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Posts Tagged ‘iPad’

Slowing the development cycle

February 20th, 2012 No comments

Apple’s a bit slow. The iPhone has been followed up, twice now, with incremental upgrades. The iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 4S were both relatively minor tweaks on the previous model. Bloggers complain, customers barely notice, but one group is absolutely thrilled: developers.

I work with an Apple developer and it turns out, that despite all the hoops and regulations they have to jump through to even sell something related to the Apple an Apple platform, it’s all worth it because Apple has made the big picture much easier. The write-once-deploy-anywhere notion is sort of true in Apple-land in a way that Andriod can’t even dream of. Once a piece of software or hardware is developed for an Apple product, it will plug into the same port, in the same location and have the same application hooks on iPods, a range of iPhones, and a couple of different iPads. That’s a pretty big deal when compared to developing an accessory for an Andriod-based phone or tablet. In that world, it’s develop once, and then try try again for nearly every phone or tablet on the market.

Apple will release an iPad “3” in March, but, like their other incremental upgrades, it isn’t the time to expect much. Rumors are starting to shake out that there won’t even be an all new A6 quad-core processor, for example. As if anyone but the technorati even cares. The iPad is firmly in the lead among tablets; there is little reason to rock this particular boat. I could, for example, imagine that the real feature of the new iPad will be its price: cheaper than the last ones. Such a move would be devastating to the competition who are making compelling products but struggling to make them as inexpensively as Apple has (with the obvious exception of Amazon).

A cheaper iPad could be decimating to the only real competitor: Amazon’s Fire. Seeing as the iPad already runs Amazon’s Kindle app, a cheap iPad would fill a visible niche. Not to mention how happy developers would be. They wouldn’t have to re-design accessories for this new product. Keeping developers happy is critical in these days when your product isn’t just a shrink-wrapped device, but rather that whole eco-system of market channels, accessories, and add-ons.

Still, I’ve taken up this prediction thing, lately, so, I’ll predict that, in spite of my hopes and dreams, Apple will not be lowering their iPad 3 price. They can always (and likely will) sell last year’s model for cheaper, but really, why would they want to cannibalize their own margins to sell a few extra units? The Kindle has proven no real threat and there is little point in being both the performance and low-cost leader.

Building an eco-system

January 17th, 2012 No comments

I remember buying used books in the college book store. I was amazed how expensive they were, but I remembered most how heavy they were as I quickly learned not to carry them with me to classes. That’s a shame because having the book there to refer to right after a lecture might have made it easier to work out the problems assigned. We actually used books during class in elementary school; keeping these heavy things with us was a necessity. So was a sturdy backpack.

I predict Apple wants to change all that. In the process, they want to improve the way we learn and even the way books, themselves, are created. The Kindle and Nook are both excellent eBook readers. They are light and easy to read in typical light. But textbooks, especially those for earlier grades, are in color. Interacting with textbooks can make them more effective and more stimulating. Have a textbook that’s attached to the internet, so it can be updated, fact checked, compared with other sources, and shared with friends makes it even more powerful. E-readers fall short on interactivity because their beautiful screens are slow to refresh, and their unsophisticated, but perfect just for reading, software is limited. That’s what keeps them cheaper (around a fifth of the price of an iPad) but whypreferred iPadsto Kindles.

The iPad isn’t new, so why hasn’t it already become the text book replacement I suggest it should be? Apple’s been here before, but it’s all about the eco-system. As each new Android phone is released with better and better specs, even than Apple’s offering, pundits predict it will kill off the iPhone. It doesn’t happen because, like buying into a camera system, buying an iPhone is gaining access not only to a nifty phone, but also a huge app-store, and giant accessory market.

In order to bring iPads to classrooms, Apple needs an eco-system. This, I predict, is what Apple will announce Thursday, 19 January. Many are calling it GarageBand for text books. It really means that by making the tools available to develop textbooks, new, interactive textbooks that take advantage of all of the iPad’s features, Apple can crowd-source the eco-system that it needs to build out this market. This is not to say that suddenly everyone will be able to make text books that the Texas Board of Education is likely to accept, but there is still a need for iPad compatible tools that make this development much easier. Tools that expand the interactivity of the book with the rest of the world. Imagine how much better Facebook would be if kids we’re able to share references from their homework instead of just the latest “re-post this if you think….” Apple has a long history of enabling content creators, and not just content consumers. Not a bad strategy if you develop tools to both consume and create digital content. If you want to know where Apple is going in the future, expect them to look for opportunities to enable one side or the other of the content equation.

And check back in a couple of days to see if this is at the heart of Thursday’s announcement.