iphone blog

March 16, 2010

BlackBerry to Lose More Ground to iPhone, Android: Survey

Filed under: theappleblog — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — @ 4:25 pm

A new survey by research firm Crowd Science brings bad news for BlackBerry maker RIM, and some good news for Apple. The company that comes out best of all, though, is Google, whose Android operating system seems poised to see some major growth in the near future.

The survey, which Crowd Science performs semi-annually, addresses smartphone brand loyalty. This time around, it found that iPhone and Android customers were well satisfied with their choice of smartphone, but that BlackBerry is hemorrhaging users badly to both of those primary competitors.

A little over 90 percent of both iPhone and Android smartphone owners plan to stay with that OS when they purchase their next device, while nearly 40 percent of BlackBerry owners said they would opt for an iPhone next time around, and 34 percent said they’d go with Android instead of a RIM device.

It’s bad news for the Waterloo-based BlackBerry maker, and this latest survey shows that Apple isn’t exclusively to blame for the company’s steady decline. According to Crowd Science CEO John Martin:

These results show that the restlessness of Blackberry users with their current brand hasn’t just been driven by the allure of iPhone. Rather, Blackberry as a brand just isn’t garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems.

For me, the real surprise is not that many are dissatisfied with RIM, which seems to have done very little but make incremental cosmetic upgrades with its devices over the last couple of years, but that Android is nearly matching the iPhone in terms of consumer awareness and desire.

Apple still has the advantage in terms of who its customers are and what kind of money they’re willing to spend, and on what, though. iPhone owners tend to be slightly older and more affluent, and are much more likely to buy paid applications compared to other smartphone users. Android owners skew younger and less affluent, and accordingly are much less likely to spend money on paid applications. They do download more free apps than any other user group, though.

Finally, the Nexus One is making a big splash, even if it isn’t selling in droves. Android awareness in general jumped six percentage points to 66 percent since the last survey period, and 32 percent of BlackBerry owners would swap their current devices for a Nexus One right away, given the chance. That number jumps to 60 percent for users of smartphones not made by Apple or BlackBerry.

While RIM is the company that should really be scared by the results of this survey, Apple shouldn’t exactly be patting themselves on the back, either. Android is making steady gains, especially among current smartphone users, and they seem to have scored a special place in the hearts of young consumers, which, when combined with the 90 percent plus brand loyalty result, could pay off huge going forward.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Report: Surveying the Mobile App Store Landscape

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BlackBerry to Lose More Ground to iPhone, Android: Survey

March 15, 2010

Analyst Estimate: 150,000 iPads Pre-Ordered Already

Filed under: theappleblog — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — @ 4:40 pm

While the number isn’t official (Apple isn’t exactly free and easy with its sales figures), one analyst is saying that although its early yet to tell, it looks like the iPad is on track to break some pretty significant records in terms of order volume. Amateur Apple analyst Daniel Tello, who regularly outguesses the pros, is now saying that around 152,000 iPads have been pre-ordered in the first 72 hours of availability.

Tello’s approach involves extrapolating Apple web order numbers. This time around, he worked with Victor Castroll, a Valcent Financial Group analyst. Together, they surveyed a sample group and found 120 orders for 137 iPads over 58 hours beginning at 8:30 A.M. Friday morning.

From there, Tello applied a formula that subtracts non-iPad orders on Apple’s site and multiplies the resulting number by an average of 1.125 iPads per order. Finally, he added in 2,000 units for late-night hours during which time they had no data. In the end, the total arrived at was 152,000 ending at midnight on Sunday. The number doesn’t factor in iPads reserved for in-store pickup.

Tello is quick to note that even though the number seems fairly impressive for a brand new product, there was actually a huge dip in pre-order numbers following the initial day. First day sales saw 120,000 pre-orders, at a rate of around 25,000 per hour. By Sunday, that hourly rate had slowed to about 1,000. The initial spike is explained by “overexcited fanboism” according to Tello.

Based on the current numbers, Tello estimates that pre-order numbers won’t exceed much more than half a million. He anticipates when the iPad will hit the magic million-unit mark in an interview with Fortune:

My best guess, although very tentative given the early stage and few data we have so far, would be that they hit the 1 million unit milestone by the second week after it ships. But this is a very speculative guesstimate based on just a weekend of pre-orders.

To hit 1 million two weeks after shipping would be a major milestone, not only for Apple itself, but for the entire tablet market. The iPhone took 74 days before it reached 1 millions sold, and the sales numbers for the entire tablet industry is only around 3 to 4 million a year according to Engadget. Apple would then be on pace to actually double or triple the sales numbers of its entire market segment on its own in the first year of sales, if the iPad sells roughly as many units as did the iPhone in its first year.

Tello’s numbers also provide a snapshot of what kind of iPads are being sold in what quantities. The Wi-Fi only model is strongly outselling the Wi-Fi + 3G version, by a margin of almost exactly two to one. It’s not surprising given the price difference between the two, and the growing prevalence of MiFi devices that convert users’ existing cellular data plans into usable Wi-Fi. Surprisingly, storage capacities are more evenly divided, with the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models taking roughly a third of the pre-orders each.

Remember also that these sales figures are only for the U.S. so far. International versions of the device aren’t due to go on sale until sometime in late April at the earliest. The real challenge for Apple will be the first few weeks of in-store availability, which is when the general public will be making purchases, and not just the devoted Apple faithful willing to put down a pre-order. If both international customers and the general buyer reflect anywhere near the enthusiasm of the pre-order crowd, Apple will definitely have a hit on its hands, but I’d wait till the hype effect has passed before placing any real bets about the iPad’s future success.

Related Research from GigaOM Pro:

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Analyst Estimate: 150,000 iPads Pre-Ordered Already

March 14, 2010

Was the iPad Launch a Success?

Filed under: theappleblog — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — @ 8:39 pm

Even though a single iPad hasn’t actually been shipped, that won’t stop the questions over the success of initial orders from being asked. Considering how Apple has positioned the iPad in the product lineup, on par with the Mac, iPod, and iPhone, Steve Jobs better have a press-release answer ready.

On Friday, Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Apple 2.0 started following people following the numbers, though whether those numbers are real or imaginary is yet to be determined. The data thus far derived has come from InvestorVillage, an Internet forum for “self-directed investors.”

By using orders numbers from an admittedly small number of purchasers, and accounting for purchases of other products at the Apple Store, the initial estimate was 51,000 in the first two hours, 74,000 after four and a half hours, and 91,000 in six hours. According to Apple 2.0, by the end of Friday the estimated number of iPad pre-orders was approximately 120,000. That’s the good news, assuming it’s true.

Apple 2.0 also passed along metrics for 110 iPads that are what you’d expect, Wi-Fi over 3G by two to one, the cheapest iPad at $499 being very popular. Somewhat surprisingly, the most expensive model, 64GB/3G at $829, was also popular but, hey, these are self-directed investors spending their hard-earned dividends that we’re talking about.

Of course, there’s another group of investors waiting for news on iPad orders. Investors in AAPL saw their fortunes rise on Friday with the stock price reaching a new high at $227, the company briefly overtaking Wal-Mart in valuation at $206 billion. Whether AAPL goes higher on Monday will likely come down to how many iPad orders there were over the weekend, but how many equals success?

Looking back at iPhone launches, a million iPads ordered would definitely be a success, probably more than all the Slate PCs with Windows sold since 2002. Don’t expect that to happen. Both the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS were immediately available in multiple countries. While the iPad will be available in other countries in late April, the first weekend of the month will be U.S. only, so perhaps the original iPhone would be a better comparison. Certainly, if the iPad does outsell the original iPhone, that will be the spin, but what if it doesn’t?

Everyone who wanted to order an iPad could have ordered one Friday. There were no lines at the online Apple Store. Even assuming the number crunchers at InvestorVillage got it right on Friday, it seems unlikely to me anything like 120,000 orders will be placed on successive days. For the sake of argument, let’s assume the number ordered is halved on successive days, 210,000 total over three days. 210,000 iPads doesn’t look very good compared to the iPhone launch, does it? The only thing worse would be if Apple doesn’t release any numbers.

In an interview with the New York Times last year, Jobs remarked on Amazon’s silence over Kindle sales, saying, “usually, if they sell a lot of something, you want to tell everybody.” That’s exactly why we’ve never heard about Apple TV sales, and it’s what will be the real metric for whether iPad orders were a success over the weekend. If there is silence from Cupertino, expect investors to react with wailing and selling of AAPL. More importantly for consumers, there could be an immediate drop in the price for the iPad, similar to what happened with the original iPhone shortly after launch.

I think that’s the kind of failure we can all appreciate.

Related Research from GigaOM Pro:

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Was the iPad Launch a Success?

March 12, 2010

New iPad Details Emerge as Pre-Ordering Commences

Filed under: theappleblog — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — @ 4:19 pm

People may be able to buy their iPads today, but they won’t actually get their hands on the much-anticipated devices until early next month, and later if they opted for 3G connectivity. But Apple isn’t without a heart, so the company revealed some new specific details about the tablet on the iPad micro-site, according to MacWorld.

Included in the informational appetizer are details regarding the 3G data plans available for the device, the iBooks application and how it will work, a small hardware change that should make a pretty big difference, and a couple other eyebrow-raising late-game additions.

Data Control

The iPad benefits from having to deal with only two available data options at launch in the U.S. Because it knows exactly how much data you should have, it can provide much more useful usage information. You get access to an iPad Cellular Data Plan window on the 3G-enabled devices, from which you can modify, sign up for, or even cancel your AT&T data plan.

The iPad will let you know when you’ve got only 20 percent and 10 percent remaining of your 250MB if that’s what you’re working with, and when you’re completely out. From there, you can top off by adding more data, or even upgrade to the full unlimited plan at $30 a month. Sure beats sitting on hold waiting for an AT&T representative. There’s also evidence that you’ll be able to manage an international data plan from the screen in the future, but Apple hasn’t revealed any details regarding this yet.

iBooks

The actual iBooks app won’t be installed by default on shipping iPads, probably owing to the fact that it might not be available at all on international versions of the device, at least if the lack of a mention of the app on the iPad pages in other countries indicates anything. Instead, you’ll be able to download it from the App Store.

Good news for public domain fans: any free ePub format books you download from elsewhere can be synced to the iPad via iTunes and read on your device. And Kindle fans will appreciate the ability to highlight and look-up any word in any book, either on Wikipedia, the dictionary, or via web search, just by touching and holding.

Screen Orientation Lock

I absolutely hate using the iPhone while lying in bed for a lot of things because many times, a screen lock is a software feature and isn’t necessarily available for all applications. That means that it’ll constantly switch to landscape mode, despite that not being at all what I want it to do.

The iPad solves that problem via a hardware switch above the volume controls on the side of the device that locks the screen’s orientation into whatever mode it’s in currently.

Accessibility

More accessibility options have been added, including the ability to switch audio to mono and route it through just one headphone for users who may only have hearing in one ear. iBooks are also apparently covered by VoiceOver, so that users can have them read to them by Apple’s emotionless robot drones.

AVI Support

Perhaps the biggest little detail added in the iPad’s specifications is support for AVI videos, using the MotionJPEG format. Resolution for the files supported is 1280

March 11, 2010

Kayak’s Projected Market Cap: More Than $705M

Filed under: gigaom — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — @ 11:30 pm

One of the more solid and genuinely useful Internet startups out there, travel fare aggregator Kayak, was dissected in a report released today by NeXt Up Research for SharesPost. NeXt Up thinks that with a heavy advertising spend, Kayak should have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18 percent from 2009 to 2012. Based on estimated revenue and comparison to competitors, the report estimates Kayak’s market cap at between $705 and $771 million.

Is Kayak a promising IPO candidate? You decide. Here are some of the relevant assessments:

  • Meta search engines like Kayak accounted for less than 8 percent of online travel booked in 2009, due mostly to low awareness.

  • Kayak is spending heavily to make itself better known — NeXt Up estimates an advertising budget of $50 million a year, but Kayak has said itself it plans to spend $100 million on marketing.

  • The travel industry should recover from the recession and see a CAGR of 4 percent from 2009 to 2013, with online travel agents growing with a 7 percent CAGR.

  • Promising Kayak initiatives include its iPhone apps (see our story) and Travelpost, its TripAdvisor competitor.

  • Kayak is projected to have revenue of $180 million in 2010, growing to $305 million in 2014 with EBITDA margins of 30-35 percent.

  • Kayak has raised about $224 million in venture funding and debt from General Catalyst, Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, Oak Investment Partners, Tenaya Capital, Trident Capital, Gold Hill Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Silicon Valley Bank and AOL.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

What Twitter Airfare Sales Tell Us About Real-Time E-Commerce

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Kayak’s Projected Market Cap: More Than $705M

Rumor Has It: iPhone 4.0 Bringing Multitasking

Filed under: theappleblog — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — @ 6:25 pm

The iPhone has a number of advantages over its smartphone competitors, but one thing it hasn’t had that users have been clamoring for is true multitasking. Push notifications were intended as a workaround designed to give users the ability to stay up-to-date with multiple apps without having to actually run them at the same time.

It’s still only a partial solution, though, and one many iPhone users aren’t satisfied with. True multitasking is still high on the want list of many iPhone users, and really remains the only thing not addressed by the many major feature additions iPhone 3.0 brought. Luckily, true app backgrounding capabilities are said to be on the way in iPhone 4.0.

That’s according to sources AppleInsider describes as having a “proven track record in predicting Apple’s technological advances.” According to those same sources, though, Apple still has a ways to go before it can introduce these features to iPhone users. But the problem doesn’t lie with the iPhone’s ability to run multiple applications at once.

In fact, the iPhone is quite good at multitasking in its current incarnation. Nike+ runs great while you do other things like take calls and/or check your email. But it’s the only non-Apple app that’s allowed that privilege. And Apple developed it for Nike, so it doesn’t really count. What’s new in iPhone 4.0 is that third-party developers will finally be able to run their apps in the background, too.

Apple hasn’t enabled true multitasking for all apps not because it’s been technically prevented from doing so, but because doing so represents a security risk in terms of opening the door to apps being able to run in the background without the user’s knowledge, which is how viruses and other malware works.

There’s also the issue of increased performance requirements, and increased battery usage. Apple is said to be addressing both of those with the new framework, though the source provided no specifics about how exactly that would be managed. I predict that mutitasking will only work on newer hardware, most likely the 3GS and above. A next-gen iPhone will probably be built from the ground up with multitasking in mind, and should offer battery and processor improvements scaled to compensate.

Another challenge Apple faces in bringing background multitasking to the iPhone is redesigning the user interface. As of now, users can access any currently running Apple programs that use backgrounding by tapping a thin colored bar at the top of the screen. While that works quite well for just one app, if you have a number running at once, it could quickly become way too cluttered and obscure the app you’re actually using at the moment.

According to AppleInsider’s source, the solution in the works at Apple leverages some existing tech from OS X to accomplish this. Personally, I’m betting on some kind of Exposé-type interface, possibly accessed through a special gesture or in a way similar to the one used now to bring up the iPhone’s Spotlight search screen. It might also take a page out of mobile Safari’s book, and use an interface similar to the one the browser has for displaying multiple pages.

The iPhone’s interface in general could probably use a makeover at the point. It’s been unchanged since its launch, and while many would call that a testament to its strength and intuitiveness, there’s no denying that as the iPhone gains new abilities, Apple might want to consider some more drastic changes to the ways in which users access and make use of those functions.

I’m sure Apple can handle the UI challenges, but I’m much more wary about how it addresses the potential security risks that come with opening up backgrounding. Luckily, it still has absolute control over the App Store, but it still might be possible for industrious hackers to bypass the safeguards in place and get some malicious software onto people’s devices.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: The App Developer’s Guide to Choosing a Mobile Platform

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Rumor Has It: iPhone 4.0 Bringing Multitasking

Apple sees 98% iPhone growth as Microsoft, Google prepare for battle

Filed under: appleinsider — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — @ 3:15 pm

By Neil Hughes

Published: 10:15 AM EST

Worldwide smartphone shipments stormed back last quarter with 37.2 percent in growth, and Apple’s iPhone led the way with a 97.9 percent year-over-year surge in shipments. But the real coming battle in the mobile market, according to one analyst, lies between Microsoft and Google.

Analyst Charlie Wolf with Needham & Company provided a breakdown of the expanding smartphone market, which in the holiday quarter rebounded from just 5.6 percent growth over the previous four quarters. While Apple saw the greatest success, Nokia’s shipments also jumped 37.3 percent and Research in Motion saw a spike of 41.2 percent.

While the recession has softened and the smartphone market is recovering, Wolf is now looking to the future and the fiercely competitive handset business.

“Events since the beginning of 2010 have turned the market into a land grab not dissimilar to the California gold rush in the 1800s,” Wolf wrote. “Everyone is chasing the iPhone which has taken on an aura that far exceeds the phone’s market share. The aura stems from the disruptive design and functionality of the first iPhone, and it has been reinforced by the remarkable success of the iPhone App Store.”

The analyst said he believes the smartphone market has turned into a “land grab” that is “virtually certain” to lead to a brutal battle between Microsoft and Google. He said Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Series won’t kill the iPhone, which exists in a class by itself, but it will be a potential “Android killer.” Windows Phone 7 Series, Wolf said, is evidence that Microsoft “finally gets it.”

Wolf 1

“Microsoft has delivered on the necessary condition for success — a smartphone operating system that should enable it to play in the same sandbox with Apple, Google and BlackBerry,” he wrote. “We’ve frequently criticized Microsoft’s inept efforts in delivering a user-friendly smartphone operating system. Such criticisms are now in the past.”

The real coming smartphone battle, he said, lies between Google’s Android mobile operating system and Windows Phone 7. Android has a few advantages, in that it licensees do not have to pay any fees, and it allows manufacturers to differentiate their phones from other Android devices with custom interfaces. But Android also has no presence on the enterprise market, where Microsoft and its entrenched position with Windows will play to the Redmond, Wash., company’s advantage.

“A major battle between Microsoft and Google to win the hearts and minds of the smartphone vendors who are building devices for both platforms appears inevitable.”

Wolf 2

Microsoft is also expected to extend its new Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system to non-phone devices such as the rumored Zune HD2 portable media player. The first phones running Windows Phone 7 Series are expected to arrive by this holiday.

Wolf also spoke of the success BlackBerry has found “out of the limelight,” and the struggles faced by Palm despite the company’s “superior platform.”

“We have little confidence in a material acceleration in Pre sales because Palm simply does not have the financial resources to market its devices at a level comparable to its competitors,” he wrote. “But miracles do occur occasionally.”

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Apple sees 98% iPhone growth as Microsoft, Google prepare for battle

March 9, 2010

Not Every iPhone Apple App to Get the iPad Treatment

Filed under: gigaom — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — @ 6:56 pm

Apple has a default set of apps that come with every iPhone and iPod touch that you can’t remove from the device, and that provide some basic features that are likely to appeal to a wide swath of users. The iPad will have a default set, too, but it won’t necessarily include all the familiar apps you know and possibly love.

According to John Gruber of Daring Fireball, apps that Apple didn’t show off during its iPad unveiling event weren’t just left out because there weren’t many major changes made to them, they actually won’t appear on the platform at all. Or, if they do, they won’t ship with the product and instead will be downloadable after the fact via the App Store.

The apps in question are Calculator, Stocks, Weather, Clock and Voice Memos. According to Gruber’s sources, the apps won’t be included not because Apple has deemed them any less useful or appealing to consumers in terms of function, but because Cupertino couldn’t come up with iPad-complementary large-format designs for their user interfaces.

Personally, I’m not too upset about the omissions. I barely ever use Calculator and Voice Memos, and I’ve opened Stocks maybe once or twice. Weather I’ve replaced with a much more functional third-party app. Clock is the only one I use regularly, but I suspect it won’t be that hard to replace it via third-party sources if necessary, either, and I probably won’t have the iPad at the gym anyway, which is where I use Clock the most for its stopwatch functions.

I’m still of the opinion that Apple should make all of its native apps downloadable content, aside from the iPod and phone-related apps on the iPhone, so this is probably as close as I’ll get to that coming true. But it raises an interesting question about third-party apps: if Apple can’t see a way to make some of its content work on the iPad, how are developers going to be expected to cope?

Changing screen size doesn’t only change the amount of space you have in which to display things. It changes a user’s expectation of what a piece of software will be able to do, and the way in which the program will do it. Games may be able to escape this expectation gap, since they provide roughly the same thing whether portable or not (hence the success of PS ports on the PSP), but utilities and other apps likely won’t.

It’s fine for existing iPhone and iPod touch owners, who will probably just find using old apps dissatisfying, but know to wait for iPad-specific programs. But what about users new not only to the platform, but to iPhone OS as a whole? Ill-fitting apps could sour these new customers against the iPad right out of the gate, conceivably alienating some so strongly that they might not return to Apple for future products.

There’s two ways Apple can fight this: from launch, it should highlight and drive new customers to an iPad-specific section of the App Store, possibly through a modification to the App Store application itself on the device. I’m almost certain this will happen anyway, but the app should default to iPad-only titles at launch to make certain that inexperienced users will only be exposed to those if they don’t understand App Store navigation fully off the bat.

Finally, Apple needs to better encourage developers to convert existing apps to the iPad’s dimensions, and alter their UIs accordingly. I’m not sure yet how Apple is planning to deal with developers wanting to offer iPad and iPhone-specific versions of the same app, but making that process as simple as possible for consumers looking to choose one over the other will be key to establishing developer good faith, and convincing users that the iPad isn’t jut the big iPod many detractors are making it out to be.

Related Research from GigaOM Pro:

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Not Every iPhone Apple App to Get the iPad Treatment

March 8, 2010

Mac Developer Program Invites iPhone SDK Halo Effect

Filed under: theappleblog — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — @ 4:00 pm

This past Thursday Apple announced sweeping changes to the Developer Program. The old Select and Premiere programs have been replaced by a $99/year Mac Developer Program that is similar to the iPhone Developer Program. The old ADC programs were substantially more expensive ($499 and $3,499) and the program benefits have been simplified to match the new lower cost.

Apple had this to say…

Modeled after the highly successful iPhone Developer Program, we’ve relaunched the Mac Developer Program to offer members technical resources, support, access to pre-release software, developer forums and more, all for just $99 per year. As our developer base continues to grow in leaps and bounds, we’re working hard to ensure we provide our developers with everything they need to create innovative applications for both the iPhone OS and Mac OS X

Benefits

Developers that enroll in the new Mac Developer Program have access to pre-release builds of Mac OS X, OS X Server, tools, and SDKs. Xcode was always available for free, but access to Snow Leopard for development will encourage developers to begin incorporating the unique technology available in 10.6 (Grand Central Dispatch, OpenCL, etc.) into their applications. OS X Server, even for development testing, is a nice plus.

The annual subscription includes two technical support incidents where Apple will assign an engineer from the developer support team to help track down a problem and recommend a solution. Additional support incidents are still available for purchase as they were under the old program. Incidents are $99 for a two-pack or $499 for a five-pack.

Members also have access to developer forums and video training. The forums are a great resource because they are filled with posts from registered developers, including many recognizable names from well-known Mac shops. The videos do not include the WWDC session videos, which are still available for purchase separately ($299 for a Mac session, or $499 for the complete collection).

It appears that access to the compatibility labs and the ADC Hardware Purchase discounts are not available in the new Mac Developer program. Existing members can continue to access their ADC benefits until their subscription expires.

Apple has not made any changes to its current programs for Support and Pro Apps certifications to expand into developer certifications.

The iPhone SDK Halo Effect

The new pricing and web site modeled after the iPhone program should serve to bring more developers over to the Mac side. With all the interest in iPhone apps, there are a number of developers that are now familiar with Objective-C and the Cocoa frameworks. There may be a sort of programming halo effect similar to the phenomenon seen on the consumer side where customers happy with the iPod or iPhone are convinced to try the Mac for their next computer. Gedeon Maheux co-founder of the successful design and development outfit Iconfactory had this to say:

The lower entry price and the ability to use knowledge learned for their mobile platforms both seem like a logical evolution of what they’ve done in the last few years.

The Mac has been out of the lime light for quite some time and I think Apple is rightfully attempting to put the focus back on the platform. It sure is exciting!

With the new file-sharing support in the iPad, desktop companion apps will be a great benefit to iPhone/iPad apps. Of course, designing apps for the iPad with its large screen is getting awfully close to designing an app for the Mac. I am hopeful that the new program will encourage even more development on the Mac OS platform. For example, casual games have made a huge splash in the App Store and bringing over some of these titles to the Mac might be great fun for those without iPhones, and an alternate revenue stream for publishers. The $99 price might be just enough to convince some iPhone developers to give it a go on the Mac as well.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: The App Developer’s Guide to Choosing a Mobile Platform

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Mac Developer Program Invites iPhone SDK Halo Effect

March 7, 2010

Microsoft’s Courier ‘digital journal’: The ’second coming’ of all student tech

Filed under: zdnet — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — @ 11:51 pm

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 3:51 pm

Categories: Breaking news, Discussion, Hardware, Major breakthroughs, Microsoft, Mobile computing, Next-generation technology, Productivity, Research, Skills development, University, Weird and wonderful, e-Learning

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Tablet, Touchscreen, Courier, Netbooks, Nettops & MIDs, iPhone, Hardware, Zack Whittaker

There’s a reason why I have never even looked at the concept images or videos of Microsoft’s new digital journal, Courier, without a sour, unfriendly taste in my mouth until now. Microsoft had nothing but love and energy pumped into their concepts, whereas the real thing is horrifically different.

My colleague Mary Jo Foley has questioned the even existence of this device, similarly to how I think. Had they stitched together and trimmed down half of the Microsoft research projects in play at the moment, they already have most of it there.

But if in the deep, dark world of Microsoft’s Redmond campus there is even a smidgen of hope for this device, I ask that you rally up around me and take the place by storm so we can prove it really is there.

If this device, through the videos above courtesy of Engadget via Steve Clayton, will turn out to be what they say they are, you can lay your laptop or netbook down and light a candle of solidarity for this technological second-coming.

This my student friends, will be it. Discuss.

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Microsoft’s Courier ‘digital journal’: The ’second coming’ of all student tech

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