The iPad and the transition from analog to digital

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My colleague Michael Hiltzik wasn’t blown away by Apple’s initial arguments for the iPad, but he did see the sleek tablet making trouble for Amazon’s Kindle. Other journalists predict the iPad will kill the netbook market, or that it will somehow save newspapers and magazines. I’m more interested in its impact on the televisions, or rather, the amount of time people will devote to passive entertainment in their living rooms. I don’t know whether the iPad will be a phenomenon or a flop, but I’m quite confident that there is an opportunity for new devices like it that map better to the interactive, on-demand era than 20th-century gadgets like TVs. That’s because the shift from analog to digital (and from static to mobile) that is transforming all manner of media and information demands new devices too.

For more, read my Opinion L.A. blog post on the iPad’s niche.

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times’ Opinion Manufacturing Division. Follow him on Twitter: @jcahealey