Most people seem to use technology in broadly similar ways these days. Surf the web, deal with email, watch YouTube, get on Facebook and other social sites, and some basic to intermediate Office-y stuff.
It doesn’t really matter whether this is on a smartphone, tablet, notebook or desktop computer. All of these devices essentially provide similar functionality.
Devices within a category also essentially work in similar ways. Small differences aside, a touchscreen phone works like a touchscreen phone regardless of the operating system or manufacturer.
The cloud and ubiquitous connectivity are also increasingly decoupling our data storage from our devices. This means the amount of storage space on devices will increasingly matter less and less.
There is some talk about tablets being the television of this generation. As a hardware form factor, possibly. But I think it goes beyond this. The devices will ultimately matter less than the content and our interactions with each other, and with ideas.
Concepts like expression, accessibility, values, fashionability, community, and philosophy will become more important discussions over CPU cores, screen and memory size.
