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The Next Six Months

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191–200 of 228 posts

Re: The Next Six Months

#191

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…

Most of the tablets assume a hardware keyboard is going to be used for long form text entry. I think even the iPad is less fascist about this than it has been in the past.

Re: The Next Six Months

#192
post #141
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While Intel and MS will make money hand over first for years to come, it does appear to be the end of the consumer market for these two companies. Their focus will be business class computers, workstations, and servers. the server market, for all of my career, really, has been following the consumer market. The stuff you see in a server is basically upmarket desktop kit; the primary difference being the addition of…

There will be no desktop market. That's the disruption.

You really see offices full of workers staring at tablet PCs, trains & planes full of road warriors bashing out long reports on touchscreens?

The home market may primarily shift to tablets; I'm not convinced by that and I think there's still a problem with the use case for content creators on tablets which includes an awful lot of school children. But the market I absolutely can't see abandoning PCs as we see them now and moving to handheld touchscreens is the office market and that's far from insignificant.

Re: The Next Six Months

#193
post #52
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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect#The_Osborne_Myth

Re: The Next Six Months

#195
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you prefer reading the articles in paper or in the ipad? (I'm considering switching from paper to ipad) Thanks!

I'm watching this space very, very closely (i.e. tablets specifically for reading PDFs of articles). There are a lot of options but none are quite perfect: * iPad Pros: - Color screen - Can zoom to exact size desired - Multi-touch - Papers.app (easy sync/organization for PDFs) Cons: - Not e-ink - Battery life - Not as light/thin as Kindle * Kindle 3 Pros: - E-ink - Amazing battery life Cons: - Zoom is limited to a co…

A major selling point for me is not only organising papers but the ability to annotate papers with full text search for your notes - something available with the mendeley app on the iPad. If no other reader includes this ability soon I know a lot of academics planning on getting an iPad v1 once v2 is launched.

Re: The Next Six Months

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, when stationary for a moment, looking up information. You see average folks looking dead tree/ink information device in public all the time. They're called tourists. They're called museum-goers. They're called audience. Those things they're holding are called guidebooks and programs. I think this would make for an awesome museum AR experience.

neat idea, long way away.

There are already such apps on the App Store.

Re: The Next Six Months

#197
post #177

"The next six months are going to set the foundation for the future of personal computing." Gruber needs to make the leap and become a political talking-head on cable news already. Unleashing lines like that without a hint of sarcasm or irony? You can't teach that, folks, that's god given.

I’m confident in predicting that tablets will be more than one third of unit sales to consumers of all PCs in Europe and North America within five years. 346 million PCs were sold worldwide in 2010, Apple sold 15 million iPads so far. That’s still a long way off but it is not impossible, especially with other manufacturers bringing their devices to the market. This is a reasonable prediction. It might well be wrong b…

All of that? perfectly reasonable; the original claim? still slightly absurd.

If you want to look at it by comparison to the iphone led smartphone revolution, the timeframe there was:

first iphone release: 1/2007

first android phone: 10/2008

first touchscreen BB: 11/2008

first webos phone: 6/2009

(all dates courtesy of the wikipedia articles for the specific phones or OSes)

and then you didn't really get a phone which competed well with the iphone until, arguably, the nexus one which was in 2010 (or even the Pre which was middle of '09) making it a full 2.5 - 3 years later.

The point is that this stuff progresses in fits and spurts over a long period of time and that the next six months are going to be no more significant than the six which follow it, contrary to what HP's and Motorola's marketing people tell you today (or Apple's will in a few weeks time).

Re: The Next Six Months

#198
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m confident in predicting that tablets will be more than one third of unit sales to consumers of all PCs in Europe and North America within five years. 346 million PCs were sold worldwide in 2010, Apple sold 15 million iPads so far. That’s still a long way off but it is not impossible, especially with other manufacturers bringing their devices to the market. This is a reasonable prediction. It might well be wrong b…

All of that? perfectly reasonable; the original claim? still slightly absurd. If you want to look at it by comparison to the iphone led smartphone revolution, the timeframe there was: first iphone release: 1/2007 first android phone: 10/2008 first touchscreen BB: 11/2008 first webos phone: 6/2009 (all dates courtesy of the wikipedia articles for the specific phones or OSes) and then you didn't really get a phone whic…

“The next six months are going to set the foundation for the future of personal computing.”

That’s the claim. Still seems reasonable to me. What’s wrong with it? I don’t understand what you are getting at.

If you think that tablets will be important in the future there is nothing wrong with thinking that a lot of groundwork will be done in the next few months: Honeycomb is coming, HP and RIM get started. That sounds to me like a solid foundation.

Re: The Next Six Months

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Kindle 3 turns PDF pages about as fast as I could turn a page in a book or a stapled article printout. Not lightning fast, but good enough for me.

I have a k1, k2, k3 and iPad. In fact, I brought the k2 and k3 and iPad on a vacation with me to Kauai. Don't try and read complex PDFs on a kindle. I have several dozen downloaded onto my iPad (dropbox+goodreader make this trivial) - the kindle is not the right tool for flipping through PDFs. I have logged about 40 hours reading on the kindles in five days - (mostly on the beach, a little at coffeeshops) - but linea…

Couldn't agree more. I love my Kindle for reading long-form (novels, non-fiction). But I read a lot of medical journals and while you can read them on the Kindle, it is sub-optimal at best. Plus I'm a pathologist and most of my journals have pretty pictures where color is nice to have. I'm currently using a rooted Nookcolor (which is okay), but I'm a recent Mac convert, so I'm looking to pick up an ipad on the refresh.

Re: The Next Six Months

#200
post #83
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I have the choice, I'd definitely prefer Android tablets over iPads. By choice I mean similar price and performance. I don't really care for apps, I only need a good browser, video and skype functionality. I have considered the Galaxy Tab, but as reviews said the browser sucks I passed (plus, it was very expensive). Looking forward to Honeycomb lot...

Yeah, I might like to own something similar with a good browser like you mentioned but I can't see consumers buying a lot of Android or Web OS tablets.

Why not? They are buying a lot of Android phones, too.
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