Autumn Marathon

Turn,Turn,Turn (to everything there is a season)

Couple of big tech news items last week.  Most prominently (absurdly prominent given other major world events) was Apple’s introduction of the iPAD.

I like it. It’s effectively an oversized iPhone/Touch and, in this case, size does matter. As some of my Silicon Valley tech friends observed, developers will be able to do new kinds of things with all that touchscreen space. As an eReader, it will blow Kindle away as long as Apple procures the right content. As a music/video platform, it will be excellent. For standard email/business apps, it will be only ok - but that’s not really a primary use.  On the other hand, there’s a good chance that those developers will find different business uses in areas where the desktop/laptop paradigms don’t work.  Importantly, I think Apple got the price point about right: consumers will buy the device, developers develop, and a new value will be created.

As someone in the market for a converged device, I’m not sure iPad is better than the $400 Win7 netbooks currently flooding the market. There are tradeoffs in each case. I’m writing this blog on a my new netbook.  It’s the perfect companion for business trips, but I can see things that an iPad will be better at. Fortunately,at these prices, it’s possible to get both.

All of these devices are proof that “the network is the computer.” Which is to say, that the devices would not be very interesting if it weren’t so easy to access interesting content, interact with people, buy/sell and learn on the internet.  ”The network is the computer” was a slogan of Sun Microsystems, Inc: it was coined back in the 1980s!  I worked at Sun for over 10 years starting in 1997.  Shortly after I joined the company, there were strong rumors that Sun would acquire Apple, then viewed as being on its last legs.  Not long after that Apple brought one of its founders, Steve Jobs, back as CEO.  More than a decade later, sadly, on the same week that Apple announced its new iPAD, Sun was swallowed by Oracle and no longer exists.