I understand why this position is theoretically reassuring as some sort of an open portal onto the device but as a practical matter, web apps will be just as irrelevant on the ipad as they are on the iphone.
To gold rush developers, perhaps. I spend most of my iphone time in safari, and I don't think I'm alone. With a bigger screen I'd use it even more.
This thing is good for the web, which is what we all need to be pushing. It brings the web to the absolute front. This is "webTV" without all the stupid. A computer that gives you a modern browser and then gets out of your way. The fact that it also comes with a closed marketplace for proprietary apps is neat for a few lucky developers, but hardly matters to the "future of computing".
You're worrying about how we can make "the device" free. Why? All the good free stuff is, necessarily, device-agnostic, and this particular device gives above average access to it.
To gold rush developers, perhaps. I spend most of my iphone time in safari, and I don't think I'm alone. With a bigger screen I'd use it even more.
This thing is good for the web, which is what we all need to be pushing. It brings the web to the absolute front. This is "webTV" without all the stupid. A computer that gives you a modern browser and then gets out of your way. The fact that it also comes with a closed marketplace for proprietary apps is neat for a few lucky developers, but hardly matters to the "future of computing".
You're worrying about how we can make "the device" free. Why? All the good free stuff is, necessarily, device-agnostic, and this particular device gives above average access to it.