From TechNewsWorld
First Blood Spilled in the New Tablet Wars by Renay San Miguel

“Two in-development tablet devices that seemed intriguing as details were slowly revealed over the last few months have apparently died in the womb. Microsoft said the Courier is not to be, and HP has hit the brakes on the tablet PC Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer showed on stage at CES in January… In a one-two punch to Microsoft and Windows, various technology blogs and websites reported late last week that Microsoft has ended plans to make its Courier dual-screen tablet, and HP (NYSE: HPQ) has hit the brakes on production of the tablet computer that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed off in prototype form at January’s Consumer Electronics Show.”

Our Courier dreams are shattered. However, manufacturers including Microsoft feel there’s still time to produce a tablet but they want to get it right. Ace in the hole is Android-based tablets  (See What Would a Google Tablet Look Like? Here Are Some Clues).

So, the first round goes to Apple. If there’s a round #2 you’ll hear about it.
RC

Now that our speculations about Apple’s tablet (including a name) have been put to rest, it’s time to play Speculation 2.0.  What are we speculating about?  How about a Google tablet.

Electronista says “Google is in the midst of crafting its own tablet to take on the iPad, a leak late Sunday may have revealed. CEO Eric Schmidt at a recent Los Angeles party purportedly told those gathered that the company is working on an Android tablet. Most of its details weren’t mentioned, but it would be both an e-reader and a general computing device.”

The Electronista staff adds: “Any tablet launch would be controversial for Google, as it would not only stoke the heated battle with Apple even further but risk alienating the company’s hardware partners.”

Can’t pass up a good rumor?  Then Google prepping its own Android tablet? is perfect for you.

RC

David Pogue, the wonderful blogger who tells technology like it is for the New York Times, has weighed iPad in the balance and found it not wanting.

He’s also weighed it on a scale and found it heavy compared to Kindle, 1.5 pounds vs. 10 ounces. But that is not a fatal factor in his evaluation.  In fact there are no fatal factors in his evaluation.  His biggest reservation is the fundamental concept of the iPad itself: why does the iPad exist? At first we were mystified by this enigmatic, existential question. But like a koan the answer came the next day.  More on that in a moment.

Pogue’s approach to appraising Apple’s tablet is divided in two: one column for geeks and one for shleppers.  We take umbrage at the distinction, because it doesn’t give much credit to a generation of lay users who are quite conversant with computer specs.  In fact this shlepper didn’t see anything so complex in Pogue’s “techie” section that could not be comprehended by an English major who did his Master’s thesis on Henry James.

Here are some highlights of Pogue’s analysis:

• There’s an e-book reader app, but it’s not going to rescue the newspaper and book industries (sorry, media pundits). The selection is puny (60,000 titles for now). You can’t read well in direct sunlight. At 1.5 pounds, the iPad gets heavy in your hand after awhile (the Kindle is 10 ounces).
• When the iPad is upright, typing on the on-screen keyboard is a horrible experience
• Things open fast, scroll fast, load fast
• The iPad can’t play Flash video…Thousands of Web sites show up with empty white squares on the iPad
• There’s no multitasking…It’s one app at a time
• The simple act of making the multitouch screen bigger changes the whole experience
• A great AT&T cellular deal
• 150,000 existing iPhone apps run on the iPad and 1000 specially designed for the iPad’s bigger screen

We said Pogue likes the iPad with an asterisk, but besides cavils like weight and glare, his specific reservations are so modest we won’t bother to reprint them here.  You can read them on Looking at the iPad From Two Angles

Pogue’s glowing bottom line is this: “The iPad is so fast and light, the multitouch screen so bright and responsive, the software so easy to navigate, that it really does qualify as a new category of gadget. Some have suggested that it might make a good goof-proof computer for technophobes, the aged and the young; they’re absolutely right.”

So – what does Pogue mean when he says the iPad is a hit except for the concept? The answer came in an article by Brad Stone and Claire Cain Miller published in the Times the next day. “Many consumers do not understand the device’s purpose, who would want to pay $500 or more for it and why anyone would need another gadget on top of a computer and smartphone. After all, phones are performing an ever-expanding range of functions, as Apple points out in its many iPhone commercials.” A banker commented that “I can do everything on my MacBook Pro, cellphone and BlackBerry. I don’t need any more devices. I already have six phone numbers and enough things to plug in at night.” A Silicon Valley entrepreneur was quoted as saying “But let’s see: you can’t make a phone call with it, you can’t take a picture with it, and you have to buy content that before now you were not willing to pay for.”

But that very same entrepreneur said “The first five million will be sold in a heartbeat.” Not very enigmatic or cosmic, but until something comes along to top the iPad, this would seem to be the last word.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

Nilay Patel has posted on Engadget a preview of the excruciatingly long awaited Microsoft Courier tablet. It could well give Apple’s iPad a run for the money.

” We’re told Courier will function as a ‘digital journal,’” writes Patel, “and it’s designed to be seriously portable: it’s under an inch thick, weighs a little over a pound, and isn’t much bigger than a 5×7 photo when closed. That’s a lot smaller than we expected…The interface appears to be pen-based and centered around drawing and writing, with built-in handwriting recognition and a corresponding web site that allows access to everything entered into the device in a blog-like format complete with comments…Most interestingly, it looks like the Courier will also serve as Microsoft’s e-book device, with a dedicated ecosystem centered around reading.”

No news on price or release date except a vague “Q3/Q4″. Below is a video demo. For the full Engadget article click here.

RC

Saving up for that iPad? Maybe you should check out the JooJoo first.

JooJoo? That’s one of a host of tablets in one stage or another of development or release. In fact, in the next year or two we’re going to have more tablets than a hypochondriac’s medicine chest. Some compare favorable to Apple’s iPad in price, power, specs and features. If you’re willing to do a little comparison shopping it might be worth waiting and sitting out a dance or two before making your choice of slate or tablet.

Gizmodo has made it easier to do that shopping with a post called Slate Showdown: iPad vs. HP Slate vs. JooJoo vs. Android Tablets & More

Here’s the short version:

The iPad has the most storage, cheap 3G, the time-tested iPhone OS and its mountain of apps, and a serious amount of Apple marketing juice behind it. But it’s also famously lacking features common to the other tablets, such as webcam and multitasking (only first party apps like music and email can multitask). The Notion Ink Adam is perhaps the most interesting of the bunch, with its dual-function transflective screen from Pixel Qi: It can be either a normal LCD or, with the flick of a switch, an easy-on-the-eyes reflective LCD that resembles e-ink. Its hardware is also surprisingly impressive—but it remains to be seen if Android is really the right OS for a 10-inch tablet.

The Dell Mini 5 and forthcoming Android edition of the Archos 7 tablet are two of a kind, almost oversized smartphones in their feature sets. Is an extra two or three inches of screen real estate worth the consequent decrease in pocketability? Perhaps not. And finally, there’s the maligned JooJoo, formerly the CrunchPad, a bit of an oddball as the only web-only device in the bunch. It doesn’t really have apps, can’t multitask, and pretty much confines you to an albeit fancy browser, sort of like Chrome OS will. The JooJoo is also the only tablet here to have no demonstrated way to read ebooks.

If you want to read about any of these in detail, click on the links below.

Apple iPad: [Gizmodo]
HP Slate: [Gizmodo, GDGT; Tipster]
Fusion Garage JooJoo: [Gizmodo]
Notion Ink Adam: [Slashgear]
Dell Mini 5: [Gizmodo, Gizmodo]
Archos 7 Android: [DanceWithShadows, Gizmodo]
Lenovo IdeaPad U1: [Lenovo, Gizmodo, Gizmodo]
Archos 9: [UMPCPortal, Archos]

By the way, do you know the difference between a slate and a tablet? Nobody does – the terms seem to be interchangeable, but the Gizmodo guy likes “slate” if for no other reason than “tablet” is overused.

RC

Two representatives of Aptara, the digital solutions company, have offered a terrific scenario of a typical school room of the future in which everybody’s using a tablet. It’s just what we imagined when we first laid eyes on a tablet back in 2003.

Here’s the opening passage of Aptara’s scenario developed by John Ott and Eric Freese:
*****************************
Welcome to class. Take your new tablet— your only textbook this semester— out of your backpack. It’s about the same size, but lighter and thinner than your old textbooks. It’s also battery-powered, similar to a big touch-screen, like your iPhone.

Use that touch-screen and download the first chapter of your first lesson. That’s right—your lesson is an app. Plug in your earbuds and tap the screen to begin the introductory video.

Cool, the presenter is that famous scientist from the cable show…

Now the video goes into full documentary mode; scenes from real life. Major ideas from the lesson appear as text at the bottom of the screen; so do vocabulary words. Now the presenter is back and he’s working out a big idea step-by-step on the whiteboard…

Video over. Time to read…
**************************************
Has anyone figured out the flaw in this projection? Consider: with digital technology you don’t have to go to class – because there’s no class to go to. You can “attend” school in your bedroom, living room, dorm room, bathroom or car.

Digital technology is the great disintermediator. Among the things it disintermediates is place. There is no school room, at least not one with geographical coordinates. It exists in the cloud. In Gertrude Stein’s immortal phrase, there is no there there. Unfortunately, Stein used it to characterize Philadelphia, but it’s the mot juste for a virtual school room.

University trustees had better begin thinking about discounting tuition for students auditing classes from their bathrooms…

Aptara’s complete article can be seen on the Digital Book World website, and if you haven’t signed up to receive DBW’s newsletter, do log on. You’ll be at least one light year more informed than your neighbors.

Richard Curtis

“There are lots of schoolkids in the world,” writes Tyler Cowen on the Marginal Revolution website.

We were thinking the same thing. In fact, we were thinking it a decade ago when we leaped into the e-book space: the medium is perfect for textbooks. But education had to wait for hardware and software to catch up.

It’s caught up.

Hardware: Apple will lead the way. “The superior Apple graphics, colors, and fonts will support all of the textbook features which Kindle botches and destroys” says Cowen in My predictions about the iPad. “In the longer run the iPad will compete with your university, or in some ways enhance your university. It will offer homework services and instructional videos and courses, none of which can work well on the current iPhone or Kindle.”

Platform: We’ve been reading up on a San Francisco startup called Inkling. “Stacked with pedigreed veterans of Microsoft and Google, Harvard, MIT and Stanford,” writes Paul Boutin of VentureBeat, Inkling surfaced after Apple’s iPad launch with $1 million to seed development of software aimed not just at student’s learning needs but their pocketbooks as well. The company is working with a number of textbook publishers like McGraw-Hill and Pearson.”First, they’ll port their existing tomes onto Apple’s iPad as interactive, socialized objects. Then, they’ll create all-new learning modules — interactive, social, and mobile — that leave ink-on-paper textbooks in the dust.”

Inkling offers color, interactivity, highlighter capability, social network sharing features, talking text and dynamic quizzes. And all of this delivered lightning-fast. “The iPad’s A4 chip is even faster than the Android G2 that gets geeks so excited,” says Boutin, “so rich layouts and interactive illustrations run quickly.”

“But the real breakthrough,” he writes, “is in pricing. Instead of a $180 textbook, learning modules built with Inkling will be priced individually on iTunes, just as music and TV shows are. Instead of buying all 50 chapters of a 1,200-page biology book, an instructor can create a customized bundle of only the modules students will actually use. Pricing hasn’t been determined yet, but it’s likely to be a few dollars per unit — much cheaper than current textbooks.

Are you listening, students? Modular bundles so cheap they’re not worth ripping off!

Here are some details from Inkling’s “About” page:

• Interactive figures. Inkling lets you directly manipulate objects to explore them. Want to know if two molecules bond? Use your fingertips to pull them together and see what happens.
• Custom spine. Inkling organizes content based on your assignments. It shows you everything you need to do, all at once, no matter where the content is from. It’s like a custom textbook, just for you.
• Reader. When it’s time to read a traditional textbook, Inkling does an amazing job. Dog-ear your pages, skip from chapter to chapter with gestures, and jump from figure to figure with your finger.
• Quizzes. Measure your progress with interactive tests that deepen your understanding of the content.
• Note following. Ever borrow a classmate’s notes? Borrow them in realtime with Inkling NoteSync™. Annotations, highlights and comments from your friends show up alongside your own, instantly.
• Device sync. Want to finish up a reading while waiting in line? Anything you’ve got on your iPad appears right on your iPhone or iPod touch, too.

Look for iPads utilizing the Inkling platform on campuses as early as next fall.

Richard Curtis

After a gestation longer than an elephant, speculation characterized by preposterous fantasies, and a delivery witnessed by millions, Apple finally brought forth a bouncing baby iPad. Not since the Essenes have such Messianic hopes and dreams been cherished, and whether they will be fulfilled remains to be seen after technicians take it apart and consumers render their verdict. Nevertheless, it seemed difficult for tech pundits to resist the temptation to kneel before it.

Here for instance is what Gizmodo’s blogger had to say:

• The guts: It’s a half-inch thick—just a hair thicker than the iPhone, for reference—and weighs 1.5 pounds…It’s also loaded with 802.11 n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, a 30-pin iPod connector, a speaker, a microphone, an accelerometer and a compass.
• It’s substantial but surprisingly light. Easy to grip. Beautiful. Rigid. Starkly designed. The glass is a little rubbery but it could be my sweaty hands. And it’s fasssstttt.
• Apple didn’t really sell this point, but it’s the single biggest benefit of the iPad: speed. It feels at least a generation faster than the iPhone 3GS. Lags and waits are gone, and the OS and apps respond just as quickly as you’d hope. Rotating between portrait and landscape modes, especially, is where this new horsepower manifests in the OS.
• iBooks: It’s an optical illusion, but just seeing the depth of pages makes the iBook app feel more like a book than a Kindle ever did for me. The text is sharp, and while the screen is bright, it doesn’t seem to strains the eyes—but time will tell on that.
• Pictures: Pinch, zoom, whatever—like we said, it’s fast—the photo app is faster that iPhoto performs on my aging Core2Duo laptop.
• Apps: Apps can play in their native resolution, or be 2x uprezzed for the screen. How does it look? An ATV game we tried actually looked pretty good—limited more by its base polygon count than the scaling process itself. Bottom line: it’s about as elegant solution as Apple could have offered, even if that graphics won’t be razor sharp.
• Browsing: Over Wi-Fi, Gizmodo loaded quickly. The 9.7-inch screen is an excellent size for reading the site. You can pinch zoom, but you won’t need to. Of course, on such a pretty web browsing experience, not having Flash makes the big, empty video boxes in the middle of a page is pretty disappointing. Put differently, the fatal flaw of Apple’s mobile browser has never been more apparent.

For these features and many more, the $499 price is universally acclaimed to be a huge bargain for this seamless blend of computer, game and movie player, e-book readers, and more. As to the battery, about which many expressed the gravest skepticism, Apple claims it will run for ten hours even with intense use such as movies. If you don’t like what they’re showing on your flight to Australia, load your iPad up with half a dozen films and you’ll be there in no time.

To see Gizmodo’s hands-on test-drive, click here. You can also view an absolute feeding-frenzy of comments, blogs, tweets, and eructations. Be careful not to stick your hand in there: it will be bitten off.

As for e-books and newspapers, Publishers Weekly’s Calvin Reid writes: “The device was demoed with newspaper content from the New York Times and supports video and audio embedded in the content. Most importantly, the iPad will support the ePub e-book standard and Apple has developed its own e-reader software, iBooks, and will also launch an iBookstore. E-book pricing is reported to be in the $15 range.” If you plan to write a book on iPad instead of reading one, there is both a virtual keyboard (left) and a pull-out.

Now that iPad is born there doesn’t seem to be much left to live for. But we will carry on as best we can, comforting ourselves with the knowledge that the Apple has scaled a pinnacle from which the view of the digital future is truly intoxicating.

Richard Curtis

The other day we reported that Apple-watchers have taken to calling the imminent tablet The Unicorn because of all the magical properties being attributed to it – and because, of course, no one has seen it. If only there were a fly on the wall of Apple’s Cupertino headquarters, a fly with a particularly sensitive transmitter…

In fact we have one. It’s a company called Flurry Analytics. Flurry has developed tools that gather from app developers information about applications they are working on. Jenna Wortham, writing about Flurry in the New York Times, reports that “Flurry can generate reports about the location of an application’s users, for example, or how long it took a user to complete a game level.”

It turns out that Flurry picked up some feedback from about 50 devices on or around the Cupertino campus and came to some conclusions about what we’re going to find under the hood of Apple’s tablet when we finally get our hands on one for a test drive.

Check Flurry’s chart below and you’ll see that the top three apps downloaded from Cupertino are for games, entertainment and news/books, followed by lifestyle, utilities, music, photography, travel, finance, social networking, weather and miscellaneous.

That games and entertainment are the # 1 and #2 apps should not surprise us, especially when one considers that the tablet’s larger screen will enable more than one user to play games on it. But the third one, news and books, raises an eyebrow in view of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s declaration that nobody reads anymore. It sounds as if people are going to be reading newspapers and illustrated books big time on the iSlate, Unicorn or whatever it’s called.

For more speculations on the Apple tablet, read Jenna Wortham’s A Playland for Apps in a Tablet World. The speculation should end later today when Apple’s formal announcement puts us all out of our misery. But if that Flurry fly on the wall of Apple’s lab is transmitting accurate information, Apple’s announcement should be anticlimactic.

Richard Curtis

When Kassia Krozser referred to the forthcoming Apple tablet as the “Apple Unicorn” I emailed her to ask if she knew something that no civilian outside of Apple knows. Or was it a joke? If it was a joke it was a damn good one.

It’s a joke. Someone started referring to the tablet as a Unicorn because no one had ever seen it but everyone was ascribing magical properties to it.

I fell for it because “Unicorn” happens to be a splendid name for an e-book reader, especially compared to the litany of dumb ones we have been reciting for the last year or two. “The name has, oddly (or not), found traction in all sorts of media,” Kassia writes, “and there’s even a Unicorn hashtag on Twitter.”

Of course, if the name of Apple’s tablet truly turns out to be Unicorn the joke would be on Apple. But right now, Las Vegas money is strongly behind “iSlate”. Forty-eight hours or so from now we’ll all know.

Richard Curtis