I for one will not buying one for a number of reasons. First of all the device is still one that fits somewhere in the middle of usefulness. It isn’t really good at any one thing except perhaps as a video player. Battery life is average. The camera is next to useless. It works as an eBook reader but only for a little while at a time and not outside. It works as a music player but really only if you are using headphones and are using it on a desk. It is not really a full computer so application use is Smartphone like in nature but with a bigger screen. So basically it is a bitsa product, a bit of this and a bit of that but with devices that do each function better e.g. the Kindle as an eBook reader and the PS3 as a game playing machine etc.
Where the iPad and indeed all Apple products lose me is the iTunes store. Not only do they expect everyone to buy all products through their store they are requiring that any apps that offer content through an external store to also offer it through in-app purchasing plan. The app will not be allowed to provide a link to their own external stores, and they must give Apple the same 30 per cent share that it makes from all App Store purchases.
While I like the idea of Apple driving customers to say an organization like Amazon this does not help the average Apple user. More disturbing is that Apple lovers don’t see any problems with the iTune’s store approach. There are rumours that Amazon may be planning to give a free Kindle to those who agree to purchasing a certain number of books or subscriptions under the Amazon Prime service. Compared to other tablet vendors Amazon already has a long history as a product and media provider.
Since it will probably be the end of the year before we see a Kindle 4 with a touch colour screen, i.e. a tablet product, it currently falls to manufacturers like Samsung and even Microsoft to provide the direct competition. The Microsoft Xoom is about the only product at the moment that can be called a competitor. It is expensive but the WiFi only model is better priced. Sales to date have been slow mostly because of the pricing points and because the product has had a few bugs. When the price comes down and the Honeycomb Android is a bit more stable then the situation may shift a little but not a lot I predict. A more likely competitor will be the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 when it arrives and even the HP TouchPad or RIM PlayBook. Each supplier will have their own markets. At the moment the tablet market is Apple with an estimated 82 percent, Xoom is second with a mere 4 percent.
The real question, and one that many have not been asking, is even if the tablet will survive available product for much longer. Everyone I know who has one uses it to play games and watch videos, hardly the mage product Apple claims it to be. Others play with it for a week or two and then wonder why they got one. My auntie tried one and then went for the Kindle as a book reader. The iPads impact in emerging markets should be at best minimal.
What they do have now is a colour eInk screen technology that we can expect to see integrated into the next generation of eBooks and other devices.
Industry News
For a brief time recently Facebook subscribers using AT&T in the US had all their traffic pass through China Telecom before reaching their final destinations. Blame has been placed on an “innocent routing error” but whatever the cause this is a little troubling. In recent times China has been blamed for a series of hacking attempts on organizations around the world. This latest incident could have been an innocent one but theoretically the traffic could have been monitored as it passed through the network and information extracted. Did this happen? Probably not but it is the possibility that has some asking questions. Around the same time last year an estimated 15 percent of the world’s Internet traffic was diverted through China and networks used by organisations like Dell, Apple, CNN, and Starbucks were affected.
In a related incident a security breach in Australia apparently opened up the e-mails of MPs to the Chinese as they invaded the Australian Parliament House network. While I am not sure why anyone would want to read anything an Australian politician might write the network is not considered a sensitive level one. Ironically it was American officials who alerted the Australians. The government is keeping quiet and will neither confirm nor deny that the event occurred, transparency in action I guess. The non-event has compromised the emails of a number of ministers including the PM.
Also in Australia there is the NNBN, that is the not National Broadband Network. Its real name is the FTTP and will provide South Brisbane residents with speeds up to 100Mbps on a fibre network. While they are in discussions with the NBN people it remains to be seen if they can get an agreement to make their network compatible with the NBN specifications.
If you need any more proof that Apple is degenerating how about this. To be eligible for this year’s Apple Design Awards Mac OSX developers must sell their apps through the Mac App Store. So no matter how good your application is unless they sell it at their store it will not be considered. Remember that a large number of apps are not allowed to be sold in the store because Apple doesn’t like them. If Apple was a country they would be called racists and accused of Apartide. The policy means that the winner is one who does not have a direct relationship with their customers. The rest have not met one of the 93 rules for having their product in the store. Some are sensible, some are silly and some are just plain mean. For example if the application even mentions another computer platform it is rejected.
I just finished watching a video showing that the iPad 2 screen is more flexible and so more durable that the iPad 1. Of course by the time they’d finished both screens were destroyed. I love those guys.
I also love inventors. Some scientists in the US are working on a backpack sized force field based on an electromagnetic field that can apparently douse a fire. They have tested a 600 watt unit that can douse fires over one foot high. They think that they can get the same effect with a 60 watt unit configured in the right way. The best part of this story is that they don’t know how it works. The process is mostly chemical and the theory is that the EM is somehow interacting with the carbon. This technology could be used to replace sprinkler systems and works best in a confined area.
Enjoy your week.
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