Display Equals Application

Why the new iPad’s Retina Display matters

“So when a device comes along like the iPad that doesn’t just display the application, but actually becomes the application, radically improving its screen radically improves the experience. And when a device’s screen is as radically improved as the display in the new iPad, the device itself is fundamentally changed.”

Brilliant observation/thought!

Apple: Defining the Post-PC Era

An excellent editorial piece by Joshua Topolsky of Engadget – whether iPad2 is revolutionary or evolutionary – Apple is changing the game. And in doing so forging new territory.

Amplify’d from www.engadget.com

In this new world, Apple no longer has to compete on specs and features, nor does it want to. There is no Mac vs. PC here — only “the future” versus “the past.” It won’t be a debate about displays, memory, wireless options — it will be a debate about the quality of the experience. Apple is not just eschewing the spec conversation in favor of a different conversation — it’s rendering those former conversations useless. It would be like trying to compare a race car to a deeply satisfying book.

Apple is in the process of making the iPad the de-facto standard for what the next stage of computing looks like, from the look and feel to the kind of software and experiences you have on the device. Apple doesn’t just want to own the market — it wants to own the idea of the market. We’ve seen this act before, and we know how it ends. Read more at www.engadget.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bsvn3

iPad: Can rivals compete on price?

Interesting analysis by TechRepublic on how Apple’s own retail stores provide an edge in pricing compared to HTC, Samsung and host of other Tablet vendors.

Amplify’d from www.techrepublic.com

Takeaway: The biggest disappointment of nearly every promising competitor to the Apple iPad has been the price tag. Learn the one trump card that allows Apple to out-price rival tablets.

More specifically, the combination of Apple’s 300+ retail stores and its online Apple Store means that the company sells a huge chunk of its iPads directly to its customers.  While Apple has cut distribution deals with Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, Amazon, and a few others, those are mostly market-share grabs and ways to help spread the iPad’s marketing message.

Apple appears to carefully control the inventory it sends to these retail partners. Even during the holidays, there weren’t typically huge stacks of iPads on a pallet in the aisle at Best Buy or Wal-Mart like other popular consumer electronics such as the Nintendo Wii or the Xbox 360. The iPads seemed to be sprinkled among the various retailers throughout the holidays. Meanwhile, the Apple retail stores were loaded with an almost unlimited supply of iPads, so if you wanted to make sure you got one your best bet was to go there (or order one from Apple’s Web store). One estimate was that Apple sold 8.8 iPads per hour per retail store on Black Friday.

was

was utterly impossible for Samsung to hit — unless it was selling the tablet directly to consumers Read more at www.techrepublic.com

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/gJTafc

Future of TV: Apple TV

[Part II of multi-part series on Future of TV, Part I is here]

Apple’s debut in the world of devices connected to the TV – the Apple TV has had limited success – a success so limited compared to its other product lines that the company has to label it as a hobby. I have covered my reasons on why the ATV has had a limited success but it is important to note that  the challenges are something that Apple is learning from, here is what COO Tim Cook said on the last quarter’s earnings call:

“Because our gut says something’s there, we’re continuing to invest in this. But today, it’s still just a hobby.”

The iPad, on the other hand, is enjoying quite a success as a video device! And take a look at this – the size of the computing platform driving the iPad experience is very small [the interesting part is about 2 minutes from the start of the video].

Apple’s challenging experience with ATV, and their ability to bring a world of video to the iPad lend credence to the reports by Gene Munster of PiperJaffray. Gene originally talked about an Apple Television (as in the TV, and not Apple TV) in February 2009 and recently in March 2010. Gene was predicting that Apple TV (as in the current ATV box) would have DVR capabilities added by end of 2009, while that may be off mark, the conjecture in his report make a lot of sense.

Apple should redesign the ATV with the Apple A4 chip & couple it with a high performance Video Companion chip to playback high definition streams. This design then, of course, will bring the iPhone OS to the Apple TV Ecosystem along with the 200K apps (Reference to 200K Apps is towards the end in this blog post by Jobs himself on the subject of Flash)!

While Mac & iPhone application programming both rely on the Cocoa Framework developed by Apple, the Cocoa Touch framework in iPhone 3.x & upcoming 4.x will have to evolve to:

–          Freeform Support in addition to Multi-Touch

–          Interactivity Layer that would allow iPad, iTouch & iPhone to experience the Apple TV (think Apple TV Remote app on steroids!)

The ATV approach would allow Apple to have broader penetration in the living room compared to actually building & marketing an Apple Television – to hook up with all High Definition TVs. The content challenge, which plagues the current ATV box, would be mitigated by the content being made available on the Apple iPad – such asNetflix and ABC Player. Not to mention as more content moves to the Web with support for HTML5, enabling the Safari Browser on ATV/iPhoneOS would make huge amount of content available to consumers.

The reality is that many companies are attempting to bring Web, Apps & TV together. Apple is unique – they, as demonstrated, have a history of re-inventing products – the MP3 Player (iPod), Mobile Phones (iPhone) and Portable Computing (iPad). Apple changed the paradigm of navigation, discovery and experience with all of these product lines, and are probably the best suited to change the ‘lean back’, ’10ft’ experience of watching TV.