Category: Market

Mike Monteiro writes:

I went back for a second helping of Avatar this Sunday. There’s a scene early on in the movie where one of the scientists walks across the lab carrying the “mobile computer slab of the future.” We’ve seen one of these in almost every sci-fi movie of the last 50 years. It comes free with a jetpack, I suppose. Except this time, one month later, my 12 year old son turns to me and whispers “Look Dad, it’s an iPad.”

The iPad isn’t the future of computing; it’s a replacement for computing.

Right on!

I like root access as much as the next guy, but at least I can understand that you don’t sell a car by convincing the buyer that the car manufacturer’s engine was developed from freely modifiable blueprints that were available to other car manufacturers without a license fee.

On iPads, Grandmas and Game-changing

The iPad is the Prius

Future Shock

The iPad Is For Everyone But Us

Old World vs. New World Computing

Steven Frank:

A lot of thoughtful people, many of whom are bloggers, look at this history and say, “Look at this march of progress! Surely the desktop + windows + mouse interface can’t be the end of the road? What’s next?”

Then “next” arrived and it was so unrecognizable to most of them (myself included) that we looked at it said, “What in the shit is this?”

Highly recommended reading:

http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/359224392/i-need-to-talk-to-you-about-computers-ive-been

Fraser Speirs gets it:

What you’re seeing in the industry’s reaction to the iPad is nothing less than future shock.

Very good reading.

Fraser Speirs – Blog – Future Shock

I think it’s a logical evolution of mobile computing. A hop along the trajectory. When the iPhone first rolled out as an embodiment of the new touch-based UI–a disruptive technology, I said it was far too good as a phone. It could not be a better phone because phones were as good as they could be. It was a pretty lousy computer so I reasoned all it could become was a better computer. The iPad is a better computer.

Will it be a big hit? I think it will grow nicely and be profitable. It will take several iterations but eventually it will absorb usage from low-end laptops and move computing to new contexts. It will have amazing applications in certain verticals like education, health care, travel and automotive use.

All these steps are like checkboxes in the disruptor’s playbook. In 5 years, this will be as big a business as the Mac and then Apple will have to think how they break out of the 5% share ghetto.

Will there be a response? Yes, but, like with the iPhone, not for a long time, and not symmetrically. The PC guys will dismiss this and the phone guys will see it as outside scope. Once they begin the effort in earnest, it will fall well short of the entrenched, incumbent, integrated(*), rapidly evolving juggernaut that will be Apple Mobile Computing.

(*) Note the emphasis from Apple on its own CPU in the device. Apple does not talk about chipsets in their devices, but they did this time. Not only are they signaling control, but it also shows that value-chain integration down to silicon is what is needed to go up the performance trajectory for good-enough mobile computing.