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Kimberly White, Reuters / Landov Today Steve Jobs finally presented his highly anticipated new tablet computer, the iPad. Douglas Rushkoff on how it could cannibalize Apple’s own product line—and make your Mac obsolete.
Beyond the hype, style, and speculation, the truth is that the iPad is really just another tablet device. A really big PDA, where a touchscreen does what a laptop's keyboard used to do.
What makes the iPad so new and different, of course, is that instead of you having to find a bootleg copy of Apple's OS X operating system and install it illegally on an existing netbook or tablet PC, now you get to have a real Mac system pre-installed on a super-lightweight device that’s fully capable of running it.
Except, of course, you won't. The iPad—contrary to the way most people thought about it—is not a tablet computer running the Apple operating system. It’s more like a very big iPhone, running the iPhone operating system. As Jobs explained at the unveiling a few minutes ago, netbooks don't do computing as well as computers, so why make one? Instead, the iPad means to fill the middle space between a phone and a laptop, and to be really good at that. Like a really big iPod Touch.
Click Below to Watch Steve Jobs’ iPad Announcement
While this certainly makes it useful in the way that a Kindle (only with an eye-straining backlit screen) or a big PDA (but really big) might be useful, it also encourages us to do more of our daily computing in the walled gardens of Apple's iTunes and Apps stores.
For years, now, Apple has been struggling to make its popular retail shopping applications profitable. Just last week, in fact, when releasing the company's quarterly reports, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer admitted, "Regarding the App Store and the iTunes Store, we're running those a bit over break-even, and that hasn't changed. We're very excited to be providing our developers with just a fabulous opportunity, and we think that's helping us a lot with the iPhone and the iPod touch platforms."
So maybe they're not really struggling so much, after all.
In other words, these programs and online stores are really loss leaders for the hardware people have to buy in order to use them. And now that there are so many cool apps and publications available through the app store, Apple has created the ultimate device for enjoying them: an iPhone big enough to read to book or watch a movie on.
Most importantly though, like the iPhone, the iPad will get its content from iTunes and the App Store—places where people actually have to pay for the stuff they download. This is welcome news to publishers of all types of media, who have been decimated by the Internet's “cult of the free.”
But if history is any guide, joining up with Apple doesn't really generate the kind of revenue content providers might expect. Recording companies featured on iTunes lose money as their albums are sliced into singles that cost a whole lot less.
View as Single Page 12 Back to Top January 27, 2010 | 2:13pm Facebook | Twitter | Digg | | Emails | print Ipad, Tablet, Apple, New Product, Unveiled, Islate, Liveblog, Tablet Computer, Jobs, Technology, Steve Jobs (–)
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Info RSSDouglas Rushkoff, a professor of media studies at The New School University and producer and correspondent for the PBS Frontline Digital Nation project, is the author of numerous books, including Cyberia, ScreenAgers, Media Virus, and, most recently, Read Full Article »
