Oldish news (since I’m catching up post-hols), but good to see common sense has prevailed regarding Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs (which is the first to get the blessing of Apple’s head honcho). CNN reported a few days back that it’s now called Steve Jobs By Walter Isaacson. Simple, straightforward and to the point, just like the best of Apple’s hardware and software.
The old title, chosen by the publisher’s publicity department, was iSteve: The Book of Jobs. That sounds, at best, like a knock-off unauthorised hack job or some kind of joke that went horribly wrong, in somehow getting voted through the marketing process, rather than immediately being shot in the head.
Our sources are saying that not only will there be a newly designed iPhone coming in the fall, but there is going to be a new entry into the iPad family as well. As hard as it might be to believe, the new tablet is said to sport a double resolution screen (2048 x 1536), and will be dubbed the “iPad HD.” The idea behind the product is apparently that it will be a “pro” device aimed at a higher end market — folks who work in video and photo production possibly — and will be introduced alongside something like an iPad version of Final Cut or Aperture. This product is specifically said to not be the iPad 3, rather a complimentary piece of the iPad 2 line. Think MacBook and MacBook Pro.
Sounds like bullshit to me. I’ll be amazed if the iPad doesn’t follow one of the following two patterns:
A full-line ‘upgrade’ to a 2048-by-1536 display.
An iPhone-style system, with the lowest-end model being a version of the previous tablet, but the rest of the line being the newest spec.
The alternative—having an iPad HD in a niche and high-end position—would be a dangerous move, as would signifying it’s some kind of ‘pro’ device. Right now, all iPads are relatively equal. The point is that they are everything, from a children’s colouring book to a tool for professional writers and artists. By making a single high-end iPad HD device, Apple would immediately position the rest of the entire iPad line as something not for professionals, and it would also further fragment the line. You’d also have a situation where it wouldn’t be obvious to most developers when and how to update their apps to take advantage of the new display.
My thinking: when it’s financially viable to do so (or when Apple’s hand is forced by a competitor), we’ll see the entire iPad line shift to 2048 x 1536. At the same time, the internals will get a pretty significant boost (RAM, chip speed) that Apple will entirely avoid talking about, because the display and what you can do with the device is all that’s really important.
No, I’m not dead in a ditch, nor have I succumbed to the joys of Windows and Android, thereby skulking away from this blog in an embarrassed fashion. Instead, I for the first time in years went somewhere with naff-all Wi-Fi (south-eastern Spain, where you get odd looks in phone shops for asking if someone will sell you a SIM card without a phone already wrapped around it), and spent a happy couple of weeks oblivious to news, technology and Tim Langdell continuing to be a total dick. (More on Langdell later.)
Still, I also got a number of messages from people who I’ve never met but who were nonetheless concerned for my well-being, asking through the silence if I was OK. So, occasionally, the internet is indeed full of lovely. Also, clearly, I am a noisy bugger (to the point that two weeks away makes people think I’m being held hostage by giant rabid weasels (or perhaps something less exciting) or come across so stressed sometimes that perhaps people thought my head had exploded due to my disbelief at someone doing something so unbelievably stupid that it all got a BIT TOO MUCH.
Anyway, Revert to Saved is open for business/bile again, but may have a mildly cheery edge for a short period of time, right up until the first of the many deadlines lurking menacingly in the distance whizz past my ears while making DAGGADAGGADAGGADAGGA noises. The bastards.
Writing on his Telegraph blog last month, Brendan O’Neill argued that “far from being a bastion of freedom of speech, Twitter can be a remarkably conformist, elitist and intolerant arena”. It is a statement that is both self-evidently true and entirely meaningless. Twitter is a communication tool. It makes no more sense to describe it as “conformist” or “elitist” than it does to say that the telephone is conformist or elitist.
But if you’re at all into social networking and/or want to understand how and why Twitter is often misrepresented by the mainstream press, Richmond’s piece is a must-read.
This is one of my least-favourite Apple adverts, for the iPhone 4:
I dislike it to some extent merely because of the intro, which, rarely for Apple, is about a technical component, the lithium polymer battery. And yet in 30 seconds, it nonetheless shows:
Use of the email client, with an embedded chart (“work”);
An ice-hockey videogame (“play”);
A movie being played (“laugh”);
Album navigation in the iPod app (“listen”);
Video being taken in the Camera app (“shoot”);
Basic video-editing being worked on (“edit”);
The SMS app sending the video (“share”);
A Facebook feed (“update”);
A game being installed (“download”);
iBooks in use (“read”);
A tweet being composed (“write”);
A FaceTime conversation.
In other words, the advert is primarily about what you can do with the device, showing a dozen things consumers might be interested in.
Compare it with the Samsung’s Galaxy SII ad below, which says to ‘unleash your fingers’ by spending more than three times the length of Apple’s ad showing “JayFunk, the internet Finger Tutting phenomenon” titting about with his fingers in front of the camera. It’s 1:39 in before the product is even shown, and at no point is it ever shown in action.
It’d certainly be interesting to see how consumers react to these different approaches. I suspect the latter might have people amused by the finger tutter but immediately forgetting the brand, while Apple’s had is more likely to have people realising the iPhone does more than they thought, and therefore consider actually buying one.