The iPad 2
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
It's this kind of thinking (on the part of their competition) that lets Apple keep their head start for way, way longer than necessary.
The short answer: Because what you're proposing would be terrible.
Apple's money magnet is creating a sense of delight and surprise. You'd be mimicking the result, a snap on cover, without grasping the intent, which is to make you feel like a kid seeing magic. People don't want a cover. They want to be delighted by a cover.
At least, they do now, since Apple has shown them it is possible to feel this way.
It there _are_ magnets, I can see it getting annoying when the iPad starts collecting magnet-attracted crap.
This is a problem with magnetic tank bags on motorcycles, they pick up presumably iron/steel grit on the magnets, then you clip the magnets+grit onto your nicely glossy painted fuel tank, and scratch the crap out of it...
http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/03/apple-ipad-2-smart-cover-...
Enough to make me wish my wife's birthday wasn't in January, so that I wouldn't have bought her the original iPad before this was available.
Would be interesting to know where it will end up and how much it will then be sold for in turn.
Uh, actually, I hadn't seriously contemplated this until now. Hmm. Come to think of it, the major hurdle is probably getting this scheme past my SO. :)
OTOH, I could have sold it last month for at least $400, which would be a much better deal but would mean I would have no iPad for one month.
OTOOH, if I keep the iPad 1 another year, it will probably still be sellable for $250, and that is $250 for 2 years of use which is not bad.
This might lower the resale value of the device which could be another reason for the design that Apple has chosen here.
Eponysterical, as they say on MetaFilter.
However, I understand how well it fits the bill for casual consumption, and considering how Apple is effectively building a robust platform for content delivery. It seems that an iPad in every house would pay dividends for years to come.
Hardware sales will still be important (a $1100 computer with 30% margins every 3 years brings in $100 a year), but it won't be long before the content is making more than the hardware.
StreamToMe and AirVideo both convert and stream basically anything. (As far as I know, StreamToMe uses ffmpeg internally to make the conversion on the fly.)
I don't even bother with syncing video content anymore.
Unless I am watching a movie with the kids, I now prefer my iPad 1 to my TV for watching video at home. Curling up with an episode of "The Prisoner" or even "The Empire Strikes Back feels like curling up with a book, and I can watch anything on my network serve without all that synchronization nonsense.
Synchronizing movies is SneakerNet by another name. It may make sense for an airplane flight or a long subway ride, but why on Earth would anyone ever want to do it at home?
The downsides are that the iPad won’t sync and consequently your PC has to be always on to allow constant access.
Me, I'm waiting hat in hand for the Asus Eee Note. Executive summary in SAT Analogy format:
iPad : Eee Note :: flat-screen TV : chalkboard
but.
it rocks as a business device. if you sit in meetings a lot, needing to walk from room to room, it is awesome. take notes, do e-mail, run presentations. access web based enterprise software like salesforce.com.
field force personnel? they love it. no more charging, no more boot time, it just works and doesn't weigh them down. big pharma as an example is moving heavily onto the ipad. companies like veeva or cegedim offer dedicated ipad apps by now.
the ipad is a game changer in the business world.
"Just get the hinge vaguely in the vicinity of the left edge of the iPad and it acts like a robot that knows how to (and wants to) connect itself."
Has the guy that wrote this never seen a magnet before or what?
It's a bit of a Procrustean bed since if it was too much for the iPad 1 then obviously they'd cut stuff and reduce detail till it wasn't.
I think I fucked up something somewhere...
I like the way he used the sentence. I think he meant, "But it is in no way a radical or significant improvement from last year's model"
So then the operative part is was it radical or significant? Well, Gruber's whole point is that Apple launches radical products and then slowly improves them. He even concedes that it's probably not worth upgrading for many people:
Most of the 15 million original iPads sold to date do not need to be replaced by iPad 2s. That’s not a problem for Apple, nor a failure for the iPad 2. A $500-800 device should have a useful life that is longer than a year.
So what exactly are you trying to say?
I think this kind of analysis of Apple's process is far more interesting than the resultant products.
FWIW, I think the idea of it not being a departure is significant. He's saying that they are sticking to the core themes that motivated the iPad. Sure, it's getting improved, but he's saying they got the kernel right.
Look at the Apple TV by comparison. There was a significant departure from the approach of the first version to the current version. You can very easily make the argument that the main theme/motivation of the Apple TV still hasn't quite gelled. The fact that Apple doesn't put their full weight behind pushing it means they probably know they haven't gotten it nailed down quite yet. … and getting it nailed down is a business problem more than a technical one.
With new superior models coming every year, time for Apple to do some innovation in the business-model (well, in addition to the app-ecosystem they created) and move to a subscription-based model :)
One pays few grands (say $2k) every year to upgrade i/pod/phone/pad to the latest version.
(well, they have recycling program with 90% depreciation!!)
As it turned out, this made an enormous amount of people unhappy. I think they abandoned it.
Apple does have an annual subscription service, MobileMe (or whatever they are calling it this week). As far as I can tell it has had a very low rate of adoption, despite coming free (for a limited time) with new Macs. Heck, I have a hard enough time convincing random (Mac using) strangers to buy a damn external drive and turn on Time Machine. Don't underestimate user inertia.
The only problem is that there's way to much risk to do this unless you are Apple or have a direct relationship with Apple. Then again, maybe the float would cover the risk.
Can someone explain by what metric this might be true, and why?
I'm not sure about the DRM, but algorithmically it's probably a lot simpler than h.264 video.
They probably weren't as well compressed because they're intended to work on the older iDevices too which couldn't handle something tuned specifically for the iPad or, even more so, the iPad2.
I think it's safe to say that the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 (the last big two releases for Apple) have been significant upgrades. Gruber agrees and so do many other analysts. Instead of feeling disappointed, I felt pleasantly surprised after the announcement - a feeling that I'm sure many other people shared.
Let's just say: Apple is definitely on a roll.
None of the new stuff is new technology. They're amazing at selling something that's good enough for a lot of uses and leaving a lot of space for improvement in the very near future. If they would've included cameras and the accelerometer in version 1, and perhaps made it a bit thinner, version 2 would've been significantly less interesting.
Really?
I assume that you look back on every product's new version and say, "none of this is new tech, they could have shipped it in the last version!"
In almost every case, subsequent versions are driven directly by previous versions; nothing revolutionary happens. Was the dual core A5 ready for the first iPad? Was unibody aluminum manufacturing ready for the form factor and volume of iPad? Were the cameras sourced cheaply enough for the first iPad? What about 512MB RAM? Could all of this have been done in time for the first iPad? You have none of those answers, and I bet that most of them are "no."
Then you have something like the Smart Covers. Those are derived directly from watching what happened with the first iPad. No great cases came out, and people wanted to protect the screen. You ask, "Somehow the screen is all of a sudden the only important thing?" Well, yes, for many people. Myself included. I refuse to use any case, because most prevent easy docking, add bulk and are a pain. But every time I travel with my iPad, I am careful to stick it in a bag such that the screen is protected.
You know, that 's exactly what everyone says about software, which is why it's nearly always late and buggy. The temptation to add "just one more thing" absolutely kills products.
Please believe me when I tell you, Apple's magic is leaving stuff out. Not because they can make more money later, but because they are smart enough to ship a great product that works properly NOW rather than trying for a perfect product that is late and buggy later.
"The cameras are severely lacking, the screen -- while extremely high quality -- is touting last year's spec, and its operating system still has significant annoyances, like the aggravating pop-up notifications" -iPad 2 Review (Engadget)
Apple doesn't, as of yet, make a smaller tablet, and that's where the competitors should focus. Like a B&N Android Nook 7" tablet for $199, wifi only - and this is probably totally feasible on their part.
But if you are trying to compete with 10" devices against the iPad, forget it.
Apple is winning because they defined the genre, giving them a 2-3 year head start.
Meaning, any new Apple product is designed be obsolete within a year. That doesn't feel right.
iPad's are still fully functional and can even still be purchased. I plan on keeping mine for at least another year.
This is a Planned Obsolescence™ scheme. Not as bad as time-limited light bulbs, but still.
There's doing better this year (lessons learned etc), and doing less than optimal now so you can do better next year. If I recall correctly, Apple did that once with the IPhone: the case had room for a camera that wasn't there in this year's model.
On a different note, there is better and there is different. The design of cars, for instance, changes much faster than the underlying mechanics (engine, safety…) improve. As far as I can tell, Apple isn't too guilty of this. Their design though exquisitely shiny, is relatively stable.
There's also the timing of product: most goods now are designed not to last (designers actually learn at school how important this is for their future customers). The most famous example is light bulbs. They only last 1500 to 2000 hours because the biggest vendors at the time colluded to limit their lifetimes. They got sued, but since, despite numerous patents for long-lasting light bulbs, you don't find any for sale. Apple used this strategy once with irreplaceable IPods' batteries. They eventually backed off because a consumer union sued them.
Going back to the IPad, if Apple really cared about making the best product possible, they would have made the processor replaceable, and the memory extend-able, so that when they inevitably improve, customer can replace them at lower cost (both in money and in resources).
Now, I'm not willing to blame Evil Corp™ right away: they just maximize profit. So, I'd rather ask what in our society generates such profit maximizers.
Besides, even if they do purposefully hold off on stuff that would make it better only to manipulate us and profit (which I doubt[a]), it still doesn't make your first-gen iPad useless. It works great still!
[a]: To take the example of the camera, they probably weren't able to make it a good experience. The software was still buggy, or they were waiting for more readily available parts (supply chain is a big deal!), etc.
In short, they aren't bricking original iPad's, so there's no reason to get upset about a new one. You can simply hold onto yours. If you can't because of peer-pressure or you require the newest status symbol, that's not Apple's problem -- Indeed they would be stupid not to capitalize on that.
Why not? What is wrong with sockets? Or plugs? Or screws? How would they make the IPad significantly thicker, heavier, more fragile, less powerful, or clunkier? It would at worst make it 10% more expensive. But that would waste so much less resources when it's time to upgrade, or when one piece is broken. Oh wait, it wouldn't be as profitable, so let's pretend it just sucks and forget about it.
[a]: Good example, actually. They could either have put the camera anyway, knowing the software could be patched later, or just wait until it's ready, or make it possible to add the camera later (maybe requiring an approved specialist to solder it on). They just preferred the more lucrative path. Like nearly everyone else in this planet. I can hardly blame them personally for that, because:
> Indeed they would be stupid not to capitalize on that.
From a selfish point of view, I agree: companies would be silly not to do everything in their power to maximize profit. Even taking advantage of human weaknesses, or waste resources, or dumping trash in the wild, or <insert lots of horrible things here>.
I just say that something is wrong with such a system.
http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/dirty_percent
To me it seems like apple is implementing not only a tax on all apps that run on the device, which has been there from the start and is ok. As a customer I like the fact that the apps are centralized and under quality and security control.
But the new move seems to be a tax on ALL MEDIA played on or loaded on the device. I don't want apple to control the data I load on my device, and this is what they're doing.
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/03/03/marco-disagreeme...
ubernostrum should not have been downvoted. Gruber has consistently been highly critical about other App Store policies:
http://daringfireball.net/2008/09/app_store_exclusion http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/04/16/scratch http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/04/16/app-store-reject.... http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/09/29/isinglepayer
The only thing more consistent than Gruber's support of Apple is the ad hominem attacks inevitably made against him.
Here are other reviews but they all sound pretty much like Gruber’s:
http://www.macworld.com/article/158439/2011/03/ipad2.html
And both are getting scary powerful.
Basically, you're replacing a closed codec with an open one. MS and Apple will put WebM in IE and Safari if there's sufficient adoption, as it doesn't cost them anything to do so.
You may not care about open codecs that aren't laden with patents, but I can't see how this makes things worse. All of the kvetching about this move extending Flash's lifetime is pointless given the fact it wasn't going anywhere anyway.
Hardly a new account, though it is his first comment.
I don't think it's him, though; I imagine the real Gruber would have tried to take http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gruber (which is still available), so as to match his Twitter username.