Tag Archives | Apple iPad

A Modest Proposal for Sony’s PSP, and the Marketing Thereof

Posted by Jared Newman on February 2, 2010 at 7:07 pm

Nintendo and Sony reacted predictably to the iPad’s debut last week — that is, they blew it off.

Sony’s comments, in particular, deserve scrutiny, because PSP sales fell further last year than any other console. It’s harder to find fault with Nintendo’s remarks when the Nintendo DS continues to outsell every gaming machine on the market. John Koller, Sony Computer Entertainment’s director of hardware marketing, said Apple’s gaming presence has been “a net positive” for Sony. “When people want a deeper, richer console, they start playing on a PSP,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

Sony’s been saying this for a while. The company believes that the PSP offers deep gaming experiences while the iPhone is shallow. That is increasingly less true as games like Assassin’s Creed and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars end up on Apple’s devices. Besides, ignoring consumers who liken portable games to snacks isn’t wise. That’s probably why Sony introduced PSP Minis, a downloadable catalog of cheap, small-scale games, albeit more expensive than the same games on the iPhone.

So here’s what I propose: Instead of trying to position the PSP as the major leagues to the iPhone’s farm team, Sony should exploit the one real advantage it has. I’m talking about buttons.

We’re entering an age where buttons are marginalized. The Wii threw out many of them. Nintendo DS games often focus on the touch screen. Microsoft’s Project Natal will do away with buttons entirely. Play any console game that’s been ported to the iPhone, and you’ll miss the D-Pad’s tactile feedback. Someone’s got to stand up against the erosion of gaming’s most time-honored tradition.

It might as well be Sony, whose PSP is blissfully set in its ways. Mr. Koller, I propose that you ditch the silly marketing jargon and say something that gamers really understand: “Button mashers, welcome home.”

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Oh No, the “Free iPad” Offers Are Here!

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 1, 2010 at 12:00 am

What’s the surest sign that the iPad is the world’s hottest tech product right now? It may not be Steve Jobs telling us it’s magical and revolutionary, or the avalanche of coverage on tech blogs. Maybe it’s the arrival of cheesy ads that dangle free iPads in front of people–almost two months before the gizmo even goes on sale.

Earlier today, I was on Facebook, and saw this ad:


Free iPods for 45-year-old males? I’m 45! I’m male! What a happy coincidence! What a rare opportunity!

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Will the iPad Follow the Failure of Voice Dictation Software?

Posted by David Spark on January 31, 2010 at 3:21 pm

[David Spark (@dspark) is a veteran tech journalist and the founder of Spark Media Solutions, a storytelling and social media production company that specializes in live event production. He blogs at Spark Minute and can be seen regularly on KQED and John C. Dvorak’s Cranky Geeks.]

Thirteen years ago, in 1997, I wrote an article for Family PC magazine (a now-defunct Ziff Davis publication) about dictation software. That was the year programs such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking and IBM ViaVoice had turned a critical corner in their respective capabilities. No longer did you have to dictate in an unnatural slow paused pattern (e.g. “Take…A…Letter”).  You could now speak naturally (e.g. “Take a letter”) and the program would seamlessly enter your words with 90-plus percent accuracy.

At that point, myself and many others in the industry thought that voice dictation would be a game changer. The technology and publicity was fantastic. Actor Richard Dreyfuss was a staunch supporter, mentioning Dragon’s software on The Tonight Show. Voice dictation seemed like a perfect technological interface solution for human-to-PC communications. When we’re born, speech is one of the first forms of communications we learn, so let’s train computers to adapt to a human’s way of communicating. It sounded like a slam dunk solution, but there was one problem…

We’ve become comfortable communicating with keyboards.
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iPad: A Question for the Magazine Industry, Not an Answer

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 31, 2010 at 11:16 am

[NOTE: I wrote this last week as a guest post for FOLIO, the magazine industry’s trade magazine and Web site.]

In the weeks leading up to Apple’s launch of its tablet device Wednesday, a strange fairy tale started to gain currency. It cast the publishing business as a hapless Sleeping Beauty—and Apple CEO Steve Jobs as a Prince Charming who’d kiss the industry out of its slumber with a combination of hardware, software, and services that would instantly restore consumers’ willingness to pay for quality content.

As I sat in the audience at the event, I slowly figured out that it wouldn’t provide a ready-made happy ending for magazine publishers. Apple did reveal that the gizmo includes an e-book reader, iBooks—but as the name suggests, that software is meant for books, not periodicals. It also let the New York Times show off a handsome app for reading that paper. But the only magazine that came up during the event was TIME—and that was when Jobs showed how good its Web site looked in the iPad’s Safari browser. It mostly served as a reminder that it’s not entirely clear why many consumers would choose to pay for digital magazines when the same content is available on the Web for free.

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Whose iPad is It, Anyway?

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 29, 2010 at 10:55 am

What’s the single most worrisome thing about the iPad? It’s not the lack of a physical keyboard, or that third-party applications can’t multitask, or even the fact that people are still arguing that it’s unclear whether there’s a market for the thing. It’s Apple’s monopoly on distribution of applications. Absent jailbreaking–and I’m curious to see if Apple has done anything to lock down the iPad evenmore than the iPhone–this is a device that will run the software that Apple thinks it should run.

For lots of people, that’s a dealbreaker on both philosophical and practical grounds. Last August, during the controversy over Apple’s failure to approve Google’s Google Voice app, I blogged about my unhappiness with the situation but also said I thought Apple would decide it was in its best interest to do the right thing with app approval in the long run.

Months later, there haven’t been any further major App Store approval fiascos (at least not ones that we know about). But Apple never did approve Google Voice, and Google gave up and developed a Web-based version. It’s quite good, but not as good as the native one would have been.

As an iPhone owner, the whole Google Voice saga is still stuck in my craw–especially since Apple’s official stance appears to be that it’s still “pondering” whether to approve the app.

Emotionally and rationally, I want the iPhone/iPad platform to be open. I still believe it’ll happen. But here’s the thing: At the moment, Apple’s closed platform has a vastly richer and more interesting selection of applications than any mobile platform that is more open. An optimist would take that fact as evidence that Apple’s strategy actually benefits consumers; a pessimist would conclude that it gives Apple little incentive to loosen up.

The next big milestone for the iPhone/iPad platform will come when Apple starts to disclose details about iPhone OS 4.0. Judging from last year’s iPhone 3.0 timetable, 4.0’s unveiling may be only weeks away. If Apple announces that it’s formally allowing applications to bypass the App Store and its approval process, I’ll be stunned. But if it has no news whatsoever about relaxing the current constraints on developers, I’ll be very disappointed.

Your thoughts?

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The iPad Isn’t Just for Us–It’s for Aunt Bettys Too

Posted by David Worthington on January 29, 2010 at 2:52 am

Nobody reading this post is ever going to use Apple’s new iPad as his or her sole computer. But there is a group of folks who might: People like my late aunt Betty, who used WebTV to send e-mail. The iPad’s portability and streamlined interface for common tasks make it a compelling device for people–usually older people–who have chosen to opt out of the computer revolution until now.

My aunt never had a PC, and as far as I know, didn’t want one. Would she have been willing to spend $500 on an appliance that she could use in his living room for keeping in touch with her family and reading the paper? Maybe. The WebTV price was set at $329.

I will tell you one thing–Aunt Betty wound’t have cared about how “open” the iPad was as long as it did what she expected. If she could listen to music, watch movies, read, and use it for e-mail and theWeb, she’d probably be pleased with her purchase. The question of whether the iPad could multitask would never come up.

The iPad is meant to sync with a PC or Mac, but there’s no reason why it couldn’t become a fully autonomous, standalone device. It will be interesting to see what Apple does with MobileMe and the iPad.

My colleague Harry McCracken commented that Web TV was supposed to be for young folks, but unintentionally found a market among “oldsters.” It is possible that the iPad could achieve the same success among people who would not typically buy a PC. I’m curious to see the demographics of who ends up buying it–it may not be the “innovators” who you’d expect.

It doesn’t look like Apple is catering to Aunt Betty types, but it should.

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The T-Grid: iPhone vs. iPad vs. MacBook

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 29, 2010 at 1:37 am

At Wednesday’s iPad launch, Steve Jobs began his introduction of the new gizmo by noting that most of us carry a laptop and/or smartphone, and asking whether there’s room for a new kind of device in the middle. His answer, of course, is that there is–and that iPad is that product. That makes iPad the third distinct class of computing device that the company offers–assuming you don’t consider iPods to be computing devices.

As is my wont when I’m comparing products, I whipped up a T-Grid. This one contrasts the iPhone 3GS, the iPad, and the cheapest version of Apple’s flagship MacBook Pro computer. Check it out for a quick summary of what Apple thinks is important to include in each category of device. The MacBook Pro may be the most expensive and capable of the three, but there are certain ways in which it’s beginning to feel like old technology, such as its lack of built-in 3G and GPS. And I’m starting to wonder how long it’ll be until Jobs decides it’s time to build a touchscreen Mac…

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Microsoft: iPad’s Closed Platform is “Humorous”

Posted by David Worthington on January 28, 2010 at 11:37 pm

[Note: The original headline on this story was “Microsoft: iPad is “Humorous.” Microsoft PR head Frank Shaw tweeted that he found that title misleading. After contacting him and listening to his complaint, we’ve changed the headline to make it more specific.]

It’s an understatement to say that Apple’s iPad generated a lot of chatter when it was announced on Wednesday; the scuttlebutt actually slowed down the Internet. Even Microsoft couldn’t help but weigh in, criticizing the iPad for being a “locked down device.”

“It is a humorous world in how Microsoft is much more open than Apple,” Brandon Watson, the director of product management in the developer platform at Microsoft, told me in an interview yesterday. With Microsoft’s platforms, developers can build whatever they want, and target a broad array of devices using the same skill set, he added.

Watson claimed that many developers of applications for the iPhone OS–which the iPad uses–are not making money. Developing applications for the iPhone and iPad is expensive, he said, because iPhone OS uses the Objective C language rather than Microsoft’s more pervasive .NET platform. And Apple’s control over the platform has alienated some people that make software for its products, he said.

It’s certainly true that there has been some griping about Apple’s development policies, and not every app is a winner. Facebook developer Joe Hewitt famously protested against the control Apple is exerting over its hardware (he is now praising the iPad), and argued that Apple is setting a “horrible precedent.” The Free Software Foundation protested the iPad on Wednesday for being an “unprecedented extension of DRM” into a new class of computers.

I think that the FSF’s argument may have merit, but Microsoft’s criticism misses the target altogether. What Apple has envisioned with the iPad isn’t a traditional PC–it’s more of an appliance. You don’t tinker with your television; you turn it on and consume services. The iPad’s Apps are like services. And despite what Watson said about iPhone developers failing to make money, some are clearly doing exceptionally well.

When Microsoft released its Tablet PC back in 2001, it grafted handwriting recognition onto Windows. That capability extended Windows into new (such as engineering and medical services), but the Tablet PC was still essentially a PC running Windows. Windows 7’s multitouch enhancements create a more natural user interface for PCs, but a PC is still a PC.

The iPad isn’t a PC. I’ve gone on trips to Boston and Washington DC over the past several weekends, and spend hours riding Amtrak and on Wi-Fi-enabled busses. I didn’t bring a laptop with me, because I didn’t want to lug one around, and didn’t really need to have a full fledged computer with me. My iPhone provided me with entertainment along the way. Truth be told, I would rather have had an iPad with me to surf the Web, listen to music, watch movies and read. If the price comes down even further, Apple’s got a winner.

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