The combination of highly portable devices and the mobile internet is transforming our experience of computing.
But the company stumbled by failing to recognize quickly enough that, in the age of the Internet, no one wanted a portable device that couldn't get online.
The internet is a portable utility that an enormous populace carries around at every moment.
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An important milestone in the next 12 months will be when for the first time the number of internet-connected portable devices is expected to exceed that of web-enabled personal computers.
This is also directly related to the iPod, since music on the world's most popular portable music player ever has to be downloaded via the Internet.
NeoPlanet: This fully functional free Web browser and "portable portal" is based on the Internet Explorer engine.
Steve saw portable and mobile devices as bigger than the Internet.
The two companies are already developing a range of cheap and portable Internet appliances that will enable people to use on-line services as routinely as they make a telephone call.
One answer, of course, is to disconnect your computer from the internet completely, and never to accept any form of portable media from anyone.
All three combine to represent the logical future of personal computing: surfing, shopping and downloading the Net from your car, cell phone and TV set, and from portable Internet appliances.
The "killer applications" of speedy networks (which theoretically can transmit data at 40 times the rate of conventional cellular systems) have been widely touted to be portable videophones, plus access to Internet-based broadband content: games, music and shopping.
Iomega's HipZip is a portable MP3 player that uses disks about the size of a half-dollar coin to record songs from the Internet.
Adding to the experience are the free plastic buckets and spades for making sandcastles, portable goals for beach soccer, nets for volleyball and even giant touch-screen internet terminals on the boardwalk.
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