eBay Sold Four iPad 2s Per Minute This Cyber Monday Morning

eBay Sold Four iPad 2s Per Minute This Cyber Monday Morning:

An eBay rep tells me that the iPad 2 was on sale for a mere two hours before it was sold out. At that price, people picked up four iPad 2 tablets per minute (or about 480 in total) during that time.

(Via TechCrunch » apple)

I Like My Odds in This Argument

John Gruber has haters.

I Like My Odds in This Argument:

Yours truly, two weeks ago, arguing that Windows 8 is fundamentally flawed as a competitor to the iPad:

The iPad succeeds because it has eliminated complexity, not because it has covered up the complexity of the Mac with a touch-based “shell.”

Aaron Holesgrove, arguing that I’m wrong:

Actually, the iPad succeeds because it enables you to read websites whilst sitting on the toilet and play casual games in bed. It’s a toy. You can’t eliminate complexity when there was never any complexity in the first place – Apple went and threw a 10″ screen on the iPod Touch and iPhone and called them the iPad and iPad 3G, respectively.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

A friend said this about my complaint that Holesgrove was being immature at best.

Seriously, though, your problem isn’t unique to Apple haters or anything.  You have people that can’t argue their way out of a paper bag behind all sorts of opinions.  The problem is that once you back them into a corner, they start in with the strawman arguments, false dichotomies, ad hominem attacks and other nonsense.

I like Gruber’s odds myself.

Up in the iClouds

I recently was chatting over email with friend Mark Chandler over Apple’s release of iCloud and what it would mean for our personal music.  I lamented how Apple’s competitors seems to be making really obvious mistakes and with Apple’s solution in view, it didn’t seem like rocket science.  His response was great as always, post-worthy for sure.

Apple is a hardware company at the end of the day. They want to lock you into a model, and they have to make sure that they offer just enough to keep you hooked, but leave room for improvement in the next gadget that they want you to buy. In this case, they improved the service instead of the gadget, but the perception is that the “product” has been upgraded. User experience is also a core value at Apple. Regardless of whether or not anything they have trotted out was a success, the user experience was an integral part of the product.

The Amazon model was good enough, but they didn’t have the depth of offering. People using that service were using it to get music to put on their iPods for the most part anyway, so Apple still got a residual of sorts. M$ needs to clean out upper management (Balmer just needs to go the same way that Amelio had to go) and let some of what they have in research see the light of day. Courier was the best challenge to the iPad that never was . It had the potential to be truly disruptive since it wasn’t trying to copy the iPad, but instead bring a different paradigm to the tablet form factor. The music store model that Apple is trotting out is pretty similar to the Zune marketplace, but the device was the weak link in the Zune ecosystem. If M$ was really slick, they’d have supported other devices including the iPod with that store and laughed all the way to the bank.

Google needs to go see a shrink. They can’t figure out what they want to be right now, and with Oracle about to drag them over the coals over the JVM that’s part of Android, they are only further distracted. You’d figure with all the info that they have at their disposal they’d know exactly what people want and just deliver it. They are also suffering from what we all saw around MIT. A bunch of really intelligent people with zero street smarts that have a hard time accepting that they can and will be wrong at times. They nailed search, and expect to nail everything else with the same amount of ease. They need to hire the equivalent of an elementary school art teacher. Someone that knows when to take the construction paper away from the kid and hang it on the wall for everyone to admire, but also knows when to make the kid just start over with a new piece of paper. Google Wave is the best example of this. Unless you were an ADHD addled kid, that product was unusable. The idea behind it was sound, but the execution was lacking.

I’m not writing off any of the other players just yet, but they are going to need to come up with something that no one has seen before, or they are going to have to cater to high-end niche users.

Actually Rob, it is rocket science. One needs a bunch of smart people, a lot of money, and plenty of luck. You don’t get to the moon, much less stay in the air for any amount of time without all three.

I stand corrected.

Mark Chandler is a computer security professional, chef, and DJ.  safechef@yahoo.com

Goals That Don’t Include Being a Sysadmin

My Month With the Nexus S – Release Candidate One:

“I said at the start that if the Nexus S were my first-ever smartphone I’d probably love it. But since it wasn’t my first, I come to it (and maybe more importantly to the operating system) with expectations of performance, stability, battery life, and general attention to detail that it just can’t meet. Sure, it comes with a whole host of freedoms that I can exercise, like installing a third-party keyboard component to replace the system keyboard, but I didn’t exercise those freedoms because I don’t care, I’m just not that guy. I never themed my Windows installations, never jailbroke my iPhone, never turbocharged my car. I want a phoneputer that just works and lets me pursue my own goals; goals that don’t include being a sysadmin. The Nexus S does everything one could reasonably expect of a smartphone, and it does them competently, but if you’ve experienced a smartphone that does those things exceptionally, mere competence is a big step backward.”

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Features vs. usability really is not a contest.

They Still Don’t Get It

★ Why Windows 8 Is Fundamentally Flawed as a Response to the iPad:

But I think it’s a fundamentally flawed idea for Microsoft to build their next-generation OS and interface on top of the existing Windows. The idea is that you get the new stuff right alongside Windows as we know it. Microsoft is obviously trying to learn from Apple, but they clearly don’t understand why the iPad runs iOS, and not Mac OS X…

The ability to run Mac OS X apps on the iPad, with full access to the file system, peripherals, etc., would make the iPad worse, not better. The iPad succeeds because it has eliminatedcomplexity, not because it has covered up the complexity of the Mac with a touch-based “shell”. iOS’s lack of backward compatibility with any existing software means that all apps for iOS are written specifically for iOS.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Microsoft has not unlearned the core lessons of Windows to do What’s Next.

Zaky: Apple’s Cash to Exceed $300 Billion by 2015

Zaky: Apple’s Cash to Exceed $300 Billion by 2015:

Andy Zaky:

If it then carried that 2013 0.00% growth rate into 2014, the company would have $230 billion in cash or just about $250 in cash per share. 2015 it would have $300 billion in cash or $330 in cash per share. Again, that assumes 0.00% growth for 2013, 2014, and 2015. So if Apple grows 0.00%, then by 2015, it will have more cash per share than the stock is trading at today.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Those numbers aren’t tricks. Apple is a beast with cash. But Zaky assumes the world in 2015 will be a later version of the world in 2011.  Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007.  Is 2011 just 2007 4.0?

Windows Phone 7 Fails To Halt Microsoft’s Mobile Slide

Windows Phone 7 Fails To Halt Microsoft’s Mobile Slide:

Microsoft’s share of U.S. smartphone platforms slipped 1.7%, to 8%, during the three months ended Jan. 31, according to market watcher comScore. Over the same period, Google Android’s share increased 7.7%, to 31.2%, while Apple’s iPhone held steady—increasing .1% to 24.7%.

(Via InformationWeek – All Stories And Blogs.)

Ouch.  No hardware carrier needs two monkeys on their back.  Microsoft’s traditional model has been to charge for their OS and appropriate some value from the OEM.  Google’s turns all that on its head.  In fact, Google is willing to pay through revenue sharing on search.  Microsoft’s rumored “billions” paid to Nokia to implement on Windows Phone is too little, too late.  Microsoft can’t pay everybody to implement on their OS.

In a Galaxy Tab Far, Far Away

Samsung panics over iPad 2, may cut Galaxy Tab 10.1’s price:

Samsung was caught off-guard by the iPad 2 and may have to rethink its strategy for the Galaxy Tab 10.1, the company’s executive VP of mobile Lee Don-joo said on Friday. The Korean company had planned to charge a premium over the original Galaxy Tab, which already cost nearly as much as a larger, first-generation 3G iPad, but wasn’t certain it could do so now that the iPad 2 was roughly matching it in features for the same $499 price. Lee didn’t tell Yonhap what pricing was to have been, but a 16GB, 3G Galaxy Tab costs $600 in the US.

“The 10-inch [tablet] was to be priced higher than the 7-inch [tablet] but we will have to think that over,” he said.

(Via MacNN | The Macintosh News Network.)

I bet they do.  I never understood the Galaxy Tab, esp. in a world obsessed with tech specs.  After all, why would I pay more for a smaller tablet?  Now Samsung in in the weird place of charging much more for the same sized tablet minus the Apple experience to justify it.

Paid not to Understand

Nintendo chief slams iPhone, Android for devaluing games | Electronista:

“Iwata’s comments also sidestepped many of the factors that often force traditional game prices upwards. Nintendo despite its Internet services is dependent on cartridge-based game sales at retail, and its developers have to both account for manufacturing and for the cut demanded by retail stores. Android and iOS developers are only bound by the revenue split with Apple or Google and often have much reduced overhead. A typical 3DS game in the US will cost $40 where most smartphone-class games cost $10 or less, even when they represent direct ports of DSi titles.”

(Via MacNN.)

Iwata is near delusional in his comment about producing value.  His company monetizes value, specifically the value is in the bundle of the game plus the device that runs it.  Apple and Android have simply made it far more difficult for Nintendo to monetize the part of that bundle, i.e. the game, it has in the past.  Nintendo was able to lock the game up in a cartridge to control how the end consumer can enjoy the value that Nintendo “creates.”  Apple and Android destroyed that by using the Internet as distribution rather than expensive physical cartridges in retail stores.  And we’ve seen this movie before with CD’s and now DVD’s.  (No wonder Apple is no rush to get into Blu-ray.)

Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”  But in truth Iwata is paid to understand and it’s sad he doesn’t.