John Gruber on the HP TouchPad ‘summer’ release:

Summer feels like a long time away. If my theory is right, they’re not only going to be months behind the iPad 2, but if they slip until late summer, they might bump up against the release of the iPad 3.

I’m unsure what Gruber means here, but TechRadar’s assuming he’s talking about the iPad 3 showing up in September. There’s some logic in this from a technology standpoint, in that Retina displays might be ready for the device by that point, but I don’t think Apple’s going to start offering iPad upgrades every six months. Doing so would wreck a chunk of sales, massively upping hold-outs. Also, given that international releases of Apple iOS kit are often delayed for three or more months, it’d be crazy to have the US gearing up for iPad X when some countries only just got iPad X-1.

I suspect Apple will stick to its annual refresh for this and its other major hardware products. The reliability and regularity is beneficial from a sales, marketing and manufacturing standpoint. To that end, I’m thinking the iPad 2 will show up in the USA a year after the iPad (i.e. April) and then elsewhere over the summer, and the iPad 3 to show up in April 2012. (Alternatively, perhaps the upcoming iPad might not be considered a ‘major’ revision and won’t be branded iPad 2, but even if the only big change is a FaceTime camera, that’ll cause enough of a splash in the press.)

UPDATE: Gruber follows up by saying the transition would make sense, with an iPad announcement replacing the iTunes/iPod one, which he says is “old news”.

OK, so the title of this one’s not quite true, but HP’s new tablet looks like an iPad, and John Gruber makes a brilliant point:

TouchPad — a name that, not coincidentally, is drawn from those of two best-selling iOS devices

Not very subtle, HP. Also, the announcement seemed lacking in important details, such as price, availability and battery life. Still, I’m sure those will all ensure it’s an iPad killer, right, tech press?

Jeremy Keith on the BBC’s plans to—for no reason whatsoever—delete a whole bunch of websites:

Just to be clear, these sites aren’t going to be archived. They are going to be deleted from the web. Server space is the new magnetic tape.

This callous attitude appears to be based entirely on the fact that these sites occupy URLs in top-level directories—repeatedly referred to incorrectly as top level domains on the BBC internet blog—a space that the decision-makers at the BBC are obsessed with.

The BBC, of course, famously spent plenty of effort in the 1960s and 1970s trashing or deleting tapes, which of course hasn’t at all returned to haunt the corporation. Tapes cost money, and so the argument back then was stronger, but the BBC just nuking a load of websites that are just sitting there being informative, like the bastard knowledge-givers and memories-storage containers that they are, is bonkers. (Bye, 47000 unique World War Two memories that the public contributed—the BBC wants to delete you to appease the Tories and senior-level BBC management somehow!)

Keith adds:

I’m very saddened to see the BBC join the ranks of online services that don’t give a damn for posterity.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Absolutely fucking nothing.

And any publication that says anything different is lying out of its arse.

Google’s bitching that Microsoft Bing’s ripping off its search results.

Google:

At Google we strongly believe in innovation and are proud of our search quality. We’ve invested thousands of person-years into developing our search algorithms because we want our users to get the right answer every time they search, and that’s not easy. We look forward to competing with genuinely new search algorithms out there—algorithms built on core innovation, and not on recycled search results from a competitor. So to all the users out there looking for the most authentic, relevant search results, we encourage you to come directly to Google. And to those who have asked what we want out of all this, the answer is simple: we’d like for this practice to stop.

Perhaps Google should look at its own actions before criticising others. Android is one of Google’s most important products now, but it’s interesting to note how rapidly it went from being something akin to a BlackBerry to a knock-off iPhone once Apple’s device appeared. (And while Larry Page claims Google was working on Android before the iPhone arrived, Apple was working on iOS for years before, as part of the SafariPad skunk works project. Plus BlackBerry-like Android devices were what Google showed off after the iPhone was in the wild.)

Maybe Apple should say:

At Apple we strongly believe in innovation and are proud of our iOS devices’ quality. We’ve invested thousands of person-years into developing our iOS devices and iOS itself because we want our users to get the best experience every time they use them, and that’s not easy. We look forward to competing with genuinely new companies in this space that are out there—with products built on core innovation, and not on recycled ideas and concepts from a competitor. So to all the users out there looking for the most authentic, relevant smartphone and touchscreen devices, we encourage you to come directly to Apple. And to those who have asked what we want out of all this, the answer is simple: we’d like for this practice to stop.

Or maybe Google should just stop whining about others ripping it off when it does precisely the same thing itself.