In fact, I have seen more tablets in the wild in Beijing than I do in London. Even the famous and enormous Beijing duck restaurant, just off Wangfujing Avenue, offers a tablet menu to customers. Just tick off your choice and it arrives at the table. Unfortunately I ordered what I thought was a cheap bottle of Chinese Great Wall red wine at 68 yuan only to find I had carelessly misplaced a zero and the actually price was a hefty ¥680 (£68). It was all the more embarrassing because I wasn’t paying. It’s just too easy to tick those boxes.
This use of tablets as an interactive menu is something that I think will become commonplace in the future. Apart from providing a new and rather interesting way to choose your food, it also introduces tablet computing to people who would, perhaps, otherwise never thought of trying a tablet. Once they have stabbed a bit of Beijing Duck or a gong po chicken they are going to think they would do with one of these useful devices at home.
This could never have happened with a traditional computer with keyboard and mouse, however small. The tablet is just right for so many new tasks that I am sure it will become universal within a short time. Apple, as the premium brand, could lose out on this low-end market, but will benefit as people are introduced to tablets on a day-to-day basis. They will think “iPad”, although the tablet in the photograph is not an iPad and I couldn’t decide what it was. But it did the trick.