Posts Tagged ‘Apple’
Apple HDTV is an iPhone without a screen; 1080p
It wasn’t an hour after a pressed “publish” on my story about a reader’s speculation that the Apple TV would get a refresh at Apple’s WWDC on June 7 that I saw this post on Engadget about just that.
According to its sources, Apple TV will indeed get a major refresh at WWDC, actually it’s more like a completely new product. The story goes like this: the new Apple TV will be based on iPhone OS and will include an A4 chip, 16GB of flash memory, cloud storage and 1080p high-definition output. Word is that the new device will only have two ports, power and video out.
Storage will be on the cloud, but it remains to see how Apple will charge for it. I sincerely hope that Apple doesn’t plan on charging $100 per year for storage (like it does with MobileMe) or it’s simply taunting the jailbreak community to build a better mousetrap — and they will.
Sources describe the ATV sequel as “an iPhone without a screen,” but the real kicker is the price – rumored to be $99. I’m calling it the “Apple HDTV,” but feel free to chime in in the TalkBack with your prediction. For $99, I’d buy one.
I don’t know about you but my current Apple TV almost never gets turned on, except for when there’s a software update to write about. The damned thing runs so hot that it will literally singe your fingertips and there’s no power switch or sleep mode (that I’m aware of) so it’s an electricity vampire. Apple TV meet Craigslist.
4 Out of 10 iPhones Sold to Business Users
Who was it, again, who said Apple’s iPhone “doesn’t appeal to business because it doesn’t have a keyboard”?
Because the device clearly does appeal to business. In fact, quite a few of the iPhones sold today are purchased by business users, according to Ron Spears, chief of AT&T’s Business Solutions unit.
“Four out of 10 sales of the iPhone are made to enterprise users,” Spears said at an investor conference Thursday. “When the iPhone came out, what most people heard in the first year from ’07 to ’08 was ‘oh my God, it’s not BlackBerry secure. This is not going to work on the enterprise space.’ At the end of the day, it’s just software. That’s all it is.”
Elaborating on the history of adoption of the iPhone by business users, Spears notes, “And by the time the 3G came out in ’08 [Apple] had solved about 80 percent of the security issues. By the time the 3GS came out last summer, most CIOs will tell you today they have very few issues around the security that they need provided, as they have come to know that RIM can do it because of the way RIM provides their solution. So enterprises today view the iPhone as a mobile computer.”
Evidently, Apple has succeeded in overcoming enterprise’s early misgivings about the iPhone’s security and business-readiness. Recall that last fall, the device scored highest in both the consumer and business categories of JD Power’s Smartphone Satisfaction Study. The iPhone scored 803 points out of a possible 1,000. That’s 79 points more than Research in Motion’s BlackBerry, which took second place with a score of 724 points, the industry average.
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Sony Says to Launch E-Reader in Japan, Take on Apple
Sony Corp said on Thursday it would launch an e-reader in Japan by year-end, taking on rival Apple Inc just a day before its iPad hits shelves in the country. Sony said it also plans to launch an e-book content distribution service in Japan by year-end as it aims at a chunk of the promising electronic book market.
The debut of the iPad, a portable computing and entertainment system that also functions as an e-reader, is expected to boost Japan’s still-small e-book market.
Sony said it will set up a planning company on July 1 for the content distribution service and will hold 25 percent of the firm. KDDI Corp, Toppan Printing Co, and the Asahi Shimbun newspaper will also hold 25 percent each. The new service will offer comics, magazines, newspapers, as well as books online, Sony said.
Sony sells its e-reader Reader in the United States to vie with Amazon.com’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and Apple’s iPad, but it does not currently sell the device at home. Sony attempted to create an e-reader market in the past when it launched reading devices only to pull them from shelves after a few lacklustre years due to a lack of content.
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Why I Shall Never Buy Another Apple iProduct
Forget the iPad for a moment. In my eyes, the iPad is the rare exception to the rule in the line of products that Apple has to offer because of the price to features ratio. But bearing in mind buying an iPad would be part of the perpetuation of the Apple brand and the consumerist smug levels that users seem to have, I will no doubt be avoiding it anyway.
Over a year ago, I bought myself an iPod nano – the fourth generation version which had just been released. It was a birthday present to myself and it was the cheapest iPod for a long time. I may as well give it a shot, I thought.
A couple of days later, I get a phone call from my bank, supposedly being the fraud department. I was suspicious of the call, so I called my bank back directly and yes, it turns out that in fact it was the fraud department. Better to be safe than sorry. As soon as the transaction went through from my debit card for the iPod touch nano, my bank had cancelled my card and stalled any transactions taking place, citing “suspicious activity”. When I confirmed that it was in fact a genuine payment and it was a birthday present to myself, they put the order through and I got the iPod the next couple of days.
It wasn’t as if I had bought a dozen of the same thing and sent the delivery to my non-billing address, but I should have seen that as an omen, frankly.
Since then, the scroll wheel became faulty and the battery lasts only so long. The absolute necessity to install iTunes to manage your music detests me (though SharePod works a treat, but not sadly it is not widely known about), and frankly the sound quality was knocked into second place by a BlackBerry of all things.
Switch for a moment from the iPod to the wider picture. The two are not necessarily connected or mutually exclusive to each other. An argument for poor build quality or raising the issue of a device which barely makes it through the year, perhaps. It boils down to one thing, in my opinion. Social class.
This isn’t about Windows or Linux, or even Mac OS X as such. This isn’t an argument of who should use what or the comparison between the operating systems. No, most definitely not. In fact, just to make a point to those who say I’m simply anti-Apple because I’m pro-Microsoft (which frankly makes me laugh), I would definitely advocate open-source technology and operating systems over Windows since my last experiment. The problem is, it’ll never happen.
Though many will no doubt argue that I could not possibly comment after buying a lone iPod nano. Over the last few months, I have experimented in great deal with Mac OS X, the iPhone, and other Apple products. I can surely appreciate the technology, the user interface and experience, the quality of the devices and suchlike. But the technology world seems to have infiltrated the class system in my view, meaning those who buy an Apple product – in particular the notebooks such as the MacBook Air or Pro – use it as a tool of raising their place in the social hierarchy. A device for fashion and statement, rather than that for function and necessity.
To see the technology and specifications packed into say, a MacBook Pro, a relatively powerful device which let’s face it, could be far cheaper and more powerful from another hardware manufacturer. Apple products are staunchly overpriced for what they offer and are not designed to be bought and therefore used by the average student.
Only the other day, was it pointed out to me the privately owned and run Seton Hill University expect students to pay thousands more for a degree programme than most other universities in the US, while at the same time jumping on the Apple bandwagon and offering every new student an iPad. The private university rakes in the tuition fees and spends it on technology of the upper classes – their students who can afford it. The tuition fee debate was sparked off in the comment section a couple of days ago, with my reply also.
They may well be perfect for the silver spoon student who has their tuition fees paid by their father’s trust fund, but to the average, proletariat, working to middle class background student who just about makes it through each academic year, “disposable” devices which are cheap and just about get the job done will have to suffice.
Toshiba to Develop Tablet PC with Two 7-Inch Screens
Toshiba is reportedly developing a tablet with two 7-inch displays, which folds like a book. That would make it the latest in a long line of companies-both big names and start-ups-who have toyed with these dual-display devices.
The concept makes some sense. A design with two displays maximizes the screen real estate while keeping the size down. You can mix-and-match different display technologies and operating systems to serve different applications in a single device. And the success of touchscreen smartphones, and more recently the Apple iPad, demonstrates that many users are willing to forgo a physical keyboard. But so far the dual-display has been DOA.
Asus, HTC, MSI and Sony among others have all experimented with these devices, either as full-blown tablets or e-book readers, but there’s no sign any of them are coming to your Best Buy anytime soon. The Microsoft Courier project generated a lot of excitement, but never made it out of the incubator. One Laptop Per Child scrapped its XO-2 dual-screen tablet, and instead plans to release updates to its standard XO netbook. OLPC will eventually offer a standard low-cost tablet, the XO-3.
Then there are the dual-display e-readers. Start-up Kno demonstrated its device at the D8 conference, but its unwieldy tablet, which consists of two 14-inch displays, has puzzled reviewers. The Entourage Edge is a hybrid device-the company calls it a “dualbook”–with a 9.7-inch E-Ink display on one side and a 10.1-inch LCD tablet running Android on the other. It’s a novel concept, but the device is much thicker than an e-book reader or tablet, and doesn’t really excel at either.
Aside from Apple, no company has yet figured out how to deliver a great experience on a standard tablet, let alone one with two displays-sometime using different technologies and input mechanisms. Google is still working on versions of Android and Chrome OS tailored for tablets. And Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently admitted that the company has a lot of work to do on Windows 7 tablets to catch up with the iPad.