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My $0.02 (first edition)

The perfect device for baby boomers and pensioneers

As i already twittered : It looks like the perfect device for my mother (just turned 80).I always did not set-up a computer for her (although i’m storing a couple of my old ones at her home). It would just have been too complicated for her. Still she is very interested to learn about that internet thing. And as her eyes got worse she is not able to easily read the newspaper or regular size books.

Others agree:

• A colleague walked into the office yesterday morning, saying: “Now we know what to buy for our parents.”
• More on this for example on jageree.com and Ultimi Barbarorum

A future version will probably add a camera (jointly with a camera for the iTouch) and grandma’s are able to have iChats with their siblings and friends.

A home and an away version

I’m happy to see  a  WiFi only version of the iPad as well as a full mobile version. i already have an iPod Touch and an iPhone and have complementary uses for them at home and away.

I’m not too happy to have no GPS in the WiFi device because with offloaded Maps i would love to use it also in the car or on holiday etc (Romaing charges are just ridiculous high in europe, so i typically offload maps of the region before going on holiday)

A lost opportunity

A lot of people are complaing about missing features. I typically don’t because i firmly believe in simplicity. There are exceptions (see e.g. above).

But right now i think Apple lost an opportunity to not add a MiniDisplay Port and or micro USB port as video and serial connector. May be even add  a third  proprietary connector if neede.

Placed them side by side and  they would not need more  room on the device than the 30-pin connector.   You  could even build an  dongle to convert the threesome to a 30-pin connector in order to  be able to  the existing iPod accessories.

I know it would potentially cannibalize the existing iPod  3rd Party ecosystem (you wouldn’t if you build / sold the above dongle.

But having separat small standard ports would:

• make the connector cables much more elegant (no bulky dongles)
• beam the  port capabilities into the current time
• especially would enable digital video out. I suspect that the A4 SoC is perfectly able to do digital video, but  having only analog video out has mainly to do with the aging 30-port connector. It may also have to do with making content providers happy)

Open Questions

These have mostly to do  with my professional view on the iPad (as the head of the R & D lab of one of the worlds largest newsagencies currently looking very hard at ereading:

• When will iBooks be available outside the USA?
• Will it offer subscription based pricing models that magazines and newspapers can use (although the app is called iBooks? But we also got used to buy videos etc. in an app called iTunes :-)
• Will the SDK contain classes for rendering ePubs or will tht be private to iBooks?
• Will ePubs automatically opened with iBooks?
• …

Misc

iBooks looks an awful lot like Delicious Library (as others have olso noted). Could swear that Mike Matas (the original designer of Delicious Library that joined Apple in 2005) had a hand on it. But then learned that Matas left Apple  in July 2009.

On Monday Apple finally sent out the invites  to their January 27th event – widely presumed to be about the RAT  (Rumored Apple Tablet). Because everyone and their dog is speculating about what the RAT  would or not would be i just like to point you to the summaries that I think most likely  are to be correct for most of their parts: Andy Ihnatko (from which i shamelessly stole the RAT acronym above) and John Gruber (Part I and Part II).

Whatever exactly will be announced by Apple (and even if they wouldn’t announce a tablet at all) i’m sure that 2010 will be the year of the tablet, as much as 2008 was the year of the netbook. Because 2010 is (finally) the year of the confluence of all the necessary technologies.

Let’s have a look:

Processors

RightNow there is a multitude of powerful (mostly multicore) processor platforms out there that consume very little power and are still able to en/decode HD video, driver large displays and do 3D-rendering and integrate WiFi / GSM. Most notable the Nvidia Tegra 2, Marvells Armada 510/610, Qualcomms Snapdragon,  TI’s OMAP and Freescales i.MX. Important: Practically all of them are ARM-based.

Displays

Touch-enabled displays are now available in all sizes ranges that are of interest for tablets: 5”, 7” and 10”.  There are two power-saving display technologies that are production ready in 2010: AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode) and PixelQis transflective displays. They are somewhat complementary. While AMOLEds excel at displaying bright  images /video and are available at a reasonable price for 5” (and to some extent at 7” display sizes but practically out of scope for 10” displays, PixelQi’s transflective displays in their reflective mode are practically equal to e-ink displays wrt. display crispness and readability in sunlight (while still able to display video), and equal to normal LCD displays  in transmissive mode. They are right now manufactured in 10”.

OS

Open Source, Linux based, fast booting OS have also evolved to a quality  where they are mass compatible. Most notable Android (a Linux / Java Based OS) has been picked up by most mobile phone manufacturers and also gets traction in into mobile internet devices / tablets (see below). Other contenders are Google Chrome OS /Chromium, Moblin / Ubuntu Moblin Remix and  Maemo.

CES 2010

I ended my July 2008 blog post  titled  “Will Apple finally my dream e-reading /netbook device” with:

We’ll see. If not (Ed. Apple is building a tablet), hopefully somebody uses Google’s android to build such a device.

Fortunately, this is exactly what is happening and could be seen at CES2010. Partly by replacing Androind with another of  the OS alternatives  mentioned above. Forget the lame MS/HP presentation, the real action could be seen elsewhere and nearly everywhere (because of the confluence of the technologies i mentioned above).

So without further ado some pointers to my favorite exhibits at CES2010 (sometimes also other events)

10” devices

My personal highlight of CES2010 was NotionInk ADAM, a 10” tablet based on NVidia Tegra 2, PixelQi Display and Android

Notion ink ADAM

More about the device can for example be found here.

The PixelQi Display has also been shown integrated into a Lenov Idea Pad. The video below is especially interesting because it shows the two different display modes using the NYT Reader 2.0 app.

7” devices

MSI Wind has show prototypes of both 10” and 7” dualscreen devices. The video below shows the 10” version as the 7” version was seemingly non functional.

5” devices

Dell has shown the  Dell Mini 5, an Android based tablet running on top of a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.

A device that is already in the market is the Archos 5 Internet Tablet which is based on Android and features an OLED display.

Set top boxes

The Quanta ebox is a slim set top box based on  Marvells Armada 510 chip

Boxee Box: The boxee box is based on the Nvidia Tegra2 and is going to be sold for below $200 by D-Link that won a best of show award at CES2010

Other touch devices

As an interesting side note, TouchRevolution showed off a 7” touch-enabled, android based platform integrated into a washing machine and a microwave

More videos can be found in my shared item feed.

A look into the (near) future

Back in the  July 2008 post i wrote:

For quite some time  i’ve argued that  the iPhone / iPod touch is right now my favourite e-reading device (see here, here and here) (Having extensively tested e-ink devices like the Iliad). Hence i drooled for a iTouch like device with a  7-9″ display.

…

IMHO, it is more likely that Apple will enter the netbook market with a typical apple twist by not doing another scaled down version of a notebook, but a device that is dedicated for optimal support of the typical tasks a netbook has to support in a home and car enviroment.: Surf and read on the web, watch video, control your home entertainment systems etc.  This device should be the best device for couch surfing as well as showing video to your kids (or let them play casual games) while being in the car.

Ever since the Newton, Apple had technology for this kind of devices and it is more or less a yearly rumour that the Newton 2.0 will finally ship. But this time i think the chances are better than ever.

We’ll see. If not , hopefully somebody uses Google’s android to build such a device.

While being wrong 2008 wrt. to the timeframe (i basically made wrong assumptions about the power consumption of  Intel ATOM and LCD displays),  i still very much believe in the scenario of an optimized device for mobile entertainment at  home (e.g couch surfing) and in car setting.

This already resonated in my “Why Times Reader 2.0 is important” post from May 2009:

For the curious: My dream eReading device has for years been an Apple media pad. Right now my specs for this device read as follows: around 1.5 pound (hopefully lighter), beefed up iPhone OS (or better dual boot, full OS at a premium price), 7 – 10” display,  wi-fi 801.11n  plus 3G, all app store goodness, bluetooth for external keyboard connectivity as well as all other bluetoothy things, plus a PixelQi multitouch display.

The exiting thing : everything except the PixelQi display is available right now, the PixelQi schedule will allow for a WWDC presentation (or a launch at the traditional september special event).

So  what i am hoping for and why?

I’ll try to do it along the lines of my introduction and the CES review.

Processor / Platform

I  think that is safe to bet that this device(s) will be the first Apple device that will incorporate some benefits of the P.A. Semi acquisition Apple made in early 2008. P.A. Semi was a fabless chip designer  specializing in low-power processor design based on ARM CPU cores. As said above all processor alternatives that i mentioned above are also based on ARM CPUs.

Since 1.5 – 2 years are a typical time frames for the the scoping of a design to a production quality chip /platform that can be mass manufactured i think we are on the safe side for that. It is also safe to assume that the platform of the tablet includes the benefits of the long term license deal with Power VR for das 2d/3D graphics as well as video de/encoding . So IMHO the paltform to be used within the table will be feature /performancewise be at least comparable to the Nvidia Tegra 2 plattform.

Displays

As argued above the display technology most likely depends on screen size of the device(s). For 5” it definitely will be AMOLED, for 7” AMOLED is a likely but pricey choice and for 10” it will be either regular LCD or a PixelQi display for the following reason:

As we have seen in the PixelQi videos above, the display seem to be ready for the market. But i remember that they said last year  that touch-enabled displays that would not suck (e.g. take away too much contrast) would be more in the June/July 2010 timeframe. So if the the tablet is going to be delayed until June lets hope that this will be the reason.

May be some of the Apple patents with regard to display technology (e.g. integrating touch and display layer in order to come up with a thinner device etc.) will be incorporated.

OS / Applications

I’m  sure that the OS will be more twisted toward  iPhoneOS  than  to Mac OS X. The main reason for that is that there definitely will be an app/content store for the device(s) and that the devices will definitely be no general purpose computers. But i’m also quite sure that the OS will be not be  identical to the current iPhoneOS. It definitely will support multi-tasking and the User interaction will be different / enhanced. It is also quite clear that there will be the possibility to pair a physical keyboard (most likely a bluetooth keyboard at least with some of the devices.

I’m also quite sure that (some) of the devices will incorporate technology / features from the Apple TV and will more or less be Apple TV 2.0.

Line Up

10” device

I think it is a fairly safe bet that the device to be unveiled on Wednesday will be a 10” tablet. And by 10” i also mean 9.7 or 10.1 ”. The device will basically have the functionality as described by Inathko and Gruber.  PixelQi display would be nice, but most likely it will be a regular LCD display.

You already can watch video stored on you’re iPhone and ipod Touch on a big screen, using either a 3rd Party Dock or a special viideo cable. Right now forwarding the signal to an external display is restricted to the playback of the video. All interaction is on the device only (which makes sense for devices like the iPhone).

This changes with the 10” tablet. As said above i expect that AppleTV functionality will be incorporated into the devices. This means that you will be either able to use  a  Front Row like interface on the device itself and / or more likely use an iPhone or iPod touch with the  Apple Remote App. I also expect a dock with gigabit network connectivity, maybe an enclosed 2.5” drive for additional content, eventually DVR and TV-Tuner capabilities and an IR port for a regular Apple Remote. This dock will eitehr come directly from Apple or from a third party provider.

5”  device

The current  ipod Touch is basically the equivalent of the 5” devices mentioned above.  Since the current Zune as well as the Nexus one are already using  AMOLED  displays i think it is a save bet that the next generation iPod touch will have an AMOLED display.  For me it is an open question if the device will have a 5” screen or if the economies of scale wil dictate that the screen is the same size as an iPhone.

May be the chosen route  is to keep the iPod Touch form factor as it is and to touch enable the successor to the iPod classic, using a greater display and a harddrive.

7”  device

Most likely either a 5” or a 7” device will be developed by Apple since there is not enough potential for diffentiating between the two devices. But may be they will go the MacBook Pro route and offer the same functionality with two different display sizes.

Set-Top Box

If Apple is interested to continue it’s Apple TV hobby, the logical consequence is to strip the 10 inch tablet of the display and use  the other parts to build a tiny and shiny Apple TV 2.0. This box can easily be sold for around $200 it may go as low as $150.

Final words

I think it is unlikely that all this devices will be introduced next week, but i would be very much surprised if at the end of the year the line-up wouldn’t more or look like sketched above.

Immerhin kann man nicht sagen, sie haben es nicht versucht. Im Gegensatz zu Murdoch macht Springer bei seinen Regionalblättern ernst.

Das abendblatt.de, der Webauftritt des Hamburger Abendblattes ist seit heute für Abonnenten kostenlos, ein Euphemismus dafür, dass es für Nicht-Abonnenten kostenpflichtig ist. Ich habe noch nicht nachgesehen, aber ich gehe davon aus, dass die Berliner Morgenpost, wenn sie es noch nicht ist umgehend folgt. Schliesslich hängen sie ja in der gleichen Verlagsgruppe. dazu gehört auch die Welt, aber ich glaube ich (noch) nicht daran, dass hier so schnell  die Paywall im Web aufgestellt wird. Die Paid-Content-Vorgaben wurden bestimmt schon mit dem eMag und der iPhone-App erfüllt.

Also Abonennten, sucht mal eure Abonummer raus. Ist bestimmt nicht sooo griffbereit.

Seltsames Selbstverständnis

Was ich gelinde gesagt “interessant” finde ist das Selbstverständnis, das im dem folgenden Abschnitt  des Artikels von Matthias Iken: In eigener Sache – abendblatt.de gibt es seit heute im Abonnement sichtbar wird (Hervorhebungen von mir):

Welche Stimme im Netz ist in der Lage, objektiv Information zu sammeln, zu gewichten und bei Streitpunkten beide Seiten zu Wort kommen zu lassen? PR-Seiten, Blogs oder öffentliche Verlautbarungen können diesen Anspruch nicht erfüllen – und sollten es nicht. Zudem benötigen die Bürger verlässliche wie verletzliche Leitmedien, die das Geschehen bündeln und aus dem Meer von Informationen als Inseln der Relevanz herausragen.

Dazu folgendes:
1. Was bitte sind verletzliche Leitmedien? Vielleicht folgt ja eine Erklärung.

2. Ob Blogs oder Non-profit Organisationen, oder NGOs diese Aufgabenstellung nicht erfüllen können sei mal dahingestellt, warum sie es aber nicht sollen würde mich wirklich mal interessieren.

PS: First Click Free noch in der uneingeschränkten Variante

Kleiner Tipp für Nicht-Abonnenten die erstmal testen wollen ob es sich lohnt ein Abo für 7,95 EUR abzuschliessen gilt, dass das Abendblatt von der First-Click-Free Regel bei Google Gebrauch macht (so ganz ohne Search-Traffic geht es halt nicht)

Ein kurzer  Versuch zeigt: Anscheinend hat es das Abendblatt in der Kürze der Zeit noch nicht geschafft die neue 5-Clicks Free Regelung von Google zu implementieren.

Dank Ubiquity konnte ich quasi ohne Zeitverlust die Volltexte von 10 Artikeln lesen die eigentlich hinter der Paywall stehen, nach der neuen Regelung hätte das Abnedblatt das Recht, nach dem 5.Klick der via Google kommt die Paywall zu zeigen.

Aber es ist sicher nur eine Frage der Zeit bis das auch implementiert ist. MAl sehen wohin mich die Links meines brandneuen Google Alerts mit source:”Hamburger Abendblatt” führen werden.

In the context of the current paid content debate at least magazine publishers seem to start thinking how the content that people might be willing to pay for should look like. ( Others are saying, they are dusting off their years old concepts. ) However, EMagazines seem to be the new hype. Every week we see the wraps taken off some magazine concept or even a first offering.

Wired

Two weeks ago it was Conde Nast showing off a concept tablet version of Wired (AllThingsD),

Welt am Sonntag

A week later Axel Springer launches the Welt am Sonntag emag (journalism.co.uk, JakBlog),

Sports Illustrated

Now Time Inc. shows off a concept version of SportsIllustrated (AllThingsD).

In addition i’ve seen a presentation about a eMagazine version of another big german weekly magazine.

Moreover,  a number of American Magazine Publishers (reportedly Time Inc. Condé Nast and Hearst among them) are discussing a “Hulu for Magazines” (AllThingsD) which most industry observers deem to be a difficult thing to succeed given the mights of Amazon and Apple which is more than rumoured to get its tablet out of the door in the next year (Gizmodo). But given the success of Hulu i wouldn’t think that they couldn’t pull off at least some market share.

A format plethora

The problem they all face: Right now they have to serve a multitude of formats right now most of the EMagazines are developed based on Adobe Air./ Adobe Flash But is more than unlikely that Apple is going to use that  for its iTunes offering. If the iTunes Extra and iTunes LP specs are any hint, it is much more likely that it is a HTML/Javacript based format. (iTunes already supports PDF as a format, e.g. Slides accompanying videos of lectures on iTunes U)

In addition there is ePub, the open, XHTML/CSS based eBook standard that everybody except Amazon is using. Amazon still uses a variant of the Mobipocket format.

NYT showing the way

I think that (as usual) the NYT is showing the way.

• They introduced the NYT reader a couple of years ago based on Microsoft technology
• Then relaunched it this year using Adobe Air
• They are also available on the Kindle and will be available on every other eReading device that launches
• Yesterday they launched Times Skimmer, giving the reader 7 different layout options for the homepage and the section püages). Especially the serendipity mode looks and feels a lot  like an EMagazine.

My look into the EReading crystal ball

So what is my educated guess?

• Over the next two years eReaders (eInk, eletrophoretic, … as well as LCD based) will switch to using browser rendering engines (most likely WebKit with Geckoa distant second) to display ePub publications.
• This opens up the possibilities to use  Javascript in addition to XHTML and CSS in the ePub publications.
• Apple will (also as usual) stay with a kind of propriatary format that fortunately is also based on modern web standards
• Adobe Air will be used for high-end productions and desktop apps. Given the fact that AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) includes WebKit (and at least once was deemed to also integrate PDF) , web-standards based EMagazine content can be included

Fall 1: Böses Internetunternehmen macht schwer zugängliche Informationen leicht zugänglich, cached sie ggf. und schaufelt den Content-Erstellern Traffic und damit Umsätze zu.

Konsequenz: Hamburger Erklärung etc.

Fall 2: Gute große Zeitung, zitiert kleine Zeitschrift, Interesse wird erzeugt und mit ein bisschen Glück kaufen möglichst viele Zeitungsleser auch das Original-Magazin. (siehe  KAI DIEKMANNS BLOG.)

BILD wollte es für seine Leser natürlich genauer wissen. Denn dass das Interview für so viel Wirbel sorgte, hatte ja auch damit zu tun, dass kaum jemand den Zusammenhang kannte, in dem Sarrazins Zitate standen.

Deshalb druckten wir in der Zeitung einen längeren Auszug und stellten den ganzen Text ungekürzt ins Internet – selbstverständlich mit ausführlicher Quellenangabe (online stand sogar der sehr lange Zusatz: “Die Zeitschrift Lettre International erscheint vierteljährlich und ist in ausgesuchten Buchhandlungen und im Zeitschrifthandel an Flughäfen und Bahnhöfen erhältlich. Einzelheftpreis: 17 Euro, Jahresabo: 41 Euro. Hier abonnieren: http://www.lettre.de/aboheft.html”).

So weit, so normal: Große Zeitung zitiert kleine Zeitschrift, Interesse wird erzeugt und mit ein bisschen Glück kaufen möglichst viele Zeitungsleser auch das Original-Magazin.

Offenbar nicht. Denn jetzt sieht alles etwas anders aus. Redaktionsleiter Berberich schimpft wie ein Rohrspatz über BILD, redet von „Diebstahl“ seines Textes, will Schadensersatz und lässt sich dabei von meinem Freund Jony Eisenberg vertreten….

Lieber Herr Berberich: Da müssen Sie etwas übersehen haben. Denn natürlich haben wir das Interview nicht geklaut, sondern uns vorher die Erlaubnis zur Veröffentlichung geholt. Mein Kollege Hans-Jörg Vehlewald aus der Politikredaktion bat dafür telefonisch in ihrem Büro um den kompletten Text, den er anschließend auch per Fax bekam – versehen mit dem handschriftlichen Vermerk: „z. Hd. Herrn Vehlewald, mit Nennung der Quelle: Lettre International“ siehe ganz unten.Nun muss man BILD ja nicht mögen. Und man kann sich auch immer alles anders überlegen. Aber uns zuerst den Abdruck zu erlauben, und dann davon nichts mehr wissen zu wollen, finde ich…komisch.