the last twenty years of computing, but the last decade has shown their inability to move with the times. Windows Vista was an obvious mis-step, but so is their series of Tablet Editions, because they failed to do what the iPhone OS did: rethink the interface. Instead, they expect a thin film of touch interactions to be enough, and it’s not.

Similarly, Windows Mobile’s reliance on a stylus and vestigial metaphors - the Start button, for example - hardly shows any signs of being the foundations for a usable device. Dan pointed out there’s a chance that the Xbox division might manage, and I suppose the Zune folks might have a chance, but I’d not hold my breath.

Of course, since almost every PC manufacturer relies on Microsoft for their OS, that rules out the likes of Dell, HP, Asus and Sony. So who’s left?

Nokia have dabbled with tablets before, and with the N900, they seem to have a fairly decent handheld device. Maemo might just make a good enough layer on top of Linux, but do they have the vision to make the hardware? Unfortunately, my gut feeling is that they don’t. Two or three years ago they might have been able to get away with a grand visionary play, but now, with the iPhone and Android going after their most profitable market segment, they look a bit like a wounded giant, trying to make sure they’re still going.

So that leaves Google. Their biggest issue, as far as I can tell, is that they have two OSes which overlap uncomfortably right at the point the iPad exists: the (announced but unreleased) Chrome OS, and the aforementioned Android. I don’t know enough to tell which fits better, but I expect one of them would be fine.

The company has other problems, too. So far Android hasn’t included multi-touch in the core OS or apps, because of the fear of patent litigation from Apple. It’s possible there’ll be a deal to resolve that, one way or another. In fact, I really hope there is: otherwise the monopoly I alluded to earlier will become a reality. The other issue is that they’re still not an experienced hardware manufacturer. Their first consumer product, the Nexus One, is built for them by HTC, and they’ve had teething troubles with customer relations, especially to do with getting phones working with telecoms companies. Maybe a licensee will make a tablet first, but you could argue the potential of the phone OS didn’t really surface until there was an in-house design; maybe the same would be true of a pad.

However, of all the people listed here, I suspect Google are by far the best placed to compete with Apple. Now all I have to do is wait a few years and see how wrong this post was.