From Jack Shafer, appropriately enough at Slate, comes a splash of cold water on the newspaper industry’s hopes of being saved by tablet devices.
Says Shafer, no matter how we get online we end up on the Internet. And once there we’ll surf it; we won’t be kept on the reservation of apps that only take us to one website.
Not so coincidentally, Ryan Kim reported at SFGate last week that HP’s tablet device, due out this fall and also called Slate, will be a computer running Windows 7.
In the Apple-verse of the iPad nothing could be more un- sexy, but like my good old QWERTY keyboard there is a lot to be said for a familiar interface, one I already know how to use.
Mobile access is different, yes; more spur of the moment, fewer extended sessions. Much of the time we just want handy access to a few services – mail and messages, driving directions or bus connections.
Businesses love the idea of a simplified, app-ified online experience, a virtual mall where they get to choose your menu of choices. And sometimes this is convenient.
But we have seen this video before. The multi-use personal computer and the full Internet will always win against specialized devices and restricted access, whenever they are in the game at all.