simon green <(Address removed)> said:
1. the unrealised potential and future development of "apps" ie:
2. the simplicity of the OS (and rock solid reliability)
3. the beginnings of the proah end of qwerty keyboard
4. it's size ... this is what mobile computing REALLY looks like.
5. sharing stuff ... this is good and takes the "personal" out of PC's
6. it is so cool in design
7. the way it seamlessly syncs and works
8. windows geeks hate them
Looks like a reasonable summary. Too expensive for me though - where does everyone get the endless money for endless gadgets?
I'm teaching a mobile computing course this term. I've got the students developing Android apps as it's simple and free. I would have liked to let them loose on iPhone as that's obviously 'sexier', though I doubt there'd be any learning advantage. Regardless, it's great engaging students in stuff that's nothing to do with PCs, tedious office applications and boring 'enterprise' bollox.
Your point 4 is interesting. Tablets were first developed at Xerox Parc in the late 80s as part of their work on Ubiquitous Computing. Their key realisation was that computing should be "calm" and I think we're only just beginning to experience this with devices like iPad. Mobility is just one aspect of this, in many ways just the start.
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/weiser/Ubiq.html
"Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives." --Mark Weiser
Mark Weiser was best-known for his advocacy of "ubiquitous computing," a concept he first proposed in 1988.
The idea of ubiquitous computing built on Mark's earlier research on human-computer interaction, and was further influenced by Xerox PARC's work in networking, the ethnography of computing and workplaces (and its critique of traditional computer design), and graphical user interface research. Building on "a new way of thinking about computers in the world, one that takes into account the natural human environment," Mark hoped to create a world in which people interacted with and used computers without thinking about them. Ultimately, computers would "vanish into the background," weaving "themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it."
