<p>Given the expected announcement by Apple in just a few hours from now, this quote/prediction is one of the best in the list that's being compiled here:</p>
<p>"Second, I'd like to comment on the avalanche of tablets poised to enter the market in the coming months.</p>
<p>First, it appears to be just a handful of credible entrants, not exactly an avalanche. Second, almost all of them use seven-inch screens as compared to iPad's near 10-inch screen. Let's start there. One naturally thinks that a seven-inch screen would offer 70% of the benefits of a 10-inch screen. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. The screen measurements are diagonal, so that a seven-inch screen is only 45% as large as iPad's 10-inch screen. You heard me right; just 45% as large. </p>
<p>If you take an iPad and hold it upright in portrait view and draw an imaginary horizontal line halfway down the screen, the screens on the seven-inch tablets are a bit smaller than the bottom half of the iPad display. This size isn't sufficient to create great tablet apps in our opinion.Well, one could increase the resolution of the display to make up for some of the difference. It is meaningless, unless your tablet also includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one quarter of the present size.</p>
<p>Apple's done extensive user-testing on touch interfaces over many years, and we really understand this stuff. </p>
<p>There are clear limits of how close you can physically place elements on a touch screen before users cannot reliably tap, flick or pinch them. This is one of the key reasons we think the 10-inch screen size is the minimum size required to create great tablet apps.</p>
<p>Third, every tablet user is also a smartphone user. No tablet can compete with the mobility of a smartphone, its ease of fitting into your pocket or purse, its unobtrusiveness when used in a crowd. Given that all tablet users will already have a smartphone in their pockets, giving up precious display area to fit a tablet in our pockets is clearly the wrong tradeoff. The seven-inch tablets are tweeners, too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with an iPad."</p>
<p>SOURCE: <a href="http://m.seekingalpha.com/article/230710">http://m.seekingalpha.com/article/230710</a><br></p>
<p>Rgds,</p>
<p>Tracy</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Oct 23, 2012 1:21 PM, "Chaitanya Dhareshwar" <<a href="mailto:chaitanyabd@gmail.com">chaitanyabd@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>So considering the remarkable inverse accuracy of these statements they should have announced "Digital divide will be around for ever, we guarantee at least 5 years" - and then in 4 years we'd be clean?</div>
<div> </div><div>-C<br><br></div><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 9:51 PM, David Conrad <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:drc@virtualized.org" target="_blank">drc@virtualized.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;padding-left:1ex;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid" class="gmail_quote"><div>On Oct 23, 2012, at 5:12 AM, Chaitanya Dhareshwar <<a href="mailto:chaitanyabd@gmail.com" target="_blank">chaitanyabd@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> That was 5 computers - <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/feb/21/computing.supercomputers" target="_blank">http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/feb/21/computing.supercomputers</a><br>
<br>
</div><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson#Famous_misquote" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson#Famous_misquote</a><br>
<br>
However, that article you referenced suggests 5 is 4 too many.<br>
<div><br>
> It's like Gates saying "640K Ram should be enough for everyone"<br>
<br>
</div><a href="http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484" target="_blank">http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484</a> (note: potentially offensive language unrelated to the Gates quote towards the end of that article)<br>
<br>
Bill Gates did however say (in 1989) that Microsoft would never make a 32-bit operating system and that spam would be "a thing of the past in two years time" in 2004.<br>
<div><br>
> But yes why do they make such silly statements? And they're the ones in the forefront of computing (facepalm)<br>
<br>
</div>Making predictions about the future is known to be a bit challenging, e.g., <a href="http://listverse.com/2007/10/28/top-30-failed-technology-predictions/" target="_blank">http://listverse.com/2007/10/28/top-30-failed-technology-predictions/</a><br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
-drc<br>
<br>
<br>
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