Tag Archives | Apple iPad

What if There is No Tablet Market?

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 18, 2011 at 6:48 pm

Last month, a PCWorld contributor named Katherine Noyes wrote a blog post whose very title invited incredulous mockery: “Why Tablets Are Just a Fad.” One hundred percent of the responses I saw said that she was wrong, wrong, wrong (some politely, some less so).

I thought her take was epically myopic myself. Still do. But right now, if you want to make the case that tablets aren’t a fad, there’s one major piece of evidence in your favor: the iPad is a monstrous hit. Beyond that? I’m not sure if there’s a single data point yet that proves that tablets are a robust product category that’s here for the long haul.

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Hoo Boy, Here We Go Yet Again: Apple Sues Samsung

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 18, 2011 at 2:44 pm

Do Samsung products such as its Galaxy S phones and Galaxy Tab tablets imitate Apple’s iPhone and iPad? Yes, of course they do. So, to greater and lesser extents, do nearly every smartphone and slate-type computing device on the market today. Is that legal? I guess we’ll find out: Apple is suing Samsung, saying that it’s violating multiple patents and trademarks.

I haven’t seen Apple’s suit, but it sounds like it relates to look-and-feel issues more than do most of the umpteen lawsuits that tech companies have filed against each other recently.  In a statement to All Things Digital’s Ina Fried, an Apple spokesperson even complained about the boxes that Samsung products come in being too Apple-esque:

It’s no coincidence that Samsung’s latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging,. This kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to protect Apple’s intellectual property when companies steal our ideas.

If Apple has a case, you gotta wonder who else it’ll sue and where all this ends. HP’s upcoming TouchPad tablet, for instance, is promising–but it’s even more strikingly iPad-like than Samsung’s tablets to date. Is it vulnerable? And given that Archos is just about the only company that can honestly say it would be making tablets even if the iPad had never existed, does Apple have a legally-justified beef against the entire category?

I’ve always been made uneasy when one company unimaginatively cribs another’s designs–when I attended Mobile World Congress 2009 it felt like a blur of faux iPhones–but I don’t like the idea of one company essentially having a monopoly on a product category or a form factor. More thoughts to come as details emerge, but for now, what’s your take?

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Apple Rep Thinks iPad 2 Stock Plentiful “Within a Couple Weeks”

Posted by Doug Aamoth on April 18, 2011 at 11:35 am

If you’ve been feverishly searching for an iPad 2 without any success, things might get better in the next couple of weeks. I was in a Boston-area Apple store yesterday and, as is my custom, decided to ask one of the employees if they had any iPad 2s in stock.

He, like so many before him, looked at me as if I had three heads before telling me that they were completely sold out—every model, every price point, everything. This was not the first time I’d been told this exact same information, as stock levels of the iPad 2 have been scarce everywhere.

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Adobe Teaches Photoshop to Talk to Tablets

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 10, 2011 at 9:51 pm

A couple of weeks ago, Adobe demoed an ambitious experimental version of Photoshop for the iPad. The company isn’t saying when it might turn into a shipping product. But it is rolling out an intriguing new technology that involves both Photoshop and the iPad. It’s the Photoshop Touch Software Development Kit, an interface that allows apps on the iPad, Android tablets, and the BlackBerry PlayBook to shuttle information back and forth with Photoshop running on a Windows PC or a Mac via Wi-Fi. The Touch SDK can turn a tablet into an extension of the Photoshop interface or let a tablet app move images into Photoshop with one tap–and it’s a neat idea with loads of promise.

Adobe is announcing the Touch SDK as part of an extravaganza of Creative Suite news tonight that includes the announcement of Creative Suite 5.5 (an interim upgrade due within the next month with a bunch of new features, many of them focused on creating Flash and HTML 5 content and apps) and the introduction of subscription plans that will let users opt to pay monthly fees for ongoing access to the latest versions of the Creative Suite apps rather than buying them the traditional way (prices range from $35 a month for one app, such as Photoshop, to $129 a month for the Master Collection, which includes everything). Creative Suite 5.5’s version of Photoshop will support the SDK, but you won’t need to upgrade to it to use Photoshop-enabled tablet apps: Adobe will make a free update available for Photoshop 5.5 on May 3rd, the company says.

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Report: 2 Million-Plus iPad 2s Shipped in March

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 6, 2011 at 12:40 pm

All those “stock outs” at iPad retailers across the US (and worldwide) had to mean something right? Well, according to Taiwanese tech site DigiTimes, which cites unnamed Apple suppliers, it did. These sources claim that the company may have taken delivery of as much as 2.6 million iPads last month.

Seeing that the iPad 2 is sold out just about everywhere, it’s not out of the realm of possibly that the company sold just about all of its incoming stock. If that’s true then sales of the second generation device more than doubled sales of the first one in its initial month of availability.

DigiTimes goes on to say that its sources estimated that Apple will be able to take delivery of upwards of four million units every month as long as components remain available. Now, iSuppli had sad last month that the massive earthquake in Japan could affect supply, so we’ll have to wait and see.

I still wonder why Apple has been so silent regarding sales numbers. Typically, it is the first to toot its own horn when things are going well. Just seems a little strange, but then again all the anecdotal evidence we’re seeing indicates the iPad 2 is selling just fine.

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Daily Downward?

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 5, 2011 at 9:38 am

How many people are reading The Daily, News Corp.’s new iPad-only, for-pay newspaper? Only Rupert Murdoch and company (and Apple) know for sure. It is, however, possible to determine how many Daily readers are tweeting from within it–and that number is going down, not up.

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Cablevision Opens the (iPad) Firehose

Posted by Dave Z on April 4, 2011 at 8:59 am

Leave it to Cablevision… True to form, they’ve thrown caution to the wind and have launched the full fledged STB replacement iPad app we’ve been waiting for:

  • ƒApproximately 300 channels of live television
  • ƒMore than 2,000 titles of Video on demand (VOD) available today, with Cablevision’s full VOD library expected to be encoded and available by early summer
  • ƒEnhanced guide information that is fully searchable and able to be filtered based on genre, cast, time of day and favorite channels
  • ƒ The ability to schedule future DVR recordings and manage (erase) previously-recorded content
  • ƒ Full parental controls (specific to each iPad)
  • ƒ Closed Captioning

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