How to sell an iPhone app for $9.99

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Apple, Developer, iPhone, App Store, iPod touchMarco over on the Instapaper blog (which, of course, is the blog of the app Instapaper), posted a really interesting commentary recently on a subject we've been following since the beginning: App Store pricing. As we've said before, it's a strange thing -- developers want higher prices so that they can put more effort into making iPhone apps better. But customers have a perception already that...

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Will Google's Android Play DOS to Apple's iPhone?

Daniel Eran Dilger Today's broad array of smartphone operating system contenders are offering lots of potential answers to a problem that only requires one. It appears the market has two options ahead: either pool generic hardware makers behind a single operating system and deliver a smartphone marketplace that resembles the Windows PC market, or watch them fall to a dominant leader and have a smartphone market that resembles Apple's iPod ecosystem. This decision isn't going to be made by a class of intellectual elite, or by government mandate. it's going to be made by the market itself. Here are the factors that will influence the outcome, either marginalizing Apple's iPhone into a niche as the company has twice experienced previously at the hands of DOS in 1981 and Windows in 1991, or positioning it as the dominant leader as Apple has achieved for itself with the iPod since 2001. The third segment in this series looks at Google's Android and the Open Handset Alliance as a possible “DOS-attack” against Apple's iPhone. Subsequent segments will look at Nokia's newly opened Symbian and other mobile contenders challenging the iPhone. Will the iPhone Meet its Match from a Modern Day DOS? Will Windows Mobile Play DOS to Apple’s iPhone? Will Google's Android Play DOS to Apple's iPhone? Will Symbian Play DOS to Apple's iPhone? Google Acquires Android. In 2005, Google purchased a startup named Android, which had been in business for nearly two years. The secretive startup was known only to be working on software for mobile phones. It was being run by a who's who of mobile industry veterans, including Andy Rubin, the founder of Danger. Rubin had earlier worked at WebTV along with Chris White and Andy McFadden, both of whom had also joined Android. Richard Miner of Orange and Nick Sears of Tmobile also brought their mobile provider experience to Android. At the time of the acquisition, Google didn't announce any plans for Android and instead only told BusinessWeek, “We acquired Android because of the talented engineers and great technology. We're thrilled to have them here.” It appeared that Google was only going to be expanding its search services for mobile phone users, along the lines of the Google SMS answer system it had recently released. Google Buys Android for Its Mobile Arsenal - BusinessWeek Windows XP Media Center Edition vs Apple TV: The Fall of WebTV The GPhone Myth. As reports began to leak out about talks between Google and hardware makers throughout 2007, rumors began to fly about “the GPhone,” a competitive offering that was supposed to take on the iPhone. Some phone enthusiasts hoped Google would jump in to rescue the struggling OpenMoko project and turn it into a viable project that could attack Apple's new smartphone. In October 2007, I printed the Great Google GPhone Myth, taking apart the idea that Google would be directly competing against the iPhone, and describing that Google was really working on a free alternative to Windows Mobile as a conduit for getting its search and related services on a broader variety of mobiles. Google's services were already on the iPhone. In November, Google played its hand: it had organized a consortium of companies called the Open Handset Alliance to develop open standards for mobiles. The first product from the group would be Android, a mobile operating system built on the Linux kernel. Google wasn't getting into the phone handset business at all; it was only making sure that its mobile search products would not risk being marginalized by the threat of Windows Mobile on phones in the same way Microsoft had been working to leverage its PC monopoly to push Google search off the Windows desktop. The Great Google gPhone Myth Introducing Android: Leader of Linux. Two weeks later, Google released an early version of the Android software. On top of a Linux kernel, Android uses a specialized version of a Java Virtual Machine that takes Java language code and turns it into what Google calls “Dalvik bytecode” rather than Java bytecode as a standard JVM would. This allows Google to leverage existing and familiar Java language tools without paying Sun for a Java license. Like Mac OS X and its fraternal iPhone OS, Android includes a variety of open source libraries, including SQLite and WebKit. On top of that, Google developed a series of frameworks that handle the tasks Cocoa Touch does on the iPhone. Android also bundles a set of applications. While Apple adapted its existing Mac OS X to work in a mobile environment to create the iPhone OS, Android is more like a customized Java environment running on a specialized mobile Linux variant: elements of maturity in an otherwise experimental new platform. What is Android? -Google Android was by no means the first mobile OS using Linux. Both Palm and its amputated ACCESS software arm have Linux-based mobile platforms. Nokia has Maemo, which it uses in its Internet Tablets, and also recently acquired Trolltech and its Qtopia mobile Linux platform. Motorola has teamed up with MontaVista Software to use its Mobilinux. Intel created the Moblin project for mobile Linux, aimed at Internet devices. Google's OHA also isn't the first consortium to attempt to standardize a mobile Linux platform. The OSDL started the Mobile Linux Initiative to define requirements for hardware; the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) then worked to define various phone profiles aimed at the Japanese market; the Linux Phone Standard (LiPS) Forum tried to do the same thing in Europe. In 2007, LiPS was folded into the new LiMo Foundation, along with the OSDL. All of these committees have had some overlap and some complementary features. Several of Google's OHA partners are also LiMo members, including NTT DoCoMo, Wind River, and Motorola. So why didn't Google just join LiMo? “LiMo, very candidly, wasn't moving fast enough,” OHA board member John Bruggeman told CNET. Google hopes to herd the Linux cats into a progressive, structured platform that can battle against Symbian and Windows Mobile to succeed as the new DOS of smartphones. Will Google fracture or unify mobile Linux? The Presumption of the Necessity of DOS. The previous segment examining Windows Mobile pointed out how the PC industry as a whole assumed that Microsoft's desktop Windows monopoly would easily take over dominance in the MP3 player market, pushing Apple into a niche position. This was expected because DOS had pushed Apple's early computers into a reduced role starting in 1981, and Microsoft had repeated this again in 1991 when the DOS world migrated to Windows, effectively pruning Apple's Macintosh into a Bonsai platform. The inability of one company to dominate any product category has been frequently repeated by PC industry pundits as a given, despite the fact that history is full of examples of this happening. Sony dominated personal music players for two decades under the Walkman brand even while equally large competitors tried to push it from this position; Nintendo has similarly owned handheld gaming despite ill-fated efforts to grab a piece of its pie by products running a generic platform such as Microsoft's WinCE (Gizmondo), Linux (GP32), and Symbian (N-Gage). In fact, outside of the Windows/DOS PC, there are actually few examples of a generic platform taking over an industry. Nearly every other consumer-facing product uses proprietary platforms: car makers, stereo equipment, appliances and so on typically all use designs custom to their maker. The paradox of the Windows PC market has been that Microsoft's broadly licensed software supposedly saves hardware makers from investing in software development while ensuring compatibility, when in reality it adds significant costs to PC makers while limiting their ability to differentiate themselves. That explains why PC makers have been perpetually merging together and going out of business while Microosft has rolled in money over the last two decades. Parallel efforts to copy Microsoft in broadly licensing an operating system have regularly failed: IBM's OS/2, Apple's Mac OS, Palm's PDA OS, even Microsoft's own efforts to duplicate Windows dominance in other markets, from copy machines to PDAs to smartphones to SPOT watches to music players. The closest copy may be Symbian, but its customers are partners, not simply consumers of a generic third party's operating system as Windows licensees are. That indicates it is not necessary to duplicate the dominance exercised by Microsoft over the PC industry in the smartphone market. Google's Android and Symbian exist more as technology sharing pacts among manufacturers, but both aspire to take Microsoft's DOS role among smartphones. However, the idea that Apple's iPhone must be dethroned by a modern-day DOS, whether Windows Mobile, Android, or Symbian, is not just debatable, but does not sync with the reality of more recent events. Apple's recent history of the iPod further refutes the idea that a software analog to Microsoft is needed. The iPod Emergence: Apple & Pixo vs IBM & Microsoft. Apple's iPod in 2001 made no effort to clone the DOS business model; it actually did the opposite. When Apple entered the market, there were a number of existing MP3 devices using custom software, hardware designs, and DRM codecs. The iPod used off the shelf components to deliver a custom MP3 player using third party software, but Apple also added its own technologies: easy to use sync with iTunes, a fast Firewire interface that made uploading music far faster than the prevailing USB 1.0, and an attractive industrial design. With the iPod, Apple played the role of IBM in 1981, using Pixo's embedded operating system to enter the market quickly, just as IBM had used DOS. The difference was that Apple didn't direct any market attention toward Pixo and added a lot of value on top of that core embedded OS. A modern day Compaq couldn't simply clone the hardware and license Pixo to run on it in order to compete against the iPod, because the iPod was much more than just generic hardware running Pixo software. As the iPod developed, Pixo's role diminished and was eventually displaced. Just like IBM, Apple jumped into a new market just as demand was beginning to explode. Apple made MP3 players far more attractive to a general audience by delivering greater playback capacity than most entry level devices offered, along with an ease of use that encouraged buyers to jump in at the higher end of the market. That left Apple with not only the lion's share of the market, but also by far the most profitable segments of the market. Two decades prior, IBM badly fumbled its play with the early PC and ended up irrelevant in the PC world by the late 80s, sideswiped by Microsoft's DOS and the cloners who were licensing it in parallel, notably Compaq and later HP and Dell. Steve Jobs had witnessed that happen, and was determined to not let it happen again to Apple. Rather than being manipulated by a software middleware vendor as IBM had, Apple worked to incrementally develop the iPod market itself. After consuming the hard drive-based player market, Apple took on the Flash RAM-based market with a tiny hard drive system used in the iPod Mini, and followed up with Flash-based devices of its own in the Nano and Shuffle. This allowed Apple to progressively serve an increasingly wider market, incrementally growing upon an established foundation. With the iPod, Apple became, in effect, an IBM with its own internal Microsoft. Microsoft's Failure Despite Features. In contrast, Microsoft entered the music player market by promoting music player hardware reference designs around WinCE. However, it was unable to ship a finished design until the iPod had become firmly established around 2005. Later branded as PlaysForSure, the devices were sold by various hardware makers and all purported to support the same DRM and the same music subscription services while also offering a broader array of hardware that presented video before the iPod did, supported wireless before the iPod, and so on. Despite these unique features, all of those PFS designs still failed. Microsoft blamed the failure of PFS upon its music store and hardware partners and decided to take Apple on itself in 2006. It relaunched a Toshiba PFS player as its own device under the Zune brand, adding WiFi music sharing features and a larger display than the current Pods had. It failed dramatically as well. Did Microsoft's attempts to float a new DOS among music players fail because of Apple's success, or due to Microsoft's own problems? The failure of the Zune, which followed the iPod model rather than the DOS model, seems to suggest that Microsoft itself was to blame. Consider too that Microsoft's Windows Mobile phones, which use the same underlying operating system as its failed PlaysForSure music players and the Zune, had similarly flopped even before Apple could release a charismatic phone equivalent to the iPod. Of course, when the iPhone was released, it hit Windows Mobile hardest. The iPhone made Windows Mobile Smartphones look ridiculous and underpowered, and made Windows Mobile Pocket PC phones look clumsy and awkward, despite the fact that they both supported a variety of features the iPhone didn't, including the ability to edit documents, capture video, send MMS, and so on. Simply adding on features did not enable Microsoft to compete against Apple. The only conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that competing against Apple requires more than just having a feature arsenal. Microsoft's failures in themselves do not necessarily mean that Google's Android will fail in its attempts to float its own smartphone platform. Why Microsoft’s Zune is Still Failing Microsoft’s Zune, Vista, and Windows Mobile 7 Strategy vs the iPhone Will Google Succeed where Microsoft Failed? Microsoft's demonstrated inability to successfully enter consumer markets for MP3 players and smartphones has given observers little faith that the company will somehow turn things around in late 2009 when its next generation of devices are expected to be released. However, prior to that the first fruits of Google's efforts to build its own smartphone operating environment will arrive. Will Google's Android take over Microsoft's crown as the “DOS vendor” among smartphones? Supporters of Google's Android project point to some parallels between Android for smartphones and Windows on the PC: Android will allow hardware makers to differentiate in ways that can offer features Apple can't (or doesn't want to); it should allow software developers to offer features Apple does not allow on the iPhone; it embraces open, hobbyist experimentation in ways that Apple currently isn't; and it opens the potential for content providers that Apple is not interested in allowing. Openness is Android's key competitive feature. Will all this openness allow Google to unseat the iPhone to become the primary platform developers want to participate in, and subsequently soak up the market for third party hardware makers that Windows Mobile serves? While Google currently has no market share due to the fact that no Android phones have yet shipped, it does have broad vocal support from a variety of the same kinds of hardware manufacturers that supported DOS and Windows and helped to make those platforms successful in the desktop PC market. HTC and Android. The first Android phone is expected to be the HTC Dream; Taiwan's HTC (High Tech Computer) also manufactures Palm's Treo Pro phone as well as many of the most visible Windows Mobile devices. In addition to models produced under its own name, HTC also sells Windows Mobile devices under the Dopod brand, as well as no-name phones branded by providers, such as AT&T, Orange, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, and others. HTC will also be building the XPERIA X1 Windows Mobile phone for Sony Ericsson. HTC was quick to throw its support behind Android despite its long term alliance with Windows Mobile. Why would it so enthusiastically support an unproven platform from a company that has no experience in consumer hardware platforms? One can only assume that HTC is not happy with the current state of Windows Mobile, and desperately wants another “DOS” to succeed where Microsoft's has so spectacularly failed. As an Original Design Manufacturer for Palm, HTC watched as Palm adopted Windows Mobile in place of the Palm OS and subsequently fell even deeper into crisis. Palm's only successful phone since has been its Palm OS-based Centro. HTC undoubtedly sees Android as its ticket to becoming the next Dell, but without a similar dependance upon Microsoft. Android for mobile phones is essentially playing the role of Linux for PCs, except that it has the backing of a major company behind it. Can Android Take on the iPhone with Openness as its Feature? As great as this sounds, it's important to consider that Linux on the desktop has made no significant progress in eating into Windows dominance after a decade of trying. Being open, free, flexible, and decentralized hasn't been enough of an advantage to get consumers to migrate from Windows to Linux in any fraction of significance. Similarly, in the music business, Linux-based MP3 players have had no impact on the iPod, despite offering more features, flexibility, support for additional codecs, and so on. In the mobile phone area, Linux enjoys a sizable portion of the smartphone market, but this is almost entirely due to phones sold by Motorola in China, where the advantages of Linux' openness are void. Motorola's Linux phones offer nothing to users in terms of openness or flexibility, and are really no different in terms of features than other appliance 'feature phones' based upon closed operating systems. And again, a key problem with assaulting Apple in a feature war is that neither the iPod nor the iPhone became popular by being “highly featured.” They both delivered perhaps 80% of the functionality found in all other devices in the market. Rather than trying to match every feature and cater to every niche as Microsoft had with Windows Mobile, Apple's devices did a few things very well at launch, and incrementally developed into full featured devices that still lack some of the more unique features of their competitors. Further, in terms of openness, the demographic that embraces Linux' characteristic freedoms is not the same as the demographic that buys smartphones in quantity and then pays for data service. This is a critical fact to consider because a big part of the iPhone's success stems from the fact that it is being pushed by mobile providers who want to capture the cream of the market willing to pay a premium for data services. The Frankenphone. Combining the fractured aesthetic of HTC's Windows Mobile phone hardware with Android's software, based upon Linux' perpetually unfinished DIY openness and Google's Java-like development platform, will not result in a product similar to the iPhone. Instead, it will look a lot like phones that have already failed in the market. Apple's advantage comes from slick hardware designs with a close attention to detail, combined with software that purposely does less so that it can do what it does better. Even Apple's own conservative attempts to broaden its software capabilities with iPhone 2.0 have resulted in instability problems that can be blamed upon both Apple's early releases of its phone operating system and software from inexperienced third party developers new to the platform. Would the current frustrations with iPhone 2.0 be somehow mitigated by additional openness that also embraced all kinds of variables from different hardware makers with less quality control than Apple, a loose committee of additional cooks working to serve up operating system features targeted at every possible conceived need, and a wider third party software group with fewer constraints on illegal behaviors? The Failure of Open. While it is politically unpopular to criticize the well meaning efforts of open source contributors, the failure of Linux on the desktop, the failure of the vaporware Indrema game console, and the failure of the OpenMoko project to deliver a workable phone within a year of its deadline all underline the serious problems open development faces in the world of consumer oriented devices. Open has simply failed to deliver on its promises in the world of consumer hardware. OpenMoko was supposed to release its first mobile phone to consumers for $250 several months in advance of the iPhone. When the iPhone shipped, the group then announced new plans to get its phone out by the end of 2007. Instead, this spring the group announced new plans to move to an entirely different development platform, and ship its phone mid year for $400 with limited functionality and incomplete software outside of basic GSM phone features. Linux's notable successes, from Motorola's Linux phones to the Tivo DVR to Linksys Routers, have often come without any associated openness or freedom, and were instead delivered simply to provide their manufacturer with a free kernel to build upon. This indicates that while Linux may find its way into an increasing number of smartphones, it will likely not be accompanied by the glorious freedom of an open development environment Google has said it would offer with Android. Apple iPhone vs the FIC Neo1973 OpenMoko Linux Smartphone Can Google Succeed Where Open Has Previously Failed? Despite “openness” being Android's strongest competitive feature compared to Apple's iPhone, Google recently revealed that its wide-open development model is intentionally gravitating towards a closed association of top tier partners due to practical considerations. In July, Google accidentally sent out a notice that revealed that it had been seeding private SDK updates to only a subset of its contributors, angering those who believed that Android would be as open as Linux on the desktop or the OpenMoko project. Further, Google has restricted initial development to higher level APIs just as Apple did, further indicating that Google itself realizes that being wildly open to impress a minority of hobbyists will not result in the commercial success of its new platform. That serves to neuter Android's primary advantage over the iPhone. Without delivering on the premise of being wide open, Android is really just a less mature set of Java libraries used to create a specialized binary that runs on a Linux foundation. Unlike Apple's iPhone, Android phones won't have a slick user interface developed by professional artists, nor the iPhone's legacy of mature software development frameworks crafted over the last thirty years, nor the iPhone's tightly integrated hardware with award winning industrial design, nor its marketing power tied into the iPod and Apple's retail stores. Android won't be an open iPhone, it will only be a Windows Mobile phone with a better kernel that runs specialized Java software instead of Win32 or .NET code. Don't expect consumers to be impressed by that. The Biggest Missing Feature. There is one remaining factor that strangles to death any last remaining hope that Android might assassinate the iPhone and assume the crown of the “DOS of smartphones.” That is: Android delivers zero price advantage to consumers. In 1981 and 1991, consumers who wanted Apple computers faced the sticker shock of a somewhat arrogant price tag. Apple sold its computers, as it still does, at the higher end of the market, but there was simply far more range in prices available. In 1981, that meant the Apple II was $2600 and the new Apple III was $3500, even before you added a monitor. On the low end, Commodore sold its far less powerful, but “still a computer” Vic-20 for $300, while IBM entered the market with the IBM PC at $3000. Over the next few years, Apple focused on delivering additional sophistication at the same price, releasing the $10,000 Lisa and then the $2,500 Macintosh. IBM continued selling PCs in the same $3,000 to $10,000 range, but other DOS PC vendors began selling machines at prices that ranged as low as $1500. That left Apple with a roughly $1000 price premium over low end PCs. The products weren't really comparable, but consumers only saw the huge price difference. In 1991, Apple was still selling moderate to high-end Macintoshes for $3,800 to $10,000; the crippled Mac LC was $2500, and obsolete-at-birth Mac Classic ranged from $999 to $1500. Windows allowed PC makers to ship a functional $1500 PC and claim a rough approximation to Apple's $2500 entry level system, maintaining that apparent $1000 price premium. Today, pundits are lucky to find a Dell or HP system that is even a couple hundred dollars less than a comparable Mac. However, in the smartphone business, the iPhone 3G is now the same price, if not less, than generic competing phones on the market. Even more significant is the fact that the price of the phone hardware is nearly nothing compared to the cost of the service plan. This fact simply eases any price premium that could cause buyers to flock to a smartphone running a generic operating system over buying the iPhone 3G, regardless of whether it runs Windows Mobile or Android. 1990-1995: Planting Software Seeds Android Partners Have Already Failed. That same pricing principle similarly prevented buyers from considering many of the alternatives to the iPod. While Apple's original iPod models were more expensive than many of the first MP3 players on the market, they were price competitive with models offering similar features. By 2004, it was Apple who was undercutting MP3 competitors on price. Microsoft offered zero price advantage when it began selling the Zune, a major factor in its failure, but Microsoft simply couldn't out-price the iPod; it was already losing money offering the Zune at the same price as the iPod. Apple now has tremendous market power in buying RAM and other components that will prevent any competitors from being able to offer a huge discount over the iPhone's $199 price tag. Even if competitors were to give their phones away, they would only offer a $200 discount to users who would then still need to pay the same mobile fees to use the phone. Android's other partners, including Samsung and LG, have already failed to capture any significant market share in the music player market. Are they going to maintain their position as smartphone makers now that they face similar competition from Apple, its iPod ecosystem, its iTunes Music and Apps Store, Apple's retail store experience, and other factors that are pushing the iPhone? If they can, it is not obvious how partnering with Android will help. Other Problems for Android. Android was announced in early November 2007 and was followed with an early preview SDK within a couple weeks, a month ahead of Apple's initial announcement of the iPhone 2.0 SDK. However, between March and July 2008, Apple delivered nine progressive releases of its SDK, opened its App Store, and sold 60 million apps, raising $30 million to support iPhone software development in just the first month. It has since released three more SDK updates to developers related to iPhone 2.1, which is expected next month. Android just published its first open SDK beta update earlier this week, warning developers that “applications developed with it may not quite be compatible with devices running the final Android 1.0.” Additionally, Android still has no phones available. By the time the HTC Dream is expected to launch, Apple will have an installed base of around ten million iPhone (and iPod touch) users supporting software development through iTunes. The business model for selling Android apps is no better than that for selling jailbreak iPhone apps: there is no iTunes Apps Store to promote them, so users will have to track them down on their own. Android developers also have no real freedom that jailbreak iPhone developers lack. The only difference is that there are ten million iPhones to sell jailbreak apps to, and currently zero Android phones. If selling a jailbreak iPhone app sounds like more trouble than its worth, imagine trying to sell Android apps to a non-existant audience. Now add the official iPhone App Store into the mix, where publicity, promotion and profits are booming. What platform is going to have the most applications? How many users will flock to a smartphone platform with no apps? The wisdom of releasing a desirable phone and achieving a significant installed base before releasing an SDK makes a lot more sense in retrospect. Additionally, while Apple has a decade of experience in shipping regular updates to Mac OS X and its Xcode developer tools, Google has only shipped a random assortment of web-oriented SDKs (a number of which have been abandoned) as a tangent to its core business of selling advertisements. When the Android SDK 1.0 is finished later this year, developers will not only lack an installed base to sell their apps to, but will also have no high profile market for selling their apps in, and subsequently no financial incentive to develop applications that add value to the Android platform, just like Linux on the PC desktop. Around the same time, possibly within the next month, Apple will be shipping its second major OS release: iPhone 2.1. Apple will also be upgrading its entire user base to the new software so that developers will have a cohesive platform to target. This mirrors the efforts Apple has taken to upgrade its Mac OS X users to the same reference release. Mobile developers will be seeing money pouring in via iTunes while crickets chirp in the Android section of various mobile online stores. Apple’s iPhone Vs. Other Mobile Hardware Makers: 5 Revenue Engines Same Same, But Different: DOS Model Problems. Android developers will also have a series of other problems to manage. Like Windows Mobile, Android is intended to support everything, from BlackBerry-style keypad phones with a small touchscreen to the simple Windows Mobile Smartphone form factor lacking a touch screen to iPhone-like full size touch screens. Also like Windows Mobile, Android phone makers will have the option to leave off Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS location services, graphics hardware acceleration, and so on. Each Android phone will also have unique camera hardware, support for different video and audio codecs, and varied support for other differentiating proprietary services demanded by mobile operators. This will force developers to to make complex decisions regarding the lowest common denominator they choose to support. So while the iPhone will have a cohesive feature set, a managed software environment, and a functional market, Android will be a loose federation of hardware makers selling the same random features found on Windows Mobile today, with a chaotic development environment that lacks any central market for users or developers. And it will be run as an experiment by a company with no experience in consumer hardware or platform development. The Missing Tap. One specific example of the “DOS model problem” is that Android currently does not support multitouch. It's not touched on in the API, and Google quietly tap dances around its omission. Why no multitouch? Because multitouch screens are expensive, and most OHA hardware members are more interested in making a profit in a competitive phone market rather than impressing consumers as Apple did with the iPhone. Most existing smartphones, even those trying to directly rival the iPhone, use a stylus driven, pressure sensitive tap screen or a simpler, cheaper touch technology that lacks support for sensing multitouch. The iPhone's screen can actually sense up to five fingers at once, but the primary feature multitouch offers on the iPhone is the two fingered tapping and the pinching effects everyone associates with it. Android could certainly support multitouch if there were a demand for it, but that's the point: Google knows that its hardware partners are cheap and unlikely to put out hardware that actually competes with the iPhone. Instead of using expensive technologies that deliver clever yet largely invisible functionality, OHA members, just like PC makers, are far more likely to add flashy, impractical gadgety fluff that's cheap to tack on, such as slide out keyboards, neon tubes, and scratch and sniff stickers. That's how you impress gullible nerds on the cheap. Google itself is blowing smoke and erecting mirrors to distract from the reality that it being a “DOS vendor” means supporting bargain basement hardware from penny pinching duplicators. Android has been demonstrating some “wow” features such as a Street Maps app that pans around based on an internal compass in the demonstration phone. The problem is that that kind of thing only makes for a fun demo. Nobody needs to twirl around their phone in the air to see a view of the other side of the street, but everyone who has used an iPhone will wonder why they can't pinch to zoom out. Even worse, most Android phones aren't going to have a compass built into them, so Google is demonstrating features most Android users won't be able to use. That Sounds Like Microsoft… Google's design decisions are beginning to look a lot like Windows Vista; rather than actually working to make laptops boot faster, Microsoft came up with the idea of adding a small screen to the back of Vista laptops so users could check their email without having to wake the system up. But this was a stupid idea for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that most users just want a laptop that boots up quickly. Few laptops got the mini screen, but every user who tries Vista on their laptop will wonder why it doesn't boot up as fast as Mac OS X Leopard. In the same way, Google is advertising features for Android that most users won't ever see in their actual phones while ignoring things people will expect based on their exposure to the iPhone. Android is simply selecting the wrong features. Android will offer the advantages of supporting MMS, recording video, and the list of other features Windows Mobile already supplies. Those features didn't stop Apple from firing past Microsoft in the smartphone arena however, just as the Zune's highly touted WiFi and screen didn't phase iPod buyers. Incidentally, just months after the Zune, Apple had not only demonstrated a larger display but a higher definition multitouch screen, and not only WiFi, but functional WiFi that could be used to browse the web or check email. This suggests that Apple, with its faster release schedule, won't stay behind any of the leading features potentially offered by Android for very long. Android partners, however, will find it as difficult to catch up with Apple's unique features, just as Microsoft has been stymied to keep up with Mac OS X, the iPod, and the iPhone. The underlying reason: both Google and Microosft are tasked with maintaing support for a huge variety of hardware options demanded by all their partners. Apple has the unique circumstances to do only what it needs to do itself. Android in Windows Mobile's Shoes. Like Windows Mobile, Android faces a difficult market. In the US, it competes against the popular BlackBerry in corporate markets and the iPhone among consumers. Worldwide, it competes against entrenched market leader Nokia. The difference is that Google, unlike Microsoft, has no in. Windows Mobile was adopted by Windows-bound IT shops despite its weaknesses. Nobody has any preexisting reason to try an Android phone apart from hobbyists and open software enthusiasts, a demographic that has done little to move Linux on the PC desktop. Google also lacks Microsoft's installed base; it's starting from zero. The smartphone industry initially doubted Apple's chances of making much progress with the iPhone, despite the company having the Mac platform, the iPod, retail stores, platform development experience, marketing savvy, industrial design prowess, and so on. Google doesn't have any of those things. Mobile Providers vs Android. Apple also started with an exclusive partnership with AT&T, a three legged race that demanded effort from both. Google is hoping that hardware makers handle the hardware details and that mobile providers will be excited to sell its Android phones. While hardware makers such as HTC clearly appreciate having found a free alternative to Windows Mobile, it's not obvious why providers would be excited about Android, as it promises an openness that most mobile providers strongly oppose. AT&T took a big risk in getting behind the iPhone, as the phone encouraged users to use email rather than fee-based SMS and MMS, it supported WiFi for data access, and it bypassed AT&T's MEdia Net services to plug into iTunes instead. Verizon refused to parter with Apple and grant it those kinds of concessions. Is AT&T going to take a similar risk to partner with a phone that is not exclusive to it, and is Verizon now going to open its arms to support phones that do not exclusively support BREW, VCast and its other proprietary services? While Android may well eat into Microsoft's Windows Mobile business by stealing away its hardware makers, it seems unlikely that Android will ever serve as more than free alternative to Windows Mobile in a market where Windows Mobile is increasingly irrelevant. Android may have the dubious distinction of swallowing Microsoft's mobile business the same way Microsoft ate up the Palm OS, but even if it accomplishes that goal, Google will likely find itself unsustainably hungry immediately afterward. It will also find itself swimming in a shark tank of hungry rivals, including Nokia's Symbian, RIM's BlackBerry, and Apple's iPhone. Symbian is the final generic platform vying for the opportunity to play DOS in the smartphone market. The next article will examine Nokia's chances in its bid to match Microsoft's PC dominance in the mobile market while setting out in a new venture to copy Android's open software model. Did you like this article? Let me know. Comment here, in the Forum, or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast (oh wait, I have to fix that first). It's also cool to submit my articles to Digg, Reddit, or Slashdot where more people will see them. Consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!
TUAW bloggers post their Apple predictions for 2010

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, AppleIt's the end of another calendar year, which can mean only two things. First, every blog is going to be posting lists of 2009 retrospectives, and second, there are going to be a lot of posts filled with completely off-target predictions for 2010. So that we're not leaving our readership sitting in the dark wondering what the TUAW bloggers are prognosticating for the next year, here are our wild guesses well-researched and intelligent predictions for Apple in 2010. Enjoy 'em, and from all of us at TUAW, have a safe and happy New Year's Eve and Day. Steve Sande Big DUH! The Apple Tablet arrives. There are way too many hints flying around the blogosphere for this to be a non-product for another year. It's gotta happen! The Apple TV disappears from the Apple lineup. I hates it, I does. It just doesn't seem like an Apple product. iPhone moves to multiple US carriers, but not Verizon. Why? Wrong network for a world (read GSM) phone, and I think Apple is probably irritated with Verizon's Droid and their advertising. Apple closes some low-producing Apple Stores. The economy is still bad, and there have to be some locations with stores that aren't pulling their weight. Apple buys Dropbox, BackBlaze, and Evernote, makes MobileMe useful. Dropbox for better and faster folder syncing between devices, BackBlaze for external backups to the cloud, Evernote just because it's cool. Add 'em all together and what do you have? Something that's really worth paying $99 a year for. Apple definitely has the cash to buy these services. The Apple TV reappears in the Apple lineup as a high-quality autostereoscopic 3DTV with TiVo, Slingbox, and Boxee functionality built in. I can dream, can't I? Erica Sadun I'm hoping this will be the year of the tablet. Of course, I've been anticipating the year of the tablet since, oh say, around 1993 or so. Apple's future isn't about the hardware though, and it's not about their OS line: it's about their ability to deliver media. I'm thinking "iTunes gone large". Apple's Lala acquisiition, rumored TV deals, and possible textbook distribution agreements point to a renewed focus on content delivery devices. Admittedly, Apple TV has never really evolved into its promise, perhaps due to areas into which Apple was not able to expand due to licensing deals with companies with Cable/Broadband interests but the iPhone has gone above and beyond in the media realm. So do I see a tablet (or a line of tablet devices) as a natural extension of the Apple content store? Absolutely. Will we see it this year? Possibly. Will it be early this year? Hard to say. Ask me again in a month. Michael Rose The tablet, yes, there will be one, it will be spectacular, and about three months after introduction it will drop in price by $200. People who bought the original version would be annoyed except they're so giddy from having had a piece of the future in their knapsacks for three months. We'll see Apple get serious about cloud services by buying a company that's doing online storage right (Dropbox guys, don't make your numbers unlisted) and creating a capability that will actually rival some of the more effective platforms out there. Apple needs a Microsoft Mesh-like solution to really unlock the portable power of its devices. Then again, the tablet. 2010 will be the year that hackintoshes become more than a distraction and a legal burden. The Psystar battle shows that Apple knows there's risk, and sooner or later the netbooks-on-OS-X market will collide with the business realities of Apple's day to day operations. Then again, the tablet. We'll see a secondary carrier for the iPhone in the US (yay!). It will not be Verizon (darn!), it will be T-Mobile. The Verizon iPhone is a 2011 phenomenon, but by then the prevalence of portable Wi-Fi and VoIP solutions for mobile will start to scratch away at the cellphone market's power. Then again, the tablet. Mac OS X 10.7 will return us to 'new features' land; we'll learn about it at WWDC and see it by 2011. Mel Martin There will be a tablet. Even though Steve Jobs said Apple wasn't working on one, remember he also denied the iPhone was coming for a long time too. There seems to be a crescendo of stories about the tablet (i-Slate, i-Pad, whatever) and that's a pretty good indication something is on the way. Changes to MobileMe. Maybe cheaper, certainly some new features. The system has come a long way, but it can hardly be called reliable, and I think for the money it needs more features and/or a lower price. The notification system could use some improving as well. When things go down it seems to take an awfully long time for Apple support to post something about it. A new AppleTV. I think something is likely, something beyond the current hardware/software. I like my AppleTV, but it is still feature poor and very limited in sources for video. Apple should get something a bit more interesting out, or hang this product out to dry. Blu-ray. Originally Apple was a big proponent of this hi-rez video disc. Now, not so much. I expect Apple will have to start adding Blu-ray to desktops and laptops, maybe even to the AppleTV. Sure there have been some licensing cost issues, but others are getting past it and offering it on windows based hardware. Come on Apple, get with it. Apple will get 'Back to my Mac' working. It was a highly touted feature of MobileMe, but for a large population of Mac users, it simply doesn't work. Hard to get excited about a feature I pay for and can't use. Other applications seem to be able to solve these router and security issues. Back to my Mac should just work. A new iPhone. The easiest prediction of all to make. They seem to come out like clockwork, and force many of us to ditch our older models and re-up with our favorite carrier. Speaking of favorite carriers, I think Apple will finally end AT&T exclusivity. Apple's image has taken a beating over AT&T service and support. The world's best smartphone shouldn't be stuck on the world's worst network. I think Apple will change this. Apple market share will continue to increase. Apple users are generally happy users, and Apple users tend to be evangelical about their experiences. In both the U.S., and around the globe, I expect Apple to increase share of laptops, desktops, iPhones and following on that, OS share. Apple will move more services to the 'cloud'. MobileMe is certainly there, iWork looks like it is heading that direction as well. Microsoft and Google have ambitious cloud-based designs, so it's an easy prediction, and a likely outcome. Most predictions will be wrong. There's something about predicting the future. Things take unexpected turns and don't come out exactly as planned. The film '2001' is really dated, and 'Space 1999', well, it looks pretty silly today. My favorite bad prediction? The GM produced film [YouTube Video link] done for the 1939 World's Fair that predicted the sixties. My, what a miss. Michael Grothaus The iPod classic will be no more. By September 2010 the iPod touch will have a max capacity of 128GB, making the iPod classic look archaic and redundant. The iPod lineup will solely consist of 'iPod touch' and 'iPod' - the former 'iPod nano' that maxes out at 32GB. The iSlate is announced in January, followed by a mid-year product launch. The iSlate will make the iPhone look 2005. It will have multi-touch on front and back of the device. Sometime during the year there will be an interesting anecdote about Steve Jobs showing the iSlate to a famous industrial designer (no, not Johnny Ive) this past December whom Jobs then attempted to call a cab for when the designer was leaving Jobs' "modest" home. The industrial designer will tell how Jobs, the most creative tech genius on the planet, had trouble calling a cab from his home phone. Apple (AAPL) stock will hit $300 a share and the stock will do a 2-for-1 split. The iPhone will be the #1 smartphone in the world by a wide margin by December 2010. Blackberry will be #2, and the Google Phone will be a distant third. Palm isn't even a blip on the radar. 'The iSlate will bomb.' Or so will say numerous tech CEOs who will bemoan its 'limited appeal'. They will all be wrong. And though the iSlate won't kill it until 2011, the Kindle will be handed its hat at the door in 2010. Apple will partner with Visa and Mastercard for turning your iPhone into a swipe credit card using the 4th gen iPhone's RFID chip. iLife 2010 will replace iDVD with 'iLP'. iLP will allow users to easily created iTunes LP albums which they can instantly upload to MobileMe for download onto their friends and families new AppleTVs. The new AppleTV will have the cable companies quaking in their pants. Steve Jobs wants to do for the broadcast industry what he did for the music, movie, mobile, and publishing industries. 32" LED Cinema Display. iPhone: Two more US carriers, one of them Verizon. OLED screen and new industrial design that takes lessons from the iSlate. iPhone OS 4.0. Expect to see a multi-touch surface on the iPhone that is not part of the screen. iTunes Store: another late-year redesign to help facilitate making app search easier. Tabbed browsing. Apps top 200,000. Mike Schramm I think we'll finally see the iTablet this year, but it'll be much closer to an iPhone or a Kindle than a traditional tablet computer, with complete App Store integration and a relatively limited UI. The iPhone will finally be released to multiple carriers, T-Mobile first among them. And Apple will focus on cloud services -- they'll host your music and documents online whenever you want them, accessible from all your Apple devices and/or Apple software. What, those aren't out-on-a-limb enough for you? The Mac Pro will get a major update, possibly even a rebranding. The Apple TV will start running App Store apps. And the iPod touch will finally get a camera. Victor Agreda, Jr. Apparently the tablet is a forgone conclusion, so I'll just say that the tablet is just the beginning... I predict that Apple's tablet move will nearly cement its reign in the digital home of tomorrow. Apple will begin partnering with companies such as LG, KitchenAid and others to bring integration into the kitchen, the spare room, etc. The tablet ecosystem and 3rd-party markets will soon resemble the iPod ecosystems from just a few years ago. Remember the iPod dock with built-in toilet paper dispenser? Prepare yourself for a mirror with enough transparency so you can shave AND read your iTablet at the same time. Apple will also spend 2010 getting into the cloud like never before. iWork, iTunes and iLife will be the first to get online application, further hooks and functionality. But at WWDC Apple will announce 10.7 and some "really amazing" features that leverage the power of the internet with the power of their OS. Online backups? Yes, and probably something new and a little bit innovative to deal with what is now at least a decade for many of us with digital cameras... You didn't think iPhoto's crappy behavior when confronted by huge libraries would go on forever, did you? Speaking of data management, depending on which winds the wireless ones blow, Apple may tie ever more services from app makers to its own cloudy ambitions. Look for some ad-fueled functionality to be provided free to tablet and iPhone users, and for announcements regarding iPhone on other networks... Plus look for some needed upgrades to the iPhone OS itself. Apple isn't dumb enough to ignore the jailbreak community and many of the awesome, time-saving tweaks found there. PogoPlank is one example and Stacks is another. Why can't I see the weather without unlocking my phone? Fixing things like this will put an end to some of the "Droid Does" nonsense.TUAWTUAW bloggers post their Apple predictions for 2010 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink�|�Email this�|�Comments Apple - Steve Jobs - Microsoft - Apple Store - Apple Tablet
Macworld 2010 special iPad event liveblog

Filed under: Macworld, Hardware, Blogging, iPad We are live from the floor of Macworld 2010, where they're be talking about the iPad in a special event feature Jason Snell, Macworld editor-in-chief, and a panel of industry experts. We have heard that won't be an actual iPad on the show floor, so it's not clear whether we'll get to see the device, but we will hear commentary and insight on what the iPad means for Apple and the world at large. After the break, find an updating liveblog of the event as it happens, straight from Moscone Center in San Francisco.2:04PM Ted: I would like to see 1) if there will be iPhone OS changes brought back from the iPad, and what hidden features we'll see there. And 2) what options are available for printing. Dan: Can I use it as a phone? Or a camera? (laughter) No, when we saw it, we said, the screen looks kind of empty, doesn't it? You can put about six apps in the dock, so I think we'll see a newer design for the homescreen, something that takes more advantage of the extra space. Something more appropriate for the product rather than just a large iPhone.2:02PM Jason: Frasier Spiers said do you realize how amazing this will be in education? And yes, you'll see a real change there. One last question: what is your biggest unanswered question about the iPad?2:01PM Andy: It will lend credibility to the idea of computing via tablet, and Android and others will follow that path in another year or so as well. It'll finally break us free from the "type on this, look at this" paradigm we've been stuck with.2:00PM Andy: We'll also see a halo effect. Star Wars didn't invent the sci-fi movie, but it showed that sci-fi wasn't the problem, bad movies were. So tablets aren't the problem, bad tablets are, and the iPad will remind people of that.2:00PM Andy: iPad won't be a big hit until 2011 -- it will take a while after the people in this room buy them to show them off to the normal civilian, and the next time they need a portable computer, they'll remember the iPad they saw on the airplane or in the classroom.1:59PM Ted: I also think we'll be surprised. Third-party developers will surprise us. Jason: Right, apps are front and center on iPad, and we only had web apps when the iPhone came out. Andy: I don't believe that tablets have been tried and failed, I don't believe they've ever been tried. No tablet I've seen compares to the iPad -- tablets I've seen are a desktop computer in tablet form, the iPad is an actual tablet.1:58PM Ted: This is also the ultimate remote control. We'll see it controlling a more digital home in the next few years, and the iPad is the way to control it. Turn on stereo, run lights, control thermostat, the iPad is made for that.1:57PM Jason: What about people who use only a fraction of a computer -- only email or only web browsing? Ryan: Sure, it's fine if netbooks get assassinated by the iPad -- around the house computer. But it's still not going to take the place of productivity or when I need to go on the road. In addition to, but not a replacement for. Ted: Agreed, around the house computer instead of a laptop. I'm optimistic about the long-term as well -- it's not there today, but things will change. Majority of people with a computer today don't really utilize it to the full extent, and the iPad will satisfy those folks.1:55PM Ryan: I'm not so sure -- you need feedback, you need tactility, you can type fast because you need the keys and you need to know where they are. Apple did release a keyboard dock -- the tech may change, but we're not there now, and it's going to be a while before we abandon the keyboard or the traditional computer. Steve even acknowledged that it was an in-between device.1:54PM Dan: Younger people will be the one to watch. When this becomes an option, will people not bother to learn or use the traditional mouse and keyboard? We're used to it, but if you look at someone learning, you realize the challenges behind the mouse and the cursor and the traditional interface. There's a huge disconnect, and especially for kids, we'll have to see if they prefer the iPad to the exclusion of traditional computing. Their intial reaction is to touch.. which is why you don't take them to museums (laughter). When kids grow up with this, will they wonder what's wrong with us for using archaic keyboards and mice?1:52PM Jason: Time to talk about the future. What impact will the iPad have in the next five years? What about the tablet market? MS said a while ago that tablets were the future, and they're a flop so far, basically. Will we see a significant change in tablet computing or how we use them?1:52PM Jason: Some people don't mind reading on screens like the iPad, some people do. There will be options no matter what. Kindle is for reading books, iPad has more functionality. Please no, Amazon, put in an API for apps -- its strength is reading books. Ted: Will you feel that way when you have to carry two devices? Dan: I still carry an iPhone and an iPod, but then again I'm really strange.1:50PM Andy: We already have an iPad nano, it's the iPhone. If you want something with less or more functionality, you've got choices.1:50PM Dan: They can totally coexist, just like the original iPod was still around after the iPod touch. The iPad won't kill the Kindle any more than the Kindle killed the book.1:50PM Andy: The $500 price point is now radioactive if you're an ereader. But you can do very well at a lower price point. Ted: I also think there will be a cheaper iPad, just as the iPhone dropped in price after it came out. Jason: I can see a day when the Kindle is free. Ryan: Absolutely. That's the future of Amazon's business model. It's not going away.1:48PM Ryan: The question is: are you going to want to read on the iPad. Comic books make a ton of sense, but I didn't want to read a book on the iPad -- too bright, colors too vivid, I feel like the contrast on the Kindle is better for certain reading. Books will still be best read on e-Ink. Jason: I agree that even with the iPad, there's a future for something like the kindle or a more traditional ereader. Ted: I've read books on my iPhone and it's not painful by any means. I think from a price perspective, the Kindle is a hard sell. Dan: Ha, well the large Kindle is a bad investment anyway.1:46PM Dan: Bookstore wasn't even active in the iPads we used -- the icon was there, but it didn't work, we haven't even seen it yet. Jason: A Kindle app for the iPad will be interesting, too. Comic books, thanks for mentioning those, because comics on the iPad's bigger screen will be a big deal.1:45PM Andy: I'm co-authoring an app that will work as my printing press -- once the press gets built, then it's just making the content. There's always an outlet, as opposed to a third-party where you have to wait for approval.1:44PM Andy: Application-based content is here to stay -- designing your own app can help you release content your own way. Jason: Except that costs more money. Build your own app is great, but some devs can't do that. Maybe a third-party will, but not everyone can do their own.1:43PM Andy: iBooks won't be the most signficant part of the periodical delivery mechanism on the iPad -- even comic book and periodical publishers aren't supporting the iPad so much as tablet devices in general. They're using Webkit -- not platform specific, but iPad included.1:42PM Andy: The iBooks app is a quiet piece of news, but that's an incredibly significant announcement. That app that we tried that day was probably the least functional of all the apps on there -- will it freeze up, will it slow down? It's downloadable because it's not ready in time for shipping, and Apple understands that the app will have to evolve quickly and update often.1:41PM Ted: A semester's worth of books on the iPad at (hopefully) a fraction of the cost, not to mention that the used market could possibly be gone for good, a good thing in publisher's eyes. Jason: Lower the price of the new textbook, make more money back on the lost used market. If they'll agree to that, which they probably won't.1:40PM Ted: I want to get back to books for a second. Textbooks will change thanks to the iPad for sure.1:39PM Jason: There will be apps for newspapers or magazines, but it'll have to be someone else or they'll have to make their own, and that's a fractured space. Ryan: Apple could have changed the game on that, but they aren't doing that now.1:38PM Ryan: Except that book aspect here is books. There's no periodicals for the iPad right now, no iMagazines. If Apple had created a standard or introduced an app like the Kindle, maybe revolutionary. But all they're talking about right now is books. There's no solution for the industries that are having trouble.1:37PM Dan: Still, the music industry lost the battle for DRM, will that happen to book publishers? Andy: The web was an experiment that absolutely failed for books and magazines, and what it did was train the average consumer that a web browser is free -- charging for web content isn't right. But the Kindle taught that produced content by professionals does cost money, and the iPad can run that same market.1:36PM Andy: It's a computer, so it can do whatever devs and content publishers want it to do. Apple is using epub, which is remarkably flexible for sharing and lending books and licenses, even to libraries. So it could make it easier to share and borrow books -- your local public library as a version of Amazon.com. "There's a license available for Tom Clancy's book, I'll sign that out." Dan: Sure, libraries may have applications even -- if they can find the money.1:35PM Dan: It seems like the early days of the music industry's digital revolution, where publishers want to lock things down. It's a good idea for convenience -- a whole library in a device. But losing that freedom to content and sharing worries me.1:34PM Jason: When this product was rumored for months... Ryan: Years... Decades.... Jason: When Nostradamus predicted the iPad (laughter), ebooks were a big deal. What does this mean for books and newspapers and magazines?1:33PM Ryan: It's not as intimate of an experience on a laptop, but it's a little more convenient. Jason: Accessories will be key -- cradles, docks, stands. Ted: Two different modes -- primarily a consumption device, like a book. But more serious work will require a keyboard, stand, different environment.1:32PM Jason: In the testing area at the event, iPads were on raised platforms, with each one having an Apple employee told "if you let this thing out of your sight, we won't just fire you, your family will end up wondering what happened to you." Andy: Glossy front. Not a problem with a notebook, but what about a tablet? We'll see. Dan: It's easier, I can tilt the iPad anyway I want. Ryan: You also don't have to be holding your laptop at all times, but the iPad will have to be held up most of the time.1:30PM Andy: That'll be interesting to see what happens in real life though. Apple events are magic acts -- they're planned. When Steve was using that book on stage, was the chair even designed for him to hold the iPad in the right place? What will it be like to hold an iPad (1.5 lbs) while standing or trying to do something in a weird position? What about when people see what you're doing in a coffeeshop, or at a table? We will have to see.1:29PM Ted: People that are happy with an iPad today will be happy with a laptop in three or four years. Dan: That's a bold statement. There's a duality between iPad today vs. iPad in three or four years. But there is a ubiquity to computers today, and we've all adapted quickly to having them around in the same places the iPad will be -- on the couch, in the kitchen, and so on. It's nice to have something that doesn't make you feel like you have to match to it, but it matches to you.1:27PM Ted: The iPad can't do everything that a Mac can do, but the release of the iWork software was an opening salvo. You can start using this as a productivity machine -- you can't use it tomorrow, but look how far the iPhone has come thus far.1:27PM Andy: There are two checkboxes for me as a user -- I need to write a lot at any given moment, and I need to transfer files on and off of it, and the iPad meets both needs just fine for me. This will be as transformative a product as the original Mac was.1:26PM Jason: Is it right to say that Apple is taking another crack at what computers are, and is it the right approach? Andy: Yes, I think so. Computers don't have to have file systems or browsers, they just have to solve problems, and the iPad still does that.1:25PM Andy: I agree -- if you have a system level switch, it even solves the problem of support. If something breaks, make sure that override on third-party apps is turned off, and you're back to working paradise.1:24PM Dan: I'm playing devil's advocate, because I agree with you, but Apple's philsophy is that. They don't want you to be a tinkerer, because they aren't aimed at tinkerers. We don't agree with that, but it's their product, even if we're buying it. You can do what you want, if you go down the jailbreak road, and people will always find a way. But it is a lot harder than it needs to be, even if I understand why Apple is doing that.1:23PM Jason: Yeah I think there's room for non-App Store apps, but App Store apps would get preference. Ryan: Yes, the App Store is literally a revolution in software distribution. But Apple is not bugding on their philsophy at all. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to set the override switch and do what you want.1:22PM Ryan: 3rd party apps are dangerous, but as long as you warn users, what's the problem? It is my toaster oven, right?1:21PM Jason: App Store -- will it work the same on the iPad, will we see the same iPhone issues? Andy: If it works, then great. If not, the weaknesses will be more clear. I want a computer that will potentially will always work, never crash, will always run software. The win from the App Store concept is that you get a more stable machine at the expense of freedom that you might not excercise anyway. Steve Jobs is a benevolent tyrant -- he'll give you everything you want, all he demands is absolute obedience, and you'll be fine.1:20PM Ted: What do you care, I said? And no, they say, it will degrade the experience of using the toaster oven. And one more thing, they said -- those poptarts in your pantry won't work with your toaster oven either -- you didn't buy them directly from our CuisineArts store. Plus, they'd actually rejected Poptarts from the Art Store. Extended metaphor -- if the iPhone was a toaster, Ted would have issues getting it to do what he wanted.1:18PM Ted: All of the closed things concern me as they apply to the iPad. He's telling a story about how the lower story of his house is very cold downstairs, so he decided to rig up a toaster oven to serve as a space heater. He rigged it up with an extension cord, and it didn't work. He called tech support, and said he was using an extension cord, and they asked if it had a "Made for Cuisinart" sticker on it. It didn't, so he bought a special Cuisinart cord, but it still didn't work. Called back tech support for the toaster, and finally had to admit he was using the toaster oven as a space heater. "No," they said, "you're not authorized to do that." Terms of purchase actually prohibit "jailbaking" (laughs from the audience).1:15PM Ted: On the record, I think the iPad will be a great success, so I like it, I'm buying one. But I expect the iPad is still a closed platform, and it will not replace laptops and more complex computers.1:14PM Jason: Ted is here, even though he didn't use the iPhone, because this seems like Apple saying "we're moving the ball forward" in computing. This is a new paradigm -- touchscreen, direct interaction. iWork is going from Mac straight to the iPad -- is this a netbook/laptop replacement or not?1:13PM Dan: Yeah without the bezel, there's no place to put your thumb - we're so accustomed to the iPhone that it seems like wasted space, but once you use it, it'll fade into the background like everything else.1:12PM Jason: The bezel got complaints, but we have thumbs and you need that extra not-screen space to actually hold it. Ryan disagrees -- he says the iPhone has no bezel and people hold it just find. Andy: This one I really need a grip on, though -- people may even put grip tape on the back to help you not drop it. In the tub for example. (laughs)1:11PM Ihnatko: We could probably charge $499 for these foam iPads though. If anyone wants some blog hits, just take one of these and get some blurry shots of it, you'll get thousands of hits in a few seconds.1:10PM Andy's first impression: build was high quality. It feels like a premium product -- no gaps, it really does disappear in your hand. The device itself disappears within the first five seconds -- it's all experience. Holding it is not the same as seeing it, which most of the complainers have only done.1:08PM Jason: The screen is 4:3, not 16:9 -- even when they showed Star Trek, it was a little weird, but a 16:9 device would be more uncomfortable to hold. Ryan: Right, you can't have both. Either be really wide or more traditional, and they went 4:3, and I kind of prefer it.1:08PM Ryan: Also slightly less foamy than these foam prototypes on stage. It feels really well constructed, a bit heavier than it should feel, but still portable. I do have complaints, but we'll get to that.1:07PM Jason: It helps that we've seen the iPhone interface. Ryan: Everything serves the screen. As a browser, it's nice to go in and see nothing but the content.1:06PM Dan Warren: It's suprising how natural it feels. There's something about it that feels very intuitive. Like a book, you don't pick it up and think "how can I use this?" It makes sense.1:06PM Ted is the only one who hasn't touched the iPad, but everyone else was at the event. What were your first impressions?1:05PM Panels are coming up on stage. Jason says "We don't have a real one, Apple's not here." Four of the five people on stage have used an iPad, however. Dan Warren of Macworld, Ted Landau, Mac Observer and Macfixit. Ryan Block of GDGT and our old Engadget colleague, and Andy Ihnatko.1:04PM Paul introducing Jason Snell, finishes with "We'll see you next year, right?" Hope so!1:03PM The person holding one of the balls that was bouncing around? She just won an iPad from Macworld -- they're going to give her one when the iPad actually ships. Congrats! Maybe we should have participated in the ball bouncing.1:02PM Here's Paul Kent. "Welcome to our iPad special event." He's got an iPad mockup, but it's not the real thing. "You know that this is not shipping yet?" He just dropped it as a joke.1:01PM The lights are going down.12:59PM "Ladies and gentlemen, we need to fill every seat." The hall is practically full, and still more are coming in the door. Someone behind us thinks there will be an iPad here, but we'll see. 12:57PM Four minutes out -- even the press corps is really batting these balls around. I just got hit in the head. That's what we go through for you readers. 12:54PM The crowd is bouncing around a big ball and they seem excited about the iPad. Good thing they probably don't have one -- if one showed up in the hall here, they might get mobbed. 12:50PM Once again, word direct from Jason Snell this morning is that we will not see an actual iPad at this event. But of course, you never know. 12:49PM They're showing the promotional video that's been playing all week here at Macworld. The public has just been allowed in to see the show, and seats are filling up.TUAWMacworld 2010 special iPad event liveblog originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 15:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink�|�Email this�|�Comments Apple - San Francisco - Moscone Center - Jason Snell - Macworld
10 reasons to pass on the iPad? TUAW fact check

Filed under: iPod Family, Portables, Odds and endsOver at TechRepublic's 10 Things blog, Debra Littlejohn Shinder has posted an article called "10 reasons why I'll be passing on the iPad." Some of her reasoning is sound, but quite a few of her points are easy to refute. It's worth looking at her post and the points it tries to make, because it's indicative of a widespread misunderstanding of not only the iPad's capabilities, but also its intended consumer base. 1. There's no physical keyboard Debra's correct that the iPad has no physical keyboard. But what she fails to account for is that not only will Apple sell a keyboard dock for the iPad, the device can also be paired with any existing Bluetooth keyboard. Apple's reasoning for not including a physical keyboard on the iPad is even more compelling than for the iPhone, because unlike the iPhone, you at least have the option of pairing the iPad with a physical keyboard. In order to put a physical keyboard on the device itself, there'd be two options: keep the iPad the same size and sacrifice a third of the screen's real estate, or increase the iPad's size beyond what some (including Debra) already consider unwieldy in order to include a keyboard. In landscape orientation, the iPad's virtual keyboard is nearly the size of a conventional keyboard, too, so while touch typing is going to be a challenge, it's a fair bet that typing on the iPad will be much faster and easier than the high end of 30 - 35 WPM thumb typing many people (myself included) achieve on the iPhone's far smaller keyboard. The lack of a physical keyboard on the iPhone hasn't measurably affected its sales; the iPad isn't likely to suffer many lost sales from this, either. Check out the other nine points by clicking the Read More link below. 2. One size doesn't fit all Debra claims that if the iPad is supposed to be a niche device positioned between a phone and a netbook, it should have a screen size midway between the two -- in other words, smaller than a 9.7" screen. However, that's not how Steve Jobs positioned the iPad at all during the keynote; Jobs's Keynote slide clearly showed the iPad filling a gap between the iPhone/iPod touch and a 13" MacBook. It's puzzling that in one sentence Debra complains about the iPad being too large to fit in your pocket, while in the next sentence she extols the virtues of Sony's VAIO X netbooks, which are almost exactly the same size - in terms of weight and thickness anyway. The VAIO X has an 11.1" 16:9 display, which actually makes it quite a bit larger than the iPad. One other thing about the VAIO X is quite a bit larger than the iPad: the price, which starts at $1299 -- far more expensive than even the priciest iPad. While it's true the iPad won't fit in your pocket, it's still far more portable than even a MacBook Air. Stephen Colbert even managed to pull one out of his jacket at the Grammys, so while the iPad is larger than an iPhone, it's far from the unwieldy monster many people are trying to claim it is. 3. It runs a phone OS One thing many pundits fail to account for is that the iPhone OS is actually a version of OS X adapted for a touchscreen device. No, there's no Finder, Dock, or menu bar. No, there's no Expos�, Spaces, or Time Machine. But the underpinnings of the iPhone OS are exactly the same as those of the Mac version of OS X. So when people complain the iPad doesn't run OS X, they're really pining for OS X features like the ones I already mentioned -- the Finder, Dock, menu bar, etc. However, none of those OS X features are particularly suited to a touchscreen device, especially one with a 9.7" screen. Tablet PCs running the full version of Windows have already demonstrated the pitfalls of running an OS meant for a larger device with a traditional point-and-click interface, and as a result, almost all of those devices have failed to gain traction in the market. Debra and others also cite the iPad's lack of multitasking as a strike against it. On this point, at least, I agree with them. While iPhone OS already allows for limited multitasking among Apple's own apps -- Phone, Messages, Mail, Safari, and iPod can all run simultaneously in the background -- third-party apps are still restricted to workarounds like push notifications. While restricting multitasking makes a kind of sense on devices like the iPhone 3G, with limited processing power and RAM available, on the iPad those technological limitations don't fly as an excuse. You can argue that not having multitasking on the iPad makes it easier to use for Grandma and other non-techies, but it also limits the device's potential utility. Granted, the iPad isn't positioned as a replacement for a MacBook, but the ability to run even one or two third-party apps in the background would make the device far more versatile. Personally, I would be very surprised if Apple doesn't introduce at least a limited form of multitasking in iPhone OS 4.0. Of course, I also said the same thing last year about iPhone OS 3.0, so who knows. One point bears mentioning, though: despite the introduction of iWork for the iPad, Apple is still pushing the device as a platform for consuming media, not as a productivity platform. To get any serious work done, Apple still expects you'll use your main computer, whether it's a MacBook, iMac, or PC. 4. There's not enough storage The most important question to ask on this point is, "For whom?" Debra says the 64 GB model might have enough capacity for her purposes, but she also grouses about the price of that model, comparing it to cheaper netbooks with "four times the storage." I will say that I'm puzzled at Apple's decision to top out the iPad's capacity at 64 GB, especially considering that's where the iPod touch currently tops out. A 128 GB iPad would have been very tempting indeed; unfortunately, given the price of flash memory, it also would have probably cost more than $1000. But what does 64 GB allow you to store? In my case, a 64 GB iPad would hold my entire 39 GB music library -- 19 days worth of music -- plus my entire iPhoto library of over 7000 photos, which, when optimized for the iPad's screen, would probably take up somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 GB, plus or minus a GB or two. At my most app-crazy I had about 2 GB of apps on my iPhone 3G, and "Other" space, presumably including the OS itself, takes up just over 1 GB. Added up, that equates to 47 out of 64 GB. In my case, that leaves over 15 GB of space for document storage, videos, and so forth. Let's say I store my entire Documents folder on the iPad (I wouldn't -- I use iDisk and Dropbox for that) -- 4300 documents taking up just over 2 GB of space. Now we have 13 GB left over for videos and whatever else. Even if I left myself a 3 GB buffer for whatever reason (including accounting for the GB versus GiB difference), that's still 10 GB of space for videos -- enough to store 10 two-hour films at a decent bitrate, or almost an entire season of an hour-long TV series. Let me break that down again -- a 64 GB iPad would store: -- 19 days of music -- 7000 photos -- Well over 100 apps -- A 2 GB Documents folder with 4300 items -- 20 hours of video -- Around 3 GB of space left over for whatever else (temporary photo storage, e-books, accounting for the difference between binary gigabytes versus decimal gigabytes, etc.) Granted, there are people out there with music and photo libraries larger than mine, but most of my Mac-using friends only have, on average, 1500 items in their iTunes libraries, a thousand or so photos, and maybe three pages of apps on their iPhones. 64 GB may not sound like much on paper, but practically speaking, it lets you pack around a lot of media. Unless you're going to spend weeks at a time away from your main computer, the iPad should be able to carry around enough media to keep almost anyone entertained for days on end. 5. There's no HDMI output or camera Debra claims you can't output the iPad's video to an HDTV without an HDMI connector. That simply isn't true; with a VGA adapter, you can output the iPad's full 1024 x 768 video signal to an HDTV. With a component connector, you can output a 576p PAL signal or a 480p NTSC signal to your TV. Okay, fine, it's not 1080p ultra-high-def video, but where exactly are you going to find video of that resolution anyway (besides Blu-Ray and Bittorrent)? I'll admit that it would have been nice to have at least 1366 x 768 video (1080i, in other words), but I'm betting that the vast majority of consumers aren't going to even bother hooking the iPad up to their TV at all when it's far easier to just put the screen on their laps and watch a movie on the iPad itself instead. Another point Debra brings up is the iPad's 3:4 aspect ratio, which is less than ideal for video. This has been argued all over the internet, including here at TUAW, but as many people have pointed out, the 3:4 aspect ratio is ideally suited to pretty much every other function on the iPad except video: books, documents, web pages, and photos are all laid out far closer to a 3:4 or 4:3 ratio than 16:9. Using a 16:9 ratio on the iPad would not only make the device larger than it already is, it would also leave all other forms of media on the device at a disadvantage compared to video. The iPad's lack of camera is another point Debra and others have brought out against the device, but like multitasking, this is one point on which I agree. A back-facing camera like the iPhone's doesn't make a lot of sense on the iPad -- it would be a bit unwieldy trying to take pictures or video with a device this size, rather like trying to hold up a MacBook Air to take photos with its iSight. Most people probably have a standalone point-and-shoot camera that would take better stills and/or video than the iPad's hypothetical back-facing camera anyway, and you can load those pictures directly onto the device with either the iPad-specific camera connector or SD card reader. But a front-facing camera for video conferencing definitely would have been a killer feature. Apple apparently thought so, too, because it actually included a space in the iPad for exactly such a camera, only to withdraw it for reasons known only to Apple. Whether the company is waiting for the next-gen iPad to introduce a camera or pulling a big switcheroo like it did with the original iPhone -- which was originally supposed to ship with the scratch-prone plastic face of previous iPods, but was replaced with nearly scratch-proof glass in the six months between its announcement and release -- no one can say. 6. There are no USB ports Debra's main complaints against the lack of USB ports are that you can't hook up a flash drive or a USB keyboard. As far as the keyboard goes, I've already mentioned the fact that you can purchase a keyboard dock or use a Bluetooth keyboard. As for not being able to hook up a flash drive? I can see why some people might want to do this -- expanding the iPad's storage, transferring files, etc. But I'm willing to bet that for most people this isn't going to be an issue. While I run the risk of sounding like Bill Gates's infamous "640K should be enough for anyone" by saying so (although Gates never actually said that), 64 GB of space on a device like the iPad really should suit most users' needs -- at least for the next couple of years, anyway. As for transferring files? I can think of a number of existing, cloud-based solutions, the most simplistic of which is e-mail. No, you can't transfer several gigabytes of files at a time through e-mail or "the cloud," but most people don't transfer that much data all at one go even a handful of times with a portable device, much less on a regular basis. I'm not going to go full fanboy and say it's a good thing the iPad doesn't come with USB ports. In fact, I'm kind of with Debra and the others on this one in wishing that Apple included at least one USB port. While I probably wouldn't use the port very often (if at all), it definitely falls into the category of "nice to have." I've been an iPod user for almost five years and an iPhone user for a year, and I can count the number of times I've needed/wanted a USB port on one of those devices on exactly no fingers... but I'll admit that I might sing a different tune with a bigger device like an iPad. But for most of the people who are likely to buy the iPad, i.e., the non-geek, non-techie, "I just want internet and music and movies" folks, they're probably not going to miss USB ports at all. 7. There's no flash memory slot No, the iPad doesn't have a flash memory slot. You can buy an SD card reader attachment, though, although Debra and others rail against the added cost of the connector, claiming that in order to reach "the functional equivalent of a netbook, you may end up spending a bundle." A lot of the same arguments for or against USB apply here as well; most non-geeks aren't going to miss an SD slot at all. Transferring documents via SD cards in 2010 reeks of the "sneakernet" we thought we were abolishing along with dot-matrix printers and 2800 baud modems; let's just say that most users are going to have photos and/or videos on their SD cards, most users are going to wait until they get home to their main computer to upload those files, and most users aren't going to care that the iPad's missing a dedicated SD slot any more than they cared about the iPod missing one. If anything, the argument for an SD slot is far weaker than the argument for USB. 8. The price is not right Debra claims the iPad "costs twice as much as the Kindle and other ebook readers." That's flat-out false. The $499 iPad does cost almost twice as much as the standard Kindle, but compared to every other e-reader out there, the iPad's pricing is extremely competitive once you consider all the things the iPad does that the other readers iDon't. A $489 Kindle DX, for example, while $10 cheaper than the cheapest iPad, doesn't have a color screen, has only 4 GB of storage, doesn't have a touchscreen, doesn't run apps, doesn't have e-mail, music, and so on, and so forth. The iPad's price is the one aspect of the device that few pundits have complained about; in fact, the pricing has Wall Street and other financial analysts doing cartwheels. You don't even have to compare the iPad to other companies' similar products to see how good a deal it is. The 16 GB iPad costs $300 more than an 8 GB iPod touch. That $300 gets you twice the capacity, a much larger and higher-quality screen, a more powerful CPU, better Wi-Fi including 802.11n, vastly improved battery performance, a built-in speaker and microphone, and, eventually, access to a host of apps designed to take advantage of the iPad's larger screen and higher performance. A 32 GB iPad has the same $300 price difference compared to a 32 GB iPod touch, as does the 64 GB model. Once you tack on an additional $130 for 3G wireless the price difference widens, but so does the device's utility -- access to wireless broadband anywhere there's an available 3G network, which, as iPhone users already know, is invaluable. Debra compares the fully kitted-out $829 3G-enabled iPad to "a powerful compact laptop that runs a full-fledged operating system and multi-tasks and that has USB and SD and Ethernet connectors, 4 GB of RAM, and 250 GB of storage." The "full-fledged operating system" she's talking about isn't OS X, however, and the laptop she's talking about definitely isn't manufactured by Apple. That might not make a difference to a lot of people, but if you're already in the "Macs cost too much" camp, it's no wonder the iPad doesn't hold much appeal compared to that Windows Home Edition running, plastic, bargain-bin quality laptop from Dell or HP that's almost certain to stop working in two years or less. Yes, I recognize the extremely fanboyish sound of that sentence. No, I don't apologize for it. Cheap laptops are exactly that: cheap. Call it elitism, fanboyism, Kool-Aid drinking, whatever: I'd much rather put up with the iPad's shortcomings than those of the "powerful" but oh-so-cheapo laptops of other manufacturers. 9. It's locked in "You have to buy your apps from the App Store," Debra notes. Yes, you do: from a store that has over 140,000 apps available, most of them for free, and capable of doing almost anything. Hate the App Store for some reason? Fine. Jailbreak the thing and use Cydia instead. Apple may not want you to do this, and they may go out of their way to prevent it, but if you're of the jailbreaking mindset already, that's not going to stop you, is it? A very vocal minority of people love to complain about "vendor lock-in" when it comes to the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad, even though those same people have likely been playing around with video game systems from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft for decades -- all platforms with "vendor lock-in" even more pervasive and insidious than that of Apple's platform. What these people don't seem to realize is that same vendor lock-in is precisely what keeps Apple's portable platforms from being riddled with viruses, malware, and apps made of more crap than code. "Security through obscurity" may be a valid(ish) argument to fall back upon with the Mac, but with 75 million plus people using the iPhone OS, it's a very high-profile target for virus writers. That same "walled garden" that Linux proponents and "open internet" evangelists whine about is what keeps the iPhone platform from being an unusable nightmare. Yes, the App Store approval process has in many cases been a pain in the nether regions, but things are improving -- apps that might have once taken days or weeks to get approved are now getting through the approval process in a matter of hours. Has the App Store's "lock-in" affected sales of the iPhone one iota? No. In fact, sales of the iPhone took way off after the App Store's arrival. Yes, "Apple as gatekeeper" gets the George Orwell fans riled. But someone has to keep the gate, because the instant the iPhone OS becomes a truly "open" platform like some people are espousing, that's the same instant the Russian mafia remote-hijacks your iPhone from a basement in Vladivostok because you just had to download that "Siberian Honeys" app from the dark alleys of the internet. Other aspects of dreaded "lock-in" that Debra's concerned about are riddled with falsehoods. "You can't run Skype to make phone calls," with the iPad, she claims. "We wouldn't want to cut into the iPhone market, after all." Say what? That must be news to the Skype team, who's already investigating an iPad-specific Skype app. It must be news to Apple, too, who no longer restricts the use of VoIP over 3G. "Nor can you download Flash to install on the browser, which means you won't be watching those YouTube videos." Say what again? Since when is the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad incapable of watching YouTube videos? Oh right: since never. No, you can't put Flash on the iPad, but according to our informal poll, 75% of people planning on buying one either don't care or are outright glad Flash isn't making an appearance. What about hardware "lock-in?" Debra says that "you can't even remove and replace the battery yourself," which has been true of every single iPod since 2001 and hasn't stopped people from buying them by the millions. She goes on and says, "if you were flying to Australia and wanted to bring along an extra battery for the extra-long flight, forget about it." Um. A two-second Google search for "iPhone external battery" might have been a good idea. Plus, speaking from personal experience, if you stay awake for a full flight across the Pacific Ocean, you're going to have a lot more pressing issues to worry about than your iPad's battery, like the fact that you're going to feel like you got run over by a truck after the plane lands. Take it from one who knows: Trans-Pacific flights are best spent in blissful unconsciousness. 10. The network Yep, the iPad's 3G connection is only available on AT&T's network... if you live in the United States. If, like me, you live in what's known informally as "the rest of the world," this argument against buying a 3G-enabled iPad holds no water for you. But let's stick to the States for a moment and analyze Debra's argument against AT&T's network. No, AT&T isn't everyone (or possibly even anyone)'s favorite US network, but the pay-as-you-go, completely contract-free plans available for the iPad are very compellingly priced. You can get 250 MB of data for $14.99 (not the $20 Debra claims in her article), which is more than enough for casual data usage. 250 MB doesn't sound like a lot on paper, but that's what my iPhone plan started out at here in New Zealand. I never once went over 100 MB or so of monthly data usage until I started using iPhone tethering, and I'd consider my data usage fairly robust. The "unlimited" AT&T plan at $30 a month is an even better deal, and even if "unlimited" only means 5 GB, you're not going to burn through that much data unless you're using the connection every waking hour of the month. Debra's argument against these plans is that it's another bill to pay on top of your cell phone bill, but that's the beauty of the iPad plans: without a contract to commit to, you can cancel the plan whenever you want. If you start out with the $30/month "unlimited" plan on the iPad, only to find out your usage isn't topping 250 MB, rather than being locked in to that plan for another 23 months, you can downgrade to the $15 plan. If you find that you don't need the 3G coverage at all, you can always buy the Wi-Fi only iPad. "Here's wishing you good luck on finding those Wi-Fi hot spots," Debra says in response to that idea, which sounds about right for us in New Zealand, where free Wi-Fi is about as rare as gold, but makes much less sense in the US, where free Wi-Fi is usually only a library or caf� away. If you absolutely must have 3G on the iPad, absolutely must not use AT&T, and are prepared to spend twice as much for the privilege of going with Verizon, you always have the option of hooking the iPad up to a MiFi (possibly -- we'll have to wait until the iPad's actually released before we know if this will work or not). Additionally, just because the iPad isn't available on Verizon right now (now now NOW) doesn't mean it never will be; Apple and Verizon are reportedly "still talking" about bringing the iPad and/or iPhone over to the network. We've come to the end of Debra's ten points, but not to the end of mine. My final point, the one that sums up all of this: like the Mac, like the iPod, and like the iPhone, the iPad is not for everyone. It's not even for me -- despite all the words I've just spent defending it, I'm not buying an iPad until next year at the earliest, and only if I decide against replacing my current, aging MacBook Pro with the same computer rather than an iMac/iPad combo. The bottom line is that the iPad can't be all things to all people. It's not meant to replace a full-fledged Mac or PC -- it's meant as an ultraportable extension of a larger device, and one with a far simpler and more intuitive interface, a "computer for the rest of us," if you will. And make no mistake: for every Debra Littlejohn Shinder, for every "open internet" geek who screams "vendor lock-in" every time Apple's name is mentioned, for every "no multitasking, no Flash, no sale" techie, for every dismissive pundit who shrugs and says, "It's just a big iPod touch," there's at least one person who has been waiting for a device just like the iPad, and those people are the ones who will make it a success. Whether you like it or hate it, the iPad is indicative of the future direction of computing. But, just for the sake of argument, let's say we can cook up a portable computer far "better" than an iPad, a dream device that has USB, 1080p output, a removable battery, runs the full version of OS X, has a front-facing camera, isn't dependent on AT&T, isn't "locked in" to the App Store, has a physical keyboard, widescreen-formatted display, and has more than 64 GB of storage. What might such a device look like? Oh. Right. TUAW10 reasons to pass on the iPad? TUAW fact check originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read�|�Permalink�|�Email this�|�Comments Apple - iPhone - Steve Job - IPod Touch - Sony
Apple Event Metaliveblog: Celebrate the tablet with TUAW

Filed under: Other Events11:12 SYNCS exactly like iPhone or iPod touch.Sync everything: media, calendars, apps, etc. Connect via usb sync 11:11 Great pricing! Want! Eng: 11:11AM And the iWork demo is done. "So what are we going to charge for applications like this? We're gong to charge just $9.99 each." He means $10 for Pages, $10 for Keynote... etc. 11:11: GIZ Jason Chen: What is Apple going to charge for each of the iWork apps? $9.99 each, so $30 if you want all. 11:10: Eng: 11:10AM It looks as though these new dropdowns menus are a major part of the iPad OS. Will be interesting to see how this translates to the iPhone and iPod touch. Is there going to be room? Or will they be left out entirely? 11:10 All this entry does make us ask the question, are you expected to type only on this device, or is there some sort of external keyboard option from Apple? Because if I could take iWork with me on the road, I might not want to type that entire Pages document by touchscreen. (via Macworld) 11:10: GIZ Jason Chen: So far we've covered ebooks and newspapers (TV and movies were already there from the iPhone), but we haven't covered magazines yet. I wonder what that's going to be like. gdgt: Showing the spreadsheet-centric soft keyboard. Auto-fields and sums showing as inferred. Pretty neat for a spreadsheet. Then again, it's still a spreadsheet. 11:10 Manipulating charts is a dream. 11:09: "I could see this being used as a cash register like the new card swipe systems at the Apple Store now. Be really easy to manage inventory too." -- Megan 11:08: Data entry keyboard. This is one of the amazing thing about touch entry keyboards. Showing that there are custom keyboards, all meant to help context entry. Over 250 options built in. Help built in. Mike Jones: "Nice new 10 key keyboard." 11:07: Now numbers demo. Let's do some typical spreadsheet tasks. Showing how you can manipulate tables. But what about data entry? 11:07: Mike Jones: "there's an awful lot of space around the screen that is making me wonder if they've added touch sensitivity to the edges" Sang: "one thing i notice about this, as opposed to the courier, is the lack of "floating" palettes. iPad's paletttes are more on-demand" 11:07: Demoing the page navigator. And showing the automated text wrap features. Yes. THIS: 11:06AM New tool: Page Navigator. It's a bit like the magnification loop and lets you jump through pages. Automatic image outlines -- just drag your image and text reformats. 11:06: Sande: "Spaces is *made" for the iPad". Mel: "I think this may kill netbooks if the price is right." Mike Jones: "I'm thinking if they do multitasking they will do it immediately after iWork" 11:05: Big applause after iWork presentation. Big. GIZ Jason Chen: I suppose the iPad would be a pretty good presentation device, letting you see the screens on your device and controlling it while it's being projected onto a wall through the 30-pin dock connector. (Video out is still unconfirmed, this is just my guess.) 11:04 "What about multitasking?" -- Megan 11:04: Eng: 11:03AM We'll say this -- iWork looks really robust. Far more than an iPhone app. Lots of options, lots of ways to work with your data. 11:03: "Look! I just done a mask, an advanced technique and it's easy". Now demoing how to do animations. Easy built-in animations, scaling, translation, etc. These are transitions between slides right now. Very easy, "with just my finger!!" 11:02: Showing access to photo albums, etc. How easy it is to drag things around whereever you want. Demoing resizing handles. Want to match sizes? tap the other one while resizing. Nice! 11:01: How do you do this without keyboard or mouse? Demonstrating gestures. Sang:"how awesome would it be if steve's been doing the presentation the whole time using iPad's keynote" 11:00 Amazing software. Want to be the first to show you. Let's show keynote. It runs in landscape orientation, because that's the standard for slides.And you first see your slide library. Gorgeous templates. What you'd expect. 11:00 Completely new version of Keynote: Specifically for the iPad. Create presentations with your fingers. Most beautiful word processor you'll ever see. New version of numbers. 10:58 re: iWork: "What they came up with is really magnificent". About to do iWork demo. 10:58 And now for something exciting. Looking at creating a version of iWork for iPhone a year ago. iPhone? Really? But iPad! Win. 10:57: "i was expecting more "eye-friendly" text, i.e. e-ink. i can't picture myself staring at this screen reading a novel" -- Sang 10:56 Steve showing off the store. Book at $14.99. "And that is iBooks" gdgt: Tap right or left to change the page - or drag the page manually. Very nice! GIZ Jason Chen: You can skip directly to chapters from the table of contents, and there are photos, as you'd expect. gdgt: "We think the iPad is going to make a terrific e-book reader not just for popular books, but for textbooks as well." 10:56 Eng: 10:56AM The store is very similar to iTunes. Same modal pop-overs. Pricing doesn't look too bad. The book page display is nice. You can turn pages slowly -- really slick looking page animation. 10:56: amazon: 0.75 +1.27&lrm; (1.06%&lrm;) 10:56: "Still no mention of 3G connectivity. Is it WiFi only?" -- Mel Martinaz "Only WiFi so far" -- Mike Schramm 10:55 Five big partners...Penguin, McMillon, Simon &Schuster, and more. Mike R: Wil Shipley's head just exploded 10:54: *blink* This afternoon? Really? 10:53: NEW iBOOK STORE: Fully integrated with iBooks app. Read your eBooks right on your iPad, NY Times bestseller lists, 5 of the largest pubs in the world, all their books on the store. Open the floodgates with the rest of the pubs starting this afternoon. 10:52 Want to show you another one of *our* apps. Amazon pioneered with Kindle. We're standing on their shoulders and going further. This is reading a book on kindle. iBooks announced. 10:52: Apple iPad page still not up. 10:50 More details about Major League Baseball. By the by, the Apple Store? Still up. Nothing shipping today. gdgt Game video with overlays, this is pretty dope. If you're a baseball fan, seems like this is probably going to be your new preferred viewing experience. Scott's back. 10:49 Next App: Major League Baseball. Looking at live game experience. "unless somethign dramatic happens in the next 10 minutes it's just a flat iPod touch." -- Dave Caolo; Isn't this 90 minutes? -- Erica 10:48 It's so PRETTY! Want one, want, want, want. Engadget: "10:48AM Need for Speed Shift on screen. Looks pretty good. "Building for the iPad is a little different -- it's kind of like holding an HD display up to your face. It's really cool.", gdgt: Touch and accelerator-enabled (of course). Tap the mirror to look behind. "A game like NFS really pushes the limits, so we wanted to show you just how fast this can really go." 10:47 Demo of game. Showing really cool racing game, first person viewpoint. 10:47: EAGuy: "really excited about iPad. Showing demo. Gorgeous 3d, showing racing game. 10:46 Electronic Arts up next. Number One mobile publisher of games. 10:46: Eng: 10:46AM This is very slick -- probably the most impressive demo yet. A very sophisticated use of the screen real estate. Brushes for the iPad looks like you can go pretty deep. Available at product launch. 10:44: Showing undo/redo. Wide range of brushes, etc. Digital finger painting. Megan: "Could you imagine Photoshop on this? It'll kill the Cintiq tablet: apple-creation-0275-rm-eng.jpg" 10:44: gdgt: Next up: an app called Brushes, an art browser. Can zoom in up to 32 times. Engadget: "10:45AM "Today I'd like to show you how brushes looks on the iPad." This is nice. Context menus for brush and color options. We're loving these new pop-over menus. No more diving!" 10:44: Taking full advantage of iPad firmware 3.2 (It's 3.2, not 4.0) 10:44: gdgt: Reading [the NYT app] syncs to the iPhone app. Inline video clips. 10:43 Megan: "Needs to be designed better. HIRE ME!!" Sang: "imagine using Keynote on the iPad. it'd be money" Megan: "This is the future of newspaper design" gdgt "We're incredibly psyched to pioneer the next generation of digital journalism." Ha, Martin Nisenholtz said "psyched." 10:42 Steve showed you the NY Times website. It's beautiful. So why do a new app for iPad? Our iPhone app downloaded 3Million times. Want to create something special for iPad 10:42 "gdgt: Martin: "Steve showed you the NYT site on the iPad, it's unbelievably beautiful. Why did we come out three weeks ago to develop an app for the iPad?" Wait, three weeks? Scott said peeps had 2 weeks. Anyway! "We think that we've captured the essence of reading a newspaper... all in a native app."" 10:41 Martin Nisenholtz of NYT. Martin is EVP of digital for the times 10:40 Next up New York Times. 10:38 Really excited about poss. for devs on iPad. "The iPad version of Nova ships later this year..." Interesting. Scott is back. "Next up, the New York Times."" 10:38 Demos. "gdgt Showing a title called Nova. This looks pretty decent, but still a tiny bit choppy. But hey, this was done in two weeks, so I'm gonna cut these guys some slack." 10:38 Devs invited 2 weeks ago. Will show you what they came up with. Mark Hickey of Gameloft is up. 10:38 "By the way, if they're available today, I'll be running to the Apple Store imediatly - 4 miles away." --- Steve Sande 10:37: Rewrote all our apps for this display. New SDK supports devs for new size. Can automatically scale app to full screen, can save profiles, and have it work in both systems. 10:36: Eep. 10:36 NEW SDK OUT TODAY!!!!! Sorry, but I think I just have to *eep* 10:36 Eng: "So all of the iPhone apps will run on this. In fact when you buy it, download all the apps you have right onto the iPad. Now if the developer spends some time modifying their app, they can take full advantage of this display." 10:35 Interface Builder is going to have to be smart about using dual resolution apps. 10:35 Pixel doubling. Eng: 10:34AM Games look amazing. He's playing an OpenGLS title right now and it looks super smooth. 10:34 Showing game video, "Video works great on the iPad", And 10:33AM Gaming obviously will handle this better, but a text heavy app looks lonely or weirdly huge. 10:33: "It just works." Demoing facebook now. It just scales up. Facebook uses text, video, etc. What app really drives graphics hw? Games do! 10:33 Eng: 10:33AM "Let's start with Facebook. It just works." He's showing off the non-pixel doubled version, a small app in the middle of the screen. It's kind of silly looking. A lone app in the center of a black screen. The scaled up app looks silly as well, especially in Facebook. 10:32: Forstall: App Store huge success, 18 monts old, billions of apps, 140k apps. We built the iPad to run virtually all these apps out of the box. Pixel for pixel accuracy and also, automatically full screen via pixel doubling. YAY! I think my inner Apple fangrrl just sqeed herself out. 10:32: All new built in applications. And Scott Forstall, sr vp of iphone softwar to talk aboutApp Store. 10:30: Scott Forstall on stage. 10:30 16-64 GB of flash storage. A MONTH, a freaking MONTH of standby. I am awed. Arsenic free, green and lovely. 10:30: Eng: "All the usual suspects: accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, dock connector. And it's got battery." 10:30 Eng: 10:30AM "What is the battery life like? We've been able to achieve 10 hours of battery life. I can take a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo and watch video the whole time. And it has over a month of standby time." 10:30 This chip will *scream*. Latest in wireless networking. "All the usual suspects: accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, dock connector. And it's got battery." 10 FREAKING HOURS OF BATTERY. 10:29: "as mentioned in every bit of upcoming advertising." -- Dave Winograd. 10:28: Getting back to the hardware a little bit. It's realllly thin. 1/2 inch thin. Just 1.5 pounds. Thinner and lighter than any netbook. 9.7 IPS display. Super high quality display. Best multitouch sensors in the world, married to our great display. 10:26: Now showing videos, movies. That is video on the iPad. That's a little overview of what the iPad can do. 10:26: "This interface is interesting, because unlike the iPhone, it's got panes and floating windows and lots of stuff that you can do when you've got a bunch of screen space.(via Macworld)" 10:25: Let's go to youtube. Let me show you a high def video on youtube. Again, let's go to landscape mode. And that's Youtube. Again, related clips, etc. Portrait, landscape. (Steve really really likes the portrait/landscape thing today) Movies, TV Shows, Music videos, etc. 10:24 Go to our current location in the maps app (Maps demo) in San Francisco. Should findall the sushi places nearby. mmmm sushi... And here's a sushi bar. Great demo. Mild, not wild, applause. That's maps. Let me show you video. 10:24 Events, Faces, and places. Shows a big map with pins in it. Tap and hold on the pin and see all the photos there. Tap on it to open the photos. There are built-in slideshows, so yo can bring up slideshow options and pick your transition. Just starts playing music and then flips through the images.(via Macworld) 10:23 Demoing iTunes now. Looking at calendar, again? Steve Sande: "I bet 24,343 Macbooks just went up for sale on eBay" Contact, calendar, address book, Also got a great maps app. Again, the eiffel tower,tap the corner, and pinch as big as we like. 10:22 TUAW staffers wondering about possible fingerprint tech for unlocking? Dave Caolo: "gotta agree: I think there's a 'wow factor' surprise lurking" jEng: 10:22AM Steve is playing more Dylan! iTunes: 10:22: Steve finishes slideshow demo to LOUD applause. Looknow at music collection, iPod, scroll through albums, tap to play. Eng: 10:21AM This is the ultimate tease. We've got a sneaking suspicion there's a lot more to come. 10:21: NYT wonders if this is the end of the laptop. Mike Rose: "WE HAZ BROKE THE INTERNETS" 10:20 Show you a map of all the places you've taken photographs. e.g. Photos I took in Paris. Built in slide shows as well as single image display. Picka transition, pick music. (This is on the iPhone too, right now. So not a new feature.) 10:20 Really good closeup of the keyboard: 10:19 Next, the keyboard. Can look at everything in portrait and landscape. Can look at any photo. Steve is *totally* getting into the portrait/landscape thing. Metadata from maps tied into photos. Can get events, places, at the same time. All tied into maps. 10:18: Engadget: Wow, nice email display -- message list in a column on the left, full message on the right. 10:17: Steve is showing off the improved e-mail browser. Can look at the metro in paris...As an example of PDF display. All the attachment support now being demo'ed Sounds like the E-mail support is going to be absolutely rocking. 10:16 Grab the tablet in the kitchen... A whole website in the palm of your hands. Read national geographic, for example. Very, very simple. Time magazine being demos, sports, right in the palm of your hands. So that is browsing the web. Now E-Mail. 10:12 Great slide show stuff built in. Built in a calendar, see a months' activities, a days', built in, a great address book, contacts, GOOGLE MAPS, satellite view, etc. iPad is an aweesome way to enjoy your music colleciton, and of course, ...iTunes, purchase movies, apps, music, etc. HIGH DEF YOUTUBE 10:12 Whole web page. It's phenomenal. It's incredible. Focus inon a message, see your inbox, turn it sideways (landscape and portrait support), keyboard pops up. It's almost lifesize, it's a dream. Your photos, your albums, your events, etc. 10:10 Very, very thin. Can change the background, Winterboard it out the wazoo (Winterboard is the jailbreak theming app) "Best browsing experience you'll ever have with a whole web page right in front of you. Way better than a laptop, way better than an iPhone" 10:10 It's the iPad. Mike R: "My iPad, let me show it to you. PREEECCCIIOOUS." Let me show it to you. Wild wild applause. 10:10: Some people have thought about netbooks: sThe problem is netbooks aren't better at ANYTHING." Applause. "They're just cheap laptops." We think we got something better. AND WE'D LIKE TO SHOW IT TO YOU TODAY. 10:09: Something better for browsing the web than a laptop? Watching videos? Something better? Media collection, playing games? If there's going to be a 3rd category of device, has to be better at these tasks. 10:08 Is there room for a third category of device? It's the tablet, of course... Steve is making a case for the mobile niche of Apple. gdgt: "In order to create a new category of devices, those devices will have to be far better at doing some key tasks - important things - better than the laptop and smartphone. What kind of tasks? Things like browsing the web..." 10:06 In 1991,In Apple shipped first modern laptop computer. Apple invented it. With an LCD screen. In 2007, Apple reinvented the phone. 2 years later, the iPhone 3GS. Apple is laptops, Apple is smart phones. 10:05 Steve: "Apple is a mobile devices company" How does Apple stack up against other companies that sell mobile devices. By revenue, is largest Mobile Device company in the world. More than Sony, etc. 15.6B in revenue. Bigger than Nokia. "apple is larger than sony mobile products division" -- via twit gdgt: "Lastly, we started apple in 1976 - 34 years later, we just ended our holiday quarter with 15.6 billion in revenue." Big applause. "That means Apple is over a 50 billion dollar company - I like to forget that, because that's not how we think of Apple, but it's pretty amazing." 10:05: GIZ Jason Chen: Next update: App Store. There are over 140,000 applications in the App Store. "A few weeks ago we announced a user downloaded the 3 billionth app from the App Store." 10:04 gdgt: "Last holiday quarter we had over 250 million visitors to our stores." Talking about the new New York stores. "It's so wonderful to be putting these stores right in the neighborhoods of our customers. It feels good. Next update: app store." WE ARE SWITCHING TO TRADITIONAL LIVE BLOG. Cover It Live is not responding. Happy Tablet Day! Here at TUAW, we are so excited to be able to share the moment with all of you stopping by. Today, we'll be metaliveblogging all the major outlets including Engagdet, Ars, and so forth. And adding to the metaliveblogging goodness, we'll be layering TUAW's own special touch of analysis and opinion on top of the summaries we'll be scraping from other sites. So thank you for joining us. Today we'll be covering feeds from: Today we'll be covering feeds from: Engadget Macworld Ars Technica MacNN Gizmodo and more..."Our Latest Creation" The Apple Media Event TUAW MetaliveblogTUAWApple Event Metaliveblog: Celebrate the tablet with TUAW originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink�|�Email this�|�Comments Apple - Engadget - Macworld - TUAW - Ars Technica
Hitting the road with iPhone GPS apps: A holiday buyers guide

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Features, iPhone, Holidays, iPod touch, App ReviewWe're about to hit the big holiday travel peak, and it's a great time to survey what we've seen this year for iPhone GPS apps. GPS navigation by satellite has been around a long time, but it's never been this inexpensive or desirable. There's an explosion of choices, with competitive features and falling prices. For many of our readers, facing long trips to see family and friends, getting the right GPS app is a priority. A few words about this guide: I haven't seen or tested everything on the market, and the choices are constantly changing and updating. I've done my best to keep up and get some time on the road with each of the apps listed here. If I haven't talked about your favorite app, it's not because I don't like it, but because I can't vouch for it. Like all of you, I have some criteria by which I judge a GPS app. My list contains the things I think are really, really, important. Your list could be different. Such is life. Read on for my (long) list of must-haves, and for the rundown of the GPS apps themselves. Here's my criteria: Good graphics and a clear GUI. I want to be able to figure out how things work without a lot of effort. I don't expect to spend a lot of time looking at the screen, but when I do I don't want it to be littered with useless information. Good sound. I don't want to have to struggle to hear what is being said, and I don't want to guess what directions I just got. GPS accuracy. Of course. I want the GPS to know where I am. On a highway, I don't want to be depicted on a side road. Most of the GPS accuracy comes down to the electronics on the iPhone, but smart software can enhance the accuracy of my position. Updated Maps. In my testing, I found several units that didn't have streets I was driving on, or could not find addresses in neighborhoods that were a decade old. There isn't any good way to find out how new the map data is, but there are plenty of reviews on the iTunes store that will help you gauge this. Steer clear of any app that has a lot of people complaining about out-of-date data. Updated Points of Interest. Same as above. How current are the locations and phone numbers of restaurants, hospitals, shops? Is the POI list static or is there a web component that keeps it up to date? I prefer a frequently updated POI list. If it's on the phone only, and something you downloaded as part of the app, it is both smaller and less up-to-date than the online options. Where are the maps? Maps may be stored on your phone, or delivered on-demand via the 3G network. I prefer them to be on the phone, because cellular reception may not be perfect. In the U.S., that means AT&T. For the rest of the world there are providers with great coverage, and some with poor coverage. If you opt for a GPS app that depends on the network for maps, you'd better have good cellular service or you'll be looking at a blank map. Text-to-speech. I really don't want to spend time looking at the display. I want the GPS to tell me to turn left on Elm Street, not 'turn left ahead'. That could be very confusing. Traffic information. It's no good following a route that is backed up three hours because of an accident. I want my GPS to alert me, and re-route me if at all possible. Choices about route calculation. I want options for fastest, shortest, and less congested routes. I want to be able to avoid toll roads, freeways or ferries. I want to be driving with this app, not having the app drive me. Useful on-screen information. I want to know how long till I get there, based on my speed, not a guess. I want to know what time I will arrive, and I'd like to know the distance to my destination and to my next turn. Address Book integration. I really don't want to type in destinations if they are already sitting on my phone. iPod integration. Not a big deal for me, but it is for many. Can you access your iTunes library without leaving the app? More than just a driving mode. The iPhone is small and portable. Pedestrian directions are really nice to have. Less important but nice: auto night display, meaning the display dims or changes colors so it is easier to see at night and less distracting. Speed limit information; can the app warn you if your are speeding? To know that, its database has to know the posted speed for major roads. I also like landscape mode, which is, I think, a nicer way to view the maps. OK. Now let's look at the contenders... all prices quoted are those from the US App Store. One of the first out of the gate was the AT&T Navigator app [iTunes link]. It's a monthly subscription at $9.99, with discounts for multi-month agreements. The maps are clear, the POI database is up to date. This app is cloud based, and that means if you lose AT&T signal, you're hosed. The app has recently had an update with improved iTunes integration. The app does text to speech, has an attractive GUI, and has a nice feature to help you find cheap gas. It includes real-time traffic, and warns you of congestion ahead. The downsides are the already mentioned dependence on a cellular signal. It also is way too chatty for my taste, and over warns you of upcoming turns. I did not find the voice pleasant, as it seemed distorted on the iPhone speaker. I'd blame that on the iPhone, except several other products don't have the problem. As this is subscription based, it just keeps costing. At $70 a year, you could buy the Navigon, Magellan or TomTom app and be ahead of the game. Purchasers who rated this app at the iTunes store generally are not happy. Ndrive United States. This is a low cost $32.99 app [iTunes link] with built in maps, and a pretty fair POI database. The developers promised text to speech, but as of this writing, it's a no-show. In my review i said that voice instructions came a bit late. I liked the 3D rendering of downtown buildings. As prices of the more popular GPS apps drop, Ndrive is not as compelling as it was, but I think it is worth a look. Another low cost option is CoPilot Live North America. At $20 (on sale now) [iTunes Link] It includes text to speech, and works well. In my review I noted that the maps were not particularly attractive, and were often out of date. You can add live traffic for another $20, which starts getting app up there in price. I'd consider this an entry level purchase for someone who isn't sure they want to spend a lot of GPS navigation. At $20 without traffic, it's a pretty low risk proposition. TomTom. This app is offered int he U.S. and several other countries. It was an eagerly awaited app because of the reputation of the company. For U.S. drivers there is a US/Canada version at $69.99 [iTunes link] and a $49.99 version [iTunes link] that deletes Canada. It's on sale at this price until December 28. Out of the gate, this app was missing some desired features, like text to speech, but a recent update added that function. The graphics are clear and easy to understand. The GUI is responsive. All the data is on-board. There have been complaints the maps are not as up to date as some of its competitors. All in all, the TomTom app is full featured, and very competitive, especially at the $50.00 sale price. Magellan Roadmate. Full featured, very nice GUI and easy to read screens. Has text to speech, 3D landmarks, Lane assist, pedestrian mode, and a one touch menu for getting to favorites. In my review I found the app easy to use and responsive. At U.S. $79.99 (on sale) [iTunes link] it's a bit pricey and I expect they will have to get a bit more aggressive because of the competition. I like everything about this app except the price and lack of real time traffic. G-Map U.S. and Canada. At a sale price of U.S. $49.99 [iTunes link] it is in the middle of the pack in terms of cost, but in my experience it was buggy and a bit slow to react to turns. In my review I noted that the app had in fact been pulled from the app store for bugs. Several users, including me, have had trouble installing it. The developers have been quick to try and fix the issues that pop up, and they have added text to speech. If you don't need Canadian maps, the TomTom sale price is a better deal. iGo Navigation. At U.S. $64.99 on sale, this is a bit high for an app with no text to speech. It does have lane assist, 3D landmarks, and details at intersections. In my review I noted that app froze up, which is a no-no. Without text to speech, it's a high price and not very competitive with the big names. Navigon Mobile Navigator North America. In my view, this is the current top drawer app that I have used and extensively tested. It's on sale to January 11 for $59.99 [iTunes link], and it includes Canada, text to speech, and now Google live search to compliment the built in POI data base. That's the best of both worlds in my view, with the maps on board, and the ability to find, call, and easily navigate to a destination. If you are out of cell tower range, the built in POI data is reasonably complete. You can get up to date traffic data for larger cities for an additional one time purchase of $19.99. I think the on screen graphics are best in class, and Navigon was the first to add text to speech. They have been very prompt at getting frequent updates out and have added valuable features. If you look at the iTunes ratings, it seems to have satisfied the most people. If I had to choose one GPS app for the iPhone, it would be the Navigon, no question. They company released the Google integration yesterday, and it had some server issues, but they got right on it and fixed it very quickly. Against my list of desired features, the Navigon hits them all. Google may or may not offer a free nav app at some point, but if you're planning a long holiday trip, you probably can't wait. The Navigon is not the most expensive, and not the cheapest of the apps that are out there. But I do think it is the best, with the Magellan and TomTom in a close second place. So there you have it. I know there are some other apps I haven't tried so they are absent here. Many of these apps run fine on an iPod touch. Check the iTunes links I've provided to get specifics on each model. I've tried to cover a variety of options and prices, and hopefully you'll find something that fits your needs and your budget. Happy Holidays and safe driving. TUAWHitting the road with iPhone GPS apps: A holiday buyers guide originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read�|�Permalink�|�Email this�|�Comments iPhone - GPS - App Store - IPod Touch - TomTom
GDC 2010: Interview with Keith Lee of Booyah

Filed under: Gaming, Software, Internet, Developer, iPhone Booyah is an App Store company with quite a few lessons in its past already. The founders are former developers at Blizzard (they worked on both Diablo and World of Warcraft before setting off on their own), and after their first app, Booyah Society, didn't exactly strike gold on the App Store, they went back to the drawing board on their idea of "real life achievements," and have done much better with their latest app, MyTown -- it's one of the top grossing apps around, with more users and higher engagement than the popular Foursquare. We got to sit down with CEO Keith Lee for an interview at GDC, and he told us about what they learned from Booyah Society, why Booyah is convinced that real-life social gaming is where it's at, and what they think of the iPad (and what Blizzard thinks of the iPhone). Read on for more. So you guys left Blizzard and formed your own company. How long ago was that? And let us know why as well. So after announcing Diablo III in Paris, my two co-founders, Brian [Morrisroe] and Sam [Christiansen], we left Blizzard because we were just inspired by the idea of doing something that was based on the real world. And we thought that the advent of smartphones and cameras, as well as GPS would give us an interesting opportunity to expose a lot of the game mechanics that we learned working at Blizzard doing everything from World of Warcraft to Diablo, but to apply it to a big audience. So that's what excited us, not just drive people to play hundreds of hours to get an epic sword on a PC, but to drive them to actually spend hundreds of hours to level up in the real world, and that can be as simple as leveling up by going to a fitness place, or by leveling up in music by doing stuff at a concert with your friends. So that's what really excited us. The mission for our company is to create new experiences for the masses by intersecting the real world and the virtual world. We launched a year and a half ago, and we're based in San Francisco, and we've launched our most recent app, called MyTown. MyTown now is the most popular location-based mobile game. It is. I'm an MMO player for a long time, and when iPhone first came out, one of the things I thought of was, this is a device that knows where it is, can see where it is, has all of this information on it...a location-based MMO is kind of like the big thing to do. Was there anything else going on or did you have anything you took influence from at the time? Our original idea was to make a social game called Booyah Society based around your Facebook and Twitter games, and then to fill the pause with communication. We realized though that we just tried to do too much at one time, especially for something that's more concise like the iPhone. Understanding that form factor, we took a step back, and we actually learned to simplify our app. So Booyah Society was last year, and we decided let's just focus on GPS. Let's build a game just around that -- what could be the most compelling idea around it? And then we came out with the idea of MyTown, which is essentially, a game based around real world property ownership. I played Booyah Society, and I wrote about it, and the problem with it was that while it was cool to give yourself achievements or rewards for doing certain things, there was no check on it. No validation, right. That's one of the biggest challenges when you start to intersect the real world and the virtual worlds. Now you have to spend 90% of your time thinking about proper validation. Because if someone really loves your games, he's going to get hacked and cheated. When you can validate activities through your backend servers like in a "pure MMO," it's a lot easier than, "Did you really go to the sports place or work out today?" Yeah in Booyah when I played it, you could basically type in, "I flew on a unicorn today," and there was nothing there to check it. Absolutely. So we took that step back and said well what can we do to actually incent [sic] people to be excited about an activity? And we said hey, property ownership is perfect, people don't want to lie about it, because they actually do care about the places they frequent. If I really like my local yogurt store, I want to buy it. That's a form of self-expression, they have an emotional tie to that location. And so once we realized that ownership was this incentiveidea, we wrapped the whole game around that, and generally the validation problem was solved. And the great thing too is that if you're checking in to the different locations in our game -- like right now, I can't check in to a place in Palo Alto or New York, I can only check in here. So the accuracy can be higher than in the past when you said that you can fly a unicorn or something like that. Right. Now whenever we talk about checking in, people think Foursquare. And this is a fact that I don't think a lot of people realize: MyTown is bigger than Foursquare in terms of your users, right? Right now, MyTown has hit 1.3 to 1.4 million registered users, so yes, they're at about 350,000, so we're about five times larger. But I think the biggest difference for us is that we have created a game that users engage throughout the day. The typical users for Foursquare and those social utility apps are about five to six minutes a day. We are now clocking in eighty minutes a day of usage for the average user, we have more users as well, and the cool thing is that we've created a complete virtual economy based on checking in, so I check into Moscone, I'm going to get more like virtual items that are different from going to an H&M. So for example, right now we're doing deals with H&M retail stores to award virtual items and goods based on proximity to their location. And it's really cool because, just this week, there are 40 million items being purchased and consumed. Every week now. And that's something that Foursquare has zero of. For all of Foursquare's press and all of the people using it, it's not a game, it's a network. And what you guys have done is turn checking in to a game -- you can build your own stores, and charge rent, and earn points, and so on. Do you think that's why you have more users, or does it limit the potential audience by ruling out people who "don't play games"? I think we started off at the same place as Foursquare, as a social utility. But then realizing eventually that we're a game, we'll be starting to diverge dramatically. I think the big idea here is that we're going to sit on top of the location graph, and we're going to be using all of this new data, check-in data, from Facebook, Google, anyone else out there. We're going to be able to leverage the location graph with all of this new metadata. Just like what the social graph looked like four or five years ago when Zynga and all of these other social games sat on top of it. So the big difference here is that we'll be the frontrunner to creation location-based social games that no one's ever done before. Foursquare and all of these other guys are actually creating the content that we'd love to use. We're currently going to use Foursquare's API and Gowalla's API. They're there to win the social-based platform play, which Facebook will completely wipe them out in about 6-8 months. Yeah, outside of the realm of the iPhone, that's interesting right there. The thing is, what differentiates them when Facebook decides to add a check-in feature that's part of their status update across all their applications on every single platform? The biggest difference is that they have 450 million users, and with such a large user base, they could work any deals with any marketers that decide to do that. I know that's the direction that Foursquare and Gowalla want to go -- they want to be an advertising platform based on location. You've got a head start on that. You've got a deal with H&M already -- That's right. And I know back when you were working on Booyah Society, that's what you were talking about. It's funny because we created the game wrapped around this real-world Monopoly idea, we started to garner 100,000 users a week, and now we can actually do some of the things we wanted to do with Booyah Society, the original vision. As we continue to partner with every venue in every location it becomes increasing more compelling for them to check-in and level up for working out, and we can have achievements based around that. And that's one of the things that differentiates us from these other products. And I think we're still like at the top 40 on the App Store after two and a half months. Pretty crazy. In terms of virtual items, I know when you check into the game, you can get virtual items that will power up the game. I haven't seen in the app myself, but are there in-app purchases in there, and how's that working? Yeah we're actually doing in-app purchases, where you can buy virtual goods to help you get more slots, add power, level you up more quickly. We're actually one of the Top Grossing apps in the App Store as well. We make money through in-app purchases, our second revenue stream is location-based ads, and then third of all, brand partnerships with all these different clients. So the great thing is that there's so many opportunities once you create a great game that people are spending an hour in, the value behind virtual goods that people want to spend and buy now, is worth a lot more the more time every day that people spend time in the app. They care about it, and actually, what's interesting too is that we're noticing that people do really spend a lot more on virtual goods and items because they're related to real locations. If it was just a random supermarket, that doesn't matter to me, but if it's the one I go to every day, my favorite Whole Foods market, I actually want to level up and upgrade it, because you can never own that in the real world, so it's kind of a cool fantasy of being this virtual property tycoon. We're realizing that you can have a product marketed with a real world idea. It's almost like a social connection with a building, which is a weird thing to say, but... Yeah. We're going to be launching an update next week that's going to be focusing on social, so we're going to have all the features that Foursquare and Gowalla have -- you'll be able to view other people's profiles, see the towns that they've made, the things that they've done. And I think it'll be very interesting for me to look at my friends and see what places they own. Because we actually limit the number of stores that you can actually keep. You can only have a maximum of 25. So you'll have to see if people are getting it because they want money or because they love their favorite Apple Store next door to them. It tells about their personality, and we'll have notifications where we can see what people are buying and selling. It's more interesting than just checking in, because I don't care if you went to Starbucks this morning, I only care if you check into a party or a club that I care about. How interesting would it be if you ended up in Napa and you bought like a hot new winery? I'd probably start a dialog or conversation if I saw that from a person on Facebook. Because it doesn't happen that often, when you buy and sell a property, but it tells you a lot about that person. I did want to talk about the future -- you said there's a social patch coming? Yeah, we're releasing another update next week focused on social. So friends lists, messaging, in-app messaging, gifting will be available there. And we'll start to add some very interesting viral growth mechanics or loops that haven't worked out yet on iPhone but have been done on other platforms. And this is the best way to defeat the issues that people are having on the App Store in terms of promotion -- it costs a lot of money to advertise to be on the top 100 charts. I think that people haven't spent a lot of time thinking about how to create all of these interesting viral channels. Imagine I gifted you with a new slot for your property, or gave you a little Godzilla art pack, or I visited your place and I pranked you, kind of destroying your town for an hour. These are the sort of things that I think can create really cool social loops, loops that haven't been done before, and the great thing is that people can send it around to their friends, and you don't have to advertise at all. Your cost of acquisition is a lot lower. Is the company working on anything else or is MyTown your focus right now? Right now, MyTown is definitely our number one focus, but as I mentioned before, we've started to understand now that we're there to create real experiences on top of this location graph, and now that we've spent a lot of time developing our location database, and as our guys are now veterans all at making iPhone apps, the time that it would take and the resources would be a fourth of the time we spent on MyTown, which already only took us two months to do. So we're very, very exciting about coming up with new ways to leverage what we've already built, and maybe a different theme or target market or something. So yes, we are working on a few other really exciting games, and that's an area we're very excited about as we grow. Cool. Because you came from Blizzard, I want to ask: They've been poking around the iPhone, but what do you think of their strategy for it? The relationship that we have with Blizzard is loose in a sense that they knew that we were going to be working on products that were going to be highly differentiated from a big MMO. Rob Pardo is one of our advisors, so he also has to really think about the implications of what we're doing in the real world. He's a great person, he has such a strong user experience design sense that we get a lot of really great feedback. I can't speak for the strategy of what Blizzard is doing in the next few years, but I think their products like WoW are so highly engaging right now that it makes sense to find ways to get their users or new users exposed to World of Warcraft. And it makes sense to me that building products on the iPhone or other platforms is a really great way to introduce it to more users or casual users. I know we've all heard of it, but there's still people out there in the iPhone/iPod touch base that might want to have a taste of something new branded with World of Warcraft. I can totally imagine them making a game based on the Murloc or something else. I think that could be really interesting to introduce it to a new audience. And one last thing, with April 3rd coming up very quickly, MyTown doesn't really seem like an app that would work well on the iPad, but are you all interested in iPad? We're extremely excited and we have been looking at the APIs a lot and kind of just trying to get as much information as we can to make a better deicision. Our strategy right now is to create some of the best experiences on the iPhone and iPod touch. That said, our product would probably work a bit better if there was a more refined GPS system on the iPad. Is it a challenge then, or are you fine with just being on the iPhone? We are currently investigating being on the iPad. We're all very bullish on that. That said, I think that if we were going to do something specific to the iPad, we would want to create an experience that's real world and that leverages something that's unique on the iPad itself. Great. Thanks!TUAWGDC 2010: Interview with Keith Lee of Booyah originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read�|�Permalink�|�Email this�|�Comments iPhone - App Store - Booyah - MyTown - Foursquare
Macmillan trying to sell readers 'hardcover' ebooks

Filed under: Retail, Software, Internet, iPad John Siracusa drew my attention to an article by Macmillan CEO John Sargent on the agency model, availability and price, in which he says that the company actually plans to keep their hardcover/paperback separation even while selling ebooks. While new hardcover ebooks will sell for $14.99 and $12.99 ("a tremendous discount from the price of the printed hardcover books"), the company will aim to sell "ebook editions of paperback new releases" for as low as $6.99. As Siracusa goes on to say, "now let us all sit back and ponder the concept of 'paperback' and 'hardcover' ebooks." Macmillan is sticking with an old pricing scheme even in a brand new marketplace. Just what exactly makes the difference between a "hardcover ebook" and a "paperback ebook"? Read on to find out. The first question is: "Why would someone buy a hardcover book?" I can only think of three reasons (Are there other reasons? There may be, I just can't think of any): You're a big fan of {insert author's name here} and want to read his/her newest book as soon as it comes out. You're a collector and prefer the perceived increased "value" of a hardcover. You like the slightly bigger print/additional whitespace that you often get with a hardcover compared to a paperback. Second question: Which of those reasons also apply to ebooks? Certainly #1 applies. There's no faster way to get a book than to download it (assuming both are available on the same day, something else that Macmillan says they will be doing from now on). On the other hand, #2 certainly does not apply. There's no perceived value of a "first edition" ebook. You're not going to display it on your bookshelf and of course you can't bring it to a book signing. You also can't loan it to your friend or donate it to the library. What about #3? I assume all ebook readers offer variable font sizing, it seems like one of the most obvious features they could offer. In fact, you can probably make the print larger than the printed hardcover. #3 seems like a reason to prefer an ebook instead of a hardcover. Third question: When was the last time you paid "list price" for a book? Macmillan says "printed hardcover books...generally range from $28.00 to $24.00." That's what I mean by "list price." I bet very few people ever pay that price. Brick & mortar bookstores have traditionally sold them for much less. It seems like Borders/Barnes & Noble have a "25% off" sticker for every new book that comes out. I'll tell you when the last time I paid "list price": I wanted to get a signed copy of the latest Hodgman book, and the only way to do that was to order it from Politics & Prose who were only too happy to sell me a signed copy for the full list price, plus shipping. I think I paid about $30 for a book I could have ordered from Amazon for about $12-15. I'm going to guess you haven't paid "list price" for many books since you first found out about Amazon.com. Macmillan seems to have done to Amazon what the music industry eventually did to Apple and the iTunes store. Apple created the iTunes store and sold songs for 99�, doing the most to effect music sales since Napster was first released. Over 10 billion songs have been downloaded legally since (not to mention all those sold through Amazon, etc.). The music industry absolutely loved it... and wanted to change more per song. They eventually leveraged Amazon.com's MP3 store against Apple to force Apple to allow for variable pricing. $1.29 for "popular", 99� for "less popular" and 69� for some mythical level of songs, presumably ones no one wants to buy at all, i.e. "Let the Eagle Soar" by John Ashcroft. (Aside: Almost 5 years later "Price as Signal" by Joel Spolsky remains the smartest thing I've read about what variable pricing means to the music business and why they wanted it.) The music industry eventually got its way. They are now selling songs for $1.29 on iTunes, and guess what?! Higher prices mean slower sales. I know! Who would have guessed?! Amazon created the Kindle and sold books for $9.99. The book industry absolutely loved it... and wanted to charge more per book. Publishers also didn't want the Kindle to be able to read books aloud because, well, obviously that was going to hurt audiobook sales, and where's the fun in not being able to charge someone multiple times for the same content?! Do you think they've learned nothing from George Lucas? Ironically, Amazon was leveraged by the announcement of Apple's iPad (turnabout is fair play). Apple, which fought long and hard for standardized pricing for music, easily accepted variable pricing for books. Is this really all that different than Apple releasing the iPhone for $600 and then dropping the price to $400? Yes and no. Obviously Apple realized that it could profit by selling iPhones for more initially and then could boost sales by dropping the price after the early adopters had spent their money. In that sense it's much like someone who is going to buy the new Christopher Moore book the day that it comes out. One difference is that book publishers are dangling by a hairy financial thread, whereas Apple has enough money to buy Canada and turn it into Steve Jobs' summer house. Apple was also the only company in the world selling the iPhone, and even $600 was a "competitive" price. Those who bought when it came out were able to use it on a daily basis for two months before the price dropped to $400. Those who buy an ebook when it first comes out get to read it once and then, well, keep it in case they ever decide to read it again. While book publishers are the only ones selling particular books by particular authors, there are scads of other publishers, a seemingly endless supply of writers, and this thing called "the Interwebnet" which is offering people plenty to read, for free. When you are buying a hardcover book, you're getting something which is clearly different than a paperback. It's also easy to argue that you are getting something better than a paperback (despite the fact that some people might prefer paperbacks to hardcover). That's why a hardcover is worth more than a paperback. Why is an ebook worth more than the same ebook, months later? It isn't. The most logical thing for ebook users to do is put a note in their calendars to remind them to buy the book in six months instead of when it comes out. It's not as if they will have trouble finding anything to read in the meantime. The nearest comparison that I can make is to apps that I've purchased from the App Store. I've purchased several which later dropped their price significantly, e.g. $10 to $4, $5 to $3, etc. The "actual dollar amount" may not seem like that much, but percentage-wise, it's a big cut. The effect that it has had on me is pretty simple: I now wait before buying a new app. Not only do I get to hear other people review it (since there are still no "demo" versions available) but I also get to see if the price drops. Net result? Fewer impulse buys, and almost certainly fewer purchases overall. It seems to me that is exactly what book publishers don't want to do: give people a reason to wait longer to buy books and a reason to resist impulse purchases. I'm sure publishing executives are worried about ebook sales cannibalizing more profitable hardcover sales, but I wonder if these aren't two separate markets. People who want to buy ebooks have made a conscious decision to not purchase physical books. Macmillan seems to want to go about business using the same rules and models that have been in place: "buy early, pay more." But part of that equation has always been "buy early, pay more, get something better." Charging more for the same ebook completely misses the third part of that equation.TUAWMacmillan trying to sell readers 'hardcover' ebooks originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read�|�Permalink�|�Email this�|�Comments Amazon.com - Steve Jobs - iPhone - Apple - Publishing
Google's Android Market Guarantees Problems for Users

Daniel Eran Dilger It's great news that Google is planning to deliver a market for mobile software with its own centralized “Android Market.” It should give Apple's iPhone Apps Store competitive pressure to continue to innovate, and provide a safety net for smartphone users if Apple fails to deliver progress fast enough. If Apple and Google both fail, users will be stuck with the failed third party software models related to Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Nokia's Symbian. Those high stakes make it all the more disappointing to find that the Android Market fails to answer the tough issues correctly. iPhone App Store vs Android Market. There's no doubt that there will be apps that make it into Google's Android store that aren't currently available from Apple, likely including WiFi tethering (for using your mobile's data plan to give your laptop Internet access on the road), a feature Apple forced NullRiver's NetShare to remove from the iPhone store. That was apparently at the behest of AT&T, which staunchly refuses to support tethering without charging an expensive additional fee. AT&T's 3G network is already strained to carry relatively light-duty mobile traffic; unrestricted amounts of data being dumped on the network from far more demanding desktop apps by millions of users is currently just infeasible to accommodate. Other providers have 3G EVDO bandwidth to spare, but will cut you off just as quickly when you reach their finite definition of “unlimited” data access. Finite bandwidth is not a problem Google's 'free and open' software market can solve, because Google is not the only link in the chain in providing mobile apps. AT&T isn't going to allow tethering from Android phones either, regardless of Google's intended store policies. And Verizon Wireless likely isn't going to allow WiFi on Android phones at all. So it's a joke to say Android will transcend every problem in ways that Apple hasn't. This isn't a case of Google acting like Netflix to offer unlimited content to rival Blockbuster's censorship; instead, Google is simply making great sounding campaign promises it won't be able to deliver. AppleInsider | Google reveals open Android Market to rival iPhone's App Store Will Google’s Android Play DOS to Apple’s iPhone? Why Apple Plays God with the iPhone SDK But Wait, There's More (And Less). The Android Market will also deliver lots of problems Apple isn't, including a way to distribute malware that can't be remotely killed, or untraceable spyware that professes to be on the up-and-up when you install it, but then works behind your back and phones home sensitive data to a rogue developer's servers. Remember all the speculation last year about the possibility of developers being able to hack the iPhone open and install their own malicious tools to watch what you're doing? Under the iPhone SDK, access to that dangerous path is simply forbidden. Under Android, there's not so much as a handrail for users. Apple has already reprimanded iPhone developers who provided inadequate protection of their users' data, and then forced them to fix their problems immediately. With Google advertising its “see no evil, hear no evil” policy for its self-policing development community, Google won't even know if there's a problem. It will also lack any way to stop or reverse problems, and having renounced any accountability for protecting users with regulatory controls, Google will lack the leverage to push malicious or possibly just incompetent developers to take any action once it does discover problems. Malware and junkware on the PC is a big problem, but on a smartphone it is orders of magnitude more serious of an issue. Having to run spyware cleanup on a PC is a nusance. Having your phone subverted into a tool for advertisers or identity thieves could easily result in issues on the level of life safety. If you thought it was embarrassing to have Outlook send out spam in your name in 2001, wait until Android starts drunk dialing all your contacts to tell them about special offers, attaching your GPS location and perhaps a recent photo from your album so they know they can trust you about it. Google seems to think it can simply ignore security problems by asking developers not to take advantage of its users. This is absurdly ridiculous in our modern context. Google may as well be building unvented fireplaces in a tornado alley trailer park. Ten Myths of Leopard: 9 Apple is Spying on Users! The Unavoidable Malware Myth: Why Apple Won’t Inherit Microsoft’s Malware Crown Wired's Grotesquely Rank Hypocrisy in Mobile Security. Where did all of those mobile phone security experts from last fall run away to? They were abuzz about the imagined catastrophe that might befall the “can't even run any software” iPhone, but none have stepped forward to posit an opinion on why Android's exposed spinning blades in a dark room might result in the world's next Windows XP. Wired, which led the witch hunt against the iPhone last fall, published an article this summer titled “Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web,” which went on breathlessly for days about how Android would solve the industry's problems with giddy can-do chutzpah. Nowhere did the article even suggest a criticism of its wide open, security-free business model. Instead, the author announced, “Engineers who write for just about any mobile operating system today have to spend time and cash obtaining security keys and code-signing certificates. Android would allow any application to be installed and run, no questions asked.” If you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, don't bother. It ended right there on the “time and money savings” of not having any security model. Microsoft saved a lot of money by ignoring security, too, as long as you don't count the $11 billion malware industry. Shame on Wired for continuing its descent into hopelessly unplugged irrelevance. UnWired! Rick Farrow, Metasploit, and My iPhone Security Interview Kim Zetter and the iPhone Root Security Myth High Risk, High Likelihood for Exploitation. The tech media more recently went into high alert to warn users that Apple's MobileMe web apps didn't perform SSL encryption, allowing the possibility for spies to target them in order to read their calendar and email transactions, were they to used the web apps over a public network. That's a valid concern to voice, but also an extremely unlikely threat for users to spend much time worrying about, particularly since there are a number of straightforward precautions users can take to avoid any risky exposure scenarios. There's also little business model behind sniffing calendar appointments and the kind of mundane email threads that .Mac users might engage in while drinking coffee at Starbucks. On the other hand, malicious software and social engineering exploitation is a billion dollar industry, and organized criminals in Korea, China, Russia, and of course Nigeria are as desperate for new dollars outside of the PC desktop as Google is. Rather than the unlikely scenario of on-site spies targeting a specific individual to sniff out truffles from their browser's email, these people have organized and profitable methods for delivering viral payloads to wide audiences from the convenience of a position thousands of miles away. On a smartphone, they can take your money simply by having installed software send a paid SMS. This is a real threat, not a contrived bunch of hysterical nonsense dreamed up by fear-mongering pundits. It is simply criminally negligent for Google to design a smartphone software platform with nearly zero regard for the safety of its users. We can justifiably criticize Microsoft for its lax stance on security in the 90s that resulted in the Windows malware crisis, but many of the potential dangers of certain decisions weren't fully recognized back then. Google is organizing an olympic-sized skating party on a lake it knows has dangerously thin ice. Is Apple’s MobileMe Secure? Store vs Market? It's also worth mentioning that the media is comparing what Google only intends to do with what Apple has already pulled off; I could easily draft plans for a phone that sounds better than the iPhone, but I certainly couldn't deliver it. Apple has years of experience in media sales and micro-payments in iTunes. It began selling software through iTunes in 2006, and spent years refining its software deployment system to make sure iTunes would work as a true market place for mobile software once the iPhone was ready. Anyone can open a store. There are a dozen online music and video stores that have gone out of business trying to sell music like iTunes. Apple created a real market, where both buyers and sellers can have confidence that they're getting a fair deal. Google has tried to backhandedly condemn Apple's App Store for being called a “store,” negatively associating the word with a commercial endeavor as opposed to the community effort Google's marketing team has branded a “market.” Never mind that the words really mean the same thing; Google isn't really creating a market, because markets have enforced rules. Without rules and authority, there is too much risk involved to do legitimate business. If Android were only setting up a barter system between the company's altruistic and noble minded PhDs in the Google cafeteria, there wouldn't be an issue. However, Google is setting up shop in the most corrupt, chaotic, and criminal setting on earth: the wide open Internet, a dirty enough place to turn a brand new PC into a viral porn spam server within fifteen minutes of being plugged in. Hacking iPod Games: How Apple's DRM Works Rise of the iTunes Killers Myth Can Great Google Getter Done? The company's Alfred E. W. Newman approach to security issues is more than a little alarming coming from a company that is fully aware of Internet scammers. Google's main job is identifying and scouring away the criminal tracks that SEO frauds try to leave behind in its search engine results. The company terminates its advertiser partners on a whim when it even suspects an irregularity, and the web is full or people complaining that Google has failed to pay them for hundreds of dollars of AdSense advertising without even a fair explanation. The company is hard edge and savvy when it comes to protecting its own revenues, so why is it being so soft and naive when the security of its users is on the line? Google's “do no evil” slogan, paired with its considerable contributions to society, from free search to free satellite imagery, and from its staunch support of the public interest related to WiFi and mobile broadband issues to its investments in progressive technologies to make the world a better place, all simply add up to leave its unreasonable stance on mobile security a mysterious puzzle. Can Google even pull its store off? The company serves up millions of free videos in YouTube, but remember that Google originally tried to build its own YouTube and failed; it had to buy YouTube to enter the market. Google also screwed the pooch when it dropped its own paid DRM video service and told its users to go fly a kite. That kind of customer-oblivious behavior isn't going to successfully lock horns with Apple's proven excellence in delivering the iTunes Store as a customer-friendly market place. Apple pulled together 14 year old torrent freaks and the RIAA's lawyers into the same room and made them play together. It turned the festering boil of the rotten mobile software market into a million dollar per day buffet. Google's Android Market not only faces the same challenges, but also has to fly in the face of the industry darling, starting at zero against Apple's ten million installed base of iPhones and its accelerating market share. The industry outside of Apple is working just as hard to grab its own slice as well. Google taking on the iPhone App Store is a bit like Sony deciding to build cars to take on BMW. That's all fine and good, but let's see the car before we start comparing its “planned” zero to 60 performance against that of today's cars with a proven legacy. And stop telling us that lacking both seat belts and brakes is a feature. Did you like this article? Let me know. Comment here, in the Forum, or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast (oh wait, I have to fix that first). It's also cool to submit my articles to Digg, Reddit, or Slashdot where more people will see them. Consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!
GDC 2010: Ngmoco justifies the freemium model

Filed under: Gaming, Software, Developer, iPhone, App Store As popular as Ngmoco and its games are, whenever we seem to post about them, the subject of their business model seems to rise to the top again. While they have emerged as one of the iPhone's top original developers, they've also lost a lot of fans by sticking with a model they call "freemium," even to the detriment of some of their most popular games. They release games for free, and then monetize the games by using microtransactions, selling both virtual items and virtual currency for real money. We have a lot of questions for the company, and we'll be asking even more of them coming later this week. But first things first: we cornered Ngmoco producer Allen Ma here in their suite at GDC 2010 and asked him to try and tell us why Ngmoco is so insistent on "freemium," and how they feel about some of the adverse customer reactions to their model. Read on to hear why free-to-play, pay-to-play-more is the model that they're betting their business on. When we post about Ngmoco, the first comment on the post is often "Here's Ngmoco trying to steal our money again." What do you think when you see a reaction like that? It's very, very odd because it's strange to see those moments when our goal as a company is that we want to give you a full game experience for free. That's really what Eliminate is. You can log into Eliminate any time you want, and play the game against anyone else, for free. And it's Quake 3 on the iPhone! So it's very interesting when people go oh they're scamming us because they want us to pay ten to twenty dollars to play through a game experience. That really is not true. Because you can never pay for the game and get the same exact experience. Well, it's not the same exact experience. It is, it just takes longer to get there. That in itself makes it not the same. Well does it or doesn't it, right? Because I feel like there's a lot of games out there where you're paying to do something faster than someone else. There's a whole black market that exists in World of Warcraft where you can buy a level 80 character for hundreds of dollars. There's this market where people are willing to do that. We're just doing that in a way where it's legitimate and fair to everyone. Well, but a lot of players frown on that even in World of Warcraft. A lot of players say if you buy a level 80, that's cheating, because the game is designed to be played the other way. And in Eliminate, we would never let you buy a fully maxed out character, right? In Eliminate specifically, what we're allowing you to do, we're still allowing you to play the game, but we allow you to earn credits at a higher frequency than other people. You still have to play the same amount of games, you can't cheat your way to max level, but in actual total number of days to get there, you're lowering it. I think another reason that people have an issue with this is that you guys, Ngmoco, have said that you're not even bothering with paid apps. There are some people who are willing to pay for a good experience, they're even willing to pay ten dollars for a solid, worthwhile, whole unlocked version of the game. And Ngmoco is saying we're not doing that, it's all freemium or nothing. What would you say to that? We're just finding that, with paid, you can't make any money. There's only a handful of companies that are able to charge more than three dollars for a game. Gameloft, EA, Square Enix. Anyone else, they charge more than two bucks, no one's even going to look at their game. There's no way that we could have built Eliminate, for the cost per install or cost per SKU that we would have sold, to actually be able to make back that money in the timeframe that we wanted to. It's funny, because people are saying that they're willing to pay, but when push comes to shove, they're actually not willing to pay. That person that says they're willing to pay $10, they'll probably wait for it to drop to 99 cents before they actually purchase it. What they really want is a $10 game for 99 cents. What we're giving them is a $50 game for free. That's really our stance right now. When you set out to make these games, even a game like We Rule, are you still thinking about it in the old model of, the premium experience for this is $50, or the premium experience is $10? Is there a "right amount" of money to spend to get the full game, or are you just saying the sky's the limit on the amount of money you should pay? I think what freemium allows us to do is continually make the game better. So instead of going, OK, you as the user have to take a gamble to see if this game is worth x amount of dollars to you; instead, why don't you come in and try the game. If you like it, throw us a couple of bucks. When you do that, we know that you like that piece of the game, and we'll give you more of that, so that if you continue to like it, we'll keep designing these things, right? The ones that you don't like, we'll stop doing. For example in Eliminate, people really wanted co-op. So we're going to give them co-op, because they're going to keep playing the game. Some of them will continue to keep paying to play the game, and that's encouraging as a developer to keep making it better and better. And this is why World of Warcraft works, right, because users are willing to continue to pay to play the game. Unfortunately, not every game can be as excellent as World of Warcraft where everyone in the world is willing to pay for it. I could point you to a game like Dungeons and Dragons Online, which used to be a regular MMO and now is a free-to-play MMO, and they're saying that they're making like 60-80% more revenue as a free-to-play game than when it was paid. And they're now updating the game way more frequently than they did when it was paid. So it sounds like you're not even thinking in the old model of, "here's this experience for this amount of money." You're thinking of it as a dialogue, where you pay us for what you like, and we'll return more content. You're not just investing two bucks to speed up your game, you're investing two bucks in the game and in future content. Yeah. You're paying to support the game, and you're paying to support all of the free players that weren't willing to pay for the game. So when you think about it that way, you're paying so that we can maintain the servers that allow all of the people to play. So again, going back to Eliminate, our game that's working right now, you're paying for the game, so that you can continue to own people that don't pay for the game. Great, thanks very much.TUAWGDC 2010: Ngmoco justifies the freemium model originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read�|�Permalink�|�Email this�|�Comments iPhone - AppStore - World of Warcraft - Freemium - Business model

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