HEY
GUYS, APPLE'S AIRPORT IS BIGGER THAN CHICAGO'S. People just
haven't realized it yet.
Just think of the liberation, almost as great as
what's described in the Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation.
This "be anywhere" concept is absolutely fab (within reason,
of course: out in Lhasa it may not work too well, but here
in San Francisco it sure does!)
Why don't people put it to good use, then?
I
say, let's think up all kinds of neat little cool stuff that
can make full use of its potential.
Here's one idea. You know those tablets the crew of the Enterpoop
(er, sorry, Enterprise) carry around when they want to
get Starfleet messages, show memos, and the like. No
reason why we have to wait till the 24th century for those!
Take just the screen off an iBook or PowerBook,
stick a G3 chip and an AirPort into it, add a tiny PCMCIA
hard drive (nowadays they're only 2.5 ounces and can store
gigabytes, and terabytes are soon coming), and you have
one great little tablet!
The input device can be anything, anything at all. You're in
the office, and want to type, fine, plug the keyboard from your
iMac into the USB port, prop the tablet up against a couple
dictionaries, and you have an instant full-fledged computer,
faster than any PC on the market. You're in the garden, use
a pen-type pointing device. Make the screen touch sensitive,
and you can even let your fingers do the walking -- er, pointing.
Add a bit of handwriting recognition, and
there you are, sending and receiving e-mail from the Throne
Room! (Time to junk those outdated magazines from
top of the flush tank.)
Not to mention surfing your favorite porn sites from bed. Mind
you, that could be hazardous to your health, if you're married.
("Whatcha doin', dear?" "Oh, nutt'n, honey!" "Aw, how come
you don't cuddle anymore?")
A cheap piezo
and a built-in mike could make the iTablet your cordless
phone, too. And with earphones, of course, instant Symphony
Hall.
At just 10 mm thick and less than a pound-and-a-half in weight,
nothing in the PC world could even come close to the iTablet's
portability. It could even be offered in different sizes
and screen resolutions, to suit all budgets. And, of course,
in all five colors.
Trust me, Steve. If you don't build it, someone
else will -- and no matter who builds it, they will
come.
... (not his real name -- but you figured that out already,
right?) ... calls himself a "Thinker", especially about the
future. He thinks that's where he'll be spending the rest of
his life (but who's he kidding, eh? Doesn't he realize
it's always going to be now?)
Most people say to him
"You can't be serious" -- and they're right, he can't. (But
then, who can be serious about the future, seeing as
how anything can happen in it, and usually does ... er, will?)
His best book -- indeed his only book -- is entitled The
Seventh Generation, and its shareware version in Adobe
Acrobatformat is available for download from his alter-ego's
web site
(under construction right now). It's all about the next 150
years or so, and where technology might take us in that amount
of time. (Just $5.00 -- cheap! And well worth it, though he
says so himself). Check it out.
And send
him e-mail: he loves feedback! (He promises to answer,
too, eventually anyways.)
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