“It’s not that hard to predict what will happen in the future… but it is very hard to predict with any accuracy when things will happen,” Bob Cringely writes for I, Cringely.
“For technologies, I tend to see events happening long before they actually do, which makes me something of a prophet, though a pretty useless one,” Cringely writes. “This may be proved yet again in the coming months as Apple and other companies attempt to take most of the paper out of publishing, something I thought we were about to do 15 years ago, but didn’t.”
“The rumor this week is that Apple’s long awaited tablet computer is some form of electronic reader and that Apple intends to get into the distribution of content for this new platform, just as it earlier did for the music, TV and movie businesses with the iPod and iTunes,” Cringely writes.
“I have no inside knowledge about Apple’s plans, but as one of the guys who came up with the whole electronic publication idea, I think I’m in a position to put it in perspective,” Cringely writes.
“Technology is the least of this. Yes, we need an electronic medium that is price-competitive with what it replaces, but it doesn’t take an Apple per se to do that,” Cringely writes. “The much harder parts are the business model and the mojo.”
Full article here.