What if the iPad were a PC?

in , , ,

Philip Elmer-DeWitt on a report by Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore:

Exclude the iPad, and Apple’s PC sales grew 24% year-over-year. Include them, and Apple’s unit sales soared roughly 250%. By comparison, Hewlett-Packard grew 3% year-over-year and Dell units fell 5%.

When the iPad is part of the mix, Apple’s share of the U.S. PC market is about 25%. That makes it the market leader, having gained a remarkable 18 points in the space of two quarters.

John Gruber comments:

Like I just said, there’s no way Microsoft and Intel aren’t taking this seriously.

He's right.

Intel, Microsoft, and the Curious Case of the iPad

in , , , ,

Brook Crothers:

“That tablet thing? Yeah, we’ll get back to you on that.” That’s a crude but fairly accurate encapsulation of the attitude Microsoft, Intel, and Advanced Micro Devices have toward the iPad and the tablet market in general.

Why the cavalier attitude? Before I defer to the opinion of an IDC analyst I interviewed (below), here’s one pretty obvious reason I’ll put forward. All three companies look at their revenue streams — traditional PC hardware and software on laptops, desktops, and servers — and come to the conclusion that the tablet is a marginal market. A deceptively accurate conclusion, because at this point in time — and even 12 months out — the tablet is marginal compared with the gargantuan laptop, desktop, and server markets.

John Gruber had some interesting thoughts on this, and rebutted with this comment:

An interesting take, but I disagree. I think Microsoft and Intel are both taking the iPad’s success extremely seriously. It may be a small market, as of today, but the trend line is heading north at a very steep angle. I think it’s a case where you can’t take what Microsoft and Intel say about it at face value. Intel has no processor to power an iPad-class devic. Microsoft has no OS to run an iPad-class device. Most worrying for these companies may not be the iPad itself, but the fact that iPad competitors — scant though they are, as of today — aren’t running Intel processors or Microsoft software.

Additionally, I think that as more Android driven tablets come out over the next year, they will still be 1-2 years off before they begin to catch up to the feature-set that the iPad launched with in April. And in that time Apple will have released the second version of the iPad, further raising the bar of what they will need to achieve to meet expectations that users have come to expect from the iPad. And even then? I'm sorry, but if I can't get Simplenote, Dropbox, Netflix, Osfoora, Reeder, Instapaper, Flipboard, Deliveries, Airvideo, Kindle, Elements, New York Times, Angry Birrds, Epicurious, Pandora, NPR, Scorecenter, and MLB At Bat all on this mythical Android tablet? Then you have not yet begun to compete with the iPad.

Microsoft's Language Problem

in , , ,

John Gruber points out something related to the launch of the Windows Phone 7 category of phones this morning:

Microsoft announces Windows Phone 7, in a press release headlined “Windows Phone 7: A Fresh Start for the Smartphone: The Phone Delivers a New User Experience by Integrating the Things Users Really Want to Do, Creating a Balance Between Getting Work Done and Having Fun”:

The goal for Microsoft’s latest smartphone is an ambitious one: to deliver a phone that truly integrates the things people really want to do, puts those things right in front of them, and either lets them get finished quickly or immerses them in the experience they were seeking.

Who talks like this? This bureaucrat-ese is intended, I suppose, to sound serious. But it just sounds like bullshit.

Here’s how Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007:

Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. And here it is.

The Impeccable Timing Of The Verizon iPhone Rumors

in , ,

MG Siegler, for AOL/Techcrunch:

This past July, rumors were swirling that Apple would have to recall the iPhone 4 due to its antenna. When Apple called a surprise press conference, these rumors only intensified. But one day before the event, there was the WSJ again with the story that Apple would not be recalling the device. Again, this seemed to be all about setting expectations. The next day, did Apple recall the device? Nope. But no one panicked because everyone knew they weren’t going to.

If you go back to last year, on June 19, Apple had their most successful product launch ever (at the time) with the iPhone 3GS. That night, after the stock market had closed, WSJ broke the news that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had undergone a liver transplant months earlier while on his medical leave of absence. The timing of such a scoop was curious at best — and there’s no denying that the timing was advantageous to Apple. Jobs was said to be fine, and returning to work shortly.

What did all of those stories have in common? Each was authored or co-authored by WSJ reporter Yukari Iwatani Kane. And guess who co-authored today’s Verizon iPhone story as well? Yep.

The Evolution of Geek

in , ,

Benjamin Stein made a great post about the evolution of geeks and their choice in technological tools and how they, as early adopters, affect mainstream adoption AND how this evolution has changed somewhat in the past few years.

But then something strange happened. Nerds switched to Apple laptops. Then lots of people switched to Apple laptops. But the nerds didn’t move on. My nerdiest programmer friends use the same MacBook model as my wife.

Marco Arment responded to Benjamin's post, referring to a post he had written several years back:

Part of my own transition was what I called grown-up computing five years ago, after a year of “adult” life:

Grown-up computing is, put simply, the way I use computers and my attitude toward them now that I’m out of college and settling into the 9-to-5 world. It differs greatly from “young computing”.

[…]

The last thing I want to do is figure out why some program isn’t working or reinstall my operating system. I see these as zero-gain activities: generally, I learn nothing new, I don’t enjoy myself, I’m not being entertained or enriched, and my effort only results in maintaining the status quo.

I’d rather get a computer that didn’t require any maintenance and simply allowed me to do productive work. I’d like to have something to show for all of my clicking and typing instead of simply making information balloons go away. I’d rather write an article for this site than type my serial number again. I’d rather search the internet for interesting or entertaining information to read instead of looking for the solution to an obscure problem for which I only have a useless generic error message. I just want things to work.

It’s likely that most geeks that Ben and I know are in or near our age group, and are probably “computing adults” in a similar sense: they’d rather use computers and related technology to accomplish a goal greater than just messing around with their computers.

But what if this effect, on a larger and less age-specific scale, is the bigger trend that Ben’s seeing?

What if most geeks today really are just buying Macs instead of building their own overclocked Windows PCs from Newegg parts?

What if PC gaming really is on a decline because only a very small slice of the population is willing to pay $500 for a giant, hot, loud video card and endure the Great PC Gaming Pain-in-the-Ass Trifecta of drivers, patches, and copy protection, leaving almost every gamer to just stick with game consoles for a fraction of the cost and hassle?

And what if a big slice of even the most hardcore geeks have abandoned their netbooks for iPads because they just work so much better most of the time?

Even geeks (like us) have their limits of reasonability. At some point, we often decide that what we’ve been doing or what we think we should enjoy just isn’t worthwhile.

Marco largely put down on pixel what I was thinking in my head.

Matt Buchanan on Verizon's Samsung Fascinate Lightning

in , ,

Okay. First off, WTF is a Fascinate Lightning. It sounds like an name the US Military would come up with for a snazzy operation they're trying to execute. OPERATION FASCINATE LIGHTNING. Indeed.

Matt Buchanan:

Verizon, unfortunately, is also what ruins the phone. Or, rather, what it’s forced Samsung to do to the phone, which you could sum up in a word: Bing. Bing is the default—and only—search engine on the Fascinate. A Google Android phone. In the search widget, in the browser, when you press the search button. Bing. No, you can’t change it. There’s no setting for it, and the Google Search widget that you can snag from the Market is blocked (or at least very carefully hidden). Being unwittingly forced into Verizon and Bing’s conjugal relationship is infuriating on its own, but the implementation also feels like the sloppy hack that it is. The co-branded Bing/Verizon portal that an in-browser search takes you to is ripped from the circa-2005 dumbphone-approved “internet,” while the Bing Maps app that it pushes you toward is vastly inferior to Google Maps (no multitouch, Latitude, etc.).

Wow, I sure am sorry I got my iPhone 4. You know, because Apple is so 'closed' and everything. I'd better switch to this far superior Android phone.