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The Apple Ipad Won't Change the World

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Get a grip, folks. The product's release will be exciting, but the iPad—and other tablets like it—won't change your lives.

The Apple iPad is a laptop without a keyboard. Got it? It's not some futuristic “god-like" device that will change our lives. I, like many others, believe that the time is ripe for the iPad and other tablets to succeed as a tech market segment. I won't go into all the reasons again. I've done so before. However, I am hearing some downright nutty stuff about what Apple's iPad and other tablets will do for the tech industry, publishing, and our lives.

In its April 2010 issue, Wired produced a stupefying piece called “13 of the Brightest Tech Minds Sound Off on the Rise of the Tablet." Bizarrely long and soul-deadening headline aside, this promised to be a pretty exciting piece. Then I noticed that Martha Stewart was included on the list. I can still remember her first CPU analysis, or was that someone else who actually has tracked the tech industry? I always get confused. As one would expect from someone still so firmly entrenched in the print media world, she hoped that the tablet wouldn't take the place of the “magazine format." Don't worry Martha, it won't.

Other contributors have, at least, more tech street cred than Ms. Stewart, but their commentary on the tablet is no less ridiculous. The Atlantic correspondent James Fallows likened tablets to electronic flight bags (EFBs) that astronauts use. To be honest, EFBs sound kind of cool, but the analogy with tablets like the Apple iPad falls somewhat flat. Take, for instance, this comment, “EFBs also let pilots simultaneously work with different kinds of data." We know the iPad won't multi-task, so I'm not getting the connection.

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