WEB207 - Topic 2.3 - Mobile Media & Apps

In order to get started thinking through this area, when reading, please consider:
1. Do smart phones, tablets and other highly portable devices fundamentally change our relationship to and with media? Are we now (and will we increasingly become) part of a nexus of perpetual web media creation and consumption?

2. While the iPhone and smart phones in general are iconic of black-box convergence (ie all technologies coming together in one device), on the basis of the reading and your experience, will one device ever be the ‘norm’?

3. How important are apps? Are these just programs for new types of computers, or is app culture a markedly different approach to buying software? Indeed, are apps just software or has the distinction between programs and web media forms become even less clear?

During the lecture there was some discussion about Apple's completely controlled environment where "they've done all of the thinking for you" and a user gets a "guaranteed experience", versus Android's open-source system that lets you get under the hood and tinker and do what you like.  The analogy that immediately sprang to mind was the old "Mac vs PC" debate, which had exactly the same parameters.  Poor Apple

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