Quote:
Originally Posted by wizwor
I can certainly see a day when tablet or phone form computers are the center of the personal computing experience. With the maturation of the personal area network, there's no reason to believe a bluetooth enabled computer could not automatically pair with nearby peripherals so that my portable computer outputs to nearby displays, accepts input from local keyboards and mice, and logs onto designated networks. This is not science fiction. No reason why a touch screen could not be so paired.
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Sure there is: copyright and patent law.
Proprietary hardware, proprietary software, compatibility available only by paid license... your future tablet will work with certain printers if you buy the app with that printer's drivers. Want to be able to display presentations on the big screen? You get a free app with purchase of the screen. For people who want to run them at the office, the office can buy a ten-pack of licenses. Want to run it at a friend's house? That same ten-pack is available to you!
Right now, the tablet producers are better off letting everything possible run through bluetooth. They may decide to take a more walled-garden approach. Amazon, especially, is in place to make its Kindle Fire only compatible with licensed hardware; their target demographic is much less likely than Apple's to demand compatibility across multiple devices and OS's.
I don't think it'll happen right away. I do think device manufacturers--of all sorts--are looking to both prevent similar technology from competitors (hence the hidden software with no-reverse-engineering TOS) and the possibility of licenses for use, and therefore not making compatibility automatic.