“Watching CE makers talk about their tablets is like watching aphasia in action,” Sascha Segan writes for PC Magazine. “As far as I can tell, tablets like the Dell Mini 5 are for uh. Just because screens exist between four and 12 inches, companies are insisting that we have to have them, because, well, uh. I think they’re e-readers that let you surf the Internet on your couch.”
“Dedicated e-readers like the Amazon Kindle are, in fact, tablets, but they’re not what we’re talking about here. The tablets we’re discussing are to the Kindle as a smartphone is to a voice-only phone. They’re probably not as well designed for a single use, but they have more uses,” Segan writes. “Like, for instance, uh.”
“So, welcome Apple. If there’s one thing that Apple’s good at, it’s communicating why you should want things,” Segan writes. “Apple has always played the role of refiners and explainers, taking existing technologies and making them more human. (See: the PC, the MP3 player, the smartphone.)”
“There’s one thing Apple can’t change alone, though. As a Dell product manager pointed out to me, many people are going to want 3G subscriptions so they can take their tablets out of the house. And at $60 a pop, that’s a no-go,” Segan writes. “That’s why Apple needs Verizon.”
Full article here.