Recently, I had a witty exchange  with my friend Brad on his blog (see comments section). Brad was marveling at Bumptop and a potential tablet device. He mentioned that this sexy new duo would ‘conquer the world’ and ‘change computing as we know it’. This, he said, would all happen within two years.

Not to be a buzzkill but here’s why it won’t and why even if it doesn’t, a new tablet might still be ‘successful’ for the company launching it first (probably Apple).

As ‘luck’ would have it, I had a chance to test tablet computing a little. About a month ago I broke the ulna bone in my forearm while practicing Aikido. With my mouse arm effectively out of commission I decided to resort to a stylus setup as I use my other arm for handwriting. I got access to a Wacom tablet - admittedly this is not the same as the highly anticipated tablet of the likes Apple is probably going to release. Still the Wacom device allowed me to experience working with a tablet of sorts day to day. As I did, some things became fairly clear.

Here’s the challenge to tablet computing as I see it:

To be practical, the tablet needs a keyboard-like data entry tool.
As someone who had trouble typing for the passed month, I’ve become acutely aware of just how much typing I do. Speech-recognition software is interesting (in my injured desperation I also tried it out) but it isn’t quite workplace practical yet. From the images (of dubious origin) of the Apple tablet online it seems Steve J and Co. have likely already anticipated the need for a keyboard-like interface and will include it in the device. Smart move but…

To be portable the tablet should not need a separate keyboard.
Speaking from experience; if you want to do anything more than watch videos, listen to music, surf the web, play games and possibly send short text messages (all things you can do on a smaller, cheaper, more portable smart phone), you’ll need a keyboard. However, a big part of the appeal of the tablet concept lies in the sleek simplicity of the device overall (few buttons, knobs, ports and keys) and its inherent portability. Otherwise, why not buy a laptop or desktop machine? Hauling peripherals around  isn’t going to work. So, the keyboard should be on the screen. But…

To have an ergonomically comfortable experience the keyboard will likely have to move off the screen.
Ergonomics is the big unaddressed hurdle in tablets. A tablet on a table or your lap puts the viewing screen perpendicular to the angle of your face 95% of your upright, waking existence. The tablet therefore forces the user to crane their neck in a way humans are not anatomically designed for. Stare down at your shoes for 45minutes. How’s your neck feeling?

Wacom knew this and built a stand onto the tablet I used. It made the device bulky, heavy and not especially portable but it was practical.

Conflicting needs for tablet computing.
So that’s the rub if tablets are to become consumer devices. To be portable, it should be an all-in-one device. To be practical and ergonomic it likely needs a separate keyboard for longer computing sessions. The obvious solution would be to build a folding tablet with two touchscreens. But that’s basically a laptop isn’t it?

Another option would be to use the tablet like a sub-laptop. Keep the working peripherals at your workstation and tote the tablet from place to place. So much for writing long blog posts at Starbucks though.

(It’s worth mentioning here that the consumer marketplace isn’t the only one and tablets may have numerous business uses in warehouses, sales floors, bank branches, etc.)

A bump in the road for BumpTop.
This brings me to BumpTop. Admittedly it is very sexy and feels like we’re inching toward the interfaces from the movie Minority Report. However, 3D space is tricky for people to work with. To date 3D in computing has not been especially successful with the computing masses (think VRML or SecondLife). While 3D is cool in video games, experientially playing Halo is a lot different than writing a business report or compiling research. Interestingly most of BumpTops examples are more entertainment oriented – cropping photos and such. That’s fine if your hardware device is an entertainment toy like an iPod Touch. But when serious use is called for, you’re back at the keyboard dilemma.

What is often forgotten by techy pioneers is just exactly how technologically literate the average computer user really is (and as importantly – feels like committing the time to learn to be). There’s a reason Web 2.0 has has seen a simplification, not complication, of website interfaces. To make sharing- the backbone of the social web – accessible to all, websites need to be navigable by all, and that means K.I.S.S. Similarly videogames, even two-fisted Wii games, have a very limited feature set during game play, nothing near the complexity of needs a device must meet to do common work computing.

For my money, I’m not convinced 3D navigation of computer files offers any benefits aside from sexiness and novelty in its current state. When we’re a little closer to Minority Report, then I might change my opinion but don’t count on that in two years.

So will a tablets be successful? Well, first define what ‘successful’ means.
Like Netbooks, the earliest adopters and technophiles will glom onto tablets, snap them up, show them off and talk about them like the Second Coming. Also like Netbooks, their ‘real life’ utility will be limited and their mass adoption modest at best unless the product developers find ways to make the tablet ergonomically friendly and generally more practical while also keeping it portable. For the low four-figure pricetag they’re talking about, if the tablet is just a big iPhone it will be a rich geek’s toy not an indispensable piece of hardware. Maybe that’s a profitable marketplace, I don’t know.

Interestingly a fabric-based, flexible and wireless keyboard might span the portability-practicality gap. If you could fold the keyboard into the device and take it out only when you need it, then that $1000 XL iPod Touch you just bought might make a business write-off on your tax return afterall.

Or, perhaps the tablet will be smaller and more Kindle sized – a size ‘L’ iPod Touch which retails at what current iPhones do now. That’s the consumer gadget marketplace and it can be profitable for sure. Then again, 82% of mobile phone users are still using the simpler, cheaper ‘feature phones’ and haven’t even gotten a smart phone yet. Makes that 2-year world conquest still harder to believe.

Of course the reality could be that like fax machines, the whole tablet concept is an interim advancement whose shelf life will be limited.

Does the tablet need to sell to be ‘successful’?
I’ve often thought Apple puts out some new products (the Air laptop, the old Cube, the Newton way back when) less to actually sell them en mass than to keep their street cred as the innovator in hardware. To the degree an Apple tablet is just a big iPhone/iPod Touch, perhaps development wasn’t super expensive and the street-cred earned will help Apple retain the clout it needs to dominate the market in mindshare. After all, even if you can’t afford a $1000 toy, you can get the iPod touch – tiny, old school version – for a few hundred bucks and soak up the sexiness of being an Apple touchscreen dude.

From a marketing perspective that would essentially be product development as brand advertising – something that put Apple on the map with the inclusion of a mouse on home PCs (c1984) and again with the colorful iMac bubble computers (c1990s). In fact, the earliest iPods had this effect and in general the whole iPod/iPhone category has gotten a lot of people rethinking their commitment to the Wintel platform in general for their home computers.

Given the cost, reach and efficacy of a year-long national TV campaign, developing the tablet was probably cheaper and will be more effective as an advertisement for Apple the brand.

Maybe that’s all the success the tablet needs to make it worthwhile.