There’s been a lot of talk about the iPad and its potential to revolutionize the publishing industry. I’ve never really bought it, though I couldn’t always say why. I didn’t think the new form would really encourage publishers to change all that much. Penguin proved me wrong in its discussion of new iPad content, but even Penguin didn’t completely sway me. This article by a book designer named Craig Mod did.

Craig’s whole point is that the iPad not only offers something new, it offers something very old – the experience of reading an actual book. His position is that the iPad preserves the book by more realistically allowing publishers to port their published form, books, onto a new device. The Kindle could only approximate things with its black and white display. By contrast (wink, wink), the iPad’s full color gives publishers the tools they’ve always had for creating rich content experiences. The arrival of links and what we now consider “content-rich” experiences are just icing on the cake.

His article offers a long and winding history of designing books and the kind of thought that goes into a reading experience. It’s worth reading for anyone interested in the future of the written word and/or a passion for creating consumable content.

Source: @craigmod

Nearly good on his word, Steve Jobs will be delivering the iPad to US customers on April 3rd. I say almost because the April 3rd release is 66 days past the announcement, when Steve-O promised us 60. You can pre-order next week – next week – starting March 12th. The 3G version won’t be released until later in the month.

Some of the questions people are starting to ask include questions about shortages, lines, and the number of iPad-centric apps we’ll see on launch day. The only question I want an answer for is when does iPad 2.0 launch? There isn’t much I care to see on the iPad at this point. Nine months from now, though, that’s a different story. By then most publishers should be comfortable with platform, certainly more comfortable than the haphazard rush we’re currently seeing to try to get things ready. That’s when you get to the good stuff.

The rest of the world will be able to get Apple’s latest creation toward the end of April.

Apple’s had a rough go with its suppliers of late. If arson, among other things, wasn’t bad enough, the company now reports that several of its suppliers have confirmed child laborers in their employ. The news came in the form of Apple’s own supplier responsibility report, which is really an attempt to clean up the company image.

The report also found that 50 factories have kept employees past than the maximum 60 hour work week and 24 factories paying below than minimum wage. Some 61% of suppliers follow their safety regulations and only 57% have the required environmental permits. It’s not great news, though obviously the child labor thing is the real kick in the pants.

Though Apple wouldn’t reveal where the infracting factories were located, it did say that the children were no longer employed. Apple is still using the suppliers involved.

Source: Bloomberg

The day Apple announced the iPad, Amazon was calling newspapers and publishers before Steve Jobs had even left the stage. As the New York Times’ Bits blog has it, Amazon wanted to hear what Apple had offered. Amazon had been trying for more than a month to sign deals with publishers that would give Amazon customers the best prices anywhere, either by matching or beating the prices given to other dealers.

Amazon tried to sweeten the deal by offering publishers bigger revenues than in the past. Unfortunately, Apple was willing to budge on a much larger issue: price. With Apple, publishers had a bit more flexibility than Amazon would give, which in turn gave publishers bargaining power over Amazon. See, Amazon will do just about anything to stay competitive with Apple.

In fairness to Amazon, it’s not like publishers want to upset that distribution channel. Amazon pretty much pioneered the ebook scene – it certainly made ebooks as popular as they were likely to become before some sort of wonder device came along – which leaves publishers keen to cater to the existing subscribers in Amazon’s marketplace until either the iPad gains enough ground or Amazon releases a new reader.

That last point is very important. If Amazon doesn’t release a new reader within the next year or so, it will pigeonhole itself into becoming solely a content provider, a position I wouldn’t think Bezos wants to be in considering he started the Kindle. Rarely would a company of Amazon’s scale introduce a middling product only to do away with it in a couple years.

Source: Bits

It’s been a while since we heard anything meaningful about the tablet formerly known as the CrunchPad. The device, now named JooJoo, has been overshadowed in a serious way by the Apple iPad. As much as I would like to dissuade everyone from buying one of these things, I know someone will. If you’re willing to dive into one of the more ridiculous tech situations of our time, though, you’ll be waiting to get your hands on your newest gadget. The JooJoo has been officially delayed until March 25th.

Earlier this month, Fusion Garage’s JooJoo Internet tablet went into full production with an anticipated on-time delivery to consumers at the end of February. Last week, the company became aware of a manufacturing issue involving JooJoo’s industry-first 12.1 inch capacitive touch screen which Fusion Garage was quickly able to diagnose and rectify. The company now forecasts the JooJoo will be sent to consumers on March 25.

The manufacturing issue centers on fine tuning the touch sensitivity of the capacitive screen. Fusion Garage will be providing all pre-order customers with a free JooJoo accessory to compensate for the delay in the delivery of their JooJoo.

That’s the official word from Fusion Garage. As nice as the JooJoo seems, the delays and impending litigation are enough to keep me away from the device. To be honest I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the first of many delays.

I learned how to beat mix in 1987. Back then, everyone was using Technics 1200s (the first CD players with pitch bend came the following year), and any effects you wanted to add – which basically came down to two things, phasing and back-beating – had to be done manually with the records themselves. No Pro Tools, no effects processing, no digital anything. Mix tapes were done in one take; I’d plot out each side in advance, press record, and hope for the best. I averaged roughly 3.5 train wrecks per mix tape.

In 2000, I finally upgraded from vinyl to CD. Denon made, and still makes, fantastic DJ equipment for use with CDs, so I bought that, a Numark mixing board, and a cabinet. But making mix tapes was still a pain, the old one-take scenario, and transferring them to digital form was worse. Roxio – which back then was called Adaptec – had a program that could transfer analog sources to digital format if you had the right equipment, but the signal loss was incredible. Once you amplified it to a reasonable level, the tape hiss was unbearable. Eventually, I stopped making mixes, though that had as much to do with a more demanding job and family life as it did with the archaic process of making the tape itself.

All that gear, of course, is woefully outdated now. I haven’t made a beat mix since 2002. Sigh.

Needless to say, when the email promoting MixMeister Express landed in my inbox, they had my attention. The program’s layout is similar to the loop-based remix software Acid, another toy I played with a lot back when I had more time on my hands. And the way MixMeister analyzes songs and plots transitions from one song to the next is, well, ridiculously smart. In a matter of hours, I had assembled an 80-minute mix, and not a single train wreck in sight.

During News Corp’s quarterly earnings conference call, Rupert Murdoch finally revealed his true feelings about the deal between HarperCollins, which News Corp owns, and Amazon for ebooks in the Kindle Store. “We don’t like the Amazon model of $9.99….we think it really devalues books and hurts all the retailers of hardcover books.”

That pretty much says it all. Now that the company has an option coming with the iPad, it no longer needs to succumb to Amazon’s demands. Things are just the opposite, in fact, thanks to flexible pricing options from Apple. The competition is forcing Amazon to renegotiate prices with publishers for fear of losing market share or publisher support altogether.

It’s tough to say that increased ebook prices actually preserves the value of the book, particularly after prices have been so low. Fortunately for publishers, the ebook reading population was small enough that the rest of the world might not know to care about the difference.

One of the big setbacks of 3D tech today is the glasses. They’re necessary in order for most audiences to get a good view, whatever their viewing angle. While there are autostereoscopic displays (no glasses required) in the wild, they typically only work from 8 or 9 viewing angles, which severely limits their functionality.

Sunny Ocean Studios in Singapore is hoping to change all of that. The company plans to debut an autostereoscopic set at CeBIT this year that supports 64 viewing angles on its 27-inch screen. That’s a huge upgrade from the current status quo. I have to wonder what the thing will look like, though. It has to take a significant amount of resources to produce the frames for 64 different viewpoints.

And how much is this thing going to cost? Armin Grasnick, founder of Sunny Ocean Studios, says he can do displays up to 100-inches both quickly and inexpensively. Something tells me that won’t keep the price tag from climbing.

Source: Engadget

When Apple announced the iPad you could almost hear world inhale, waiting for the onslaught of competitor products with such clever names as the youPad and the Padlet. Can you imagine a world without iPod knock-offs? I can’t. Acer can, though, and the company won’t be feeding the tablet flames, according to Engadget.

The news came from Scott Lin, president of Acer Taiwan, who said the tablet just doesn’t fit Acer’s business model. Instead, the manufacturer will be focusing on ultra-thin laptops, some as svelte as .7 inches when closed. It’s a smart move, one that could grab the interest of anyone scared off by that weird touchscreen keyboard. The company expects the thinner line of products to account for 20-30 percent of sales in the coming year.

Source: Engadget

It was a big surprise to see the iPad launch without a camera, front-facing or otherwise. The device seems perfect for video calls and could easily be used as a point and shoot in a pinch. But, as Engadget reports, iPhone OS 3.2 includes support for video calling, among other new features.

Some of those other features include file downloading with local browser storage and SMS support. Basically, the iPad launch was just the tip of the iceberg. As with the iPhone, this first release is likely just going to get the ball rolling, driving interest and presales among the truly fanatic. From there, it’s a matter of referral. In the first six months the iPhone was out every owner I spoke with was in love with the device, or at least were willing to say that were.

This is how Jobs works – he breeds a sort of elite fanclub around his latest device and builds on that kind of elitism to drive insane sales. Whatever the iPad is now, it’s going to be a whole lot different in the next couple years.

At some point yesterday Amazon pulled any ebooks from publisher Macmillan due to a pricing dispute, according to the New York Times. Apparently Macmillan wanted to raise prices from $9.99 to $15 and Amazon didn’t approve.

You might remember the same thing happening as iTunes was starting to get its legs. Apple used its massive marketshare to strong arm media companies to the $.99 price point, which most everyone felt was too low. Obviously that model has worked out in Apple’s favor, if not in the favor of most record labels, a few of which were able to strike more flexible deals.

There is one major difference – Macmillan has somewhere to go. Apple is just about to open the iBook Store for its new iPad, which, in all likelihood, is going to outsell the Kindle by quite a bit. Most estimates put the Kindle’s installed base around 3 million. The iPad could easily have that by the end of this year.

I would be pretty surprised, though, if Jobs was willing to give Amazon the price advantage in the ebook war.

Source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/amazon-pulls-macmillan-books-over-e-book-price-disagreement/

Among the iPad’s shortcomings, the lack of Flash support is king. It’s such a pervasive web tech it seems foolish not to include support in what is meant to be the world’s “best browsing experience.” If you were paying close enough attention, though, you might have noticed Flash running on the iPad in several promo videos. For websites shown in the original demo video, the Flash portions looked just as they would on any other device.

Apple made changes to the promos after speculation lead to all kinds of rumors about upcoming Flash support for the tablet. Now the video shows that nasty blue lego you get when you’re browsing those totally normal, harmless, and tasteful video sites you frequent on your iPhone.

It’s a frustrating change, mostly because it seems Apple is holding fast on the “no flash” policy. Looks like we’ll be waiting for HTML5 to get more widespread support. That or there’s always hell freezing over.

Source: Mac Rumors

Kindle sales are notoriously hard to track because the company won’t talk specifics. Amazon is also becoming famous for talking about the success of the Kindle in relative terms, making it basically impossible to nail down just how well the ebook reader and the Kindle store are performing.

The most recent statement from Bezos regarding sales came shortly after the iPad announcement. He says, “millions of people now own Kindles.” That means basically nothing. The device has been around for more than two years, and as the mother-of-all ereaders for most of that time, you’d hope it has a couple million in circulation.

Here’s Bezos on the performance of the Kindle store: “When we have both editions, we sell 6 Kindle books for every 10 physical books…This is year-to-date and includes only paid books—free Kindle books would make the number even higher. It’s been an exciting 27 months.” Again, essentially meaningless. Of course the number of ebooks to real books will be higher in the case that ebooks exist for a given text, but is that really a good thing for the industry? Ebooks are much cheaper than hardbacks and even most paperbacks at release. It seems to follow that there could be people without a Kindle that still download the goods to something like an iPhone. It’s good for Amazon but pretty terrible for publishers, who are seeing profits slide in the wake of digital content.

Add to all of this the fact that the Kindle is a purpose-built device, a dying breed gadgets that seem to have decreasing lifespans as the years wear on. The iPad with its epub format and color screen is going to make the Kindle look like yesterday’s brown bag lunch that forces you to load it down with liverwurst sandwiches (may have taken that one a bit far). No thank you.

Dell first showed us the Mini 5 at CES this year, but it was a quiet affair. The five-inch tablet has all the trappings of a smartphone in a much bigger package and at a much higher price tag. With the iPad announcement, the Dell’s tablet looks out of place, and it has to get a whole lot cheaper before anyone will take it seriously.

In case you didn’t hear about it (a lot of people didn’t), the Mini 5 is a thousand dollar slate running Android 1.6. As far as I can tell it’s about an iPhone and a half in terms of size. The device has a 5 megapixel camera, Bluetooth and 3G support, all running on a 1GHz Snapdragon. In terms of specs, it’s pretty comparable to the iPad, but look at that price tag. $1,000? For that? Really the only improvement it makes over the iPad is that camera, which is definitely not worth $500. You could argue that Android is the key here, but 1.6? What is this, 2009?

One of the biggest complaints about the iPad, and even the iPhone, is the lack of Flash support. It’s something Apple’s been reluctant to add because of the potential for a security breach on either device. In order to be considered truly excellent browsing devices, though, I think Apple needs to find a way to make Flash work for both devices.

For now, though, Adobe is willing to take up the cause. It announced a product for developers at the end of last year that would easily convert Flash apps into something the iPhone can use. The company now says it will offer the same support for the iPad.

Here’s an excerpt from the official platform blog:

“We announced the Packager for iPhone at MAX 2009 which will allow Flash developers to create native iPhone applications and will be available in the upcoming version of Flash Pro CS5. This technology enables developers to create applications for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad (though applications will not initially take direct advantage of iPad’s new screen resolution). It is our intent to make it possible for Flash developers to build applications that can take advantage of the increased screen size and resolution of the iPad.”

It’s a decent workaround, but definitely not a fix. By this method you’ll have access to the cool Flash apps available on platforms like Android, but it’s not like you’ll be watching Hulu on your iPad (unless they release a special app). Stay tuned on this one – it’s going to be a hot topic over the course of the year.

If you believe what Apple tells you, the iPad is going to change the way you do just about everything. It’s the best web browser, the best movie viewer, the best way to read a book, and so on and so on. Realistically, though, it will probably change very little, at least for now.

The iPad is really just a big iPhone, albeit a very pretty, big iPhone, but not much more. It’s still lacking multitasking, which is a big deal if you’re going to use it as a productive device. Want to listen to Pandora while you’re typing out some emails? Sorry. Switch back and forth between email and a document? You’ll have to exit one to get to the other. The iPad also doesn’t have Flash support, which makes that “best browsing experience” feel like something from the dark ages. Sure you can watch your videos via apps, but that means more switching between applications.

It’s a problem of maturity for Apple’s new platform. The closed system has worked well enough for the iPhone, but we’re all sick of the restrictions on the device and the limitations of the App Store. We want Google Voice. Real Google Voice, not that web app trash. I want to use my iPad for Flash videos and watching DivX. For Ninjavideo. All of those things are limited by a platform that was designed for a mobile phone, not a web device.

For all the things the iPad can’t do, though, it can do one thing very well: evolve. The hardware is compelling enough and cheap enough to get into a lot of hands. As more people are ready to use the device, I’m willing to bet Apple will consider opening things up. If not, we’ve always got George Hotz.

The long wait is finally over. Today is officially tablet day, as Apple announced just moments ago. It’s an exciting day for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is the way this device could shape the future of the digital word. Obviously that’s going to be a long process, but if we know anything about Apple, it won’t seem so long, and we’ll soon be wondering how we did without (don’t act like you don’t love your iPod).

Jobs kicked things off today like this: “We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical product today.” Tease of the century. He launched into a quick (thankfully) overview of the company, but it wasn’t long before we got to the meat. The iPad. That’s the official name for the long-rumored tablet device that Jobs calls “the best browsing experience you’ve ever had.”

Basically, it’s a big iPhone, with a really nice interface. The keyboard looks big enough to be typed on laptop style (Jobs demoed it this way) and it has that same great glass look that Apple is known for. For now, it runs iPhone apps, as in the apps can be downloaded as is and run either at iPhone resolution or doubled up for the iPad. There’s an SDK available for developers to get started.

As for hardware, there are a whole slew of options available. You can get everything from 16GB to 64GB flash storage, Wi-Fi and unlocked 3G support (yes, unlocked – thank you god), in whatever combination your heart desires. It runs on a 1GHz Apple A4 chip, so they aren’t dishing out any cash to Qualcomm for that dual-core Snapdragon. It is definitely fast enough to do some light photo/video editing on the fly, just like we would see from the iPhone. Really, though, I think I’d get the most use for watching HD video.

Of course the number we all care about is price. When Jobs said the base model would be $499 I was shocked. More shocked than by anything else about the presentation. That’s like buying an iPod. That’s…insane. You can get as high as $829 if you’ve got the highest storage level and 3G support, but for what you get that’s an amazing price in my mind.

This thing will be the topic of conversation on every blog today, including this one. More posts on iBooks and what this means for the Kindle. Check back soon.

We’re just a day away from getting a look at Apple’s tablet and the brass is as excited as anyone. More quotes from Jobs and his cronies have surfaced, which serve only to build the hype around still rumored device.

The quotes come from the press release regarding Apple’s Q1 earnings, a whopping $3.38b in profits. In the press release, Jobs was quoted for the following: “The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.” It’s an odd thing to say about a quarter’s earnings in which the rumored device played no role. Obviously this thing is going to be big.

Apple COO Tim Cook was asked directly about the product unveiling during the earnings conference call, to which he said, “I wouldn’t want to take away your joy of surprise on Wednesday when you see our latest creation.”

The thing to take away from all of this is that Apple is excited, seriously excited from the top down, so much so that they can’t even keep from talking about it when it hasn’t been released.