Every now and again I come across a piece of clickbait that I just can't help but to click on.  This past week I saw this piece on TechCrunch the other day, supposedly proclaiming that tablets are dead.  The main thesis of the article is that  since there wasn't a lot of brand new, innovative, product in the tablet lines at MWC (mobile world congress) that the tablets are now a commodity and therefore they are dead as a product.  Over the past few years I haven't seen a lot of stuff in the computing world that is drool worthy, certainly not like when I was in high school and the fastest computer was a 66Mhz computer processor.  Even with smartphones in the early 2000s when I, and others into technology, was buying new phones (and selling the old one) every six months.

Smartphones are still around, computers are still around, and tablets will still be around. I think that we've reached a plateau on how innovative we can be with each iteration.  If the device does what it's supposed to do, and it still works, why spend another $500-$700 every year (or every other year) to get the next best thing?  I still have an iPad2.  I got it when it first came out.  It's slow, it crashes from time to time, and it's not a spring chicken.  That said, it still allows me to read PDFs, browse the web, and view netflix - so it does what I need it to do.

Computers have not become portable enough to replace the tablet.  I like my surface pro 3 (despite its ghost touch issues) and I do like my 4 year old Samsung Slate (need to get some more storage for it), but these still don't compete with tablets on weight and battery life.