Tag Archives: iPad
Apple’s Intro into Tablets May Mirror Same Path as Smartphones
Posted on 05. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 
1 Comments
Remember 2007? That summer was a magical time for smartphone enthusiasts. That was the summer that Apple introduced the iPhone, and while many said it wouldn’t work (marrying an iPod with a phone would be crazy) the exact opposite happened. Apple changed the smartphone market, created an application store that developers now salivate over and created an operating system platform that now extends to their newest product, the iPad.
It wasn’t too long after that Google announced it would lead a consortium to develop an open source platform for mobile phones called Android. Unlike the iPhone, however, Android took a different path to development into a highly touted architecture used by many smartphone manufacturers. The first phone with Android, the G4 manufactured by the little-know HTC with wireless service by T-Mobile, was a curious device and one that only captured the interests of the most early of the early adopters.
Now Android is a successful commercial system, but because of its open source nature it is not only in smartphones but also in netbooks, tablets and even cars. I can’t wait to run Android on my fridge. It’s so hard to keep organized right now.
Fast forward to today. I do apologize for being repetitive, but here’s the story so far.
Apple introduced the iPad, and while many said that it won’t work (supersizing an iPod Touch would be crazy) the exact opposite may or may not happen (600,000 sold already is not bad though). Apple potentially has changed the tablet market, with an application market that developers are salivating over and offering a device that is far cheaper and more widespread than any other tablet that is on the market.
You can fill in the rest for Chrome OS. I don’t have that information yet, but I would assume that the iPad is leading the way for some interesting open source development when it comes to tablets and other devices.
Comparison: iPad Performance vs. Nexus One
Posted on 04. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 3 Comments
So, how fast is the iPad? According to the hardware analysis site Anandtech not as fast as might have been expected. While the iPad’s custom designed A4 processor is faster than the Nexus One’s Qualcomm Snapdragon, the results don’t put the iPad that far ahead. Both the devices were compared with the iPhone 3GS and measured by how fast that each of them were able to load certain web pages.
The reviewer, Anand Lal Shimpi, writes that the “iPad loads web pages 10% faster than the Nexus One” and that “despite the early reports of the iPad being blazingly fast, I found it just “acceptable” in my limited time with it thus far”.
In fact, it may even be possible that with those results that the A4 is really not all that unique anyways. Regardless of that, if this chip were to be put into the next generation of iPhones, the Nexus One would be beat. Since the only way to compare the device is to load web pages, I wonder if Apple’s operating system with Safari is better refined and optimized than Android 2.1 and its namesake browser that is running on Nexus One.
So there you have it. Many reviews are glowing about the iPad being an amazing device, and I don’t discount that because of how profoundly different it is. And although the iPad and the Nexus One are hard to compare since they run in different segments (phone vs. tablet) speed is still a very important metric to measure in terms of user experience.
Gmail Web App for iPad is Announced
Posted on 03. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments
Yesterday Google announced a special version of Gmail on its mobile blog, a version that utilizes HTML5 in order to optimize the experience for iPad users. All anyone with the Apple tablet needs to do is head over to gmail.com and they will see their email in a format that best uses a tablet’s functionality:
You’ll notice that incoming emails are pushed off to one side, while selected messages are shown in a main column to the right. Also, the buttons in the application are sized for touch. This interface was actually first developed for smartphone users to be able to use Gmail, and has been ported to this new version designed for a tablet.
What is interesting to note is that instead of using an App Store-type of strategy for Gmail on the iPad, Google has gone ahead with their web app methodology. That’s because Google is more interested in allowing open content on the web as opposed to Apple’s strategy of creating a controlled, as some call “walled garden” approach. Indeed, there are other Google services readily available on the iPad such as YouTube and Maps.
With that being said, Google does have the Google Mobile App in the App Store, first released for the iPhone and available for the iPad if users are interested in voice search.
Nevertheless having more services that are strictly web-enabled allows Google to be more prevalent in all platforms – and will help them push their own initiatives for their own platform which will promote applications that are easily used on the web with no other software need that what a user already has.
Trying to Profit from Video, Google Purchases Episodic
Posted on 02. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
It has been announced that Google has acquired the online video platform company Episodic. According to their official website, “Episodic truly spans the video value chain and provides everything publishers and marketers need to manage, measure and monetize online video”.
Monetize online video. That’s been somewhat of a challenge for Google. While video sites that provide television content such as Hulu are now profitable, YouTube is not so easy to monetize. That’s because many video clips on the site lack commercial appeal. How do you find ways to advertise to an audience that likes to watch a cat playing the piano? That’s hard to determine.
Enter Episodic. Read Write Web reports they have been working with companies like Showtime’s Sports division to stream live online video for a fee, which is television content experience that YouTube doesn’t really have. This is like Google getting some of the expertise that Hulu already has, which by the way is a joint venture between NBC Universal, Disney and News Corporation. Hulu monetizes their content through a clever method of advertising prior to showing videos, and sometimes even allows users to choose the ads that they will watch.
With the flurry of news about the iPad release this week, this acquisition along with Google’s recent purchase of video codec developers On2 will end up being a good strategic decision if the intention is to compete with Apple on content in a model that is different – offering video to users for free, but at the same time finding a way to make money from advertising.
Analysis: Who Benefits Most From the Chrome-Flash Collaboration?
Posted on 30. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 5 Comments
We all thought it was dead; in one fell swoop its back on the map.
It was rumored yesterday that Google and Adobe would work together to integrate Flash into the Chrome browser, and that rumor indeed came true. Now the development version of Chrome is capable of having Flash baked in, if you so choose. At some point in the near future, this will be implemented to all versions of Chrome. I think many are surprised by the move here, but at the same time this was decision that must have been was months in the making as Google becomes more of an adversary to Apple.
What happens here is a lesson of competitive advantage: Google plans on having a big share of the mobile market since they have watched what Apple has been able to accomplish with wireless phones and the hype over the iPad. So creating a strategic partnership with Mozilla and Adobe makes sense. Sure, Flash is not open source but it would not surprise me that there is some sort of agreement between Google and Adobe to start heading that way with Flash, seeing as how Google supports it with Chrome, Android, Chrome OS and other projects.
So Google gets a competitive advantage over Apple. What does Adobe gain? Well, in the future, everyone who uses Chrome will get Flash installed. Since most browsers today have it installed anyways, a logical step is to integrate it. Plus, most people don’t spend time updating Flash unless thye need to for running something in their browser that needs it, and that leaves users vulnerable to attack since older versions are more susceptible than the latest and greatest.
An auto-update allows users to be worry-free when it comes to Flash. Because most people don’t really care about Flash itself, they just want the interactive web to work as it should, right?
It’s been said that Adobe has struggled to keep Flash from being exploited, most likely due to the fact that before now Flash wasn’t a target of hackers. That’s no longer the case and it makes one wonder how this will affect Adobe’s other popular free software, Reader, which uses rather large PDF file formats that could contain malicious code.
So who gains the most? While Google getting a standard format integrated into Chrome is certainly a plus, it does make one wonder whatever happened to the huge push to HTML5, where video codecs are browser embedded and can play clips using a tag. Perhaps this is a reaction to the metrics recorded from the YouTube HTML5 beta, with Google realizing that Flash is so ubiquitous it is better off increasing support of the format that powers the biggest and potentially most profitable video site in the world.
Adobe gets exposure for their formats as a result of this, and it wouldn’t surprise anyone now that a seemingly resurrected Flash will allow them to continue to provide all sorts of web content to end users. They get the backing of Google which will challenge Steve Jobs’ assertion that Flash is full of bugs, and allow for a more secure experience because security sandboxing will be implemented. Not to mention the fact that auto-update will limit the amount of widespread attack that could possible. This could potentially motivate hackers to take on different, and perhaps more exploitable, targets that exist.
So for now Google wins, until we see Flash integrated in all the major browsers – which could be the next move since Mozilla also has an interest in this new collaboration.
Does Nexus One’s Poor Numbers Mean a Strategy Change?
Posted on 16. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 2 Comments
Gizmodo is reporting today that the Nexus One, released in early January as Google’s flagship Android smartphone product has had very poor sales numbers when compared to its competitors. Counting the seventy-four days since the Nexus One has been released, and then comparing the Droid and iPhone the numbers are paltry for Google. While the iPhone and Motorola Droid tallied a million and 1.05 million respectively, the Nexus One has only shipped 135,000 phones.At that number, the highly touted iPad tablet already has more pre-orders than Google’s official phone has sold.
But let’s go back to highly touted. Although the tablet from Apple was never really a for sure thing, there were plenty of news stories about it long before it was unveiled, one of the biggest was the fact that Apple already owned the domain name for iSlate – the supposed name for the device at the time. So what about the publicity for the Nexus One? Pretty slim, and it almost seemed like and afterthought once Motorola hit it big with the Droid that Google felt they almost had to release their own phone.
On the subject of Motorola, keep in mind that the marketing campaign for the Droid was in excess of $100 million dollars. There wasn’t a time you could turn on the TV and hear a robot saying “Droid” in the commercial blitz that commenced at the phone’s launch. By contrast, I’ve never seen a Nexus One commercial – the only ads that I have seen are on Google pages and some ads sprinkled here and there on the internet.
Just because the numbers are not that good for Google doesn’t mean that they haven’t learned a lot from this exercise. Remember, this was the first actual product that Google has released. And they decided to do it differently than any other mobile phone manufacturer on the market by selling it themselves. Even though in reality it was made by HTC, it has the Google brand on it.
Now they will sell the Nexus One for AT&T, competing directly with Apple – but you have to pay the full $529 for the privilege.
When it comes time for Google to sell their own computing device, what path will they take? I have a feeling that they will sell one themselves, but they may opt to also get the backing of a large manufacturer as well for mass marketing purposes. Remember, Acer as of late has been doing a lot of posturing about being the first to market with a Chrome OS netbook, that they will sell millions of them this year and so on.
Whatever the choice may be, it’s clear that the Nexus One was a trial run that required very little marketing expense for the company, which is where things could have got expensive. After all, it seems as if HTC is rolling out new phones all the time anyway, why not help Google out since incidentally, the search engine giant lent a hand with the G1 smartphone?
And don’t forget, the Nexus One has received favorable reviews, some calling it the best Android phone yet – even Gizmodo. Google doesn’t care about popularity for its branded devices yet; it’s more concerned with providing the best user experience possible.
Google CEO Says Chrome OS on Track for Release
Posted on 12. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
Wondering when you can get your hands on a Chrome-powered machine? Expect it sometime in the latter half of the year, just as what Google established as a timeline last year. That’s because the Middle East tech blog T-Break Tech is reporting that CEO Eric Schmidt said yesterday at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit that Chrome OS is still on track for that timetable and that big news will be coming later on this year.
It’s very possible that we have not learned about all of the details about Chrome OS yet.For example, not long after Apple showed off their iPad tablet for the first time, Google quietly slipped some videos of a Chrome OS prototype tablet. There were also some interesting user interfeace designs accompanying the videos. It’s not a far stretch to think that Google plans on offering several varieties of devices in order to filled the segment of gadgets that fit between a smartphone and a a laptop.
That could mean a smartbook, tablet or something else that does not even have a label yet. For example, check out this patent design from Qualcomm. It’s a tablet-netbook-smartphone product that folds and bends depending on how you want to use it.
The reality is that instead of just having one computing machine, many users may adopt a liking to several different ones depending on where they are. For example, there could be a smartbook/phone for being on the go, a netbook for the desk at home and a tablet in the living room. Not to mention your Chrome OS business machine that expected in 2011. All of these devices would be able to access the same data and preferences as needed, or could be configured differently to serve their own purpose.
Regardless, I expect something interesting coming soon.
Computex to Have 50 ARM Products
Posted on 11. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
Computerworld is reporting that Computex, held the first week of June in Taipei, will have over fifty different devices on display that run on the ARM architecture. ARM is a company based in Cambridge, U.K. that develops and licenses their processor technology to a wide array of manufacturers. You can find ARM chips in your smartphone, and the soon to be released iPad tablet that has been of keen interest in the tech world has an ARM chip in it customized by Apple.
This wouldn’t be news for a mobile phone expo. But Computex is the second largest computer manufacturer conference. Because the chips require less power and produce a lower amount of heat than x86 processors, this technology will become prevalent in the netbook, tablet and smartbook market over the next few years. Many of these gadgets will be offered by wireless companies offering data services bundled together in the second half of this year.
Of particular interest of course is the fact that Chrome OS machines will most likely run on ARM chips. There already has been a successful prototype shown at the CeBIT conference not too long ago, and I would expect to see a good amount of machines running Chrome OS specifically when Computex rolls around. Right now many of these tablets and smaller computers are being shown running Android, however I am not quite convinced that operating system is the best choice for theses machine but instead simply a placeholder as Chrome OS is put through its paces.
Video: $200 Chrome OS Tablet by Freescale
Posted on 08. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 20 Comments
So it does exist. I had heard that there was going to be a Chrome OS tablet at the Mobile World Congress, and sure enough we finally see in a somewhat lengthy video the folks from Freescale showing off their prototype with a 7″ screen. This was the same model that was shown at CES running Android. The cost? Around $200, running on hardware in the form factor of their model known as the i.MX51. The video shows some locally cached video playback in HTML5:
This is just an observation, but it seems to me that other tablets are going to have a hard time competing against a tablet product that is only a couple of hundred dollars. But let’s face it: this is just a tablet, and there is only so much you can do with them. I’m not even sure how comfortable one would even be to use. Of course I have to admit I have never actually used one.
But in the demo you see that the Freescale product manager is using a mouse and a keyboard. Probably because the touch capabilities and interface for Chrome OS on tablets is not nearly complete. Earlier today I wrote about the business Chrome OS coming out and I explored the concept of Google having several different versions of their operating system. I feel like this demo gives more proof to that concept. The device itself is capable of touch, as they also showed a tablet running some variation of Linux that had capacitive input.
But for a couple of bills and with an ARM processor, how could you go wrong? It even appears to have a camera. That explains the large bezel.
Shout out to Armdevices.net.
Video: Using HTML5 with YouTube
Posted on 11. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
As many already know, YouTube is attempting to get away from using the proprietary Adobe Flash standard for video playback. In mobile devices such as the iPhone and soon the iPad, you cannot use Flash, supposedly because Apple CEO Steve Jobs deems it “buggy” – causing applications that use it to crash. There is another valid argument for not using Flash, and it is because now that it is installed in so many devices it could be a security threat according to McAfee.
As previously reported here, there is a beta for using HTML5 while on YouTube. This allows anyone using a HTML5-compliant browser to use it. But that means using a compliant browser such as Safari, Chrome, Firefox or IE when coupled with Chrome Frame to use it. The current version does have its quirks, but eventually it will result in a a faster and overall better user expeience when looking at any type of media over the web.
You can take a look at how to use HTML5 and its early performance on the YouTube site right here:
It’s pretty clear from the clip that the video loads pretty fast. Instead of using Flash as the go-between, HTML5 allows web developers to directly embed compressed video files such as MPEG right into the code itself so that it can be called from a server. Not to mention that Flash can take up a lot of resources on your machine if you’re trying to load up a couple of videos. The only intermediary is the application that you use, further evidencing the fact that personal computing is becoming more centralized around the internet browser and the standard application that we use to view it.
JooJoo Looks to be Dark Horse in Tablet Race
Posted on 05. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments
Fusion Garage, a privately funded start-up established in 2008, has a tablet product up its sleeve called JooJoo and it has some hardware specifications that directly go after its competitors. This is a device with a 12.1″ screen, has an integrated camera, boots in nine seconds and supports multitouch. It also has HD capability for video. Check out a short clip of this device:
One concern I have is price. At $499, JooJoo is not offering any sort of competitive advantage against Apple. This also appears to be running a proprietary “browser based operating system” that is developed by Fusion Garage. Since I could not find any other information about it on their specifications page, that’s all I have on what type of operating system this device is running.
With only 4GB of solid state internal memory, this tablet would strictly be used in a cloud environment. Plus, with HD video built-in, the only way for the JooJoo to get content for large high-def video files would have to be from the web. In this case, it would be beneficial for Fusion Garage to get the support of developers who will ultimately need to be able to provide the tablet with applications that it will need in order to go up against the iPad.
Of course, their strategy may be to support web-only applications that are being developed in HTML5 that Google plans to support, with hopes of riding the Chrome OS tablet wave with a product that has some nice features in terms of technical capabilities.
Though JooJoo hasn’t been released yet, it is supposed to be available this month.
Report: Tablet Sales Will Top 4 Million in 2010
Posted on 03. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
Computerworld is touting a recent report released by ABI Research, Inc. predicts that tablet sales will be over four million this year, and by 2015 will be at 57 million sold per year. That seems to me like a huge number of devices sold in a market that barely exists. Yet.
ABI is defining a tablet as a device that is between five and eleven inches, has wi-fi and video capability. That certainly fits into the Apple iPad and Chrome OS tablet specifications perfectly. The interest in these devices is high, but we shall see whether this amount of tablets are actually sold. The major concern for a tablet is how much in terms of creation you will really be able to do. Without a keyboard or other input devices such as a camera (for now) the iPad along with other low-cost tablets popping up in the news are lacking the tools needed in order to create content for the web and otherwise.
That begs the question: are users going to be hooking up an assortment of other devices to tablets in order to make them function more like a regular PC? If that were the case, it would totally defeat the purpose of even having a tablet in the first place. Of course with Apple, they control the hardware specifications of the iPad, and can limit the number of ports thus the number of accessories that could be attached. Expect to see Google, which has already been adamant about Chrome OS hardware specifications, to do the same thing.
While this technology seems interesting, I’m not completely convinced that a tablet fills a specific need that I have unless it is for quick information retrieval. In that case, the device better be pretty low-cost.
