

Apple's Tablet PC Will Reinvent Computing - meterplech
http://www.newsweek.com/id/217683?from=rss

======
icey
People will be studying Apple's marketing machine for decades to come.

What other company can have a device _they've never even announced_ get so
much press declaring it a game-changer?

~~~
jacquesm
I think that in part it is the fact that Apple managed to successfully re-
invent itself and that plenty of people are seeing Steve Jobs as 'larger than
life', a person to emulate. There is something of a cult about Apple.

I have an iMac here, it's just another computer to me, I couldn't care less
about the people that run the company that produces it, if it works it's
great, if it doesn't I try to fix it, just like with any other piece of
digital hardware.

But whenever people visit here (not frequently), ever since I got it out of
storage the first thing is: Wow, you are a mac user. Somehow my much more
powerful linux box that actually earns me my bread & butter never ever gets
that sort of a response.

It could be that it is the striking design, or the fantastic software, I don't
know. The design is 'ok', less cluttered than most pcs, but actually not all
that different from say an 80's era all-in-one machine. The software is ok,
but not all that much better (if at all) than a well set up linux desktop.

It's a weird phenomenon. I hope for all those working at Apple that Steve Jobs
will be able to transfer the reigns to someone else without Apple taking a
nosedive, it certainly looks as though his personal involvement is what makes
Apple go. It's a great short term strategy to make your company a cult of
personality, but if something happens to that person, or if they retire it
remains to be seen what will survive of that.

~~~
stcredzero
There are certain things about OS X that come from its Next roots. An OS like
OS X has the potential to be the kind of _seamless_ environment we've only had
in R&D or dreamed about. OS X already has system-wide facilities that programs
can hook into, like Undo/Redo. Also note that there's a _lot_ of drag & drop.
(For example, you can drag & drop into a Terminal.app window, and that file's
path name appears there!) OS X won't get us all the way there, however. For
that, you need an OS where _everything_ is a 1st class Object that can be
scripted against. Those things have existed in research labs, so we know
they're possible.

------
jseliger
Right: either Apple (or someone else's) tablet PC will reinvent computing, or
it won't. Making predictions about a product that, as the lede says, "though
it doesn't even exist yet," is idiotic. Perhaps not as idiotic as the
ginger/it/segway nonsense of the late 90s, but still up there.

