Tag Archives | Tablets

Marvell Shows a New Android Tablet Design

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 16, 2010 at 8:02 am

I’m spending the day at the Future of Publishing Summit in New York City, a conference on the digital transformation of books, magazines, and newspapers. The room is packed with execs from the New York publishing industry, plus a few Silicon Valley types. Among the latter are the folks from chipmaker Marvell, who are showing off some prototype devices based on the company’s low-cost, power-efficient Armada processors.

The newest of these is a reference design for a 10.1″ Android-based color tablet that Marvell just finished putting together. Here it is:

As a reference design, this (rather chunky) tablet is mostly about technological guts rather than industrial design: I’d expect the companies who build devices based on it to make them sleeker and sexier.

Marvell says that it expects tablets based on this design to go on sale by the end of this year. It’s not talking about pricetags yet, but with the iPad starting at $499, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the starting price for tablets from other companies will be substantially lower. Manufacturers should certainly be able to sell an Armada-based tablet running the free Android OS for less than a “Slate PC” running full-blown Windows 7.

Marvell’s version runs Android in a form that looks pretty much like the Android on phones such as the Nexus One and Droid, only on a bigger, higher-resolution display. Assuming that tablets are here to stay, I hope that Google–or someone–builds an Android interface that was designed with big touchscreens in mind. Despite the theory that the iPad is merely a big iPhone, the most interesting thing about it is that Apple went to the trouble of designing a new interface tailored to its needs. I don’t think tablets running a stock copy of Windows 7 or Android are going to be anywhere near as interesting as ones that rethink the experience for a new class of gizmo.

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iPad Reserved

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 12, 2010 at 6:31 am

At 5:38am this morning I reserved an iPad for pickup at my local Apple Store on April 3rd, the day Apple’s new gizmo becomes available. Hey, I was up anyway–in fact, I was onboard a plane at the time, heading home from Seattle. It went smoothly, except for one glitch on the login screen. But I liked the Jobsian-sounding error I got: “This is an error message. You have failed in some way.”

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Microsoft’s Courier: Concept or Product?

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 5, 2010 at 12:13 pm

Remember “Courier,” the cool Microsoft dual-screen concept tablet which Gizmodo uncovered last September? It’s back. This time, it’s Engadget that’s published Courier imagery, including a photo and new screens and videos.

Until now, there’s been no evidence that Courier was anything more than a slick idea that might or might not ever turn into a product–sort of like Apple’s Knowledge Navigator from 1987. But Engadget’s source talked about details that, if true, mean that Courier is indeed in the works. It’s supposedly based on Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processor and will show up in the third or fourth quarter of this year.

If so, neat–but for now, Courier doesn’t feel very tangible. The videos are animations that look like they were done in Flash; the screens don’t look real; even the photograph might be a mockup of some sort. Until Microsoft says something or more solid materials leak out, it’s tough to know what to think.

I’m a fan of genuinely new ideas in user interfaces, and Courier is full of them. I’m intrigued, however, by the fact that the whole idea seems to center around the idea that folks want to create handwritten digital notes. That was also the theory behind the Tablet PC, a product which Microsoft thought would come to dominate the notebook market–but which never really took off.

I remain skeptical about there being a critical mass of people who want to take notes with a stylus and then look at their own handwriting forever after. Of course Courier, in concept form, looks to be about a hundred times more elegant than the Tablet PC, so maybe it could be the breakthrough that the Tablet turned out not to be. I hope we get the chance to find out…

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iPad: Revolutionary, Magical, and a Little Late

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 5, 2010 at 10:08 am

On January 27th, Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad and said it would be available in two months. Now Apple has announced the specifics concerning availability of the Wi-Fi version–and the company’s saying it’ll go on sale on Saturday, April 3rd. It’ll accept pre-orders starting on March 12th for both the Wi-Fi and 3G models, and buyers will be able to reserve a Wi-Fi model to pick up on the third.

(Apple didn’t say when the 3G model will go on sale, but based on the original timetable and barring any delays, it’ll presumably show up in late April or early May.)

I’m still not sure whether the arrival of the iPad will inspire large numbers of people to show up at Apple Stores at four in the morning. We also don’t know whether there will be enough iPads to go around. (For what it’s worth, there’s never been a shortage of iPhones on their launch days–in fact, the most efficient way to buy one has been to bide your time until late on the first sale day, and then stroll in and pick one up with little or no waiting.)

In Apple’s press release about the on-sale details, it calls the iPad “magical and revolutionary” not once but twice, including one such reference in a Jobs quote. The more the company repeats this mantra, the more I think of this guy, the product he promotes, and the catch phrase he’s been using for several decades:

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Your Biggest iPad Questions Answered

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 6, 2010 at 2:52 pm

[Here’s another column I wrote for FoxNews.com. In this one, I try to summarize some of the major things that non-geeks need to know about the iPad.]

When Apple finally announced its iPad tablet computer at a San Francisco press event last week, we learned that it was “magical.” And “revolutionary.” And that the price was “unbelievable.”

That’s the truth according to Steve Jobs, at least. As usual, the facts are a bit more complex. The iPad is an ambitious product that’s hard to sum up in a few words, or to assess at all until it’s actually available for sale, which won’t be for weeks. Herewith, some early answers to major questions about the device, based on what I learned at Apple’s launch and the hands-on time I got with one after the great unveiling concluded.

Continue Reading →

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Reports: Apple Will Sell Eight Million iPads by 2012

Posted by David Worthington on February 3, 2010 at 5:24 pm

An analyst with Needham & Company has projected that Apple will sell 2 million iPads this year with an additional 6M being sold in 2011. The sales will come at the expense of Apple’s iPod Touch, according to reports today.

Sales will begin moderately. The anticipated spike in sales will occur after “the arrival of a catalyst,” but the report did not specify what that incentive would be. The iTunes store worked before, and it may work again.

That is evidenced by reports of interactive textbooks headed to the iPad. The iPad also could appeal to people who have light computing requirements such as seniors.

In comparison, the iPhone was much more mass market. Over 1 million iPhones were sold within 71 days of its introduction, and sold over 8 million units last quarter. The iPhone has contributed remarkably to Apple’s revenues–without massively cannibalizing the sales of iPods. The iPad could be viewed as a substitute for the iPod Touch.

The thing to keep in mind is that this is only the first iteration of the iPad. There’s no shortage of speculation about what Apple may or may deliver when the iPad ships – from evidence of a camera to an “intelligent bezel.” We don’t know the entire story of what “it” is yet, or what it will become. The iPad could very well end up carrying other Apple products.

Whether those reports are accurate or not, they do prove one thing: there is no shortage of potential for the tablet category. Even if Google enters the market, increased category awareness and growth should only support Apple’s sales.

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The JooJoo Cometh

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 1, 2010 at 9:11 am

Over at VentureBeat, Paul Boutin has an update on what is now the second-most interesting tablet device announced to date: Fusion Garage’s JooJoo, the former CrunchPad that until now has been notable largely for behind-the-scenes dramatics and legal wrangling.

The JooJoo has gotten decent reviews from those that have seen it in person–it’s got a bigger, wider, higher-resolution display than Apple’s iPad, and does Flash. On those other hand, it’s Web-only; there’s no JooJoo App Store, nor any JooJoo apps. It sells for $499, the same price as the base iPad.

Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan told Paul that the JooJoo will ship by the end of the month. Assuming you’re intrigued by tablets at all, is this one tempting? Does the fact it’s the subject of a lawsuit filed by Michael Arrington, the man who proposed it in the first place, scare you off?

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