A word on tablet OS

When Apple officially announced details on it’s iPad tablet, I was really disappointed. No multitasking, no flash, no USB and no camera seemed like a pretty big and unnecessary restrictions for a device that has so much potential. And one of the disappointment was announcement that it will run iPhone OS.  I really was hoping for a full fledged OS like OS X or Windows 7 (well obviously later one not from Apple).  But them iPad was released and others jumped on tablet wagon with devices like Joojoo, Archos, HP Slate, etc. I read reviews, saw real videos of what iPad can do and impossible thing happened, I began wanted to get one!  I guess at this point I realized that these devices are not meant to be laptop replacement and having a full fledged OS on them would probably only hurt them, at least at present. I don’t think iPad would be able to run so smooth, quick and have a 10 hour batter life if it had OS X.  I think that HP Slate will run like a dog.  Current hardware just cannot be expected to be shrunken to a size of a tablet and be powerful enough to run Windows 7.  There will be sacrifices.  So Phone OS is fine for now. In 3-5 years I hope it will be a time for full OS on the tablet (and I hope for once it will be a company other than Apple who can do this first), but not yet, not this year…

And having said all that, I still think there’s no excuse for Apple not to support Flash, multitasking (although it will change in OS4)  or have standard USB port  in the iPad.

Tags: apple, computers, electronics, iphone, tablets, windows