You probably expect me to bitch this out (if you know what I'm talking about) but instead I'm going to use it as a lead-in to a general mobile problem.

For those who aren't up-to-the-hour on this stuff, the iPad is a just-announced Apple product which is basically the mix of an iPhone and Mac Book Air display. Half an inch thick, 1.5 pounds, multitouch 9.7" IPS screen (1024x768). 16-64 GB of storage, custom 1 GHz processor, 802.11-n wireless, 3G connection and more.

I'm of two minds on this. First, as I wrote about over two years ago, I think that the desirable mobile future is in slate-style multitouch tablets. Laptops are nice when you've got a table to sit at, but their keyboards and bases make them completely unusable in other scenarios. Solution? Make the display detachable and itself portable. Give it its own battery and transmit user input and display output between the display and computing base. Apple's approach stuffs everything into the display itself which has ups (simplicity) and downs (my version would let you use the display as just that, a display, for anything from a netbook-grade computer to a full gaming machine). But it's still an admirable attempt as far as form factor is concerned. And hey, they're even making a dock with a keyboard base--if that can be used unpowered, you eliminate the laptop benefit of a hardware keyboard. Aaand they got rid of the retard chrome accents that they've senselessly been horny for. Unfortunately, that's where Apple and I stop agreeing on things, and I'm not talking about business practices here. This is also where the Mobile Conundrum part of my journal starts up.

The recent trend, it seems, has been to make software, and then to make mobile software. We've got web browsers and then we've got mobile web browsers. Chat clients and mobile chat clients. Mobile versions of software are optimized for low-resolution screens with lower performance overhead and touch/multitouch input. But don't we want those things anyway? Aren't space-efficient interfaces with slick touch-enabled controls and low resource use good for laptops and desktops as well? And there's another odd division, too--the kinds of chips used in the devices. Now, my knowledge on this subject is extremely limited so correct me if I'm wrong on any of this stuff, but basically everything from desktops to netbooks use your standard x86 architecture, while mobile devices almost invariably use the ARM architecture.

So here's where things stand. Desktops and laptops are slowly getting traditionally mobile features--touch-oriented inputs, for the most part. Mobile devices are getting enough computational power to do more than your 2000-era PDA text editor, and can do 3D graphics, web browsing, video playback and more. The two sides of computing, stationary behemoth and mobile lightweight, are converging towards each other, with devices like the iPad and Netbooks all but passing each other (the iPad screen is bigger than some netbooks, with comparable weight, and some netbooks are severely underpowered and can't do half the stuff that the iPad can). And yet they still retain the division in hardware and software, even though they try to tackle the same problem.

There are three potential ways this can play out. First, everything becomes a computer and runs computer OSes and computer software. This is good because it brings an extensive back-catalog of software, but bad because much of it isn't designed for mobile use--interface and performance issues will exist at times. Alternately, everything becomes an ARM-powered device with a new (iPhone? Android? Windows Mobile?) OS using newly-coded software. This is good because it uses mobile design considerations to make for good mobile software and potentially better desktop software, but bad because everything you owned is now useless. Or we can continue to have two different platforms, one from desktop/x86 roots and one from PDA/ARM roots, competing against each other and doing well in their own markets, but being completely in-fucking-compatible with each other.

...I dunno about you guys, but I'm not okay with this shit. I want a unified computing architecture. I don't want games that only run on my Nintendo DS or an iPhone/Pod/Pad or laptop. For that matter I don't want any applications that only run on one platform. I want a smooth continuity in resolution, size and performance from the 640x360 (half-720p) smartphone to the most monstrous of desktop computers. Just in the past few weeks, Sepf was delighted to find that he could play Pokemon on his phone. To me, it's pathetic that we actually get excited when we can play our old games on new devices. That should be EXPECTED. They're general purpose computers. Or, they should be.

What are your thoughts? Do we teach our mobile devices to sit, multitask and high-rez, or try to squeeze more watts and grams from our netbooks? Or do you like the division between traditional mobile and traditional desktop?

Me, I hate mobile stuff. I don't like making compromises. I'm not going to pay for a phone which is 80% the cost of a laptop but can't do Flash or 720p video. I want a DS Lite-sized ultramobile PC running a multitouch-capable version of Windows 7. I want a 720p screen and some UI improvements to make it easier to navigate Windows with a fingertip on a smaller screen. Most importantly, I don't want to sacrifice features just because I'm moving from my desk to a coffee shop to a plane. I don't want a different OS, I don't want to have to close down an application to open another (ahem, iPhone OS), I don't want to have to re-buy games and applications with trimmed-down versions on my mobile device.

Long story short, while I can definitely appreciate the idea of a multitouch slate, I want it to be a computer rather than a PDA.