iPad Predicted to Represent 2% of North American Web Traffic by End of 2011

[Winni]

The more the better -- should bode well for HTML-5 adoption.

I'm afraid that it won't have anything to do with it -- most of this web traffic from the iPad will be through apps (and not browsers) or through streaming media.

The article also claims that the iPad has surpassed Linux. Yeah, sure. With half of the entire Internet running on Linux servers and millions of Android-powered devices that have not been counted as Linux clients although Android is nothing but yet another Linux distribution (with a Java icing), I'm pretty sure that this claim must be right. (Warning: I was being cynical here.)

If one talks about Linux without meaning just the operating system kernel (that "Linux" technically only is), you can only mean the full range of Linux-powered platforms and distributions, and since Linux runs everywhere from a wristwatch over Google's and Amazon's data centers to satellites, I doubt that the iPad dwarfs the numbers of "Linux" on the web. You just don't see it that much on desktop PCs and notebooks.

 

[AidenShaw]

Originally Posted by Popeye206
They say "North America".... US and Canada.

And Mexico.

And Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, The Bahamas and all the countries in the Leeward Islands.

 

[BC2009]

I'm afraid that it won't have anything to do with it -- most of this web traffic from the iPad will be through apps (and not browsers) or through streaming media.

The article also claims that the iPad has surpassed Linux. Yeah, sure. With half of the entire Internet running on Linux servers and millions of Android-powered devices that have not been counted as Linux clients although Android is nothing but yet another Linux distribution (with a Java icing), I'm pretty sure that this claim must be right. (Warning: I was being cynical here.)

If one talks about Linux without meaning just the operating system kernel (that "Linux" technically only is), you can only mean the full range of Linux-powered platforms and distributions, and since Linux runs everywhere from a wristwatch over Google's and Amazon's data centers to satellites, I doubt that the iPad dwarfs the numbers of "Linux" on the web. You just don't see it that much on desktop PCs and notebooks.

Good point on Android being just another variant of Linux. I think this report was based on Web traffic being monitored, and all those Linux servers don't generate Web client traffic -- so they are not saying that iOS has surpassed Linux in number of installations, but rather in number of Web clients accessing their online ads. I use Linux on the desktop (in addition to OSX and, unfortunately, Windows), and I wish websites tested against Linux variants of several browsers because I often deal with strange artifacts or unsupported plugins.

 

[ten-oak-druid]

Netbooks will likely be 0.01% next year.

 

[Reed Rothchild]

Good news if the traffic is via Safari or other browsers and not the closed app world.

Most "apps" on the appstore that access Internet stuff are basically wrapped up HTML with the straightjacket that an "app" automatically applies. We should all (including currently blinkered Apple fandroids) pray that this never becomes the norm. Thankfully, it is extremely unlikely that this will happen. Let Apple make their micropayments via locking down and hiding the web, and let the rest of the world get on with expanding and disseminating what the www is all about (Google, Microsoft (!) and the rest).


As the guy who invented the world wide web wrote just last month:

"In contrast, not using open standards creates closed worlds. Apple’s iTunes system, for example, identifies songs and videos using URIs that are open. But instead of “http:” the addresses begin with “itunes:,” which is proprietary. You can access an “itunes:” link only using Apple’s proprietary iTunes program. You can’t make a link to any information in the iTunes world—a song or information about a band. You can’t send that link to someone else to see. You are no longer on the Web. The iTunes world is centralized and walled off. You are trapped in a single store, rather than being on the open marketplace. For all the store’s wonderful features, its evolution is limited to what one company thinks up.

Other companies are also creating closed worlds. The tendency for magazines, for example, to produce smartphone “apps” rather than Web apps is disturbing, because that material is off the Web. You can’t bookmark it or e-mail a link to a page within it. You can’t tweet it. It is better to build a Web app that will also run on smartphone browsers, and the techniques for doing so are getting better all the time.

Some people may think that closed worlds are just fine. The worlds are easy to use and may seem to give those people what they want. But as we saw in the 1990s with the America Online dial-up information system that gave you a restricted subset of the Web, these closed, “walled gardens,” no matter how pleasing, can never compete in diversity, richness and innovation with the mad, throbbing Web market outside their gates. If a walled garden has too tight a hold on a market, however, it can delay that outside growth."