According to TechCrunch, OMG IPAD KILLAH Kno is dead. This will come as a huge shock to crazy people, who genuinely thought the massive 14.1-inch stylus-operated tablet (available in expensive $599 single-screen version or WHAT WERE THEY THINKING $899 dual-screen) would topple Apple’s iPad, despite Apple’s device working rather well in an education environment.

Still, the Kno guys aren’t fussed, because, apparently, it was always about the software and platform-agnosticity. CEO Osman Rashid said:

We have accelerated our 2012 strategy to 2011. Our long-term plan was always to support multiple platforms.

“No, really—honest,” he didn’t add, unless you read between the lines—lines positively bulging with sadness and delusion.

Still, it’s early days yet, and there’s loads of room in education for strong software. So what’s Kno’s next move?

Although Rashid wouldn’t confirm which platform Kno would support first, it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be the iPad.

Because supporting the leading tablet would be really stupid.

Kno’s software centers around using a stylus, not your fingers. “There is no real concept of a stylus on the iPad,” says Rashid.

This is probably because humans by default come with ten perfectly reasonable styluses attached. That said, there are things like the AluPen. Of course, you’re pretty much screwed if you’ve based most of your software around stylus (read: fiddly) input, eh, Kno-guys?

“The current iPad is mant [sic] for the finger.”

Actually, it’s meant for direct manipulation of content, without any abstraction layer. The mouse cursor was always a nice idea but a terrible concept from an intuition standpoint, since you have to be taught to use it. But even a stylus is a poor content manipulation tool compared to a finger—again, because you need to be taught to use it.

He hopes this will change. “We hope Apple over time sees the value of a stylus in education because kids do need to learn how to write.”

Rashid favours teaching kids to interact with content rather than manipulating content. By contrast, I think writing is overrated, and is something fewer and fewer people bother with. I don’t debate that it’s a skill that children need to learn, but I’d sooner have a child immersed in solving maths puzzles rather than first having to grasp manipulating a pencil and laying out the sums; I’d sooner have a child immersed in finger-painting (real-world or digital) than battling with a fiddly paintbrush.

They can sort out their penmanship later.

Bloomberg reports on Acer’s “Windows PC for the iPad generation”. It’s very exciting:

You’ve never seen a personal computer quite like this one.

Ooh. Exciting!

Acer Inc. (2353)’s new Iconia 6120 Touchbook has many of the features you would expect from a full-sized laptop: an Intel Corp. (INTC) i5 microprocessor, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s Windows 7 operating system, a 14-inch display.

Ooh. Exc– Actually, less exciting, because no-one cares about specs these days, but, hey, Windows 7 and a 14-inch display, so I’m sure for a cutting-edge competitor to a long-lasting iPad, NOTHING CAN GO WRONG HERE. (SPOILER: Something will go wrong.)

It’s also missing one feature you would expect: a keyboard. In its place is a second 14-inch touch screen. Need to type something? A full-sized virtual keyboard, complete with touchpad, appears on the bottom display when you lay your palms on it, to be used and then dismissed when no longer required.

Translation: Acer saw the Nintendo DS and thought “man, that really needs to be a whole lot bigger and run Windows”. But, hey, the DS worked. It worked really well. So this dual-screen thing might not be entirely stupid, and a 14-inch screen’s certainly big enough to get a full-size virtual keyboard under your fingers. Clearly, NOTHING CAN GO WRONG HERE. (SPOILER: Something will go wrong. Quite soon. Just wait a bit.)

The computer, which is available for order now and shows up in stores later this month, costs $1,199.99.

Ah. Well, I guess if we ignore the iPad’s price-point being a fraction of that and even the MacBook Air being $200 cheaper, that’s not too bad.

It weighs a hefty 6.2 pounds

And 2.2 pounds compares very favourably with Apple kit.

It weighs a hefty 6.2 pounds

Oh. So twice the 13-inch MacBook Air and more than four times heavier than the iPad? THINGS HAVE STARTED TO GO WRONG!

Typing on the glass takes some getting used to, though it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I had expected […] My biggest problem wasn’t with the keyboard but with the trackpad, which is so small that my finger kept sliding past its virtual edges.

IT’S GOING WRONG! WE CAN’T STOP IT!

While there’s no tactile feedback when you land on a virtual key, as there is on some smartphones, you can hear an audible “click.” It’s a nice idea, except that there is a noticeable lag between hitting the key and hearing the sound.

IT’S LIKE NO-ONE’S EVEN LISTENING ANY MORE! IT’S ALL GOING WRONG!

The biggest drawback is the battery. The two touch screens suck power like a vacuum cleaner, and even Acer’s claim of three hours on a full charge may be on the high side if you’ve got the screens set to bright and are connected to a Wi-Fi network. Moreover, the battery isn’t user-replaceable, so you’ll tend to find yourself tethered to an electrical outlet.

IT’S ALL GONE WRONG!

A pretty funny report on TechRadar. Apparently, the UK price of the Xoom has just been updated. Dixons and Carphone Warehouse—who’d cunningly set the pre-order price of the Xoom to the same as the original equivalent iPad—have both realised the device isn’t entirely competitive since the iPad 2 came out. So what have they done? Clearly, sensible companies would realise that there’s still no really compelling answer to “why should I buy something other than an iPad?” and price accordingly.

Dixons has knocked 20 quid off the 32 GB Wi-Fi Xoom’s price, so you can pre-order your “real tablet” now for just £479.99. Meanwhile, Carphone Warehouse has dropped the price of the 3G model to £579.99.

I racked my brain for almost a microsecond before coming up with how they decided on these new prices. On the Apple Store, you’ll be shocked to see the 32 GB iPad 2 come in at £479 and the 3G model at £579. Which still means the Xoom is priced slightly higher, the idiots. But even in a direct comparison, if we ignore the piffling 99-pence extra, it’s effectively the same price for a device offering the vast majority of users an inferior experience, the double idiots.

Personally, I hope Apple changes the price of the iPad 2 three times over the next week, just to fuck with these guys.

David Friedman gets excited about a new save icon on his blog. His thinking: the floppy disk is archaic and many current computer users have likely never used or seen one. Therefore, he creates something new.

I’m not really sure the floppy disk save icon is a problem anyway, for two reasons. First, as iOS has shown, the very concept of manually saving files will soon be obsolete. Mac OS X Lion will soon enable devs to make apps regularly autosave (and provide versioning) on the Mac desktop; other systems will rapidly follow suit. Secondly, popular icons and icon concepts transcend technology and time. As journo chum Chris Brennan wryly pointed out on Twitter:

In the UK the sign for a level crossing is a steam train. I’m not so sure a floppy disk as a save icon is the end of the world.

The difficultly in replacing such icons is two-fold. First, you have to essentially override what’s in people’s heads, icons that are recognised in an instant. Secondly, you have to create something that’s at least as recognisable as what you originally had. This is where Friedman failed, in using a baseball home plate.

The “safe” icon is pointy on one end like an arrow. This can be used to indicate where your file is saved. If the latest version of your file is saved locally, it points down. If the latest version of your file is saved on a server somewhere, it points up.

I’m sure if you know baseball, that all makes sense. But I don’t really know much about baseball—it’s not really a worldwide sport. Similarly, replace the save icon with some kind of football (as in soccer) icon and you’d have Americans scratching their heads. And anyone else who doesn’t know or care for football.

To be fair, it’s very clear that Friedman was only experimenting and playing around, but his article shows how tough it can be to replace existing and popular icons with something that can and will be recognised almost universally. In the meantime, he jokes:

But I still like my idea and urge it to be adopted by anyone writing software for Americans who are baseball fans without internet access or a modern operating system.

Hrn. Henry Blodget over at Business Insider’s having fun with the whole OMG ANDROID IS TEH WIN AND IPHONE IS DEAD thing. In the annoyingly capitalised Android Is Destroying Everyone, Especially RIM — iPhone Dead In Water, he spews out lots of exciting tripe that doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny when you examine the details.

Google’s Android OS has gained an astonishing 7 points of market share in the US smartphone market in the past three months, Comscore says.

RIM’s market share over the same period collapsed, dropping almost 5 points.

Apple’s iPhone share increased slightly, but is dead in the water and has now fallen way behind Android (in smartphones).

According to Blodget, then, Apple retaining its marketshare (in a rapidly growing market), matching the competition (at the very least) in terms of innovation, and making huge profits is ‘dead in the water’.

Apple’s share was always going to fall once Android became the OS that any hardware manufacturer could weld to a device and then go to market with a shitty product that costs naff-all.

So, to summarise: Apple’s selling more devices each quarter and making huge piles of money, but because it’s not matching the increase in sales of the combination of a whole ton of other manufacturers who happen to use various versions of Android, Apple’s iPhone is ‘dead in the water’. OK, got it.

(If you include iPod touches in the calculation, Apple’s share has actually fallen).

Let’s ignore the iPad, eh?

Why do the Android gains matter?

You tell us.

Are Apple bulls right that Apple has an insurmountable hold on the “premium” segment of the market and that it doesn’t matter who has the other 75%?

Yes. Oh hang, on—I bet you’re going to say ‘no’, right?

The Android gains matter because technology platform markets tend to standardize around a single dominant platform (see Windows in PCs, Facebook in social, Google in search).

No they fucking don’t. PC’s were an anomaly. I don’t see every TV being made by Sony, or every handheld console being made by Nintendo, or every TV games console being made by Microsoft.

There’s also a big difference between standardisation and dominance. Facebook is certainly not the ‘standard’ of social networking—it’s just the current one everyone’s in love with. But we’ve been there before and web users are fickle. Maybe Facebook will be our overlords in a decade, but it’s just as likely to be Friends Reunited 2 and we’ll all be using WeldedToYourBrain.com, or something. Ditto search and Google.

And the more dominant the platform becomes, the more valuable it becomes and the harder it becomes to dislodge. The network effect kicks in, and developers building products designed to work with the platform devote more and more of their energy to the platform. The reward for building and working with other platforms, meanwhile, drops, and gradually developers stop developing for them.

Bollocks. Devs go where the money is—it’s really that simple. And it’s pretty clear right now that Android is not the place to go, as shown nicely in the linked graph provided by Lee Armstrong. He compares sales across Android, iOS and Windows Phone for Plane Finder. If Blodget is right, you’d expect Android sales to be close to iOS ones and gradually increasing. As it is, they’re barely above Windows Phone sales—iOS is way out in front.

Until Google starts encouraging its platform’s users to buy things rather than expect free, this situation won’t change. And even if it does (read: if Amazon’s Android store is a success), that won’t stop iOS from being a profitable platform—and that’s what matters. After all, note how Microsoft and Adobe still see fit to create Mac OS X applications despite the Mac’s marketshare being in single figures.

Further reading:

• Is Android Taking Over?, Jon-Erik Storm
  
• A Successful Failure, Ben Brooks