The Long Fail: A History of Unsuccessful Tablet Computers | Hacker News Reader

The Long Fail: A History of Unsuccessful Tablet Computers

technologizer.com

I think the interesting thing about this rumor mill is that so many people are wondering WHY they would buy the Apple Tablet. The answer is of course: Content! Games, movies, newspapers, magazines, books, and of course, apps.

Sure, you can use your netbook to consume all of this content as well, but not (yet) with a one-click "buy now" experience. Just look at Amazons success with the Kindle, and this conclusion is obvious.

Previous attempts like the UMPC was trying to take one use case (desktop computing) and shoehorning it into another form factor. Apple will most likely be trying to expand the iPhone experience to a bigger device. They will have a much higher probability of success with this move.

My wife carries the kindle around in her purse. It wouldn't be a mobile device for me, but it is for her. The tablets are just a bit too big to really be convenient to carry around...

I'm not really betting against Jobs, just wondering what the real use case is. I'm certainly not going to carry a tablet everywhere.

Let's hope Jobs finally has an answer to his own question, (quoting from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/technology/05tablet.html?_... ):

<…> the tablets kept getting shelved at Apple because Mr. Jobs, whose incisive critiques are often memorable, asked, in essence, what they were good for besides surfing the Web in the bathroom.

Get a man purse. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnKRbEPbItE

There is only one reason: books.

I have a shipload of textbook that I will lose when I go overseas. One textbook easily costs $100+. A tablet or kindle like thing would work perfectly.

At the moment the kindle's page turn speed is too low for a technical book though.

Has to be as thin as a legal pad and write like my Dixon Ticonderoga #2 Soft before I will believe it can be scaled to the size of a drafting table.

> Apple is announcing its first true tablet ... and it’s just about the only outfit in the business that abstained until now

Hello ? What was the Apple Messagepad Series including the Newton all about then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagePad

and don't say PDA when you're including the AT&T E440

How is the iPhone not a tablet?

The journalist seems to prefer "tablets" that ran MS-DOS.

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