William Goodall's Blog Occasional mutterings

In this guest opinion piece, Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps argues that the introduction of the iPad ushers in a whole new era in personal computing, one with less choice, but more relevance. There is something very significant about the iPad beyond how many units it will sell: it’s changing how we think about the PC. The iPad creates a use case for a device that doesn’t do everything your laptop does, targeted at a consumer that uses devices more for consumption than production. The iPad ushers in a new era of personal computing that we call “Curated Computing”—a mode of computing where choice is constrained to deliver less complex, more relevant experiences. Let me repeat that, because it’s the essence of the Curated Computing experience: less choice; more relevance. Consider this: consumers can do a wide variety of things with a Windows PC or Mac, like run commands, install robust software, connect easily to external devices, and save files locally. But the iPad does things differently. Its operating system runs more like a jukebox than a desktop, asking consumers to choose (and often pay for) applications from a predetermined set list. Each of these applications is in itself also curated, since the publisher selects content and functionality that’s appropriate to the form factor, just as a museum curator selects artwork from a larger collection to exhibit in a particular gallery space.

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[From Curated computing: what’s next for devices in a post-iPad world]

An interesting viewpoint. I agree with some of it, but of course it isn’t either/or. Many (most?) people will prefer the curated experience but some will want greater control. I reckon they’ll be the minority, like Linux on the desktop.

A piece of crap. Three pounds, slow, poor battery life, 4 GB of built-in storage, doesn’t work with YouTube, and no support for Android Marketplace apps. All for the same price as a 16 GB iPad.

Or, you could pay just $199 and get the 7-inch Archos 7 Android tablet. It too is slow (“most apps take four to five seconds to open”), it too does not support apps from the Android Marketplace, it doesn’t have an accelerometer, it uses a resistive (rather than capacitive) touchscreen, and it runs the year-old Android 1.5 OS and there’s no way to upgrade it.

★

[From Look at What You Get for $499 in an Android Tablet]

Oh dear 🙂

In less than one month, Apple has already sold more than 1 million iPads. The company has announced that it reached the milestone on Friday after the launch of the iPad WiFi + 3G in the US.

“One million iPads in 28 days—that’s less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a statement. “Demand continues to exceed supply and we’re working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers.”

Supply is indeed tight—many Apple Stores were out of stock of 3G-enabled iPads by Saturday afternoon, though Best Buy locations outside major population centers still had some stock left. Shortly after launch, tight supply and greater than expected demand caused Apple to push the international launch of the iPad back about one month to late May.

Apple also noted that, in the last month, iPad users have downloaded more than 12 million apps from the App Store and over 1.5 million e-books from the iBookstore. There are now over 5,000 apps designed specifically for the iPad among the over 200,000 currently on offer in the App Store.

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[From iPad sales hit the 1 million mark in less than a month]

That seems fairly successful. The naysayers will need to spin that a bit.

Steve Jobs has taken a break from his iPad e-mailing spree to post another long, open letter to Apple’s website, this time about Flash. The letter goes into detail as to why Apple chooses not to allow Adobe’s Flash technology on the iPhone and iPad, claiming that the decision isn’t as business-driven as Adobe would like to believe.

Jobs’ opening remark is about Flash’s openness, or lack thereof. “While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe,” writes Jobs. He acknowledges that Apple has closed products as well—namely the iPhone, iPod, and iPad—but that the company believes that all standards on the Web should be open. Naturally, this leads into Apple’s support of HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript, not to mention Apple’s support for the open source WebKit.

Jobs also believes that Flash isn’t quite as dominant on the Web as Adobe claims, noting that “almost all” video that is available in Flash is also available in H.264. YouTube is among the most successful apps on the iPhone OS, Jobs points out, and there are numerous other apps that support video streaming available for the iPad (Netflix, ABC, NPR, New York Times, and more). Again, Jobs makes the concession that iPhone OS users won’t be able to play Flash games, but says that there are plenty of other games on the App Store. (Someone let me know when there’s a version of Winterbells for iPhone.)

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[From Poll Technica: Steve Jobs’ letter on Flash]

It seems most readers agree with Steve Jobs so far, according to the poll.