Print designers want total control over arbitrary layout. The makers of tools for print designers — especially Adobe — will be trying to cram their toolkit into digital bottles. Adobe’s plan for the iPad was to use InDesign for page layout, generating Flash components that would be compiled into a downloadable app. Now that Apple has killed Flash on the iPad, magazine designers are making iPad “applications” that are really collections of giant JPG files generated by print tools.

Image files! No wonder the apps are so huge. It’s like a flashback to the mid-1990s, when the New York Times homepage on the Web was one big GIF file.

Here’s my prediction: Algorithmic layout is going to win. The economics are brutal and they will decide.

We already have Gannett moving its newspaper layout work to central “Production Centers” — hospices for print. My friends in the visual journalism community hate hate hate this. I understand why. I laid out newspaper pages for years. Decoupling product construction from reporting and editing the news is not something to celebrate. But I also understand the economic drivers behind it.

The entities formerly known as newsrooms — Gannett calls them “Information Centers” — will oddly enough be more closely coupled to their websites than their print products. Their world will be inverted. They will be paying more attention to metadata — classification, tagging, geocoding, the elements of the semantic Web.

When you do this right, you create the conditions necessary for efficient algorithmic construction of a broad set of products tailored for specific situations. Web pages. Apps for the iPad. Mobile services. Microzoned products, defined by geography or interest or the user’s current status, delivered via electronic or even print processes, but “finished” with fairly little human involvement in the “pages” that are consumed

I very much agree with Steve, that at least for non-print products and escpecially tablets,  algorithmic layout will win. Here is (a slightly edited version) the comment i posted on his blog:

More advanced algorihmic layout using constraint-based layout techniques to place content on a 2d grid  is  used in  directories, most yellow pages and catalogues.

The publishers desire to have a newspaper like rendition of the content on  tablets like the ipad (not sure if this also the readers desire)  can IMHO only be solved with algorithmic layout.   National/global monthly, and may be weekly magazines can be manually relayoutet twice for a horizontal and a vertical layout  for a single device like the iPad. But even Adobe admits that their approach is not suited (maybe yet) for daily newspapers,

And even these magazines often have a placed layout only for one of the orientations and use very simple algorithmic layout for the other.

Manual layout will not be able to scale with the upcoming plethora of tablet devices. It is also impossible to have a manual layout that works well with user scalable font sizes (IMHO one of the big advantages of  tablets in an aging society).

Alltogehter manual layout is simply undoable on a daily, or subdaily basis for a multitude of screen sizes and devices.

Hence we are working towards story(tyoe) templates, , priorities, placement rules and layouthinting in our approaches towards newspaper-like renditions of newspaper content on tablets and  e-readers.

Over a year ago i sent two tweets  to @timoreilly. These tweets started  what i think is a showcase of  ultimate customer service and (i hope) helped bringing a new product: the virtual bundle at O’Reilly Media into place.

This blog post is about that story.

Prologue

Regular readers of this blog know that i buy quite some programming and computer science books.  They also know that part of my job is defining and implementing innovative solutions for news publishers in the ebook space. Hence i know that O’Reilly publishes (most of) its books DRM-free in a number of different formats (including PDF and EPUB).

This books can be purchased via the O’Reilly Web store, either as stand alone digital  products or as physical + digital bundles. Whereas the standalone products are priced at approx. 80% of the physical book, the price of the physical plus digital is typically physical + 5$.

The latter option definitely is interesting for guys like me. But here are two problems with it:

1. I still prefer  to buy them at a (certain) physical bookstore.
2. These bundles are only available in the US

I’m lucky to have Lehmanns Fachbuchhandlung  in Hamburg, a science  bookstore dedicated to Computer Science / Programming and Medical Science. It’s staff is quite extraordinary in providing tips, sharing information about books that i might be interested in havin regular meetings of the community (often with very interesting invited talks), … In short: They do a great job and i want to support them in every possible way.

Act I

Late last June  i once again bought a couple of books at Lehmanns, including 3 books from O’Reilly Media. Hence i asked them to ask O’Reilly  if there is a way that i can buy the books at a physical  bookstore and tu purchase the discounted ebook version, i.e. a virtual bundle of the physical book bought at a bookstore and the digital book bought at oreilly.com.

A couple of days later Lehmanns got back to me and told me that  there was a no go from O’Reilly USA for bundle deals. Since i follow @timoreilly on Twitter i knew that  Tim O’Reilly is actively using Twitter for his business. Hence early next morning i sent the following two tweets @timoreilly:

@timoreilly bought (again) 3 oreilly books at local german bookstore.asked them if thr is sum way 2 get a print + epub bundle
@timoreilly bookstore contacted Oreilly germany which responded: No go from oreilly usa for bundle deals #fail

Much to my surprise only 10 minutes later i got the following DM from Tim O’Reilly:

send mail with details to savikas@oreilly.com and me tim@oreilly.com

Since i’ve been to the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing (ToC) conference in February 2009, i knew that Andrew Savikas is the VP, Digital Initiatives  at O’Reilly.

So this DM was basically an invitation to directly tell the two people in command of the business how i think it can and should be improved.

Given that possibility i basically wrote them the the same story i told you:

Hello Tim, Hello Mr. Savikas,

…

So now for the details i was asked for:

Ever since ToC 2009 (BTW great conference) i was wondering if it is possible to buy print plus ebook bundles outside the United States. Me and my wife are avid OReilly fans and i guess that ovet time we have purchased around 100 different titles privately.

We are also fans of our local bookstore which is the best computer bookstore in germany. The level of expertise and service is simply unmatched and we happily shell out some more Euros for that experience (compared to an online store).

Especially for computer science books the combination of a printed book bundled with an ebook is very attractive to me and i guess others to. You read the physical book in order to understand the topics or simply have a good read. But you also want to carry all your bookshlef around and have it available at your fingertips (and fully searchable) when you are at your laptop, iphone, …). I’m fairly sure that similar reasoning led to the print and ebook bundles available at oreilly.com.

Unfortunately this kind of bundles are not available outside the United States at least not at O’Reilly.de . Moreover, as said above i want to support my local bookstore

…

I then took the chance to introduce the bookstore to the bundle concept and how i wanted to be able to buy the physical book at the store and get the ebook as a bundle deal.

They took action and got in contact with O’Reilly Germany and sent me an email saying that O’Reilly Germany got back t hem saying that they are not authorized to do bundle deals.

So ultimately i want to be able to buy a book at the bookstore and then be able to buy the electronic version of that book for a heaviliy discounted price. Other publishers enable this by embedding disount codes into the printed titles, or force one to enter the 14th word in the third line on page 25 or whatever. I certainly want a good user experience but wouldn’t mind to jump through some hoops for getting the discounted eBook. E.g. registering the books at oreilly.com, whatever.

…

So hopefully i’m able to trigger a process within O’Reilly that finally ends in providing this kind of service. Or, even better, just gives me the information how to do this today.

Sincerely

Gerd Kamp

Andrew Savikas got back to me the same day telling me that they were working on a solution for this, but some key people were on vacation and i had to wait a couple of weeks.

Hello Gerd,

..

I agree that it would be good to provide the ebook versions at a deep discount to customers who purchase our print books. I am discussing coding options with our printers, and working with the oreilly.com team on how to implement such a program. They are working on some major upgrades to oreilly.com, including an expanded “membership” program, and ebook discounts for print purchases are a part of that project.

..
Thank you for the kind words about the TOC Conference, for buying our books, and for letting us know how we can make you happier with us and our books.

Regards

Andrew Savikas
VP, Digital Initiatives
O’Reilly Media, Inc.

Tim O’Reilly also answered personally (on July 4th):

Thanks a lot for the info, Gerd.  I will investigate and see how we can do this.  In the meantime, I’m sure we can come up with a workaround for you.

In mid-August i hadn’t heard back from O’Reilly. Since i had just bought another couple of O’Reilly books and was preparing for my own holidays. Since i like to read not only fiction in my holidays  i sent another mail at Andrew and Tim, asking if there would be some way to get early access to their virtual bundle deal.

Since i’m going on vacation at the beginning of september it would be great if we can find a workaround, e.g, some discount code for oreilly.com tied to my account. … This would enable me to carry these books in electronic form

Again the same day someone from O’Reilly got back to me:

We’ll have an ebook upgrade program in place in two weeks. The program will allow anyone who has purchased an English language book (sorry, but no DE titles, yet) to upgrade to the electronic version for $4.99. We’d launch it now but we’re waiting for two people to return from vacation and to make sure the kinks are all worked out. In the meantime, if you send me a list of books you want to upgrade I’ll have our customer service folks take care of you in time for your vacation.

So i sent them a list of the twelve ebooks i wanted to purchase. Again same day:

Dear Mr. Kamp,

Thank your for your request. We have created an order for you of the titles you requested, with the total coming out to $59.88. I have attached the invoice for the order for your review. If you find the order satisfactory, please call our customer service line at (707) 827-7019 with a credit card number and we will go ahead and process it. You may also fax your credit card number if you like to (707) 824-8268. Once payment has been received, we will deposit the e-books into your account and you will have instant access. Thank you again for your order.

So i called them. When i was just beginning to tell them  why i was calling, they told me:

Mr. Kamp, i guess you are calling to give me the credit card for that ebook order of yours. We are a small department so we basically all know the pending issues.

Immediately after giving them my credit card number the books were loaded into my bookshelf at members.oreilly.com and i could take them with me :

After  that i thanked everybody for this most awesome customer service and asked them if it is ok to blog about the upcoming upgrade programme. They asked me to wait until it is in place.

Act II

At the end of September (so it took them more than tqo weeks :-) i received the following offer via email:

Although it announced that the promotion was only valid for one month, it in fact worked at least until the end of last year and i used it to buy virtual bundles of all the O’Reilly books i bought.

I already thought that this would be the permanent option but was a bit skeptical because it was  not officially announced.

Hence i still refrained from writing this post. But after my last purchase i recognized the  MB5UP promotion code  heavily advertised when you log in into your member page (see image at the beginning of this post). This finally triggered me to finally write this story up.

Epilogue

For  me this is a story  of two tales.

Firstly it is about the best ebook offer you can get on the planet. Lifetime access to the digital version of the book, all DRM-free together with a heavily discounted price if you also  bought the printed version.  To summarize, in order to get a virtual ebook bundle from O’Reilly you have to:

1. Buy the book at the local bookstore,
2. Register it with your member account at O’Reilly  (you should always do this because you get access to the errata page of this book)
3. Add the book to your shopping cart
4. Use the code MB5UP at checkout

But secondly, and at least as important, it is a stoy about how to use social media for the most awesome customer service .

In der Pressemitteilung zur Jahrespressekonferenz des BDZV heisst es (Hervorhebung von meir):

Drei-Stufen-Test wird zur Farce

BDZV-Hauptgeschäftsführer Dietmar Wolff hob hervor, dass es angesichts der bislang nicht ausreichenden Refinanzierung der Onlineaktivitäten durch Werbung von „existenzieller Bedeutung“ sei, im Internet auf Bezahlinhalte zu setzen. Jüngste Studien und auch Verlagserfahrungen im Markt zeigten, dass die Nutzer durchaus bereit seien, für attraktive und exklusive Inhalte zu bezahlen. In diesem Zusammenhang kritisierte Wolff das Engagement der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten, die mit ihren gebührenfinanzierten Onlineauftritten jede Marktentwicklung konterkarierten. Die Verbreitung von textbasierten Portalen wie „tagesschau.de“ und „heute.de“ auf allen Verteilkanälen habe nichts mehr mit Rundfunk zu tun. „Es ist ein Skandal, dass die Rundfunkräte den presseähnlichen Angeboten grünes Licht geben und den Drei-Stufen-Test damit zur Farce machen“, so Wolff. Die Zeitungsverleger würden mit allen ihnen zur Verfügung stehenden juristischen und politischen Mitteln Front gegen diese Praxis machen.

Zeitgleich heisst es in einer Meldung zum Verweildauerkonzept (eines Teiles des Rundfunkstaatsvertrages) auf Tagesschau.de:

Rund 80 Prozent der Inhalte nicht mehr abrufbar

Während viele Verlage damit beginnen, ihre Archive für die Allgemeinheit zu öffnen, muss tagesschau.de den größten Teil seines mit Gebührenmitteln erstellten Online-Archivs löschen. Betroffen sind ca. 80 Prozent der Inhalte. Zusätzlich problematisch: Auch das Löschen kostet Geld, denn es muss eigens organisiert und programmiert werden. Da die Budgets in den Telemedienkonzepten gedeckelt sind, gehen die Lösch-Kosten zu Lasten neuer Inhalte

Kennt jemand das URL-Schema von tagesschau.de und heute.de? Oder steckt irgendwo im Seitenquelltext der Primärschlüssel?. Wäre schade wenn das Archiv ohne jede Privatkopie verschwinden würde.

Development

iPhone Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide
(Aaron Hillegass & Joe Conway, Addison-Wesley Professional, ISBN: 9780321706249)
Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

HTML & CSS: The Good Parts
(Ben Henick, O’Reilly Media, ISBN: 9780596157609)
Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript: Making App Store Apps Without Objective-C or Cocoa
( Jonathan Stark, O’Reilly Media, ISBN: 9780596805784)
Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

Agile Web Development with Rails, Third Edition
(Sam Ruby & Dave Thomas & David Heinemeier Hansson, Pragmatic Bookshelf, ISBN: 9781934356166)
Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

The Ruby Programming Language
(David Flanagan & Yukihiro Matsumoto, O’Reilly Media, ISBN: 9780596516178)
Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

OpenStreetMap: Die freie Weltkarte nutzen und mitgestalten (German)
(Frederik Ramm & Jochen Topf, Lehmanns, ISBN: 9783865413208)
Direct Buy (DE)::

Apple Training Series: Mac OS X Advanced System Administration v10.5
(Edward R. Marczak, Peachpit Press , ISBN: 9780321563149)
Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers
(Steve Souders, O’Reilly Media, ISBN: 9780596529307)
Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

Using Google App Engine
(Charles Severance, O’Reilly Media, ISBN: 9780596800697)
Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

FBML Essentials: Facebook Markup Language Fundamentals
(Jesse Stay, O’Reilly Media, ISBN: 9780596519186)
Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World
(Joe Armstrong, Pragmatic Bookshelf, ISBN: 9781934356005)
Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

Expert Python Programming: Best practices for designing, coding, and distributing your Python software
(Tarek Ziadé, Packt Publishing, ISBN: 9781847194947)
Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

Practical Django Projects
(James Bennett, Apress, ISBN: 9781590599969)
Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

Computer Science

Beautiful Data: The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions
(Toby Segaran & Jeff Hammerbacher, O’Reilly Media, ISBN: 9780596157111)
Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

Natural Language Processing with Python
(Steven Bird & Ewan Klein & Edward Loper, O’Reilly Media, ISBN: 9780596516499)
Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

IT

Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior
(Tom Demarco & Peter Hruschka & Tim Lister & Suzanne Robertson & James Robertson & Steve McMenamin, Dorset House, ISBN: 9780932633675)
Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

Coders at Work
(Peter Seibel, Apress, ISBN: 9781430219484)
Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

Content

The New York Times: The Complete Front Pages, 1851-2008
(The New York Times, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, ISBN: 9781579127497)Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

Modell Bauhaus. 1919-2009 (German)
(Hatje Cantz Verlag, ISBN: 9783775724142)
Direct Buy (DE)::

Maps

The Agile Rabbit Book of Historical And Curious Maps
(Pepin Press, ISBN: 9789057680519)
Direct Buy (US)::
Direct Buy (DE)::

Atlas der Globalisierung: Sehen und verstehen, was die Welt bewegt (German)
(TAZ, ISBN: 9783937683256)
Direct Buy (DE)::

[Update:] Since this question came up within  my work at dpa and we are a Google Maps enterprise customer, i contacted the support (a first). They got back to me within 3 hours (not 2 bad) and pointed me to this public page. It is a licensing issue (probably with GIsrael).

I just recognized that the maps that Google show for Israel on their own domain are very different from the maps one gets when using the Google Maps API (even the premier version).

If this an effect of MapMaker data not shown via the Maps API , licensing issues with MAPA GIsrael, just a matter of updating the maps, or other issues ? Does anybody know of other areas of the world where the Maps API maps are significantly worse than the Google Maps maps?

1. BBC News
2. Reuters News Pro for iPad
3. npr for iPad
4. The Wall Street Journal
5. USA Today
6. NYT Editor’s Choice
7. AP News
8. Welt iKiosk

But before i share some background info on why i’m doing this as well as some quick notes and screenshots for the different apps i have to note the following.:

I could not find a single link to any ressource on the web within any of the news apps i tested.

If you happened to find one within these apps or know of a news app that does, i would love to hear from you.

Some background

At the dpa-newslab we are actively investigating the different options for getting newspaper (and news agencies) print and online content onto ereaders and tablet devices.

On one hand this means that we are fully aware of the discrepancies and tensions between different fractions and schools of thought at newspapers, ranging from “This has to look and behave exactly as a printed newspaper” end of the spectrum to the “This has to be a fully digital native experience optimized experience” end at the opposite side of the spectrum (think VIV magazin).

On the other hand this means that we are investigating which of the three main content delivery channels (web, app, ebooks) makes most sense for which kind of content that newspapers and news agencies) have.

Our plan is to come up with a number of prototypes and products that range from the more traditional approaches to the wilder, more visualization heavy ones (Hey, we are a lab).  But more about this soon at the newslab blog.

Hence i was very interested to see with which ideas our colleagues came up (given 2 month time and no physical device to test it with).  But now the notes on the different apps.

BBC News

MY favourite app due to its vertical home page layout. The horizontal layout gives either too much or too little space for the index views of the different sections.Intuitive way of moving from article to article (with visual feedback in the index view)

Lots of video that starts super fast, (when it starts at all). Live radio streaming (although only one station :-(.)

Would have preferred a pop over for section selection instead of button bar in vertical mode. Irritating place for tickernear the top of the screen.

Reuters News Pro for iPad

Second place, because of its use of iPad / tablet user interface options in the overview screen and its use of video. as well as the interactive graphics in the Markets and Stocks  sections. I’m wodering if the latter are native charting components or done in Javascript. Does Anybody know?

On the minus side:  The Article detail view is ugly and the split screen accordion view in horizontal mode  is overkill.

npr for iPad

Third place, but close to Reuters. Clearly shows its radio heritage and focus, by indcating which articles are available as audio.  Easy to build a playlist and listen to it. Vast array of radio live streams (grouped by state) with ability to store favourite stations.

Big minus, no possibility to configure the topics of the home screen.

The Wall Street Journal

Clearly the best of the applications that follow closely the printed paper layout. Nicely lay out index pages.  Interesting navigation betwenn sections and articles within a section by vertically and horizontally swiping, Clever visual implementation of the paywall by obscuring parts of the screen.

Minus: Sending emails with forgotten passwords does not work. No font size change at the index pages possible (too hard a problem to recalculate the layout?) Pop-Up ads too intrusive.

USA Today

Often crashing app that tries to mimick the printed version. Nice solution for navigating between the sections.

But the Home pageuses iFrame like tricks. Small imagages in articles. Strange way of navigating within the pages of the article (vertically) and between the different articles of a section (horizontally). I expected it the other way round (IMHO the pagination of the articles would also have been technically easier that way).

NYT Editor’s Choice

A step back from what was shown on Jan. 27th. Clearly the print people had a say. Too little content wrapped in a layout that resembles  NYT skimmer and the NYT reader Air App and hence inherits the nice multicolumn arbitrary width layout of the single article pages).

AP News

Sorry my dear friends at the AP. I simply don’t get it.

Minus: Confusing design metaphor (at least for europeans). Figure it should resemble a bulletin board. These look distinctly different in germany!. Is the lower half of the index page a timeline or not? Waste of screen estate by not using the whole screen at the detail level (text, images, and video)  Too small images and videos, Completely counterintuitive and non HIG way of personalizing it, …

Plus side: Possibility to localize the news (but no longer german news, since AP sold it’s german subsidiary to ddp. Content available in th iPhone App though)

iKiosk

Weirdly named application by the german  newspaper Die Welt (Part of Axel Springer)

In short: A very thin wrapper around the PDF version of the paper, that does not work, since everything that triggers the accelerometer, unzooms to the whole page view (in which you can’t read anything). Unless this is fixed totally useless, afterwards only useless or a scam since after a 30day trial period the paper is only marginally cheaper than the printed version (ok. it’s free for print subscribers)

But presumably was worth doing it from a corporate point of view since it enabled Axel Springer Chairman & CEO Matthias Döpfner to show something in his talk with Charlie Rose (for a couple odf seconds)

Rem.: Unfortunately the iPad Screenshot facility does not store the orientation of the screenshot with the image, so that i couldn’t use the upload facility from the WordPress iPad App as i wantec too. Apple you have to fix that

My favourite  news apps so far: Reuters, BBC . Least favourable: NYT (the iPhone app is better) and iKiosk. More on this later

This is a short post about my first impressions after using the iPad and some of the applications i downloaded. I wasn’t able to spend more time yet, because i’m attending wherecamp today and tomorrow and then flying back to germany. But i thought it would be a worthwile exercise.

Buying experience

Since i knew i would be in the area i registered for picking up a 32GB iPad at the Palo Alto Store on March 12th. Yesterday i then decided not to come in early and be at the front of the line. Hence i turned up at the store a couple of minutes after 9am. At that time the queue for preordered  phones was approx. 70metres long while the purchase line was  only about 20metres long. Since i overheard that the preordered  line was served first, i stayed with my  original plan to pickup the preordered one. As expected, not only buyers showed up but also spectators and the media.

As a german i wondered why people showed up to pickup their preordered iPads when the can it have delivered at home. Most of them seemed to be there to meet friends, have some fun and share the experience.

While waiting we the preordered units where checked in by Apple staff with a custom app on their iphones, and we were treated with krispykremes and water. It took me about one hour to get to the front of the  line. While waiting i notices that Robert Scoble was there and overheard him telling somebody else that he was first in line (funnily i also overheard some seemingly senior Apple hardware engineer that came to the store not recognizing Scoble but only talking about “this guy”).

I was assigned a staff member  (Hi, Kevin) that helped me pickup my purchase. As usual with the Apple stores, the store was on my credit card companies blacklist, but as opposed to the store on 5th Avenue, the additional authorization worked at the first  try.

I didn’t buy any additional stuff but the VGA video adapter and was done in about 5 minutes total.

Scott Forstall and Katie (Cotton)

As Scott Forstall was at the store and talking to customers, i had to walk over and ask him about any new details on the europe launch.  Instead of answering himself he took the safe route and relayed the question to Katie (obviously Katie Cotton) who unsurprisingly gave me the official line of  “end of April”.  Nevertheless the fact of Scott being there and me being able to just walk over and ask him was a nice thing.

Activation

You might already have read it: You can’t use the iPad without having it connected to a computer that has iTunes installed. Since it is not neccessary to register the iPad (it is even not (yet) possible to register the iPad with a german phone number) and applications can be downloaded over wifi, there is actual no urgent need to have this step.

I unboxed and activated my iPad at Googles car park before going to Wherecamp2010. Since i already downloaded most of the apps i wanted to test / buy yesterday, i was able to sync them on the device without taking to much time from the conference sessions.

General impressions

In this  post i will only give some general impressions about the device and the various  apps i have used (mainly news related apps). A more detailed review of the different news apps will follow  suitly.  for the general impressions i will focus on the parts that you probably might not have heard elsewhere.

The iPad is definitely the couch surfing / computing / video watching device i had hoped for. Especially watching video, both video synced from iTunes / iTunesU as well as video streamed via wifi (e.g. in the Reuters, BBC and ABC apps) was amazingly good. I definitely can see this device as a major step for no longer needing a TV set. It makes watching video whereever you have a wifi connection so easy and seamless . You can even watch it together  with your spouse without too many problems.

Unfortunately  i’m not sure that you will be able to watch web based video on the big screen, since the VGA adapter seemingly only works with certain applications, such as Videos, Keynote and Youtube. As with the iPhone and the composite/s-video out  it does not replicate the iPad display on an external screen. Since all the apps i’ve seen the video out working with are Apple apps, and i’m not aware of an Video-Out API i’m afraid, that video out might be something that is dissappointing.

Update: Jens tells me that there is an Video Out API. Thanks a lot

Unfortunately i’m right now unable to test if H.264 encoded video will work within safari as well as third party apps.

After reading the reviews i’m also positely surprised of the useability of the onscreen keyboard in landscape mode. It is definitely good enough for me for note taking during meetings and conferences (tested it this afternoon at wherecamp).

Pixeldoubling IMHO works well enough with most iPhone only apps that i’m wondering why the heck they didn’t make it an option that is enabled by default and you have to enable it for every single app. At least it remembers the setting for the app.

Doch was ist das, was von Ankershoffen da aus der Tasche zieht? Abgewetzt und mitgenommen sieht dieser „Tablet PC“ aus, der blaue Einschaltknopf ist schlimm eingedrückt; abgegrabbeltes schwarzes Klebeband hält notdürftig das Logo „Wepad“ fest – und der Rahmen des „Geräts“ ist aus Holz. So wie einst Apple seine ersten Computer aus Holz schreinerte, so ist auch das WePad zunächst nur als Prototyp mit einer Holzummantelung zu sehen. „Der andere Prototyp ist gerade in Frankreich“, erzählt von Ankershoffen. Erst in der nächsten Woche sollen die ersten Seriengeräte aus Asien eintreffen – dann wird ein Magnesium-Aluminium-Rahmen dem WePad den gewissen Schick verleihen.

In Ermangelung von Links im Artikel sowie der Erwähnung von Pegatron und netbooknews.de,  hier der Link zum netbooknews.de Artikel in dem Pegatron als Hersteller des wePad vorgestellt wird :-)

Für mich stellt sich immer mehr die Frage nach der Rolle von 4tiitoo im ganzen Szenario. Anscheinend ist auf dem Prototypen noch nicht viel von Android zu sehen. Portiert 4tiitoo jetzt ihre Benutzeroberfläche auf Android, oder wird die Benutzeroberfläche (zumindest auf OS Ebene) demnächst komplett von Android abgelöst, wie bei den meisten anderen Android basierten Tablets.

Offen ist für mich auch die Frage nach einem SDK für das WePad. Es ist immer nur von einem Meta-AppStore die Rede, welche AppStores aber darunter liegen sollen und welche SDKs dann benutzt werden können ist unklar.

Eine weitere offenen Frage wie denn Android Marketplace auf einem 1366×768 Screen funktioneren soll, wenn bislang die maximal vorgesehene Screensize 480×854 ist.

Ich weiss, momentan  ist das für neofonie eher sekundär, aber irgendwann müssen sie zumindest mir auf diese Fragen überzeugende Antworten liefern. Ansonsten hat es das WePad IMHO gegenüber out of the box Android-tablets oder Hybiriden eInk/Tablet devices we dem NotionInk Adam schwer. Nicht zu vergessen, dass ChromeOS auch nicht mehr lange dauert, und die Pegatron Mutter ASUS offensichtlich plant ein ChromeOS Tablet herauszubringen. Sollte das WePad auf einem Referenzdesign von ASUS/Pegatron beruhen, könnte es sogar das gleiche sein.

Zur Markteinführung des iPad in den Vereinigten Staaten am 3. April 2010 ist die WELT-Gruppe mit einer eigenen Applikation im App-Store vertreten. Mit der „Kiosk-App“ haben Nutzer die Möglichkeit, die aktuellen Ausgaben von WELT, WELT KOMPAKT und WELT am SONNTAG auf dem neuen Tablet von Apple zu lesen.

…

Jan Bayer, Verlagsgeschäftsführer WELT-Gruppe: „Die WELT-Gruppe als Innovationsführer im Segment der Qualitätszeitungsmarken ist von Anfang an auf dem iPad vertreten. Wir haben uns bewusst dafür entschieden, zum Marktstart unsere starken Zeitungsmarken als digitale Ausgaben auf dem iPad anzubieten. Bereits bei der iPhone-App der WELT hat sich gezeigt, dass die PDF-Funktionalität ein sehr stark genutztes Angebot ist

Natürlich wurde diese Mitteilung sofort von den verschiedensten Medien aufgegriffen und hat es auch auf die Rivva-Homepage geschafft (da ich momentna in USA bin Where2.0 und Wherecamp, verzichte ich mal auf individuelle Links). Dabei ist folgender Tenor zu lesen:

• Teuer
• Was, nur PDF?

Zu dem ersten Punkt möchte ich mich nicht äussern da ich mir nicht die Mühe gemacht habe den Teil mit den Preisen zu lesen :-). Aber bzgl PDF habe ich eine Meinung.

Ich kann mir vorstellen, dass es schon einigen Druck von Seiten ASV  gab, um zum Launchzeitpunkt im iPad Store vertreten zu sein.

Ich fand schon die Idee nicht schlecht , dass die Welt iPhone App PDF  mitbrachte, da es praktisch umsonst mit dem iPhoneSDK  mitkommt. Die eingebaute Preview App kann natürlich PDFs darstellen, da schon NextStep (der Vorläufer von MacOSX) auf Display Postscript basierte, und der Window Server von Mac OS X auf Postscript basiert (Wikipedia).

Via AirSharing haber ich schon etliche PDF Dokumente auf mein iPhone gebracht und dort gelesen / angesehen. Die deutlich größere Auflösung  des iPad zusammen mit der Tabloid Grösse der Welt kompakt lassen für mich die PDF-Variante für diese Kombination aus Produkt und Gerät durchaus attraktiv erscheinen. Insbesondere dann, wenn man nur wenig Zeit zur Entwicklung einer App und gar keine Möglichkeit zum Testen der Applikation auf dem echten Gerät hat.

PDF ist damit die Variante die unter den gegebenen Voraussetzungen: Zeit, Aufwand, Testability etc. den besten Kompromiss darstellt, wenn man zum Stratzeitpunkt im iPad-Store vertreten sein will.

Die entscheidende Frage ist die nach der Geschwindigkeit des Renderings, aber auch hier ist davon auszugehen, dass das iPad deutlich schneller ist als das iPhone. Und dieses ist in Bezug auf ds PDF rendering deutlich schneller als alle PDFs die ich auf eReadern wie dem Kindle und dem Sony Reader gesehen habe. Dort war PDF für mich bislang keine Option.

Natürlich ist PDF eine der Optionen die wir uns im dpa newslab im Feld ereading ansehen, neben einer Reihe von anderen. Allerdings ist es für mich /uns nicht die primäre Variante die für alle Zeitungen geeignet ist. Aber unter den gegebenen Umständen kann ich die Entscheidung der Welt Gruppe nachvollziehen.

Wie sich das ganze anfühlt werde ich am Samstag sagen können, wenn ich mein iPad abgeholt habe :-) Einer der Voreteile wenn man gerade in USA ist.

Vielleicht haben die geänderten WePad-Photos auch etwas damit zu tun. Von diesen sind nämlich die Verweise auf das Abendblatt und Welt verschwunden.

Klar, das eine solche Geschichte schnell von den einschlägigen Mediendiensten und Online-Redaktionen aufgegriffen wird, etwa Spiegel, meedia, turi2, …

Laut der eigens für das WePad eingerichteten Facebook Fansite kann das WePad folgendes:

Das WePad bietet Zugang zum Internet, sofort nutzbare Apps und Zugriff auf Bücher und Fotos sowie auf Magazine und Tageszeitungen verschiedener Verlage, die mit dem WeMagazine ePublishing Eco System realisiert wurden.

WeMagazine konnte auf der CeBIT bewundert werden, ein Kollege von hat auf der IFRA Expo im letzten Jahr eine Vorversion ssehen der auf Basis vn Adobe AIR realisiert war.

Ich kenne neofonie resp. die Schwesterf/Tochterfirma WeFind AG als Hersteller von Suchmaschinenlösungen, als Technologieprovider hinter nachrichten.de und netzeitung.de,  als Use-case Leader des Theseus-Use-Cases Alexandria (nachdem Lycos Research zusammen mit Lycos von der Bildfläche verschwunden ist) und als Anbieter von mobilen Lösungen (unter anderem der iPhone App der Leipziger Volkszeitung). Kurzum als Softwareanbieter, nicht als Hardwareanbieter.

Wo kommt die Hardware her? 42.

Daher habe auch mich gewundert dass neofonie auf einmal  auch Hardware macht. Wie schaffen die das nur? Die Antwort ist natürlich die Antwort auf die Frage nach “life, universe and everything”: 42, oder um es genauer zu sagen http://www.4tiitoo.de.

Auf deren Website wurde irgendwann zwischen gestern abend und heute morgen noch schnell, der Hinweis auf die Kooperation mit neofonie  eingefügt und das Gerät von tiitoo in WePad umbenannt, ausser im Alt-Text des Bildes :-(

Ebenso hat areamobile noch andere WePad Bilder als ich von der FacebookFansite herunterladen konnte. Meine Bilder sind jetzt wit einem WePad Desktop versehen, die alten haben noch den orangen Hintergrund des tiitoo (ohne das tiitoo Branding im Screenshot, dafür aber mit WePad Branding auf dem Rahmen).

Sieht also alles sehr nach einem voreiligem Alleingang von neofonie aus der 4tiitoo überraschte einer wirklich abgestimmten Kommunikationsstrategie aus.

Partner? Welche Partner?

Apropos Partner. Zu Print- und Vertriebspartnern schweigt sich neofonie ja bislang aus ebenso zu Preisen. Es soll nur biliger sein als das iPad

Auffällig ist allerdings, dass auf dem Screenshot  mit dem Abendblatt (gleich 2x) und der Welt (neben TVMovie und der Tagesschau) zwei Zeitungen von Axel-Springer zu finden sind. Dazu, neben den üblichen Referenzen zu den Internetgiganten, noch Verweise auf das Wetter in Köln, koeln.de und zwei weiteren Hamburger Unternehmen: Tchibo und Hawesko (2x).

Sollte das irgend ein Indiz für eine Partnerschaft mit ASV  oder anderen ehrbaren Hamburger Kaufleuten sein (wie war das mit den “”untypische Vertriebspartnern” von denen im areamobile Artikel die Rede ist) und  die Kommunikation mit diesen ähnlich gut wie mit 4tiitoo gelaufen sein, dann viel Spass neofonie.

Technik. Welches OS?

Doch zurück zu den Unklarheiten. In den Artikeln wird über das Betriebssystem spekuliert. So schreibt der Spiegel:

Etwas verworren sind bislang noch die Angaben zu dem Betriebssystem, das neofonie auf dem WePad verwenden will. Laut areamobile handelt es sich dabei um ein Linux-Derivat, “auf das Android und eine eigene Nutzeroberfläche aufgesetzt sind”. Ein solches System würde dem WePad-Nutzer zumindest Zugriff auf Googles Online-App-Store Marketplace geben, um sich mit Zusatzprogrammen auszustatten. Unklar ist dabei nur, inwieweit bestehende Android-Software kompatibel zu dem neuen Gerät mit seiner hohen Bildschirmauflösung ist.

Leider ist auch die Darstellung des Spiegels etwas verworren. Android ist ein Betriebssystem das auf dem Linuxkernel und einem Satz  von in C-geschriebenen LIbraries sowie einer Java Virtual Machine die nicht Java heissen darf  und deshalb Dalvik heisst aufbaut. Applikationen werden in Java geschrieben.

Da laut tiitoo schon in 2009 ein Feldtest mit 150 End-Usern durchgeführt wurde und die Firma seit 2006 daran arbeitet (das sagt zumindest das gerade aktuelle Textsnippet in den Google-Suchergebnissen das bei einer Suche nach 4tiitoo angezeigt wird ist folgendes wahrscheinlicher:

das tiitoo wurde als eigenes Linuxderivat mit eigener Oberfläche entwickelt. Vielleicht wurde ja auch eine Flash-SourceLizenz erworben (wie es z.B. bei dem Chumby der Fall ist) und die komplette Oberfläche ist Flash.

Auf jeden Fall hat die in den Screenshots gezeigte Oberfläche, nix aber auch gar nix mit der Aberfläche zu tun die auf en mittlerweile kaum noch zu zählenden Android-Tablets zu finden ist. Umnicht die gesamte Entwicklungslast selbst tragenzu müssen, werden die 4tiitoo Leute wohl in den letzten Monaten schwer damit beschäftigt sei, ihr System auf Android als Basis umzubauen.

Was den Google Marketplace angeht, so irrt der Spiegel. Android heisst nicht automatisch auch Android Marketplace. Siehe nur das Beispiel Archos Internet Tablet, das quasi gehackt wurde um den Marketplace auf das Gerät zu bringen (erst in der auf der CeBIT gezeigten Version ist jetzt auch der Marketplace enthalten). So wie ich es verstanden habe braucht man als Gerätehersteller ein Distribution Agreement mit Google um die Google Applikationen (und das heisst auch den Android Marketplace) auf dem Gerät installieren zu können.

• Tablets will be gamechangers  both for personal media consumption and personal computing (if executed right)
• Neither re-enacting /emulating existing media (especially in the newspaper and magazin space) nor re-enacting existing personal computing user experiences will do the trick. “Enhanced editions” of all kinds where one of the most talked about topics at O’Reilly’s Tools of Change for Publishing conference in late February.
• Most media companies have a long way to go until they are tablet-ready. And that means wrt. enabling their existing processes and content, not wrt. building exciting apps. The prior are a necessary precondition for the latter.
• It is nearly impossible to do development for tablets without a physical device. Because good applications wil be based on making the experience as physical  as possible. And that means integrating sensors of all kind as well as direct manapulation interfaces

Apples Human Interface Guidelines

Carefully reading  the iPad Human Interface Guidelines  is presumably the best thing you can do in order prepare for developing iPad applications. Thankfully uxmag published the overview  of these guidelines first. Hence i’m feeling quite confident that i might publish them over here without getting litigated from Apple (technically even these guidelines  are under NDA and only available to members of the iPhone / iPad developer program):

Support All Orientations

Your application should encourage people to interact with iPad from any side by providing a great experience in all orientations. The reason is that people don’t view the device as having a default orientation, because they don’t pay much attention to the minimal device frame and they’re unconcerned with the location of the Home button.

Enhance Interactivity (Don’t Just Add Features)

The best iPad applications give people innovative ways to interact with content while they perform a clearly defined, finite task. Resist the temptation to fill the large screen with features that are not directly related to the main task. In particular, you should not view the large iPad screen as an invitation to bring back all the functionality you pruned from your iPhone application.

Flatten Your Information Hierarchy

Although you don’t want to pack too much information into one screen, you also want to prevent people from feeling that they must visit many different screens to find what they want. In general, focus the main screen on the primary content and provide additional information or tools in an auxiliary view, such as a popover.

Reduce Full-Screen Transitions

Instead of swapping in a whole new screen when some embedded information changes, update only the areas of the user interface that need it. When you perform fewer full-screen transitions, your application has greater visual stability, which helps people keep track of where they are in their task.

Enable Collaboration and Connectedness

Think of ways people might want to use your application with others. Expand your thinking to include both the physical sharing of a single device and the virtual sharing of data.

Add Physicality and Heightened Realism

Whenever possible, add a realistic, physical dimension to your application. The more true to life your application looks and behaves, the easier it is for people to understand how it works and the more they enjoy using it.

Delight People with Stunning Graphics

The high-resolution iPad screen supports rich, beautiful, engaging graphics that draw people into an application and make the simplest task rewarding.

De-emphasize User Interface Controls

Help people focus on the content by designing your application UI as a subtle frame for the information they’re interested in. Downplay application controls by minimizing their number and prominence. Consider creating custom controls that subtly integrate with your application’s graphical style. In this way, controls are discoverable, but not too conspicuous.

Minimize Modality

iPad applications should allow people to interact with them in nonlinear ways. Modality prevents this freedom by interrupting people’s workflow and forcing them to choose a particular path.

Rethink Your Lists

Consider a more real-world vision of your application. For example, on iPhone, Contacts is a streamlined list, but on iPad, Contacts is an address book with a beautifully tangible look and feel.

Consider Multifinger Gestures

The large iPad screen provides great scope for multifinger gestures, including gestures made by more than one person.

Consider Popovers for Some Modal Tasks

If you use modal views to enable self-contained tasks in your iPhone application, you might be able to use popovers instead.

Restrict Complexity in Modal Tasks

People appreciate being able to accomplish a self-contained subtask in a modal view, because the context shift is clear and temporary. But if the subtask is too complex, people can lose sight of the main task they suspended when they entered the modal view.

Downplay File-Handling Operations

Although iPad applications can allow people to create and manipulate files and share them with a computer (when the device is docked), this does not mean that people should have a sense of the file system on iPad.

Ask People to Save Only When Necessary

People should have confidence that their work is always preserved unless they explicitly cancel or delete it. If your application helps people create and edit documents, make sure they do not have to take an explicit save action.

Start Instantly

iPad applications should start as quickly as possible so that people can begin using them without delay.

Always Be Prepared to Stop

Like iPhone applications, iPad applications stop when people press the Home button to open another application.

Adobe and HPs (lack of) vision

Meanwhile Adobe and HP join forces and publish a video previewing Adobe running on a HP Slate. Not surprisingly they are focusing on the “full web” experience that is enabled by runing a “real” operating system running “real” web sites and “real” applications (based on Adobe AIR).

Meaning: Cluttered OS build for a different kind of system (PC/Laptop) using a different user interface metaphor (Desktop/Mouse) showing websites optimized for both.

IMHO especially the photoshop.com demo in the video below clearly shows the lack of vision and violation of the “De-emphasize User Interface Controls” Guideline from above.

PS.: More dissemination of the video (as well as an alternative takeon it) can be found at crunchgear

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.