Plasma
Active
a New Approach to
Tablet Computing
KDE lines up a truly free tablet operating system.
STUART JARVIS
Why would you spend a few hundred dollars on a device that is little more than
a smartphone (with a bigger screen,
without the phone)?
Despite the success of Apple’s iPad,
that is a question that seems to have
defeated most hardware and software
vendors. MeeGo struggled to define
a tablet user interface, never quite
managing more than a pre-release. It
presented a few simple options, such
as watching videos, playing music or
browsing the Web—really no more than
a modern phone with a larger screen.
Even the iPad, an acknowledged success,
is little more than an oversize iPhone. Its
“wall of apps” approach has been largely
copied by the Android-based tablets so
far appearing on the market.
