One of the best known digital inkers of all time is Sumocat who writes for Gottabemobile.com. To see a great example of what digital inking is all about, visit Sumocat’s ink blog here: http://sumocat.blogspot.com/
But something that he said in a comment on one of his articles yesterday got me thinking…
Just about the only thing I don’t like about the iPad is the lack of real inking, but this isn’t something that appeals to the masses. – Sumocat, Gottabemobile.com comments
Last night I was out at a business lounge in the Melbourne Airport Hilton with a couple of Motion Computing VPs and Sumocat’s comment came to mind… As I looked across the room I noticed business people all over the place having informal meetings and taking notes on pen and paper.
Perhaps Sumocat’s comment was referring to the fact that people don’t use pen and paper so much while vegetating on the couch (or toilet) – which is of course the intended use case for an Apple ipad. And he’d be right about that… Touch will do just fine.
However, I thought how many people work in an office, attend meetings all day long and take notes? Tablet PCs in their current form are unbelievably ideal for this use case, and I’d have to say that there are masses.
At home, at work, in the car (as a passenger or stopped of course!), at church, at the shops, at the post office… there are so many places that you scribble notes on paper. Surely everyone does that?
Touch in any form will simply not cut it to replace the ballpoint pen, but a proper windows Tablet PC with an active digitizer can! If we could only get them into a consumer format and priced like an Apple iPad.
I think now that Apple will never adopt the pen. I doubt that Google will either when they release a couple Tablet PCs shortly. C’mon Microsoft, it’s time to act on Courier – put your cards on the table(t)!
Hey, thanks for the shout out and continuing the discussion, Brett. To clarify, I’m referring to the current lure of pen computing. I love it (obviously), but it’s not pulling people away from pen and paper. There’s too much convenience and comfort with paper, while Tablet PCs are, well, PCs. It’s too much hassle for most people. The one thing I see that could turn this around is the new trend of pen input on eReaders. Instant-on, long battery life, and simple interface make the experience much more convenient. People write in real books so it makes sense they’ll want to write in eBooks too. This trend could make pen input a must-have feature in the future, a requirement for any device in the eBook market, but we’re not there yet.
Hey Sumocat thanks for visiting! Yes, I agree on the appeal of the pen and the complication of the PC. That’s why I think that apple are so wrong on the iPad… A simple device with a notetaking capability would own.
Although, it is getting easier to use the PC as a notetaker under Win 7. Still not dead simple, but simple enough for most laptop-bound execs…