My three sons share an Apple iPad given to them by Mimi, their grandmother. When she bought it a couple years ago the iPad was top-of-the-line with 64 gigs and a Retina display. The boys run it hard on car trips where it functions as a hotspot and under covers in their bedrooms along with a couple iPhones, iPod Touches, various Kindles and some cheaper seven-inch Android tablets. In all we have probably a dozen touchscreen devices in the house but most of the action takes place on iPhones or that one iPad. Great for Apple, right? Not really. Apple’s iPad sales are dropping you see and the reason nobody seems to […]
Apple’s iPad Problem
Surface tablet intro no Moses event for Microsoft
Microsoft’s Hollywood announcement Monday of its two Surface tablet computers was a tactical triumph but had no strategic value for the world’s largest software company because the event left too many questions unanswered. If I were to guess what was on Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s mind it was simply to beat next week’s expected announcement of a Google brand tablet running Android. Microsoft, already playing catch-up to Apple’s iPad, did not want to be seen as following Google, too. So they held an event that was all style and no substance at all.
This is not to say that Microsoft shouldn’t make a tablet and couldn’t make a good one, but this particular event proved almost […]
Apple looks for its checkbook
Just a short thought. Apple has lost control of the iPad trademark in China but retains it in the rest of the world. Readers warn that China will be soon awash in iPad clones.
ProView Technologies, the Taiwanese company that presently controls the iPad trademark, was near bankruptcy until yesterday. Apple has $80 billion in cash.
Do we really think Cupertino will let go of an important trademark in what will eventually be the largest IT market in the world?
I don’t think so.
Kindle Fire: Take three tablets and call me in the morning
I love the Kindle Fire tablet launched today, even though I have yet to touch one. I love the $199 price, the clever browser (more about that below, it may surprise you), the tight integration, the application, book and video marketplace, the small size, I even like the limited features compared with an iPad. The Kindle Fire is perfect… for my kids. I’ll be buying three of them for Christmas.
Right now my boys, ages 5, 7 and 9 all have iPod Touches that have served them well despite having been many times lost, spilled on, and in one case very lightly driven over by a car. But the Touches, which also cost $199 […]
2011 prediction #9: Apple's Carolina strategy
If you put together my 2011 predictions so far they create a world view of tech culture and business as I see it for the coming year. Each prediction builds on the others until we get to these last two, which present a couple boffo conclusions, the big question being “What does Apple need with a 500,000 (soon to be one million) square foot data center in rural North Carolina?”
First we have Apple working to kill small hard drives. We’ll shortly see Apple also killing optical drives in its notebooks. This is to save money, space, and weight, sure, but it is mainly to limit local storage. We need local storage, but Steve doesn’t want […]
