In today’s blog post, Steven Sinofsky talks about the tradeoffs in creating a highly customizable Windows system. His post is in large parts a response to the many of commenters on the E7Blog asking for a more customizable experience–something that it appears to me that Linux, Admins, and gamers seem to want a lot and something I’m not too keen on. Decoupled components is good. A highly configurable install process is not. At least, that’s my take.
Anyway, what really got me in this post is when Steven talks about places that it makes sense to have Windows customization. He says:
Some examples are quite easy to see and you should expect us to do more along these lines, such as the TabletPC components. I have a PC that is a very small laptop and while it has full tablet functionality it isn’t the best size for doing good ink work for me (I prefer a 12.1” or greater and this PC is a 10” screen). The tablet code does have a footprint in memory and on the 1GB machine if I go and remove the tablet components the machine does perform better. This is something I can do today.
If you’re a Tablet PC advocate, I’m sure you’re re-reading this quote, then re-reading it again, and then once again.
Yes, he’s saying that even on a Tablet PC, the Tablet bits don’t have enough value for him.
OK, OK, everyone’s needs are different and I’m guessing what’s going on here is that he’s just unfamiliar with how to leverage the technology. (I’ll get back to this point in a minute and how I think that as Tablet enthusiasts we need to get back to thinking about how we can make Tablets more compelling for executives–even within Microsoft.)
Why do I think he doesn’t really know much about Tablet PCs? The way he spells it “TabletPC” [SIC]. It’s “Tablet PC.” Two words. Both capitalized. That’s our first clue that he probably hasn’t spent much time reading about Tablet PCs. Maybe he needs to spend a few minutes on Gottabemobile.
Another shocker for me is his view that ink isn’t compelling on a 10″ display. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I think most of us Tablet enthusiasts would say that two of the best Tablets ever were both 10″ models: The NEC LitePad and the Compaq/HP TC1100.
And what about all the UMPCs? Or the Classmate PC which is going to support a digitizer? These are all small screened devices and all of them make sense to have touch as well as ink technologies. I can’t imagine a great education PC that doesn’t at least have ink, for instance, and is there any doubt that these PCs will have small screens because of cost reasons?
Now, if you’re a heavy notebook user and rarely use Tablet features, then I bet I can see why screen real-estate trumps ink. But then again, I bet what this really means is that the software isn’t there.
In fact, I think Steven’s comment is really saying that the current ink-enabled software isn’t compelling enough. What does this mean? Ink in Word, Powerpoint, Messenger or any other Microsoft product isn’t compelling enough?
I guess I can see this in some cases, but might I suggest he look outside of Microsoft. Considering his position of managing developers, he’s got to try TEO, an ink extension for Outlook. And if this isn’t enough, I’m willing to give him a free copy of InkGestures, an add-in that gives pen and paper like editing gestures in Word. And if that isn’t good enough, I’ll show him how ink and other markup media can be integrated into Visual Studio. Anchor ink notes, screenshots, right in your code. I can think of half-a-dozen other ink-enabled apps that he might find worthwhile, but of course, I’d really need to better understand what types of things he does throughout the day.
Here’s another thing that erks me about his comment: That Tablet bits degrade performance–particularly on limited resource machines. I hope he’s not also talking about a dog fooded version of Windows 7, because I hope this is something that Windows 7 would address.
In fact, with the addition of multi-touch in Windows 7 I’ve been hoping that this was a signal that the Windows 7 team was taking a long overdue renewed interest in mouse/pen eventing. Plain and simple mouse events have long lagged in the innovation arena when it comes to Windows. Now I’m beginning to cringe and think this isn’t going to happen.
The performance fix for the Tablet bits is not to remove them. It’s to address the lower level implementation details. I wish he was signaling that that’s on the Windows 7 to do list.
Anyway, I’m really disappointed that Steven doesn’t find Tablet technologies worthwhile. I wish this was different. I wish that all of the Microsoft executives and senior management saw the value. But the truth is outside of Bill Gates, we’re just not there. After all this time, how can this be? I know we’ve discussed this in the past, but what we need badly is a Tablet usage scenario for execs–something preferably public.
So I’ll end this post the way I started it: Would you remove the Tablet bits from a Tablet PC? I know I wouldn’t. Would you?
Update: Steven Sinofsky has responded to this post in the comment section and says that I read to much into what he wrote. Be sure to check it out.
I think you read more than I wrote 🙂
I just said that for me, a 10″ screen is too small for inking. Maybe I just write too big. When I use ink I mostly use OneNote and I just find that a 10″ screen at 1280×768 is not enough information density.
That’s all.
“I think you read more than I wrote”….
Thanks for clarifying. I’ve gone back and re-read once again what you wrote and I can now see that it’s ambiguous as to whether you actually disable the Tablet bits or are saying it’s something you _can_ do per the reasoning you’ve outlined.
I hope my post makes clear that I appreciate that different people have different needs and a specific Tablet form factor may or may not make sense for a particular person. Indeed, a Tablet PC may not make sense for a user at all. No problem.
However, the Tablet advocate in me still challenges the notion that turning off the Tablet bits is the solution to the performance problem.
The solution is to either improve the performance of the bits (which I’m guessing requires some lower-level adjustments to Windows so I can appreciate the problems in doing so) or to make the software/hardware even more compelling. As a Tablet developer I can work on the software end and on the OS side I hope the Windows team is working to alleviate the problem as well. These together will encourage adoption and in turn encourage the OEMs to keep innovating too. We’re all dependent on one another.
Lastly, with respect to the smaller form factors, the challenge here is that many devices are falling more and more into this smaller range, not fewer, so this is a trend that apps and the OS itself have to accomodate.
A plausible approach is to wait the performance out and give the hardware let’s say four or five years to catch up to the perfmance demands of the current bits. I’m not keen on this approach, because I want to see people benefit from Tablet technology sooner rather than later. For instance, there are simply too many students that could benefit from Tablet technology today to not want to address the performance issues now. That’s my take.
Well I’ll 2 cents here, I have used both a full sized and UMPC and have used inking on both, and it depends on what I am doing as far as inking too, so if you are speaking specifically One Note, yes a little more real estate is nice, however I have done it with smaller units and it works. I’ve used inking with Outlook on smaller devices too, so I guess it is an individual opinion of sorts. I can’t imagine not having inking available by any means. I would choke without it as I take meeting notes on one device or another all the time and try to encourage others to do the same and get rid of those yellow pads. Hope you are doing well.
medicalquakc, Thanks, I’m doing pretty good considering. Chemo has its ups and downs. The best part is I’ve been through it before so I have quite a few techniques to help manage things–and above all a wonderful family and friends that make it sooo much easier.
In terms of ink and screen real-estate, I know what Steven’s talking about. I too, felt more comfortable with a larger display when writing within OneNote. I do think though, that with the growing number of smaller devices that we need to think carefully–particlarly as software developers–when considering how to support ink on them. We’ve learned from touch to increase target sizes and I think we’ve also learned to use ink sparingly or at least not to try to jam too much ink into too small a space. It’s an interesting design challenge.
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