I'll try to explain by personal anecdotes—two of them. In my household, there's just my wife and myself. I'm an übergeek; she's a technically competent teacher. Computers are merely tools to her.
We went to Italy this past summer. We took my iPhone (data turned off), an iPad 3G, my SLR, and her camera. Because I couldn't find someone locally to sell me a photo tank, I also had to take an Airport Express, a netbook, and a card reader to save the pictures I took (I didn't have the camera connection kit at the time). Except for that, we did not use a laptop. We used the iPad extensively in Italy, paying our bills, making calls on a SIP client, browsing the web, writing blog posts, and even uploading edited photos to a photoblog at http://aureolastatua.tumblr.com. We didn't once feel like we were missing out on anything or that we needed to go to an Internet cafe. The portability was astounding. We needed a laptop in 2006 when we went to Europe to do much the same.
The second anecdote is current. When I get home, I rarely get on the single "real" computer unless I'm programming. When my wife is doing report cards, I can't get on until shortly before bedtime. In years past, I would have quickly been annoyed by this and gotten a laptop by now. I don't need it for my evening browsing—because of the iPhone and iPad.
The PC isn't going away, but it's not going to be the main screen soon. That screen won't be the iPad 1, either. It'll be g4 or g5, but it will happen. I don't need a "real" computer for a lot of what I do, anymore.
We went to Italy this past summer. We took my iPhone (data turned off), an iPad 3G, my SLR, and her camera. Because I couldn't find someone locally to sell me a photo tank, I also had to take an Airport Express, a netbook, and a card reader to save the pictures I took (I didn't have the camera connection kit at the time). Except for that, we did not use a laptop. We used the iPad extensively in Italy, paying our bills, making calls on a SIP client, browsing the web, writing blog posts, and even uploading edited photos to a photoblog at http://aureolastatua.tumblr.com. We didn't once feel like we were missing out on anything or that we needed to go to an Internet cafe. The portability was astounding. We needed a laptop in 2006 when we went to Europe to do much the same.
The second anecdote is current. When I get home, I rarely get on the single "real" computer unless I'm programming. When my wife is doing report cards, I can't get on until shortly before bedtime. In years past, I would have quickly been annoyed by this and gotten a laptop by now. I don't need it for my evening browsing—because of the iPhone and iPad.
The PC isn't going away, but it's not going to be the main screen soon. That screen won't be the iPad 1, either. It'll be g4 or g5, but it will happen. I don't need a "real" computer for a lot of what I do, anymore.