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The Next Six Months

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Re: The Next Six Months

#91

Post by angstrom »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #62
pchristensen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 + 4 + 5 = classic disruption theory. The margins, cost structure, and organizations that have made them so successful so far are what's preventing them from seizing the tablet space. The CEO's are in place because they have made so much money from the old business.

Ding ding ding. MS and Intel are still aware of the disruptiveness of "Tablets" (a poor description for the phenomenon, but descriptive enough), but they are chained to their existing org-charts, ship schedules, and revenue streams. Whether or not they'll be able to pivot fast enough is still up in the air. The really interesting aspect is that the important part in market growth isn't when the disruptive technology…

Chained, but not oblivious.

Windows 8 will borrow heavily from Surface. Registry will be gone. It will be good, but it may be too late.

Re: The Next Six Months

#92

Post by naner »

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #34
naner wrote: post #20

I don't think the market for these things is huge as he suggests. Why would anyone buy a non-Apple touch or tablet device? I can see the argument for smart phones from different vendors, but not for these causal computing touch devices. And this is coming from someone who has never paid a cent to Apple. I haven't drank the kool-aid but none of these touch devices appear to really be competing with Apple. They look li…

I am curious what kind of tech stuff you do spend money on. Not into apple, and yet not a gamer, which is one of the few holdouts

I used to be an early-adopter and gadget geek. I've owned a few crappy mp3 players (never an iPod for some reason) and even a Nokia 770 (also crappy). I think that was the last of my tech gadget purchases.

These days I just own a nice laptop and a clamshell cell phone. I don't even have a camera anymore.

Re: The Next Six Months

#93

Post by Roritharr »

imsky wrote: post #84
Roritharr wrote: post #75

I dont get why everybody is falling for the "end of pc era" hype that is surrounding tablets and smartphones. Can someone explain to me why the ability to browse the web from the couch without sufficient text-entry possibilities is going to challenge the amount of pc's in a world where textentry is our main method of searching, sorting and creating data. Honestly, this is not a rhetorical question, i feel i'm missing…

It's the "end of PCs" for the mainstream market, which was overrun with them for the last 10 years. Now the mobile technology is good enough that bulky desktops are going to be used primarily by professionals. You're not going to edit video/render 3D on the iPad 2, but for 90% of the population that just needs to check their email, it's good enough.

I think that idea is overblown, simply because "Check their E-Mails" means someone has to write e-mails worth checking...

Re: The Next Six Months

#94

Post by spaghetti »

imsky wrote: post #85
spaghetti wrote: post #66

I'd really like to see a laptop with two touch screens: one replacing the regular screen and another replacing the keyboard and trackpad. This tablet/laptop hybrid would have some awesome benefits. For example one could comfortably use the device while seated at a table (display and input area can be at about 90 deg relative to each other... something that's not possible w/ the iPad). Another awesome benefit would be…

We almost had it. http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/05/microsofts-courier-digita... Why Microsoft killed Courier, I'll never know.

That looks cool! However it's rotated from what I was hoping for. I literally want just a laptop w/ two touch screens. Too bad it was cancelled.

Re: The Next Six Months

#95

Post by wiredfool »

Roritharr wrote: post #75

I dont get why everybody is falling for the "end of pc era" hype that is surrounding tablets and smartphones. Can someone explain to me why the ability to browse the web from the couch without sufficient text-entry possibilities is going to challenge the amount of pc's in a world where textentry is our main method of searching, sorting and creating data. Honestly, this is not a rhetorical question, i feel i'm missing…

We're getting closer. Years ago, must have been 7 or 8 by now, I was talking with a friend @ Microsoft, and he was going on and on about how the phone was going to be the computer. "This Phone" and he'd hold up a generic GSM flip phone.

My objection then was UI, both on the input and output side. In a way, wifi and bluetooth have solved a lot of that, as they can offload the heavy duty stuff to wireless sometimes connected displays and keyboards.

At some point, we're likely to have enough power in a cellphone to run most of what you'd want to do for day to day stuff. And do it all day on a charge. Couple that with always on networking and the availability of machines in the cloud for bigger jobs, you start to be able to have the phone/tablet be most of what you need.

Re: The Next Six Months

#96

Post by halostatue »

Roritharr wrote: post #75

I dont get why everybody is falling for the "end of pc era" hype that is surrounding tablets and smartphones. Can someone explain to me why the ability to browse the web from the couch without sufficient text-entry possibilities is going to challenge the amount of pc's in a world where textentry is our main method of searching, sorting and creating data. Honestly, this is not a rhetorical question, i feel i'm missing…

I'll try to explain by personal anecdotes—two of them. In my household, there's just my wife and myself. I'm an übergeek; she's a technically competent teacher. Computers are merely tools to her.

We went to Italy this past summer. We took my iPhone (data turned off), an iPad 3G, my SLR, and her camera. Because I couldn't find someone locally to sell me a photo tank, I also had to take an Airport Express, a netbook, and a card reader to save the pictures I took (I didn't have the camera connection kit at the time). Except for that, we did not use a laptop. We used the iPad extensively in Italy, paying our bills, making calls on a SIP client, browsing the web, writing blog posts, and even uploading edited photos to a photoblog at http://aureolastatua.tumblr.com. We didn't once feel like we were missing out on anything or that we needed to go to an Internet cafe. The portability was astounding. We needed a laptop in 2006 when we went to Europe to do much the same.

The second anecdote is current. When I get home, I rarely get on the single "real" computer unless I'm programming. When my wife is doing report cards, I can't get on until shortly before bedtime. In years past, I would have quickly been annoyed by this and gotten a laptop by now. I don't need it for my evening browsing—because of the iPhone and iPad.

The PC isn't going away, but it's not going to be the main screen soon. That screen won't be the iPad 1, either. It'll be g4 or g5, but it will happen. I don't need a "real" computer for a lot of what I do, anymore.

Re: The Next Six Months

#97

Post by widgetycrank »

tesseract wrote: post #53
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…

I'm not sure if anyone remembers the Microsoft Courier tablet demo, which came out before iPad's announcement:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmIgNfp-MdI

This video left me with a strong impression of future general computing usage patterns. It has also been my personal gold standard of a superb video demo.

Interestingly enough, they abandoned it right after iPad's release:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Courier#End_of_Courie...

Re: The Next Six Months

#98

Post by kenjackson »

spaghetti wrote: post #66

I'd really like to see a laptop with two touch screens: one replacing the regular screen and another replacing the keyboard and trackpad. This tablet/laptop hybrid would have some awesome benefits. For example one could comfortably use the device while seated at a table (display and input area can be at about 90 deg relative to each other... something that's not possible w/ the iPad). Another awesome benefit would be…

The Kyocera Echo... while a phone, has what you describe:

http://www.tabletpcreview.com/default.asp?newsID=1970&ne...

Re: The Next Six Months

#99

Post by spaghetti »

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?

The prospect of a new iPad has motivated me to hurry up with the iPad development. Recently I got an iPad and the dev experience so far has been great. Some other considerations: Apple has been pretty good IMO in supporting old iPhone apps on the new retina displays... so it seems reasonable to assume Apple will be mindful of old iPad apps running on the new device. Also the iPad is a larger investment/purchase for most people... so I don't see all iPad owners instantly updating when the new model becomes available.

Re: The Next Six Months

#100

Post by Bud »

gojomo wrote: post #18

Two iPads in one year is possible, and Gruber has better Apple-watching-skills than most. But I also think Apple is long overdue for a true "AppleTV", an all-in-one product with big screen , deeply integrated with everything else iOS/iTunes. That would also fit well with a late-in-year but in-time-for-Christmas release.

When was the last time Apple entered a new product space without having something fundamentally different to offer?

The Xserve is the only recent example I can think of, and they discontinued that product recently. I'd be surprised if Apple makes a TV.

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