Merv, I posted my opinion about the people who wrote the article. I figured I don't need to summarize the article myself so long as I got people to be interested in the topic enough to get talking. If I wanted to just summarize the "original" article by Nikkei Electronics, I would have done it with much more accuracy than CNet did and interpret as it was meant to be. Yet my opinions still stand.

You forget that this is a discussion board Merv. I merely just posted my opinion on an opinion article, aiming to spur conversation from what people might take interest from. Had I presented it neatly / accurately as you might have wanted to be, people would find the post boring and go, "eh, so what" which defeats the purpose of posting to have an actual conversation with you people.

Does Merv have Alzheimer's? :( Get well soon, buddy!

Are you telling me that the japanese by and large have given up on laptops for cellphone use exclusively? seriously? I mean laptops are far more useful than just a vehicle to check email, youtube and myspace.jp.

I mean a power user probably won't use the Air like, say, a macbook pro. It's fairly limited. However the Air does have a proper keyboard and a screen larger than a few inches; it can be used for work, when a cellphone would be awkward to use at best.

The people you think of using laptops are not the type of people Apple is targetting here, in America as well as Japan.

I wouldn't be surprised though.

The cell phones made there are far more advanced then the stuff we get here in the US. Now that the iPhone has set the bar high, most cell phones have been moving on to touch screens, internet access, even high quality cameras. I know of a Nokia model that has a 10 MP camera built into it.

If the Japanese are trying to match up to the iPhone with all those features and then some, I wouldn't see any reason to be lugging around a laptop. At that point, a cell phone is far more convenient.

Do you work from a laptop? I do. I mean, I don't deny that laptops will probably wane as a status accessory but they can't really be replaced by phones. That's all I was getting at.

Also I read somewhere that while jap phones are the shit in terms of gadgets and features, jap people don't use the features very often outside of like internet connectivity and cameras and shit

which makes some sense seeing as though I have no use for many of the features in my phone, but I don't really study this sort of thing so I'm not going to make a call on the topic

Randomly, to play a devil's advocate (I'm not saying where I stand on this conversation)-

But I've seen my father, a doctor, do about 80% of his documentation and stuff on his cell phone... While he usually spends about an hour or so on his laptop at night- this includes his random net browsing. However, he never takes the laptop anywhere.

When he's doing on-call work, or making rounds, he's always using his phone for the information he has on his patients.

On the other hand, I'd love to see an accountant manage an annual budget spreadsheet on a phone.

...or an editor work on putting the next big hollywood film together.

Oh but that one's easy!

"1 dey der was a men who was werkin at depar..de.depertman... kmart and he was big lozer. so he went to another cuntrys kmart for a new begineng and met sumone who was a diffarent nashonality and so crazy becsse he has toast for brekfast but the other guy dosenot!!!!"

*Films a urinal for two hours*

"AWESOME MY PHONE HAS SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, HA HA HA HAUHAUHAHUAUHHUAUHAUHAHUAUHAHUAUHAUHAUHAUHHUAHUAHUAHUUHAHUA"

*Film wins every award possible three months later*

"I'd like to thank.. SONIC THE HEDGEHOG YEEEEEAH BITCHES UHAUHAUHAHUAUHAUHAUHAUHUHAAUHUHAUHAHUAHUAUHAUHAUHAUHAHUAHUAHUAUHA"