Oh, David Goldman of CNN Money, haven’t you been listening? The iPad is actually doing quite well, grabbing 93 per cent of the market. While it’d be nice if the iPad 2 was unicorn-powered, all Apple really needs to do today is provide a nice upgrade that shoves in a bit of extra clout and some cameras. That alone will see the iPad 2 fly off the shelves, right?

GOLDMAN SAYS NO. In fact, Goldman says some very odd things:

The good and the bad news for Apple is that the year-old iPad still rates highly among even its newest rivals.

That’s good news, because Apple should again have the best-in-its-class tablet if the iPad 2 is as improved as the rumors say it will be.

But that’s also bad news: How much thinner, lighter, faster, better — and perhaps most importantly, cheaper — can the iPad get? Did Apple shoot itself in the foot by making its first generation tablet too good?

Yes, because the one thing people thought when they got an iPad was “man, if only this product was worse”. And iPad-owners thinking about an iPad 2 today are all complaining: “I would have upgraded, if only Apple had made the original iPad complete shit”.

The only people wishing Apple had made the original iPad worse are important figures working for Apple’s rivals.

But, luckily, there’s one way Apple can win this game, thinks Goldman:

Tim Cook, Phil Schiller or whichever Apple executive introduces the iPad 2 will need to offer some impressive specs, lest Apple fans walk away disappointed.

After all, it’s not like the competition tries to differentiate itself by wanking itself into a frenzy over spec lists, rather than, say, what you can actually do with your device. here’s hoping Goldman realises that, eh?

Rival tablets have front- and rear-facing cameras,

Phew!

[…] dual-core processors, four times as much RAM as the iPad, HDMI output and Adobe Flash support.

Oh.

And:

If that’s all Apple does, its fans will probably be unimpressed. Apple may need to have something “magical” up its sleeve, as Jobs likes to say, to wow its potential customers.

NO UNICORN? I’M LEAVING!

To be fair to Goldman (it’s sunny, so I’m in a good mood), he’s right on that last thing. Apple ‘fans’ typically have insane expectations, driven by the rumour mill. However, Apple doesn’t need a checklist of specs that somehow ‘better’ its rivals on paper—it simply needs to stay ahead where things really matter: usability, apps, quality.

Following on from reports that Microsoft has delivered its ‘other’ tablet operating system (ZDNet), the snappily named Windows Embedded Compact 7, which is meant to be for consumption devices, rather than consumption and creation devices, the rumour mill is hot with news of a further exciting Microsoft announcement later today, sure to scupper Apple’s iPad 2 launch.

According to ‘sources’, Microsoft will unveil Windows Inserted Not Quite Teeny Weeny But Nonetheless Somewhat Small 7, which has been designed specifically for devices that are “mostly consumption devices, but occasionally used for creation, like when the owner’s without a laptop and really needs to creatively create an Excel spreadsheet in a creative manner”.

When asked about how Microsoft’s staggeringly bonkers mobile fragmentation strategy hopes to compete with Apple’s single flavour of iOS across all devices, a spokesperson said: “Look, just fuck off, will you?” before feverishly smashing up an iPhone 4 with a hammer.

The BBC is generally well regarded outside of the UK, and some of its shows—including Doctor Who and Top Gear—are torrented like crazy. When Apple TV rentals yomped on in, it appeared the BBC was one of the very few non-stupid corporations in the field, since it joined Fox and Disney in offering content for Apple’s device, rather than whining about how Apple was somehow ‘devaluing’ their content. (Hello, Warner Bros.! I’d still love to know how 99 cents per episode is worse than eight bucks per month for everything through Netflix!)

Now, director general Mark Thompson says things are going to be taken a step further. An international version of iPlayer will “definitely” launch in 2011 and will cost “a small number of dollars a month—less than 10” (source: Journalism.co.uk and others).

It remains to be seen how many holes end up in the schedule, but it’s likely the BBC’s own content at least will be made available through the player. It’ll be interesting to see whether the organisation making it affordable and readily available will encourage non-Brits to fund the service, or whether they’ll still consider “less than 10” dollars too much outlay and continue to torrent.

Articulate argument from Tim Anderson on why 24-bit will not fix computer audio and why 16-bit is fine:

[What] are the limitations of 16/44 audio? We can be precise about this. Nyquist’s Theorem says that the 44,100 Hz sampling rate is enough to perfectly recapture a band-limited audio signal where the highest frequency is 22,500 Hz. Human hearing may extends [sic] to 20,000 Hz in ideal conditions, but few can hear much above 18,000 Hz and this diminishes with age.

In fact, despite the claims of audiophiles, most people cannot tell the difference between studio-quality output and an MP3 file, especially given that output is usually sub-optimal (car stereos, crappy headphones, TV speakers, and so on). And given that music is distorted beyond belief in all commercial recordings these days (to make everything sound ‘loud’, audio is compressed and peaks are clipped, wrecking dynamic range), upping the audio from 16- to 24-bits won’t make the slightest bit of difference in the vast majority of cases, even if you have high-end kit.

To my mind, as long as sources are offering ‘high enough’ quality lossy files (256–320 kbps AAC or MP3), that’s enough. Any move to 24-bit will just be corporate PR wankery—a pissing match that aims to snare users who think higher numbers are better. And I bet you’d get charged more for the privilege.

Gary Marshall on TechRadar:

Make no mistake, the iPad 2 we see tomorrow will be a disappointment. But it won’t be a disappointment because it’s a bad device, or because it doesn’t take the iPad forward.

It will be a disappointment because it isn’t the entirely imaginary device the internet has been happily inventing for the last few months.

Apple watchers have been playing a game of “my dad’s bigger than your dad”, with iPads instead of dads. “My iPad 2 will have a retina display!” “Well, my iPad 2 will have an eight-core processor!” “That’s nothing! my iPad 2 will be made of carbon fibre and angel skin, and it will have an attachment that gets stones out of horses’ hooves!”