“Now, speculation is growing that in two weeks Apple will unveil a tablet-style touch-screen computer that is bigger than an iPhone but smaller than a standard laptop,” Mintz reports. “If indeed that is Apple’s next move — the company won’t comment — it would have to show us why we ought to pay for yet another Internet-connected screen, on top of the TVs, computers and smart phones we already have.”
“Bill Gates, co-founder of Apple nemesis Microsoft Corp., predicted repeatedly during the 2000s that tablets were about to take off. He was wrong because those tablets required people to use a pen-shaped stylus to tap buttons or write on the screen, which was attractive in workplaces where employees needed to check boxes or fill out forms. For most people, though, using a stylus for regular computer tasks such as editing a spreadsheet was more cumbersome than using a mouse and keyboard,” Mintz reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Bill Gates was wrong because when Microsoft doesn’t have a product from Apple off of which to cheat, they produce ridiculous messes like MS Bob. Just watch, after Jobs unveils and explains it, Microsoft et al. will suddenly “get” tablets and the typical knockoff parade will proceed apace.
Mintz continues, “It seems it will be Apple CEO Steve Jobs who swoops in with a tablet that takes advantage of recent technology improvements and garners the most buzz. Dell and HP didn’t present a retail-ready tablet because the companies want to be able to adjust if Apple’s vision turns out to be radically different, says computer industry analyst Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates. ‘If Apple blows it out of the park, we know that that’s what the space is going to look like for a while,’ he says.”
“Touch screens and the underlying software are also dramatically better today, and we’ve gotten used to pinching, swiping and using on-screen keyboards thanks to the popularity of Apple’s iPhone,” Mintz reports. “And gadgets — especially ones made by Apple — are thinner and sleeker all the time, making them more portable than clunky early tablets.”
Mintz reports, “We’ve seen this happen before: Portable music players and “smart” phones had existed before the iPod and the iPhone came along, and yet it was Apple that redefined those categories.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
