Tablets – A backseat for creativity?

Even with the best touchscreen in the world it would still have taken me ages to write this article, let alone touch up a photo accurately, or edit some video footage for upload to YouTube. The lack of a proper keyboard inhibits communication and creativity, yes it’s fine for the odd Facebook updates and tweets, but you’re not going to write a novella or a decent business plan on it. The lack of general-purpose processing power certainly limits what you can do with a tablet, you certainly won’t be editing HD video on a tablet any time soon; watching it, for sure, but not editing it.

Tablets represent the great hope for the publishing industry, most notable in the launch of Murdoch’s Daily for the iPad. They provide a new way to sell traditionally printed content, which has been struggling against the ad-driven web for a number of years now. Dennis Publishing itself is involved in tablet publishing, as it’s a great opportunity to provide high-quality, visually rich content in a digital format.

Software developers will also be happy, as tablets expand the lucrative app market onto faster devices, hopefully allowing more complex apps to be sold at higher prices. Many apps are genuinely useful and innovative pieces of software, but many others simply repackaged free content from the web in a more easily digestible form. It’s that word, digestible, that sums up the tablet for me, it’s a device for consumption of media, not the creation of it.

This makes tablets the new industry darling, with practically everyone in the media, and the consumer electronics business, cheering for them. The consumer tech companies get to sell you a device which you use in addition to your current devices, and the media companies have a new outlet to sell content on.

There’s no doubting that tablets are very lovely pieces of kit, and they can provide some intriguing and imaginative new ways to interact with content, as well as a great way to communicate with others. But amongst all the hype it’s worth reiterating that our existing desktops and laptops are far more flexible tools, than these new upstarts.

After all, you can guarantee that the tablet’s technology was designed on a desktop PC, and it’s shiny shell was imagined on one too. The shiny promotional photography was touched up on a desktop, and then used by marketing executives carrying laptops to sell the product to retailers; who in turn will track their stock levels using yet another traditional PC.

The tablet may change the way we all consume media, but it’s unlikely to be the tool that designs the next technological breakthrough.