While we brought the Joo Joo up in passing, Rob Enderle proclaimed that the former CrunchPad could crush the market for tablet computing, thereby souring Apple’s entrance into the market altogether. The only problem with his assertion is that the Apple tablet isn’t the same beast as the Joo Joo, and to say that the latter will quell consumer desire for the iTablet is like saying that Motorola’s Razr savaged the Apple iPhone.

Enderle is really comparing apples to oranges (no pun intended); all of these non-Apple products are extremely limited: the Kindle is first and foremost an eBook reader, the Razr is just a cellphone, and the Joo Joo is a web-surfing tool. For those like Enderle who still don’t get it, the Joo Joo is a one-trick pony. It’s not a media monster running iTunes, it isn’t a keyboard-less computer with the capacity to run OS X applications, and it certainly doesn’t have the potential packing of the print industry to push forward with digital distribution of magazines and newspapers.

Most consumers probably haven’t even heard of the Joo Joo and its developer, Fusion Garage. The Joo Joo will cost $500, and for what’s probably just twice that, users will be able to own an Apple-polished product that does significantly more. So even if news of the Joo Joo does trickle down to the average computer user, we’re not so sure anyone’s going to care, especially once Apple announces their own tablet (which will be an actual computer and not just a web-browser).

But what can we expect from a tech analyst with such stunning gems as this:

[It] sounds way to close to JewJew with implications that could offend a wide variety of buyers…

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All this talk about the iTablet, and we’re still confused as to what the ultimate point is. Not about the talk itself, but about the reasoning to release an iTablet in the first place, novelty factor aside. The iPhone Blog was keen on pointing out the OS possibilities for the rumoured iTablet, and that consideration will clearly define where the device fits into Apple’s lineup, and what kind of consumer it will target. We thought more on the subject of use, and came up with a couple iTablet versions worth discussing.

The Browser

Those in the “large iPod” camp are undoubtedly browsers. That is to say, they’re the exact market the iPod Touch and iPhone go after when Apple advertises mobile Safari and video iPod features. So why a new device? Because as good a mobile entertainment center it is, the Touch/iPhone isn’t ideal for sitting back on a couch and watching a movie. Granted, that’s what TVs are for, but the iTablet Browser will enable users to take their movies and television shows to places their TVs can’t go: camping, the hotel room, the back-yard, etc. In other words, the iTablet Browser is exactly what the iPod Touch is, albeit bigger, which means less eye strain, easier-to-navigate web pages, etc.

While a niche target for sure, the iTablet Browser could be the most basic of all netbook-like devices: targeting the most casual of casual computer users. In other words, this device would be for the many grandparents out there who only need to get online to check their e-mail to receive pictures of their grandkids, or to folks who do little more than surf the web. It’s the perfect dumb-terminal for people who don’t do enough traveling to justify the small screen real-estate of the iPod Touch, or don’t need a portable phone-computer like the iPhone. What’s more, with a screen able to run multiple iPhone apps, or even customized apps like a large Kindle application, the iTablet Browser could becomes a cross between the Kindle (albeit with no e-ink display), an iPod Touch, and an AppleTV. In other words, it would be the ultimate throw-in-your-briefcase computer.

The beauty of this device is in its low-hardware requirements. The iTablet Browser needn’t be much faster than the iPhone 3GS (though likely will be since its size will be larger), and there’s little need to enable the device to run more than one application at a time, much like with the iPod Touch. Thus, the OS would likely be the same (with minor modifications), and the overall price of the device wil be low.

The Secretary

Moving up a notch, the iTablet Secretary addresses one of our oldest complaints about the iPhone: the lack of a solid input mechanism. The iTablet has the additional real-estate we need to adequately review our textual input, but at its core, a bloated iPod Touch still doesn’t have a good way to type. So, the iTablet Secretary will have to either have a bluetooth keyboard, some sort of slideout keyboard, or fancy handwriting recognition ala the legendary Apple Newton. Plus, for bloggers, students, and other multi-taskers, there would need to be an ability to quickly switch between a note-taking application and a browsing screen (mobile Safari, an eBook application, etc.) This could be as simple as beefing up the iPhone Notes app and letting it run in the background just like the iPod app, but with this and handwriting recognition, we’d likely be looking at faster hardware. Plus, there’s the whole issue of a stylus, which we wouldn’t discount outright, but it’d still be a questionable move for Apple, since their reliance on new capacitative touchscreens left the stylus behind. Of course, the iTablet Secretary could work by just letting users write letters with their fingers, which seems like the most logical move at this point.

Obviously, the cost of the iTablet Secretary would be greater than the iTablet Browser, but it would have many more uses, and target many more consumers. The cost needn’t be much higher, however, since adequate handwriting recognition was done years ago in portable devices. In fact, one would have to wonder why Apple wouldn’t release the iTablet Secretary over the iTablet Browser given that its hardware requirements wouldn’t be vastly greater, what with software considerations being the primary difference. Indeed, a modified iPod Touch OS would work wonderfully here, too.

The Excelsior

The ideal ultra-casual, portable PC, is embodied in our idea of the iTablet Excelsior. In short, it’s a full-on Apple computer with the regular version of OS X. Like the MacBook Air, it would have an attachable SuperDrive as an accessory, and would work with bluetooth devices like keyboards and mice (in addition to maintaining handwriting recognition). It would have a USB port, and maybe even a video-out port. It wouldn’t be particularly powerful, with specs at or below the basic MacBook, but it would easily handle all the tasks the iTablet Secretary could handle. In short, it’s a MacBook Air, sans keyboard.

But why go this route? Some may argue against this because of possible cannibalzing of MacBook sales, but we could make the same argument for the iTablet Browser or iTablet Secretary cannibalizing iPod Touch sales. The reality is that in their current state, the iPod Touch and iPhone are mere extensions of the home PC. That is to say, one needs a PC or Mac to sync with, and one needs iTunes to similarly manage media. Without a home computer, the iPod Touch and iPhone are artificially limited. The iTablet Excelsior, however, could serve not only as the backbone for one’s existing iPod Touch and iPhone, but for those only wanting only one super-portable device for media browsing, the iTablet Excelsior is it.

In other words, for an all-in-one solution for the average student, the MacBook may be the way to go, and maybe the iTablet Excelsior, with all its options (superdrive, keyboard, mouse, external display) would dwarf the MacBook in price, but by itself, it could squeeze well below the 1k mark and still offer a great niche computing experience. In other words, it wouldn’t cannibalize MacBook sales (effectively being part of the lineup), and would serve as the Mac Mini of the notebook world; it would be extensible enough to still offer a great home-computing experience, while working great as an on-the-go computer for class, managing warehouse inventory, or just blogging from the local coffee shop.

Conclusion

Undoubtedly, Apple will be targeting some sort of niche with the iTablet, but just which niche will it go for? Will the iTablet cut into would-be iPod Touch customers, or would-be MacBook customers? And can it carve a definitive place for itself in the market? The hype behind the device will no doubt steamroll it into the mindshare of computer users, but only its practicality will determine its success, and save it from the fate of Apple’s hobby venture, the AppleTV. We tend to think that the potential for a surefire hit is there, but even as gadget aficionados, we’d be hard-pressed to justify the purchase of anything less than the iTablet Excelsior, considering we already carry an iPhone and use a MacBook.Similar Posts:

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By chance, shortly after writing our take on the status of eBooks and the Kindle movement, we hopped online to buy a bunch of books that we’ve been meaning to acquire. The books themselves aren’t specifically relevant to this discussion, but what is relevant is the type of books we were after. To clarify, the books we were looking to get were, in general, reference books for various things:

1. I Will Teach You to be Rich, by Ramit Sethi.
2. The Transition Town: from Oil Dependence to Local Resilience, by Rob Hopkins
3. My Tank is Fight!, by Jack Parsons
4. How to Make Wargames Terrain, from Games Workshop

The first two books we picked up are available for the Kindle, and as we briefly considered buying the eBook versions to view on our iPhone, we quickly realized the folly of that idea. Ultimately, what it came down to was the convenience of not having a physical copy of the book versus the advantage of not keeping the book to begin with. In other words, the (slight) financial advantage that came along with saving space in our home was temporary: in reality, we probably won’t keep either book around for long anyway.

In the case of the first book, a financial guide, we intend to gift the book soon after we acquire it. That raises the simple question of sharing eBooks, which, we understand, usually have DRM attached to prevent rampant eBook piracy. This is interesting because it means that owners of a book can’t easily transfer that property if it’s in eBook format, compared to physical books that can be given away after one is done with them. With eBooks, the assumption is that the first owner will be the last owner, and as a result, eBook sellers will make more money than with traditional books, because people won’t be lending their eBook readers to friends; if a friend wants an eBook you have, they’ll be forced to buy their own copy. In our situation, perhaps there’s a way to gift an eBook to someone else’s account, but it’s clearly not as simple as just shipping a book to them, or giving a book to them in person, especially if we intend to flip through it first.

The second book on our list, related to transition towns and sustainable communities, is one that we intend on reading and then passing off to our significant other. After that, depending on how good of a reference it is, we’ll either hang on to it, give it to a friend, or sell it. With both latter options, the eBook option is ultimately poor, once again because of the restrictions on eBook ownership. Also, loaning out our iPhone, even to our significant other, just to read a book now and again, is an inconvenience. If we had a Kindle, this might not be a problem, since we wouldn’t take a Kindle everywhere we go, but the problem of transferring ownership once again comes up if we later want to pass the book on.

Put simply, there’s no market for second-hand eBooks, which is probably one of the main reasons Amazon is happy to start the eBook bandwagon. For consumers, who don’t intend to keep a book they buy long-term, going the eBook route doesn’t make sense unless the convenience of not having physical copies is really worth that much to them. For most people, however, especially those who are happy to recoup some money by selling used books down the road, the only way eBooks are worthwhile is if they’re substantially cheaper than their physical counterparts. For example, if we were to buy a $10 book new, and were able to get $5 from a used bookstore a month from now, then we effectively only spent $5 to “rent” the book. This means that the eBook option would only have been worthwhile if the eBook was priced at $5, half the price the physical version sold for. This is why non-reference books don’t make as much sense in the eBook format; works of fiction, which will likely only be read once before being discarded, are ideal candidates in their physical form, since some of their cost can be recouped later. For books that will definitely be kept around, however, even after they’re read initially, the eBook option begins to make sense, since they’re not books whose price can be recouped later from a second-hand sale.

As for the last two books we picked up, they were not available on the Kindle. The third book, half-fiction and half-history book, would have made a decent eBook – we’re not quite sure if we’d keep it long-term, though there’s a good chance we would. The pictures included are, we believe, black-and-white or grayscale images at best, so the Kindle would be a good candidate for this work. The fourth book, however, a reference guide for modeling wargaming terrain, includes colour photographs that would look poor on a Kindle. That said, since we’re likely to keep this reference book around and not sell it, it would be a good eBook candidate if we had a good, large-screen colour display for it. Alas, the Kindle does not have colour e-ink yet, and the iPhone is simply too small of a display device for this kind of work.

Ultimately, eBooks will pick up more momentum, but the lack of a second-hand market is a factor against their proliferation. What Amazon should be doing right now, especially with the larger Kindle DX now showcased, is getting publishers of reference books on-board. That is, Amazon should be targeting publishers of academic text-books, as well as publishers of field manuals (for mechanics, makers, etc). If this segment of the publishing industry widely adopted the eBook format, it would be much easier to get people to adopt an expensive device like the Kindle DX. Of course, for industry and the academic community, physical reference books are already very pricey, so moving to an eBook platform with appropriate price differences compared to traditional publications would be worthwhile. (Students could recoup the cost of a Kindle DX much more easily if textbooks in eBook format were just a little cheaper than their physical counterparts, especially since some already spend hundreds of dollars on books per semester. After a few semesters, the Kindle DX could have paid for itself.)

The only other factor here is ease-of-reference, which we addressed in our last post. If cost and availability of reference books in eBook format were no longer factors, the Kindle itself would need a quick, efficient way to flip back and forth between user-defined sections. Right now, we’re not so sure the Kindle is adequate for that purpose. Still, the obvious potential for eBooks to overtake the conventional book format is there, particularly in academic and industrial circles.
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The very idea of an eBook reader is the stuff of the future. One device to store a library of information? Just imagine – clearing up household clutter by being able to get rid of all one’s books (and bookshelves!) and replacing them with one small device. A device that, so conveniently, is about the size of a netbook. Paper is so 20th century, isn’t it?

Well, not quite. eBook reading hasn’t taken off, though Amazon wants to convince us that it has. With their eBook reader, the Kindle, and their recent purchase of the studio behind leading iPhone eBook application Stanza, Amazon is positioning themselves to dominate the digital book download market. The idea, from a future financial perspective, is pretty solid: get in on the ground floor, and establish oneself as the market leader. Then, slowly push out the legacy competition by offering the more convenient eBook format over paper.

And why not? From a convenience perspective, there are only a couple reasons not to jump on the eBook bandwagon. For one, buying an eBook is near-instant gratification. No need to run to the store, and no need to wait for a book ordered online to ship. For books sans graphics, read for casual entertainment, there’s little differentiating the reading experience on a Kindle compared to on paper. Most novels, for example, don’t require the reader to flip back and forth between pages; reading is an entirely iterative process: flip forward, one page at a time, until reading is complete.

But that’s where eBook convenience pretty much ends. No matter how great the Kindle’s battery life is, it’s still reliant on a battery. And on-Kindle service is bound to Sprint’s network availability. Even if these factors aren’t huge turnoffs, there’s still the fact that the Kindle is pretty expensive at this point, costing $360. Even with the inflated price of paper books these days, the Kindle proves a poor purchase. Just now peeking into Amazon’s store, Kindle books look to cost around $10 a pop, with their paper equivalents only costing a couple dollars more. With a price difference of only $2, the break-even price of a Kindle doesn’t happen until we’ve purchased 150 books, having spent $1,800. For most consumers, even buying 150 books is unrealistic, begging the question as to just how worth it the Kindle’s convenience is, space-saving aside.

The numbers above can be tweaked, naturally, if we discount the price of the Kindle. Assuming we already own an iPhone, for example, with the free Kindle application, we’re now talking pure savings, since we don’t need to break even on a hardware purchase. And this is really where the Kindle’s inconvenience can be seen. Talking about the break-even point for the iPhone is a non-factor because it’s unlikely that the purpose of purchasing an iPhone is for eBook reading alone. The iPhone is already used for a number of purposes, and a free eBook reader only makes the device more lust-worthy. Compare that to the Kindle, which offers almost no functionality other than presenting eBooks. Granted, there’s a built-in web browser, which is somewhat of a saving grace, but we question its usability over something tried-and-tested (like Safari).

Yes, there are other small advantages the Kindle offers, such as presenting text using a technology known to produce less eye-strain over the LCDs used in devices like the iPhone. But these minor boons to the device are what make the Kindle a luxury device, not a realistic, ubiquitous replacement for paper books. This becomes ever more noticeable when we’re looking at eBook readers for displaying textbooks and other tomes of reference. Simply put, tabbing paper pages is significantly more convenient than bookmarking eBook pages. That’s not to say a reasonable digital interface couldn’t be designed to simulate the real-world flexibility of tabbing pages (and adding notes), but no eBook reader is there just yet.

Recent talk is of a “large” Kindle for displaying newspapers, as though that’s what people (and not the newspaper industry) want. The Kindle isn’t going to solve the problem of newspapers publishing old news, nor the fact that the same news is available, for free, online. A Kindle with a large screen may be nice for displaying pictures alongside text (i.e. in magazine format), but without colour, the merits of such a device remain questionable.

What really needs to happen before eBooks will truly take off is a much cheaper cost to the consumer. A two-dollar price difference is nothing. eBooks should run $5 tops if there’s a paper-back equivalent, and more if the only alternative is an expensive hard-cover copy. As it stands, we’ve seen newly-released books cheaper in conventional format than their Kindle counterpart, and that’s based on Amazon prices for both. Ridiculous.

That’s not to say that a Kindle-like device isn’t attractive, merely that it’s not attractive right now. With a significantly larger magazine subscription selection, and more functionality (like colour graphics and a full-featured RSS reader), and ultimately a cheaper price, the Kindle may yet solidify the eBook industry. In the meantime, however, the eBook entrepreneurs at Amazon need to keep a careful eye on the potential competition: tablet-like devices could very well steal Amazon’s thunder, especially since they, like the iPhone, will be ever-more full-featured than the Kindle. Ultimately, it may be the Kindle eBook format that will determine the Kindle’s success, and not the Kindle device itself.
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Every month or two, there’s mention of the E-Book revolution, and the consensus usually tends to remain in the favor of traditional books. However, some people are taking the E-Book issue out of the casual reader’s hands, and putting it into the hands of college students.

Reading a novel on my computer remains something I dislike, though using learning material online is something I’m much more fond of. When I took my Intro. to Psychology class as an undergraduate, our text book was in HTML format, and this made searching for key words incredibly easy. When I took a couple Distance Learning classes later on, a good deal of my interaction with other students was via an online medium.

The problem remains in the level of interactivity. A message board is only so useful, since ideas need to be pushed back and forth before a complicated argument or discussion can have any true conclusion, while real-time interaction allows one to quickly skip tangental remarks.

The E-Book revolution (everything’s a revolution nowadays, isn’t it?) is one that may very well seep into other niche areas. For example, I was amazed to see roleplaying game publisher White Wolf sell their out-of-print sourcebooks in E-Book format. In my opinion, this is great for two reasons: one, collectors and game fanatics can obtain, in at least one form, texts no longer available, and two, players can have easily-accessible books in which to search for rules and other reference data without leafing through fifty books. The only thing that can make this better would be for publishers to release E-Book versions of their material before said material is out-of-print.

Of course, the bag of worms this opens could be rather unpleasant. Would people be more likely to pirate E-Books and not buy bound paper versions if these books were available in both formats? I’m guessing White Wolf thinks so.Similar Posts:

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