Showing posts with label iPad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iPad. Show all posts

Thursday 6 October 2011

Why the iPad will take over the world


Why the iPad will take over the world

The Apple iPad is the ultimate browsing machine (Photo: REUTERS)
The Apple iPad is the ultimate browsing machine (Photo: REUTERS)
Apple is on the verge of releasing the latest iteration in its operating system for the iPhone and iPad. Sometime in the coming months, it is also likely to bring out a newly beefed up version of the iPad. These may not seem like particularly momentous moments to anyone but the more die-hard Apple evangelists, but for me they have underlined the fact that this little tablet is heading for domination of the mobile computing industry.
Before you dismiss this as hype, I should emphasise that this conclusion has come only after some months of reflection, consideration and intense usage of an iPad, and comparison with its competitors. I was one of those fools who bought an iPad right at the beginning, when they were just out in the US and were yet to touch down in Britain. I picked it up in Washington, where I was attending the IMF's summit, more out of hope and curiosity than an expectation that it would change my life. And the truth is I was initially rather disappointed.
I bought it wondering whether it would be the tool that meant I could throw away my laptop. And so I tried, over the following days, to use it as a journalistic tool – I tried to write articles on it (using the bluetooth keyboard – typing on the screen isn't bad, but it isn't brilliant), take notes with it, use it to read the IMF reports and send emails back home. It was an unmitigated disaster. I lost some of my most important notes because one of the applications kept crashing (this is not good news when you're a journalist – and fellow hacks are, understandably, reluctant to share notes at the best of times); cutting and pasting text (quite important when you routinely have to edit and re-edit your articles) was fiddly; there wasn't a word count in Pages, the main word processing application; you couldn't switch between different applications (multi-tasking); you couldn't search with PDF files (disastrous if you are trying to navigate a 300 page report on banking regulation), etc etc.
I never wrote this at the time (far too much going on with elections, expenses and whatnot), but my abiding feeling was that I had bought the iPad hoping to dispel all those people who said they couldn't see the point of it – and I had come out agreeing with them. What was the point of this device? Not good enough to double as a laptop, not small enough to fit in your pocket, not easy-on-the-eye to read for long periods in the same way as a Kindle. Jack of all trades and master of none – or so I thought.
What I hadn't realised was that this is pretty much the point. The iPad is a disruptive innovation. Disruption, for those of you who, like me until recently, aren't familiar with business theory, is one of the ways companies upend their bigger and older competitors in business these days. The gist is as follows: when a business comes along with an innovative product that challenges an existing one, it is often cheaper, of lower quality and is often deemed "not good enough" by potential customers.
Think of mp3s – their sound quality is far inferior to CDs, but customers realised pretty soon that they were both cheaper, more convenient and of a just about satisfactory quality. When personal computers first arrived, those who built powerful mainframe room-sized computers dismissed them as incapable – and indeed they were often so slow that they couldn't keep up with the people typing into them. But the point behind disruption is that in due course the quality of the product gets to a standard that is acceptable to consumers (and if not better than the incumbent product, it is at least cheaper). Right now, flash memory is disrupting hard disks. And so on.
The graph below tells the story: sustaining technologies, such as hard disks, or dedicated digital cameras, improve over time, but eventually reach a standard beyond what most consumers, and perhaps even high end users are after. Into the market comes the disrupting technology, for instance flash memory or cameraphones, whose qualities (be they size or picture quality) are initially well below the standards of the sustaining technology but are compensated by their cheaper price or added convenience. Sometimes a whole new range of customers enters the market at this lower price/quality point. Eventually the quality of the disrupting product can surpass the old sustaining one.
susdir2
The iPad is disruptive to notebook computers: in its first iterations it doesn't meet the exacting standards that many computer users have, so it is not an obvious replacement. It wasn't good enough for me as a journalist; or indeed for anyone who wants to use their laptop for photo manipulation, DJing, game playing and so on. But it is good enough for many others.
It is good enough for students, for instance. Since returning to college, I have found myself using the iPad more and more. It is smaller than the laptop, I can use it to read as well as take notes and write. It still isn't brilliant for article editing, but it more or less does the job (and given I don't have to pump out articles at the rate I did as a professional journalist, so be it). I produced this blog (and indeed have written almost all of my recent blogs, papers, essays and all the stuff one needs to produce at college) on it. A couple of weeks ago my laptop spontaneously combusted. It didn't matter, because by then I hadn't been using it for some months anyway.
The imminent update to the iOS takes the iPad one step forward. In comes multitasking, in comes midi support and a host of other upgrades that, gradually, remove more demanding customers' resistance to shifting down the iPad. Then along will come the next iteration, with higher resolution and more power, making it less attractive, in comparison, to own a laptop, and so on and so on.
It isn't just the iPad that's doing the disruption; it looks increasingly as if Apple's existing operating system, Mac OS, will soon be disrupted by its mobile OS, which has been inserted as a kind of trojan horse into the next update of Mac OS.
This is classic disruption, as laid out by Clay Christensen in The Innovator's Dilemma. The interesting thing in this case is that usually the company that does the disrupting is quite independent from the one that gets disrupted. In this case, Apple is disrupting itself, which is quite an achievement for a giant company. The only question is whether they can keep it up.

Wednesday 20 October 2010

Apple CEO blasts Google, Blackerry maker RIM

REUTERS, Oct 19, 2010, 11.17am IST

steve-jobs.jpg
Apple Inc CEO Steve Jobs went on the offensive after a rare disappointment in sales by the iPad maker. 
SAN FRANCISCO: Apple Inc CEO Steve Jobs went on the offensive after a rare disappointment in sales by the iPad maker sent its shares tumbling, but even his biting words failed to reverse market sentiment. 

Jobs, who has not addressed investors on an earnings call for two years, lashed out at competitors Google Inc and Research in Motion and dismissed the smaller tablets made by rivals such including Samsung and Dell. 

"The current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA, dead on arrival," Jobs told analysts on the conference call. "Their manufacturers will learn the painful lesson that their tablets are too small." 

Shares of Apple -- the second-largest corporation on the Standard & Poor's 500 index, after Exxon Mobil -- slid 6 percent in after-hours trading, which would be their biggest single-day loss since 2008. 

Supply and production bottlenecks kept iPads, which have a 9.7-inch touch screen, from store shelves and buyers waiting weeks sometimes for their gadget. The company sold 4.19 million iPads in the fiscal fourth quarter.

"A little bit disappointing there. Street was expecting closer to 5 million units. The problem is supply, they can't make enough of them," said Gleacher & Co analyst Brian Marshall.

Analysts said sales should ramp up in the holiday quarter as Apple resolves supply hitches.

Gross margins fell short of target as iPads, whose profit margin is lower than it is for iPhones, made up a larger proportion of Apple's sales.
Investors had expected more from a company that had smashed Wall Street's targets in each of the past eight quarters. 
Gross margins came to 36.9 percent, below Wall Street's average forecast of 38.2 percent, despite better-than-expected components costs in the period. 

"The one surprise is on the margin side. Everything else is pretty spectacular," said Gartner analyst Van Baker. 

There was no disappointment in the iPhone, however, whose surging sales showed little impact from a PR debacle last summer over the device's antenna. 

Apple sold 14.1 million of the smartphones, a gain of 91 percent and better than Wall Street had expected. The company said demand is still outstripping supply, with the iPhone now available in 89 countries. 

Mac sales surged 27 percent to 3.9 million, at the high end of analysts' estimates. Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said the strong Mac performance was evidence that the iPad was not cannibalizing sales. 

Surveying the competition 
Jobs noted that Apple's iPhone outsold RIM's BlackBerry in its most recent quarter. "I don't see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future," Jobs said. 

And he criticized Google's Android as a "fragmented" operating system. RIM and Google did not respond to requests for comment. 

In the still emerging tablet market, Jobs said there appears to be just a "handful of credible entrants," and he said price points on rival tablets won't be able to compete with the iPad, which starts at just $499. 

Some analysts agreed with Jobs, and foresaw sales of the iPad, which came on the market only in April, jumpstarting next year as the gadget gets rolled out to more countries and to more mass-market retail outlets like Wal-Mart Stores. 

As an indication of industry bullishness, research group iSuppli said it expects Apple to sell a whopping 43.7 million iPads next year. 

"iPads were low, but I also think they had a lot of production problems getting that off the ground. So I don't think that really is a good demand indicator for iPad," said analyst Jane Snorek of First American Funds. 

Apple reported a net profit of $4.31 billion, or $4.64 a share, in the fiscal fourth quarter ended September 25, up from $2.53 billion, or $2.77 cents a share, in the year-ago period.

That was better than the average analyst estimate of $4.08 a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue surged 67 percent to $20.3 billion, ahead of Wall Street's target of $18.9 billion. 

As it looks ahead to the holiday season, Apple -- which typically issues very conservative outlooks -- forecast current-quarter earnings of $4.80 a share on revenue of $23 billion. The consensus estimate is for a profit of $5.07 a share on revenue of $22.4 billion. 

Shares of Cupertino, California-based Apple slid 6.1 percent to $298.50 in extended trading, after a brief trading halt. They closed at $318.00 on Nasdaq.


Read more: Apple CEO blasts Google, Blackerry maker RIM - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/hardware/Apple-CEO-blasts-Google-Blackerry-maker-RIM/articleshow/6773120.cms#ixzz12uXX4yOV

Your iPad, iPhone can give you infection

ANI, Oct 18, 2010, 11.05am IST

iPad.jpg
Apple iPad
MELBOURNE: People who use display iPads and iPhones at Apple stores are likely to get serious infections and the company should do more to maintain hygiene, says an Australian expert. 

Peter Collignon, a specialist in infectious diseases at the Australian National University, followed research that found a higher risk of transmitting pathogens from glass surfaces like on iPads to human skin. 

"You wouldn't have hundreds of people using the same glass or cup, but theoretically if hundreds of people share the same keyboard or touch pad, then effectively that's what you're doing," the Age quoted Collignon as saying in a phone interview. 

"The germs we transmit via our hands can frequently have germs that can cause anything from the flu to multi-drug resistant diseases." 

Scores of people visit Apple stores around the country every day to play with the company's latest gadgets. Earlier this year, an investigation by the New York Daily News found that of four iPads swabbed in two Apple stores, two contained harmful pathogens. 

One contained Staphylococcus aureus, the most common cause of staph infections, while another registered Corynebacterium minutissimum, a bacteria commonly associated with skin rash. 

A study published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology cautioned people against sharing their devices, as there was a higher risk of spreading germs from glass surfaces. Collignon said Apple and other gadget stores with touchscreen devices on display should make hand hygiene products "more readily available on counters." 

"It doesn't have to be anything fancy it just has to be a 70 per cent alcohol solution. Maybe the various computer stores can make a more frequent effort to clean their equipment," he said. 

"If you want to protect others then preferably don't share but if you do make sure your hands are clean before you touch it and afterwards," added Collignon.


Read more: Your iPad, iPhone can give you infection - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/personal-tech/computing/Your-iPad-iPhone-can-give-you-infection/articleshow/6767508.cms#ixzz12uTW16fU

Saturday 19 June 2010

Review: Apple iPad for business

The Apple iPad has plenty of affordable and useful business applications but it may be worth waiting for the iPad version 2

Apple iPad
Apple iPad
Of course, you’ve read a lot about the iPad, but here we’re concerned with business and gadgets that make our professional lives easier. Could Apple’s iPad really have a useful impact?
Ignore, then, the indisputable good looks, silent operation and sleek styling. These are good for showing off, and the iPad is certainly a pleasure to use because of how it sits in the hand, but these factors score no points for improved business use.

The iPad is a blank slate, designed to perform the tasks you set it. There are 5,000 iPad-specific applications (apps) along with 200,000 iPhone apps, many of which have strong business uses. The iPhone apps don’t look as good as dedicated iPad versions, marooned in the centre of the screen or enlarged to the point that they look blocky.

But many of these apps are gaining iPad versions, often free and achieved simply by updating your iPad. Most are free or inexpensive, such as PayRecord (£1.79) which is good for road warriors eager to keep a record of time worked and calculate payment earned. This info can be emailed to an employer client or accounts department. There are many more of these, almost certainly enough to make an iPad useful – just check out the Business category of iPad apps in iTunes if you’re not sure.

But what else is the iPad good for? It’s not great for typing – there’s no feedback to let you know you’ve hit a key, so touch typists will want the optional Bluetooth keyboard. This is not ideal as it compromises portability. Even so, Pages (£5.99), Apple’s own word processor built for the iPad, is sophisticated, elegant and capable, not to mention very cheap. Pages, which creates Word-compatible documents, goes a long way to redress the iPad’s keyboard deficiencies.

And if you want to travel light, you can carry hundreds of books in the iPad, though the glossy screen’s backlight is not as easy on the eye as paper.

The iPad lacks extensive connectivity, though you can connect USB devices with a suitable add-on, and there’s no camera on board to power augmented reality apps. What’s more, a front-facing camera that would allow video conferencing is also absent.

The iPad is a highly desirable piece of kit, with exceptional capabilities and a fast-increasing number of brilliant apps. So the blank slate Apple has created has enormous potential and will change its purpose quickly. Even so, you may want to hold off until the inevitable second edition which may have improved connectivity and extra capabilities – if you can wait a whole year.

iPad
3 stars
From £429
www.apple.com/uk

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/7832342/Review-Apple-iPad-for-business.html