In a gripping game, Canada finally delivered the final goal to beat the USA in the final ice hockey game for the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Congrats. You guys deserve it. That was an awesome game.
Well, that’s the wrap for the Jobs presentation. I’m feeling iffy. It seems like a nice thing to have, as a matter of convenience, but I didn’t see any killer features. Maybe there’s more to come and maybe you have to try it to really form a good idea of what it’s like.
So the pricing will start at $499 for 16GB storage and going up. You will need to add another $130.
I do quite like that it is really thin.
Jobs is still going through his rounds of whos-who of companies outside Apple and what they’ve been doing on the tablet. Jobs has been showing off other UI things, but nothing quite groundbreaking yet. He’s showed off the iBook, at this point. The Book store is neat and the iBook app is nothing unexpected.
The iPad has been designed to support all iPhone apps… upscaling is possible to fit the bigger screen size. Apple really has developed their own little eco-system. It’s interesting to see how they leverage it in their products from now on. I imagine we should expect their desktop and laptops to start supporting iPhone Apps and this will be the future of software distribution.
The tablet is running Apple’s own chip – a 1GHz Apple A4. This is an interesting turn of events.
Still feels like Jobs is holding out. First impressions are, the margins on the sides of the iPad are bigger than expected. Some mock ups have looked slicker.
Jobs has a tendency to keep the best for last, so we shall see.
Jobs certainly is jumping right into the action after saying ‘let’s get to the main event’ and then quoting “Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it’ from WSJ
They are calling it the iPad?
Well, Jobs has been showing the iPad and so far it just looks like a tablet, which is like a MacBook merged with the iPhone. Nothing groundbreaking so far.
Chances are that, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you would have heard a rumour going on that Apple is releasing a tablet.
Apple Tablet Mock Up
As with every Apple product, as of lately, there is always a dose of skepticism among in the press. People are pretty much divided amongst the group who think that there is no need for a tablet (pointing out companies that have long tried and failed, such as Microsoft), those who think it’s just going to another iPhone but in a bigger size with Kindle features and those who think this really could be a next step and a brand new market. It’s worth pointing out that this discussion has many parallels with when Apple was releasing the iPhone. Many thought it was destined to fail and no one would want an over-priced smart phone without a keyboard. We all know how that turned out.
In any event, in my humble opinion, I think Apple knows that a lot is riding on this. They knew this from the start, because they know that expectations are always going to be higher for Apple and anything less than a spectacular product is going to be a failure for them.
Everyone knows it’s the mythical (unobtainable?) holy grail, yet no one knows quite what it will look like or how needs to behave in order to fit between the laptop or the mobile device… or even replace them altogether. There are so many considerations and so many user preferences at play here. This isn’t just a mere evolution of personal computing… whatever the tablet will be, it would have to be something really tuned and refined, in a way that makes complete sense as a new tool. It’s hard to imagine just how Apple will pull this off, but, if anyone could, it would be Apple.
In any event, it’s only a matter of time now. Apple will be revealing their tablet (or not?) in less than 12 hours.
If you want to follow the coverage live, check out Engadget’s live feed. I’ll be posting my thoughts along the way. I’m excited!
If there is ever a better example as to why Steve Balmer is bad for Microsoft:
It’s always dangerous when a company starts requiring their employees to become ‘yes men’ and employees start fearing their own jobs if they disagree or don’t show the same level of enthusiasm.