Tablets for the Masses?
Nokia is about to ship the long awaited Nokia 770 Internet Tablet in the US. You may be thinking “that’s swell, another little techno do dad for you guys to play with”. True that, but it also has some ramifications in the pro audio system control realm. Over the last few years tablet control apps, like the Lake Contour, have been subject to the relatively spendy pricing of tablet devices. These days you can get a pretty good Wintel laptop for under a grand. The same capabilities in a tablet or slate will cost more than two or three times as much. For audio control apps, many of the features that are in a full size tablet aren’t needed.
These are purpose built devices and only require a few controls and the ability to use a stylus. How it works is the tablet runs software that remotely controls the host PC or device. The 770 is a Debian derivative Linux powered tablet that is optimized for mobile Internet access. The 770 in and of itself won’t make that big an impact in pro audio but what it will open to the door to are more vendors making generic Linux powered slates. If this thing hits, look for more powerful, larger models. If it tanks, well it was a neat idea anyway. It won’t be too long after this device hits the market that there will most likely be some hacks that will divorce it from being an Internet only appliance. it’s been out for about a week in Europe already. Based on preliminary info (many rumors in there as well no doubt) from tech sites and blogs around the net it’s possible that with a bit of work that devices like the Meyer Gallieo or LCS LX300 might be able to be controlled by the device though in practice this particular device lacks a suitable display size and resolution (4″ 800×480) and video subsystem to do things like realtime meter updates, the latter being something that even mid range tablets have a difficult time doing. If pro audio vendors could buy low cost, high value generic tablets and load them with Linux distros that were developed for embedded apps. Mameo, the Debian based Linux distro that powers the 770 if sucessful in the consumer multimedia handheld space could be a contender for use in pro audio apps like control surfaces and tablet controllers. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.