After some 15 years of half-hearted efforts, misguided designs, and broken promises, the age of the tablet is dawning at last. Apple's iPad set the stage earlier this year with a design and interface that utterly transformed the way the industry--and users--thought about tablet computing, and now Samsung is offering the market's first significant iPad alternative, the Galaxy Tab.
A massive new wave of technologies is poised to revolutionize the way we work, play, and learn, and the Galaxy Tab is a critical part of that movement. Here's why Samsung's Galaxy Tab matters, why tech users everywhere should sit up and take notice, and why the technology world will never be the same again.
How We Got Here
As a young tech reporter way back in the 1990s, I spent untold hours listening to briefings from tech companies ranging from Microsoft and IBM to Toshiba and HP as their representatives extolled the wonders and virtues of a coming tablet age. The vision was sensible enough, even if it took more than a decade to come about.
Early tablets were a mess. In fact, few of them were actually slates at all. Most were thick, chunky laptops with rotating screens that the user could fold back and write on with a stylus. Based on Windows, most tablets released at the start of the millennium were awkward to hold and difficult to write on. Consumers and most business users yawned and looked the other way.
Meanwhile, smartphones such as the RIM BlackBerry utterly destroyed the once-thriving PDA market with the help of relatively powerful, network-connected operating systems that let users do real work without a PC. When the iPhone appeared in 2007, the marketplace was primed for a versatile smartphone, and Apple's iOS touch interface revealed a whole new direction for mobile computing.
Enter Android
By October 2008, smartphone users were ready for a compelling alternative to Apple's iPhone. Despite repeated attempts by Microsoft with the Windows Mobile OS, it was finally Google that stepped up to offer what consumers were clamoring for. And so far Android has delivered well beyond most expectations, with more than 150 devices introduced worldwide to date and Google reporting more than 200,000 units activated with Google Services every day (a number that doesn't account for the growing selection of units that ship without Google Services installed).
As early as September 2009--three months before Apple unveiled plans for the iPad--Archos had delivered the first Android tablet in the Archos 5 Internet Tablet (which initially fell more into the media-player category than the tablet category). Although it was far from perfect in its execution, the Archos 5 hinted at what Android could do on bigger hardware, and set the stage for future tablets.
iPad Lights the Fire
Side by side: iPad and Galaxy TabApple created the market's first good tablet with the iPad. In typical Apple style, the device was elegant, slim, and alluring, igniting a sudden enthusiasm for tablet computing unlike any the tech world had known before. Building on the massive developer community that Apple had founded around the iPhone, the iPad was an instant hit with the Mac set and even managed to attract many PC users, though not as decisively as the iPod and iPhone did before it.
By the end of its first fiscal quarter on the market, the iPad sold some 3.27 million units, making it the most coveted tablet device in history. Despite those early numbers, however, the iPad remains a niche product, and user interest seems to have leveled out. Its high price and restrictive functionality prevent many mainstream users--particularly in the business world--from taking it seriously as a real computer.
So here we stand: Apple's design talent has shown the world what a tablet should be, producing for the first time a machine that human beings actually want to use, though at a price few people can reasonably afford and with a host of OS limitations that many users reject. All that's needed now is a little healthy competition.
Next: Rise of the Androids
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