Monday, March 28, 2011

Sent from my iPad

Well, I went and done it--allowed Steve Jobs to convince me that I needed an iPad. Now, all I need to do is allow a few days to learn what for. I should mention that I'm showing definite sings of rheumatoid arthritis, which affects primarily to typing arm. If it were in my left arm, I would say this thing is definitely too heavy... But for now, it's manageable.

The "killer app" on the iPad is something not mentioned anywhere, to my knowledge: the Safari browser. It's not the crippled mobile app that's on the iPhone, but appears to identify itself--and function--as a full browser, with about 80% of the functionality of the desktop version. This, to me, shows Apple's genius, because it's running on a mobile OS. It's small details like this that sets the iPad apart. I'm sure that other tablets use, or will use, a similar configuration, but it's important to remember that four years ago, people were looking at the iPhone and thinking, "I don't get it. What's the big deal?" At the time, the best I could do was run a very crippled mobile Opera on a Samsung phone with a screen the size of a matchbook. Four years later, we have a light-weight but sophisticated mobile OS that is able to run full-feature apps that approach desktop functionality. What will we see in another four years?

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