A tablet should be a PDA.
Like a PDA used to be, before we added a phone to it and forgot everything else that it could do. I want my tablet to have three cameras (two on the back for stereo range finding and one in front for the things that front-facing cameras are used for), multiple radios for connectivity everywhere (I want 3G, 4G, cell, wifi, am/fm, weather band, who knows what else?), and amazing voice input. It needs to be able to not only respond to commands, but to input text accurately. The voice recognition software has to learn the way I speak and it has to speak back to me in natural cadences that it picks up from listening to the way people around me actually speak. I want to be able to point it at something (a building, a field), and ask for information about it. The new work that’s being done in augmented reality is pretty awesome, and calling that up via a voice command (especially if there’s a rangefinder on the app) would be nice, but it also has to be able to relay to me aurally the information that I’m requesting – verbal commands and output are very big for me.
This is an absurd, ranting list, and it wasn’t meant to be. I’m sorry for that. I just saw a piece on my reader (just found the link – it’s from Derek Kerton at Techdirt – here) about how a killer feature for the iSlate would be a dual-mode screen (e-ink and traditional). Geh.
I want so much more than that. First and foremost would be parallel connectivity options so I can be getting the same information from the same places on multiple connections at once – think bit torrent, but for bridging (wifi, 3G, 4G, maybe traditional EDGE or whatever?) connections. a pair of wifi radios along with 3G & 4G radios aren’t that expensive or battery-hogging, and would go a long way towards making sure my tablet never goes out of range of something.
Anyway, I’m sorry if you read all of this. I’ll try to be more cogent in the future.
