June 04, 2005
Laptops are mobile devices, too
Something I've been wondering about is why laptops aren't really treated as mobile devices, in any interesting way. Laptop manufacturers tend to treat them as portable desktops, and people interested in "mobile device design" focus on PDAs, cell phones, and the like.
Now that laptops outsell desktops, it's worth treating them as interesting and distinct entities that warrant special consideration as a mobile device. What, say, are the tools for the working-at-coffeehouse types? For the airplane commuters, the road warriors, the college students, etc.? What makes sense for a laptop to have that would have never made sense in a desktop? Why don't we have location-awareness built into laptops?
Anyway, something to ponder. I would wager that the folks thinking about "mobile device design" would get a lot more traction if they considered the laptop as a platform, not the PDA or cell phone.
