If Moses were to recreate his famous descent from the cloud today, coming down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments in hand, what would he be carrying them on? An iPad? A Kindle Fire? A Samsung or an Asus tablet? He would certainly have no lack of choices, and all of them would be lighter, and hold much more content, than those stone tablets he was burdened with. It boggles the mind to think how many commandments we might be saddled with today if Moses had access to all of the storage these contemporary tablets can hold.
As tablets become more ubiquitous (some surveys indicate that one-third of all attorneys use one in some fashion in their practice), it is time to give more thought to how we can use these content-laden devices to descend from our own personal “clouds” loaded up with the information we need to conduct our daily business.
Unlike Moses, however, we have choices available when selecting a tablet. Lots of choices.
Apple has a commanding lead in tablet sales at this point, with its much-touted iPad. The iPad is projected to sell 45 million units by the end of 2011, placing it way at the front of the pack. It is by no means the only choice, however. In his recent blog post, Jason Hiner, an editor at Tech Republic, reviewed the top ten tablets available in 2011, and makes some thoughtful observations about the competition for the hearts and minds of users, who will win, and why. Read Jason’s full review here.
Jason particularly likes the Asus EEE pad Transformer and the Samsung Galaxy, as two versatile and capable iPad alternatives, but he thinks that the Kindle Fire is likely to emerge as the strongest challenger to the iPad’s dominance.
Why? Because of its easy access to the personal cloud. As the iPad has its iCloud, the Kindle Fire offers the Amazon Cloud as a personal repository for user content. And in the final analysis, this is what will differentiate tablets, and give us an insight into their ultimate usefulness for business purposes.
Looking at tablets as “laptop alternatives”, while appropriate in some situations, really misses the point. The tablet represents a new paradigm for accessing content, offering fast and easy retrieval of a dizzying array of information from virtually anywhere in the world. They are much less effective at creating content, which will likely remain the domain of the laptop (and desktop) PC for a while longer.
So, when thinking about tablets, you should inevitably also be thinking about the Cloud. For tablets, the Cloud will be a giant hard drive in the sky, and the winners in bringing tablets to market will be those that can most effectively harness that storage and make it seamlessly and instantly accessible on a tablet. Kind of makes sense to think that the “Cloud Keepers” (i.e., Apple, Amazon, and perhaps Google) will have the inside track here.
So, if you were descending from the cloud on Mt. Sinai today (assuming there is a good Wi-Fi connection there), what tablet would you be carrying, and why? Inquiring minds want to know, so leave us a comment.
Jack Schaller has been active in the field of law office technology since 1989, and has worked with a variety of commercial accounting, legal billing, practice management, and document management software products during his twenty plus years in the software consulting field. During his tenure as a software consultant he has garnered many sales and service awards for his work with legal software products. Jack is a frequent presenter at legal conferences and seminars, and is a regular contributor to TechnoLawyer and other technology publications.
