Crowdsourcing the killer business tablet

Last week we discussed how an iPad competitor could succeed in the tablet market — namely, by not trying to out-Apple Apple on the UI front, and instead delivering important capabilities Apple doesn’t and isn’t likely to offer.

Not that you would know this was the premise of the article from most of the comments posted in response.

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As a quick review, here are the three features I used to illustrate the opportunities afforded to Apple competitors with an eye on business users:

1. File management: What Windows Explorer does — organize all documents into topic-related folders. It’s fundamental to working productively because work is logically related by topic, not by the tool used to create it.
2. Information management: Don’t stop at documents. One tool should organize all information — documents, emails, tasks, and individual thoughts — in the same outline-based system, with bonus points for the ability to add the same item to multiple outlines. Everything about a topic should be found in the same place.
3. Handwriting and speech recognition as OS-level, keyboard-alternative data-entry services: This matters most to “vertical workers” — people who have to fill out forms, take notes, and so on while standing up, in a place that isn’t their office.

Here’s what various commenters had to say in response (some edited for length, none for spelling or grammar).

From counterpoint22:

Bob, one word — OneNote, try it, it can store handwritten notes, random typed text, emails, files, and just about anything else, and it can copy/paste anything from Web pages (with a quick Ctrl+S), and it can record audio/video with synced notes and the search is killer.

Yeah but — OneNote looks pretty and does what you say, but wastes screen real estate hideously. Compare it to an outline-based PIM like InfoSelect and you’ll see what I mean.

James Cronin said:

Handwriting recognition?!

STYLUS!?!??!?!?

… what reason could I possibly have for writing letters by hand rather than use a perfectly good keyboard?? Mr. Lewis and the rest of the Greatest Generation did a great job against the Nazis, but I personally refuse to humor your call to return to simpler times when people had to … draw letters by hand to form words.

I am so incensed that I have all but forgotten the other points you made in this article. More functional and intuitive filing system — I agree.

I’m actually Vietnam-war vintage. Draw your own conclusions. I’m guessing your incensed state of mind caused you to miss that this was about vertical workers. Try typing on an iPad while standing. It’s dreadful.

J G said:

how quaint… a Microsoft fanboi masquerading as an objective observer with only good intentions.

It’s stunning that you can dismiss a gazillion iPad users as nothing more than people doing trivial things. Really? We need a -real- (spelled: Microsoft Windows) tablet in order to be able to do “some serious work”. Huh. So I imagine that all those POS systems, walk-abouts (docs, nurses, etc) and the like aren’t actually -doing- any work, they just wish they were.

Venture outside the MS compound … and you’ll probably discover that most users have absolutely ZERO idea of what the heck a file system is, what files are or why they should care. I know a longtime PC user, a professional, who kept records of every single correspondence and document she ever wrote, for about 7 years. When she finally had problems finding a particular document she asked for my help. This user, who was making use of the power of a file system, had exactly ONE document saved. Every time she wrote, she overwrote the contents of the previous document.

What, saying something about an Apple product that isn’t pure, radiant praise makes me a Microsoft “fanboi”? I knew a driver once. He had a crash — proving, by your logic, that cars shouldn’t come with steering wheels and brakes.

Oh, and most Mac users know exactly what files are and why they matter. Why are you insulting them?

Rick Mills said:

Wow. Really? Storing your information in proprietary Microsoft programs? On local filesystems?

Let me go back and check the year this was written…

I authored the piece on my iPad while in flight. The information was stored — locally — in Apple’s proprietary format.

Dose said: “Dude … The tablet market is saturated. It is not a green field.”

If the tablet market is saturated, Apple had better scrap the iPad 3.

wezlo said:

I’m begging Microsoft to please keep access to the filesystem out of tablets … Windows or Mac, people in general have no idea how to use a filesystem to store their documents.

The filesystem isn’t what we need, it’s the ability to search all the data on the device and then have a quick way to list things we can do with the data. So, if we search for a document a tap and hold should give us options like print, email, open in, send to. For ordinary users, please keep the filesystem hidden.

Having a file system doesn’t preclude having search. Not having a file system means having only search (or, in the case of iOS, nothing — I’ve used its search). Compared to an organized folder tree, search is a blunt instrument. Anyone who has ever used Google search knows the “death by a million hits” effect. Additionally, users aren’t as inept as you suggest. Most have a pretty good handle on what files and folders are and do.

leicaman said:

Man, start out with such utterly wrong straw man arguments, and then draw a foregone conclusion? What a pathetically poor argument!

And for a company that’s tried for over 12 years to make a tablet that people will use, and failed, and then pretend it can beat a very useful tablet OS that is finding its way into more than 90 percent of the Fortune 500, with plenty of functionality that you apparently aren’t aware of, is a real knee-slapper.

I propose three features I think would make a non-iOS tablet competitive. You interpret it as a prediction that Microsoft will provide them. Do you do this much assuming in the rest of your life?

melgross said:

Wow, Bob, you apparently aren’t aware that many major companies totally disagree with your assessment of the capabilities of iOS. Your “semi-functionality” is their perfect device.

Trying to peddle Win8, which is also pretty obvious, isn’t going to work. Give it up. Your favorite company is losing out.

See “assuming?” above. Also, perfect device? Do you do this much assuming — oh, I guess you do.

Karl Collins said:

I grew up organizing my thoughts, and my information, in an outline structure, which the file system represents. Search and tags do not work so well for me. The outline forces me to be more consistent and rigorous in my organization, and as a result I both gain better understanding of the information and its relationship and my larger data store. It also means that I’m much more likely to find what I’m looking for, and the other related information that I didn’t know I was looking for.

Search … doesn’t help me find what I’m not looking for, but that is related, and that I should find to better understand the question at hand. Searching and also finding the place in the outline (file structure) where all the related information [is] always turns up a few things … I didn’t know to search for.

Boy, you didn’t give me much to ridicule here — good points.

RobertRadina said:

I too think in terms of file systems … but can a file system … be imitated by indexed metadata? [Wherever] the device/app puts stuff, if I tag each thing … and that tag is used by an OS-level master-indexing system, isn’t this the same as putting it in a folder? If the OS then gives me a way to find/search for that tag, I get to see all my pieces of information together. I also have the advantage of making multiple relationships … making it appear in multiple folders but it’s the same document. In other words, de-duplication is built-in.”

Dang! Another comment I can’t ridicule. I want this. When do you plan to ship it?

Al Kubeluis said, “Bob … You are right on with all 4 points.”

Jedi said, “Finally a refreshing article from someone at InfoWorld.”

Digital Dave said, “One of the best articles I’ve read in a long time! Well said!”

Three of the most perceptive comments I’ve read in a long time. Well said!

Without further ado, let’s continue the lively discussion this week in hopes of further defining the kinds of business-minded features we would like to see in a tablet — and debating what’s important and evolving in today’s tablet market.

This story, “Crowdsourcing the killer business tablet,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bob Lewis’s Advice Line blog on InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.