What's new on SlashGear.com |
- Why 2014 Will Not Be Like 1984
- iPhone Conrolled Parrot AR.Drone Quadricopter Gets Augmented Reality Chase Game for iOS
- SlashGear Week in Review – Week 46 2010
- LG E-Note H1000B Windows 7 tablet gets official
- A Week with NOOKcolor: Hardware
| Why 2014 Will Not Be Like 1984 Posted: 21 Nov 2010 11:03 AM PST Or: Will Google’s Open Model Overcome Apple’s Closed Model? There is an argument I'm hearing a lot lately that Apple is repeating the mistakes it made in the PC era again today with the iPhone. The argument – which I've heard from financial analysts, journalists, and my friend Marc on our walk home from synagogue – goes something like this:
That's the argument. It's wrong on a bunch of levels. Oh, there are parallels, but it's still wrong. First, let's tackle the revisionist history: back in 1984 Apple didn't have as big a lead as it looked. The Mac was beautiful, but there wasn't much you could do with it (the advent of desktop publishing single handedly rescued the platform from oblivion). In contrast, the iPhone is a market leader in large part because it is the most versatile platform – there are more, and higher quality apps for iOS than all other platforms combined. App developers nearly always target Apple first because that's where the money is. Some argue that this app advantage will be short lived, and app developers will switch allegiance as Android shipments exceed iPhones, which is already happening according to most market sizing numbers. Jobs argues that will not happen because fragmentation within the Android camp makes iOS app development more appealing, but I expect Google to minimize the version fragmentation going forward by slowing down the pace of software releases now that Android is maturing, leaving mainly screen resolution fragmentation as an issue for developers to deal with. However, while I don't expect fragmentation to slow Android's rise, I don't think Apple has anything to worry about here: it already has the most apps, the best apps, and the deepest selection of good niche apps. It is a leader in mobile gaming. As long as Apple maintains a meaningful share of the market overall, it will remain a premier mobile platform for developers. Apple is also benefiting from the reach iOS has in media devices (the iPod touch) and tablets (with the iPad), not to mention the leading digital media store, iTunes. Android is beginning to compete with Apple in tablets, but the iPad has a significant lead – Google has not even built a tablet-specific version of Android yet, and the iPad enjoys a massive lead in tablet-specific apps. But doesn't open always beat closed? Not necessarily. Google argues that consumers want an open OS. Why? The benefits to consumers for Apple's controlled environment are clear (the iPhone delivers a consistently good user experience), while Android's openness has been a mixed bag: there is diverse hardware available, but fragmentation has left some phones unable to run the latest apps, and even as that situation improves, carriers have imposed their own restrictions on core elements of the platform. Cellphones are the most personal of personal technology, and there is no reason to think that we will end up with a single platform. Our present state of seven major platforms (iOS, Android, WP7, webOS, Symbian, MeeGo, BlackBerry) is not sustainable, either, but it is definitely not a zero sum game where if Android succeeds, the iPhone fails. Apple is dominant in a critical industry metric: profitability – Apple makes more money than anyone else in the industry. It sells high margin devices (the average selling price paid by carriers for the iPhone last quarter was $610) and sells tens of millions of them per quarter (14.1 million of them last quarter). Apple doesn't break out profitability by business unit, but iPhone revenues were $8.6 billion last quarter and corporate gross margin was over 36%, so iPhone profits are extremely robust no matter how the numbers actually break down. When Google sells an Android phone, it makes nothing, because Google doesn't sell Android phones; Google licenses the OS for free. Google claims that Android is profitable thanks to advertising revenues Google accrues down the line, but from that perspective, Google actually gets a fair amount of mobile advertising revenue from the iPhone as well. Google's business model is different from Apple, allowing both Android and iOS to be successful at the same time. Right now, Apple outsells any individual Android licensee and outearns all of them combined. Even if Android takes an even larger share of the market overall, as long as Apple remains one of the top three or four smartphone vendors and continues selling high margin devices, Apple wins the real game among handset vendors, which is making money. How likely is Apple to remain one of the top smartphone vendors over the next few years (i.e., large enough to continue to present a healthy target for app developers)? Bet on it. Apple has the lead in apps, consistently refreshes its hardware thanks to strong profits, leads in digital media sales, and owns an incredibly strong brand. Given its position and assets, there are only two things that could realistically knock Apple out: if Apple completely misses an inflection point in how smartphones are used, or if Google chose to use mobile advertising revenue to subsidize hardware (not just the OS), penalizing companies that charge for premium hardware. Either scenario is certainly possible, but rather unlikely, in the near term. The pace of innovation at Google is astonishing, and Android has easier access to market segments Apple has chosen to avoid – entry level smartphones, QWERTY businessphones, orange square-shaped swivel phones aimed at tweens. However, Apple chose to avoid those segments for a reason: it can make more money by offering a consistent experience on a limited number of hardware variants. Apple is just fine with Google "beating" it in marketshare as long as it can corral the lion's share of industry profits.
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| iPhone Conrolled Parrot AR.Drone Quadricopter Gets Augmented Reality Chase Game for iOS Posted: 21 Nov 2010 10:33 AM PST This game is called AR.Pursuit and it’ll make controlling your flying machine all the more fantastic with augmented reality – available at the end of November in the Apple App Store. It’s a two-player game where you control your AR.Drone VS a friend’s, blasting away at them with missiles and machine guns, playing cat and dog in a real world / virtual reality world simulation. It’s so weird! It’s so wild! It looks like so much fun!
If you’re unfamiliar with the AR.Drone experience, take a look at our Hands-on post and come on back after you’re done. Then take a look at this game. There are two roles: “pursuer” and “pursued.” The pursuer is equipped with both an automatic machine gun and missiles, the machine gun firing whenever the frontal camera detects the pursued AR.Drone, while the missiles are fired by shaking your iPhone/iPod touch/iPad. Once you hit your opponent, you switch roles, they now act as the pursuer and you the pursued. Once your iDevice is connected to your AR.Drone, one player just has to select “create” and the color of their opponent’s color and type of hull. The second player selects “join,” the components of the first person’s flier, and the game is on! What you view through your iDevice is a view of your AD.Drone is seeing. Each game lasts between 1 and 9 minutes, roles are defined randomly at the beginning of the game, and the app will cost $2.99. Cheep! Check out the full press release below, and check out the fun preview video!
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| SlashGear Week in Review – Week 46 2010 Posted: 21 Nov 2010 08:15 AM PST Hey gang, welcome to this week’s edition of the SlashGear Week in Review! This is the last edition before Thanksgiving in the US, so if you celebrate the holiday have a great one! We put up our review of the T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy Tab this past Sunday. We figure that the Tab has more flexibility in some areas than the iPad but has an overall rougher feel.
A rumor popped up early in the week that the Sony Ericsson Xperia X7 and X7 Mini smartphones would be coming in Q1 2011. The X7 is said to have a 4.3-inch screen and the X7 mini sports a 3.5-inch screen. Intel is getting serious about open-source with the announcement that MeeGo developers will get a free IdeaPad S10-3t. The free tablet for devs will likely spur more to try to work with the OS. Early in the week the Nokia E7 clears the FCC. The E7 has a QWERTY keyboard, runs Symbian^3 and packs in a 4-inch AMOLED ClearBlack display. We posted up our Holiday Gift Guide Monday and it’s packed with all sorts of cool gear. There should be something for everyone on this list and it’s really packed. Facebook added a new messaging system on Monday dubbed the Modern Messaging System. The system is interesting, but caused a few issues after its implementation. A really cool remote control for your TV turned up early in the week that is called the Pillow Universal Remote Control. The remote costs about $30 and has the remote built into a throw pillow. The only downside is if you sleep on the thing you may end up with some weird channel on the TV. EviGroup unveiled the new Paddle Pro tablet computer that runs Windows Home Premium and an Intel Atom N450 CPU. The tablet has strange head tracking tech that lets you control the mouse cursor with your head movement. Proporta unveiled a new case for the iPhone 4 with a battery inside called the TurboCharger Back Pack. The case promises to recharge your iPhone fully one time. The Dell Inspiron Duo hybrid notebook was rumored to go on sale on the 23 of the month. The cool tablet is convertible with a screen that flips around rather than twisting. The entire Beatles catalog landed on iTunes after years of fans waiting for the tracks to hit. Among the offers is a $149 box set with music, video, and lots more content. Microsoft has sold a huge amount of Kinect units in the first ten days. According to MS, it moved a million units over a bit more than a week. A crazy expensive new SSD card that fits into the PCIe slot launched this week called the WarpDrive SSD. The thing sells for $11,500 and has up to 1,400MB/s of throughput. Panasonic unveiled a gigantic 3D Plasma this week that measures 103-inches. The massive TV has a price as large as the screen at $102,000. A teen selling conversion kits to turn the iPhone 4 into the long anticipated and delayed white iPhone 4 has been hit with a legal threat. The teen sold $130,000 worth of conversion gear after coverage and ended up being accused of selling stolen goods. ThinkGeek landed a really cool alarm clock this week that looks like a Star Wars Lego minifig. The clock can be had in Storm Trooper or Darth Vader guise for about $30 each. A leaked photo surfaced mid-week that claims to be a shot of a white iPhone 4 for Verizon. The device has the Verizon logo in the left corner and has a different antenna design and no SIM card cover. An interesting concept phone surfaced this week that used both AMOLED and eInk tech inside. That would give the best of both worlds with color LCD for video and the eInk for reading. It seems a story that made the rounds this week was from a paper known for misquoting folks. The original story had Apple’s Woz saying Android would beat the iPhone, Woz quickly clarified that iOS is the best. The Dell Inspiron Duo was fingered with an official launch date on Thursday. The tablet/netbook will land in early December for $549 and will run Windows 7 and an Atom N550 CPU. An awesome accessory for the iPad surfaced called the Magic Pinball. The accessory turns your iPad into a pinball machine for $79.95. A really cool stop light concept surfaced late in the week that uses the colors we are used to and an hourglass design to show how long the light has left before it changes. The concept is cool but in the real world, the lack of other lights would cause some issues for the colorblind. Call of Duty: Black Ops is selling like crazy. The game made $650 million in 5 days. That is a crazy amount of money had better than most of the big Hollywood films. Apparently Google tried to buy Twitter at one point for the tidy sum of $4 billion. That offer was turned down, as was the first offer of $2.5 billion. Sony Ericsson’s CEO has admitted that the company is in talks with Microsoft on using Windows Phone 7 in its line. However, the strict spec and software limitations mean adoption is an off chance according to the CEO. A new iPad rumor has surfaced that has a world version of the iPad with a multi-mode GSM/CDMA modem hitting in 2011. I wonder if this would be the version that gets that carbon fiber case that surfaced in a patent app from Apple. If you are a photography geek that want’s to show just how geeky you are we found the perfect bracelets for you. The Lens Bracelets look like the focus ring around a camera lens. I’m not a fan of video game soundtracks, but there are many hard-core game geeks out there that are. If you really like the Red Dead Redemption sound track and have a record player you can get the games soundtrack. You need that record player because the soundtrack is only on red vinyl. Thanks for reading this week’s edition!
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| LG E-Note H1000B Windows 7 tablet gets official Posted: 21 Nov 2010 07:53 AM PST The LG E-Note H1000B tablet spotted crossing the FCC earlier this month has made its official debut in Korea. Fronted by a 10.1-inch 1366 x 768 resistive touchscreen (complete with a stylus), the H1000B runs Windows 7 Starter Edition on an Intel Atom 1.1GHz Z510 or 1.6GHz Z530 processor, paired with 1GB of RAM, a 16GB SSD and optional WiMAX (sadly not integrated, but bundled as a separate modem).
There’s also WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, an SD card slot and two USB ports; since this is basically a full netbook in tablet clothes, you can plug in a USB keyboard, mouse or any other peripheral. The whole thing weighs 850g with the standard, removable 4-cell battery, and measures 278.5 x 180.5 x 14.5 mm. Options include Windows 7 Professional and a docking-station stand (as shown in the gallery below). Frankly, we’re not too impressed by the specifications, and can’t imagine battery life being particularly impressive either. The LG E-Note H1000B is priced at 961,000 won ($847) from Korean carrier KT, complete with the WiMAX modem.         [via NetbookNews]
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| A Week with NOOKcolor: Hardware Posted: 20 Nov 2010 07:37 PM PST Welcome to a super amazing extended review of the brand-spanking-new NOOKcolor. Let me begin by assuring you that the name is “NOOKcolor” all one word rather than “Nook Color” as I’d originally assumed in posts of the past. Then, let me let you know that this is not the first multi-post review we’ve done of a bit of gear – search for the term “A Week with” – our most recent project being the HTC HD7. Now we move on to this NOOKcolor, Barnes and Noble’s full-color eReader, on its way out on the delivery trucks as we speak, just in time for the holiday season. This first post we’ll discuss a bit about the hardware – how the item feels, works, and functions in the real world.
NOTE: that this whole situation has both an unboxing and hands-on post and a demo post preceding it, both of the posts can be considered a sort of prequel set to this. Then lets get into the basics: weight, size, and portability. The NOOKcolor weighs approximately 15.8 oz, that being .98 pounds – lighter than a Harry Potter book (the bigger ones.) It measures in at 8.1x 5.0 x 0.48 in, making it small enough to fit in a jacket pocket, but just a bit too big to fit in anyone’s pants pocket. You can hold it with one hand and read a book, but like any paper book, you’re going to probably want to hold it with both hands and/or balance it against your leg or a table or something along those lines.
There’s a “loop” in the lower left-hand corner that both acts as an aesthetic gesture which differentiates this device from other tablets and marks the place where you’re going to be able to insert your microSD memory card. Over the phone with Barnes and Noble I was told that without any card inserted, the NOOKcolor was able to “hold 600,000 books” – for me, this ends up being about 5.1GB of space with 26 books and magazines on the device taking up space. It is possible for each regular book on your device to be anywhere from 47.2MB all the way down to 372KB – these aren’t the limits, but they are the largest and smallest books I’ve got on the device at the moment, just to give you an idea. Also over the phone I was informed that with the memory card slot you’d be able to attain “unlimited storage.” Infinite books!
Along the edges of the device there’s a headphone jack (on top), volume up/down buttons (upper right), USB plug in (with lovely glowing orange/green “n” on the official cord) (on the bottom), and power button (upper left.) On the back there’s a lightly gripping rubbery back with the official “n” pressed into the center, FCC info and BARNES&NOBLE logo printed on the bottom of the back panel, above and below a small speaker hole grid. Along the entire edge of the device is a very sturdy plastic ring – don’t go bashing against any brick walls anytime soon, but don’t be surprised if it holds up against attacking small animals.
On the front, there’s on single button in the center of a piece of plastic as long as the short end of the screen and as tall as the greater border. This button is sort of a “home” button, bringing you back to your desktop from wherever you are in a book, app, in the browser, wherever. This button is again, cleverly shaped in the NOOK “n.”
Then there’s the screen. The lovely 7-inch backlit LCD screen which I’m told by Barnes and Noble started as a prototype. It’s an IPS screen with optics fusion, 1024×600 resolution, essentially no space between the display and the glass, with a lamination across the whole thing to reduce glare. It’s certainly not a no-glare situation, especially since it certainly is glass, but the sun’s not blasted my eyes out yet with it, that’s for sure.
The screen’s colors are brilliant. Whether you’re accessing a magazine (the best example of still-images, or a video from your “files”, you’re going to find the display’s details to be no disappointment. You WILL see some degradation if you go through the browser to a place like YouTube, even if you’re watching an “HD, 1080P” video – I always use The Matrix movie trailers to test screens out, and this doesn’t stand up to that test at all – lots of yuck in the blacks and colors and everything. However, if you do have a video optimized for the NOOKcolor, you’ll find excellence. NOTE: Check out this post by user “The Hillarican” on MobileRead forums which explains optimal settings. Use something like the free application “HandBrake” to convert your video. Convert the file you wish to watch to the following: MPEG-4 (FFmpeg) for video codec, AAC (faac) for audio codec, stereo sound mixdown, samplerate of 44.1, and bitrate of 128. DOUBLE NOTE: This seems to work for some people and not for others. If you get it to work, comment below and tell us your super cool secret. I do wish it were easier to play video content with the NOOKcolor. With other tablet devices (even smartphone devices) it ends up being a much simpler situation in almost every case. On the other hand, this tablet is being marketed as a reading-centric device and they do not seem to push anywhere in the marketing of this device that you’ll be able to view brilliant video. Also note that there’s no video content available anywhere in the B&N store. Should I wish for an easier video situation on a device that doesn’t technically promise it? I can’t be sure. There are several ways to interact with books and apps, meaning several ways to tap, swipe, drag, etc, but I’ll get into more of that once we reach the rest of this review series. For now, I’ll let you know how well the screen reacts to those actions. Every sort of move or press or tap seems to work perfectly. There are times (especially when tapping something small, like a text link in a book or on the browser) that it takes a few tries to get it to accept your tap, but on the whole, it’s a very good experience touchscreen-wise here. There is one place on the screen that shows a digital ghost when squeezing the device – see picture – this shouldn’t be a problem since, you know, why would you be squeezing the thing in the first place, but it’ll be interesting to see if this develops into a problem in the future. More than likely this situation arises from there being a piece of equipment inside the casing set up a little higher than everything else, and that’s the place that touches the back of the display first.
Plugging into the wall or the computer seems to work pretty well, the drive folder showing up on your computer’s desktop within a minute, most of the time within 10 seconds. As I’ve said before, I do really enjoy when any power plug lets me know when the device is fully charged, and this one does just that with a lovely NOOK “n” on the cord on the device’s end. While the device is plugged into the computer, you’re not allowed to access anything on the device unless you eject the files folder. Once you do this, though, your device will power up even as you use it. IMPORTANT: if you ever decide to fully power your NOOKcolor off, do not expect to turn it back on without it being plugged in. For some reason you are not allowed to turn the device on from fully-powered-down mode without the device being plugged into the wall or your computer.
Wrap-UpThe NOOKcolor has very minimal problems in the hardware department. If you’re the sort of person who loves to own the latest device in every department, this is definitely the one for reading books. It feels really great, handles well, and looks just lovely. Powered off or powered on, you know that this is an iconic piece of industrial design, and that is to be commended. I do not miss the ability to turn pages with physical buttons, and as of yet (remember we’re not reviewing the apps in any form yet) I do not miss the eINK display. The NOOKcolor is bright, it’s beautiful, and hardware-wise, it’s right on. Be on the lookout the rest of this week for more posts like this, each of them accessible by searching “A Week with” in the SlashGear searchbar. [This paragraph will be replaced with links to the rest of this extended review at the end of the week]             
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