The Next Six Months

http://daringfireball.net/2011/02/the_next_six_months

by thushan • 15 years ago

239 217 15 years ago

alanfalcon• 15 years ago

If Apple does have two separate iPad releases in 2011, I definitely think the first announcement will replace the current iPad and the next announcement will be a product that augments the iPad line, an HD or Pro model, as Gruber predicts. But I sincerely doubt there will be two different iPad announcements this calendar year.

Ever since Gruber's initial review of the iPad, I've been intrigued by the possibility of a Pro model with more RAM and possibly some extra horsepower. Again, it doesn't seem like Apple's plan though.

loire280• 15 years ago

While better specs certainly never hurt, I've never heard any iPad users complain processing power or RAM. iOS does memory management seamlessly (if I didn't understand how it worked, I probably wouldn't even notice it) and the interface is notably responsive.

I'm sure the new version will have a spec bump. Whatever that ends up meaning (dual core, faster, more RAM), it will continue to be plenty.

jonhohle• 15 years ago

The current iteration could stand some more RAM (and/or Safari could be smarter about how it purges its page cache). With the latest version of iOS, I can only keep a single page in memory at a time and reloading pages when hopping between two is less than desirable.

cpr• 15 years ago

As all the rumor sites (e.g., WSJ ;-) are predicting, it'll definitely have at least 512MB of RAM (can't imagine it having less than the iPhone 4).

But that's still pretty anemic, as jonhohle noted: that's not enough to keep a lot of pages in Safari's cache. (Though, from my experiments, Safari/WebKit is REALLY aggressive about minimizing memory usage, perhaps even stupidly.)

wiredfool3• 15 years ago

I'll complain.

The ipad is a second class browsing experience not because of the lack of flash, but the lack of cache. It's just not anywhere near as snappy reading as a Real Computer(tm) because it's constantly reloading stuff that's been purged.

My usual style of reading (on the desktop) is to pop open a pile of stuff in tabs, then batch read through. Can't do that on the iPad.

Safari could also use a few more cycles to make it seem that much snappier. While it feels like magic, and I would have killed for its browsing performance a few years back, it just doesn't feel quite there yet.

Also, just in the last month or so, I've noticed some sort of background task that causes stuttering in some places. (mainly in angry birds). For the first time, I've noticed that I needed to restart it. Its' a small thing, but it's also the first time I've had to resort to computer troubleshooting on it.

zyb09• 15 years ago

Maybe no users complain, but as a developer I often think, god damn, why is there so few RAM in there. And no iOS doesn't do memory managment seamlessy, the responsiveness comes from developers working hard to constantly cache/unchache everything that might take up a few megs.

pclark• 15 years ago

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 show their hand asap. Thoughts?

ReadyNSet2• 15 years ago

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.

jbrennan2• 15 years ago

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.

tomkarlo6• 15 years ago

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.

bryanlarsen• 15 years ago

Announcing early slows sales of previous models. Apple announced the iPhone 1 and the iPad 1 early, but not any subsequent models just for this reason, because the only previous models were competitors. In HP's case, their previous models aren't selling anyways, so they hope to slow the competition. It's called the Osbourne effect.

scottyallen• 15 years ago

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

ReadyNSet2• 15 years ago

compatibility has been pretty good, so unless you were to target an app with specific new features it wouldn't affect much.

megablast3• 15 years ago

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.

Bud2• 15 years ago

I need a poor-quality, low-sensitivity camera attached to the back of a foot-long iPad about as much as I need cameras built into my jeans, belt buckle, toothbrush, and turkey baster.

Just because you can build a camera (or two cameras) into everything doesn't mean you should. Cameras are a certain size and shape for a reason.

I see no reason to build a rear-facing cam into the iPad. Ever tried to hold a slippery, 7.5" x 9.5", 1.6 pound slab at arm's length before, and hold it steady? Not compelling.

spaghetti3• 15 years ago

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.

pkulak• 15 years ago

"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.

barredo• 15 years ago

* If they announced the new iPad now [and not release it for a few months] iPad 1 sales would tank.

* If they announced the new iPad now [and release it in a "handful of weeks"] iPad 1 sales would tank. [and iPad2 sales will skyrocket]

rookie• 15 years ago

unless they drop the price of the iPad 1, similar to what they do with the iPhone.

endlessvoid943• 15 years ago

It also gave developers a ton of time to adapt their apps to the new form factor. And obviously provided time for new apps. That's huge.

jbrennan2• 15 years ago

An existing product of their own would constitute competition. So it's not inaccurate what he's said. But I agree, it could have been explained more clearly.

jleyank2• 15 years ago

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.

eftpotrm3• 15 years ago

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

barista• 15 years ago

"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 biggest thing that they will have going for them is the knowhow of the platform and a plethora of apps that are already existing there that will be easy to port.

Just like mobile this will end up being a 3 horse race in a few years. Apple, Google and Microsoft. The rest of them are just wasting their time and money in competing. None of them have existing ecosystems or platforms that they can leverage to fight with the three big players.

jleyank2• 15 years ago

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

alanh2• 15 years ago

“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.

tomkarlo6• 15 years ago

One of the biggest problem with Microsoft's tablet strategy to date has been the assumption that porting apps from a mouse-based window environment to a tablet works.

Rather than reworking the UI to be suitable to touch interaction, they wanted to force you to use a stylus and pretend you're using a mouse.

lshepstone• 15 years ago

It's going to be pretty interesting watching this play out. But Apple and Android have an unfair advantage right now...apps, and lots of them. If you've got an iOS or Android phone and already own some apps the other guys are going to have to ship something amazing or dirt cheap to get your attention.

As great as the new HP stuff looks, I wouldn't like to be HP, RIM (or Nokia and their potential Meego tablet) right now...tough road ahead building app ecosystem momentum. Who cares if the tablet is slightly better when I can't get my favourite apps.

I find it greatly amusing the roles are reversed from back when Apple struggled on the desktop due to lack of apps while microsoft dominated. My how times change in 10 years. At least this time we might have more than one platform that dominated 90% which is good for everyone.

megablast3• 15 years ago

The first step is to build a great device, and it looks like HP might be there. It seems to be the best iPad contender yet, stealing that crown from Motorola's zoom from just a few days ago.

tomkarlo6• 15 years ago

No credit until it ships. Everything looks great in a demo.

roc3• 15 years ago

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 justification after they'd latched onto a conclusion.

alanh2• 15 years ago

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.

roc3• 15 years ago

I can't imagine everyday people caring enough about specs to actually make decisions based on said rumors.

The default expectation is that iPads will hit in late March. So we're talking about rumors relating to devices that may exist three to four months after the decision of "what are we getting Sally for Christmas" gets made.

And Gruber thinks average people will hear those rumors and then be willing to disappoint a loved one on Christmas over a spec bump they have no context for?

And, again, I wonder aloud if we have any indication that this happened this year. Because we all heard rumors and those things flew off the shelves anyway. So if it didn't happen this year, why would anyone expect it to happen next year?

gojomo2• 15 years ago

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.

tomkarlo6• 15 years ago

It's the wrong time in the upgrade cycle for home TVs to do that - everyone just bought a new flatscreen LCD HDTV during the past two years and sales are flat in that sector. Introducing an AppleTV with screen would be an uphill battle to convince people to replace a device they're still pretty happy with (and still paying off.)

mgkimsal• 15 years ago

"everyone" didn't. I know a number of holdouts (myself included) who are still waiting. When the next big thing comes along, another portion of us will take the plunge.

Raphael2• 15 years ago

No need to waste working televisions and monitors.

brownleej2• 15 years ago

The same argument could be made about the iMac. It's possible that Apple would say roughly the same thing they would about the iMac: That their goal is to create one device that does everything, without having discrete components that people have to manage, or cables that they have to deal with. It's Apple's style.

Bud2• 15 years ago

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.

gojomo2• 15 years ago

There were digital music players before the iPod – and despite some initial evaluations that the iPod added nothing different, it turns out it did, when considering the whole product and ecosystem.

There were smartphones before the iPhone that seemed similar (or even better) in specs/features.

There were tablets before the iPad.

Apple in entertainment takes old categories and adds a new product/platform that excels along some evaluative dimension(s) that people weren't even previously conscious of – not by simply outdoing the incumbents in the same-old dimensions.

I think there are plenty of ways an iOS/iTV could break the old moulds. Adding basic integration with the iOS ecosystem – docking ports, media sync/backup, iTunes purchases, handhelds as remotes/controllers for big-screen content and games, Facetime – would be plenty to excite the gotta-have-it Apple households for a successful v1 release.

Throw in new voice/gestural controls (as with Kinect) and app APIs that work with live and recorded TV programs – including iAds targeted to individual households. ("This episode is available for $1.99, or with 3 customized-for-you commercials.")

That'd be a new platform for digital TV, bound to Apple/iOS – "fundamentally different" enough for me!

kenjackson2• 15 years ago

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 seem to help their situation at all.

5) Both CEOs seem firmly in place still.

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.

pchristensen2• 15 years ago

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.

InclinedPlane• 15 years ago

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 takes the lead in marketshare, or when it starts eating into the marketshare of the old guard significantly. Rather, it's the inflection points of growth that are important. When a big company is past its knee (still growing but growing at a smaller and smaller pace over time) while the little guy is growing at a faster and faster pace, that's when to pay attention, because lots of things happen quickly and by the time the marketshare starts shifting it's already too late, the die has been cast.

mkramlich2• 15 years ago

Agreed but they have so much cash they could buy a company that does tablets well then rebrand/integrate. Never underestimate what a billion dollars can do given the willpower to use it.

rryyan• 15 years ago

In fact, this is exactly what HP did.

yannickt• 15 years ago

It won't do them any good if they don't have people in house who "get it". Look what happened with the Kin after they acquired Danger.

Edit: another thing, the top dogs in this space (Google and the staggeringly efficient Apple) have a lot of cash and are much more focused. So if they were to go all in in any market segment their money is likely to go a lot further than it would at Microsoft.

steveklabnik• 15 years ago

Like Google, with Android...

Todd• 15 years ago

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 tools and a solid OS underneath. Whether they'll do it is another question.

tomkarlo6• 15 years ago

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...)?

tesseract3• 15 years ago

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.

cookiecaper• 15 years ago

I agree, tablets have been the ultimate fixation in computing devices for a long time. We need only look at scifi -- how many shows have people carrying around pencil-thin panels and pulling up a ship's specifications while they walk and talk with the warp engineer, pounding on a glass table to engage weapons system, or other things like that? Apple hit the right combination of price and style at the right time, and imo took the scifi conception much more literally than their competitors, to bring tablets mainstream.

widgetycrank• 15 years ago

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...

podperson2• 15 years ago

I think the problem wasn't Microsoft entering the market too early so much as never really rethinking their approach to a platform. Their idea for PDAs/phones was a tiny version of desktop windows (compare that to Apple's Newton, with all its flaws). Their idea for tablets was a pen based version of desktop windows.

Microsoft has NEVER really originated a UI paradigm or OS, they just copied/bought/stole stuff from other people, and generally did it badly. (No question they sometimes contribute refinements.)

We're just lucky they didn't try to put a tiny version of DOS on PDAs and a pen driven version of DOS on tablets.

fleitz• 15 years ago

Microsoft actually jumped the shark on tablets with the whole XP Tablet edition years ago. The hardware just wasn't ready and interacting with Windows XP and it's app via a stylus is just not compelling. XP Tablet is Microsoft's Newton, an idea ahead of it's time.

I think there is an anti-tablet culture at MS stemming from the failure of the early laptop-based tablets.

Once MS has a solid hold with Win Phone 7 you'll see that interface transition to tablets.

thristian• 15 years ago

XP? Really?

What about Windows for Pen Computing? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_for_Pen_Computing

zacharyz• 15 years ago

I remember playing with one of intel's tablet prototype units way back in 2007. It was bulky and was running XP and used a stylus for input. Obviously it was more for testing feasibility of the platform more than anything but it was incredibly unusable and uninteresting at the time. They were aiming for a fall release which obviously never materialized.

So they have been thinking about the tablet space for a while, they just haven't been approaching it the same way as Apple has and I think realized that it would have been a shitty product if they had released it.

mjfern3• 15 years ago

> 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.

If it were just the end of the consumer market, then Intel and MS should be concerned, but at least they could take comfort in the fact that they still dominate the enterprise space. The issue is that their dominance in the enterprise space is eroding as well. For Intel, a central issue is the ascension of ARM. Smooth-Stone (a well funded startup), Dell, and NVIDIA (see Project Denver), as well as others, are now prototyping ARM-based servers for datacenters. A related issue is that Intel's latest processors now overshoot the performance needs of a majority of customers. Meanwhile, Microsoft's enterprise business is eroding due to several trends, such as cloud services (e.g., Gmail) and cloud computing (e.g., PaaS and IaaS). And both companies have to overcome some reputational issues stemming from their historical power in the PC space through the Wintel standard.

Intel and Microsoft have tremendous resources to respond to these threats, but the clock is ticking.

jimbokun3• 15 years ago

"For Intel, a central issue is the ascension of ARM. Smooth-Stone (a well funded startup), Dell, and NVIDIA (see Project Denver), as well as others, are now prototyping ARM-based servers for datacenters. A related issue is that Intel's latest processors now overshoot the performance needs of a majority of customers."

Innovator's Dilemma.

lsc2• 15 years ago

>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 ecc in various places.

If ARM beats X86 on the desktop, within a short number of years, they will beat x86 on the server, too.

Now, arm is a /long way/ from winning the desktop market, and I'm not at all sure they will. I'm just saying... /if/ x86 loses the consumer market, they will also lose the cost-sensitive server market.

x86 only owns the server market because the r&d and economies of scale paid for by the consumer market.

dstein3• 15 years ago

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

mjfern3• 15 years ago

> Microsoft AND Intel being effectively missing from the tablet race is staggering.

The real staggering fact is that it's just not the tablet market. Both Microsoft and Intel are also absent or significantly behind in smart phones, eBook readers, portable media players, connected TVs, and almost every market that represents computing (devices) beyond the PC for consumers.

unp3rs0n• 15 years ago

you are missing the xbox.

sofuture2• 15 years ago

I'm going to -4 on this, but: it absolutely still remains to be seen whether or not tablets are worth a damn.

Seriously, people play shitty games on them, and I guess read ebooks (though I see vastly more Kindles on the subway, than iPads). I do not, at all see a compelling product yet, I see a trendy gadget that early adopters and trend followers have purchased. Sure there's great lip service to how revolutionary this concept is, but that's just talk.

I'm not saying that the iPad isn't the second coming of Christ. I am saying that it's not proven itself to be that just quite yet. I don't think the PC is (even close) to dead.

far33d• 15 years ago

>I see a trendy gadget that early adopters and trend followers have purchased.

7.3m iPads sold so far hardly seems like just early adopters.

dstein3• 15 years ago

Technology-wise I see absolutely nothing preventing Apple from being able to port and merge OSX and iOS down the road. And if Nvidia's ARM chips work out it looks like tablets might just be able to replace laptops. Imagine a MacBook Air without the keyboard and running both iOS and OSX.

zachallaun• 15 years ago

You're likely right in that tablets aren't about to kill PCs, but suggesting that tablets remain a simple "trendy gadget" seems a bit silly, especially considering Apple's Q1 reports [1].

Perhaps the iPad isn't to your taste, but it was to 7 million others. (And some 16 million overall.) One could argue that Apple does, in fact, have the largest consumer base of early adopters and trend followers of any company, but when you fan base grows larger than many other markets, you kind of have to call it main-stream.

I'm pretty sure that the iPad isn't the second coming of Christ. I'm comfortable saying that. But it's something other than a trend at this point.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/18/apple-q1-2011/

gregpilling2• 15 years ago

I have noticed that a surprising number of personal acquaintances that have no computer skills, have iPads. The iPad lets them surf the net, read books, email and run some games. They don't have to think about how to use it, it has great battery life, it does the basics that they want and it is fun. One good friend of mine (former business partner) who is almost -intentionally- computer illiterate goes everywhere with his iPad. He loves it. His use is email, basic web surfing and taking notes about what he wants his employees to do. He runs a notepad for each one and keeps track of tasks he has assigned and how they accomplished it. There are way better project management tools out there, but the point is that he, a techno-peasant, is making his iPad do it.

I think a large percentage of the iPad buyers were not techsavvy and the non-threatening aspect of the device is the appeal.

larrywright• 15 years ago

This is all anecdotal, but I know a number of people who bought their parents iPads for Christmas. In all those cases, their parents haven't touched their home computer since they got the iPad. The iPad, along with its competitors, are all the computer a good segment of the population needs.

toddmorey2• 15 years ago

But think of what the tablet means: Small, super-light, instant-on hardware with long battery life; paired with a lean OS and small, fast, and focused apps. You can see some of the tablet/phone learnings leaking into other form factors, like the new Macbook Air. Tablets and phones are just the two current form factors for this new era of always-on, always-at-your-side computing. That's the shift that MS and Intel seem to be struggling with.

arohner2• 15 years ago

I use my iPad nearly every day. It's a better experience than my laptop (which I do use literally every day) in several areas:

* reading in bed

* reading long PDFs. This is my primary "work purpose". I read a lot of machine learning books and journal articles in PDF form.

* quick checking of email, when you don't want to sit down for a while

* looking up recipes while cooking

* social media sharing: when friends are over, showing them a new video on youtube, etc

SoftwareMaven• 15 years ago

First, that is all the vast majority of people do on their desktop computers, yet devices like the iPad are far more convenient and prices about equivalently[1].

Second, that is invariably how a disruptive product is defined. 'I have yet to see a use for 2.5" hard drives beyond certain toy value because the storage space is so limited.'

[1] Of course the iPad is less powerful for those dollars, but we are talking the vast majority of people who have never gotten their CPU beyond 10% utilization except when playing a movie with Flash.

scott_s• 15 years ago

Both of my parents recently retired. Now they're traveling a lot, and they wanted a portable device so they could send pictures, do email, and do basic web browsing. They didn't want a full laptop, and they didn't like the netbooks. So they bought an iPad.

Two weeks later, they bought another one so they wouldn't have to share.

My parents are early-adopters on nothing. They didn't get a car with air-conditioning until the late '90s. They didn't get a microwave until the mid '90s. That they jumped on the iPad when it came out, and then it won them over so immensely that they purchased another tells me something.

code_duck2• 15 years ago

Apple, Amazon, etc. are selling these in numbers that rival game consoles. Based on the market's reaction, tablets are neither a fad nor unproven. They're the next major form factor, and I don't see them going away. This format is on the rise as traditional desktop hardware declines.

Desks are not going out of style, so whether the PC is dead isn't necessarily the right question. People will continue to sit at desks and use computers. Microsoft's style of a desktop OS, though, could be on its way out. The hardware will be changing. Gamers, high performance computing (science, 3d, graphic design) and corporate networks will be the only ones who really need the 'tower' style computers. People who just want to read mail, browse the web, listen to music and use office software could basically take a tablet and plug in a monitor, mouse and keyboard for desktop use. Which OS they are going to use, how much flexibility it has and what sort of interface is the big question.

The real contest will be between notebooks, tablets and mini-tablets (previously known as phones). To break it down even more, the issue is whether you have a keyboard, monitor and display ports built in.

I'd love to have a tiny slab the size of a 13" Macbook with no monitor or keyboard (so, even smaller!) that I could use as a desktop. Oh, oops... I just described a Mac Mini. Looks like someone is ahead of me here.

saturdaysaint• 15 years ago

"I guess read ebooks"

Ebooks outsell paperback and hardcover novels (not combined) on the internet's biggest bookseller - we can safely say that many people definitely read ebooks on tablets (assuming we're including Kindle).

When reputable manufacturers bring mainstream tablets (i.e. Android pads that support the Market) to the $300-400 range, I believe that mainstream consumers will give them at least equal consideration with laptops in the same price range.

bergie• 15 years ago

Intel is pretty heavily involved in MeeGo, an open source operating system targeting all sorts of post-PC environments.

tesseract3• 15 years ago

It's looking like Nokia's about to get shaken up, which might possibly entail a jump to Android or Windows Mobile. Where does that leave MeeGo? Can Intel go it alone as the only major commercial sponsor? Whose devices will run it?

naner3• 15 years ago

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 like they are struggling to catch-up. These devices always have some combination of a bigger price tag, buggy interfaces, crappier specs, and/or way less software available.

I'd rather see these other vendors go a completely different direction. Microsoft releasing an iPad clone this late in the game would just be embarrassing. The Kinect was a good response to the Wii. The Playstation Move was not. (I'm making assumptions here since I'm not a gamer. I have no idea whether the Move/Kinect are successful or not.)

pchristensen2• 15 years ago

There's little doubt that in a few years, Android-based tablets will be competitive (and I'm saying this as an iPad lover). Google will make the software work because they want the ad-viewing-and-clicking ecosystem to grow and there will be diminishing growth in hardware expectations so other vendors will catch up. I predict Android tablets with beefier hardware and horsepower and iPads with better screen tech and more polish.

YuriNiyazov3• 15 years ago

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

usaar3332• 15 years ago

Is he that unusual? I don't game much these days but I also own no Apple products. There's plenty of non-Apple desktops, laptops, phones, mp3 players, etc. to go around.

naner3• 15 years ago

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.

sofuture2• 15 years ago

Are you serious? You think the choice is between Apple or gamer?

Hi my name is Tux.... I don't make Steve Jobs rich(er) and I'm the greatest developer operating system ever made.

Tichy2• 15 years ago

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...

naner3• 15 years ago

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.

thushan2• 15 years ago

Though I think Apple is the only one that can pull it off. I'm a bit surprised that they'll be able to keep to a one year product cycle with things like the iPhone/iPad when the rest of the market is hitting a new product every couple weeks. Not that they've been one to match the rest of the market, but a lot happens in a year.

Then again, maybe the biggest lesson out of the touch screen revolution is that its not the hardware - it's the software, and Apple has been certainly setting the pace on that front.

rimantas• 15 years ago

It should work OK for them, as long as the new release leapfrogs whatever came out during that time. I think handsets makers had pretty aggressive schedule while Apple was making iPhone. It took Apple two and a half years to get the first gen iPhone ready—eternity in mobile phone makers timeframe–but look at the result. Apple somehow can predict the future (or are they just making it?) well in Advance and prepare accordingly.

r00fus2• 15 years ago

The iPhone makes complete sense. The standard 2-year phone contract keeps the (non-fanatic) customers happier... their 2 year contract would only mean skipping one product release without paying the $200 premium.

The iPad... might see faster than 1-year cycles because there is no contract, per-se (of course the competitors keep screwing that part up, so maybe not).

tzs• 15 years ago

The phone market is doing a new product every couple of weeks, but how about the individual companies? Most buyers are on contract, and can't change phones more frequently than once a year with a reduced subsidy or once every two years with full subsidy.

If a phone company introduces a new phone, and then a few weeks later introduces a better phone, they've to some extent limited the market for the first one to the people who happened to hit the end of their contracts in that few weeks. Given the two year contract cycle, a phone a year makes a lot of sense (assuming your phones are good enough that it takes the competition several months to match or best them--as has been the case for Apple so far).

thushan2• 15 years ago

That's a damn good point.

endlessvoid943• 15 years ago

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.

megablast3• 15 years ago

That is true, but it could change. It is very easy to write for webos, since it is based on HTML/CSS/Javascript. So a lot of web developers can get into this.

endlessvoid943• 15 years ago

You're right.

But HP doesn't seem to be hyping or publicizing this at all. No shout-outs to developers. No "here's our SDK, here are some screencasts and tutorials". They exist, but they aren't being advertised at all. Apple has conferences where they get developers excited about working on apps.

r00fus2• 15 years ago

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

gsaines• 15 years ago

I actually clicked this expecting the article to be parodying the Friedman Unit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_%28unit%29) only to find utter sincerity!

spaghetti3• 15 years ago

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 replacing the on-screen keyboard with far-out stuff like a painter's palette, Scrabble tiles, dominoes or even two turn-tables like a DJ uses.

Imagine mixing digital paint with your fingers (on the touch screen that replaces the physical keyboard on current laptops) then actually painting on the other touch screen (the touch screen replacing the non-touch screens on current laptops).

imsky2• 15 years ago

We almost had it. http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/05/microsofts-courier-digita...

Why Microsoft killed Courier, I'll never know.

spaghetti3• 15 years ago

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.

kenjackson2• 15 years ago

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

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

yakto2• 15 years ago

Sounds like a giant Gameboy.

onteria• 15 years ago

This is of course a subjective opinion, but something doesn't quite feel right about HP making a tablet PC. They seem to put out quite a lot of things without much of an overall guiding principle. HP PCs, laptops, printers, servers, now tablets. I ask myself "Why HP?" and can't seem to come up with a very reasonable answer. Nothing jumps out at me as seeing this as the best thing ever.

With Apple they have the whole underlying principle of "Think Different" or something along the lines of changing the status quo. Apple didn't really do anything new with the iPhone and iPad in essence. Smartphones and tablet PCs were already out there. However because it went with their overall message, it made sense. People wanted to include it in their "Apple Lifestyle" so to speak.

Just my .00002 cents.

roadnottaken• 15 years ago

"...[tablets] are the future of the entire computing industry..."

That's more than a little hard to swallow...

jarek• 15 years ago

Today's fad is the future of the entire industry. No questions allowed.

Roritharr2• 15 years ago

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 some part of the picture here.

imsky2• 15 years ago

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.

Roritharr2• 15 years ago

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

wiredfool3• 15 years ago

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.

apress2• 15 years ago

This is exactly the point and where the future is going because of Moore's law and all the various others ways ourt gadgetry gets cheaper and faster every year. Remember when laptops were too expensive and underpowered to serve as a geek's main machine? Now that's the norm. In a few more years, all the computing power, storage and connectivity most people will need will be inside a phone. The Motorola Atrix may be ahead of of its time but I think it is a harbinger of things to come.

halostatue2• 15 years ago

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.

mechanical_fish• 15 years ago

The secret is to take a deep breath and realize that an absolute majority of people in the world go years at a time without writing so much as two paragraphs in a row.

People do write. In Twitter-sized chunks. That is why Twitter is so popular. But you can compose a Tweet on a touchscreen keyboard. I'm sure that's especially true if you have been to middle school in this century and have lived the life of the text messager.

But that's just part of the answer. The real answer is that the PC isn't going anywhere. But that's not enough to make an "era". As Bruce Sterling once said: We very likely have better flint-knife technology today than they did in the flint era, if only because the flint-knapping enthusiasts can swap secrets on the net and share a global collection of books, videos, and meetups. But that doesn't mean we are in any kind of "flint era". We have more paper and more pens available today than ever in history, but we don't speak of the pen-and-paper era. And there is more rock music being played today than in 1968 and yet we think of then, not now, as more of a "rock era".

An "era" is defined by newness, disruption, and the smell of profit. The modern PC platforms are between fifteen and twenty-five years old and have changed little in the last decade. Major parts of the industry have seen their margins shrink to near zero. Others are profitable but only for a tiny handful of big players. This doesn't mean history is over - I refuse to believe that, say, Adobe Photoshop circa 2011 is the last word in image editing for the next hundred years - but to change the PC market from within is a long hard slog. The build-out of mobile will be a lot more fun to watch.

ZeroGravitas2• 15 years ago

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.

maguay2• 15 years ago

One interesting thing to see will be whether newer tablets with webOS, Android, or anything else will get advanced, full-sized tablet apps like Apple's iWork apps. The iWork apps definitely are some of the very best on iPad, and it wouldn't be nearly as useful of a device without them. Docs to Go and QuickOffice are a joke in comparison (except each of them are much better at file sync and orginization...). It's the more advanced apps like these, though, that will really enable tablets to take over traditional PCs.

sigzero• 15 years ago

I am hoping for some strange reason that WebOS wins out over them all.

sinkercat• 15 years ago

Is it possible that the new product announced during the Fall event is actually a 7-inch retina display iPad? Apple might find it expensive to build a 9.7-inch retina display and that could explain the $3billion+ investment that Apple has put in (possibly for the 7-inch retina display screens). Yes, Steve Jobs did say that 7-inch tablets are DOA but it was the same Steve who said Apple doesn't see e-books as a big market.

stcredzero3• 15 years ago

Re: Rear Facing Camera.

This would be most useful on a device with a daylight readable transflective screen. Then you could use it outdoors with augmented reality apps.

yakto2• 15 years ago

While riding your Segway? Just don't see it happening (average folks holding a tablet-size device in front of their face, running AR apps).

stcredzero3• 15 years ago

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.

cletus• 15 years ago

I mostly agree with Gruber but disagree on a couple of major points:

1. Releasing the iPad in September makes no sense simply because it was such a massive hit in the holiday season. Generally speaking, you want to spread out your demand as much as possible. It took 2 months to get the previous iPad from the US to the first round of international markets and another 3-4 months to do the full round. You can only produce so many. Actually not being able to buy one because demand is so high is not Apple's style;

2. I don't see Apple releasing a new version 6 months after the previous, particularly when, in all likelihood, the iPad 2 won't have been in some markets for more than a month or two.

As far as conflicting reports on parts and specs, that's nothing new. Just like there were reports of a CDMA iPhone YEARS before there was one. There are two reasons for this:

1. Apple produces far more prototypes than they release (eg the CDMA iPhone was tested for about a year before release); and

2. People just make stuff up for page views.

I also fully agree with Gruber on a rear-facing camera making very little sense on a device that large.

krolley• 15 years ago

I think you make a very good point. The iPhone 4 was released in June, but in Europe we didn't see any real availability for many months afterwards, even into October. If Apple had released an iPhone 4GS in September, it would have delayed many peoples plans to buy an iPhone, I would think.

masklinn• 15 years ago

> It took 2 months to get the previous iPad from the US to the first round of international markets and another 3-4 months to do the full round.

It took about 5 months for the initial iPhone to get out of the US. By the 3G's release, iPhone was in 6 countries (USA, France, Germany, UK, Ireland and Austria).

The iPhone 3G was released simultaneously in 22 countries (though the 3GS backed out a bit, release day for only 8 countries and the rest staggered over 2 months)

allwein• 15 years ago

>I also fully agree with Gruber on a rear-facing camera making very little sense on a device that large.

A rear-facing camera makes little sense if you imagine the use is for people to walk around taking pictures like they would with a phone. However, when you start imagining uses like Augmented Reality or other situations where you're interacting with real world artifacts, then it makes a little more sense.

dschobel2• 15 years ago

"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.

ugh5• 15 years ago

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 but it is reasonable. Calling tablets “the future of personal computing” with such a prediction in mind seems perfectly justifiable to me. Don’t ridicule other reasonable opinions just because you disagree with them!

dschobel2• 15 years ago

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).

gaiusparx• 15 years ago

My prediction:

* Apple will keep April as the refresh month for iPad. Putting iPad in the same iPod event will steal thunder and is no good. And component supplies is tighter for iPad thus it takes few months to meet the demand and September is too tight to the holidays season. When iPad 2 is launched in April, the rest of the world will get it by Jun-Aug which ensure Apple can manufacture enough to meet year end holiday demand.

* There will be no iOS 5 this year. At June WWDC, Lion will be the focus and Apple will give sneak peak of iOS 5 at the event, with beta available in early 2012, ship in June 2012. Aple needs to get its developers ready and it takes time. iOS 5 will share the code base of Lion and will ship after Lion. iOS 5 will include user interface elements changes. I think Apple is keeping two years release cycle for major OS release.

* There will be iOS 4.4/4.5 this year for: iPhone 5, NFC capability, AppleTV 3, App Store for AppleTV and App/Games on AppleTV.

toadi• 15 years ago

The end of the PC era is always announced. But don't see how I can do my daily work on a Ipad. I need a laptop or PC.

lukifer• 15 years ago

The hyperbole of the language belies the underlying truth: not the death of the PC, but a widening of the spectrum in which PCs are a minority among numerous types of computing devices.

ugh5• 15 years ago

This is very much besides the point but I think that calling what you just described the end of the PC era is not hyperbole. When PCs stop to dominate personal computing – like they have ever since personal computing existed – that would be very much the end of an era. No hyperbole involved. That doesn’t mean that PCs will suddenly stop existing or even stop being made.

code_duck2• 15 years ago

I don't think Apple will release two significantly different versions of the iPad within 6 months.

The Next Six Months

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