<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">On 11.01.2012, at 00:36, Jeffrey Kesselman wrote:<br><br><blockquote type="cite">I wonder how a tablet really fits the Xo mission beyond PR?<br><br>The G1G1, while flawed in a few ways, made an attempt at least to put a programmable machine in the hands of third world children and<br>empower them to be content creators.<br><br>A tablet is inherently a content consumer device, not a creator device. This is the secret to Apple's success with them. (They have been<br>chasing this particular horse since the early Mac days. Mac was never supposed to be a creator device, that was the ill fated Lisa.)<br><br>I cant imagine anyone typing much code on a touch screen keyboard. Is the goal of OLPC now to create more consumers?<br><br>JK<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>It's definitely possible to type on a good touch screen keyboard. In particular code, the auto-completion can be much more helpful than with prose. Not nearly as good as on a full-size physical one, but on par with the XO keyboard IMHO (*). And the possibilities of dynamic keyboards are endless - you could have a key that inserts a full class definition and you just type the name, etc.</div><div><br></div><div>Another advantage is that it can adapt to your language. It's a hassle to code on many keyboard that does not have a US layout. I am a native speaker of German, but have been buying US keyboards for many years. It must be even more difficult for people with non-latin writing systems. The XO's keyboard layout switching key is a great help, but you can only put so many labels on a physical key.</div><div><br></div><div>Besides, in the end it's the software that makes a system suitable for creating or not. Even the "consumption-only" iPad has nice apps for creating. Not only "artsy" stuff, but for hacking too, e.g. <a href="http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/">http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/</a> And the XO-3 won't suffer from Apple's restrictions on sharing your creations.</div><div><br></div><div>I'm excited about the XO tablet :)</div><br><div>- Bert -<br><br></div><div>(*) E.g. my 12 yo daughter added a full-size keyboard to her setup even though I let her use the blue XO with the crunchy keyboard (which she greatly preferred to the smooth green one). She writes stories, and plays MUD, both requiring lots of typing:</div><div><br></div><img id="5ab67f7f-05f6-48a3-9d02-7f88ec12152d" height="201" width="320" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes" src="cid:8DB7A83B-CD67-4D5E-A5A6-601C58F63F02@fritz.box"><div><br></div></body></html>