You will not be surprised to learn that I was unable to resist the lure of ordering an Axiotron ModBook, which arrived at the office yesterday after a grueling three and a half month wait.
I was hoping it would be a simple "two computers enter; one computer leaves" type of scenario vs. the MacBook Air that I've been using for the last few months. I should've known better.
The ModBook is made by taking the bottom shell and electronics from an off-the-shelf MacBook, removing the screen, lid, and keyboard, and replacing them with a slate-style Wacom display.
Along the way, a GPS module is also inserted -- which is interesting, but I've yet to think of a practical use for it. A laptop is way too unwieldy to use as a navigation aid, but maybe you could use it to geo-tag your Flickr photos.
The consensus around the office was that the choice of a metal front bezel atop a white plastic shell was odd. While it's not as beautiful as something that Apple would ship, I would certainly not call it ugly. The face of the tablet is still quite restrained compared to most PC laptops.
I have been spoiled by the Air, as I lifted the ModBook and thought, holy cow, this is thick and and it is heavy. Truth of the matter is that it's not that much thicker or heavier than an unmodified MacBook -- it's just that the Air is that much thinner and lighter.
As far as Windows-based Tablet PCs are concerned, my point-of-reference is a years-old HP TC1100, which I've owned for some time and cranked out quite a few drawings on. With keyboard detached, the HP is actually lighter than a MacBook Air. A MacBook at roughly five pounds is twice the weight of the TC1100, at the cost of a missing optical drive and a 10" screen vs. 13" on the ModBook.
Nothing, however, is omitted from the ModBook. It has the MacBook's full array of expansion ports, SuperDrive, and is configurable to whopping amounts of memory and HD space. Even the iSight and IR receiver survive the Frankenstein-ery, and the computer arrives at your door with its original Apple packaging with all included accessories. The ModBook uses the standard MacBook power adapter (MagSafe) and battery, which is nice.
A hardware button to the upper left of the display serves as both a power toggle for the GPS module, and a "reset" button for the custom controller hardware, which so far I haven't found occasion to use.
My only real complaint about the hardware is that the reinforced glass layer atop the screen, although providing essential reassurance that you won't damage it, does reduce the brightness of the screen, and causes a significantly narrower viewing angle. There is very limited field of view in which you can see the whole screen without the brightness or color falling off to one edge or the other.
Another frustration is actually Apple's fault. For some reason, Apple removes the option for display rotation from MacBooks. I can't fathom why. But this does mean you can't, at least for the moment, use the tablet natively in portrait orientation.
Potential buyers are also advised of a bluetooth incompatibility that has been acknowledged by Axiotron. They actually recommend disabling the bluetooth module until a solution is found.
My favorite thing about slate form tablets is -- and this is going to sound weird -- the unusual feeling of intimacy. Compare to a desktop Mac with a tablet, where you must sit at a desk and resembles "work", or a laptop with a flip-up screen that forms a wall between you and the rest of the world, the tablet just sits in your lap like a chunky sketchbook. It is a very natural feeling way to work for anyone who has ever put pen to paper. And having the digital ink come from the actual point of contact between the pen and the screen make a subtle, but noticeable difference to the drawing experience.
In addition to the full suite of Mac OS X software that ships with any MacBook, a few extra bits are included.
A program called QuickClicks summons and dismisses a resizable on-screen keyboard that is absolutely indispensable for entering passwords and email addresses.
A registered version of a shareware app called inkBook is bundled. This is a serviceable but spartan notebook program that accepts sketches and handwriting, and can convert the latter to text. The bundled version is 1.x, but the site hosts a 2.0 beta which is much improved. However, another application to keep a close eye on is version 3.0 of the venerable Circus Ponies NoteBook due out soon, which would (at least from the press release) seem to be a killer app for the ModBook.
Finally, a small GPS program with an appalling user interface serves little purpose other than to report your latitude and longitude and prove that your GPS module is in fact functional.
Naturally, Apple's Inkwell software comes into its own on this hardware. For those who have never used it, there are a few different modes of operation. "Write Anywhere" which can be toggled from a menu bar item, allows you to just start writing on the screen. The writing is then converted to text and inserted at the current keyboard focus as if you had typed it. Although you can still click and drag with Write Anywhere enabled, it requires a bit of patience and finesse not to trigger the handwriting recognition, so this option is best left off and only enabled when text entry is required.
An alternative is to enable the floating Ink window, into which you can write text, edit it, and then insert it into the current application only when it's ready to go.
Inkwell also supports gestures for common operations, such as enter, undo, cut, copy and paste, which work well once you get the hang of them.
The recognition engine, based presumably on the print recognizer from NewtonOS 2.0 is quite good, but a bit behind the state of the art. It works best with long strides of dictionary words, and struggles with shorter words and shorthand. I never thought I'd say anything good about Windows Vista, but Vista's handwriting recognition is much more adroit.
Then of course, there is additional third-party software you can buy to supplement your tablet experience. Sketchbook Pro, originally developed by Alias and since acquired by Autodesk, is probably my favorite digital art program of all time. Designed from the ground up to work with the tablet form-factor, it ditches menus and toolbars in favor of a gestural palette from which you can select brushes and other tools. It works beautifully and is rock-solid stable. My only fear is that there hasn't been even a whisper of an upgrade in years. It's fortunate then that the current version works as well as it does.
Art Rage is a lower-cost alternative to Sketchbook Pro, which is also very good.
Manga Studio is another very capable program for budding comic artists but is hobbled by a few things: a painful Mac OS 9 user interface, a PowerPC binary that runs in Rosetta, and a Draconian disc-based copy protection scheme that has completely locked me out of the program at least twice requiring emails to tech support. Despite these shortcomings, it does some specific comic-related things that no other app does, and does them well. Comic artists should check it out.
Here's where it gets sticky. I'm not sure the ModBook is what you'd want to use as a primary computer. Although you might be surprised at how much you can get done without a keyboard, it is (without the addition of a separate USB keyboard) unsuitable for doing any extended amount of text input.
But if you do any work at all with digital art, it is an extremely compelling offering that I don't see Apple themselves providing any time in the near future. Sitting comfortably in screen size between Wacom's 12" and 20" Cintiq displays, which require a connection to a host computer, the ModBook is a liberating tool that you can take anywhere and toil away on your masterpiece. A first of its kind for Mac-dom.
As a daily driver, the MacBook Air is in a similar boat. I've found it works best as a "briefcase" for shuttling a smaller subset of data that you keep on a "master" computer at home. Although they are both amazing feats of technology, I'm not sure I'd be satisfied with either one as my only Mac.
Buying a second computer solely for the purpose of working on illustration and art is an expensive proposition, but if you're the sort of person who has such a desire, and you can swing it without bankrupting yourself, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the ModBook.