Mr. Jobs - Does General Purpose mean Tablet?
“I’m sure there will always be dedicated devices, and they may have a few advantages in doing just one thing,” he said. “But I think the general-purpose devices will win the day. Because I think people just probably aren’t willing to pay for a dedicated device.”
He said that Apple doesn’t see e-books as a big market at this point, and pointed out that Amazon.com, for example, doesn’t ever say how many Kindles it sells. “Usually, if they sell a lot of something, you want to tell everybody.”
Maybe I'm reading between the lines a bit here - but Job's recent pot-shot at Amazon's Kindle makes me think that Steve has been thinking a lot about his top-secret new tablet-like device that may or may never be released and why it would be a superior reader to a Kindle.
I do love my Kindle, mainly because its easy on the eyes and i only charge it ever couple of weeks. So in that way, its a great digital replacement for *most* of the books i read. I still end up buying big old heavy computer books because reading them on an Kindle sucks and I'm not paying $450 for the huge Kindle DX.
If (or when) Apple releases a tablet computer, I'm guessing it will have some functionality that makes it a very good reader (probably not 2 weeks battery life). If so, I'll still use the kindle to read books, but I'll very much enjoy going digital for all my 10lb tech books.
