What is it with all this iTablet, iBook, iSlate crap. I'm fed up of reading about it everyday in my rss feeds. Its boring. And whats more I think its all for nothing. Call me an Apple skeptic (because, well, I am one) but I really don't understand the hype surrounding this one. Its not because it might not come out, its because I simple don't know who they will be marketing it towards.
My reasoning is thus. Lets say they release one (the sooner the better), and lets say its a tablet of 7" to 12" and power of a tegra through to a CULV. What do you market it as and who do you hope to sell it to? Try market it as an Apple take on the netbook? You'll fail, NO KEYBOARD. An MID? Maybe, but there is already the iPhone so why bother. A internet tablet for the couch (JooJoo style)? Very niche market. Give it an easily readable screen and call it iBook and make it an Apple take on a eBook reader? Maybe, but eBook readers are nowhere near popular yet. Something else I haven't thought of? Likely I think, but what?
I just don't really see the need for another device between an iPhone and an MacBook, unless its a very specialised and niche product. In which case, whats all the hype for? Sure apple junkies will by it but most other people won't need it. Not over an iPhone or MacBook. Maybe I'm missing something but I just don't get it. And I'm fed up of hearing about it.
Rant over.
In other news I finished watching B5 and in turn figured out what I didn't like about the 4 (and 5th) seasons. In a word - pacing. The pacing in Season 4 was way too fast for me. Just felt like burnout. It lost all of the slow plotting brilliance of the earlier seasons and went all out in a final breathtaking final splash that just felt off. And talking about feeling just off - Season 5. Yeah.....
Happy New Year All
(tune in next month for some Kindle 2 thoughts maybe)
I have to agree, as much I want to see a iTablet I want it to be something "revolutionary" to the market they are trying to reach as the iphone was... but I dont think it will be.
ReplyDeleteHowever what would be nice is if it was just big enough to be used by artists as a portable digital sketch pad :)
Hope you had a good Christmas and wishing you all the best for the new year.
Hope you had a good Christmas too. Mine was pretty good, went to Kobe and Osaka. Ate nice (but not traditional XMas) food.
ReplyDeleteAnd thats really interesting. Everyone seems to think that the device will revolutionise things in the direction they want. I read ebook forums and the members seem to think it will be a good device to revolutionise that. You are hoping for an art tablet. Others a couch pc. It can't be everyones - just what I needed - device.
First: Happy 25th December and 1st January. :)
ReplyDeleteThe bit that has me most interested about the iTablet (for lack of a better name) isn't actualy the hardware its the software and the content.
There is lots of interesting activity going on among the various news papers and magazine providers to build digital equivalents of the dead tree magazines and some of those rumours have apple in the thick of them.
Add to that the recent increase in the adoption of digital comic books (Marvel comics are now available on the PSP for example), eBook readers (there starting to gain traction, if somewhat slowely and I love mine. Thinks like Adobe's cross platform epub DRM are helping).
Its hard to say exactly what that adds up to, and that is perhaps the problem, but I recon we wont know exactly what the device is and who its targeted at until Apple announce it.
Woops forgot to add comment on B5:
ReplyDeleteMy understanding was that he had to rush 4 as he thought he wasn't going to get a fifth season. That meant he had to wrap things up much quicker than intended.
When he did get season 5 it was too late to undo that rush and he had to make up new content and expand smaller stories to a larger role for season 5.