![Image](http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a278/Rubxqub/netbook-sales-3.jpg)
Interesting chart.
Aslanna wrote:iPhone/iPad is just a fad.
Looks about how I'd expect the LD (low-def) Ipad would look.Winnow wrote: The size appears larger on your monitor due to your monitor's inferior pixel density! (looks correct on a 27" iMac screen!) This will lead into how crisp the new iPhone HD will look with double the pixel count while keeping the same size screen.
Google Is Leapfrogging Apple
Google is done playing catch-up. Today they're setting the agenda: With Android Froyo, Google TV, mobile ads and streaming media, Google isn't just matching Apple—they're taking the lead.
The Google I/O conference has been dizzyingly dense, with announcements from nearly every corner of Google's ever-expanding apparatus. The meatiest news comes direct from Google's most intense battlefronts: Android Froyo (version 2.2); a bevy of clever new cloud services; and a mobile ad platform paired with Google TV marching into battle with competing products from Microsoft, and much more pointedly, Apple.
Google's last 18 months have been a period of frantic catchup, in which we saw Android reach feature parity with iPhone OS, the Android Market explode, and Google's confidence slowly build. Apple had been setting the terms of the battle, baiting Google into action. The competition was fierce, but the fight was on Apple's terms.
Google's tired of that. In the space of two days, they've leapfrogged Apple spectacularly: They've matched Apple's mobile OS in predictable ways, and embarrassed it in others (Flash on mobiles may not be as horrific as Apple has implied); they've invaded the living room with a dedication and vigor that makes Apple TV look like a jokey experiment; they've steamrolled the mobile ad market with as solid a platform as Apple's and, more importantly, hundreds of thousands of advertisers; they've taken massive steps into the cloud, and into streaming—the kind of stuff nerds talk about, but didn't expect to see so soon.
"We discovered something cool: It's called the internet."
We've spilled a lot of ink over Android's lack of media syncing, and what seemed like an half-assed online sync system. The pieces just didn't add up to a whole. There was no need to sync to a desktop for most of your data, but there was no easy, slick way to transfer media. Apps were handled exclusively on the phones' App Market apps, which was a pain. The experience was broken, so people complained. Why couldn't we just have an iTunes-style app, at least?
Well, now we know. With Android Froyo, apps are synced wirelessly between your desktop web browser and your phone, music is streamed from your home PC to your handset over 3G, and instructions—map directions, search terms, web pages and potential all kinds of other stuff—can be zapped to your handset from a desktop browser. Sync as Apple defines it suddenly looks tired and clumsy. The new sync is instant, it's less redundant, it makes sense. And the new sync belongs to Google.
It's the Ads, Stupid
Aside from the requisite technical hiccups, Google's presentation today was surprisingly assured. And never was it more assured than during the AdSense mobile presentation. Here we saw Google reveal something a lot like what Jobs showed with iAds, right down to the "users don't like to leave their apps" mantra.
But Apple's presentation was about a new ad platform, which let's be frank: Ugh. You've got a pretty framework for ads, Apple? Users don't care because, well, we hate ads. Devs weren't too excited, because Apple's system was new, unproven and, well, not terribly interesting.
Google's presentation was more shrewd: They didn't have to linger on the mechanism of the ads, because for Google, AdSense mobile is just a bridge for their hundreds of thousands of preexisting advertisers, to every phone the company touches. When focusing on these gadget and product side of things, it's easy to forget that Google is foremost an advertising company. Apple can present pretty ad platforms all they want, but Google has a proven record of selling.
Apple TV, Blindsided
Apple TV withered not for lack of potential, but for lack of ambition. It's as if Apple decided to invade our living rooms, built the box they need to do it, then gave up when it wasn't a wild, immediate success. In doing so, they squandered a multi-year head start.
Google TV is a markedly different product than Apple TV—more like TiVo's latest box than Apple's crippled Mac Mini—but that's only because Google is taking a much more aggressive tack. Instead of a single box to supplement your TV, Google wants to take it over. They want to combine TV and the internet in a real way, not with token widgets or content stores. They want app devs, hardware partners, content partners and search traffic, which for us, translates to apps, tons of hardware choices, a multitude of viewing options and a real window to the internet. Where Apple TV had iTunes, Google TV will have Amazon, Netflix, YouTube and Hulu. Where Apple TV had a walled-off repository of downloaded, paid content, Google will have a massive selection of content, free and paid, complementing your regular TV channels, not stubbornly isolated from them.
Google Comes of Age
In the past, Google has always been late to the party—and they rarely outpaced Apple. The iPhone set the tone and terms for the mobile wars, with iTunes and the App Store looming large over every newcomer, including Android. Apple TV came out in 2007. The iPad is the standard to which every new tablet will be measured. Through their successes, Apple has defined a vision: It's a company that loves control, that changed the meaning and importance of "apps," and which sees itself dominating nearly every aspect of its users' technological lives. It's a vision that ignores the cloud, except when it can't. And it's a vision that has an expiration date.
Google, too, has a hunger for domination, but they've finally got vision of their own to accompany it: A vision of cellphones and desktops connected seamlessly—revolutionarily, magically—over the internet; a vision of media that streams when you need it, and disappears when you don't; a vision that sees TV as an extension of the internet, not simply a dumb screen.
Google's got a ton of work to do. Android is fragmented, and huge share of the handsets people own today will never take advantage of Froyo's new features. Any new TV product takes years to filter into the average living room. Media streaming is an inevitability, but the infrastructure isn't there to fully realize it, and what Google showed off today doesn't address everything. (The is no video component to their new Simplify Media-based music streaming software, for now.) But listening to Google's newly emboldened Vic Gundotra after a particularly uninspired series of Jobsnotes, peering into each company's future, I see Google stepping out ahead—and with one impressive lead.
You can wirelessly sync now if you have a jailbroken device:Fairweather Pure wrote:Wireless synching would be great. I hate iTunes, cords, and having to be at a specific computer.
iFad indeed!With surveys indicating sky-high customer satisfaction and large, growing demand, Apple's gamble with the iPad seems to be paying off richly. New estimates suggest that Apple is selling more iPads than Macs - with 200,000 sold every week, almost as many iPads as iPhones - and the number continues to grow as demand remains high. Meanwhile, new iPad owners report what one pollster calls "nose-bleed satisfaction numbers" as high as 91%.
No, you're correct. Photo syncing is retarded using iTunes.Drolgin Steingrinder wrote:Most of the issues with the iPad have been resolved for me and have been my fault, being a long time PC user. There's one thing I just can't get - the syncing of pictures. My girlfriend uses her iPad as a demo tool to prospective customers (she's a photographer) and the syncing of pics as it's built into iTunes is just retarded. You can't just straight copy pictures onto the iPad, you have to sync them - which means erasing any pictures on the iPad that aren't also in the sync folder on your computer. What gives? Anything I'm just not getting here?
Ah, perceptions. I'll be having fun with my EVO Android phone tomorrow while you grow old stressing over company conspiracies. As witnessed on the Android thread, you're incapable of enjoying quality products from any source.Aabidano wrote:Winnow is getting buck teeth that match the callouses he's putting on Jobs' knob.
In a bit of news from the "go-figure" department, Gizmodo is reporting that Apple has refused to answer its request to attend the company's big Worldwide Developers Conference keynote this Monday.
The apparent snub has left the tech blog in a bit of a predicament—according to Editorial Director Brian Lam, Gizmodo is going to use the liveblogging of a number of other sources to construct its own, well, liveblog, of the WWDC keynote instead of its planned, "we're actually there" coverage.
This comes a few days after San Mateo County authorities announced that a "special master" had been appointed to assist in the search of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's belongings: goods seized as part of a police investigation into the disappearance (and Gizmodo acquisition) of one of Apple's prototype iPhones. It's the very device that's rumored to be announced at the Monday keynote.
The special master—a third party that's been appointed by the court to ensure that its instructions are carried out – will be working with San Mateo County authorities to ascertain what information about the prototype can be pulled from Chen's seized belongings. The purpose behind the introduction of a special master is to ensure that only information related to the case is noted down: It's based on an agreement between the district attorney's office and Chen's attorney, Thomas Nolan, regarding the potential legal ramifications of California's shield laws for reporters.
But that's not the only dispute that still surrounds the missing prototype story. According to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, in an interview at the D8 conference earlier this week, there's still a question as to whether said prototype was actually lost in a Redwood City bar—as the story has panned out thus far—or whether it was stolen out of software engineer Gray Powell's bag.
"When this whole thing with Gizmodo happened, I got a lot of advice from people that said you've got to just let it slide. You shouldn't go after a journalist because they bought stolen property and tried to extort you," Jobs said. "And I thought deeply about this, and I concluded the worst thing that could happen is if we change our core values and let it slide. I can't do that. I'd rather quit."
I don't like Google, you have to admit they've become serious douchebags. As are a lot of vendors I do buy products from, it's all part of capitalism. Given the choice I'll buy from the non-asshole vendor, and even pay a premium. I go out of my way not to buy things from Wal Mart for instance.Winnow wrote:Ah, perceptions. I'll be having fun with my EVO Android phone tomorrow while you grow old stressing over company conspiracies. As witnessed on the Android thread, you're incapable of enjoying quality products from any source.
You're welcome to your opinion. Please tell me which smart phone companies aren't douchbags.Aabidano wrote: I don't like Google, you have to admit they've become serious douchebags. As are a lot of vendors I do buy products from, it's all part of capitalism. Given the choice I'll buy from the non-asshole vendor, and even pay a premium. I go out of my way not to buy things from Wal Mart for instance.
Sargeras wrote:Spec comparison chart of the top 5 smartphones (including the iPhone 4)
http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/07/ipho ... s-and-hd2/
I'm very tempted.
From CNN:
Will you buy the new iPhone?
No: 83% (240,458 votes)
Yes: 17% (48,646 votes)
Total votes: 289,104
From CNET:
Would you buy the Apple iPhone 4 or the HTC Evo 4G?
Apple iPhone 4: 41% (2,869 votes)
HTC Evo 4G: 56% (3,918 votes)
Neither phone interests me: 3% (210 votes)
Total votes: 6,998
Originally announced that they were working on it when the iPad version came out. Hope it translates well!Netflix on iPhone Coming This Summer
Hi, John Ciancutti, VP of personalization technology, here. Today I had the unique opportunity to present the app we’re working on for iPhone at the Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference in San Francisco. Our CEO Reed Hastings reiterated our excitement to bring Netflix to iPhone and more than 5,000 developers cheered when they saw how watching instantly will look on the groundbreaking mobile device that you carry in your pocket. If you use an iPhone, like I do, get ready to watch instantly on it this summer!
iPads have been released in Europe. Would you be buying it in the US to avoid the VAT?Hesten wrote:Hmmm, im considering getting a friend to get me an Ipad in the US when he visits next month.
Since i cant use the 3G version (and doubt i would even if i could), are there any tips for buying Ipads...any accessories/bags you need, and so on?
Its a LOT cheaper in the US than in Denmark, thats why. But i been checking up on it, and the no multitasking is a dealbreaker for me, i planned to use it to read and translate comics on the way to/from work, that require 2-3 programs open.Winnow wrote:iPads have been released in Europe. Would you be buying it in the US to avoid the VAT?Hesten wrote:Hmmm, im considering getting a friend to get me an Ipad in the US when he visits next month.
Since i cant use the 3G version (and doubt i would even if i could), are there any tips for buying Ipads...any accessories/bags you need, and so on?
the bad visibility outdoors that most reviews mention
It depends on what you plan to do with it. Keep in mind. iPhone OS4 (well iOS 4 now) WILL have multitasking and it's out in a few weeks for the iPhone, with a planned release for the iPad in the fall.Hesten wrote:
Its a LOT cheaper in the US than in Denmark, thats why. But i been checking up on it, and the no multitasking is a dealbreaker for me, i planned to use it to read and translate comics on the way to/from work, that require 2-3 programs open.
Then the lack of Flash, and the bad visibility outdoors that most reviews mention is hurting too, so does the lack of USB support, and forcing Itunes on it.
Ill hold out for the next version, or see if someone else made a similar product thats worth buying.
I've always understood it as the value of the tax has already been added.... but now that you mention it, I don't really see the value in paying more.Aslanna wrote:I never understood the 'Value' part of VAT. How is making someone pay more adding value!
BTW, i forgot about this Dadude guy for awhile. He's still going strong on the newsgroups.Winnow wrote:Hack the iPad!
As with the iPhone, someone is posting every iPap app cracked to the newsgroups on a weekly basis. I downloaded the past 2 weeks (about 9 GB total). (search for "Dadude" in Supersearch) As opposed to the iPhone apps, the iPad Apps are separated neatly into folders (Education, Games, Social, Books, etc) making it easy to wade through all of them to test out.