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Yes, this is the man I'll listen to about the future of the PC
Michael Dell in an interview Sunday took a stance that there was no such thing as a post-PC era. In spite of struggling PC sales, he argued to the FT that the PC industry was still growing… Smartphones and tablets weren't "necessarily" replacing PCs, and long-term forecasts suggested that would stay the case for years to come, he said.
via Electronista
Tablet Haikus
Good ad, bad ad
Even Steve Jobs is capable of having — as Pink Floyd once said — a momentary lapse of reason. I saw it with my own eyes at a meeting when Steve was trying to get the agency to squeeze a few more product benefits into an ad we were about to produce.
Sitting across the table from Steve was Lee Clow, past and current leader of Apple’s agency. Lee crumpled up 4-5 pieces of paper and tossed one to Steve. “This is a good ad,” said Lee, as Steve easily caught it.
Then, all at once, Lee tossed the remaining pile of crumpled balls of paper to Steve and he caught none of them. “That’s a bad ad,” said Lee.
Good post from Ken Segall, as always, but I especially love the above story.
A MacBook, an iPad, and the rest: a study in sizes
I have an original unibody 13" MacBook. I love the thing. Less than an inch thick, only 4.5 lbs, etc. Awesome machine.
Then I got an iPad. As I used the iPad more and more the MacBook was relegated to little, and then no, mobile use. My daughter ended up using it.
Yesterday I had to travel for business, which required I use Windows, so I spent last weekend dusting the MacBook off (I hadn't logged into my account since August) and getting it ready. The MacBook seemed so big and heavy that I debated whether I should still take the iPad on the trip.
I did take the iPad, and was glad I did. At a crowded airport the MacBook is like a monster to take out and use. On the plane? Please. And in the hotel room—like at home—it's so much easier to use the iPad than the seemingly massive MacBook.
Then I went into the office. This is why I'd brought the MacBook in the first place. Plug in Ethernet, fire up VMWare and Windows and work away. I looked at the sea of PC laptops (mine was the only Mac) and was struck by how huge they all were. Dells, HPs, Lenovos were in attendance, and they were all absolute monsters compared to mine. Even did a demo on a year-old (newer than mine) HP, and it was a dog performance-wise. My virtual machine-running MacBook blew it away. In the afternoon, one of the attendees looked at my machine, pinched his fingers together and said "That thing is so thin."
The moral? Size is truly relative. In the world of mobile devices doing general tasks, the iPad rules, and even the MacBook seems overblown and outdated. But get the MacBook among its PC peers and one remembers just how much it still blows the majority of them away.
Dell kills off their aphrodisiac laptop
the sneaky disappearance of the Adamo XPS from Dell's site hasn't exactly been a coincidence -- it's completely killing off the premium brand and has actually tamped down volumes of the super thin machines.
Dell created a video to help promote the Adamo when it was introduced. I thought the whole thing was a little… strange, and wrote about it (on The Apple Blog). The YouTube video is still there, and still kind of creepy.
Fast forward 18 months and it turns out people wanted an aphrodisiac from Dell about as much as they want, well, anything else from Dell these days. The Adamo is dead.
Without low prices Dell is nothing, so what are they going to do?
Dell Inc is getting a marketing makeover, trying to shed its image as a cheaper alternative to rivals
No wonder Dell is dying. They'll take the only possible advantage they have and spend "hundreds and hundreds of millions" of dollars to squash it. Good plan.
iPad killers 'less menacing' than feared.
Although Apple's competitors are rushing iPad look-alikes to market, he says, only one is available for sale and all are likely to be, in his words, "disadvantaged by unsuccessful attempts to integrate first generation tablet hardware with mobile OSes (Android 2.2/3.0, Chrome) that remain either nascent or entirely unproven relative to Apple's nearly 4-year old iOS.
Ya think?
They're "less menacing" (though I don't know who was worried about them) because most of them don't exist, and the very few that might see the light of day soon are just like the iPod's competitors back in the early days: marketing-driven spec-sheet conglomerations. The competition didn't understand what made the iPod such a hit back then, and they don't understand what's driving the iPad now.
Why Apple's competitors haven't learned that building, on paper, a device with everything Apple's has and more will never work is anyone's guess. I'm only surprised we don't see more removable batteries and FM tuners, without which the iPod is doomed.
Wanting competition (I do, it's good for everyone) and having competition are two different things. No sane betting individual would put any money on the so-called competitors being rolled out—or even announced—for the iPad right now.
Another Useless iPad Competition Table
While there's still quite a few missing details, and nary an unit in site for us to try first-hand, we've still got a sampling of specs for this little guy to go tête-à-tête on the quantitative field of proverbial battle
No, you don't.
Price, availability (can I buy the thing?), cellular specifics (not just if it's built in, how do I get a signal?), and a robust platform (not just the OS, but the app and developer environment) matter.
Price: From the early stages it looks like most of the iPad's competitors will be on the outside looking in here. And a lower price that requires a 2-year contract is not the solution, given Apple offers pay-as-you-go 3G.
Availability: Obviously, you can buy an iPad now (millions already have); the others are lagging, if available at all. Not sure why this is seen as OK by many tech sites, as if the product announcement itself "counts", and iPad sales will slow as a result.
Cellular: Details on this is critical. As near as I can tell there's nothing like Apple's buy-only-as-you-need-it offering for the iPad. Do most people really want another $70/month device?
Platform: Apple's is second to none right now. You could argue for Android, but remember that many Android tables will not have access to the market place anyway, and I don't see Google doing much to change that. The others may become robust and well-supported platforms, but they're not yet. Besides, Google has already said Android is not optimized for tablets, so clearly that's not the direction they want to go.
I realize the tech press is anxious for the iPad to have competition. They've been that way for some time now. But real competition can't be manufactured by the press—which is what they're attempting to do—no matter how many spec tables they put together. Sure, it may impress the geeks, but geek support is not required for success in this market.
In short, there's not enough data on the fledgling iPad competition market to make any calls on whether these will be viable competitors in the market place. Indeed, if one were forced to draw conclusions only from what's currently known, one would have to conclude the iPad clobbers them all, not that it's somehow a horse race.
