ModBook Inventor Shows Off the First OSX Tablet
Notebooks.com sits down with Axitron President and Chief Engineer Andreas Haas, inventor of the ModBook, at MacWorld 2007. The ModBook is a modified MacBook that’s converted into a high-end slate-style Tablet PC. Excellent design and manufacturing makes the ModBooks we look like they just rolled off of Apple’s own assembly line.
Starting with a standard MacBook, the lcd is removed and replaced with a housing that contains a brighter and more durable screen and a WACOM digitizer. An optional GPS receiver and other goodies are also crammed into the ModBook.
Haas says there’s a strong demand for OSX tablets, but there isn’t sufficient demand to warrant Apple rolling out its own line of tablets. Haas takes a jab at Bill Gates and company, saying they’ve gotten the Tablet PC all wrong by selling them as notebook replacements. Haas says the ModBook is an awesome companion product to your notebook, but not meant to replace it.
The ModBook inventor is already running Windows XP and CAD on one of his ModBooks. They will be providing a Windows Vista driver, so you will be able to use it as a Vista Tablet PC.
The ModBook will start shipping in April, and start at $2,279. Fully loaded models will sell for $2,849. The Modbook is available exclusively through Other World Computing http://www.macsales.com.
Peter Norman
January 18th at 8:58am
It looks like AxioTron has done a very slick job on the engineering. I would really like one!
I have a Motion Computing LE1600; the handwriting recognition engine is quite good but that isn’t the only variable at play in the TabletPC experience - Microsoft’s TIP (Tablet Input Panel) provides so many helpful ‘handrails’ that I worry about Apple’s own pen-based input experience.
Microsoft’s TabletPC (XP TabletPC Edition and Vista moreso) prove that a good Handwriting Recognition Engine is not all thats required to make a good experience. Microsoft has had five years since the debut of the TabletPC operating system to improve the user experience and it shows - most clearly in Vista. Apple, on the other hand, has made no changes to the pen-based aspects of Mac OS X since its introduction.
Apple’s Inkwell (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/inkwell/) has no equivalent to Microsoft’s TIP so there is nothing between the user and recognized (or unrecognized) text except a floating input window; meaning there are no handrails to help the user along to better recognition. Whenever I fire up my Wacom tablet to try out Inkwell, I feel incapacitated or helpless - I’m alone with the Recognition Engine. Given how thoughtful Apple can be in making other aspects of their OS so intuitive, its a shame that none of that famed attention to detail can be found here.
This has all been a long way round to wondering whether AxioTron has bundled any helpful software with the ModBook? Or does it simply depend on Inkwell and related technologies that Apple supplies with Tiger, Panther and presumeably the upcoming Leopard? I didn’t recognize the ‘keyboard’ panel seen in some MacWorld photos of the ModBook, whereas the Input Panel was very familiar.
I have my fingers crossed that Rob Bushway of GottaBeMobile.com gets an evaluation unit from OWC.
Peter