Posted byHarry McCracken on January 28, 2010 at 9:32 am
As I spent a little hands-on time with an iPad at Apple’s event yesterday morning, jabbing away at the on-screen keyboard felt oddly familiar. It wasn’t a familial similarity to the iPhone keyboard–the fact that the iPad’s keyboard is so much larger gives it a completely different personality. But my fingers seemed to be telling me that they’d had a similar experience before.
This morning it dawned on me: The iPad keyboard feels a lot like the one on the first computer I ever bought with my own money, the Atari 400.
Posted byHarry McCracken on January 28, 2010 at 8:39 am
“Apple’s 9.7-inch OLED tablet PC is expected to have a cost of about $1,500-1,700, the report explains, adding that OLED panels are pretty expensive and suggesting prices should only fall in time.”–9to5Mac.com, 11/19/2009
“As the world waits with bated breath for an Apple tablet, one thing is for certain: the rumored tablet with a 10-inch touchscreen won’t be cheap. Most new-fangled Apple products cost the proverbial arm and leg, and it’s unlikely an Apple tablet (which the blogosphere calls the iSlate) will break this trend…the likely price point is under $1000. If Apple holds true to form, that will mean $999.”–CIO, 1/5/2010
“A key factor for the tablet’s success will be price. Yair Reiner, an analyst for Oppenheimer & Co., said in a research note last month that the tablet would be priced at about $1,000, citing sources. One challenge: Apple’s MacBook laptops start at $999.”–Wall Street Journal, 1/5/2010
“Sure, the tablet we expect Apple to launch on January 27 will probably have more than its share of cool factor. But do you want to spend $1,000 or so for bragging rights?”–PC World, 1/19/2010
“Apple may price the tablet at about $750, putting it between the $399 top-of-the-line iPod Touch and the $999 entry- level MacBook notebook, said Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York.”–BusinessWeek, 1/27/2010
I could go on. If there was a genuine surprise at yesterday’s iPad launch, it was the starting price: $499. Apple, in its Apple-esque way, calls tht “unbelievable.” Well, maybe: my jaw didn’t drop, especially since it’s for a model with relatively little storage (16GB) and no 3G wireless. And some of the features that folks expected would add to the sticker price, including a camera and/or an OLED display, aren’t there. It’s one of the rare instances of Apple defeaturing a product to hit a particular price point, which I take as a sign that it does indeed want to sell iPads in vast quantities from the get-go.
But at $499, the iPad is a plausible netbook alternative, or an upgrade from the iPod Touch. And even the top-of-the-line iPad will be $830–well short of the hefty price that everyone “knew” the Apple tablet would go for.
Bottom line: all the pre-analysis of the tablet’s appeal and chances of success predicated on a starting price around a grand turned out to be irrelevant. We need to start over again, and judge the produce Apple announced at the price it’s charging.
Posted byHarry McCracken on January 27, 2010 at 11:55 pm
For the past few Apple product launches–and other events such as Google’s recent Nexus One phone rollout–I’ve been providing real-time coverage using a free service called CoverItLive. Folks often tell me that Technologizer’s live coverage is swifter than that of larger sites, and I’m quick to give CoverItLive full credit–it’s proven a really good way to post live updates (and photos) with as little delay as possible.
I’ve thought of the service as a secret weapon–but today, it wasn’t a secret at all. The Yerba Buena Center, where Apple held its event, was dense with journalists. A meaningful percentage were liveblogging the news. And a meaningful percentage of those were using CoverItLive, including some great big sites.
CoverItLive couldn’t keep up. A few minutes after Steve Jobs took the stage, I found that my updates were appearing on the site only after a lengthy, atypical delay. Then I couldn’t get into CoverItLive at all. It wasn’t clear at first what was going on–Verizon coverage was unusually iffy–but it eventually became clear that CoverItLive had croaked under the weight of multiple livebloggers and untold numbers of viewers. (We had thousands at Technologizer alone)
Part way into the morning’s proceedings, CoverItLive snapped back to life, and it worked well for the remainder of the event. My thanks to everyone who hung around until we were back in action, and I apologize to everyone who stopped by and found the liveblogging had stalled, or who weren’t able to get into CoverItLive at all. The service has proven remarkably robust in the past, but I’ll have a backup plan in place next time around.
Oh, and here’s a note I received this afternoon from Keith McSpurren, president of CoverItLive:
Harry,
Needless to say, we failed you and our users today. I take the early support you threw behind CiL very seriously and it’s a very personal issue for me when I let someone like you down.
We did everything we could to prepare for this and had monitoring set up at amazon and rackspace. In the end, we screwed it up on a few servers as we started to double the capacity versus the last one of these.
Thanks for throwing one of the few positive tweets our way.
keith
McSpurren also told me that the company’s working on strategies to prevent widespread problems in the future, such as walling off each user so that overload in one event doesn’t overflow into others. There’s so much that’s good about CoverItLive that I hope the service is indeed able to make today’s meltdown a one-time affair…
Posted byHarry McCracken on January 27, 2010 at 11:25 pm
I’m not the only person with lingering questions about the iPad, and there are far more than 25 things left about it that aren’t entirely clear. So I asked my Twitter pals–I’m @harrymccracken there–what their #1 remaining question was. I got lots of good responses. If you’ve got answers, or informed speculation, or even more questions, please dive in…
Posted byHarry McCracken on January 27, 2010 at 10:56 pm
Like John Gruber says, the iPad is a remarkably fast gadget. (The only thing that seemed less than near-instantaneous about it during my time with a unit today was the speed of the Wi-Fi–which is the one thing that Apple has the least control over.)
Gruber raves about the Apple-designed A4 chip at the heart of the device and says it looks to be the best mobile processor in the world; I wanna get a better sense of the real-world battery life before I come to any conclusions on that front. And presumably the fact that the iPhone OS was written for slow CPUs and is now running on a fast one is a major contributor to the overall sense of speed.
But if you’ve got $499 to spend on a secondary computing device and are trying to decide between an iPad and a netbook, the sheer zippiness of the iPad is going to be a major point in its favor.
I’m already having visions of the Stevenote in which Jobs explains to us why Apple is moving Macs from Intel chips to Apple’s own CPUs…
Posted byHarry McCracken on January 27, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Last week, I asked you to participate in an experiment: trying to predict a bunch of details about Apple’s tablet by voting on multiple-choice questions, then aggregating the results into a unified set of prognostications. Almost 300 of you participated. After the jump, we’ll see how you did. (Oh, and a note: Mike Munsell won our drawing for a $100 Apple Store Gift Card–congrats!)
Posted byHarry McCracken on January 27, 2010 at 3:17 pm
In the end, the one thing about Apple product events that’s utterly predictable is this: Some of the rumors will turn out to be true, and some of them will turn out to be false. And until you know which are which, it’s pointless to too many waste brain cells on trying to form any opinion at all.
This morning, we learned enough about the product we now know as iPad to start thinking about it seriously. But it’s not like all has been revealed. In fact, I’m still asking questions rather than coming to conclusions.
After the jump, in rough order of importance, 25 things I’m wondering about.
Posted byJared Newman on January 27, 2010 at 11:18 am
Count Ubisoft’s latest anti-piracy plan as another ill-conceived scheme that punishes legitimate players.
Gamespy reports that the publisher will allow unlimited installs of its future PC games, but Ubisoft’s servers will handle saved games and authentication. That means you can’t play without an Internet connection.
In way, it’s a forward-thinking plan. Ubisoft’s looking ahead to a time when Internet connections will be everywhere, so you’ll never have a problem proving you paid for a copy of the game. Storing saved games online also means you can start playing on your laptop from where you left off on your desktop.
The big problem is we’re not yet in the age of ubiquitous Internet connections. Sure, you’ll have no problem playing at home — unless your Internet connection goes out for whatever reason — but this scheme rules out airplanes, remote areas or hotels that don’t have Wi-Fi. Ubisoft is betting most people don’t play in those situations, but it’s not fair for the publisher to make that decision. At the very least, Ubisoft game boxes should have big warning labels so players know what they’re getting.
One other concern: Ubisoft’s authentication servers aren’t guaranteed for life, and 10 years from now, players could be shut out of the game they bought. In fact, last time Ubisoft tried online authentication with Assassin’s Creed, some players had trouble immediately after purchasing.
In any case, is this really a fool-proof method for stopping piracy? If it was, I’d think other publishers would be using the same methods. Even Steam, a major platform for PC gaming that uses online authentication, has an offline mode.
The funny thing is that, in 2008, Ubisoft released Prince of Persia for PC with no digital rights management, apparently fed up with its past failures to stop piracy. I don’t know the results of that little experiment, but I guess Ubisoft figured it’s more profitable to penalize their paying customers than to let pirates roam free.
Posted byHarry McCracken on January 27, 2010 at 9:03 am
Okay, one prediction while there’s still time to make them, but only one: From here on out, monochrome e-readers–even the good ones–are going to feel like part of the past, and industry will be surprised by how many consumers are willing to give up 90%+ of their battery life for color. Remember when the first color PalmPilot came out and the long-life monochrome models quickly went away?
“Apple’s 9.7-inch OLED tablet PC is expected to have a cost of about $1,500-1,700, the report explains, adding that OLED panels are pretty expensive and suggesting prices should only fall in time.”–
I’m not the only person with lingering questions about the iPad, and there are far more than 25 things left about it that aren’t entirely clear. So I asked my Twitter pals–I’m 
In the end, the one thing about Apple product events that’s utterly predictable is this: Some of the rumors will turn out to be true, and some of them will turn out to be false. And until you know which are which, it’s pointless to too many waste brain cells on trying to form any opinion at all.
