iPad

The leading investment bank Goldman Sachs (recently tagged as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity” by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone) loves the iPad. As The Financial Times reports, Goldman categorizes the love rationale into Five Cs (oh, how confidently ingenious!) and expects the stock price to soar (I’d bet they are shorting Apple while they pumping the audience with bull horomes). OK, here are the 5 Cs, sit tight – buckle yourself, this will blow you away:

1. Consumption – iPad focused squarely on information consumption versus information production
2. Content – iPad relies on tight integration with content sources
3. Connected – Multiple options ensure the iPad is connected to the internet
4. Constant operation – iPad is an “instant on” device with all-day battery life
5. Commerce – Apple’s ecosystem ensures that users are always “ready to buy”

TNW Apple has a post on Ten (big and small) Things That Suck on the iPad.
Boris’ overall impression with the device is positive and the issues described are tagged as a ‘no deal breaker’

Note that #6 (No International Support) relates to the iTunes support, not international language support which was covered here.

Here is the conclusion:

The iPad still rocks. It is an amazing device and for $499 you would be crazy not to get one (if you can afford it).
The issues described here will undoubtedly get fixed over time and while annoying are no deal breaker.

The issue list

1. You can’t hover
2. Lots of HTML rendering issues
3. There is no ‘up’ or ‘down’
4. Apps are re-arranging themselves
5. No International support?
6. No stereo sound?
7. No Settings for iWork’s Apps?
8. Wi-Fi is buggy and unpredictable
9. iPhone Apps don’t rotate
10. No ‘No-Flash’ indication

Here is the news summary for Day 2:

Apple’s iPad Accessories – First Review

Source link: Engadget

WordPress announces WordPress for iPhone/iPad OS 2.4

Source link: WordPress Beginner

Oh, Apple iPad will save the planet!

Source link: Triple Pundit

Low memory issue spoted

Source link: Gizmodo

Zen Bound 2 for iPad Review

Source link: TouchArcade/Youtube

Here comes the iPad jailbreak Demo

Source link: iPad Guide

Steve Jobs personaly surveys the iPad carnage in the Palo Alto Apple Store.

Source link: Gizmodo

iPad Accessory Giveaway

Source link: iPad Guide

Ipad Game Video Review Mix

Given Adobe Flash’s ubiquity, the lack of Flash support is certainly one of the biggest turn-offs for potential iPad buyers. On the other hand, some of leading publishers are sidestepping the issue by providing alternative video streaming methods.

For example both Brightcove platform which enables them to detect the visitor’s operating system and to route the appropriate video stream accordingly.

So, let’s say, if an iPad user hits the publisher’s page, Brightcove will detect Apple iPhone OS on the visitor’s system and will stream H.264-encoded video renditions optimized for iPad screen resolution via html5. Problem solved.

Here is Brightcove’s sales pitch to publishers:

Ready for Apple iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch
Reduce the cost and complexity of delivering and monetizing video on current and future generations of Apple devices that support the HTML5 standard. Deliver the best possible video experience to iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users.

Automatic Device Detection
Brightcove automatic device detection dynamically switches between Flash and HTML5 player templates to suit the viewer’s device capabilities.

Native HTML5 Player Templates
New HTML5 templates provide multi-title playlists, analytics tracking, social sharing controls, advertising insertion, and other capabilities to provide a customizable video experience built on open standards.

Gorgeous H.264 transcoding
Brightcove’s cloud transcoding engine converts virtually any source file into H.264-encoded video renditions optimized for multiple encoding profiles, bit rates, and screen sizes.

Pricing and Availability
The Brightcove Experience for HTML5 is provided at no charge to customers with subscriptions to Brightcove Professional, Enterprise, and Express $499 editions. An early version of the automatic device detection and HTML5 player template are available in the Brightcove Developer Center. Additional capabilities will be provided in future versions released throughout 2010.

USA Today had a 2-page cover story on the iPad today – here are the highlights:

On Opportunity:
“If there ever was a space to do some land-grabbing in, this is it,” says Lahman, Gogii’s CEO.

On Sales Projections
The iPhone spawned a $1 billion-a-year industry for app developers, says analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray. He predicts first-year sales of 2.7 million iPads, compared with 4 million iPhones in the first year. The iPhone has grown to become a third of Apple’s business, says Munster. The iPad has the potential to represent 10% to 15% of Apple’s annual revenue by 2012, he says.

On Development Induced by Anxiety
“I’d rather be in early than sit back and wait and let my competitors get early traction,” says Ken Willner, CEO of Zumobi, a Seattle-based developer of ad-supported apps for big media brands including MSNBC and Today. “It’s a larger device, so it’s better for advertising.”

On Living Room Takeover
“This is the iPhone moving into the living room,” says Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous. Its Tap Tap Revenge is one of the iPhone’s most popular games, with 25 million downloads. “In the short term, it’s an extension of the iPhone. In the long term, it’s a brand-new platform that will move eyeballs off gaming consoles and laptops.”

On Drawbacks
Like the iPhone, the iPad doesn’t support Adobe’s Flash software, which is used to watch most online video. That mean videos at popular sites such as Hulu and ComedyCentral.com can’t be viewed, and neither can videos at thousands of other websites that rely on Flash.
Additionally, the iPad doesn’t have slots for common computer add-ons, such as, say, a USB flash drive or external hard drive. If you want to import your own video clips, for instance, you’re out of luck, unless you first put them in Apple’s iTunes software and transfer them from the computer, or figure a way to move them via the Web.

No Flash, no available slots, too big to fit into a pocket: Those are huge drawbacks, Enderle says.

And a bit of self-promotion…
USA TODAY will have an iPad app available on April 3. It will be free for the first 90 days, sponsored by Courtyard by Marriott. After that, USA TODAY will announce subscription pricing.

This one comes as a bit of surprise – Barnes&Noble has announced today that they will release an App for the iPad – essentially it’ll be an eReader that will allow you to view digital books sold through BN. I am not sure how this will jive with the concept of iBookstore, i reckon the two will not be competitors (they recently announced an alliance) yet it’ll be interesting to see how Apple is going to react to this. Another interesting point would be to hypothesize about possible sale of magazines (and other content) via RSS reader type devices (e.g., just announced Google Reader for iPad – another potential challenger to the Apple store/iBookstore concept.

Back to BN, here is blurb from what’s posted on the company’s blog:

We’ve been getting lots of questions from customers, so we wanted to confirm that we will soon be adding a new B&N eReader for iPad – continuing to fulfill our promise of providing consumers any book, any time, any where.
Designed specifically for the iPad, our new B&N eReader will give our customers access to more than one million eBooks, magazines and newspapers in the Barnes & Noble eBookstore, as well as the existing content in their Barnes & Noble digital library. (That includes eBooks and content customers have downloaded to their nook eBook reader.)

Just created a Twitter account and liked it to the RSS feed. If you would like to follow hit me at: http://twitter.com/ipad_org

Apple goes head to head with Google (well, kind of)…

…Apple’s lawsuit against HTC a proxy through which to strike at Google and its increasingly popular Android OS? It certainly looks that way. While not directly named in the lawsuit, Google figures prominently in it simply because of the sheer number of times “Android products” are called out in the complaint. According to Apple, “Accused HTC Android Products” infringe no fewer than nine of its patents–some dating from back to the company’s NeXT days.

See the source article here (All Things Digital).

The Apple iPad will be sold in Best Buy retail outlets and “select” other retail locations (we wrote previously about the device already listed on Amazon.com). The news comes via Apple Insider which is quoting Tim Cook and his statements at a Goldman Sachs led conference event held yesterday in San Francisco. Long story short, Cook said the iPad launch will resemble the iPhone sales programs already proven to work well.

If you feel like watching a 60 minute long chit chat on the iPad and how it’s going to change the future of mankind here is the iPad Session at Macworld San Francisco 2010 (Dan Moren, Jason Snell, Ted Landau and Andy Ihnatko participate):