Tech Choices: Consumption Versus Creation Devices

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Thank you, Mary Jo Foley, for this helpful paradigm shift in how I now see computing devices.

We all tend to divide them into their more obvious categories: PCs, handhelds or mobile devices, gaming devices, eReaders and now tablets (iPad).

There's also the either/or way of looking at them:

- Wireless or not.

- Windows Vs. Apple

- Open Source or not.

Mary Jo is an institution in tech reporting. She's been covering Microsoft for Ziff Davis since Bill Gates was in short pants. I admire her work greatly.

In a recent posting, she "confessed" that she bought an iPad and loves it. It's her first Apple product EVER (not even an iPod, Mary Jo?).

Anyway, I was struck by her breakdown of tech devices; those she uses to create and those to consume. She's enjoying the iPad for consuming information, while sticking to her Windows world where creation is more intuitive for her.

This makes so much sense.

Before you Apple zealots lose your minds. I'm not interested in provoking a debate over which world (Windows Vs. Apple) is the best for creation. Let's be pragmatic about it. The answer is the world that's familiar to you.

Windows is familiar to Mary Jo and that's where she creates. What she's learning from her iPad is that consuming information doesn't require as much of a learning curve and she is now happily jumping back and forth between Windows and Apple.

In recent days, both Apple and Microsoft have posted record quarterly earnings. Clearly Mary Jo isn't the first to figure this out. But, I thank her for articulating it in such a helpful way.

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio