Microsoft Surface may be intoxicating for lawyers, especially for its note-taking pen.
The tablet wars are heating up with two new players: The iPad Mini (rumor is that it will be debuted later this month) and the Microsoft Surface Pro. While Apple Inc. continues to dominate the mobile scene, netting a reported 5 million iPhone 5 sales in its first three days, the mobile technology world — and enterprise user — shouldn't count Microsoft out yet. Sure, the current generation of Windows smartphones may never catch up to iOS or Android, but in the tablet wars, the Surface Pro has a few several secret weapons: Outlook, Word, OneNote, "fat" desktop application support, and a new take on digital notes, with a redesigned stylus.
Let's take a step back and inventory what the Big Law attorney really wants and has been asking for since the iPad hit the streets in 2010: read email and attachments; create and edit documents and email; search for documents and email stored in document management systems; scrub metadata; track document edits and changes; use electronic data discovery tools; access research tools; enter and track time entries; view back-office billing, general ledger, and dashboards; run other native desktop apps; and take digital notes with either a keyboard or stylus. Let's not forget that the device needs to be thin, light, have an all-day battery, and cost less than $600. VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) aside, have the iPad or Android tablets really delivered on these things? Not really.
Critics and users agree that tablets are great at portable, anytime-anywhere connectivity. As for document creation and editing, they tend to miss the mark. Attaching a Bluetooth keyboard can help, but input of more than a quick email or status update is painful.
Outlook on an Apple device has been limited to Outlook Web Access or the native Mail apps that have many limitations. Microsoft Word and other Office products have been purposely absent on the iOS and Android platforms. The only way to get to native desktop apps has been through a VDI session or an application streaming source; both of which require significant investments in licensing and hardware for the performance that users demand. So, while IT professionals have taken on the challenge to "make it work," out of the box, the iPad fails to deliver what attorneys really want.
Pen-input is an underrated feature that has huge potential in the legal market. Sure, the iPad has had a stylus since the first generation, but it is unnatural and not well executed; mainly because it is a third-party developed add-on and not natively Apple. Steve Jobs had a thing against pen computing. (Google it.) Stylus input on a tablet is nothing new and far from revolutionary, but on the Surface Pro, the pen is going to be a game-changer. For anyone who has tried to use one of the note-taking iOS apps and sputtered along the screen with the awkward eraser point stylus on an iPad, the Microsoft stylus will rock your world. It is a digital pen with a fine point tip. It also feels like a pen and writes like a pen. (What a novel idea).
Input of the finger, gesture, or stylus variety relies on the device's digitizer. The current generation iPad and Android devices have one digitizer, which is a grid of sensors sandwiched between the layers of glass. The digitizer registers human touch through electrical impulses. The sensor requires an electrical conductor (i.e., finger) or capacitive device (i.e., an active stylus) to record movement or gesture. This capacitive requirement is also why you can't use any old pen and also why gloves impede your ability to use the iPad.
Microsoft's Surface tablet will have two digitizers, one for touch input and one for pen input. In addition, they work in conjunction not contention with each other. This is very significant. So, when you are using the pen input, the touch digitizer is disabled; eliminating the 'palm fragment' effect. On the iPad, when you rest your hand on the screen as you write, many Apps record that touch and odd fragments and lines appear that must be manually erased. Many Apps have tried to incorporate a palm "safe zone," but it proves to be too cumbersome to use in the real world. The dual digitizer also opens up the concept of combination pen and finger gesture movements to do advanced clipping and editing.
While no one can presently compete with the application ecosystem that Apple created for iOS devices, the real secret to the Surface Pro's success will be in the already established application set and native desktop application support. Microsoft still dominates the desktop with its suite of Office tools. In the legal market, this is even more important because document templates, standards, and collaboration are common between multiple parties and clients.
Microsoft's OneNote is also the underrated king of note-taking applications with pen input. It has been included in the high-end versions of Microsoft Office since 2003, but it didn't add much value to the traditional desktop user. With OneNote, digital ink is stored in virtual notebooks along with screen clippings. Not only can OneNote change your written word to typed text, with its built-in OCR feature, it has the ability to text-search your handwriting in its original format. This is huge for anyone looking to take digital notes and actually find them later. You can also export them to your favorite DMS and save them with your client file; finally delivering on an attorney demand that is many years in the making. They want to ditch their pens and legal pads — the Surface Pro will finally make that happen. There is an iOS OneNote version, but it must have been released because of a lost bet, it is featureless and almost useless.
VDI and app streaming technologies will continue to expand for mobile tablet users. But for some midsize, small, and solo practices, these add-on technologies are still too expensive to implement. Because Surface Pro is a full version of Windows 8, you can install your traditional desktop applications right on the tablet. No more light versions or scaled down portal apps are necessary, the full Office version is installable with Outlook and Word add-ins right out of the box.
The tablet wars are heating up and the next 12 months will be interesting. A big challenge is Microsoft's time-to-market strategy; the company needs to be faster and more nimble to really compete. But, considering Microsoft's other secret weapon, the X-Box Kinect, the enterprise tablet market may really tip in its favor. A company called Tobii, based in Sweden, has working prototypes of optic input dubbed "Gaze." By focusing your eye movement on what you want to do, the Kinect-like sensor will read your eye movement and execute accordingly. Apple is rumored to be looking at a similar technology for their next-generation systems. This is exciting stuff — stay tuned.
source:law.com
