Can Apple Save Handwriting?
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Over the past few days, two seemingly unrelated topics converged upon me and sparked some wishful thinking.First, there’s a mounting roar of media buzz about Apple working to get a tablet PC to market by the Christmas shopping season. It’s speculated that this book-sized, 3G-enabled, 10-inch touch screen tablet computer will have more in common with the Mac than iPod Touch or iPhone at the operating system level.
Apple’s new device is said to feature only an on-screen keyboard rather than a physical one, so it’s seems a given that this device will offer handwriting recognition, which is a mature user interface technology that’s been employed in Windows-based tablet PCs over the past few years. Despite being a surprisingly accurate means of entering text, handwriting recognition really hasn’t found its way out of the niche market because tablet PCs have never been widely adopted.
The second topic, the death of cursive writing, has been talked about for the past few years, but has been getting lots more buzz in the blogs just recently. Increasingly, the news media continues to forecast the demise of cursive writing, calling the once-essential skill now something as quaint as, well, using a telephone to actually speak to people.
I’ve long since been concerned that the loss of handwriting could mean a loss of cognitive opportunity for kids and I’m a big advocate of kids being exposed to analog technologies. So, the ideas of Apple’s forthcoming device and handwriting recognition sort of snapped together like perfect puzzle pieces for me and I’ve become kind of excited considering the possibility...
Maybe Apple can save handwriting!
And why not? Apple has certainly revitalized & catapulted other languishing technologies in its wake. The iPod was by no means the first MP3 player. The iPhone wasn’t the first touchscreen PDA — it wasn’t even the first multi-touch device, although they spun that little-known user interface into mainstream gold overnight. Album art has been around since the invention of the record, but Cover Flow made it cool again. Yup, Apple has a distinguished history of reusing & breathing new life into overlooked or underestimated technologies.
So maybe Steve Jobs & Co. can take handwriting recognition out of its obscure little niche and elevate it to an attractive, mainstream user interface element too. Perhaps Apple could reinvent cursive writing as a valued technology once again.
What do you think? Is handwriting worth saving? Will Apple’s release of a tablet with handwriting recognition have similar far-reaching ripples to bring handwriting back from the brink of extinction?
Labels: education, technology
Posted by Rob at 8:08 PM
4 Comments:
it’s seems a given that this device will offer handwriting recognition,
Really? I admit that I haven't followed the rumors of Apple's netbook plans very closely, but I'd be shocked if they really do include handwriting recognition, especially given the success of their virtual keyboard on the iPhone (which, in fact, I'm using to leave this comment) and iPod touch.
They're already training millions of people to use a virtual keyboard. Handwriting recognition seems to be a step backwards (and an unnecessary complication).
I'll be interested to see if your conjecture proves to be true.
Eric, I haven't read anything concrete yet about handwriting recognition definitely being included, but it would seem a mighty big concession to not implement a feature on Apple's first tablet PC that every Wintel tablet PC has had for over half a decade. (Of course, the Wintel tablets have also had an on-screen keyboard as well.)
And too, it's worth noting that some Wintel tablets already allow the user to work with a pen stylus or fingertip, so I can only assume that this will also be featured on Apple's device. It seems a safe bet that it'll feature multitouch but especially if it's running OS X, I can only imagine that a fingertip is just too imprecise for some tasks.
I can assure you that one of the least compelling arguments from Apple's perspective for any feature is that "Wintel machines have had it for xx years." ;-)
Well, yeah, I know Apple isn't typically compelled so much by "me too-ism" but still, if they hope to woo Wintel tablet users over to the dark side, they've gotta compete with that feature set. And handwriting recognition works very well on the tablet PCs I've used.
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