Taking another step towards realising its vision of 'Ubuntu on every device', Canonical today unveiled its Ubuntu interface for tablets.
According to Canonical, a key feature of the new tablet design is its 'real multitasking'. "Uniquely, Ubuntu allows a phone app on the screen at the same time as a tablet app. The Ubuntu side stage was invented both to enable efficient multitasking and to improve the usability of phone apps on tablets."
Canonical and Ubuntu founder, Mark Shuttleworth says: "Our family of interfaces now scales across all screens, so your phone can provide tablet, PC and TV experiences when you dock it. That's unique to Ubuntu and it's the future of personal computing."
Canonical says the tablet interface is presented by the same OS and code for its phone, PC and TV interfaces, in order to enable true device convergence. "Ubuntu is uniquely designed to scale smoothly across all form factors."
The Touch Developer Preview of Ubuntu will be made available from 21 February 2013 (from developer.ubuntu.com), with installation instructions for the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets as well as smartphones such as the Nexus 4 and Galaxy Nexus. Canonical also says its Preview SDK will also be updated to support tablet apps.
"Uniquely, on Ubuntu, developers can create a single application that works on the phone, tablet, PC and TV because it is the same system and all services work across all form factors," says Canonical.
The tablet interface supports screen sizes between 6 and 20-inches and resolutions from 100 to 450ppi. It also allows caters for multiple accounts on a single tablet, with full encryption of personal data.
Like its smartphone interface, the tablet interface also uses the screen edges for navigation between apps, settings and controls. "That makes for less clutter, more content, and sleeker hardware. No physical or soft buttons are required. It's pure touch elegance," says Canonical.
"An Ubuntu tablet is a secure thin client that can be managed with the same tools as any Ubuntu server or desktop," said Stephane Verdy, who leads enterprise desktop and thin client products at Canonical. "Ubuntu offers a full PC experience when the tablet is docked to a keyboard, with access to remote Windows applications over standard protocols from Microsoft, Citrix, VMware and Wyse."
Canonical took the wraps off its Ubuntu phone OS in January at the Consumer Electronics Show, and in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Shuttleworth revealed that the first phones running the software could debut as soon as October this year. Shuttleworth has, however, not revealed any further details about any confirmed or potential hardware partners.
At the end of 2011, Shuttleworth first announced Canonical's vision of "Ubuntu on every device". He said at the time that by April 2014: "Ubuntu will power tablets, phones, TVs and smart-screens from the car to the office kitchen, and it will connect those devices cleanly and seamlessly to the desktop, the server and the cloud".
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