Quote:
Originally Posted by DawnFalcon
No, the iPad's an internet appliance. A PC is by definition general purpose, which the iPad (which is in Apple's walled garden) does not meet.
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By whose definition? Yours? When the term "Personal Computer" was coined, maybe you're too young or new to computing to know this but, most computers required a room of their own to house them, and a team of operators to keep them running. Those computers were highly controlled, and though in some cases (such as at universities) a person could get away with using them generally, the common case was that the operators controlled everything those computers would run.
The term Personal Computer merely referred to the same type of device (electronic number crunching, aka "computer" as in, "computes things") that could fit on a desk or in a generally acceptably personal amount of space. It has nothing to do with the capabilities in terms of general usefulness, openness, or whatever. That's all coincidence.
Really the only thing to take away from this reminder is that the term "PC" is meaningless in its original form, and in current times it actually more often refers to computers running Microsoft Windows operating systems, vs. "Macs" or "Linux" computers.
As for "internet appliance" this is a term that was coined to refer to prepackaged device+software combinations that had predetermined purposes and could be deployed easily. For example, google produced an internet appliance for search. It was meant to be dropped into a LAN and produce an index of all the private data there. Other devices termed internet appliances include those crappy email terminals targeted at grandmothers, as well as set top boxes like WebTV.
So frankly neither term applies to a device like an iPad. iPads are equal in capability to an iPod Touch, but larger. I wouldn't consider an iPod Touch to be a computer nor something simple enough to be termed an appliance. In fact, in the industry this device mostly resembles what as been called a "MID" or "Mobile Internet Device" as its intended use is based primarily around internet access. But nearly all MIDs allow third party software, so that name is a bit misleading too. If you look at similarly capable devices based on android, but taking notebook form, we see the term "netbook." A decade ago this device would've been lumped into the palmtop category.
In reality I expect this and other similarly capable devices to become the hallmark of "tablets" without any added "pc" moniker. As consumer electronics companies tend to have more say on this question in the end, I'll be surprised if the term isn't used this way in the future. Of course, I also wouldn't be surprised to see some reference to "pad" become the norm, just because of Apple's
awesome naming choice.