“When I picked up my iPhone over the weekend, I had an epiphany. I was using the LinkedIn app to confirm an invitation to connect, and it hit me: This is the future of mobile computing, the mobile web — the mobile experience,” Brian X. Chen writes for Wired.
“No, I’m not saying the LinkedIn app is the future per se (that’d be silly), but rather the overall concept of it,” Chen writes. “The LinkedIn iPhone app is, in my opinion, better than the actual LinkedIn.com website. Same goes for the Facebook app compared to Facebook.com.”
“The Facebook and Linkedin apps are two key examples of popular services whose iPhone apps outdid the websites they were trying to ‘port.’ They’re two gems glistening brightly for the future of mobile,” Chen writes. “Now that we can have experiences like these on a bigger touchscreen, with the iPad and the horde of tablets that will follow it, we can expect computing to become much easier than what we’re accustomed to today.”
“The iPad opens a path for an improved web experience for everyone. As soon as the iPad and its competing slates are in people’s hands, we’ll see a host of websites tailoring their content for touchscreen tablet browsing, and it’s going to be far more pleasant than the web experience we’re used to today,” Chen writes. “Have you seen Flickr’s mobile website lately? Or YouTube’s? They’re both far friendlier, simpler and to-the-point than their original websites, and they’re plenty functional.”
Chen writes, “The iPhone and the iPad give web developers an excuse to break free from traditional user interfaces. As a side effect it’s also pushing developers to ditch old, outdated web standards, such as Adobe Flash, and embrace newer ones like HTML5. Thank goodness, because we’ve been needing a change. Cleaner, friendlier, intimate UI may sound like a step backward, but it’s not. There are huge implications.”
Full article, in which Chen correctly states that “we’re all heading with Apple into the future of computing, and it’s looking quite bright,” – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: A few more article like this, Brian, and we’ll forgive certain idiocies that you’ve committed in the past.
iPad — $499
Microsoft mediocrity cult in a raging froth — priceless.
WOZ is on CNN right now talkin iPad.
@ChrissyOne
“Mylie Cyrus and Hannah Montana are the same person?!?!?!”
Yeah, just like ChrissyOne and Zune Tang!!
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Back to the topic at hand – Yes, the parallel realization makes the initial iPad putdown – “it’s just a bigger iPhone” – patently silly. Form and technology constrains design. Design defines experience. Most web site have totally gotten out of hand trying to be the portal to everything. Focused, get ‘er done apps works better than most websites, an epiphany to Google probably. Now that the designers have broken out of the box of traditional websites and Flash content way of doing things, perhaps we’ll see more innovation to UI creation.
I kind of feel bad for people so passionate about netbooks because the iPad wasn’t even designed to mercilessly slaughter the entire netbook market … but rather, fill the gap between smart phones and computers.
Just goes to show that smaller cinderblocks worth a couple hundred bucks — labeled netbooks — speak for themselves … and no one wants them anymore.
I think the iPad is a giant loser, but to each their own.
Buggy whip
Ink blotter
Telegraphy
Iron lung
Kodachrome
Slide rule
Desktop metaphor
Netbook
Web portal
???
To be sure, there will be limitations on the iPad.
The two that are real for me:
30) You can print files from a netbook — hope iPad has printing to Airport Express USB printer.
41) You don’t need another computer to sync your data — would like wireless syncing to counter this a bit
Netbooks are a no-go for me though. #1 they run Windows (and I don’t want to hackintosh… sends me down maintenance path I’m not up for).
Brian X. Chen finally gets it 2.5 years late. Welcome to the present.
– You can’t get laid by showing a chick your netbook
– iPad is easier to lug around than a netbook. Ever pass around a laptop to show off pictures? No sweat with an iPad.
– Windoze is a good thing????
– Many useful apps (>140,000) that do NOT run on the netbook.
– Apart from price, its just a pathetic laptop.
Some people just have no vision….but then we need drones don’t we?
Anyone think OS10 will be on future iPads? If so, what will that do to laptops?
@Buster “You can’t get laid by showing a chick your netbook”
1967: “Wanna see my pad?”
2010: “Wanna see my iPad?”
Netbooks are nothing but old slow laptops.
I had one of those 15 years ago. Why would I want one now?
I once had a new fast ThinkPad and I still never wanted to use it.
Ernie? Is that you????
“The iPhone and the iPad give web developers an excuse to break free from traditional user interfaces.”
Sounds more like the Balkanization of the web.
On the one hand, netbooks are cheaper.
On the other hand netbooks have all these extra price options that make netbooks better.
What bullshit.
Why are geeks who would never use an iPad, scared shitless of the iPad?
@Big Al–
Yeah! Why???
“I once had a new fast ThinkPad and I still never wanted to use it.”
I once thought a TRS-80 and a Mac SE was fast.
If Back to the Future was filmed today, the DeLorean’s ancient temporal target would be 1980.
Ouch.
It means nothing
http://www.bing.com When it comes to decisions that matter, Bing & Decide
@ Ampar
Oh my god. Very ouch. Hang on, gotta go get my poodle skirt.
So wait, shouldn’t we have hover cars by now?
It’s amazing to me that the Cult of Crap Windowists spend so much time and energy talking about Apple products.
Apple must really be getting into their heads.
Not necessarily into their brains, because they are hard to find.
Ipad is the future.
theloniousMac,
Netbooks may be a little cheaper but their creators are not getting healthy.
Cheers
Steve Jobs does not claim that the iPad can do everything that a laptop can do. But he do say that the iPad can so some things better than a laptop or a mobile phone. Why can’t detractors of Apple products take the time to listen carefully instead of shooting out blindly?