Author Archive | Harry McCracken

The Amazon Tablet: The PlayBook’s Fraternal Twin

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 26, 2011 at 3:09 pm

Gdgt’s Ryan Block is reporting an interesting bit of scuttlebutt which I’ve also heard: that Amazon’s upcoming Android tablet is based on the same hardware platform as RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook:

From there, Amazon’s team determined they could build a tablet without the help and experience of Lab 126, so they turned to Quanta, which helped them “shortcut” the development process by using the PlayBook as their hardware template. Of course, it’s never quite that simple, and as I’m told Amazon ran into trouble, and eventually sacrifices were made (like using a slower processor).

Hardware’s important, of course, but it’s not the only thing. As with Kindle e-readers, it’s the Amazon services that are going to be key in making the tablet stand out from other products that look similar.

TechCrunch’s MG Siegler has some related scuttlebutt: the Amazon tablet will be called the Kindle Fire, won’t be available until November, and will compete against a Barnes & Noble Nook Color 2 that’s also in the works for the holidays.

Oh, and Siegler says that Wednedsday’s Amazon event in New York will definitely include the tablet announcement. Which is good news, since I’m flying cross country to liveblog it. Join me at technologizer.com/amazon at 10am ET on Wednesday, won’t you?

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Assistant: The Best Reason to Buy an iPhone 5?

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 26, 2011 at 10:19 am

Back in April of last year, Apple bought a very young, very neat startup named Siri. 9to5 Mac’s Mark Gurman says that Siri’s voice-controlled semantic search features are going to be built right into the iPhone 5:

Assistant taps into many aspects of the iPhone, according to people familiar with the feature and SDK findings. For example, one can say make appointment with Mark Gurman for 7:30 PM and Assistant will create the appointment in the user’s calendar. On noting events, Assistant also allows users to set reminders for the iOS 5 Reminders application. For example, a user could say “remind me to buy milk when I arrive at the market.” Another example would be integration with the iOS Maps application. A user could ask: “how do I get to Staples Center?” and Assistant will use the user’s current location via GPS and provide directions.

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Apple, Don’t Build a Social Network. Work With the Social Networks I Already Use

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 26, 2011 at 9:52 am

Over at Cult of Mac, Mike Elgan is warning Apple that Facebook is a threat to its dominance of digital entertainment:

Facebook will enable the discovery, sharing, buying and renting of movies and TV shows via Netflix, Hulu, Blockbuster, IMDB, Dailymotion and Flixter.

And just as the iPad is gaining traction as the electronic newspaper of choice, Facebook announces partnerships with the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Slate, the Associated Press, Reuters, Yahoo News and others to make Facebook the default online newspaper site.

Facebook is now more directly threatening to Apple’s business model than Microsoft, Google and Sony combined.

Mike is right that if Facebook’s new media-consumption and -sharing features could start to steal customers away from Apple. And he has a solution in mind: Apple needs to build its own social network. Something way better than Ping, which doesn’t seem to have changed iTunes that much, let alone the world.

If Apple were to come up with a cool social network, it would be…cool! But I fret that it’s not in the company’s nature to wade too deeply into the messy, unruly pool of user-generated content. Apple likes things perfect, not social. And an Apple that was great at social networking might not be so hot at all the things Apple is already so good at.

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Join Me for Live Coverage of Amazon’s (Tablet?) Event on Wednesday

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 24, 2011 at 11:08 am

On Wednesday, September 28th at 10am ET, Amazon.com is holding a press event in New York City. The odds seem good that it’ll announce an Android-based tablet there. So I’m making the hike to the east coast to attend, and will liveblog the event at technologizer.com/amazon. For the moment, at least, Amazon feels like the company most likely to release something that can truly rival the iPad, so I can’t wait to know more…

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Blockbuster’s New Service Isn’t a Qwikster Killer. At Least Not Yet.

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 23, 2011 at 11:04 am


I just attended a press conference hosted by Dish Network and its Blockbuster division, where they announced Blockbuster Movie Pass, a service with discs-by-mail (including Blu-Ray and games at no extra charge), unlimited on-demand streaming to TVs and PCs, and more–for $10 a month. Sounds like a formidable competitor to the service formerly known as Netflix, which is about to be divvied into Netflix and Qwikster. Except it turns out that Dish isn’t announcing anything aimed at consumers who have cable or who want to cut the cord–Movie Pass is for Dish subscribers (and includes twenty channels of live movie programming via satellite as well as its other stuff).

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Tough Love for HP

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 22, 2011 at 2:29 pm

Looks like David Churbuck didn’t know that Meg Whitman would replace Leo Apotheker as president and CEO of HP when he wrote about the company’s future–but his assessment and advice, while super-bleak and perhaps a bit ahead of the game as it stands (he says the iPad has already beat the PC), is smart and worth your time.

One fascinating tidbit:

Printers are the last mechanical appendage. Think about it. Once hard disks stopped spinning and went solid state, the last thing with a motor is the printer. Printers are a means to an end, not a future.

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