A company called Ten One Design has announced a $25 joystick for iPad called Fling that attaches to the screen with suction cups.
The Fling goes on top of the on-screen controls, and replaces your direct finger or thumb. The joystick is mostly clear plastic, so you can see through it.
Does this defeat the whole purpose of using an iPad for gaming, which is direct touch on an elegant surface? Or is this just cool?
Fling is available for pre-order Jan. 6.
Incredible technology products have emerged in the last 10 years, from Web 2.0 sites to Twitter, GPS-enabled smart phones to cheap pocket video recorders.
On New Year’s Day, 2001, blogs were still largely unknown to the public. RIM had yet to launch the BlackBerry, and Palm hadn’t yet announced its Treo. Blu-Ray was still several years in the future. Google hadn’t even started working on Gmail. A 3.1 megapixel camera cost $700. Almost nobody had heard of social networking.
There’s no question that technology has completely changed our world in the past ten years. But if I had to pick one product that was more impactful and more culture-changing – in other words, the most important technology product of the decade, it would have to be the Apple iPad.
A patent recently granted to Apple has got online observers predicting a future touch-screen MacBook laptop.
It’ll never happen. Before I tell you why, let’s take a look at the evidence.
Apple is being dragged into court over two separate class-action lawsuits filed last week. Both accuse Apple of violating the privacy of iPhone users.
If Apple loses the suits, it faces damages, plus possible changes in its privacy policy and enforcement.
But if Apple is the company being sued, why does Google care far than Apple does about what happens in court?
Go here to read the whole story.
(Picture courtesy of Funny Or Die)
A burglar was caught red-handed in Denver this week, thanks to an iPhone app that shows the camera feed from a home computer.
A woman named Claire, who gave only her first name to the press, uses the app to keep tabs on her dog while she travels. But when she logged in Tuesday, she saw a crook going through her stuff.
Police arrested a suspect. But when they told Claire that he didn’t steal anything, she informed them that in fact she has iPhone video of the suspect stealing her iPad.
When WIRED rolled out its first iPad edition, the publisher sold more than 100,000 copies. Everyone proclaimed the arrival of the electronic magazine at last.
Vanity Fair, GQ and Glamour also enjoyed healthy rollouts, though nothing near the WIRED debut.
But after initial success, iPad magazines are suddenly taking a dive. WIRED sales of subsequent editions have tanked to 22,000 and 23,000 for October and November, respectively. Other magazines have seen approximate 20% drops. Specifically, Vanity Fair dropped from 10,500 to 8,700 downloads; GQ from 13,000 to 11,000; Glamour from 4,301 to 2,775.
If iPad and electronic magazines are to gradually replace print, they’ve got to grow circulations, not shrink them. And they’ve got to at least do better than my Twitter feed.
Electronic magazine sales in general, and iPad sales in particular, will fail under the existing model.
Japan’s Green Gables bakery has been selling life-size iPhone cookies for two years. But recently, photos have appeared on Twitter and elsewhere, sparking huge demand.
Originally, the small, local bakery made the cookie as a special birthday present for a customer’s husband. But thanks to social media, the $33 cookie is being ordered by hundreds of people around Japan (it’s unavailable outside the country, so you’ve got to know someone). The current waiting time for an iPhone cookie: Two months!
You got another Apple gadget for Christmas, didn’t you? And you love it, don’t you?
So at what point do you officially declare yourself to be one of those Cupertino Kool-Aid-guzzling, Steve Jobs-worshiping, pathetically devoted Apple fans you used to loathe?
Ten years ago, there were two kinds of people: PC users (a.k.a. “regular people”) and Apple fanboys. At least that’s how it looked from the PC side.
Macs were pretty, but considered by us PC users to be overpriced, underpowered, insufficiently supported by either software or hardware, too hard to customize, optimize or repair and completely devoid of key application areas, such as games.
The world was black and white. You were either a PC or a Mac. Then things got complicated.
The upcoming Jack Black comedy, Gulliver’s Travels, which opens Christmas Day, will be one giant Apple ad.
When Gulliver travels to Lilliput, he brings his iPhone, which when used by the Lilliputians appears gigantic.
The movie has multiple MacBooks and other Apple products, and Apple logos galore.
Apple is easily the most successful company ever in getting its products into movies and TV shows. Some 41% of the movies that hit number-one at the box office featured Apple products.
Part of the reason for this success is that Hollywood is Apple-obsessed. Another is that Apple works at it. The company proudly boasts that it never pays for product placement. But it’s likely that there is some string pulling, proactive offers of devices to use and other actions that are kept secret by the company.
Whatever Apple is doing, it’s working.
It’s no secret that Apple enjoys an unprecedented lead in the touch tablet market. The last major accounting put Apple at an incredible 95% market share.
Until the iPad’s first real competitor, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which shipped late in the year, Apple pretty much had 2010 all to itself. Next year will be different.
The generally expected outcome for the market is that the coming flood of tablets will usher in a new range of choice for tablet buyers, and Apple will be forced to share the market with competitors who offer pretty much the same functionality at a lower price, or more and better features at pretty much the same price.
The market should settle, with Apple’s share declining to a low, two-digit number with the “open” and cheaper alternatives, especially Google Android devices, taking the lion’s share.
I don’t think that’s going to happen. I believe Apple will remain the dominant player indefinitely. Apple’s incredible lead, plus unexpected craziness in the rest of the market will favor Apple in the mind of consumers.
Here’s what I’m talking about.
In its quarterly earnings call today, Costco announced that it has begun the process of “phasing out” Apple products by “mutual agreement.”
The falling out appears to have been caused by a variety of events that highlight fundamental incompatibilities between the two companies:
* Apple may have refused to offer the steep discounts to Costco that most other companies have. As a result, Apple products have never been super cheap at Costco.
* Apple has always refused to allow Costco to sell Apple products online.
* iLounge reported back in October that Apple “snubbed” Costco over iPad shipments, passing over the retailer and showering iPads on competitors like Target, Walmart and Sam’s Club.
It’s very likely that Costco will continue to sell Apple-compatible third-party accessories, however, including in stores and online.
A crazy gadget called the Looxcie LX1 sits on your ear like a Bluetooth headset. A built-in video camera records constantly, capturing everything you see.
The video recording and uploading takes place via a phone — until now an Android phone. But now, just in time for Christmas, the company has optimized their product for the iPhone.
The idea behind the $199 Looxcie LX1 is to capture every moment in order to capture any moment. What that means is that the device is constantly recording video, but dumps it continuously unless you choose to save it. In other words, unlike with a convention video camera where you choose to record video before you record it, the Looxie lets you choose to save video after an event occurs.
With the recorder going all the time, you won’t miss that alien abduction, sasquatch sighting or even being run over on the sidewalk by Steve Wozniak’s Segway – or any other sudden event.
To permanently retain footage, you have several options. The easiest is to simply press a button on the Looxcie, which grabs the previous 30 seconds and saves it on your iPhone. You use the app on your iPhone to upload a clip to YouTube, Facebook or send via e-mail. You can also connect to Mac or PC via USB.
The Looxcie LX1 talks to your iPhone via Bluetooth. It weighs 1 ounce, and records video at 480×320 resolution and 15 frames per second. You can get it at BestBuy.
A small publishing company called Peter Pauper Press today announced an iPad version of a print book called The Little Black Book of Kama Sutra.
The book is part of a continuing series of “Little Black Books” and “Little Pink Books.” Other titles include The Little Black Book of Cocktails and The Little Pink Book of Etiquette.
The Kama Sutra book is very much in line with a growing trend of publishing books as interactive apps instead of as e-books. The only trouble is that the book is sexual in nature and illustrated with photographs. The publisher isn’t even going to try to get it past Apple censors, but instead intends to distribute it independently rather than through the iTunes App Store.
The Kama Sutra puts Apple in an awkward position.
Will the iPad kill — or save — the newspaper? Countless observers have argued both cases. I come to bury these notions, not to praise them.
The newspaper industry is suffering through a painful transition, characterized by layoffs, closures, mergers and the abandonment of mission and even dignity in the quest to maintain relevance to advertisers.
The “iPad-will-destroy-newspapers” crowd assumes that paper is the problem. Paper is expensive, slow and bad for the environment. Because the iPad delivers news cheap, fast and without the conversion of trees into trash, the public will choose iPad-based news, which will kill off newspapers.
The “iPad-will-save-newspapers” people, on the other hand, see the wide range of news-reading apps as the newspaper’s salvation. There’s some logic to this, given that the iPad is a theoretically superior advertising platform. But that’s not going to happen.
‘Tis the season: time to gather with friends and family and answer an endless barrage of hideous tech support questions.
You’re reading this Web site. That means you’re the most technical person in your extended family and therefore know off the top of your head why your mother-in-law’s PC won’t print, right? Your uncle is convinced that if he can corner you between dinner and pie, you’ll solve the riddle of that obscure error message he gets every time he boots his PC.
And your cousin wants to buy her husband the latest gadget. She has a Black Friday coupon for something, but doesn’t remember what it’s called. Should she buy it?
Ugh! Where’s that eggnog?
Fortunately, Apple has provided us all with a universal answer: “Get an iPad!”
If you’re in the netbook, notebook, PC, hand-held gaming, newspaper or DVD business, Apple wants to eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti — at least according to a huge number of observers who don’t know what the word “cannibalize” means.
For example, Microsoft’s general manager for Windows product management, Gavriella Schuster, said this month that the netbook market is “definitely getting cannibalized” by the iPad.
Wait, “cannibalized”? What does that mean, exactly? And why is everybody saying it?
A study conducted at the USC Marshall School of Business found that attachment to brands like the iPod “can even be strong enough to induce separation anxiety when… replaced” by another brand, according to the university’s press release.
To test their hypothesis, researchers used three completely different consumer products, and one of them was the Apple iPod. Attachment to some brands can be so strong that “consumers are willing to sacrifice time, money, energy and reputation to maintain their attachment to that brand.”
The researchers determined that “the greater the attachment, the greater sacrifices a consumer will make to connect with or remain connected to the brand.”
When PC platforms were the central battlefield for technology, Microsoft was Apple’s big threat, hated enemy and all-purpose nemesis. But those days are gone.
Yet some Apple Faithful rage on against Redmond like abandoned Japanese soldiers on remote Pacific islands long after the end of WWII. It’s time for those Apple fans to come back to civilization understand what’s really happening now. Microsoft is more a friend than an enemy to Apple.
Because Apple is already using the brand name iPad, two companies have tried to name their competitive tablets something completely different: The nPad.
Not recommended. Here’s why.
A war of words between the CEOs of Google and Apple makes for great headlines, but does little to illuminate reality.
Google says its Android OS is “open,” while Apple’s iOS platform is “closed.” Apple, on the other hand, claims Android is “fragmented,” while iOS is “integrated.”
They’re both right about Apple, at least with their respective spins, but wrong about Google. Google, in fact, is at least as “closed” as Apple.
Software giant Microsoft plans to open a new retail store Nov. 6 in Minnesota’s gigantic Mall of America — directly opposite from the Apple Store.
I predict that the Microsoft Store will fail spectacularly.
PC giant Dell tried retail locations a few years ago — the company peaked at 140 mall kiosks before the company announced that electronics superstores and the dell.com web site were better places for customers to buy.
Gateway tried it, too. The company opened more than 260 “Gateway Country” stores several years ago before shutting them down and selling out to Acer.
Microsoft’s Mall of America store will be much larger than the Apple Store across the walkway — reportedly 8,600 total square feet and 5,200 of which devoted to public showroom. And it will be a lot bigger than Microsoft’s existing retail stores in Scottsdale, Ariz., Lone Tree, Colo., and Mission Viejo and San Diego, Calif. (Apple has 310 stores.)
The new Microsoft store will mimic Apple’s shiny modern industrial wood, metal and glass architectural style. Employees will high-five customers as they stream in on Day One. There will be computers and tablets and smart phones displayed.
Microsoft’s strategy for competing technologies has always been to “embrace and extend.” The strategy for retail appears to be “copy and outspend.”
Why the Microsoft Store Will Fail
Tech giants, including Apple, open retail stores for four reasons:
1. Increase sales
2. Improve branding awareness and affinity
3. Improve public familiarity with products
4. Provide a place for tech support
I predict that Microsoft will fail in all four of these areas. Here’s why:
Apple Stores are profitable. The Microsoft store will not be. It probably wasn’t designed to be. It probably can’t be. The details of Microsoft’s money-losing retail strategy, especially for this giant store, will be contrasted unfavorably with the details of Microsoft’s incredibly lucrative retail strategy. Microsoft will probably lose a lot of money on this store, and the fact will embarrass.
The majority of PC users and the majority of cell phone owners — in other words, the majority of mall goers — do not use Apple products. Apple increases sales with its Apple stores by introducing people to its products.
People may walk by the store fogging the glass 10 times before they ever go in. Once inside, they play around with the computers, fondle the iPads, and allow themselves to be dazzled by the big screens.
For the average mall goer, the Apple Store is a journey into an exotic and beautiful alternative universe. But the Microsoft Store will be like a journey into… Best Buy.
Placing the Microsoft Store directly opposite from the Apple Store is an error. Once the novelty has worn off, the Apple Store will be consistently busier with a much broader spectrum of consumer. While the Microsoft store may be a hit with a 13-year-old boys who want to play Xbox on giant screen, proximity will expose differences in the consumer appeal of each company.
Note that Microsoft has many loyal and enthusiastic business customers. But they won’t be at the mall to represent.
Apple has its Genius Bar, which is a mixed bag of customer service experiences. Some people walk away unhappy, but some people are completely satisfied.
Offering tech support at the Microsoft store is probably a bad idea. Because the Windows platform is what Steve Jobs would call a “fragmented” environment (OS from one company, hardware from another), tech support issues are likely to require intervention by companies other than Microsoft. So Microsoft may not offer tech support, which makes the company look bad. Or it may offer tech support, which makes the company look worse. It’s a no-win for Microsoft.
The problem with Microsoft opening a store directly across from an Apple Store is that it invites comparison between a company that’s in a position to benefit from retail against one that isn’t.
Retail benefits Apple because the company’s products are more beautiful than its competition and less familiar. Retail benefits Apple because its products are all of a kind, they look as if they come from the same company with the same aesthetic value. So the Apple Store has a unified appeal that Microsoft won’t be able to fully replicate.
Microsoft may be a great company with much to offer. But it has nothing to gain from a retail store — especially one right across from an Apple Store — except embarrassment.
It’s war! Again. Or still. Whatever. Apple CEO Steve Jobs launched an “epic rant” during an earnings call this week blasting Google’s “fragmented,” er, “open” approach to apps and extolling the virtues of Apple’s “closed,” I mean “integrated” iOS platform.
“We think Android is very fragmented and getting more fragmented by the day… We believe integrated will trump fragmented every time.”
In retaliation, Google mobile strategy chief Andy Rubin apparently posted the following dorky reply on Twitter:
the definition of open: ‘mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make’.
That’s a set of Linux commands for copying Android.
Does Rubin have a point? No, seriously. What’s his point?
Since Google hasn’t mounted a coherent defense against fragmen… I mean the open approach to mobile platforms, does anyone here want to try?
Go here to read the whole post on IT World.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster predicted this week that Apple will eventually lose its early tablet lead to Google. Munster is very bullish on tablets and pessimistic about the prospects for netbooks and laptops. “The tablet is undeniably going to be the winning category in mobile computing over the next decade,” he said.
But ultimately Apple won’t be able to maintain the lead in tablets, according to Munster.
My own prediction is that Munster is correct about Android — if he is talking about the global market. But in the United States, I predict that Apple will maintain its tablet lead indefinitely. Here’s why.
(Read the rest on IT World)
This new TV commercial for Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 inspired me to write a script for this weekend’s Saturday Night Live. No, really!
WEEKEND UPDATE SEGMENT
Seth Meyers, Amy Poehler
SETH
Microsoft this week unveiled its long awaited Windows Phone 7 to compete with the Apple iPhone and Google Android phones. The company also released a TV commercial depicting a world of people so engrossed in their cell phones that they fail in their jobs, neglect their kids and ignore the sexual advances of their spouses. To which people in the commercial respond: “Really!?!”
Which brings us to a segment we like to call, “REALLY!?! with Seth & Amy.”
<Applause>
I spend a lot of time at Starbucks using my iPad. It has been interesting to see the evolution of questions and comments I get from strangers waiting for their lattes. (This is one of the disadvantages of using an iPad in public. People interrupt you.)
For the first month or two, I got a lot of questions like “Is that an iPad?” and “How do you like it?” Gradually, questions about the wireless keyboard have become more common. I’m often surprised by how many people don’t realize that you can use an iPad with a keyboard.
But most people who come up to me at Starbucks really want to know: “What would I really use it for?” I can see they want one. They know it’s the new hotness. They’ve heard everybody talking about it. They just don’t know what it’s for.
