Apple's tablet device - the iPad - was officially unveiled yesterday and it looks nice. I'm not sure if it is game-changing nice, but it looks to have addressed at least some of the concerns I've had with tablet options in the past.

In my post about my origami experience I mentioned the issues with:

• Screen resolution - the iPad have gone with 1024 x 768 which could be a nice sweet-spot.
• Screen size - almost 10" is right where I'd mentioned the possible tablet sweet-spot might be
• Battery life - a month of standby and 10 hours of use time on the iPad - nice
• Speed - the iPad has a 1Ghz processor but looks to perform well in the demo, so it's not just about clock-speed
• OS - my origami device ran XP, which wasn't great. Windows 7 would be better, and I'm sure the iPhone OS will also be an improvement

In my post about my Dell XT tablet running Windows 7, I mentioned these areas for improvement:

• Desire for built-in Internet access - I could have gotten my XT with mobile-carrier access but didn't. If I bought an iPad, I'd opt for that feature
• Make it lighter - I'd suggested around 1.5 pounds, which is right where the iPad landed. I think that would be comfortable to use
• Have an e-ink option - One of the iPad features touted is book reading on it. I don't see mention of e-ink, so I think it's a normal backlit display. I'm not sure if that would irritate the eyes if used as a long-term reading device or not.
• Make it thin, but sturdy - How's one-half inch sound? That's the iPad depth, and it sounds ideal to me.
• Make the touch screen reliable - I've never seen nor heard about issues with the iPhone or iTouch touch-screen so I don't think this is going to be an issue on the new iPad device.

I'm not going to run out and buy one, but it does look nice. A remaining question - not specific to the iPad but all tablet devices - is how will it be transported. My Dell XT is carried around in a notebook bag - it's too big for anything else. Even my Samsung Q1, which was much smaller, was an odd size - too big for anything but a large purse. How comfortable are people going to be carrying this thing around with them? Or is the expectation that this is merely a home-based device that people won't carry around?

All the recent news and chatter about a potential Apple tablet reminds me of Microsoft's Origami. Remember that? The UMPC push that got so much press a couple of years ago?

I love the idea. I was one of the first to jump on that bandwagon. I bought a Samsung Q1 when they first came out and used it as much as possible. I was using Verizon's mobile services at the time and tethered my phone to the Q1 so that I could use it just about anywhere. Such great potential.

My Q1 started getting used less and less frequently though, and is now collecting dust. Why? What happened?

The screen resolution was too low. Some would argue that 800 x 480 is a really nice screen for such a small device, but hey, in today's word even 1280 x 800 feels cramped. Try using something like Outlook at 800x480 for a period of time and you'll likely start to agree that it's just a bit too small to be ideally useful.

The screen size was too small. Directly related to the resolution issue was the physical size. My Q1 has a 7" screen which feels just slightly too small. My Dell XT Tablet PC has a 12" screen, which is great. I'm not sure if there is a smaller (than 12") ideal size or not since I haven't had experience working with anything between 7-12". Perhaps 10" would be good. I'd need some serious work time on it to be sure.

The battery life on the Q1 was horrible. A mobile device of any kind with battery power limited to only about two hours is totally unacceptable in today's world. Even three years ago it was barely acceptable.

The Q1 was painfully slow. I think that anyone who attempted to do serious daily computing on the Q1 likely realized fairly soon that it was quite under-powered. Even fairly basic operations felt painfully slow to someone used to fairly zippy desktop performance.

I don't think XP was the ideal OS. My Q1 was running XP Tablet Edition, which wasn't great - largely because of the physical challenges of the Q1. I'm not sure if a better OS like Windows 7 would have made a large difference or not. (Hmm... I wonder if Windows 7 would run on the Q1. That might be an interesting experiment some day.)

Microsoft was ahead of the curve with the UMPC movement. It obviously didn't flesh-out the way they had hoped though. The hardware technology wasn't quite ready for the movement. The software was close but also still needed some improvements to be ideal.

It will be interesting to see if 1) Apple really does release a tablet device this year (the rumor mills have been wrong before) and 2) if they are able to address the concerns that prevented the UMPC push from a few years ago from really taking off.

BTW - I run Windows 7 on my Dell XT tablet and I love it - both the Dell XT hardware and also Windows 7. It's a great combination. There are some things I'd change if I had my ideal setup, but I'll leave those comments for a different day's post.

Recently I have become a bit of the technology "black sheep" at ORCS Web with my move to a Black MacBook. Due to some internally written software, I was originally required to run Windows Vista on it just about full time (could have run XP, but chose Vista). With my recent move out of the webteam, I've moved fully over to Mac OS X--as this software is no longer needed.

I've made the move to Mac OS X not because I am a "Mac head" and will fight to the death that it is a superior operating system, but for a couple of other reasons. The first reason being that it just runs better then Windows does on my MacBook. I get better battery life and it does not get as hot. This of course is understandable, as it was not made to run Vista nor was Vista made to run on the MacBook--but it was pretty sweet seeing how well it worked. The second reason that I have made this jump is to just learn a new set of tools, a new OS, and a new perspective.

Just this past weekend I started writing my first Mac OS X based program. On the Windows side of things I have been programming\scripting in VB Script and C and then VB.NET and most recently made the move over to writing all my programs (more like "gadgets") in C#. Of course both VB.NET and C# have been from Visual Studio 2005 (and a bit in 2008 beta versions). My first program on the Mac was a tutorial from Apple on Cocoa (Apple's Objective-C based programming environment) using Xcode and Interface Builder. It was truly a beginners tutorial and very step by step, but I learned the fundamentals of programming on the Mac. It was a pleasant experience once I knew what tools to use where. I was not use to having one program for the UI and another for the back-end (although they are highly integrated) but was impressed with Interface Builder.

This has taken my "learning a new platform" to the next level, and I believe will make me better at all things I do--computer-wise anyway.  Along with learning this new platform and set of tools requires you to learn how to make the two worlds "play nice" with each other. One of the key things for me at ORCS Web is connecting to our Windows based (all of them are) servers. The great Mac Business Unit over at Microsoft just released to us the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2.0 (Beta). It has some enhancements over the old Remote Desktop Connection that you can see from the download page. You are supposed to be able to run multiple connections now, although I have not yet figured out how.

The Mac Business Unit there at Microsoft is supposed to be releasing a new version of the Office for Mac sometime in the near future. While they seem to be very tight lipped about when and what it will consist of, I know I will be a happy camper when they are released.