On Mar 19, at 5:05 AM, Ed Wiser wrote:
Marta what we are watching with the iPhone is the death of the PC as it has been used these past years. We are seeing devices that handle most of the jobs that PC have done and they fit in our pocket. Stuart’s request for scanning photo’s in a few years could be handled by the iPhone based on the SDK event Tuesday.A few years from now these large boxes that we use to read the web and type email to each other will be a thing of the past. The average consumer has no need for the power of the desktop computer when you have devices such as the iPhone to carry around.
I think a more exciting device is the Kindle. For years the tech industry has been predicting the death of the traditional book, but they've never been able to produce a box with acceptable performance, features and price. The Kindle is the first I've seen that's really tempting. Faux paper screen big enough to read comfortably, extremely long battery life, ubiquitous connectivity and tons of content all come together in one package. It's still a bit pricey at $350, but that will only improve.
Apple should be in that market with their iPhone technology. The Kindle software for the iPhone is nice, but the Kindle is a better device from which to read because of its passive-lighting display, larger size and much longer battery life.
Soon, the Kindle will have instant access to almost all books in print as well as the Web. It's the closest we can come to something approximating Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [1] and Neal Stephenson's Young Lady's Illustrated Primer [2].
It's also why I hold no hope for newspapers, as we think of them. They ought to give all their subscribers a Kindle-type box and forget about ink and pulp.
[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchhiker_guide_to_the_galaxy> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age>
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