[telecom] The Hybrid Tablet Temptation

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The Hybrid Tablet Temptation

Jan 5, 2014

Monday Note

In no small part, the iPad's success comes from its uncompromising Do Less To Do More philosophy. Now a reasonably mature product, can the iPad expand its uses without falling into the hybrid PC/tablet trap?

When the iPad came out, almost four years ago, it was immediately misunderstood by industry insiders - and joyously embraced by normal humans. Just Google "iPad naysayer" for a few nuggets of iPad negativism. Even Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, couldn't avoid the derivative trap: He saw the new object as a mere evolution of an existing one and shrugged off the iPad as a bigger phone. Schmidt should have known better, he had been an Apple director in the days when Jobs believed the two companies were "natural allies".

I was no wiser. I got my first iPad on launch day and was immediately disappointed. My new tablet wouldn't let me do the what I did on my MacBook Air - or my tiny EeePC running Windows Xp (not Vista!). For example, writing a Monday Note on an iPad was a practical impossibility - and still is.

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