More Portable Madness

Apple has released Intel Core 2 Duo versions of their non-pro Macbooks. What does this mean for you? Possibly the best budget laptop if you're willing to learn how to use Apple's OSX instead of sloshing around in Windows for the rest of your life. At a little over 1,000 dollars, it can pretty much do everything you want. Choose from fancy Apple white or get a black one to match your ipod.

I was at a keynote address by Kevin Ryan (CEO, ShopWiki among others) this morning for Ad-Tech. The presentation itself was about the differences to the internet in the last ten years (1996 compared to 2006). Though there were alot of interesting points, the one of relevance to this post is the portable device market.

He mentions that newspapers and magazines, though losing alot of readership to the internet still exist because of one main factor: portability. It's much easier to carry around a newspaper while your on the subway or waiting for your morning cup of coffee than it is to keep your laptop open. A palm pilot, though useful, doesn't have the physical area to make it an enjoyable read.

We're missing the proper hardware. I've always had the idea to create an electronic tablet. It would simply work with PDF files, just s small 11x8 screen with a memory card (0r usb with built in memory) to load PDF files into this device. You could simply page through the PDF. This device would be lightweight, it's only functionality would be to display newspaper, book, or magazine articles. Revolutionize media! Save paper!

I have no idea how to start this idea, but I feel like it would be rather simple to create a large lightweight screen with one functionality. Thought it wouldn't be a device that you could store in your pocket, in theory it would be no more annoying than carrying around a cumbersome newspaper or a heavy magazine.

So buy a Macbook and feel free to steal my electronic book idea. Just let me know if you invent it so I can be first in line to get one.