Tablets: Maybe They Really ARE A Passing Fad

businessinsider.com

6 points·Flemlord··4 comments

Actually, this is another commentary based on a misunderstanding of "post-PC".

Steve Jobs didn't say "this is a post-PC era". He said "we believe these are post-PC devices".

This is an important point and worth emphasizing since everybody is getting it wrong.

1) The iOS devices are "post-PC" (Jobs says) because they are not trying to be to be tiny PCs but rather something different. Not necessarily something totally new (I think Palm blazed the trail here) but something different from a PC and so he says tablet PCs are missing the point. From this point of view, putting Windows on a tablet should fail.

2) Steve Jobs does not think the PC form-factor era is over and clearly expects to sell more Macs in the future. He is in fact expanding the number of very popular form factors for computers from desktop and laptop to handheld and tablet.

3) By bringing some features from iOS back to the Mac, I think they are signaling that "post-PC" means evolving what is a seen as a PC to include some different concepts. It is not a statement that "tablets will replace laptops".

I spent most of the day sitting around San Diego airport waiting for my delayed flight to leave, and saw a lot of very bored people. I also saw a bunch of people with iPads, who looked as happy as could be. Surely travel is the killer app for a tablet?

I have seen contractors (collect data to generate me a quote) and real estate guys (information about the house, neighborhood etc) carrying around iphones and now ipads and putting them to really good use. What other non game examples have people seen?

I've seen people at booths at marathon expos use these to sign people up for mailing lists on the spot. I've also seen the street marketers for non-profits use these to sign people up for whatever they were promoting.

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