[ender2002]

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2005/05/10.18.shtml

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!

[memory-minus]

*yawn*

Believe it when I see it on the shelf at the store.

[MindFad]

You knew this was coming eventually. What I want eventually, when the wireless bandwidth permits it, it a display type device (could double as a computer, too, as seen in the illustrations), that I can use as a remote monitor. Like, my Mac could be in my room, but I could be using this wireless display in my living room—that type of deal. That would be neat. Of course, it would have USB ports and what not, and a stand, so I could use it wherever. Maybe this tablet thing could have something similar.

Anyway, nice illustrations. It would be neat, but I'm not sure what use I would have for it—aside from a situation such as I described.

[andretan]

I wonder how less crappy it would be (if Apple were to really make one) as compared to a PC tablet PC...

[Millennium]

Not going to happen, folks. Apple has hundreds of patents that they've never released devices for; that's standard for this industry. They applied for this patent over a year ago.

Just as well. Unless you do a lot of writing in Asian languages, tablets are useless.

[Sealobo]

Originally Posted by Millennium

Just as well. Unless you do a lot of writing in Asian languages, tablets are useless.

and typing is much faster than writing... it's true for traditiion chinese anyway.

keyboard junky 4life.

[sideus]

Tablets are the suckness.

[Xeo]

Originally Posted by Millennium

Just as well. Unless you do a lot of writing in Asian languages, tablets are useless.

Yeah I don't think writing in Japanese would be faster than typing, either. The speed of writing English vs. writing Japanese is probably similar, actually. Same goes for typing. Just guessing though.

Personally, I think whatever Apple comes out with, if they do come out with it, would be pretty cool, but unless it's small enough to fit in your pocket, I'd much rather have a keyboard.

A tablet Mac would be sweet for any graphic artist, though.

[Apple Pro Underwear]

why doesit have to be a tablet PC?

why not a airtunes interface controller?

why not a wifi mirror to your existing desktop?

or some other ingeniou ass idea?



2 words: bling bling

[Wiskedjak]

If anything, I think that, given how secretive Apple it, seeing the patent is a sure sign we'll never see the product.

[Apple Pro Underwear]

::: APU dials Wiskedjak's phone number on his iPhone and says "shhh... don't let them fools know our sectrets!" :::

[OldManMac]

Originally Posted by Millennium

Not going to happen, folks. Apple has hundreds of patents that they've never released devices for; that's standard for this industry. They applied for this patent over a year ago.

Just as well. Unless you do a lot of writing in Asian languages, tablets are useless.

Bingo!

[Super Nova]

Originally Posted by memory-minus

*yawn*

Believe it when I see it on the shelf at the store.

agreed, plus the fact that most tablet systems really aren't all that great

SuperNova

[ManOfSteal]

.gniroB

[Face Ache]

HAHAHAHA! YOU PUNY MORTALS CANNOT KNOW THE MIND OF THE GREAT JOBS!

Squirm in the slime of your own mediocre imaginings until Our Lord Jobs brings us forth our foretold tablet, for only then shall ye know the greatness that is Jobs. And ye shall cry "Oh Lord I was blind and now I can see".

Amen.

[TailsToo]

I'd rather have them make a two-button mouse...

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Apple patents tons of products and ideas even if they never want to follow up on them. I don't see more than 3 people lusting over a tablet anyway.

[andretan]

Originally Posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker

Apple patents tons of products and ideas even if they never want to follow up on them. I don't see more than 3 people lusting over a tablet anyway.

However, if Apple is really coming out with one, I bet all the Mac fanboys will be all lusting for one.

[Superchicken]

I could see it... it'd be better than PCs...

[DeathMan]

if its a wireless peripheral, I'd be more interested. A sketchbook/reader/browser with an ultra high rez display (300+dpi), that has a wireless, or bluetooth 2.0 connection to my laptop or desktop? I'd be down with that. Even if it were only 8bit grayscale, I'd totally want one.

[euphras]

Originally posted by Face Ache:
"HAHAHAHA! YOU PUNY MORTALS CANNOT KNOW THE MIND OF THE GREAT JOBS!

Squirm in the slime of your own mediocre imaginings until Our Lord Jobs brings us forth our foretold tablet, for only then shall ye know the greatness that is Jobs. And ye shall cry "Oh Lord I was blind and now I can see".

Amen to that!
Reality distortion field will do the trick...

[Cody Dawg]

A long time ago I said that this was coming and everyone sneered at me.

Now I feel vindicated.

I tried to tell everyone that they have been working with the Microsoft BU on software via Office for this and no one would believe me.

Now you'll all see when it comes out next spring.

[Apple Pro Underwear]

Originally Posted by andretan

However, if Apple is really coming out with one, I bet all the Mac fanboys will be all lusting for one.

not that i want one but...


mp3 players existed before iPods.

digital music stores existed before iTMS.

look at all the other Apple products that are better once Apple touched it.

[chris v]

Originally Posted by TailsToo

I'd rather have them make a two-button mouse...

Everybody knows two-button mouses don't work with MAC's.

Duh.

I don't get tablets, either. My handwriting is teh suck.

What I would like is a wireless display that I could draw on, like a Wacom tablet. Wouldn't neccessarily have to be a whole intar computer-- just something that remotely hooked up to my existing desktop. There's probably a pretty limited market for such things, though.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Apple Pro Underwear

why doesit have to be a tablet PC?
why not a airtunes interface controller?
why not a wifi mirror to your existing desktop?

I'd hit it.

-t

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally Posted by Cody Dawg

A long time ago I said that this was coming and everyone sneered at me.

Now I feel vindicated.

I tried to tell everyone that they have been working with the Microsoft BU on software via Office for this and no one would believe me.

Now you'll all see when it comes out next spring.

Oh great prediction.

I predict that Apple will come out with faster computers with more storage.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker

Oh great prediction.

I predict that Apple will come out with faster computers with more storage.

Be prepared to be sued by Apple !

-t

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by chris v

What I would like is a wireless display that I could draw on, like a Wacom tablet. Wouldn't neccessarily have to be a whole intar computer-- just something that remotely hooked up to my existing desktop. There's probably a pretty limited market for such things, though.

You mean something like this?
Viewsonic Wireless Monitors

Microsoft has been working on such things for many years now, with Viewsonic's products being among the first results of that work
Microsoft's Mira

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by Xeo

Yeah I don't think writing in Japanese would be faster than typing, either. The speed of writing English vs. writing Japanese is probably similar, actually. Same goes for typing. Just guessing though.

The problem is more in the way that Asian keyboards work. There are several designs, but generally they require one of a few tricks:

• Multiple keystrokes for a single character (usually by means of typing out a romanization), and even then possibly selecting from a menu.
• Selecting a character from a long list, and then pressing a single key to enter it.
• Large -and usually incomplete- sets of keys, each for one character.

All of these designs slow down input tremendously, to the point where I'm not sure it's faster or easier then writing. This said, handwriting-recognition programs for these languages tend to be very advanced, which would make these languages ideal for tablet computers.

A tablet Mac would be sweet for any graphic artist, though.

The problem is that in order for tablet Macs to work well for graphic artists, they would need to be pressure-sensitive, like current Wacom and similar tablet devices. Although touchscreens are common nowadays, I've yet to see any pressure-sensitive touchscreens; just ones with a sort of binary "touch/no-touch" capability.

[AssassyN]

Originally Posted by TailsToo

I'd rather have them make a two-button mouse....

word.

[chris v]

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak

You mean something like this?
Viewsonic Wireless Monitors

Yeah, except for the Windows part.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by Millennium

The problem is more in the way that Asian keyboards work. There are several designs, but generally they require one of a few tricks:

• Multiple keystrokes for a single character (usually by means of typing out a romanization), and even then possibly selecting from a menu.
• Selecting a character from a long list, and then pressing a single key to enter it.
• Large -and usually incomplete- sets of keys, each for one character.

All of these designs slow down input tremendously, to the point where I'm not sure it's faster or easier then writing.

You're forgetting a few things here:

First of all, needing multiple keystrokes for a single character is not the same as needing multiple keystrokes for a simple letter (which also exists in Western languages, with letters with diacritic marks attached to them); a character in most complex Asian languages (Chinese, Korean, Hindi, Japanese, etc.) is not a letter, but a syllable, and is not comparable to a single letter.

Also, even though it does slow down input having to choose characters from menus (which doesn't go for scripts such as Korean, Hindi, or pure Hiragana/Katakana in Japanese, since these are still phonetic scripts), this is still - usually - a lot faster than writing the character by hand, at least if you have to write it so clearly that a computer can read it. Once you're used to the typing interface in an Asian language (I'll use Chinese as my example, since it's the only one I have extensive experience with), you can type at about half the speed you would type in English. No matter how fast you are at handwriting, you cannot write at the same speed. If you do, your writing will be so fast and illegible that a computer won't be able to decipher it.

[Xeo]

Originally Posted by Millennium

The problem is more in the way that Asian keyboards work. There are several designs, but generally they require one of a few tricks:

• Multiple keystrokes for a single character (usually by means of typing out a romanization), and even then possibly selecting from a menu.
• Selecting a character from a long list, and then pressing a single key to enter it.
• Large -and usually incomplete- sets of keys, each for one character.

All of these designs slow down input tremendously, to the point where I'm not sure it's faster or easier then writing. This said, handwriting-recognition programs for these languages tend to be very advanced, which would make these languages ideal for tablet computers.

Even with keyboard entry being clumsier in Asian languages over English, typing is still faster than writing. As Oisn said, to write as fast as you type, it would have to be pretty illegible. The reason handwriting recognition is so good with asian languages is that there is a standard stroke order which is followed, unlike in our language where anyone can write any letter in any way, so long as it's readable. But there are plenty of ways to speed up writing kanji and it is akin to writing in cursive. I'm guessing that the superior handwriting recognition doesn't work out as well on characters like those.

Regarding multiple keystrokes, I have to use multiple keystrokes in a large majority of the words I type. A standard Japanese word might have 3 or 4 syllables, so 5-8 keystrokes in a romanization. That's not all that many more than what we do. The only difference is that choosing from a list part. Most of the time, the computer is pretty good at picking the right ones, though.

Anyway, my point is that I really don't think writing characters by hand will ever be as fast as typing, no matter what language you are using.

The problem is that in order for tablet Macs to work well for graphic artists, they would need to be pressure-sensitive, like current Wacom and similar tablet devices. Although touchscreens are common nowadays, I've yet to see any pressure-sensitive touchscreens; just ones with a sort of binary "touch/no-touch" capability.

Yeah, I agree. I just assume that Apple, considering its market, would not release a tablet computer that wasn't pressure sensitive for drawing. If someone's going to do it, Apple seems like the company that would.

[Oisín]

As Oisn said, [ ... ]

On a sidenote: What the hell is going on with MacNN lately? The past two days I've noticed my name keeps showing up (everywhere - control panel, threads; everywhere!) as Oisn instead of Ois�in-with-accent-over-the-last-i-which-it-now-won't-even-let-me-type-in-posts. Has somebody been playing with the encoding? It goes away (or rather, magically appears) if I set the encoding to ISO Latin 1... wtf?

[MindFad]

Yeah, your name looks like so in Safari now:



I haven't touched any settings. *shrug*

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by MindFad

Yeah, your name looks like so in Safari now:



I haven't touched any settings. *shrug*

You must somehow have managed to get UTF-8 as your standard encoding, 'cause that's clearly a UTF-8 “don't know what the hell that character's supposed to be” question-mark-thingy. In my Safari, it just says Oisn, with no second i; and I'm guessing, by the way Xeo wrote it, it does on his too.

*confused*

[MindFad]

I dunno. My Safari is and always has been set to Western (ISO Latin 1). Someone'll figure it out.

[ender2002]

yeah. weird. im getting that question mark thing too every now and then in safari

[Chris Grande]

Question mark thing here too...

[Demonhood]

i switched the forums to UTF-8 yesterday, that's why.
what's it supposed to be? i can change it for you.

[Xeo]

Originally Posted by MindFad

I dunno. My Safari is and always has been set to Western (ISO Latin 1). Someone'll figure it out.

Just to clarify what Demon said, now that the forum has been switched to UTF-8, you are viewing all the pages using UTF-8 even though your default is the ISO one. You would have to manually change it on a per-window basis to use anything else. That's why his name recently changed.

And Oisn, your name does have the question mark for me as well, I just didn't copy and paste to get your name, just like this time. Just post what it's supposed to be, like DH said, and he can fix ya up all pretty like. But it sounds like your browser isn't using UTF-8 or you'd see the change as well, so you might want to make sure UTF-8 is being used before you post.

[euphras]

Just for the record: Question mark thingy also here, both under UTF-8 and ISO latin 1 settings.

[Busemann]

Originally Posted by Cody Dawg

A long time ago I said that this was coming and everyone sneered at me.

Now I feel vindicated.

I tried to tell everyone that they have been working with the Microsoft BU on software via Office for this and no one would believe me.

Now you'll all see when it comes out next spring.

Several of their patents never come into fruition, so I wouldn't read too much into this one. Apple will not release a tablet computer for various reasons. Steve himself said so

[Zimphire]

Originally Posted by MindFad

Yeah, your name looks like so in Safari now:



I haven't touched any settings. *shrug*

Same here Fad.

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally Posted by Ois�n

You must somehow have managed to get UTF-8 as your standard encoding, 'cause that's clearly a UTF-8 “don't know what the hell that character's supposed to be” question-mark-thingy. In my Safari, it just says Oisn, with no second i; and I'm guessing, by the way Xeo wrote it, it does on his too.

*confused*

Says Oisn on my machine. Western Latin 1 encoding. Cuz like I'm western and no 1. Could be latin. Hey who isn't!

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani

Says Oisn on my machine. Western Latin 1 encoding. Cuz like I'm western and no 1. Could be latin. Hey who isn't!

Heh, clever

Demonhood: It's supposed to be Ois�*n (I hope that turns up right). That's Oisin, O-I-S-I-N, with an acute accent over the second i. A change would be much appreciated

Strange thing is, currently, it says Oisn in UTF-8 (with no question mark). If I change it to Western Latin 1, however, it says Ois�*n (ie. as it's supposed to look). I don't seem to get the question mark, no matter which encoding I choose.

[Xeo]

I just realized that, for some reason, the i with the acute symbol doesn't show up in UTF-8. I can type é, ú, á, ó, but �* shows up wrong for me.

And interestinly, Firefox doesn't transcode it to the HTML entities if the character encoding supports the character. That's smart, but I didn't expect it.

Now, does this -> &#237; <- work for everyone? And if so, perhaps Ois&#237;n's display name can include it. That is & #237 ;

[Weyland-Yutani]

Funny. Ois�*n comes out as Ois*n over here. (that is, an asterisk instead of accented i)

Edit: same in UTF-8 as Western Latin 1 - an asterisk instead of accented i.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by Xeo

I just realized that, for some reason, the i with the acute symbol doesn't show up in UTF-8. I can type é, ú, á, ó, but �* shows up wrong for me.

Now that is weird! It's like the forums decided that this particular letter was to be off-limits, just to annoy me specifically!

Now, does this -> �* <- work for everyone? And if so, perhaps Ois�*n's display name can include it. That is & #237 ;

Yup, that works. Odd, though; I tried with & iacute ; yesterday, and it didn't convert it, just told me I was now called Ois& iacute ;n...

[C.A.T.S. CEO]

i hope they don't call it the book mini