Apple’s iPad – It’s all about the apps.

I’ve had some time to digest Apple’s announcement of the iPad this Wednesday, and despite being confused and unsure at first I think I’ve come around on it.  Is the iPad perfect?  No.  Is it a device you need?  No more than you “need” an Amazon Kindle.  It’s a luxury device that’ll fill some use cases for you and probably make your life a little more convenient, but certainly not a necessity.

There has been a lot of commotion about the iPad being “just a big iPod Touch.”  I disagree with that sentiment completely, for a couple of reasons.  First, it’s about the user experience.  What’s the most-obvious difference between the iPod Touch and iPad?  The display size, of course.  Because the display for these touch devices doubles as the user input interface, it means developers can do a hell of a lot more with the software they create on the iPad.  I think it’ll be the first device to truly recognize the full potential and yes, I’ll admit it, “cool factor” of multitouch.  Sure I can do some multitouch functions on my iPhone, but usually only to zoom in or zoom out on an object.  Imagine the possibilities of the iPad’s nearly 10″ of screen real estate, particularly when you can set it down on the table or in your lap and have two free hands with which to manipulate the on-screen information.

The second major difference is the horsepower.  My current smartphone is the iPhone 3GS, which has a ARM processor clocked at 600mhz by default and only 256MB of memory.  The iPad on the other hand, has a 1ghz processor and rumored 1GB of RAM.  That means that the applications that are being developed for it will have a much wider range of capabilities and a richer user experience.  While watching Apple’s keynote it wasn’t until Scott Forstall brought developers up on stage to show their iPad apps, not to mention when Phil Schiller did the iWork demonstration, that I began to truly understand the amazing amount of potential this device has.  Compare the iPad right now to where the iPhone was when it launched: there are very few native applications and those that do exist were created by Apple.  The one thing that the iPad has going for it over the iPhone though, is that we already have an SDK for the device before it’s even released.  How long did it take Apple to get the iPhone SDK out there?

I’ll be the first to admit that I think the way they’ve chosen to integrate iPhone apps into the iPad is a little cheesy.  You can either run them in a native mode, which displays them in a tiny black box in the middle of your 9.5″ display, or you can use “pixel-double” to expand them to fit the screen.  Pixel-double might be good for apps that are predominantly text or image-based, but I have a feeling that there’s going to be significant graphical degradation with video playback and games.  With all that said though, iPhone apps on the iPad are not what users should be excited for.  Software developed with the iPad in mind will truly make the device sing, and I think it’ll be the best media-consumption device we’ve seen so far.

Plus you can’t read ibooks on your iPod Touch, you illiterate brigand!

My monthly post.

It seems like I’ve fallen off with posting lately.  Honestly, I feel that talking about most of the things I would normally talk about is kind of a waste of time because there’s a lot of other (better) ways to keep up on what’s hot in the tech industry.  First and foremost I’d recommend listening to as many TWiT netcasts as possible.  The most obvious of the bunch would be This Week in Tech itself, but I’d also recommend taking a look at MacBreak Weekly and Windows Weekly while you’re there.  Those are my primary sources for tech news.

On the gaming side of things I’d recommend the usuals.  My favorite of the bunch is the Joystiq Podcast, the hosts of which not only review the news from the past week but also provide an often-times hysterical delivery.  My second standby when it comes to gaming podcasts would have to be 4 Guys 1UP, previously the 1UP Yours podcast with Garnett Lee.  Garnett has since moved on to bigger and better things at Gamefly but David Ellis has done a great job in his stead.

The latest additions to my repertoire are CheapyD’s CAGcast and CO-OP by Area 5, a band of 1UP alumnus.  The CAGcast (short for Cheap Ass Gamer, a website dedicated to gaming deals) is probably the most laid-back of the bunch and, to be honest, I mostly listen to it for CheapyD and Wombat’s off-topic banter.  CO-OP on the other hand is a masterfully-produced Revision 3 video show that reviews the past week’s releases.

So, now that I’ve more-or-less put myself out of a job by sharing all of my sources for information, what can I offer?  How about a Canibus song (best rapper alive):

Google Voice

I was fortunate enough to get invites to both Google Voice and Google Wave this week, but for now I’m going to stick with discussing Google Voice. This is mostly because nobody I know has Google Wave yet and, for a product that’s about collaboration with other people, it makes it hard to form an educated opinion about its usefulness.

Google Voice is a new service from Google which lets you link multiple phone numbers (home phone, work phone, mobile, etc.) to one new number of your choosing, as long as it’s available.  You can search for numbers via keyword (for example your name), area code or zip code.  Once you’ve chosen your new number all you have to do is link your pre-existing numbers to that one and you’ll have access to the host of cool features that Google Voice provides.

The most obvious feature Google Voice provides is call forwarding.  Using the site’s settings you can set Google Voice to forward calls and messages to one of your various phones automatically.  For example, you could set your work phone to only receive Google Voice calls between 9 and 5 on weekdays, or your home phone to only receive calls on weekends.  You can even setup and manage certain groups of contacts and set the default phone for each – for example, if you want to direct work calls to your mobile phone you can do that.

The next feature I like is getting Google into some hot water with carriers – free SMS messaging.  From the Google Voice website you can send text messages to any phone, for free.  Many people have presumed that this feature alone is why the Google Voice application was denied from Apple’s App Store.  You can be sure that AT&T wasn’t too excited about the idea.

One of the best features you get with Google Voice is the purest form of free visual voicemail I’ve ever seen.  Voicemails sent to your Google Voice account are automatically transcribed to text and forwarded to the Google Voice website where you have an inbox for all incoming messages.  The transcriptions are surprisingly accurate, but you can also playback the message from the website if there are a few missed words.  As you would expect, from your Google Voice inbox you can read incoming messages as though you were reading email from your Gmail inbox.  You can search for messages, leave notes to yourself and even add stars to important messages so you can come back to them later.

All said I think Google Voice is an excellent service.  I can only hope that someone at Apple or AT&T decides to let the application through to the App Store.  If not, you can bet that Google will work on a mobile web version of Google Voice like they’ve done with most of their other services, and we’ll get access to it anyways.

Snow Leopard on Friday

After a bunch of speculation the release date for Apple’s OS X Snow Leopard is confirmed – August 28th, this Friday. That had been the rumor going around and yet again it proved to be true.

There really isn’t much else to be said. If you have Leopard on your machine and you’re looking to upgrade, you can get your copy of Snow Leopard for $29. Even better, if you’ve bought a Mac anytime between now and last June, you can get your upgrade copy for just $9.95.

Because I bought my Macbook Pro in June I preordered my copy way back then, so I should have it on Friday. Expect a post about how the update goes.

Subscribe to Jason Calacanis’s Newsletter

The headline pretty much says it all.  Jason Calacanis, founder of Mahalo.com, puts out an extremely intriguing newsletter every now and again that’s totally free.  Who is Jason?  Well, he’s basically a successful tech entrepreneur who is business-minded but doesn’t neglect the inner geek.  You might have seen or heard him on the This Week In Tech podcast, which he participates in from time to time.

I have to admit, at first glance Mr. Calacanis might rub people the wrong way.  His brash manner and uninhibited honesty is a departure from the norm, but that’s also the reason he’s garnered my respect.  That’s what inspired me to subscribe to his newsletter when I first heard about it a few months ago.  That being said I tended to ignore it when it landed in my inbox for the first few times.  That has changed.

A couple weeks ago Jason sent out his now famous email about the Microsoft/Yahoo partnership.  I won’t go into details because they’re readily available online, most notably at his blog, but it was the first newsletter that I took the time to read.  He presented a well-written argument which, if nothing else, inspired me to think a lot more about the matter.  He’s since followed up with emails about Apple and their flight from openness in regards to the iPhone, each equally if not more thought-provoking than the “seppuku” note.  Calacanis provides the perfect mixture of equal parts experience and opinion that stimulates great discussion, and he doesn’t shy away from readers replying to his comments (in fact he has shared some of them in follow-up newsletters).

So, with that said, hit up http://tinyurl.com/jasonslist and subscribe right away.  Even if you don’t agree with everything he writes about it’s a great way to keep in the loop and stimulate thinking.  In the meantime I’ll steadfastly await that next [Jason] subject line to drop into my inbox.

Google’s Eric Schmidt Resigns from Apple Board of Directors

This is a very interesting development given very recent conflicts between Google and Apple/AT&T.  Sure, Steve Jobs has stated that Eric’s resignation was a mutual decision made by both companies because Google’s encroachment on familiar territory is becoming a conflict of interest.  Still, Android has been out for some time, so why now?

One of the biggest stories last week was Apple’s denial of the Google Voice application on the iTunes app store.  The dispute has since been consumed by the gaze of the FCC to determine if this choice was made by AT&T moreso than Apple, or if AT&T in any way influences the content found on the App Store.  If that’s the case, as it may very well be, the ruling could be important for a couple reasons.

1. Consumers have one more reason to detest AT&T
2. It gives no logical support for the claim that the denial of Google applications has anything to do with Schmidt’s descent from the board
3. Consumers have one more reason to dete….oh, I already said that one

Honestly though it doesn’t sound like Apple’s style to bend to the will of AT&T.  They love their products enough to say something to the affect of “Listen, we have a product that has made you millions, you think this app conflicts with your service then tough cookies – we’re working on a Verizon version of the iPhone anyways.”  I’m getting off-track here.

Does this departure setup a feud between Apple and Google?  The two companies have seemed almost philosophically aligned for some time now, and most pundits don’t really consider Android or what we know of Chrome OS as major threats in their individual markets (phone and PC operating systems).  All this time it has been Microsoft who has been desperately trying to compete with the big G, and just when it seems that they’re making a solid go of it the focus might be shifting towards an Apple/Google main event instead.

There is one area in which the philosophies of Apple and Google conflict, however.  Openness.  It’s been proclaimed that this might be the achilles heel of Apple.  Google always happily opens up their projects to developers while Apple severely shies away from such behavior.  Sure, the iTunes App Store is extremely successful, but the only complaint we seem to hear about weekly is that certain apps get shot down for seemingly silly reasons, and of course Apple’s proprietary take on their hardware and software is always criticized.  If Apple had the market share Windows does, they’d have one of the worst monopolies we’ve ever seen.

The only thing we could possibly say Google has a monopoly on is the search engine market, but with Bing approaching 10%+ market share that’s not as much of a compelling case.

Have 2 hours to kill? Want to know more about Google Wave?

If you answered yes to these two questions I have a video just for you!  The video below weighs in at an impressive 120 minutes, and is (from what I can tell after watching the first 5) a thorough demonstration of Google Wave and its API.

Google Wave

I’m not sure what to make of Google Wave just yet.  It seems to me like it’s a collaboration tool more than anything – you’ll be able to share and create documents with rich text and multimedia support, and these projects are updated real time to allow easy communication between participants.  Still, there is Google inbox, chat and Picasa integration, and it’s been said that this is Google’s response to Twitter.  Based on the screenshots it looks like it’ll be a good way to communicate with friends, but the description makes Wave sound like something entirely different.  All I know is that I like the user interface, and I’m happy it’s open to developers.

You can throw your name into the hat to try Google Wave as soon as it becomes available at the link below.

http://wave.google.com/

A new contender enters the ring…

It’s no secret that I’ve been planning my next laptop purchase for a while now.  Up until today I was stuck deciding between the HP HDX 16 and the Dell Studio XPS 16.  Now Acer had to come along and throw a monkey wrench into my plans!  I was lucky to have narrowed it down that far!

Acer announced a new line of very interesting notebooks at their event in New York today.  The new line is branded “Aspire Timeline,” and they basically amount to machines with the portability of a MacBook or Dell Adamo with a much more attractive price.  There are three models (13.3″, 14.1″ and 15.6″) and all three are only an inch thick.  The prices range from $699 – $899.  They also have incredible battery life; eight hours stock and up to ten with a solid state drive.

Since I’m looking for a machine with a screen that’s larger than my current MacBook’s the 15.6-incher is my most likely candidate.  Of course details are sketchy right now and if the laptops don’t perform in the end then I’ll have to pass.  Still, in the documentation Acer says that these are for “knowledgeable users who understand performance” so there’s hope.

Originally found on Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/07/acer-announces-aspire-timeline-ultralights-699-to-899/

iPhone OS 3.0 for Consumers

I’m sure you all saw this one coming.  Here’s my run-through of what Apple announced at their iPhone OS 3.0 event earlier in the week.  Since most of what intrigued me in the keynote was related to their “features for consumers” I’m going to dedicate this post to those.  Some of the SDK additions for developers are interesting but that relies quite a bit on the actual developers putting them into good use.  So, without further ado:

Cut, Copy and Paste
Shocker of all shockers, Apple finally got their act together and found some way to accomplish the impossible task of integrating cut, copy and paste into the iPhone.  This has been a long time coming, and I’m glad it’s finally here.  With the new cut, copy and paste feature you’ll be able to, surprise, copy and paste text not just inside of one application, but across all applications on the iPhone.

Landscape Mode
Another obvious and necessary upgrade, landscape mode lets you run all of the standard Apple iPhone applications in landscape.  Most importantly, this means that you’ll be able to get the larger-format widescreen keyboard that was up until now exclusive to Safari in all of your Apple iPhone applications.  Note that I say Apple iPhone applications because, as far as I know, this will only count for their traditional suite of pre-installed apps (Mail, Notes, Contacts, etc.).  This update should help some of the folks out there with bigger fingers to type a bit more easily, especially in Mail.

MMS
Again, it seems as though with iPhone OS 3.0 Apple is just trying systematically tick off items on a fictional checklist titled “Cell Phone Necessities.”   With MMS you’ll finally be able to send and receive multimedia messages on the iPhone including pictures, sound files, and contact cards.  To me personally this isn’t a feature I’ve been waiting for since you can already do most of those things in email, but I know that a lot of consumers have been deterred from purchasing an iPhone because of its lack of support for MMS.

Voice Memos
Have you ever seen one of those commercials with an older lady using a small voice recorder to remember where she parked, or what to pick up at the grocery store?  That’s basically what voice memos are.  Using voice memos you can now use your iPhone to record short messages for later playback so you too can overcome your forgetfulness.  I think this is a feature that seems kind of hokey, but some may like it.

CalDAV and Calendar Subscriptions (.ics)
Getting calendars to sync properly on your touch device has always been a tall order.  Sure it can be done, but you have to jump through a lot of hoops if you’re not using exchange.  Now that the iPhone calendar app supports CalDAV hopefully keeping my Google Calendar synced won’t be as much of an issue.  I’m pretty excited for this feature, as I’d love to have my calendar events synced perfectly between calendar.google.com, iCal on the desktop and my mobile device.  Also being able to subscribe to calendars will be a nice addition.

Search and Spotlight
Finally we come to search.  Search has been integrated into all of the standard Apple iPhone apps so you can now quickly and easily search through your inbox, contacts, calendar of events and so on.  Apple has also integrated a new homescreen, Spotlight, which lets you search the entire phone at once.  Say for instance I typed in “Ron” with Spotlight.  Not only would the Spotlight results show the emails I’ve received from my friend Ron, but also the songs on my iPod by the artist Ronnie Drew and a calendar event I set to have lunch at “Ron’s Cafe.”  Okay that last one was a bit of a stretch but check out the image below to get a better idea of how it works.

Conclusion
So that’s it.  Like I said there were no bombshells really, and most of the event was devoted to checking off some features that Apple has been inundated with requests for since the iPhone launched.  Some of the developer SDK additions seem promising but I can’t really comment on those until I get a chance to play with the apps that utilize them.  It was a pretty straight-forward and almost mundane event, but that leaves a lot left for WWDC in June.