The Next Six Months • Hacker News Board

Re: The Next Six Months

#51

Post by tomkarlo » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 12:19 AM UTC

Todd wrote: post #37

kenjackson wrote: post #19

Microsoft AND Intel being effectively missing from the tablet race is staggering. And there are a few reasons why its staggering: 1) Both have known it was coming, maybe longer than anyone else. But got the core requirements all wrong. 2) No one really seems to care. 3) Related to (2), there is no belief that they have anything up their sleeve. 4) Their existing ecosystem, probably a billion units strong, doesn't see…

I wouldn't count them out. They've ported NT to ARM. The Windows Phone 7 shell, which runs on CE currently, could easily run as a front end to NT/Win8 on smaller devices. The touch device model and API is fully developed in WP7 and Win7. They have all the pieces in place to release a very compelling product--both from the end-user perspective, in the WP7/Metro shell, and the developer perspective, with excellent tool…

If they can't get enough devices out in the market to make it a compelling target platform for app makers, it won't matter that they have all the pieces.

That's increasingly looking like the outcome. Why would anyone develop an app for W7 before iPhone or Android, assuming they don't have incumbent knowledge of the W7 environment (and even then...)?

Re: The Next Six Months

#52

Post by jleyank » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 12:20 AM UTC

pkulak wrote: post #6

"Apple was willing to announce it months in advance because they had no competition..." What? They announce the first version of a product early because, being the first, it can't stop people from buying the previous version. If they announced the new iPad now, iPad 1 sales would tank.

The Osborne effect. I would think Apple and all other current/successful tech companies have this in mind re: their products - especially given the rapid turnover.

Re: The Next Six Months

#53

Post by tesseract » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 12:21 AM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #19

Microsoft AND Intel being effectively missing from the tablet race is staggering. And there are a few reasons why its staggering: 1) Both have known it was coming, maybe longer than anyone else. But got the core requirements all wrong. 2) No one really seems to care. 3) Related to (2), there is no belief that they have anything up their sleeve. 4) Their existing ecosystem, probably a billion units strong, doesn't see…

Bill Gates (and with him, Microsoft) has been nigh obsessed with tablets since at least the mid-1990s. I think the trouble is more that MS entered the tablet market way too early, and got bogged down by hardware limitations of the era: the CPU etc. had to be something from the laptop world rather than from the PDA world because the latter was not capable of driving a big color display. Laptop CPUs were expensive and relatively power hungry. Big color displays were expensive too, so because of the cost people expected a tablet to replace a laptop. This probably led in part to the decision to run a desktop OS on tablets rather than come up with a new UI model and start a new app ecosystem. Rather than going with the (expensive, crappy, or both) touchscreen technology of the time they mostly used Wacom digitizers. The tablet that so resulted was doomed to be basically a niche product.

I think you could say that MS is in the same situation with respect to the modern tablet market, that Palm was in with respect to the smartphone market about four or five years ago.

As for the other phone makers, remember Nokia and others have been trying and failing to do the tablet thing for years too. Remember all the clamoring (for years) for Apple to introduce a tablet? It was not because all the Apple rumor bloggers had some clairvoyance about the market that Steve Jobs did not - it was because seemingly everyone else had a tablet out, or would soon, and people were afraid Apple would get left behind.

Re: The Next Six Months

#54

Post by r00fus » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 12:22 AM UTC

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #26

Apple's touch strategy is definitely awesome, but the only reason it's spectacular is because of the app store. HP's new TouchPad won't have that. It will probably do well, but it won't even touch the success of the iPad. Nobody writes apps for WebOS.

HP should court Amazon to run a WebOS app-store.

Re: The Next Six Months

#55

Post by allenbrunson » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 12:22 AM UTC

jbrennan wrote: post #35

ReadyNSet wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only reason Apple announced six months in advance was the the FCC approval process, being public the iPhone would've been out in any case whether Apple announced or not.

I don't think that's true. It might have been what they said , but it's February now and we haven't seen any glimpses of iPhone 5 (or whatever) from the FCC, and I'd be willing to bet it launches less than six months from now.

"Jobs unveiled the iPhone to the public on January 9, 2007 at Macworld 2007. Apple was required to file for operating permits with the FCC, but since such filings are made available to the public, the announcement came months before the iPhone had received approval."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone

I remember hearing this story at the time, as well.

For all we know, the rules could be different for iPhone 5, since it is an update of an existing product, rather than a new one.

Re: The Next Six Months

#56

Post by alanh » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 12:23 AM UTC

roc wrote: post #17

The logic doesn't hold up for me. Are holiday buyers really the same kind of people who will have even heard gadget rumors, let alone coordinate their purchases accordingly? Do we have any reason to think many of them held off this year ? Furthermore, I thought the speed of iOS updates has been a good thing. Why are three iOS targets undesirable or problematic? It just sounds... flimsy; like someone shopping for just…

You can’t imagine everyday people hearing advice not to drop hundreds of bucks on Christmas presents that will be obsolete in a month? Because if iPads & iPods were expected in Jan/Feb I can guaranteed a ton of nerds will be looking out for Mom and Dad.

Re: The Next Six Months

#57

Post by tomkarlo » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 12:23 AM UTC

ReadyNSet wrote: post #8

pclark wrote: post #4

I wrote an entire comment about how great it is for Apple to work in secret and release and "blitzkrieg" the competition. But it turns out Apple announced their iPhone ~Jan 2007 and it shipped ~June 2007. So why did HP announce their entire 2011/2012 line up and direction of products without a price and or release date? I think that this means HP has stake holders breathing down their neck, and they had to publicly s…

only reason Apple announced six months in advance was the the FCC approval process, being public the iPhone would've been out in any case whether Apple announced or not.

It's also possible they simply didn't trust ATT employees to keep the secret, so they announced the phone publicly before showing it widely within the carrier. With later versions of the iPhone the network doesn't have to make as many changes (like visual voicemail) so they don't have to tell them about it so far in advance.

Re: The Next Six Months

#58

Post by jleyank » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 12:24 AM UTC

barista wrote: post #14

"One startling omission from that list: Microsoft. Their former hardware partners are heading off into the touch-computing future without them. We could have four competing tablet platforms six months from now — iOS, Android, WebOS, and Playbook — and not one of them is from Microsoft" Microsoft clearly seems to have taken their own sweet time to make an entry but they clearly have an intent and when they do, the big…

What would have changed if the Microsoft Courier was real? I thought this a pretty good start, but then it disappeared.

Re: The Next Six Months

#59

Post by alanh » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 12:25 AM UTC

barista wrote: post #14

"One startling omission from that list: Microsoft. Their former hardware partners are heading off into the touch-computing future without them. We could have four competing tablet platforms six months from now — iOS, Android, WebOS, and Playbook — and not one of them is from Microsoft" Microsoft clearly seems to have taken their own sweet time to make an entry but they clearly have an intent and when they do, the big…

“A plethora of apps that are easy to port”? Windows compatibility implies a terribly inadequate offering, just like every previous Windows Tablet PC to date. How is that competing? Metro/Win Phone 7 doesn’t have a “plethora of apps” ready to be tweaked for tablet size, so I’m baffled by your reasoning.

Re: The Next Six Months

#60

Post by megablast » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 12:26 AM UTC

scottyallen wrote: post #5

If you're an iPad/iPhone developer: How does the prospect of a new iPad being on the horizon affect your development/product strategy?

It will undoubtably have a camera, so now start making all those camera apps use the bigger screen. Same with skype, etc... I will add the ability for users of my iPad apps to use photos, take photos, etc... This was limited to the iPhone version.

More memory means will be able to do more things, load up bigger files into mem.