So you are saying that it's the OS that defines a PC? Ok. Then we have some common ground.
You asked whether they can be ported. Not whether they could be used well with touch. All apps can be used, although clunky, with touch.
Okay, so for the purposes of statistics such as the one this article was written about, how should the iPad be classified? Should they take a sample of iPad owners and ask them if they can do all their daily tasks on it, and then count only that percentage of iPads as PCs?
A definition cannot vary by person, else it's useless. If I (and a bunch of other people) suddenly decide to use the word "microwave" in place of what you would call a "television," how would anybody know what anybody else was talking about? It's like those people who use "literally" when they actually mean "figuratively," though less obvious.
If we are talking about an absolute definition for what a PC is, yes my definition is useless. But the usual definition of PC, which is:
"A personal computer (PC) is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator."
already counts the iPad as a PC or the iPhone for that matter. The definition doesn't really say anything about the screen size, or the capabilities of the OS.
But since you don't accept the terms of that definition, and basically everything you opposed were "personal" (incapabilities of the OS for you, lack of memory for you, etc) I also made the definition personal. A device which can't be classified as a PC for you, can be classified as a PC for others.
Sure they are. But nobody would say that the iPad feels heavier than a laptop. : )
Well, I don't really work that well with small screens. I have a 30" on my Mac Pro and even the 15" rMBP is small for me for doing side by side work. On my laptop I usually have one app covering the whole estate and use spaces to switch to other apps. So yes, it's all relative.
Well, Apple does include enough RAM for most users. They can't simply put in 4 GB RAM. And with my browsing style, that would barely be cutting it.
Again, relative. The users I've been talking about are already doing almost everything on their iPads. I mean just for one second imagine that your job doesn't require you to use a computer, and you are not a hobbyist either. What is there for you to do on a computer really other than communicating via basic things such as email/twitter and obviously browsing the web and playing games?
Here's an interesting example. My closest friend, who hasn't really used his computer for anything other than games when we were kids, is basically a computer-less person today. He doesn't even check his emails every day, and doesn't really play games either. He doesn't have a facebook or twitter account and rarely browses the web. So on average he was using the computer for less than half an hour a day. He then received an iPad for free because someone gave it to his father as a present and his father is even more computer illiterate so he gave it to him. It's been 2 months and now he has more apps on his iPad than I do on mine. Using the app store, he bought at least 50 games, most of them free, and is doing actual work related stuff on his iPad which he never did on his laptop. He said he didn't want to carry his laptop around due to weight but the iPad is with him all the time. Every time we meet he's asking me what kind of apps there are for doing this or doing that, and I'm mostly clueless because I don't do content creation on my iPad. But he's the reason why these devices are selling like crazy. They are more useful to these people. And he certainly does not represent a minority.
Tablet PC's were terrible because their OS and their apps weren't designed for touch. They were simply PC's where you replaced mouse clicks with finger clicks. Apple/Android did a much better job than that, wrote a whole new OS, came up with a bunch of new touch API's and let the developers make apps which were actually designed for touch. If a tablet PC is a PC, I don't see why a tablet today isn't one. A tablet PC was less useful than a tablet is today, on all fronts.
I don't think he does his coding and compiling on his tablet. At his work, he has some 8 core Dell workstation to work with. But as his personal computer he uses his tablet.
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