Yesterday we had a chance to get Otto Berkes
on the line, the man behind
Origami at Microsoft, as well as
Dustin Hubbard, Group Manager for Microsoft's Mobile Hardware and Application Development team. We had a few things to
ask about what the deal is with
UMPCs and Origami, here's what we
learned: Origami is a term originated from Berkes that doesn't necessarily refer to a device or specific hardware
specification, per se, but to an ultramobile PC running Windows Tablet (or Vista, later) and enhanced Microsoft Touch
Pack (a suite of apps and utilities meant to optimize using Windows by touch, and not necessarily only by stylus).
Touch Pack consists of a launcher app that better groups and opens apps based on a touchscreen interface; DialKeys, a
thumb-based text input system that uses those
two onscreen touch inputs on either
side; Touch Improvements, a suite of environment optimizations to make using Windows with your fingers a less painful
experience; and some other stuff, like Sudoku and an Origami-optimized Windows Media skin to kind of round out the
whole thing.
Otto made it pretty clear that Microsoft is aiming UMPCs based on Tablet with Touch Pack at the
general consumer, and not necessarily as another device for the already gadget-laden mobile office -- we'll be seeing
(and have already seen) initially launches by the likes of
Samsung, Asus, and Founder, so keep
an eye out for those today. We did ask about
Alexandria, the other Microsoft buzz-video /
project we saw the other day, and it sounded like a system MS was working to ease acquiring music and movies online --
is Alexandria a service that might be an iTunes-killer, perhaps? We don't know (we're working on finding out), but we
do finally know what the hell Origami is, and now you do too.
posted March 9th 2006 3:31AM
Ah, cool, so if I wipe Windows off this thing and install Linux, then it's not an Oragami device anymore. :)
I'm quite excited about these gadgets; we've needed something like it for quite a while now. PDAs are too small, and laptops are too big. These are sized just right, and don't have the dead weight of a keyboard (though if you want to ues a Bluetooth one, you can, which is a good idea for those attached to their little buttons for text entry).
I just hope somebody sells one without Windows pre-installed, to save me the trouble of removing it.
I wonder if thumb-typing is going to cause cases of RSI down the track?
A physio told me that thumbs are not suited to long periods of delicate muscle control use, and are better for grasping.
Gamepads are tolerable for thumbs, but typing requires finer motor skills. There's a reason "Blackberry thumb" has become a recognized symptom.
To number #46
The need it fills, is a portable computer. Honestly, everyone I know owns a phone that can conceivably send and receive email, and theoretically browse the web. Those with a phone form factor device, may or may not ever actually read email on their phone, but almost never send email from their phone, and will never browse the general web from their phone, sticking to content designed for phones, if even that. Those with a BlackBerry or PDA will probably send and receive email, but 9 times out of 10 if you send them a link, they will send back an email saying something like "I'll check this out when I am at a real computer."
None of these devices are used very regularly if at all for anything like opening attachments, or working on files. That is almost exclusively the province of a laptop. The laptop users are pretty much only using their laptops at specific locations like when they are at a coffee shop, at home, at work, or in a hotel, and have to carry a special bag for the laptop that adds a lot of weight, and doesn't leave much room for anything but the laptop in the bag.
This fills the need of giving you portability of a PDA, but with access to a real screen, a real browser, and real applications. I know plenty of people will say "it is too big to carry like a PDA," but let's remember for a second that 51% of the population makes a habit of carrying around these little bags they call purses. Beyond that, and awful lot of the male population typically carries a briefcase, messenger bag, backpack, gym bag, or other type of manpurse. Then you have the guys who favor BDUs or other cargo pants, and the percentage of the population incapable of conveniently carrying an 8"-10" device is actually surprisingly small.
For all those people who aren't limited to what they can carry in a pair of tight jeans, I think the idea of a computer that can view any website (even the ones with Quicktime, Flash, AJAX or PDFs), run your favorite full email client, run your favorite IM client, and open any file you can open with Windows, all for under $1,000, is a pretty compelling product. Until now, there were only three or four products, all in the $2,000+ range that could do this, and still fit in an average sized purse, or leave you room for anything else in your briefcase. Even the super-high powered PDAs from the likes Sony or Compaq were still limited by software support, file format support, and crippled browsers that couldn't view every page.
That is no trivial market. Could they be better? Sure! $200 always connected wireless broadband devices with tiny fulecells that lasted for days at a time, and had flexible displays that could be rolled out to any size you wanted would be fantastic. However, the fact that those don't exist yet doesn't mean that there aren't women who want to throw their computer in their purse, or guys who want something more powerful than a phone when they are out on the go. I think that most people looking at a $499 Lifedrive, or a $599 iPaq will seriously look at these devices. Anyone who was looking at a $2,200 Vaio or a $2,100 OQO will certainly have to give a lot of thought to their purchase. Plus all the people (of which I know several) who weren't even in the market because they knew a PDA wouldn't give them what they wanted, and knew the Vaio or OQO was out of the range they were comfortable paying will flock to these things as a possible new option.
I don't know why some are insisting the Newton was in a size dead zone. Folks buy and use schedule folio's in this things and the Newton's size range all the time and they take them EVERYWHERE. Newton had plenty of problems. But size wasn't really one of them. True OS functionality from a Newton may well have overcome its problems but it just wasn't feasible at the time.
That said I do think it is sitting in a dead zone and that is price vrs. limitations. This thing at best is going to sit right under the low cost laptops and at worst range up into the range of decently equiped ones. It is overkill to replace a nice pda/superphone and yet is going to be relatively limited input wise no matter how good the touch screen interface. And setting up full input capacity while possible is going to be a kludge compared to tradtitional fold and go laptop unless someone gets real creative with a docking shell system.
However you drop the price for this thing right smack into the middle of the upper echelon PPC technology (300-500) and you will see a lot of folks wondering why they are buying a mini OS with similar capacity (bluetooth and wi fi) with out full OS capacity and full up hard drive storage capacity. Stick it in a leather folio replacing a bulky schedule and contact ream of paper.. a screen big enough to actually replace printouts for meetings follow alongs that allows on the fly document editing that is easy to pass around or share and you have something that is right interesting.
Though to really compete there they have got to get the battery life up. 3-4 listed meaning 2 if your lucky really using it is not going to make this a real viable option for PPC lovers... or even someone that needs a mobile system. Tablet systems are an obvious example of how a mobile system without long lasting battery life is hamstrung in a way that just exacerbates all the compromises made to give it that tablet form factor.
I'm a little surprised no one has compared Origami to the Apple Newton eMate (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMate.) The eMate was heavier but had a built-in keyboard and 28-hour battery life (!). And it made a huge THUD in the marketplace back in 1997-1998. I remember seeing one at CompUSA, though originally they were only available to the education market. The Origami concept seems to be "take an eMate, lose the keyboard, put a lot bigger onboard storage and computing power onboard, make it color, up the screen resolution a bit, and have it run a version of a desktop OS."
As an enthusiastic PDA user, I've seen that PDAs only "click" with certain people; they're not for everyone. Everybody digs Post-It notes; maybe 90% digs cell phones; maybe 60% of folks dig iPods; laptop computers might be dug by 40% of folks; PDAs may be liked by 10-20% of folks; I think Origami/UMPCs will be dug by even less than PDAs. What sort of market research these guys did would be fascinating to know. The "am I having an acid flashback?" feel of their promo website at http://www.origamiproject.com (complete with a tribute at the top of the page to the oft-derided advertising slogan used at the introduction of the now-departed Dodge Neon, no less) leaves me fascinated as to who they think will buy these things. Sure, some will be sold. But people have bought Segways, too... and look how much that was hyped & anticipated.
Inappropriate technology. It's like trying to combine the best attributes of a motorbike - small, fast, manoeuvrable, low fuel consumption - with those of a Heavy Goods Vehicle - big, carries enormous loads, turning circle of a small African country, drinks fuel like John Prescott* eats pies. Fundamentally at odds. A music device/phone should be small. Anything requiring complex user input via a screen needs to be comparitively large. Oh dear. A triumph of marketing focus groups over common sense.
Looks like we are still waiting for folding pop-out screens then.
* British deputy Prime Minister
I like the concept even if it is a pretty obvious one that folks have tried with mixed success before. Some folks just can't seem to get over their anti-MS bias, but MS is not building these things. If you want Linux on it, put Linux on it. If you want Doom on it, install it. If you have a USB key, use it on it. These things are the future of mobile computing.
Laptops are too big. Smaller devices have screens so tiny that they are worthless for what I'd like to do. Purpose-built devices are idiotic because as soon as they are obsolete they are all but worthless. Perfect example: an old iPod. Unless you view it as a fashion accessory, it has no purpose once you get a new one.
With something like this, I could use it as a navigation system/music player/phone in my car, take it in with me when I go to have coffee to write emails/surf/pay bills, watch video/TV while in a plane or on a treadmill, and/or then bring it home and use it to remote to my media PC (there's an enormous advantage to having something that gives remote access to a media pc as opposed to something that just gives you remote control over a limited subset of functions). If I buy a new device, I still can use the old one - I'd probably just dedicate it to one of the application. However, for the apps I've listed there should be no real need to buy a new device every two years because those apps don't need that much computing horsepower.
Don't like how the first ones look or how much they cost? Well, that's one bennie of having a intel/windows device - there will be a lot of companies competing for your dollars. These things will come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. If only one company was making them and only letting me run their software on them, these things wouldn't be nearly as attractive to me.
Even though I was disappointed (see my comment at #5) I have reconsidered this thing. It's not there yet but with added battery power (8h), slicker design and a decent price (say around $750) I would probably go for it.
Advantages:
1. the weight is Ok to carry around, only 800gr. which kind of beats my Dell 5150 which is a bit more than 3 kg! This one you can actually take to the park without feeling like your arms are slowly extending to ground level;
2. very easy to hook up to the internal network through WiFi so music everywhere in the house with iTunes;
3. most important: I could check my photos taken with my digital SLR on the spot on a larger screen than the f***ing small LCD on the back of the camera. Much more in the way of evaluating and knowing what settings to change to get that perfect shot. Man would I love that!
So it beats my laptop which I mainly use for internet and email, beats my pocketpc which I mainly use for contacts and agenda. More powerful, lightweight, small enough to carry: yeah, actually, I'm falling for it. 2nd generation that is, if it ever gets there.
$500 - OK. $1000+ (The samsung is around $1100!!) forget it. I'd buy a thin laptop before I'd pay $1000 for an UMPC.
What about Flipstart when are they going to ever release that. I thought that was going to compete with OQO???
Actually, comparison of the Origami to the Newton is useful in one way. Apple knew that trying to cram a desktop OS and methology into a handheld wouldn't work. The Newton introduced more than handwriting recognition. They also had something called the Intelligent Assistant. The Newton could automatically make intelligent cross references to related material stored. So, if you entered "Lunch with Trump" on the Newton, it was smart enough to know that lunch tends to be around noon. It would make an entry in the calendar for the next business day at noon, and it would pull up Trump's contact info if it was stored in the addressbook. Other examples of plain english queries back then would have been an old DOS database product called Q&A, which did it's best to interpet simple english statements and turn them into complex database queries.
Microsoft, on the other hand, knows that the success to Windows is simply momentum. There are so many developers, so many knowledgable techs, so much compatible hardware, that by introducing products that use Windows development tools ensures a wide variety of compatible software RIGHT AWAY. They use momentum rather than innovation to sell you a new product. The status quo.
I've been here over and over with Microsoft before. They came out with something in the 90's called Pen Windows. It was their current version of Windows at the time (Windows 3.0) with pen input throw on top. Compaq produced a poertable computer called the Concerto, which was basically the precursor to Tablet PC's. And then, as now, Microsoft threw halfhearted support behind the concept. It languished, and hardware developers eventually discontinued the slow selling products. Unfortunately, I had bought into the concept when introduced, and equipped my entire Washington DC with those Compaqs. In the end, they were simply quirky portable computers. So when Tablet PCs came out, I rolled my eyes and smiled, seeing history repeated. And so here we go again with the Origami.
Just another halfhearted attempt by Microsoft to expand the Windows francise and appease stockholders. Otherwise, nothing new or innovative here. The Newton, however, was quite an innovation that simply came out before it's time.
A solution looking for a problem.
The loud sound you hear is this Microsoft bomb.
Amazing isn't it that if Microsoft is not ripping off anothers design to copy, it has no innovation at all.
Mount it in your car's dash for an instant CarPC.
Uhmm... the Newton didn't exactly "die" (at least not a natural death). It was spun into its own company which was promptly killed by Jobs when he went back to Apple. The Newton was Sculley's brainchild - not Jobs' - so it had to go. (Plus, it was too big, but time could have solved that).
I owned every version of the Newton and it definitely wasn't an Origami-like device. It was a PDA (the first). Had it survived, it would have been the same size as today's PDA's.
I think most people reading this blog are very tech-savy and already own several computers and thus have a hard time seeing where the UMPC would fit into their world. But I think it has the potential to create some new markets (on-board computer in cars, kiosks, seat-back computers on airplanes, email in the shower, Engadget on the john, etc).
It seems some are quick to dismiss this as a Newton re-make by M$, but before we go down the easy road, why don't we wait and see? I never saw the Newton, and it seems that by the time the idea was so new that it wasn't fully developed and failed. The internet was still growing and no WiFi technologies were on the horizon, because all that is very new. This is a new device, I think it goes against some media devices put out by Arcos which curiously enough look similar (AV700 comes to mind). It's a fully functional computer in the size of the PSP, which is intriguing, because in a PDA or smart-phone net-surfing is cumbersome, needless to say gaming. another thing is space: PDAs have limited space I don't care what card you stick it in, it's nothing compared to a HD, it indirectly touches the iPod (this sentence may rise comments) because it does some of it functions but the iPod has made an effort to stay small and thin, this device however tries to be more portable than a laptop but retaining it's functions, the problem is size: where do you put it? pocket? pocket PC, backpack? the laptop, wear it? where??. Maybe the problem is trying to do everything at once. The iPod specialized and succeeded. I don't want to say this will fail, because it's too soon, screens have an appeal to people, maybe it will be a hit, what I see is a trend to make everything portable, but since we don't really now what "everything" stands for everybody is trying to come up with a home-runner. That this device is "chick-repellent material" I don't know of any electronic device that actually works the other way around, "chicks" are not really device-junkies, guys are. (Maybe SOME notice the iPod, but again because of it's size and uncluttered look.) So that argument goes out. This device could be good if the interface is smart enough and doesn't need a lot of customer training like the PDAs (write this way to do an "a", and this way to do a "j"). Voice recognition? sony walkman smart-phone has something like that, but we are still far away from "computer, tell me where is the captain". Watching movies on the go..umm..unless they come up with some BIG development in battery technology we'll still be stuck with devices that can't make it through the day....all I say is let's wait and see...I just hope it doesn't crash/freeze like most M$ products
if I wanted a WIFI tablet, which I don't, I'd get the Nokia 770 (5.5 inches x 3.1 inches x 0.70 inch).