A web tablet that uses the cloud for apps? Ridiculous!
Of all the cockamamie ideas I’ve ever heard, this one takes the cake. The TechCrunch folks are spec’ing out a small "web tablet" that… get this… runs a minimal operating system and uses the web browser for most of its functionality! Oh, I fell off my chair laughing about that one.
Seriously, who in their right mind would actually use Firefox and extensions for their full, mobile computing experience? It’s laughable! Here’s a few challenges, I’d like to see them overcome right out of the gate:
- I might not want to be limited to one "web tablet" or computer. How will my computing environment follow me around?
- What if a web service does down? How will they be prepared for that?
- Without a client app for photo editing, what will they do?
- Can they really view PDFs without installing a bloated viewer application?
OK, I was being facetious the whole time above because I’ve being using the very computing model that the TC web-tablet is all about. No, I haven’t been doing so on a $200 piece of hardware, but with the right specs, I’m pretty darn sure I could. I think my $1200 UMPC with Intel Core Solo is overkill for this effort, but I don’t have anything less powerful at the moment.
This all goes back to one of the comments I made in my "web-only" challenge (now into day 44) and since it’s appropriate, I’ll regurgitate it here for commentary:
"When I first started out, I’ll admit that I wanted to use a simplebrowser and various web-based apps. However, I quickly learnedsomething (and I hope others did as well): web-based apps and servicesaren’t really mature enough at this point in time to fully embrace.Could I have ended my journey right then? Absolutely, but I thinkpushing forward in a slightly new direction was valuable enough tocontinue onward.
So what else have I learned? That a relatively low-powered devicewith relatively limited storage can be a "nearly-full-functioning"device for me right now thanks to the Firefox platform. I think I coulduse a device that solely had an embedded version of Firefox along withconnectivity and extensions for my personal computing needs. That’ssomething I honestly never dreamed of nor envisioned when I startedthis."
There’s much more to the product than just software of course, so I’m looking forward to seeing what develops on the hardware side. If the TC folks are looking for some expertise in either area, I think they know where to find a great community that can help them along, no?
Go grab James’ Nokia N800 or get yourself the N810.
I think an N800 with a 7″ screen and slightly more CPU power (such as one of the new ARM chips – Qualcomm Snapdragon, TI Omap3, Nvidia Tegra) and RAM would do the trick, add two SDHC slots for OS/Storage.
Have that run the new mobile Mozilla browser and you’re almost there.
Getting it down to $200 would might be difficult though.
I forgot to say that there must be an easy way to perform host based ad blocking on such a device as my N800 with ad blocking is far nicer to use than the out of the box settings – It goes from unusable to very usable.
You see, I do this everyday with the N800 (upgraded to Diablo). Its not at all impossible. What it is though is a sign that things do need to get simpler.
FYI, the browser is more than good enough for these tasks. Both FF3 adn Opera 9.5 work fine for web apps in both online and offline facilities. IE8 and Safari 4 will be pushing that further.
Frankly, most people would only need a browser if they were comfortable in apps living in SQLite and servers; you just have to show them a compelling reason why this will save them headaches in the long run.
specs are easy, but who in their right minds wants to sell it for $200?
Maybe the company that will offer it for $200 is the one that hinted about a large “product transition” that would hurt their profit margins for a few quarters – Apple.
I see completely deferent benefits from this kind of web tablets.
What if you go to a restaurant and waitress gives you the tablet which not only has list of menu you can order online but also lets you browse full multi media stuff such as video and audio explanation of each menu? If I were a owner of that restaurant, I will setup a small server and use it to update lunch/dinner menu on the fly.
IMHO this kind of device is more useful in closed environment like hospital or school and more applicable for B2B type of usage rather than C2C. Do I want to use it at home? Probably, no.
I can imagine quite a few companies that would sell such a device for $200. It would just be coupled with a $100/month mobile data plan running for at least 24 months.
Don’t say people wouldn’t buy it like that … do I really have to mention the iP…?
If it would be really Apple coming up with such a device, you’d have at least a million or so people turning off their brains immediately just because it is the newest and greatest from said company.
And then there would be the 1000 or so who would really have a use for such a device and would be willing to have all their data “in the cloud”.
In general, the specs basically describe a PDA with a larger than usual screen (and in theory you could also call the iPhone a PDA phone – just not running WinMo).
Sounds like the future.