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- Apple's Tablet is Good News for the e-Reader Market, Even if it Isn't Real
The effect of Apple’s still speculative tablet on the electronics industry continues to amaze me. Not only has it prompted countless computer makers to join the fray and release their own slate devices, but now it’s affecting e-book pricing policies over at the biggest player in that fledgling market.
Amazon announced today that it will now be offering a much more financially attractive deal for publishers providing content for its Kindle platform. Maybe it has just reached a profitability milestone in terms of the cost of Kindle unit construction that allows it to shift the burden away from content providers, but I’d hazard a guess the move has more to do with Apple’s impending announcement next week.
Why would I think that? Let’s look at the numbers. Up until now, Amazon’s profit sharing model has been, shall we say, less than kind to the people who provide its digital books. The new model gives content providers 70 percent of the total revenue derived from sales, while Amazon would keep only 30 percent. Sound familiar? That’s exactly Apple’s formula for App Store revenue sharing. Under Amazon’s previous model, providers received just about half the cut they’ll now be getting. Pretty aggressive, if you ask me.
The deal isn’t automatic for every book sold through Amazon’s Kindle store, though. There are a few criteria providers have to meet. Here’s how it breaks down, according to AppleInsider:
- The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99
- This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book
- The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights
- The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.
- Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price.
Whether or not a war really is coming, Amazon clearly doesn’t want to be left behind. And the bottom line is that’s great news for us consumers. Amazon’s revenue sharing model has been one of the major barriers in getting more content available for the platform, and now that they’re feeling the heat from Apple, be it real or imagined, the floodgates are open.
Related GigaOM Pro Research: Rumored Apple Tablet: Opportunities Too Big to Ignore
Переслать - 7 for 7: To Keyboard or Not to Keyboard, That is the Question
This is the first in a series of 7 posts in the 7 days prior to Apple’s January 27 media event in which I explore various possibilities for an Apple Tablet and other potential announcements.
The world is expecting Apple to announce a new tablet, or slate, style computer on January 27. Most predictions peg the device as essentially an iPod touch with a 10″ screen. But simply scaling Mac OS X Mobile to a larger screen size isn’t likely, as the operating system that currently powers iPhone and iPod touch models is optimized for their specific screens. The question arises, then, as to how users will input text into the Apple tablet.
The iPhone keyboard works well for several reasons. The device is small enough that you can type with just one hand while holding the phone with the same hand. The keys are surprisingly large, even in portrait mode, and Apple technology makes keys invisibly larger based on likely letter combinations. Auto-correction works well enough that the easiest way to become a fast typist on the iPhone is to suspend your disbelief that you’ll make mistakes, and just keep typing.
The same keyboard on a larger screen, whether still small or scaled up, wouldn’t work nearly as well. The biggest problem would be holding the tablet and typing at the same time. If the form factor is anything like most suspect it will be, the weight and balance of the tablet would make such input impossible, requiring users to instead hold it with one hand and hunt-and-peck to type with the other.
Current Lines of Thought
Perhaps the most obvious solution would be to split the onscreen keyboard and push it to the edges, allowing users to hold the device and type with their thumbs. A similar approach was used with a number of ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs), such as the Samsung Q1. This doesn’t strike me as particularly elegant or particularly Apple, but it could work, and might be the easiest solution technically.
Another option is an altogether different keyboard interface purposefully designed for five-finger typing with one hand. Users could hold the device in one hand, and quickly type with all fingers of the other. Combined with advanced multi-touch gestures for text input and overall control, this method is reminiscent of Microsoft Surface and Minority Report.
Unlike the iPhone and iPod touch, Apple could also allow the tablet to work with hardware keyboards, either via Bluetooth or USB connections. The current Apple wireless keyboard would make a perfect companion for times when touch input isn’t sufficient, with the touchscreen display eliminating the need to also have a mouse. Using a traditional keyboard also strikes me as very inelegant and un-Apple, but may be needed to drive mass adoption.
A Hardware Solution
However, a hardware keyboard designed specifically for the tablet and doubles as a dock might fit the bill. Given Apple’s apparent cloud ambitions (building a data center in North Carolina, purchasing LaLa, etc.) and cost concerns, the tablet is likely to have a small amount of onboard storage compared to laptops. Chances are that Apple will view the tablet as a cloud computing device, or one of several satellites orbiting around a full Mac serving as the digital media hub. Like the iPhone or iPod touch, the tablet may only hold a portion of your songs, movies, pictures and other media, meaning it will need to connect for syncing. A dock for syncing that doubles as a keyboard, with Jon Ives’ design panache, would be an excellent way to meet core needs while also extending the functionality of the device.
Given all of these options, I’m expecting three things: a variant of the software user interface that further limits users need to input text even more than the iPhone already does; an advanced multi-touch user interface that is optimized for five-finger input; and the option to use a keyboard–possibly a new keyboard that doubles as a dock–when necessary. The next-generation multi-touch capabilities that Apple has patented and developed are likely too advanced for many of today’s computer users. I expect the tablet multi-touch user interface to follow a similar path of increasing complexity and capability over several years as the trackpad and Magic Mouse have.
Related GigaOM Pro Research: Rumored Apple Tablet: Opportunities Too Big to Ignore
Переслать - Bing On the iPhone? BusinessWeek Thinks So: Report
Maybe I am too set in my ways, but I never even really tried using Bing all that much when it was released. I also found it too busy. Sure, I’m all for beautiful sweeping nature photography, but not on my search page. So I stuck with Google, without even really looking into the real working differences between the two.
According to a new report by BusinessWeek, though, I might have another chance to become more familiar with Microsoft’s search engine offering thanks to a deal between the Windows-maker and Apple. The two companies are said to be in negotiations to arrange the replacement of Google with Bing as the default search engine on the iPhone platform.
The New Mobile Landscape
Discussions are said to have been going on for weeks now, though BusinessWeek’s sources remain anonymous because the discussions have yet to be made public. They also maintain that talks could break down at any time, and there is no timeline for a decision, so it could be a while before we see any action as a result of these talks.
It’s a move that makes sense for both Apple and Microsoft. Once bitter rivals, the two are now both facing a major threat from Google in the lucrative growing mobile space. Microsoft basically looks dead in the water thanks to the incredibly stale Windows Mobile 6.5 and always just-over-the-horizon Windows Mobile 7, and while Apple is still a leader in the mobile industry, and doesn’t show any signs of slowing in the near future, Google has begun to take steps that could lead to mobile market domination.
Google’s Rise
First, Google created Android, an iPhone OS competitor that’s completely open and quickly gaining ground due to favorable licensing deals. And handset makers can spin their own UI, so that it still looks and feels like a branded, proprietary OS. Then, it bought up AdMob, which makes it the force to be reckoned with in mobile advertising. Seems Google took it right out from under Apple, too. Finally, it partnered with HTC to create the Nexus One, and set up its own mobile store that could change the way cell phones are bought the world over, if things progress according to plan.
When Apple first created the iPhone, a partnership with Google made sense. Both were challenging the might of established players in the field, like Microsoft, which at that time hadn’t descended into irrelevance, and BlackBerry, which continues to be a force to be reckoned with, although it does seem to be falling off, especially with its nascent efforts at the consumer market.
What Comes Next
Times have changed. Google now gets far more out of its partnership with Apple than does the Mac-maker. Revoking platform access is the smart move for Apple from a business perspective. But what about us lowly end users? What effect would the dissolution of the Google/Apple relationship have on consumers?
First of all, don’t worry. Apple won’t pull the plug on anything until it’s confident there won’t be any adverse effects on the user experience side of things. If the Bing default switch is coming, it’ll be an opening salvo, a way to taste consumer tolerance for change, not the first step in an inevitable overhaul.
If small changes don’t generate the kind of waves that turn over boats, then we could see other, more drastic shifts. The next most obvious place to make a change will be with the built-in Maps app. We’ve seen rumors that Apple is working on its own in-house solution, and that could well take over duties. If Apple does go this way, expect to see them up the game by rolling things like point-of-interest and navigation into the app itself, so that it comes off as improvement instead of just a business-based replacement decision.
Переслать - Battle of the Vaporware Tablets
Do you know what tablet computers and jetpacks have in common? It's not a kerosene-burning jet engine strapped to your back, though Adobe Flash on a MacBook can feel like your pants are on fire. The shared problem is that the present reality of future technologies always seems to disappoint, often resulting in products never coming to market.
It's called vaporware, and that would include the long-rumored Apple tablet. That tablet, like other Apple products that actually exist, has been getting all the attention as of late, and that's a shame. There are a number of other existentially-challenged tablets not out there right now. Here are my top five, ranked by the likelihood they will remain in the ether for all time.
#5 CrunchPad/JooJoo
Michael Arrington's CrunchPad was supposed to be "a dead simple tablet for $200," but has ended up as a combo $500 webpad and Silicon Valley legal drama. Arrington's partners, FusionGarage, dumped him and claimed ownership of the renamed JooJoo, which means "magical device" in "African." Note to FusionGarage: "African" is not a language.
Overhyped by Popular Mechanics as one of the "most brilliant" products of 2009, there's really nothing magical about JooJoo's specs: 2.4 pounds, 12" display, 4GB SSD, Wi-Fi, camera, up to five hours of battery life. The OS runs a customized Ubuntu and WebKit browser. It's the 'browser as the OS' concept, similar to what Google's doing with Chromium/Chrome, but without the backing of a company worth $200 billion.
Despite perpetually shipping in "8 to 10 weeks" since early December, and the uncertainty of litigation, JooJoo probably will ship in early 2010. That earns it fifth place among vaporware tablets today.
#4 Freescale Smartbook
Nothing says vaporware like "reference design," and that's the Freescale Smartbook. The former Mac PowerPC fabricator showed off a tablet prototype—another vaporware synonym—at CES. Freescale claimed the tablet could be made for $200 and reach market by summer, easy to say when you're not doing the making.
The Smartbook is built around a 7" display and weighs less than a pound. Internal specifications include a 1 GHz ARM CPU, 512MB RAM, 4 to 64GB storage, microSD slot, Wi-Fi, 3G modem option, and camera. All-day battery life is promised. There's also an optional keyboard and docking station that when combined with the giant bezel makes the screen look minuscule. The operating system demonstrated at CES is custom Linux, but doesn't appear much customized for touch.
Unlike the CrunchPad, the Smartbook probably won't even make it to the perpetually shipping phase of the vaporware life cycle, but at least one has been built.
#3 OLPC XO-3
The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization has provided the world's poorest children more than a million computers and counting, and the XO-3 will never be one of them, but then it doesn't have to. “We don’t necessarily need to build it,” OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte told Forbes. “We just need to threaten to build it.” With a design goal like that, how can you fail?
Hypothetically available in 2012 for $75, the XO-3 "will feature a new design using a single sheet of flexible plastic and will be unbreakable and without holes in it." The page-sized display, 8.5 by 11 inches, will have "both reflective and LCD capabilities,” making it viewable in the sun and as an e-reader. Internally, the XO-3 supposedly will have an ARM CPU running at 8 GHz, though Negroponte admits that's a "provocative" target. You think? People in the Star Trek reboot don't have kit like this, so yeah, provocative works as well as vaporware.
#2 Microsoft Courier
In 2001, Bill Gates introduced the Tablet PC to the world, and nearly a decade later Steve Ballmer did it again, but not with this device. Instead, a wildly gesticulating Ballmer claimed the "Slate PC" moniker at CES, showing off a nameless, nothing-new tablet from HP that will be available sometime this year, not that anyone cared. People wanted Courier.
That's the name of this device, as first reported by Gizmodo in September. The booklet—so much for Slate PC—has two 7" displays connected by a hinge, multi-touch and stylus input, camera on back, maybe inductive charging for power. The OS appears to be designed for the device, so it's not a Windows 7 tablet, and there are plenty of applications designed for it, so it's not Windows 7 tablet. No word on battery life, price, or availability, except that it's supposed to be in the "late prototype" stage of development, which makes one wonder why Courier wasn't at CES.
Just watching the concept video for Courier, how could one not declare Microsoft the winner in the Battle of the Vaporware Tablets? Because once again Apple has been there and done that.
#1 Apple Knowledge Navigator
Even twenty years later, the Apple Knowledge Navigator concept reigns supreme among vaporware tablets. Opening the booklet reveals a pair of magical panels that appear to merge into a single display, that display having speakers on the sides, web camera and data card slot on the top. Nice touch how it tilts upward for typing, but touch is almost an afterthought.
Most of the machine-human interaction is done via a bow-tie wearing "agent," or AI, through voice. This is vaporware at its finest, not just a demo, but like living in alternate reality, just like Apple in the late '80s under John Sculley. We will see whether Apple under Steve Jobs, who killed Apple’s first tablet, the Newton, can do better. Don’t expect talking heads in mock-turtlenecks, but it would be unwise to bet against the real Apple tablet in 2010.
Related GigaOM Pro Research: Is The Age of the Web Tablet Finally Upon Us?
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