An afternoon with the Tablet PC team.
The Tablet PC team has a challenge: build a successful new platform faster than Windows or the Macintosh built theirs.
Let's look back. When did the industry really know the Macintosh was a success? I'd say about 1988 or 89. The Mac first came out in 1984. When did the industry really know that Windows was a success? 1992/93. Windows first came out in 1985.
The Tablet PC was first released in late 2002 and yesterday the Tablet PC team invited Channel9 over to see how things are going from the inside.
First off, the team gave me amazing access. I interviewed people across the team. From the execs, to the marketing/PR team, to the developer who wrote the driver for the digitizers. About the only people I didn't meet was Bert Keely, the architect/visionary, and Bill Gates (who has been pushing for pen-based computing at Microsoft for years).
One thing, the entire team is reading the questions submitted over on Channel9. (I found out why: Peter Loforte, general manager of the Tablet PC team, reads all the Tablet sites regularly, including TabletPCBuzz, and that site linked to the list). Answers will come. I really got on Arin Goldberg for not blogging more. He, and others, say they'll be blogging more in the future.
Thanks Arin for inviting me over and getting me all those great interviews and thanks to the community from Christopher Coulter to Lora Heiny to Spencer and Peter over on Tablet PC Buzz, to MVPs like Terri for asking great questions and supporting the Tablet PC team so much over the past year (several people on the team mentioned the community and enthusiast support that they have gotten have motivated them to work even harder on getting great stuff out).
So, back to the question: what is the state of the Tablet PC today?
Well, they gave me a tour of the new Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 yesterday. I asked Peter "who the heck came up with that stupid name?"
He answered that the name itself was trying to show the platform's strength. "It's Windows XP," he said. "That means that all your software will run on it."
"Even Adobe Photoshop or Napster?" I asked. "Yes." He also showed me the seven Tablet PCs that he carries around with him, most of which have a keyboard built in. "There's a common misperception that the Tablet PC is not a full-fledged notebook," he said. "It is."
Then he continued, it's the Tablet PC edition because it's designed to take advantage of the active digitizer, ink recoginition technology, and pen-input and gesturing technology. Translation: you can write on the screen and it'll recognize your handwriting and you can use the Pen to do everything on screen that you'd use a mouse for.
Then he explained they decided to go with "2005" because it'll come out this summer and will be the version Tablets will ship with all through 2005.
One thing everyone on the team mentioned to me was "it's a free upgrade for existing Tablet PC users." And, wow, what an upgrade. We've talked about this before, but you really need to get a demo of the new handwriting recognition and correction experience.
The 2005 edition will come included with Windows XP Service Pack 2. So, not only will you get all the new Tablet PC inking features, but you'll get all the security and all the new wireless features as well. All for free. Well, that's if you already have a Tablet PC.
Anyway, we'll have more on Channel9 in a few weeks after I edit the video up into weblog-sized chunks. Hopefully the demo that Peter gave me comes out (he showed off the new upgrade as well as Ambient Design's ArtRage which is just a fantastic drawing program -- it's free as well right now!).
Other things we talked about? Retail sales haven't been a strong point of the team. They demoed to me a new retail stand that'll start showing up in Best Buy and other retailers soon. The stand lets retailers display the strengths of the Tablet PC while keeping the Tablet and the pens from getting ripped off.
Developer support? A new .NET-focused SDK is coming. And lots of other stuff. We'll talk more about that on Channel9 when I get the videos done.
Community support? More information, more events where you can meet the Tablet PC team, and other things are coming.
New hardware? This is one area where the team wasn't able to talk (they have signed NDAs with the hardware OEMs, see, even Microsoft has to sign NDAs) but they assured me that there's a wave of new stuff coming, plus they were showing off some of the coolest new Tablet PCs like those from Motion and Toshiba and Acer. The second-generation hardware definitely is better than the first generation that I'm typing on right now.
Innovations? I'll save that stuff for Channel9, but this is the first time I've gotten to speak to the developers who are working on the inner guts of the product. Even found out all the technical reasons why the pen sometimes doesn't align properly with where the cursor is on the screen. It's an intense technical problem. For instance, did you know that the hard drive's magnet can mess with the alignment of the screen? One engineer developed a whole system to correct for that. He also explained to me how the pen and digitizer work, and that even the glass that protects the LCD and the digitizer can create errors that he had to correct for.
When you get full access to a team like this, you really see how hard it is to build a successful platform (it takes total excellence on every piece, from partnerships with OEMs and ISVs, to engineering, testing, management, evangelism and marketing). If any piece messes up, success won't be attained. Makes me appreciate even more the teams who've done it in the past.
Anyway, I'll let you know when the interviews are up and I appreciate my Tablet PC even more now. [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
12:54:04 PM 
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