Is the Apple Tablet a Harbinger of a Revenue Model "Do-Over" on the Internet?

Fascinating New York Times article, with accompanying video, suggests that the Apple Tablet will charge for Internet content and help perform a "do-over" of Internet business model. The reporters speculate on the video that the Internet has been largely a failed revenue-maker and that the Apple Tablet will charge for content, have more targeted advertising, and more graphic, more impressive advertising, resulting in a far more superior, and far more-profit-making Internet business model than before.

I should have known the Internet couldn't be free forever. Sooner or later, we had to pay the piper. Perhaps the Apple Tablet is a harbinger of pay-as-you-watch Internet content. 

This Newsweek blog ponders that possibilities of other industries that the Tablet could radically change or even dominate, including ebooks, television, movies, music, and gaming. 

However, with inflated expectations perhaps, Wired Gadget Lab sees the Apple Tablet as being inevitably disappointing, lacking 5 qualities that would make it a dream machine. 

Comments

[Tom Welch]

The NY Times has already announced that in early 2011 it will start charging readers to read content.

[Keith Beesley]

I read the same article in the (print) NY Times.

I would love for something or someone to rescue traditional books, newspapers, and magazines from their inevitable result of their own (bad) business decisions, but I sure hope it's not Apple. Otherwise, Steve Jobs & co. could be the ones deciding everything we see, hear and read.