Smart editorial from Tap! magazine editor Christopher Phin on why people buy iPads. His arguments are in part a rebuttal to a piece on Engadget that bangs the ‘tablets have no obvious use-case’ drum:

But there’s something I see time and again with the iPad: people often don’t have, as Darren implies, a clear practical use in mind when they’re buying one; but over weeks and months, they start using it more for all kinds of both predictable and unexpected tasks, and using traditional computers less.

I fully admit I’ve so far bought two iOS devices for purely work-related reasons: my old (since sold) iPhone 3G and my iPad. I bought them because I figured I could write about them, not because I thought they would become devices used for anything other than testing the odd app and then writing about it. In fairly short order, the iPhone became my primary games machine, a mobile web browser, a musical instrument and a pocket book. The iPad did similar tasks but was also handy for comics, creating artwork, messing about with photos and for writing articles. And, yes, I use computers less, very rarely bothering with a laptop at all these days.

But while this is a fine argument (and Phin adds that a tablet is more suitable for a relaxing environment than a ‘proper’ computer, and notes that apps can rapidly enhance an iPad’s abilities), I was more drawn to the editorial’s conclusion:

[W]hat kind of joyless monochrome world would this be if we all made decisions based solely on the grounds of practicality and productivity?

This can be read two ways. I suspect detractors will yell: “SEE! I knew Apple fan-boy idiots just liked the shiny shiny and don’t care about anything else, the dolts!” But it can also be read that sometimes it’s fine to be drawn to something that seems exciting, even if you don’t know exactly why.

Only by embracing new technology and then seeing what we can do with it can we ensure we don’t remain stuck in the past. And for everyone moaning about the lack of obvious utility in tablets, people once said the same thing about computers—and look where that got us.

Via Harry Marks, AllThingsD reports on BlackBerry Music:

Five dollars a month.

Well, that’s not too bad.

Fifty songs

Sorry, what? 50 songs? For five bucks? The same price as you get thousands of songs from Spotify for? Are you MENTAL?

you can share with your friends.

Aha. And there’s the possible non-stupid of this idea. See, one thing’s pretty obvious when bumbling about in cities: the kids love their BlackBerries; also, kids love sharing and they rather enjoy music. A low-cost service where you can easily share your favourite songs with your friends actually sounds pretty interesting.

There are just two snags:

1. Most kids don’t see any value whatsoever in music. It’s online and ‘free’ via torrents, and so why pay?
2. Isn’t BlackBerry primarily a business-focussed company? What’s with trying to compete with Apple all the time? JUST STOP.

Add to this the hardly surprising revelation that the music is trapped on BlackBerry devices and won’t be accessible to any other hardware and you have the music service equivalent of so much RIM output: a nice idea realised in a ham-fisted manner. Here’s hoping someone gives it a wee boost before it’s revealed to the general public, or it’ll be yet more ammo for the ‘RIM is out of touch and directionless’ crowd.

Slightly odd article from the BBC, with Rory Cellan-Jones asking if Apple is now winning too often in the tech industry. It’s safe to say Apple’s doing rather well of late, but it’s easy to forget that it is a marginal player in desktop and notebook computers (even if its savvy business methods ensure high profitability) and has a scrap on its hands regarding smartphones; only in tablets does Apple look to have an iPod-style lead as its rivals flounder and find it nigh-on impossible to beat so-called ‘rip-off Apple’ on pricing.

Nonetheless, Cellan-Jones asks if Apple’s success is now destroying the industry. He notes Google’s patent land-grab and suggests Apple won’t be worried about that; he mentions HP’s tablet fire-sale and PC spin-off, and offers this:

Apple executives – like the England cricket team – must be asking themselves “where did it all go so right?”

Strange quote there. It’s not like success has come as a surprise to Apple in the spaces it’s doing well in.

It’s only 18 months since Steve Jobs told us that the iPad was part of a revolution that would take us beyond the PC – and now HP is not only agreeing, it’s throwing in the towel.

In particular, the axing of its Touchpad tablet computer, just weeks after a hugely hyped launch, is not only a humiliating and expensive setback for HP, it threatens to sap the confidence of consumers in all rivals to Apple’s device.

I’m not sure most casual buyers will distinguish between WebOS or Blackberry or Android tablets, seeing them all as just potential iPad alternatives.

This neatly sums up the problem with Apple’s rivals—they don’t offer anything new. None of Apple’s rivals has sought to be like Apple and be truly disruptive. With the iPad, Apple didn’t look at what existed and rip off the leading product; instead, it created an entirely new market.

So if a product like the Touchpad can die within weeks who’s going to want to invest in any of the other iPad killers?

Here’s where Cellan-Jones starts to slide into the gravel trap. No-one has yet invested in any kind of ‘iPad killer’, because no-one has done anything other than look at Apple’s product and try to create some kind of facsimile. Every tablet on the market right now tries as much as possible to look like an iPad and then offers some feature or other that Apple deemed unnecessary in the tablet space. Thus, you have the ‘iPad with Flash’ and the ‘iPad with a USB port’; what you don’t have is any real innovation, nor anything that will do to the iPad what the iPad did to desktop and notebook computing.

In short: you don’t create an iPad killer by ripping off the iPad; you create an iPad killer by doing something totally amazing that Apple itself hasn’t thought of yet but that makes the iPad look as archaic as the iPad made most notebooks look.

Cellan-Jones then says the one tablet that could give the iPad a scrap is the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, but there’s a problem:

Apple is in the middle of a legal battle in a German court over the alleged similarities between the Tab and the iPad, which saw Samsung’s device temporarily banned from most European countries.

The ban has been lifted, outside Germany at least, but the whole affair has not helped market the tablet.

Who will go out and buy an iPad rival if all they are hearing is that it’s a copy of the original, and no cheaper?

Well, quite. And here’s the thing: it more or less is a copy of the original, and no cheaper.

Whatever the merits of Apple’s case may be, patent and intellectual property disputes now appear to be harming the interests of consumers and innovators in the computing industry.

SCREEEEE! THUNK! And there’s Cellan-Jones, in the wall, with a crumpled bumper. I fail to see how Apple is harming the interests of consumers by blocking a device that wholeheartedly ripped it off, allegedly to the point of intentional confusion. As for harming the interests of innovators… really? Let’s take a look at that, courtesy of SockRolid at MacRumors:

Yeah, just feel the innovation. (Additional handy images: Daring Fireball’s shot of a pre-iPhone Android device, which didn’t at all look like a BlackBerry, and @Dooderoo’s ‘before and after’ of Samsung tablets.)

Steve Jobs and his company have enjoyed win after win over the last couple of years.

But many consumers – as well as rivals – may be hoping that on Thursday when the German court rules again on the copycat case, Apple suffers a rare defeat.

Not me. I’m sick of companies just riffing off other companies and it needs to stop. Microsoft of all companies has shown that you can innovate in the touchscreen space (although, sadly, Ballmer’s ‘Windows everywhere’ idiocy has stopped Windows Phone already appearing on tablet devices; instead, we’re told to wait for the Frankenstein’s monster that will be Windows 8—neither optimised touchscreen environment nor traditional desktop computing OS, despite trying to be both).

I don’t believe the Apple device designs were ‘obvious’, otherwise someone else would have got there around the same time, not many months later; and I also believe that if you’re going to copy rather than innovate, you’ve only yourself to blame if you, like Samsung, go as far as to rip off the bloody icons of your rival’s system.

Earlier today (well, technically yesterday, since it’s gone midnight here), I said HP should stick it out alone, create great hardware and software, not licence webOS  and attempt to out-Apple Apple. Turns out HP doesn’t have the stomach for that; instead, it’s killing the TouchPad and, judging by the other changes to its business, is instead going to attempt to out-IBM IBM. Yeah, good luck with that—I hear IBM has quite a head start.

Still, Apple had a head start, too, but then most people who’d used webOS thought HP could nonetheless make a mark. On Twitter, Lukas Mathis said:

Tablets will make up a huge part of the future PC market. HP had one of the best horses in that race. This will be known as HP’s worst move.

It’s certainly bad for HP, regardless of where it goes next; James Kendrick says why:

HP in one day tanked any trust it had built up with customers for years. I wouldn’t even buy a printer cartridge from them now.

I’m sure James won’t be the only one. And yoinking an entire platform that’s barely bedded in? Eddie Smith has some wise words on that:

The indirect message sent by HP today: If you buy a non-iPad, you might be buying abandonware.

I was hoping for more of a fight from HP. And with Microsoft nowhere, maybe commentators claiming we’ll eventually end up in an Mac OS/Windows-style result in tablets, but with Google’s Android in place of Microsoft, aren’t quite so far off—although the numbers and balance, clearly, won’t be terribly similar, unless Apple makes the iPad 3 out of papier mache and twigs.

Unless Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky is a big fat liar, it looks like he’s just confirmed a Windows 8 app store in his post about the many teams involved in the project. If you look in the bullet-pointed list, it’s somewhere between ‘App Compatibility and Device Compatibility’ and ‘Blimey, We Have Quite a Lot of Teams, Don’t We?’

As is often the case, Apple leads and Microsoft goes “woof” before pissing up a tree and eventually following, but I’m glad it’s doing so in this case. Although I have some problems with the Mac App Store (very passive update alerts, slightly too strict entry requirements, odd bugs when it comes to upgrading from beta software), the general experience of using the store is excellent.

On Windows, installing software isn’t quite the nightmare that some people make it out to be, but it’s rarely better than the ‘mount DMG/drag to /Applications’ dance Mac users put up with, and it’s certainly more hassle than clicking ‘install’ and twiddling your thumbs for a bit. The question is whether Microsoft can ape Apple’s user-experience rather than just the concept. I can’t imagine Microsoft would have a great deal of trouble populating its app store, but it might have problems in focussing and in saying ‘no’ (say, to large companies who want options for install numbers and so on, versus Apple’s ‘take it or leave it’ approach). Time will tell, but of all the things mentioned in Sinofsky’s list, the app store is the most exciting for me.