Author Archive | Harry McCracken

Amazon to Buy Palm?

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 30, 2011 at 8:32 am

VentureBeat’s Devindra Hardawar is reporting that Amazon.com is seriously interested in buying WebOS from HP, the company that bought Palm for $1.2 billion and then killed the TouchPad after six weeks.

The Kindle Fire is powered by Android, but it’s been heavily customized by Amazon to the point where you can barely tell. By purchasing the remnants of Palm, Amazon would have free rein to redesign webOS to its own liking, and it would be able to further differentiate its Kindle devices from the slew of Android tablets in the market.

It would be swell if the WebOS saga ended happily, and I can’t think of a better candidate than Amazon to figure out how to do well by the software. Then again, I once thought that HP could be a good home for it, too…

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Mace on the Fire

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 30, 2011 at 3:17 am

Michael Mace of Mobile Opportunity blogged some of the smartest thoughts I’ve seen on Amazon’s announcement of the Kindle Fire and related products and services this week. One worthwhile nugget, of many:

I may be indulging in wishful thinking, but there’s a possibility that ten years from now we’ll look back on Silk as the single most important thing in today’s announcement.

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Whatever Happened to the iPad Rivals of 2010?

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 30, 2011 at 1:45 am

Back in August of 2010, it was clear that Apple’s iPad–which had gone on sale on April 3rd–was a gigantic, game-changing hit. The rest of the industry was scrambling to respond, and there had already been a steady stream of announcements, pre-announcements, sneak peeks, and rumors, along with a few products that had actually shipped. I chose that month to round up as many of them as possible. I called them “iPadversaries,” and published a story with brief profiles of 32 of them.

And then the world continued to change. Some of the products I wrote about shipped in more or less the form I’d described. Others evolved further, or failed to show up at all. Windows, which was supposed to provide meaningful competition to the iPad, didn’t. Scads of tablets based on Android arrived, without any of them being a clear-cut success. And two of the most interesting rumors of August 2011–a WebOS tablet and a BlackBerry one–turned into the two highest-profile flops to date.

More than thirteen months after we ran that iPadversaries story, I decided it might be instructive (or at least perversely fascinating) to follow up on all 32 machines.

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Here’s Yesterday’s Amazon Kindle Fire Event

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 29, 2011 at 12:40 pm

I was lucky enough to be at Amazon’s press event yesterday in person. (I enjoyed the company of about 16,500 of you who attended our liveblog, cohosted by Macworld’s Jason Snell.) Amazon has now posted the full video of the event, so you can see what I saw:

 

In many ways, Amazon’s presentation mirrored Apple’s iconic Steve Jobs keynotes: CEO spouting stats, announcing products, and saving the best for last, interspersed with videos. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is a gifted speaker and did a good job. I was startled by one major difference between an Apple event and this one–Bezos received only sporadic smattering of polite applause. There were no thunderous ovations or wild cheering. I don’t think that was a sign that the audience wasn’t impressed–but the ratio of journalists to employees and VIPs may have been higher at the Amazon event than at typical Apple ones.

(Yes, there are some journalists who clap and hoot at Apple events, but it makes me cringe when they do. Non-journalist types, however, are entitled to get as raucous as they please.)

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Goodbye, iPod Classic and Shuffle?

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 28, 2011 at 4:37 am

People have been expecting Apple to kill the iPad Classic–the last model recognizable as a direct descendant of the original 2001 iPod–for years. Now TUAW is reporting that Apple may discontinue it, along with the iPod Shuffle. If the company’s iPhone event next week also touches on iPod-related news, we might get the news then.

(My classic-style iPod and I were inseparable for eons, and I once looked down at the iPhone because of its comparatively small capacity–but it’s been a long time since I’ve so much as booted up an iPod. Do you use one?)

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Toshiba Enters the 7-Inch Tablet Sweepstakes

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 27, 2011 at 5:23 pm

I keep thinking that some company is going to release a 7″ tablet that’s nicely done and a big hit, proving that there’s a market for a device that’s a lot bigger than a smartphone but a lot smaller than an iPad. So far it hasn’t happened. But the 7″ tablets keep coming, and today Toshiba gave me a peek at the Thrive 7″ Tablet, which it plans to release in December.

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Amazon Tablet Event Liveblog Tomorrow

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 27, 2011 at 11:44 am

Enough with the pretense–Amazon.com is unveiling its Android tablet tomorrow. (I’d like to see a new Kindle e-reader, too, OK?) I’ll be at the New York event and will liveblog it starting at 10am ET. I’ll also have a special guest: Jason Snell of Macworld, who will provide color commentary and generally hang out with us.

It may not surprise you to learn that Apple events get by far the highest liveblog attendance here at Technologizer. (Google Android events and Facebook ones are more or less tied for a distant second place.) I’ve never liveblogged an Amazon press conference, so I’m looking forward to it–and wondering whether, as with Apple events, tens of thousands of you will choose to join me.

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The Case for Screwing Up Netflix

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 27, 2011 at 8:28 am

Marc Randolph, a former Netflix employee–he was a founder and the first CEO–has chimed in on this whole Qwikster mess. He makes a more compelling, coherent case for divvying up the company’s streaming service and disc-rental business than anything that Netflix/Qwikster has said in its own defense:

So even though I haven’t been at Netflix in a long time, I can easily imagine the growing frustration they must have felt these last few years as they made decisions they knew were suboptimal for the streaming business in order to maintain compatibility with the DVD business.  How to work out pricing that covers multiple use cases.  How to come up with messaging that embraces two different ways to receive movies.  How to manage the significant differences in the content available between the two services.  How to simplify the landing page and sign up flow.

Well no longer.  Not having to worry about compatibility between the services makes it infinitely easier to optimize every decision around the real prize, which is clearly streaming.  Pricing.  Messaging.  Content.  Sign-up-flow.  All better now.

Randolph doesn’t defend Netflix’s communications about the price hike, name change, and related matters: He calls them “ham-handed” and “tone-deaf.” But I wonder how well Netflix customers would be taking the news if the company’s communications had been flawless, and if it had come up with a way better name than “Qwikster.”

I don’t come away from Randolph’s piece entirely convinced of the righteousness–ham-handed, tone-deaf messaging aside–of what Netflix is doing. Or maybe I’m so convinced that I don’ think the company’s going far enough. I mean, if renting DVDs by mail is so unpleasant a business to be in, shouldn’t Netflix just sell, spin off, or shutter Qwikster? Sooner or later, it’s going to take one of those actions. Why not do it today, rather than complain about all the downsides of disc rentals and how they’re standing in the way of the streaming business?

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It’s Official: Apple’s iPhone Event is Next Tuesday

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 27, 2011 at 8:20 am

Sooner or later, Apple rumors narrow in on the truth. Apple is indeed holding its iPhone event next Tuesday, October 4th. It is indeed doing so at its Town Hall auditorium on its own campus rather than in San Francisco. (That’s understandable: Oracle’s Open World conference will be pretty much commandeering the entire city that day.)

Apple isn’t bring too coy this time around: Invites for the event say “Let’s talk iPhone.” One big question is whether that’s iPhone singular or iPhones plural. We’ll know soon enough.

I won’t be there in person this time, but I have a good excuse: I’ll be on a long-planned journey to Tokyo to cover CEATEC, the big consumer-electronics conference. But I’ll be watching from afar–and I suspect I’ll be back in the States before the phone (phones?) hits store shelves. More thoughts to come…

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