The Real Test

Well, here goes nothing. I have pirated a Bluetooth keyboard and paired it with the iPhone, so now we see once and for all what it’s going to be like to actually blog from this thing.

Looks like I may miss having a mouse to help with corrections and edits but for sheer speed of input, this can’t be beat. Ironically, this experiment comes on a day that Cisco, of all people, launches what may be the best challenge yet to the iPad: a 7″ tablet with the infelicitous name “Cius” (apparently pronounced ‘see-us’) which runs on Android and supports, among other things, Cisco Telepresence. Which is more or less the gold standard in you-are-there video communication, to the point where it was practically a character in 24 and gets commercials with Ellen Page during the World Cup.

It’s true: the PC is going away. More and more people are putting the lie to the idea that the iPad is only for consumption with assorted feats of media creation (and hell, if I can blog like this on the phone, how much easier with the bigger screen?) while the Cius expressly supports thin-client login so you can use your work machine from afar. And let me emphasize: I am writing this on a razor-thin Bluetooth keyboard and the most compact smartphone out there. The combined pair takes up less room in my bag than a trade paperback thickness or a magazine area footprint. If I could just find one of those old collapsable Palm keyboards from years ago, like the one a former contract “boss” had and threw on the scrap pile for lack of utility…

well hell, I guess that’s that question answered. It can be done. Add the keyboard to the mix, and everything I would have done on the laptop, I can do on the iPhone…except for ripping DVDs. And Netflix and Hulu seem determined to make that unnecessary as soon as possible. Hell, I can get VGA video out on the iPhone, what’s to prevent me connecting it to a projector and watching movies on the wall? (Except for the fact that it would almost certainly destroy the battery life.)

We live in the future, boys and girls. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.

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