Re: Odd middle ground
"A tablet is a media consumption device with a bigger screen than a phone, that is all. Useless for productivity, despite the best marketing efforts of Apple and Microsoft.
Horseshit. That may be all it is for YOU, but I can go to a client's site, take photos, make sketches with pro-level art tools (Serif Software Affinity Photo, which I also use on the desktop, since I don't feel like renting Adobe Photoshop), create a quote and email it all in a PDF to a client before I get back to the office. I can troubleshoot relatives' computer problems (being the family geek) remotely with Team Viewer. I can even type long-form text files on the screen -- not being a touch-typist, the lack of a physical keyboard is utterly immaterial to me (although I, at least, have the intellectual honesty to admit that something that I have no need for MIGHT be crucial to someone else!) -- and being able to look at the keyboard AND the output on-screen at the same time works well for me.
Now, it's true that I spend a lot of my leisure time using my iPad (9.7") and my Samsung Tab 4 (7") for consuming content -- try reading with severely nearsighted sixty-mumble-year-old eyes on a moving city bus on a laptop or phone! -- but saying that that's ALL a tablet could POSSIBLY be useful for is just flat-out wrong. I can't drive so, for instance, I might consider a motorcycle to be a frivolous toy, good only for cruising around for amusement. But I had a friend years ago who couldn't afford a car, so rode her motorcycle year-round -- including in New England winters -- to get to her third-shift job after the busses stopped running at night. For me, a motorcycle had no use case -- for her, it most certainly DID.
There are myriad people who have use-cases different from yours or mine. Many of them may be niche cases -- as I will admit MINE is -- but, when you come right down to it, EVERY individual is a niche case and if you can fill a lot of niches, you can have a solid industry.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
