Tag Archives: ipad

Oct 24 2012
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Apple, iPad, Technology

How about mini prices, Apple?

We all know that ‘nits’ are little creatures which have a habit of nesting in human hair. No one, however, know what nits are when it comes to computer displays. That didn’t matter yesterday, though, when Apple announced that its latest line of laptop and desktop computer displays featured ‘300 nits’. We are all supposed to be very excited about the increase in nittage (although the previous nit value was never quoted). Why? Just because we should be. Three hundred is a larger number than, say, 5, and therefore we should all be grateful and impressed.

Let’s cover the announcements made at yesterday’s event…

Macbook Pro 13”

Apple’s bestselling notebook received a significant update. It is now thinner and includes a ‘retina’ display, which is tech twat speak for ‘you won’t be able to see any of the dots that make up the images on the screen’. Unfortunately, while it is not as expensive as its 15” big brother, it is still just expensive enough to be unaffordable for everyone.

iMac

Apple believe this is the best desktop computer in the world and the only time anyone has got the all-in-one concept right. And who are we to argue? They offered lots of big numbers to explain why they are right and why we are all stupid and wrong for buying other stuff. The new iMac is thinner than anything you can conceivably think of and is put together using friction-stir welding, which isn’t the most boring thing you’ve read all day. While some will be able to afford the 21.5” version, the one we all want – the 27” – is more expensive than most of the stuff in your house and therefore entirely unobtainable.

iPad

Everyone has forgotten what this is called. Including Apple. Originally, it was ‘The New iPad’, although most owners referred to theirs as the iPad 3. Now it is the 4th generation iPad, although the Apple website refers to it as ‘iPad with Retina display’. Confused? Well, that’s because you’re stupid. The new, current, 4th iPad is now twice as fast as the old new, 3rd iPad and features faster wireless and the new lightening charging port. Basically, if you own the old new 3rd generation iPad (I think I’m still referring to the correct one), it is now rubbish and should be replaced.

iPad mini

The main event. The big one. Actually, the little one. Just as Apple innovated by making their iPhone slightly bigger, they’ve made the iPad smaller. This immediately means it’s better than anything the competition can come up with and, once again, to prove the point, we were shown lots of high percentages and mentions of ‘theirs is made out of plastic’. Unfortunately, aside from the base 16Gb model, the other iterations are only obtainable for those who are happy to live off street kill for the following twelve months after purchase.

Those that know me will want to know the answer to the question, ’will you be getting one?’. Will I? Probably not. I want one more than I want to keep my eyes, but it comes back to the age old justification problem. And that is that there is very little justification for it. Only, Apple have made what I consider to be an increasingly solid rod for their own back, here.

Normal people like me cannot afford, nor wish to spend money on the majority of their products. I’d very much like a new Macbook Pro with a retina display for my studio. I’d also love an Air for blogging and the times an iPad’s onscreen keyboard is simply too cumbersome. I’d like a Mac mini to run as a media server. I’d like an iMac as a desktop machine to look nice in the dining room. I’d like an iPad mini because it’s more portable.

I’ll stop there. But, in short, I want everything they do. All of it. But I can’t justify any of those items. The key words above are ‘like’ and ‘want’. I don’t need any of the stuff they make. None of us do. If they continue to innovate in such small steps and price themselves out of the real world, they will not capture the wider, PC-killing audience they so clearly strive for.

Take a hint, Apple. Drop your prices.

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Oct 05 2011
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Apple, In the news, iPhone, Technology

No 5

As dust bales roll through the digital streets of the once dense, sarcasm- and expletive-strewn jungle that is TheBoyEllis Blog, I can confirm that I am still alive. Postaweek2011 appears to have claimed its next victim (I’d imagine there’s been a fair few) after a heady month that was dominated by marriage, associated celebrations and the much-needed holidaying that follows.

Concerned I had little to write about, I thought I may have struck gold last week after our dealings with the housing market; firstly attempting to buy a new house from a builder via a part exchange scheme and, after that predictably failed miserably, deciding to put our house on the market and buy an older place. This sounded like perfect source material, until I realised I could only really muster one sentence describing the whole affair, which is:

No one in the housing market knows what they’re talking about.

And that’s not much of a blog, is it?

Yesterday, however, Apple rolled into town in all its grandiose, questionable statistic chomping glory and delivered the perfect excuse for me to pick up the digital pen once again.

I bought an iPhone 4 pretty much as soon as it came out. Because I’m stupid. But, in my defence, it was brilliant. The ‘retina’ screen looked like those fake photos of screens mobile phone shops place on the handsets in store, such was its vibrancy and crystal, seemingly pixel-free clarity. Only, it wasn’t a photo – it was actually the screen, which you could touch and watch respond. Just as when I first played with an iPhone, it felt like I was in Star Trek (being a child of the 80s, it doesn’t take a huge amount to get me excited).

Then, I, along with the millions who had also flocked to buy the precision engineered slice of metal and glass, attempted to make a phone call. This proved difficult because, as we were to find out, in order to make a successful call without the signal dropping, we had to hold the phone as though we were holding a piece of dog poo against our ear; a kind of ginger, two-fingered affair which ensured we didn’t accidentally create a bridge between two pieces of the ‘ground-breaking’ external antenna which must never be joined. If they become one, the result is a bit like when you cross lightsabre beams, only three million times more boring.

Apple then embarked on an uncharacteristic and creepily frantic attempt to prove that other phones do the exact same thing. Several videos appeared on their website of someone (Mr Jobs?) squeezing various models of Blackberrys and Android phones to prove that they too lose their signal when ‘held incorrectly’. Clearly realising that what they were doing was akin to a drunken ex-boyfriend bashing his genitalia against his former girlfriend’s front door in an attempt to prove it is as adequate as that by which it has been replaced, the videos were soon removed.

Steve Jobs even had to make an unscheduled stage appearance to make sure everyone was aware it was their own fault and not Apple’s. He did so in typically nonchalant style, although he did concede that they’d all had to stay past chucking out time on several occasions to work on a reasonable excuse.

This was all very irritating at first, but we all soon realised that this was an iPhone and, as such, its inadequacies as a phone (there are a number) do not matter. It is shiny and cool and Steve had quite clearly explained why we are all to blame. So, we stopped complaining and carried on playing with iFart.

Now, Apple have a new phone. With so many expecting the number 5 to make an appearance, it is no surprise that a collective sigh was exhaled after Apple simply added the letter ‘S’ to the end of the current product’s name.

Yes, now we have an iPhone 4S. It has the same A5 CPU that powers the iPad 2 and which will provide all of the unplayable first person shooter games on iOS with graphics that modern gaming consoles can only dream of. Web pages will open half a second quicker and the camera will no longer wait until Gaddafi has been captured, tried and beheaded before opening.

Ah, the camera. This is much better.  Once again managing to make fresh titfer out of old hat, 8MP stills and 1080P HD recording were the headlines, but Apple also went into minute detail about how they have achieved near-DSLR quality imagery with the addition of all manner of professional grade components and lenses.

After everyone had woken up, they went on to demonstrate Siri. This was their ‘just one other thing…’ moment. The bit we all wait for at Apple conferences.

Siri basically means you can talk to your phone and it will respond appropriately. Set tasks, reply to messages, find out how lunar space travel works. You name it – literally – and it’ll do it. The demo was, admittedly, very impressive.

Odd, then, that the only reason I can think I want an iPhone 4S is because it will finally allow me to replace my black iPhone 4 with a white one…

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Jun 07 2011
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Apple, In the news, iPad, iPhone, Technology

A cloudy day in PC world

WWDC 2011 - time for Apple to add a few more things they forgot at the outset

I got drunk a couple of years ago and signed up to MobileMe. It was a sixty day free trial so I figured there was little to lose.

Two months later, I got drunk again and forgot to cancel the subscription. Steve Jobs duly buried his hand into my trouser pocket and took £59. I couldn’t complain or ask for it back because I’d agreed to let him do so sixty days prior. I’d simply forgotten to cancel the trial and had chosen the expiry date to go out for a few beers. iWhoops.

He did the same thing a year later, although that time I was sober and had just resigned myself to the fact that he’d come along and relieve me of my hard earned every twelve months. Disclaimer: as much as I love Apple products, that is not a euphemism.

Then, a further year on, he didn’t bother. Instead, he took to a stage so large it could house three symphony orchestras to proclaim, quite simply, that MobileMe was in fact, utterly, totally, irreversibly shite.

And that was it. No ‘sorry’, or ‘here, have your £118 back’. Just a rare admission from the man who continues to reinvent everything (only to later add the important bits that were missing at the start via a series of updates) that one of their reinventions was ‘not our finest hour’.

I agree. It wasn’t even their finest fifteen minutes. MobileMe was, in principle, a good idea, if not a new one. It was expensive, though, and I am forever asking myself what I’m getting for £59. I have email, calendars and contacts synced between my various devices. I also have a 20GB iDisk which I occasionally put 40KB PDF files on. I used to have all that elsewhere and for free.

Still, MobileMe had cool graphics and the James Bond-like Find My iPhone which even featured a radar for the icon (that’s cool, right? Radars are definitely cool). Obviously, it wouldn’t find your iPhone – it would simply highlight a 20 mile radius in which it might be located. That’s not very useful. I could probably do the same thing myself just by thinking about it. But Find My iPhone had a green radar thing that swung around and beeped. So that made it all fine.

Anyway, I digress. Now we have iCloud which is free and a more rounded solution. But, as cool as it looks, that’s not what I want to talk about.

There was one word which seemed to permeate through the entire keynote address. It wasn’t preceded by an ‘i’, nor was it followed by the interminably irritating ‘it’s just beauuuutiful’ – a phrase Apple has even used to describe an email client’s reading pane.

The word was ‘PC’. Steve Jobs will occasionally point and laugh at this silly little acronym. In the past, he’s received a muffled guffaw from his adoring crowd as he highlights just how rubbish PCs are. How they have missed the point of personal computing entirely and continue to make each of our lives a living hell through their wrong approach to multi-tasking, wrong approach to security, poor hardware and for sleeping with our partners behind our backs.

Obviously, this is nonsense. PCs do work. They might not have the same pretty animations that Mac OS X has mastered so beauuuutifully, but they do a job and will continue to for the vast majority of home and business users on the planet Only, now, we’re being told that we can cut ourselves free of the PC. Snip through the digital umbilical cord, if you like. Apple even had a little icon for this.

Principally, they are referring to iOS 5 which includes the ability to wirelessly sync with iTunes and setup iOS devices without connecting them to a computer.

Of course, by ‘PC’ and the newly coined phrase ‘Post PC’, they are also referring to Macs (we’re not stupid, Steve) and it was encouraging to hear them ‘demote’ all devices – iPads, iPhones, laptops, desktops – to just that: devices. Bits of metal which can be setup independently and display all of the stuff we store on the cloud. Viewing panes into our remote, digital world. Nothing more. I like that.

I predict that, eventually, this will make complex operating systems a thing of the past. As Jobs noted, file systems are cumbersome and difficult for novices to get their heads around, yet they are the one thing we rely on almost every day. Why not let applications and web servers do the work? This premise is put to fantastic use in iOS.

I also predict, as I have noted to people in the past, that OS X will continue to turn into iOS. It’s happening already with Lion; full screen apps and Launchpad (iOS-esque app organisation) were present at yesterday’s demo. Those that need more functionality (and by that, I mean principally developers and bedroom tweakers [no laughing at the back]) will continue to have the tools they need to do their jobs via SDKs. But us, the everyday user? Cutting the link between ourselves, our devices and our desktop machines is just the start. I think the people at Apple gave us quite a significant glance into the future yesterday.

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Apr 13 2011
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Apple, Technology

ATV

Today, I spotted this article on the eternally chugging rumour mill that is Apple Insider.

If Apple are indeed planning to make a TV, this is terrible, terrible news. Why? Well, for the simple fact that I will want one more than I want to punch George Osbourne in the face. And that’s a lot.

I freely admit that I love Apple products. They’re expensive, yes. They always appear to be a few steps behind the times in certain respects. The company’s CEO is irreversibly arrogant and insistent that everything they do is exactly how it should be done. They distort and twist facts and stats about competitors. I know all of this, yet I own an iPhone 4, MacBook Pro, iPad, Airport Express and enough Apple USB cables to turn Jupiter into a giant yo-yo.

So, if this rumour is true – and I wouldn’t be surprised if it is – what’s an Apple TV going to be like? Just a bigger LED cinema display with an internet connection? Knowing Apple, and using the iPad as a case in point… probably.

It does seem to be the logical progression for Apple TV. They know how to make displays and the latest iteration of their mini set-top, content-on-demand box has been well received. Why not combine the two?

The introduction of FaceTime on the iPad 2 also hints at their continuing quest to dominate our social lives and be forever in the public conscience. FaceTime on your TV would further help this cause.

They also know that, even during a worldwide financial meltdown, idiots like me continue to be enticed by their superb design team and attention-grabbing marketing. I wouldn’t be over-egging it by suggesting they’re the best on the planet at the latter and it’s the reason they make expensive, feature-light products sell by the bucketload. They could doubtless do the same with a television.

Of course, it might also just be a load of old bollocks.

I’ve seen rumours come and go on Apple Insider but this is one I’ll keep an eye on.

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Mar 04 2011
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Apple, General, Technology

Erm… I like the cover, Steve

iPad 2

iPad 2: A rare victory for accessories over the product for which they're intended

I wasn’t looking forward to the iPad 2 announcement this week. You see, I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that I must refrain from buying ‘buttons and technology’ this year due to the impending wedding bill that is, admittedly, far more important.

However, I love my iPad and I didn’t want to see it shuffle discreetly into the corner of the room, head bowed and gently weeping as it discovered it was suddenly an ‘old’ model. Wednesday’s iPad 2 announcement seemed certain to make that an inevitable consequence.

Thankfully, I was wrong.

iPad 2 is thinner. This means it looks 33% better than the old model. When you look at it side on.

It’s faster. The ‘old’ iPad is no slouch and as mine is used almost primarily for web surfing, reading the paper and task management, I’m not too fussed. I’m even less fussed about graphics that are nine times faster. iOS is, after all, a great gaming platform which is rendered as good as useless by the control surface (download any game which features an onscreen joystick and tell me otherwise).

It has cameras. I can’t think of a more awkward and dickhead-inducing way of taking photos than via an iPad. Facetime? I can do that on my iPhone and Macbook. Photobooth is hilarious but only for about fifteen minutes. Plus, I have that on my Macbook, too.

It comes in white. Granted. This is very cool (and not a lie, like the iPhone 4’s mysterious AWOL white brother).

Apple claim the new unit is unreservedly deserving of the number ‘2’ moniker. I’m not so sure. It is, quite clearly, a 3Gs-type upgrade. The real next generation iPad will be with us in 2011. And I’m happy to wait.

There was one thing, though. Something (as is always the case with Apple) highly unexpected; the case. Or cover, to be more precise in this instance.

In one, clicky, flappy, magnetised motion, they’ve done it again. The cover, which effortlessly attaches itself to the side of the iPad and covers just the screen, is almost enough to make you want to upgrade to what is essentially the same product you already own. It looks brilliant. The sort of thing you could just put on and take off again and again, all day.

Alas… I’m sticking to my guns and the advice of my better half. I’m off to reassure my iPad that it has nothing to worry about.

Until 2012.

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Dec 29 2010
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Apple, iPhone, Technology

Technology over substance

Airplay

Airplay. Brilliant, but a techno-wow too far?

As Band Aid stuttered through the hifi and – after a valiant effort to make it to the first chorus – eventually disappeared entirely, I knew only one thing; my Airport Express had decided to cease working for the second time that day and at an equally inconvenient juncture.

We were hosting our first and only Christmas party of the festive season and, an hour before our guests were due to arrive, my rarely used AE had decided to remove itself entirely from my home network. There was no trace of it, it had indeed gone AWOL and hadn’t even bothered to say goodbye. The green ‘everything’s ok!’ light stayed steadfastly lit, grinning at me like an illegitimate, spoilt child.

After a tiny amount of non-festive swearing and a great deal of self-persuading that throwing it down the street would not a fix produce, a full reset to factory settings did the trick.

This lasted approximately three hours, by which time we were all sitting down to enjoy the hearty Christmas dinner my fiancé and I had slaved over. No sooner had I plunged my fork into a sizeable chunk of turkey had Boy George started doing an impromptu bit of beat boxing instead of his usual verse.

“Mark, for Christmas, I’m going to buy you a CD player and some CDs,” said my friend.

That struck a chord, if you’ll excuse the pun. As clever as the Airport Express/Airplay setup I’d been relying on was, it was proving to be, unfortunately, completely and utterly unreliable.

Yes, it looked cool. Swanning around the house with my iPad, showing anyone who cared (there weren’t many) that I could make music come out of my hifi via my oversized iPod Touch without wires made me feel like Steve Jobs, striding across the stage at an Apple event leading an expectant crown on to the next ‘wow’ moment.

That’s great, until the bloody thing stops working. And, then, yes, why not just go back to good old CDs? What was wrong with them?

It’s made me question the benefit of such technological wizardry.

Apple made a big thing about Airplay this year and rightly so. Being able to wirelessly stream audio and video around your house is convenient, enjoyable and, in this form, relatively inexpensive. But, then, where is Mr Jobs when it all goes wrong? Quite often, he’s standing there, pointing the finger, blaming us, the humble user. We’re holding it wrong. It wasn’t designed for that. It’s Thursday. You’ve got an uncle called Jim. It’s your fault.

As much as I felt like heading over to the Apple boss’ house to wrap my iPad around his neck and force-feed him the Airport Express, I couldn’t afford the time or air miles, therefore settled for good old MTV instead. That worked. Flawlessly.

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Aug 30 2010
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Apple, iPhone, Technology

iPhone 4 – Everything Covered?

Image by Catyb. via Flickr

As I type, I’m on a kid-infested flight returning from a two week holiday.

I require three things while away (I’ve omitted several ‘givens’): music, camera, entertainment.

Previously, this involved carting around about three-hundred separate gadgets, each of which would end up either coated in sand, broken or lost.

During my time in Kefalonia, however, I’ve made an unexpected decision to sell my SLR camera on my return. Not because I found a better one, or because I have to pay for a costly foreign medical bill, but because I fell, hook, line and sinker for my iPhone 4′s camera. This was unexpected.

Apple chief, Steve Jobs, describes it as a ‘camera system’, casually brushing off any notion that more pixels equals better pictures in typical Apple fashion; indiscriminately and arrogantly with a heavy dusting of patronisation for good measure.

Like many people, I laughed at yet another over zealous semi-branding of centuries-old technology, courtesy of the man who has made the practice something of an art form.

It turns out, however, that the turtle necked one is absolutely correct. The iPhone 4 produces stunning still pictures.

Much is made of them via the phone’s incredible Retina Display (another needless piece of branding), yet they shine even when transferred to any other device.

The same could not be said for my old 3G. That would only produce a half-decent shot when presented with studio-like conditions. Attempting to take photos anywhere else, i.e. houses, parks, pubs, hotels, theme parks or, well, anywhere, produced the kind of grainy, dull pictures associated with disposable cameras.

iPhone 4 rarely fails to adjust itself correctly to prevailing conditions and even manages to adjust depth of field without you having to lift a finger (I’ve never seen convincing depth of field on point-and-shoot cameras, let alone mobile phones).

Video, too is perfectly useable. It’s 720p HD and, while it occasionally suffers from some judder on panning shots, it perfectly captured every moment I asked it to and, more importantly, didn’t make me look like a Handicam-wielding burk.

This got me thinking. Why do I need an SLR which, admittedly, has seen very sparing use since I bought in several years ago. Why lug something around which weighs the same as Eamon Holmes and is about as attractive? It simply isn’t required anymore. Photos are for remembering and sharing. If they look good as your desktop wallpaper, that’s a bonus.

My iPhone is my iPod. It plays games. I can watch movies and TV on it. Show me a better device which does all this and still fits in your pocket. You’ll struggle, before you start looking…

The only thing which did slightly disappoint while away was my iPad. It beats the iPhone hands down as a media player for the flight, and is handy once again to watch movies on in bed (plus the battery is just jaw dropping), but I wasn’t once tempted to take it to the poolside or beach to read an iBook. This was partly due to an inherent fear of scratching, smashing or sitting on it, but in reality, you simply can’t sit outside and use this thing for any great length of time. You spend most of the time tutting at your increasing number of chins, which are the only things visible on the screen. I do not want to study my chins while on holiday.

That said, I have just typed out this entire blog on it. Which is nice.

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Jun 03 2010
1 Comment
Apple, Technology

iPad Review

The day Steve Jobs held his new creation aloft I, like many others, couldn’t help but feel somewhat aggrieved. Here, after months of speculation, was the magical device Apple claimed would transform the mini computer market. Netbooks would be rendered pointless. The need for a folding device with separate keyboard and screen would soon be considered old fashioned and highly inefficient. Our lives would never be quite the same again. Etc.

And there, in Jobs’ hands, was what looked like a a massive iPod touch. A really big iPhone. Without the phone bit. Or the camera. A huge, gigantic disappointment.

I really wanted one.

To spare my credit card further pain, I spent the next few weeks explaining to everyone how pointless it was. And the device is, on face value, difficult to justify. I have a netbook. I have an iPhone. I have a MacBook Pro. Where would an iPad fit in? No matter how many times Jobs and his cronies banged on about the fun to be had ‘just picking it up off the coffee table to enjoy fantastic email’, I couldn’t think of a legitimate use of this £500 piece of techno eye candy.

Then, a few days after the UK launch, I took the thirty minute journey to PC World in Milton Keynes to have a play with one. Within second of the home screen arranging itself I’d decided I required an iPad. So I bought one.

A few days in, I feel qualified enough to write a few words on Apple’s new baby and I’ll start by reiterating that it really is a luxury device. No one on this planet needs an iPad. Neither will it replace your laptop. The lack of a real keyboard cements that fact.

I’ll start with the screen, which is stunning. There was a whole lot of hokum about the fact it doesn’t possess a true widescreen aspect ratio and the fact that it’s surrounded by a fat black bezel, but as soon as you set your eyes on one, neither of those things matter. It is fabulous. The bezel, in fact, actually makes perfect sense as it gives your thumbs somewhere to rest whilst not obscuring the screen.

Built quality is something else which strikes you; it feels sturdy, immaculately constructed and tough. Granted, I wouldn’t want to drop it, or frisbee it across to someone at the other side of the room, but it does feel like it’ll last. If the iPhone 4 is anything like this, we’re in for a treat.

Apps, while expensive, are impressive and bring to light the benefit of the larger screen, when compared with the iPhone. It’s genuinely very exciting when you consider the kind of apps we’ll see from those clever and friendless enough to develop them. As a part time bedroom music producer, I can’t wait to see how this thing will complement my studio with synth and DAW controller apps.

The keyboard. I hate the iPhone’s keyboard. I’ve found it’s got harder to use the longer I’ve had the phone, regularly hitting incorrect characters or the backspace button. iPad’s keyboard is obviously far bigger which makes it possible to type almost like you can on a ‘real’ keyboard. Not quite though. It’s still prone to errors and the lack of tactile feedback is one of the many reasons it won’t replace your laptop. Indeed, I wrote 50% of this blog on the iPad but had to resort to my MacBook after a while.

Key to understanding and appreciating the iPad is realising that it is simply a device which makes ‘passing the internet around’, checking email, viewing photos and listening to music incredibly simple. The battery is astonishing. Apple quote 10 hours and I don’t doubt that. If anything, it might be a little more. Whatever it is, you can leave this thing anywhere about your house and pick it up when you need it, safe in the knowledge it isn’t going to die on you. Its also on, instantly, therefore you don’t have to wait for the OS to boot up before you check your email.

The lack of Flash? This subject bores me to the core so I won’t labour on it. I’ve hardly noticed it. Although, to be fair, I visit a fairly limited number of websites, most of which don’t include flash content or utilise the HTML5 (something Apple will almost certainly force a web-standard out of). We all know Apple disallow the use of Flash on their mobile devices because they want to protect the App Store, but I really can’t get too excited or angry about it. They were the first to abandon floppy drives, after all…

Should you buy one? In short, only if you can afford it. My house is flooded with technology to the point where I simply don’t have time to use it all. The iPad has, however, made a bit of a mockery of my MacBook when it comes to web browsing and ‘pick up and play-ability’. It’s just incredibly handy to have around.

If you can’t afford it at the moment and need to save, give it a few months and see what apps appear. Maybe even wait until the first hardware revision which should certainly include a camera, at the very least.

I’ll finish with ten of my favourite apps so far:

  1. Press Reader – download digital versions of newspapers – thousands are featured from all across the world and prices are reasonable.
  2. AccuWeather – pretty and informative weather app.
  3. Wikipanion – great Wikipedia app.
  4. Eurosport – far better than its iPhone equivalent.
  5. RightMove – simply fantastic if you’re a UK resident house hunting/selling
  6. Early Edition – great RSS reader which formats RSS feeds in a newspaper-like format.
  7. Guardian Eyewitness – features one photo a day taken from professional news photographers. Also offers technical tips on how the shot was taken.
  8. WordPress – makes far more sense than the iPhone version and is a masterclass of simple design.
  9. Korg Electribe – iPad version of a classic groovebox. Much fun.
  10. IMDb – brilliant for film information and trailers.

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Jan 28 2010
2 Comments
Apple, Technology

The iPad: Will we Want it?

Apple iPad

Someone tries out the 'massive iPhone'

So, it’s called the iPad. After what was essentially months of mindless, pointless speculation, Steve Jobs this week unveiled Apple’s latest product: an iPhone OS-based tablet device.

We all knew it was going to be a tablet and we all knew it was intended to prove that netbooks, essentially, are crap. And that’s pretty much how Jobs started his presentation, proclaiming that the mini laptops which have taken the mobile computing market by storm are slow, uninventive and run useless operating systems (‘Windows’ to you and me). As dismissive and arrogant as always. Don’t you just love him.

During the run up to this week’s event, I commented on Apple’s mastery of marketing and their unique ability to leave the job of whipping up a storm of interest to their loyal – and not so loyal – following. Once again, with the announcement of the iPad, it worked brilliantly. We were all waiting with baited breath as Steve Jobs trudged onto the stage in his trademark black turtle neck and Primark stone-washed jeans.

I think they may have screwed up with this one, I’m afraid. Apple’s product line, almost without exception, is successful because of one common element – desire. We want everything they make. I have an iPhone. I don’t need it. Any phone will allow me to send texts and ring people. I use a Mac in my music studio. I don’t need it; a decently specced PC running Cubase would do the job just as well and at half the cost. However, I parted with hard earned for both of these things simply because they were desirable.

Look at the entire Apple range – iPods, laptops, all-in-one computers… even their keyboards are sights to behold and use. Expensive they may be, but for a company that can claim a worth of around $50bn, it doesn’t seem to matter.

The problem with the iPad is that I just don’t think the desire will be there. It is a very odd product which simply doesn’t seem to fit any gap anywhere. ‘Pick up the iPad laying in the kitchen’ said Jobs as he idly flicked through the NY Times website during the demonstration. Indeed, at times, he seemed to be nodding off; hardly a ringing endorsement for a product he has labelled ‘one of the most important things we’ve done’.

It remains to be seen how it will fare once it’s thrown out into the wild. One thing it has on its side is price. It is, like few Apple products, genuinely affordable. That might just be enough to carry it through, but one question remains: are we going to want this enough for it to be a success? I’m not convinced.

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