You might file this under D for "Duh."

[hal]

I still have a Palm device as well as a WM5 machine as well, and while they do work, the larger screen of even a smaller tablet is welcome to my older eyes. Plus support is out there for these newer devices. I started another thread about my cheap testing-the-waters tablet (Sylvania) under the ereader section. Since this is a lot of what I used my PDAs for, it might indeed be the niche.

IIRC, you also have fat fingers, so a tablet shall be a more pleasant input device than a pocketable device :P

[LandSurveyor]

Yes, "dog paws" indeed.

[r0k]

Perhaps somebody will come up with a jailbreak app which allows an iPhone to be "controlled" from an iPad. That would be great as I would keep all my work stuff and contacts on my iPhone and entertainment stuff on my iPad. Then when a call comes in, I could take it on my iPad. If I wanted to send an email, I would use the email app on my iPhone. This would work for those times when I have both with me and I'd never be in a situation where I have to juggle devices. After the jailbreak world does this, (inspired by Atrix no doubt), perhaps Apple will be dragged kicking and screaming to the idea of "pairing" two iOS devices.

I'm loving that the Atrix is out and Galaxy tab and so forth. Competition is good. And I agree that 100K units is not exactly a failure. I heard that BB Playbook is delayed cuz Apple snapped up all the displays. When it arrives, the heat will be turned up a little more. I don't expect Apple to dominate tablets forever like they dominate mp3 players, but I do expect them to hold on to market share in spite of a deluge of Android and other tablets. This is because Apple has such a significant head start. The A4 and now A5 chips give Apple a tablet price advantage the others have to bleed to compete with.

My huge fingers enjoy my iPad much more than they enjoy my iPhone but as a pocketable device, my iPhone is with me 99% of the time while my iPad is with me less than 25% of the time which is significantly more than my netbook was ever along with me. The thing that I think hurts Atrix is the form factor. The phone is small enough and nice enough but if I'm going to haul along a netbook, wouldn't I want one that ran a "real" OS and was more than simply an extension of my phone?

While I think the failure of Atrix is too early to call, I doubt this thing will compete with tablets. I expect to see this thread resurrected in about a year and by then the failure of Atrix will be easier to recognize.

[Mi An]

I heard that BB Playbook is delayed cuz Apple snapped up all the displays.

Display shortages are everywhere these days. Lots of that with superamoled, leading to superLCD as a replacement. I wish I had money to put into display futures.

[Varjak]

Display shortages are everywhere these days. Lots of that with superamoled, leading to superLCD as a replacement. I wish I had money to put into display futures.

Display futures! Wow, that makes me think of the 'old days' when they actually traded DRAM futures as a commodity. I think those contracts are long gone.