Posts Tagged: ipad

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25
Nov 11

Apple, the Low Cost Leader

Some of you still believe that Apple and their products are “nice, but over-priced”. This may have been true at one point in history, but your information is old and needs to be updated.

Let me help:

  • So Far Rivals Can’t Beat iPad’s Price (NYTimes, 3/2011)
  • “Would-be rivals to Apple’s iPad have more of a chance in Europe than they do in the United States, but they need to cut prices fast to grasp the opportunity, IT research firm Forrester said on Tuesday. [...] their prices cannot yet compete with Apple, which has far larger scale in the tablet market and an efficient supply chain.” (Reuters 8/2011)
  • “PC makers are struggling to match Apple’s prices” (Daring Fireball, DigiTimes 8/2011)
  • “Something unexpected has happened at Apple, once known as the tech industry’s high-price leader. Over the last several years it began beating rivals on price.” (NYTimes, 10/2011)
  • “The first crop of Android tablets that hit the market failed to come close to the iPad’s entry-level price of $499″ (CNET, 10/2011)

 

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9
Jun 11

iCloud Single Sign-On

Apple announced iCloud earlier this week, and this has been a long time coming. Not in that the feature itself is something that everyone has been asking for, but it solves a problem many applications have: maintaining state between hardware devices.

Google’s answer to this problem is that the device doesn’t matter. Its all about the browser. Apples answer is iCloud — it’s all about apps.

[A short recap for those just joining the conversation, iCloud is a thing that enables sharing of data between your devices. You take a picture on your iPhone, and moments later that photo is on your iPad, in iPhoto on your Mac, and even the photos folder on your PC. Apple is initially building this into many apps: iTunes, Photos, App Store, iBooks, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Backup, Contacts, Calendar, and Mail]

Why is this important?
Today maintaining state between computers, smartphones and tablets relies on a hodge-podge of technologies:

  • Mail is kept in sync using special imap server settings on each device.
  • Music is sync’d only with a cable connected to iTunes running on just one computer. Same for bookmarks, photos, iBooks.
  • Kindle books, probable the closest in style to iCloud, syncs through my Anazon login. Yet that one login on each device gets me precious little beyond the books.
  • Calendars use a mashup of CalDAV, Googles services, and Microsoft Exchange. My address book is in a similar situation.
  • OmniFocus todo’s are sync’d through a custom WebDAV folder on my edstrom.net server.
  • Dropbox, one of my favorite utilities, also comes close. Their big claim to fame is their open API which many applications have adopted instead of building their own sync layer. And there is certainly demand for it: take a look at all the Dropbox apps.
  • Games may or may not save state…

In a lot of ways, I think iCloud is the answer to the old buzz catch-phrase: Single Sign-On. Now I can sign into any device -once- and all my apps, my photos, my documents, my music … will all be there. Outside of the browser window.

 

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18
Mar 11

SXSW Notes

Here are my rolled-up and somewhat summarized notes from the conference. Enjoy! -Peter

MAJOR THEMES FROM THE CONFERENCE

  • Existing technologies (tablets, smartphones) will be adopted by a much broader audience this year.
  • The iPad is getting far more attention than Android. Often Android devices are not even considered.
  • Making your content/experience/application location aware (Location Based Services) is gaining momentum.
  • There is a lot of interest in Gamification/Gameful approaches to products.
  • QR codes were everywhere.

RANDOM NOTES OF POSSIBLE INTEREST

  • The Like button is only 11 months old. (!)
  • Ambient Location with automatic check-in’s is emerging. Ambient Location is location tracking such that automatic things can happen: your lights turn on when you get home, get an sms when you need to get off the bus, letting the boss know when you are running late, etc.
  • The hyper-local approach seems to be morphing into hyper-personal
  • QR Codes were used for contact info, liking on facebook, downloading apps, viewing promo web sites, on the backs of t-shirts, on business cards, etc. Once you know how it works, it is hard to *not* scan them.
  • QR codes can be made here or you can read about them here.
  • App development recommendation: go big or go home, and it is vital to have a solid well-organized back-end
  • Users are much more aware of how much you support (or don’t support) new features. One app got a 3/5 rating in iTunes because they didn’t have retinal display graphics in their audio player … be ready to embrace upgrades without delay when new phones/software updates become available
  • Check out Qwiki (be sure to turn your speakers on). I can’t help but think of StarTrek. Recommended use: search by name name to find out more info.
  • WordPress powers 12% of the web
  • Flipboard is moving towards an ad-based model. 31 employes, $0 revenue so far, VC ends at the end of the year. An iPhone app is in the works.
  • People spend 3 billion hours a week playing video games; 10,000 hours by age 21 — essentially an entire 2nd education. Playing games produce: positive emotion, stronger relationships, meaning, accomplishment. Gamers spend 80% of their time failing, “work is more fun than fun.”
  • Dropbox had a cost per acquisition (CPA) about $300 through google ads but the lifetime value (LTV) was only $99 so they switched to referrals with a 2-sided incentive program. They saw a sustained growth of 60% when they made this change.
  • Engagement metrics from newest thinking to old-school: daily active users, time on site, frequency, customers, registered users, returning visitors, unique visitors, visits, page views, hits
  • * Watch the smartphone and tablet penetration this year. Smartphones are in the early majority stage, tablets are still at the early adopters. 15 mill iPads sold in 2010, 28 mill predicted for 2011 (looks like 0.6mill iPad2′s sold in first 3 days)
  • Google’s specific blue “was worth at least $80 million” – Paul Ray of Bing
  • In tablet design: clarity trumps density, and buttons are a hack.
  • There are two types of designers: Intuition based design and Data-driven design. The latter helps reduce arguments based on opinions but may lead you to a local-maxiumu … where the design is not optimal, but can’t get any better without whole-sale change or intuition.
  • Video of 4 year-old on an iPad, “how did you learn how to do that?” “I’m just learning all these things from the screen”… for kids, all screens are touch screens.
  • Favorite tools for designing: white board, paper prototypes, lots of gesturing, listening and translating jargon. created a gesture map.

TIPS FOR NEXT YEAR

  • Pre-select sessions online (plancast, lanyrd, sxsw app), but paper may be easier when you are there
  • Take pictures of things you want to remember but don’t want to write down or carry
  • Wi-fi was really good except 10 minutes before major session times (keynotes), AT&T worked reasonably well for me
  • Group text messages via GroupFlier worked great for coordinating meet-ups
  • Have a team email list
  • Make t-shirts with a QR code
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3
Mar 11

The Qualitative iPad 2

TUAW gets it:

“Last night, I was browsing through story after story on the interwebs that hoped to help people decide on a tablet purchase by comparing the Xoom specifications with the iPad. From multitasking to chip speed to RAM, analysists attempted to find consumers the best possible value for the money.

And they completely missed the point.

When it comes to tablets, it’s not about the specs. It’s about user experience. It’s about the way we use the device and how the device fits itself to the way we want to use it.”

Andy explains:

“But you kind of have to hold the iPad 2 to really get the redesign. It’s thinner by a third, plus its edges taper to a thin line of metal. It’s almost inconceivable that this thing you’re holding is a multicore tablet computer. The Xoom tablet is trim, light, and very pretty … but when you place it next to the iPad 2, it looks as though it was designed and built by angry Soviet prison labor instead of by Motorola.”

And who wants to surf the web, watch a movie, or try to be productive on something designed by Soviet prison labor? It’s suppose to be a joy to use, not a chore. Right?

Specs are a nice place to start when it comes to comparing one tablet to the next, but if you never go beyond the quantitive specs, you’ll never understand the qualitative aspects. And I’d argue that the qualitative aspects are far more important.

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11
Jan 11

iTunes Challenge

I need your help. Or at least I think I do. It’s a technical problem.

Here’s the situation:

I have a media iMac at home. I have an iPhone and an iPad that sync music, podcasts, books, apps, movies, and photos to this media machine. I don’t sync the contacts, calender or email through iTunes as those go through the cloud.

I recently started using a MacBook at work. I’d like to switch synchronizing the iPhone and iPad to the work machine. I’m not sure entirely why. Some vague reasons that have crossed my mind:

  • It’s a nicer and faster computer than my 5-year old iMac.
  • I could download new apps or books from iTunes instead of searching within the App Store on iOS.
  • New podcasts would download during the day to listen to on my commute home.
  • I’m more likely to sync to my work computer than my home machine.
  • The old iMac’s USB doesn’t charge the iPad at all unless the screen is off, so I’ve started charging both devices at work.
  • I don’t really use the iMac at home other than to store stuff.

The problem, however, is the media. Podcasts will download on their own, so that doesn’t seem to be a problem. And with iTunes Sharing, I can sync the files — or at least a lot of them, but I won’t get the play counts and I don’t have the space for all of the media (the iMac has a pretty full 1/2  TB drive). And it only works at home when I actually have the work computer on with iTunes running. Yet, there does not seem to be a way to sync smart playlists (maybe I just recreate them? but again, the play counts which are vital to many of my smart playlists, are missing). And iPhoto synchronizing from a shared library is manual only. This is a bigger issue, because my wife and I take lots of photos of our kids, and I really appreciate how new photos taken with our SLR or iPhone just magically show up on the iPad after a sync.

So … is this a fictions first-world problem that I invented and needs no solution? Or is it a real problem? How would you solve it?

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