The Funny New Crippled Machines
Why on earth does the market -- that's us -- allow these people to get away with putting out small format computers that you can't also talk on or through, like telephones?
It reminds me of the period about five or eight years ago when the copier makers made us buy separate machines for scanning and for faxing, simply because they *could*. The technologies overlapped like crazy, the desk territory was crying out for unification, but still the manufacturers were able to get away with producing separate, crippled, machines to force us to buy two or three where one should have done.
To this day I use Wilkinson Sword razors and Crst toothpaste, simply because those two manufacturers went to market with superior products when Gillette and Colgate, respectively, were deliberately withholding superior products to exploit market friction and take profit "rents" to use the economists' term.
Now then, who will be the one to break through on the computer/communications front? My guess, tentatively: Samsung -- if only the courts don't bow to the monopolists and oligopolists and make their innovations "illegal," i.e. judicially lynched.
