Your iPad Plans (Assuming You Have Any)

It’s been a while since our last T-Poll. And with only a few days left until the iPad shows up, we’re entering the equivalent of a political campaign’s final stretch–if you’re going to have an opinion of the iPad based on pre-release information and speculation, you’ve probably formed it by now.

So here we go:

Have You Been Entertained and Informed by a Ford Lately? Should You Be?

Earlier today, I lounged in the passenger seat while a Ford employee sat behind the wheel and showed me MyFord Touch–the upcoming radically upgraded version of the digital entertainment/information platform that the company began offering a couple of years ago as Ford Sync. The new version has a speedometer that’s flanked by two LCDs, and a jumbo color touchscreen, and it lets you do a gazillion things–from listening to music to getting directions to adjusting mood lighting in the car to turning your auto into a mobile hotspot. I loved it. And the chances of the Ford rep getting distracted and causing an accident were…well, nil, because we were sitting in a fake car interior inside a conference room in the Las Vegas Convention Center here at CES.

I’m impressed by MyFord Touch, which will start to appear in cars later this year–price TBA–and which Ford plans to roll out to eighty percent of its line within five years. It–and/or stuff like it–will be a factor the next time I plunk down money for an automobile. But this New York Times story reports on concerns that the new generation of Internet-connected car computing systems simply demands too much attention from drivers. One of the naysayers is U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, who’s presumably in a position to do something about them if he so chooses.

Your opinion, please.



3D: Gimmick? Breakthrough? Both? Neither?

First, a disclaimer: I’m instinctively skeptical about 3D. I’ve seen my fair share of 3D movies over the last three decades or so, and they always leave me squinting, adjusting my glasses, and generally not enjoying myself. It seems like a lot of effort to go through for an effect that’s less like real life and more like a humongous View-Master. Your mileage may vary (I’ve always assumed that the fact I wear glasses in real life is an issue).

All 3D reminds me of this (no, I haven’t seen Avatar yet):

Anyhow, as you know, we’re in the midst of a sort of 3D renaissance. It started in theaters, but is in the process of coming home–or trying to, at least. Over at HDGuru.com, they’re reporting that DirecTV will be announcing an all-3D channel next week at the Consumer Electronics Show. It’ll be compatible with new 3D-capable TVs that’ll be announced at the show. And yes, you’ll need to wear special glasses.

Me, I don’t think I’m going to love 3D until it’s (A) closer to true 3D than the 2.5D effect you’ve always gotten; (B) doesn’t involve glasses; (C) isn’t used by moviemakers for pointless “HEY, THIS IS 3D!” effects. I expect all three points to be resolved by oh, 2050 or so. But I’m willing to be pleasantly surprised when I head to Vegas for CES in a little over a week.

This seems like a good excuse for a T-Poll:

How Big Should a Tablet Be?

The Boy Genius Report has a post up with the title “Apple tablet definitely coming in 7″ size?” Seems to me that the uses of “definitely” and a question mark in the same headline cancel each other out. Either Apple is doing a 7-inch tablet or it isn’t. We just don’t know yet. (Boy Genius says the source of the rumor has been amazingly accurate; oddly enough, nobody ever publishes an Apple rumor and says that it comes from a source that’s erratic and unreliable.)

But the “news” does present an opportunity to ponder what size an Apple tablet–or any tablet–should be. I think we can definitively say that it needs to be enough larger than the iPhone and iPod Touch (which have 3.5-inch screens) to be a distinct beast, and that it needs enough resolution to handle modern Web pages without excessive zooming (let’s say 1024 pixels of resolution, at least on its longer side). E-readers like the Kindle are in the right ballpark, but their displays are a tad on the cramped side if you’re going to be using an on-screen keyboard much. So yes, seven inches sounds logical enough.

But you can feel free to disagree with me:

Should Google Get Into the Hardware Game?

With the exception of a search appliance for internal use by businesses, Google has stayed out of the hardware business. Now rumor has it that we may see a Google-branded phone shortly, and maybe even a Google netbook late next year. My friend Jason Hiner says that Google needs to be cautious if it plans to go into the physical-object biz in a big way.

T-Poll time:

Which Browser Would You Vote For?

More news about monopolies and governmental action against them: The European Union has ended its antitrust case against Microsoft over Internet Explorer after Microsoft agreed to give European Windows users a ballot screen which will let them choose between IE and eleven (!) other browsers.

A hundred million Europeans will get this feature next year, and at least a few of them are reading this post. But even if you’ve never set foot in an EU country, how about taking this quick poll? The browsers listed are the ones that Microsoft will offer when the ballot screen rolls out.

Should Microsoft Abandon Phones?

Over at the New York Times’ Bits blog, Steve Lohr is reporting on a shocking recommendation from tech analyst/writer Mark Anderson: Microsoft should abandon the phone business. Anderson says that Microsoft doesn’t get consumers–with the exception of game-playing consumers–and it’s time for the company to focus on business customers.

As Lohr says, the chances that Microsoft will give Windows Mobile a respectful burial and move on are slim. Very, very slim. If I were Steve Ballmer, I sure wouldn’t: Even if the company’s phone strategy is in crummy shape, some chance of getting back on track is better than no chance. Phones are the future of personal computing: To exit the business would be the equivalent of Warner Bros. giving up on TV in 1950, or the New York Times shuttering its Web site in 1998 or so.

So I’m not advocating for Microsoft to give up–and in fact would be happy to see Windows Mobile 7 turn out to be something worth getting excited over.

What say you?

Is the Cloud All You Need?

When you think about it, every netbook to date has been misnamed: They’ve run traditional operating systems, and worked just fine even when you didn’t have an Internet connection. But netbooks based on Google’s Chrome OS will be different: At best, they’re going to have very limited functionality when you’re not online. Whether they turn out to be wildly popular or a legendary flop, they’re something new. They’re…netbooks!

So let’s keep this T-Poll short and sweet:

What Would You Pay For News?

The New York Times is reporting on a new survey that says that 48 percent of Americans would be willing to pay something for online news. The Times’ story begins with a tsk-tsking tone: We Yanks are less likely to say we’d pony up than people in other western countries.  But a lover of ambitious news reporting–and, I hasten to add, someone with a selfish desire to see the media business continue to provide paying work–I found the figure sort of encouraging. In a world in which everybody except Wall Street Journal readers get to be happy online freeloaders, I would have guessed that considerably less than half of respondents would have had their head around the concept of paying for news.

The Times says that the survey’s respondents would pay $3 a month for online news, which means they’re tied for Australians for that place. (Italians, by contrast, would for over $7 a month.) It’s not clear just what Americans would expect for their three bucks, or whether we’re talking about a scenario in which there’s still plentiful news available for free, or one in which freebies suddenly go away and your choice is between paying or getting no online news at all.

Anyhow, let’s try a mini-replication of the survey right here. For the sake of the following question, assume that every general-interest news site in the nation suddenly builds a pay wall, and that what you’d be paying for is some sort of pass that would give you access to multiple news sources for one monthly fee.

Mr. Murdoch, Build Up That Content Wall!

Like many media moguls, Rupert Murdoch keeps accusing Google of unfairly monetizing his sites’ content by indexing and selling ads next to search results that contain links to it. Now he’s talking about fighting back, by taking the simple step of instituting fees for access to News Corp. online properties and then blocking Google from indexing them.

As Staci Kramer of PaidContent points out, it’s not entirely clear what Murdoch is talking about, or even that he knows what he’s talking about. He says this strategy would be similar to what the Wall Street Journal does, but while the Journal does indeed have a pay wall, it actually lowers it for visitors who arrive from Google.

As far as I know, no major media sites are currently actively preventing Google from crawling their content or otherwise trying to prevent the company from helping people find stories and making money along the way. (A half a decade ago, some publishers–including IDG, where I worked at the time–checked to see if visitors were arriving from Google and told ones who were to come back via the home page–but the experiment was futile, self-destructive, and short-lived.)

I’m probably in the the minority among my media-industry peers here–and it may be a minority of one–but I (A) think Murdoch’s plan is a silly, self-defeating idea, and (B) hope that he does indeed put it into action.

Here’s why:

• I’m tired of hearing media executives whine about Google without doing anything about its alleged misconduct. It’s extremely easy to configure a Web site to prevent Google from crawling it. So why don’t these sites that are so nonplussed about being in Google’s index opt out? If Murdoch blocks Google, he’ll at least be safe from charges of inconsistency and/or hypocrisy.
• I’m in favor of multiple business models for content sites. Technologizer is doing fine as a mostly ad-supported enterprise, thank you very much, but the media business will ultimately be healthier if there are multiple potential revenue streams–ads, monthly subscriptions, maybe even pay-per-use for some stuff. You know, kind of like TV. If News Corp. goes through with this, I’ll at least give it credit for experimenting rather than dithering.
• I’m willing to pay for some stuff. Yes, that attitude is colored to some degree by the fact that I’m in the media biz myself, and no, I can’t think offhand of any News Corp. properties I’m dying to shower in money. (I don’t even have a WSJ subscription at the moment.) But I’d rather live in a world in which some consumers get used to paying for some online content than in one in which sites are doomed if they can’t make a go of things based on advertising alone.
• Watching other people gamble is constructive. If the Murdoch paywall flops as spectacularly as most folks think it will, it’ll be a useful confirmation that everybody was right in the first place. If it’s disappointing, but less so than everyone expects, that’s useful information, too. And if it somehow pays off, other media sites can claim they knew it would all along, and rush to imitate the News Corp. approach.

But enough about my reaction to Rupert’s ruminations. You?

Hackintosh Trouble?

Apple may be suing Mac clone merchant Psystar, but its policy towards individuals who install OS X on non-Apple hardware to create “Hackintoshes” seems to have been to ignore them rather than to frustrate them. That may be about to change.

According to OS X Daily, Apple’s upcoming OS X 10.6.2 update prevents Snow Leopard from running on computers that use Intel’s Atom CPU. If true, that would make it incompatible with the vast majority of netbooks in one fell swoop.

I don’t want to assume that the OS X Daily story is the real deal until it’s received independent confirmation, and even if it is true, it’s possible that there’s an explanation that has nothing to do with Apple’s attitude towards Hackintoshes. But if Apple does want to foil Hackintoshes, this would be a good way to go about it. (Of course, it’s entirely possible that Hackintosh makers will simply hack OS X 10.6.2 further to reintroduce Atom support.)

OS X Daily wonders whether Apple might move against Hackintosh netbooks because it’s getting ready to introduce a tablet. Maybe so, but the number of folks in the world who are willing to go through the effort of putting OS X on a PC must be one-tenth of one-percent of the market that Apple would like to capture with a tablet. It would be nice to think that the two platforms–if you can call Hackintoshes a platform–could quietly, unofficially coexist.

Anyhow, here’s a T-Poll:

Is TomTom Toast?

Among the bevy of interesting things about Verizon’s Droid smartphone is Android 2.0′s new version of Google Maps, which includes full-blown turn-by-turn GPS navigation with spoken instructions–for free. Judging from the couple of trips around San Francisco it’s guided me on so far, it would be pretty darn appealing even if it wasn’t a freebie–the directions worked, it speaks the names of streets in a crisper voice than AT&T Navigator sports on the iPhone, and I like the way it switches to a Street View photo once you’ve arrived at your destination.

Google says it’s working on bringing the new version of Maps to other devices. If it does, for-pay navigation applications will have to be radically better to compete, which is bad news indeed for all the companies charging for smartphone navigation apps–and probably even worse news for those who sell stand-alone handheld navigation devices. People are already spreading doom and gloom about the future of navigation stalwarts such as TomTom and Garmin.

There’s at least one form of dedicated navigation hardware that I hope doesn’t vanish: built-in car systems, which have nice big screens and, in some cases, user interfaces better designed for on-the-go use. And pilots, sailors, and other specialists will still want their customized GPS devices. But if we all get navigation that’s 90 percent as good as the best stuff out there for 0 percent of the price, it’s hard to see how many folks will justify paying for another gadget–especially one that may carry a monthly service charge.

Your take on the fate of GPS hardware, please:

E-Readers or Swiss Army Knives?

Quick follow-up to our E-Reader Cheat Sheet: One of the most interesting questions about e-readers isn’t “Which one is best?” but “Is the whole category toast?” And one of the things that makes the question interesting is that there are savvy folks who think that e-readers will give way to general-purpose devices, and savvy folks who think we’ll continue to need book-centric gadgets.

Derek Thompson at the Atlantic:

Returning to today’s news: B&N and Amazon’s offer to access e-books on computers, iPhones, BlackBerry’s and future hybrid devices, means that anything with an internet connection is functionally an e-reader. We don’t need an e-reader to “e-read.” I think that means Amazon and Barnes & Noble are inherently handicapped in the e-reader arms race. They’re building e-readers that can go online. That’s nice, but the upcoming Apple Tablet is so much more: a ultra-portable netbook/entertainment center that can also read books. The Tablet isn’t merely designed for today’s e-reader technology. It’s designed with the expectation that consumers want their personal technologies integrated. It’s not just another awesome corkscrew. It’s a Swiss Army Knife.

James Fallows, also at the Atlantic, politely disagreeing:

I’m skeptical because of the dozen previous times through the computer era in which that prediction has not panned out. “Real” cameras are still much better than in-phone cameras; the right device to carry in your pocket, as a phone or PDA, will always be worse to read on than a device with a bigger screen, which in turn is too big to fit in your pocket; keyboards are simply better than little thumbpads for entering more than a few words, and any device with a real keyboard has to be a certain size. So, sure, some things will be combined, but the all in one era is not at hand, and won’t be.

John Gruber at Daring Fireball, linking to our Cheat Sheet:

So many options, but I just can’t see how this product category has long-term legs.

Jim Fallows is one of the smartest people ever to write about technology, but in this instance, I’m guessing the dedicated device will be subsumed by a general purpose one, and maybe sooner than most people would guess. True, there are lots of examples of devices that are just too different from each other to be effectively Swiss Army Knifed–for instance, smartphones won’t replace point-and-shoot cameras until some genius figures out a way to eliminate the need for zoom lenses and decent flashes. (Yes, I know that there are phones with zooms and flashes, but they remain odd, bulky exceptions.)

But Swiss Army Knifing a technology works quite well when the technologies and form factors in question are essentially similar. That’s why standalone PDAs have essentially been replaced by smartphones, for instance. The one thing standing in the way of tablets replacing e-book readers is the face that an e-ink screen can run for weeks on a battery charge, and the color LCD you’d want for a general-purpose device will peter out after a few hours. But that problem will get solved eventually–and I suspect that even today, more people would give up long battery life for beautiful color than most e-reader manufacturers suspect.

Your take?

Will Windows 7 Hurt Mac Sales?

Among the many questions that Windows 7′s imminent release is prompting is this: Will it result in fewer Windows users deciding to switch to Macs, thereby halting the slow erosion in Windows’ market share that we’ve seen during the Vista era? So far, there’s no consensus on wht’s likely to happen:a

• At Computerworld, Gregg Keizer reported on an analyst’s prediction that Windows 7′s release wouldn’t hurt Mac sales, and might even help them;
• BetaNews’s Joe Wilcox says the analyst’s analysis is wrongheaded, and that he thinks Windows 7 will put a dent in Apple’s growing market share;
• Daring Fireball’s John Gruber concurs with some of Wilcox’s take but says that the competition between Windows and Macs is pretty indirect;
• Peter Burrows of BusinessWeek interviewed Apple’s Phil Schiller, who contends that Windows 7 presents a good opportunity to sell more Macs, since buying a new Mac is easier than upgrading a Windows XP machine to Windows 7. (Um, wouldn’t you need to back up and restore data and reinstall apps if you were moving to the Mac, too?)

I’m not going to predict how Windows 7′ release will impact Mac sales–hey, making no predictions is the best way to avoid making boneheaded ones–but a few thoughts on the dynamics of the competition:

• Unless Windows 7′s driver situation is worse than it seems and/or PC manufacturers manage to screw the OS up with unwantedware, it’s going to make for better PCs than Windows Vista ever did;
• I’d still rate Snow Leopard as the better OS, but the gap between the two platforms is smaller than it’s been in a long time;
• Windows 7 doesn’t do much to reduce the need of Windows users to worry about security in a way that Mac owners don’t;
• It also doesn’t eliminate such Mac virtues as the bundling of iLife;
• As John Gruber says, the competition between Windows and Macs only happens at the high end of the market–most people who buy Windows buy it on cheaper, lower-end computers for which there is no Mac counterpart.

Ultimately, I keep coming back to the notion that most people really don’t have any particular desire to switch operating systems. If Windows 7 lives up to its promise and expectations, it’ll leave fewer Windows users tempted to dump the OS. But I suspect that most folks who have made the jump to the Mac aren’t coming back.

Your take?

Is Broadband a Basic Human Right?

IntoMobile is reporting that our friends in Finland will soon get access to broadband Internet access as a basic legal right. Starting next July, a 1-Mbps connection will be mandated; by the end of 2015, a 100-Mbps one will be required. The story doesn’t say whether these connections are guaranteed to be free, or who’s providing them.

Of course, I live in America, a country that can’t figure out how to provide healthcare to everyone, so I’m guessing that universal broadband isn’t coming anytime soon. (And me, I’d vote for putting that particular “right” off until the health thing is resolved, okay?)

What’s your take?

Sidekick Disaster: A Sign of Things to Come?

There’s no new news this Monday morning on Microsoft’s apparent loss of vast quantities of data belonging to users of T-Mobile Sidekick phones–T-Mobile’s most recent missive to customers is still the apologetic forum message telling them not to power down their Sidekicks if they can possibly avoid it. You gotta think there’s more pain to come–for Sidekick owners who have lost photos, address books, and other data, and for T-Mobile and Sidekick, who may end up with permanently tarnished reputations.

I’m still scratching my head and trying to think of any remotely comparable examples of large companies simply losing huge amounts of essential customer information, and I’m coming up short. (The closest parallel–instances of companies leaving customers in the lurch by intentionally shutting down services-isn’t really comparable.)

This incident may be unique, at least for the moment. But do you think it’s an early warning sign of danger to come as we all live more and more of our lives on the Web?