Apple iPad To Disrupt eReader, Netbook Markets

January 27, 2010

Apple's iPad is a nice PC tablet that outperforms current high-end eReaders at a lower price

Despite all the buzz prior to its unveiling earlier today during Steve Jobs’ keynote (you can watch it here), the iPad is anything but magical or revolutionary as Apple CEO wants us to believe.

Consider the iPad as a big iPod touch or an iPod touch XL or DX (in honour to the large sized Kindle).

Super thin, unbelievably light, reasonably priced

First, the good news. The iPad is really thin (half an inch), super light (1.5 lb) and has a 10-hours battery life and 1-month standby; a great achievement for a device that thin.

At CES, a couple weeks ago, Nvidia showed  a Tegra-powered tablet with 16-hours HD video playback time or  140 hours of audio playback, surpassing the iPad. Note that these numbers were for  tablet prototypes and might be better or worse on the final product.

Starting at $499, the iPad looks cheap compared to the similarly sized Amazon Kindle DX, which sells for $10 more: the iPad has a full colour screen, can browse the Web, read ebooks (with the iBooks app and the ePub format) and run applications (games, maps, social networking…).

All these things that the Kindle just can’t do. But to be fair, we’d have to compare the Amazon device with the 3G data-only connection (and Wi-Fi) iPad version, which then costs a whopping $630, without the optional data plan – but included with the Kindle.

The optional Bluetooth keyboard dock transforms the iPad into an "interesting" netbook

No Flash, camera, USB port and extended storage

Now the bad news.

As its smaller siblings, the iPad still doesn’t support Flash, which makes it a poor device to browse the Web, even compared to other ARM-based tablets – running Linux or Google Chrome OS for example – which offer support for Adobe’s Web video technology.

More surprising is the lack of an integrated camera. Not sure why this design choice, especially as the iPhone has one; making me think that the iPad is really just a souped-up iPod touch.

The lack of a USB port and an extended storage (e.g. an SD card slot) are two additional unpleasant surprises. However, Apple does sell a dongle to copy photos from a camera through a USB connector or an SD card slot.

The iPad is a killer eReader

All in all, the iPad is anything but magical or revolutionary. But I can see it be a cheap Mac (although it can’t run MacOS apps), an Apple version of a netbook, with its optional keyboard.

“Netbooks aren’t better at anything! They’re slow, they have low quality displays and run clunky old PC software. They’re not better than a laptop in anything. They’re just cheaper. They’re just cheap laptops,” Jobs joked.

Moreover, the iPad relatively lower price could very well disrupt the whole eReader market, that is currently inundated with over-priced devices like the Kindle or the $400 Sony Daily Edition. And I’m not sure the sleek Skiff e-reader stands a chance now.

8 Comments | hardware, news, software, wireless | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360

My 6 Most Useful High-Tech Hardware In 2009

December 31, 2009

Unlike most, trying to be smart – or dumb – about predicting next year’s trends, I wanted to reflect back on the most useful high-tech hardware in my life this year.

  1. First and foremost is my laptop. In this case, it’s an old Apple Macbook (2 GHz Intel Core Duo, 2 GB Ram) that I upgraded with a 500 GB hard disk drive from Western Digital. It still works fine for editing videos, photos and stories. There was a crack on the Mac’s case (next to the screen) and the Mac repair shop changed it (it was a known defect) and installed a brand new keyboard… all for free (I think it’s still under warranty)!
  2. A Logitech Performance MX mouse that works virtually everywhere, even on glass, thanks to its Darkfield technology. The only downside with this mouse was that they is no trap inside it to store the tiny wireless receiver when I need to free up one of the USB port. I’m always afraid to loose it as it’s so minuscule. Also I must always remember to bring the USB cable that ships with the mouse as it’s needed to recharge it;
  3. Livescribe‘s Pulse Smartpen was a lifesaver for me. It records everything I write and synch it with the audio recording. I never miss a word, during an interview or even a long-form presentation. Even more critical for me, I’m able to go back to a particular speech/interview by just tapping on my notes associated to it. It makes my reporting so much more accurate and faster. I couldn’t do without it anymore.
  4. iPod nano, 5th generation with the audio and video recording. I use it to record short interviews, instead of using the bigger video camcorder; as well as audio conversations/presentations when I don’t have my Smartpen handy. I wish the nano had an external microphone jack like the Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video camera which might replace in 2010, both the iPod nano and my hard disk based camcorder. I would have to check the battery life though;
  5. Google G1 smartphone. If you heard me complaining about my phone, you might be surprised to see it mentioned here. But despite its dismal keyboard, which I somehow got used to!, the G1 got even more useful when Google released its Navigation app. With Google Map Navigation I don’t need a seperate GPS system anymore. The G1 is now my one stop shop for voice, watch/alarm, email, Web browsing, calendar, twitter, occasional photo/video recording and lately, navigation. I’m not using much of the Facebook app yet but that might change next year;
  6. Last but not least, the Roku Netflix player was the most important device in my home entertainment centre, just after the plasma TV but way more than the DVD/VHS player or the intermittently connected Mac mini. Hopefully, Roku will open its media player up (as well as the USB port) so it can play content off a USB key/drive and from more Internet video sources like Hulu. One can dream!

Voila, that’s it for me. Have a wonderful holiday and see you next year!

Leave a Comment » | hardware, news | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360

Price Watch: Apple To Slash Prices On iPods, Macs Next Week?

November 18, 2009

BGR obtained that Apple flier which indicates a price drop of up to 30% on all iPods, and up to 25% on all Macs!

If this report from BGR is correct, Apple will be heavily discounting its iPods and Macs next week. And if this is the case – and checks at retailers seem to confirm that – you’d better wait one more week if you plan to purchase an Apple product.

From the flier:

  1. Up to 30% off on all iPods, including iPod Touch which could fetch at around $150; consistent with the Walmart promotion;
  2. Up to 30% off on all Macs;
  3. Up to 15% off on all accessories, Apple software and hardware (including the new wireless Magic mouse).

10 Comments | hardware, news, Price Watch, software | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360

Walmart Amazing Black Friday Tech Deals: TVs, iPod Touch, Blu-Ray,GPS

November 17, 2009

For Black friday next week, Walmart will slash $100 off Sanyo's 50" Plasma TV price, that now retails for $698

A CNNMoney.com report revealed some of Walmart’s amazing “doorbusters” planned for next week’s Black Friday.

TVs/Blu-ray

  1. Sanyo 50-inch plasma 720p HDTV for $598;
  2. Emerson 32-inch LCD 720p HDTV for $248;
  3. Emerson 42-inchPlasma 720p HDTV ($448)
  4. Magnavox Blu-ray player for $78;

Computers

  1. eMachine laptop with a 15.6-inch LCD display, 2GB memory and 160GB hard drive for $198;
  2. Hewlett-Packard laptop with a 15.6-inch display, 3GB memory and 250GB hard drive for $298;

Electronics

  1. iPod Touch 8GB for $195 with a $50 iTunes gift card;
  2. Tom Tom GPS for $59;

Best Buy, Target and perhaps Fry’s are going to have a hard time to beat Walmart prices. I don’t have much hope for the other “smaller” retailers like Office Depot, OfficeMax and the likes.

Moreover, Wal-Mart will match the price of any local competitor’s printed ad for an identical product.

7 Comments | computers, hardware, news, Price Watch | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360

IPod Market Dwindles As IPod Touch And Apple IPhone Take Over

July 21, 2009

Apple steered a steady course through the difficult economy with quarterly revenue up 12 percent and profits ahead of Wall Street expectations.

But its iPod business hit a wall that analysts had anticipated for some time. Sales were down 11 percent in the company’s third quarter and units (10.2 million were sold) were off 7 percent.

Apples traditional iPod sales were down in the recent third quarter

Apple's traditional iPod sales were down in the recent third quarter

The company offered the explanation that traditional iPods (its Shuffle, Nano and Classic) were losing out to the iPod Touch and iPhone. The sales volume of the traditional models declined while the Touch rose 130 percent, said CFO Peter Oppenheimer on a Tuesday afternoon conference call.

The company expects a further decline over time as it “cannibalizes itself,” with the iPod Touch and iPhone, says Oppenheimer.

Caution aside, the iPod business will last for many more years, he added.

A slowdown in iPod sales has been predicted for several years as the market has become increasingly saturated with the tiny MP3 players. It seems to have finally arrived.

Apple investors were not overly concerned. The company’s shares rose 4 percent, or $6.60, in after-hours trading.

Leave a Comment » | news | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet

H-P Unveils First Web-Connected Printer, No Computer Needed

June 22, 2009
HP Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web: an all-in-one printer glued to an iPod touch, with a capacitive touchscreen and Apps Store!

HP Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web: an all-in-one printer glued to an iPod touch, with a capacitive touchscreen and an App Store!

It’s been a very very long time since I was exciting about using a printer. A bit like using an uninterruptible power supply or a backup system!

But with it’s latest all-in one printer/scanner/fax, H-P makes printing cool again.

The Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web (with the money H-P spends in marketing, it could have easily found a more shorter and sexier name!) uses the same printing engine than the currently shipping Photosmart Premium C8180 – a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth multi-function printer which it will be replacing – but with an iPod touch-like capacitive touchscreen instead of the current smaller screen and series of buttons, and combined with H-P’s Apps Studio; yet another applications store.

H-P takes a page from the iPhone playbook and starts an Apps Store for printers

And just as with the iPhone, Palm Pre, etc., it will soon be possible to download apps for your printer!

At the launch event earlier today hosted at Al Gore’s Current TV studios in San Francisco, H-P showed apps from USA Today, Google, Fandango, Coupons.com, DreamWorks Animation, Nickelodeon, Web Sudoku, Weathernews as well as the company’s online site Snapfish.

With these apps, you’ll be able to customize, choose, print… daily news, maps, coupons, coloring pages, movie tickets, recipes, personal calendars and more – all at the touch of a finger.

Under the hood, the Web printer is running Linux with Nokia’s Qt application and graphical-user interface framework.

The Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web will be available in the U.S. in September for $399 (the current Photosmart Premium, model C8180, is being discounted at less than $250 on Amazon.com) and next year for the rest of the world.

Here’s an excerpt of our exclusive interview with product marketing manager Ravikiran Adusumilli, going into more details on the printer capabilities (Wi-Fi setup, touchscreen, micro-transactions, auto-duplex printing…) that took 1.5 years to get to market:

Read the rest of this entry »

18 Comments | hardware, news, software, web 2.0, wireless | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360

Stantum Brings Unlimited Multi-Touch To The Masses

April 24, 2009
Stantums technology takes multi-touch to a whole new level

Stantum's technology takes multi-touch to a whole new level

The multi-touch industry is pretty much divided into 2 camps: the capacitive and resistive touchscreens.

The capacitive touchscreen is the most widely used technology, but also the more expensive. It’s in the iPhone and all the current multi-touch solutions in the market such as the H-P TouchSmart or the latest Dell Lattitude XT2 tablet.

However, the former technology was supposed to be impossible to do. So far, resistive touchscreens were mainly used in conjunction with a stylus or for “single-touch” manipulations.

Stantum targets mobile devices with unlimited multi-touch technology

That is, until a small group of French entrepreneurs from Bordeaux, decided in 2002 to develop their own multi-touch technology on resistive touchscreens for its Lemur music surface, launched in 2005.

“With our technology you can use as many fingers as you want, with gloves, with a stylus or a combination of all. Unlike the capacitive screens which can only be used with fingers,” explained Stantum co-founder Guillaume Largillier who was demoing the technology at the Interactive Demo Conference this week in San Jose, Calif.

The French startup raised $13 million last month to expand internationally, and plans to open shortly an office in Silicon Valley. Stantum is currently focused on delivering its technology – in partnership with chip makers – for handheld devices and up to 14-inch touchscreens. Larger screen will come probably next year.

Check out the video of the demo I’ve shot at the show. The accuracy – both in gestures and pressure – and responsiveness of the touchscreen prototypes were very impressive.

20 Comments | chips, hardware, news, startups | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360

Why The Multi-Touch Industry Pooh-Poohs Apple Patent Claim

April 23, 2009
Apple may face more lawsuits over its use of multi-touch technologies in the iPhone like the one from Stantum's Lemur music control surface

Apple may face more lawsuits over its use of multi-touch technologies in the iPhone which resembles Stantum's Lemur music control surface patent

Stantum caused a little bit of a stir today at the Interactive Display Conference 2009 in San Jose, Calif.

The French startup claims to be the pioneer of multi-touch technology – the same used by Apple on the iPhone and iPod touch – with its Lemur music control surface, the first commercial product using multi-touch and released in 2004.

“It’s a fantasy to say that Apple can own the technology of this whole industry with their multi-touch patent. And as always, the more noise Apple make about suing everybody over multi-touch, the less the value of there intellectual property (IP),” said Stantum co-founder Guillaume Largillier.

Apple is bluffing with its multi-touch patent, and is now a target for patent infringement lawsuits

Stantum has developed multi-touch technologies for the last 7-years and file patents a few months before Apple’s.

To prove his point, Largillier recalls Elan Microelectronics patent lawsuit earlier this month against Apple claiming the iPhone and the iPod Touch is infringing its patents; and seeking triple damages and a “reasonable royalty.”

“The capacitive displays – used in Apple’s iPhone touchscreen – are a mined area in terms of IP. It’s just the beginning,” warns Largillier.

Speaking later in the day, Synaptics‘ product marketing manager Andrew Hsu was also skeptical on the importance of Apple’s multi-touch 250+ pages patent filing and its 15 claims, saying that it only really about an algorithm for scrolling and panning.

“The technology is not new. Most of the core ideas were there since the late 70s,” said Hsu.

1 Comment | computers, hardware, news, startups, wireless | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360

With Jobs On The Sidelines, Apple Has Something To Prove

April 7, 2009

The Apple rumor mill has been strangely silence.

Of course there is some chatter. Pundits expect two new iPhones by midyear, one, a cheaper model with less storage and the other perhaps an upscale version with a video camera. Snow Leopard, the next version of the Macintosh operating system OS X, will almost certainly be the focus of the June developers’ conference in San Francisco.

Jobs probably still has his fingerprints on new products, but where are they?

Jobs probably still has his fingerprints on new products, but where are they?

And new iPods should hit the ground in August, when the line is normally refreshed, with the iPod Touch perhaps getting a camera.

But what about the bigger questions? How will Apple capitalize on the rapidly expanding netbook market? How will the company respond to Amazon’s Kindle? And what is its next step into the digital living room?

With CEO Steve Jobs at home recuperating, Apple needs to show it is firing on all cylinders, as the Wall Street analysts love to say. Apple insists Jobs is playing a role. But the company needs to show it can find the next category killer, or creator, at a time when its leader is not 100 percent.

Tom Bajarin, the president of Creative Strategies, says Job’s fingerprints are likely on any product in the pipeline – now and for at least the next two to three years.

“Remember, they started work on the iPhone in 2004 and it did not come to market until 2007,” says Bajarin. “So his influence is still far reaching and could extend for many years, even if he is not involved full time.”

Any yet the rumor mill has dug up no solid report of a netbook, or mobile device that would change the current thinking about mobile computing.

Bajarin reasons that Apple may not enter the netbook market with a low-cost product that cannibalizes their laptop sales. “That is why I think that if they do respond to the netbook threat, it could be in some type of form factor that is very different than what we have now,” he says.

We are waiting. And we are anxious to see what product perfectionist Jobs and his crew unveil.

1 Comment | computers, news, wireless | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet

Apple Plans Netbook With Touch Screen, Dow Jones Reports

March 10, 2009
This is a mock-up of Apple's netbook or MacBook Touch designed by

A mock-up of Apple's netbook or MacBook Touch (From Frunny)

Rumours of an Apple netbook resurfaced today.

This time, the Dow Jones Newswires reports that the Cupertino, Calif.-company plans to launch a netbook computer with a touch screen monitor – more likely a 10-inch in size – as early as the second half of this year.

Chances are that the Apple netbook will be assembled by Quanta Computer, a Taiwanese notebook maker which already builds the MacBook Air.

Apple is also reported to be working on a large iPod Touch with a 7 to 9-inch screen, more than doubling the size of the current 3.5-inch one, and that will compete with the smaller size netbooks.

7 Comments | computers, hardware, news | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360

« Previous Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 31 other followers