iPad. The rest of the story.

So iPad is now official, and available in waves over the next 60-90 days (WiFi only in 60, WiFi + 3G in 90).  It shows the maturity of some of Apple's strategies, the development of the iPhone OS, and brings us the first fruit from the PA Semi purchase (the CPU is a custom ARM design built by PA Semi's team and manufactured for Apple's exclusive use).  My initial thoughts:

- iPad is reasonably well-priced for what it is.  The lack of a cellular subsidy for it is also good - contract-free and unlocked is the way to go.  Plus there's no real reason why VoIP can't be used on it, remember, AT&T said a while back that VoIP was OK.  We'll see if it flies now in the App Store.

- The form factor is good, albeit a little awkward.  It should fit in a coat pocket if not in your jeans pocket.  Of course, since it's Apple it's the best-designed tablet device to date.

- It won't replace a Kindle.  Amazon must be relieved.  But it will pick up some readers, and help grow the e-book market.  And for some kinds of print media it will be the best way to consume it.  No wonder magazine and textbook publishers are excited.

- It has just enough work in it to have some professional use.  I'd take one away with me on vacation instead of a laptop or netbook - weekender use is a good market.  Of course, that means an extra $30 to Apple for the iWork apps...

- As a media device, it's promising.  Depends on the battery life in real-world usage.  If you can mix apps, surfing, and processor-intensive activities and still get 8-10 hours of continuous use, it's a big winner.  Should be possible - other than the screen it's got pretty much the same grade of components as an iPhone and plenty more room for battery inside.

- There's still a few holes in it.  No camera means no videoconferencing.  That would be a killer app for the iPad, and would be a no-brainer for the 2011 model.  64GB in the top model is very nice, but 128GB would be even better.  Or even 96GB.  Media libraries are big.  Mine's got 21GB of photos, 17GB of music, 21GB of movies, 5GB of TV, and 2.5GB of podcasts.  Plus 3GB of apps (I've got Navigon installed plus a big nav chart app).  That's almost 70GB right there, and my library isn't huge.  An online storage option that ties to MobileMe would be compelling as a way of handling this, but there wasn't any anything on that front today.  Look for more to come from Apple, maybe between now and launch.  Apple likes to put other things out there between announcement and launch to help increase hype.  Wouldn't surprise me if that happened here.

- Also, there's other things we know are coming soon from Apple.  They chose not to reveal them today.  Most of the code in iWork for the iPad will manifest itself in an iWork '10 that I'd expect soon.  And for sharing the files iWork.com will likely go into production and leave beta.  Also due soon (I thought it would be today) - iPhone 4.0 software.  This is going to be announced before the iPhone 2010 model according to Apple's model.  Probably in March, right around the shipping of iPad.  The other thing I expected today but didn't see is the Intel i5-based MacBook Pro.  All the other vendors have them out now, I figured Apple would use that as a "build-the-excitement" announcement before the main event today but was mistaken.  Probably out in the next week or so since it didn't make it today.  Apple gets too much revenue from MacBook Pros to let it wait too long.

- In a nutshell, I think iPad will be a solid success, though not a game-changer yet.  They've built a tablet device that is probably the coolest one on the market today, but has plenty of room for improvement.  So once you're hooked, you'll buy a new one every year.  Exactly what they want.  Damn, those guys are good...

Why all politics is local

Here in Massachusetts, a Senate race that wouldn be in most cases a blowout for the Democrat (as usual) has turned into a nail-biter.  The result on Tuesday is completely up for grabs.  Looking at the two candidates, the Democrat (Attorney General Martha Coakley) has a solid track record of accomplishment and the Rebublican (State Senator Scott Brown) has a history as pretty much a speedbump.  Why is it so close?  Here's a few of the reasons:

National issues: The shine is off Obama as reality has begun to set in.  Though the economy has improved, it's not enough to keep him at his peak popularity.  And the messy business of governing means that a lot of his election rhetoric hasn't come to pass.  This reflects poorly on Coakley by association, and the lack of Democratic unity (as usual) means that slow progress continues.

The Teabagger Factor: Scott Brown has wingnut appeal.  He's pretty far right (hell, by Massachusetts standards he's a jackboot-wearer), and so the nuts are out for him.

The Local Factor: Here in Massachusetts, we've almost always been a one-party state except we like to elect Republican governors to pretend we've got balance.  We all hate Beacon Hill but we like our legislator.  The reality is that frustration with the Legislature's been building steadily for years, and though Coakley's a constitutional officer instead of a legislator she's seen as part of the problem.  Brown, on the other hand, is an actual state Senator - but there aren't even enough Republicans in the state Senate to affect a veto (5 out of 40).  He doesn't really show up at all.

The Arrogance Factor: Coakley won easily in the primary election, with all assuming that meant an easy win in the final.  But the primary was really just a test of early organization, and Coakley had been in the race since before Kennedy died.  She's only taken it seriously for about the last week.

The Payback Factor: One of the big X-Factors in this race.  In the 1980s and 90s, a number of high-profile cases were tried here that Coakley was a factor in - most notably the Fells Acres daycare abuse case.  As DA, she worked hard even in the face of overwhelming evidence to try and keep the Fells Acres operators behind bars.  And she still sees the decision to push to keep the Amiraults behind bars as a correct one.  I'm one of a lot of people who take that one personally.

Good riddance...

2009 has been one of those years.  And how.  The first three months of 2009 I spent wondering first if I'd have to let people go, and second if I'd have to close the doors and look for a real job elsewhere.  The six after that was treading water business-wise - only the last few months have seen anything resembling growth or security.  I'm not where I was in 2008, but I'm still open for business and that's a Win.

The rest of life this year wasn't nearly as bad, but still a challenge.  Our beloved son has been a handful all year - I think instead of seeing Jane's being home with him as a blessing he sees it as an entitlement.  He was sick during our vacation (and it rained all week).  We had to throw a lot of money at upgrading/replacing the HVAC in our house - stuff that'll pay off in time but not for a while.  It was just that kind of year.

All that negativity aside, we survived intact, mostly healthy, and without losing our shirts or going into debt.  My business is positioned well for 2010.  Difficult as our son can be, he's still bright and personable (most of the time!).  We've got the big expenses out of the way now in our home, and we've lived here long enough that there's not too many surprises left.  And all three humans (and one cat) in our home will see the sun come up tomorrow on a world that is hopefully a little better than it was when the sun set before.

Paul Krugman called the decade just past the "zeros".  I'm not with him for the decade, but the year 2009?  I'll go with that.

The next netbook

I'm still using an Eee 901 I bought last year, upgraded with a 16GB SSD and 2GB of RAM.  It is running Windows 7 Professional and does a perfectly adequate job for me when I need cheap, light, and long-lasting.  I didn't replace it this year for a few reasons - first, I'm watching the company expenses as carefully as I can, but more importantly there's nothing really new or worthy this year in the netbook category.  Except that everyone got into it.

2010 will change that some with the nVidia Ion platform and Intel's Pine Trail Atom.  Now, performance is just on the edge of low-end laptops (enough for HD video) and battery life is 20+ percent better.  It's viable to get 10 hours of life from a 6-cell battery.  The 9" form factor I have in my 901 turned out to be kind of a dead-end (as did the 7" before) - what's making the platform now are the 10" and 12" screens.  They allow space for keyboards that are much more usable (the letter keys are within a couple percent of full-size and the other keys are a little shrunken to make up for it - 12" models usually have a real keyboard).  The only other dead-end in most models was the use of SSD - I for one will miss that a lot since it made them more rugged.

The model I consider next year will have a 1366x768 screen (the one I have now is 1024x600), likely a 160 or 250GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM standard, and it'll probably include Windows 7 Starter.  Not bad for a netbook.  Double the RAM and upgrade to Windows 7 Pro, and we're looking at a real laptop for under $400 that'll run for a full work day and then some on batteries.

And you wonder why Apple's pretty much the only PC maker making big profits.  All that margin the other companies used to have vanished in the netbook frenzy.  Which, by the way, is also why Apple doesn't play in that segment.

Latest iPhone nonsense

There's a post today on TUAW that breathlessly speculates that Apple's WWDC has booked Moscone from 6/28 through 7/2 (likely - they always book dates anonymously until it's actually announcement time) because that way they can announce an iPhone for Verizon and/or other US carriers (not likely).

Let me repeat myself one more time: Until the move to 4G (which may begin this coming year), Apple is highly unlikely to ever produce a version of the iPhone for CDMA carriers.  And by "highly unlikely" I mean "no chance in hell".  Now, let me remind you all as to why:

- The GSM 3G standard is what is used in virtually all of the world
- CDMA is entering its final run, 4G will replace it
- CDMA data networks cannot handle simultaneous voice and data
- All Apple gets from Verizon or Sprint is a small portion of their market, max
- Right now Apple makes one iPhone (yes, they still produce the older 3G as the entry model, and yes they make one without wifi for China - but it's still the same base phone and the chipsets are GSM-only), not two

In essence, Apple makes an iPhone for almost all of world + dog, excepting two US carriers and part of South Korea.  And they have the largest US GSM carrier in the fold.  The two US carriers they don't support are migrating to newer 4G technologies over the next year, and the largest CDMA carrier (Verizon) is migrating to LTE for 4G - same as AT&T.  CDMA is a dead end.  Why support it now?

Not that folks wouldn't buy a Verizon iPhone, even with the limitations that Verizon's network put on it.  They would.  But the reason I say "no way" is because Apple just is too smart to throw the engineering resources at a product with a very limited shelf life when they can get a lot better return by being on top of 4G.

And that day - Verizon'll be first in line, I bet.

And the winner is...

I did a little household survey to figure out which of the non-computer gadgets is the house favorite.  I polled all the residents and spent about a minute tabulating the data (I voted along with my wife and child - the cat declined to comment and asked to be taken off our polling list).  Here are the top 3, in traditional pageant format:

Second Runner-Up: Roomba.  We have to at least pick stuff off the floor before pushing the button, but it saves us vacuuming runs when we use it.  A good thing.

First Runner-Up: iPhone.  We all have them (David's got an old one with the chip removed that he plays games on instead of me buying him an iPod Touch).  It redefined what the phone could do.  But AT&T sucks just enough, and other cell phones are usable enough, that it's not our über gadget.

And the winner: TiVo (Series 3).  We've been loyal TiVo owners for almost 8 years now, with 5 years on the original Series 2 and now 3 years on the Series 3.  It looks like the hard drive on it is starting to get flakey, and we're trying desperately to decide if we want to fix this soon (and put in a bigger one while we're at it) or hold out a couple more months in the hope that there will finally be a Series 4 shipping.

TiVo's become so integral to the TV experience since we started using it that the risk of having it out of service is painful to everyone here!  That's why it won.  But TiVo has a long way to go just to catch up to modern TV and cable systems.  What they need badly (and this is why we're hoping for a Series 4 soon):

- Tru2Way support (so we can finally patch in to On Demand and PPV)
- SDV support to handle the newer cable systems without an adapter
- Better networking and the ability to transmit from box to box in real time.  The way Verizon's DVR does it (multi-room viewing)
- Bring the UI into the HD era.
- More native storage.  No reason to have anything less than a 1TB drive anymore.
- One or two more tuners on-board.  Right now you get two.  Or add one tuner and devote it to live TV so you can record two shows while viewing one other live.

And please, whatever you do, do it soon!  We only have one TV, and no cable box other than our TiVo - I don't want ours to die and then be forced back to the dark ages!

Still not seeing it (a Verizon iPhone, that is)

First of all, if there was a Verizon iPhone on the horizon, would Verizon be trying so hard to piss off Apple with their Android push?  I think not.

Second, Verizon likes to re-brand everything.  Apple has established that they don't play that game.  Verizon's never caved on that point for any handset maker to date.

Third, Verizon and AT&T have roughly equal US market shares.  Apple sells a huge amount of iPhones here, but they also play in the (overwhelmingly UTMS) global market.  Why devote resources to one carrier?

Fourth, UTMS 3G networks allow simultaneous voice/data.  CDMA/EVDO does not.  iPhone uses that as a major selling point.  Why take a capability away from the iPhone on purpose?

Finally - CDMA is on the way out and it's a niche anyway on a global scale.  LTE is replacing CDMA at Verizon, beginning next year.  Also, it's what AT&T is switching to, along with most global cell networks.  CDMA iPhone?  Nope.  LTE iPhone?  Absolutely.  Maybe in 2010?  Outside possibility, but definitely by 2011.

And at that point, maybe Verizon will start selling it.  Which is consistent with what I've been saying for about a year and a half now (ever since the original iPhone 3G came out) and for some reasons the "expert analysts" keep reading tea leaves they don't understand to say otherwise.

Is there a possibility Apple might introduce a device with ties to Verizon before that?  Anything is possible, but I think the idea that the "legendary Apple iMediaTablet" or something like it would be a CDMA device here and a UTMS device elsewhere is unlikely.

Why Verizon's Droid phone has already lost the war

Sure, Verizon has the best 3G coverage nationwide.  They're about 2 years ahead of AT&T in deployment, and they have virtually all of the nation blanketed with signal, especially since the Alltel integration.  In that regard, the Verizon network has all sorts of advantages.  But there's catches to it, as well:

• Verizon's EVDO 3G doesn't handle voice and data simultaneously.  Check the web, your phone probably goes to voicemail - or the call interrupts your web session for the duration.  All EVDO phones have worked this way as long as I've seen them (AT&T's counter-ads even point this out).

• CDMA/EVDO is the technology dead-end.  It's going to vanish with the deployment of 4G (LTE) and in fact the LTE transition that will start next year will likely neutralize any advantage either carrier has at this point - AT&T and Verizon are both deploying it.  Advantage - AT&T, since LTE is basically an extension of the GSM standards used everywhere in the world but on Sprint and Verizon's networks.

• AT&T has the baggage of only being about 2 years old.  Really.  The current AT&T was born from the purchase of Cingular Wireless by the then much smaller AT&T.  They spent a lot of the last couple of years trying to integrate the various networks they'd picked up - and that's part of why 3G deployment's only begun to accelerate over the last year.  They still don't have the data footprint that Verizon has, but that's going to grow fast.  I'm not an AT&T fanboi but the gap will continue to shrink fast.

• The current (app-running) incarnation of the iPhone is only 16 months old right now.  But that's a huge first-mover advantage for Apple - they've sold over 20 million of these puppies world-wide.  And they're a moving target.  Sure, some features have been improved upon by the competition, but Apple keeps coming out and moving the goal line - adding upon the numbers lead as they do so.

Is Verizon going to sell plenty of Droids?  Sure.  It's the best smartphone (based on specs) they've had yet.  It'll be the default purchase instead of the bag-of-hurt Windows Mobile phones.  Android, too, is a viable phone OS - it's pretty much going to kill off Windows Mobile and probably Symbian, though, as well as all the other "Linux for phone OS" devices out there.  That's good for the industry.  Not going to touch iPhone or Blackberry.

The major dilemma for Android as an OS is the same one RIM has with Blackberries.  Right now, you can develop an application for iPhone, compile it, and run it on any device running Mac OS X Touch.  iPhones 1-3GS, iPod Touch, and devices to be announced later.  It's one platform, one binary.  On the other hand, virtually every Blackberry is a unique device, requiring a unique build of software.  From what I've seen so far, Android looks like the latter, not the former.  That's not going to help.

For a learning experience, Apple didn't come out and advertise what the other phones didn't do.  They showed us what the iPhone could do, and how easy it all was.  And they have steadily added the things that power phone users found lacking - and made it easy for most developers to get their wares in front of an audience.  From what Verizon's indicating, they've focused on making an iPhone Plus, rather than a new way of using a mobile phone.  Apple did it the other way around.  Which is why they won.

Closer to a-Kindling...

Amazon cut the price of the Kindle 2 by $40 today, and introduced a GSM-based version (on AT&T's network) that will still cost $20 less than it did yesterday (new prices are $259 and $279, respectively - down from $299). I'm getting closer to Want status.

The magic point for me will be when it drops below $200 and gets native PDF support. Then I'll use it as a repository for all my tech manuals that I have in PDF format, and I'll read an occasional mass-market book on it as well.

iDon't get the hype

Apple may or may not at some point come out with a tablet computer. So what? Maybe Steve Jobs is playing chess while I'm playing checkers, but I just can't see virtually any tablet device that would be more than a niche device. Sure, tablets are useful in some industrial and commercial settings, but that's never been Apple's game. Apple plays consumer ball nowadays - along with their traditional high-end and creative pro markets. Here's the easiest questions to ask in order to figure out if a tablet computer has a place in the consumer market or not:

• What's faster, typing or writing (natural language, not some weird variation like Palm's old Graffiti input)?
• What's faster, easier, and more discreet to do in public, typing or speaking?
• Assuming a tablet computer could have easy, fast input and could run acceptably long on a charge, where do you stow it when it's not in use?
• Do you cry when a tablet computer falls down and breaks? Or do you just curse a couple of times and then go buy a replacement?
• Can it be cheap and rugged enough to not worry about?

Of course, Apple already knows how to make a reasonably rugged device that has good battery life, runs a desktop OS, and can perform the most needed functions of most desktop computers. In fact, it's called the iPhone. And it sells a hundred for every likely iTablet sale. Now, I could be completely full of nonsense here, but I just don't see a way for Apple to build a "tablet" computer that can fit my criteria above and still be cheap enough to sell to the mass market.

What I do foresee (maybe even as early as tomorrow) is a scaled-down version of the MacBook that can be sold at a $700 or so price point. That's likely to come - Apple won't play in the low-margin netbook space per se, but they'll provide a barebones laptop for people looking to trade up. They will keep driving the cost down on their consumer desktops, too - it's OK, because they make so much cash on iPhones that they can afford to shave the margins a little on the consumer systems. I see the big marketshare push starting soon. The potential isn't there to break Windows, but there's no reason that Apple can't have a happy, profitable 20-25% of the marketplace. It's more do-able now than it has been in years.

But there ain't no iTablet in that picture, and I doubt there will be.