Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Enter the Tablet Naysayers!
At the moment, Apple’s tablet is not a real product but a gumbo of rumor, speculation, patent diving, and unabashed daydreaming. But it’s already inspiring a thoughtful backlash.
At the moment, Apple’s tablet is not a real product but a gumbo of rumor, speculation, patent diving, and unabashed daydreaming. But it’s already inspiring a thoughtful backlash.
I continue to think of my iPhone not as a phone but as a personal computer. Which is why I continue to be so nonplussed about Apple’s barring of some applications on the grounds that they compete with its own apps, and others at (reportedly) the behest of AT&T.
About the only thing we know for sure about Apple’s allegedly upcoming tablet computer is that there’s definitely misinformation floating around at the moment. Last week, AppleInsider was exceptionally confident that Apple will be shipping its long-awaited tablet computer in the first quarter of next year.
In theory, software version numbers should be about as scintillating as as serial numbers, house numbers, channel numbers, or Vehicle Identification Numbers. You don’t much more mundane than the practice of keeping track of a software package’s major and minor editions by assigning decimal numbers to them. Except…version numbers long ago stopped being version numbers.
If you ask Apple or AT&T how much the iPhone 3G S costs, they’ll emphasize two prices: $199 for the 16GB version and $299 for the 32GB one, as Apple does here.
Poor Twitter! It may be the hottest service on the Web, but it’s also profoundly misunderstood.
As I said in my post last Sunday on Microsoft’s “Laptop Hunter” ads, it’s unrealistic to expect TV commercials to contribute to a thoughtful discussion of anything.
There’s something about comparing the prices of Windows PCs and Macs that makes otherwise cool and collected people–Windows and Mac users alike–become profoundly emotional and partisan, until steam shoots out of their ears and their eyeballs turn bright red.
Old computer products, like old soldiers, never die. They stay on the market–even though they haven’t been updated in eons. Or their names get slapped on new products–available only outside the U.S. Or obsessive fans refuse to accept that they’re obsolete–long after the rest of the world has moved on.
Last week, PCMag.com’s Sascha Segan pointed out something unusual about former Vice President Al Gore’s keynote speech at next week’s CTIA Wireless phone trade show in Las Vegas: It wasn’t going to be open to the press, apparently at the request of Gore or his staff. It was a truly jarring bit of news. I’ve been attending tech trade shows for a couple of decades, and can’t remember a single other keynote that the media wasn’t invited to attend.
My favorite moment at this year’s Macworld Expo keynote had nothing to do with any of the products that were unveiled–it was was about the unveiling of a person. At last year’s Macworld Expo keynote, Steve Jobs waxed rhapsodic about the Apple engineer who had gone on vacation to the Cayman Islands, shot video, and had trouble editing it–and who then invented the all-new, simpler iMovie as a result.
Wow. Wow. Wow. Over the last few days, folks noticed that the traditional announcement that Steve Jobs would kick off IDG’s Macworld Expo with a keynote speech hadn’t come yet, and began wondering if he might be a no-show–as unlikely as that seemed. Sometimes, the unlikely is nonetheless reality….
It’s one of the most popular phones in history. It’s also one of the most controversial. And it’s almost certainly inspired more news, reviews, analysis, and general punditry than any phone–maybe any other gadget–ever. But when all is said and done, the bottom line on the iPhone is simple: What do the people who use them every day think of their phones?
So T-Mobile’s G1 has been unveiled. It looks neat–and it looks like the most serious rival to the iPhone yet, though the BlackBerry Bold could be a contender once AT&T starts selling the darn thing.
Strange but true: These are either the best of times or the worst of times for Apple’s reputation–and it all depends on which developments you choose to pay attention to.
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