Wow: We’re still more than a week from iPad launch day, but there are already best-selling iPad apps…
Tag Archives | Apple iPad
iPad Reserved
At 5:38am this morning I reserved an iPad for pickup at my local Apple Store on April 3rd, the day Apple’s new gizmo becomes available. Hey, I was up anyway–in fact, I was onboard a plane at the time, heading home from Seattle. It went smoothly, except for one glitch on the login screen. But I liked the Jobsian-sounding error I got: “This is an error message. You have failed in some way.”
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Little Apps, Big iPad
I’m (mostly) enthusiastic about Apple’s iPad and its potential to be the tablet that convinces the world that the world needs tablets. But if you were making a list of dirty little iPad secrets, this one would rank near the top: Running iPhone apps on a device with a far larger screen sounds like an inherently unsatisfying stopgap.
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iPad: Revolutionary, Magical, and a Little Late
On January 27th, Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad and said it would be available in two months. Now Apple has announced the specifics concerning availability of the Wi-Fi version–and the company’s saying it’ll go on sale on Saturday, April 3rd. It’ll accept pre-orders starting on March 12th for both the Wi-Fi and 3G models, and buyers will be able to reserve a Wi-Fi model to pick up on the third.
(Apple didn’t say when the 3G model will go on sale, but based on the original timetable and barring any delays, it’ll presumably show up in late April or early May.)
I’m still not sure whether the arrival of the iPad will inspire large numbers of people to show up at Apple Stores at four in the morning. We also don’t know whether there will be enough iPads to go around. (For what it’s worth, there’s never been a shortage of iPhones on their launch days–in fact, the most efficient way to buy one has been to bide your time until late on the first sale day, and then stroll in and pick one up with little or no waiting.)
In Apple’s press release about the on-sale details, it calls the iPad “magical and revolutionary” not once but twice, including one such reference in a Jobs quote. The more the company repeats this mantra, the more I think of this guy, the product he promotes, and the catch phrase he’s been using for several decades:
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Those Facebook Ads for Free iPads
Last month, I wrote about mysterious Facebook ads that offered free iPads to 45-year-old males. Or 26-year-old females. Or people of whatever age and gender happened to be those of the Facebook member reading the ad.
Now the New York Times has weighed in, with an entertaining and illuminating article on weird Facebook ads (including ones claiming to be aimed at Eddie Izzard fans). It says that Facebook doesn’t approve ads individually, but that ones that mention factors that really have nothing to do with the subject of the ad–such as age, sex, and feelings about Eddie Izzard in the case of a “free iPad” ad–are prohibited and will be deleted when they’re found.
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5Words: The iPad’s Hidden Camera Features
Camera features in cameraless iPad.
Now Europe is targeting Google.
And Italy is punishing YouTube.
Ten really weird social networks.
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Office for the iPad? Maybe. Hopefully.
Gadget site T3 is reporting that Microsoft has dropped a “hint” that it may be working on a version of Office for the iPad. I hope so–it could be both cool and useful. But the evidence that it’s doing so is paper-thin so far. (I’ve probably asked Microsoft staffers about things they might be working on hundreds of times over the years, and they only rarely say “no comment” or issue a flat denial–their tendency is say that ideas of all sorts sound “interesting.”)
Last April, someone asked a Microsoft exec about Office for the iPhone, and some took his response (“Not yet–keep watching”) as evidence that such a suite was in the works. The only Office/iPhone news since then has been the fact that Office 2010’s Web features will include some basic tools designed to let people view documents on smartphones. Maybe the exec was talking about that. Or maybe Microsoft is working on an iPhone edition of Office. Or maybe he just meant what he said.
Of course, almost thirty years ago Microsoft did become a rabid fan of a new Apple platform, and released a bunch of applications for it. Its enthusiasm seems to have paid off for everybody involved that time around…
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Your Biggest iPad Questions Answered
[Here’s another column I wrote for FoxNews.com. In this one, I try to summarize some of the major things that non-geeks need to know about the iPad.]
When Apple finally announced its iPad tablet computer at a San Francisco press event last week, we learned that it was “magical.” And “revolutionary.” And that the price was “unbelievable.”
That’s the truth according to Steve Jobs, at least. As usual, the facts are a bit more complex. The iPad is an ambitious product that’s hard to sum up in a few words, or to assess at all until it’s actually available for sale, which won’t be for weeks. Herewith, some early answers to major questions about the device, based on what I learned at Apple’s launch and the hands-on time I got with one after the great unveiling concluded.
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Five Possible Superkindles. Which One(s) Will Amazon Build?
So Amazon.com has bought itself a startup with an innovative touch-screen technology. The only logical assumption is that it intends to build a touch-enabled Kindle. You’ve gotta think that it’ll take a while to incorporate the new technology into a future Kindle. And given that the last all-new Kindle shipped nearly a year ago, there are probably at least two future Kindles in the works: a next-generation one and a next-next-generation one.
Trying to figure out where the Kindle is headed was aways interesting food for thought, but it got even more interesting when Apple showed off the iPad last week. The current Kindle and the iPad are a study in contrasts: The Kindle is a monochrome, long-life device, button-driven built almost entirely for reading books; the iPad is a color, short-life, touch-screen Swiss Army Knife.
But the only scenario in which the Kindle is unaffected by the iPad (and possibly iPad-like gizmos from other companies) is one in which the iPad flops almost instantaneously. That seems unlikely. So here are five possible “Superkindles” (to steal New York Times times reporter Nick Bilton’s term).
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Reports: Apple Will Sell Eight Million iPads by 2012
An analyst with Needham & Company has projected that Apple will sell 2 million iPads this year with an additional 6M being sold in 2011. The sales will come at the expense of Apple’s iPod Touch, according to reports today.
Sales will begin moderately. The anticipated spike in sales will occur after “the arrival of a catalyst,” but the report did not specify what that incentive would be. The iTunes store worked before, and it may work again.
That is evidenced by reports of interactive textbooks headed to the iPad. The iPad also could appeal to people who have light computing requirements such as seniors.
In comparison, the iPhone was much more mass market. Over 1 million iPhones were sold within 71 days of its introduction, and sold over 8 million units last quarter. The iPhone has contributed remarkably to Apple’s revenues–without massively cannibalizing the sales of iPods. The iPad could be viewed as a substitute for the iPod Touch.
The thing to keep in mind is that this is only the first iteration of the iPad. There’s no shortage of speculation about what Apple may or may deliver when the iPad ships – from evidence of a camera to an “intelligent bezel.” We don’t know the entire story of what “it” is yet, or what it will become. The iPad could very well end up carrying other Apple products.
Whether those reports are accurate or not, they do prove one thing: there is no shortage of potential for the tablet category. Even if Google enters the market, increased category awareness and growth should only support Apple’s sales.