Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook was just welcomed with a goody bag filled with 1 million shares of his company’s stock. That was the easy part. Now he’s going to have to earn it.

But as much as he would like to focus on developing products envisioned by the retiring founder Steve Jobs (who will remain active in the company for as long as he is able), he may first have to shore up the iPad as it comes under fire from rivals seeking a share of Apple’s commanding market for the tablet computer.

In particular Cook will have to deal with Amazon, which is not only developing a tablet of its own but planning to offer it to consumers dirt-cheap.  Amazon has not concealed its strategy of selling its Android-driven gadget at a loss – hundreds of dollars below iPad’s base price of $499 – just to pull the rug out from its competitor, according to Garrett Sloan of the New York Post.

Amazon has a long way to travel to bite into Apple’s 25 million unit lead, but no observer of Amazon would bet against its coming up with a product, a price and a marketing campaign that could close the gap faster than anyone would believe possible. Maybe Jeff Bezos should name the new tablet Orange, to facilitate comparison between Apples and Oranges.

Details in $99 tablets: Price is right

Richard Curtis

“The e-reader’s days are numbered,” writes HuffPo’s Amy Lee. Despite millions of e-book readers sold in the last couple of years, Lee foresees obsolescence for Kindles and Nooks as tablets take grip and ultimately take charge.

Her surmise is drawn from prestigious technical and media research firm Forrester, who project that by next year tablets will outsell e-readers, and in less than four years there will be twice as many tablet owners as e-reader owners.

The reason is simple: history proves that that given a choice between a dedicated device and a multifunctional one, it’s multifunctional every time. “As the demise of the Flip camera suggests, consumers are increasingly trading single-purpose devices for multifunction gadgets. Especially as the price of tablet computers continues to fall, experts predict users will drop e-readers for tablet PCs that offer web-browsing and video capabilities alongside e-books.

“Even Amazon, which helped make e-readers and ebooks mainstream, appears to recognize the e-reader’s impending demise and is rumored to be developing its own tablet device. The Barnes & Noble Nook Color has already been modified to run Android’s Froyo software, taking it into tablet territory.”

Lee quotes another tech firm that relegates the future of e-readers to a niche. 

A niche!

We’re not sentimental about our Kindle but this is one prediction we think is dead wrong. The compactness and utility of Kindles and Nooks (the original Kindles, the original Nooks) can’t be matched by tablets. More importantly, book lovers love to immerse themselves without distraction in their books.  They like their dedicated e-book devices to be…well, dedicated. So we’re betting against the house on this one.  Niche indeed!

You decide whether or not The ereader’s days are numbered.

Richard Curtis

Soon the Chinese will celebrate The Year of The Rabbit. The rest of us will celebrate The Year of the Tablet. Apple’s runaway success with the iPad has spawned an army of emulators and imitators that will leave consumers utterly bewildered when the time comes to choose.  And the time is approaching rapidly when everyone will want one, from students to business executives. Researchers project between 24 and 42 million tablets to be sold in the United States in 2011, according to New York Times‘s Joshua Brustein.

To assist the perplexed, the New York Times recently published a guide to the pluses and minuses of such iPad rivals as the Motorola Xoom, the H. P. Slate, the Dell Streak, the Blackberry Playbook and the Samsung Gallery Tab.

Conclusions? Though the Apple product “remains the dominant tablet computer,” its rivals exhibit some features like flash support that make them genuinely competitive.  And one, the Xoom, was named best gadget at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

With its huge jump on the rest of the pack, Apple doesn’t have a lot to worry about being surpassed. But neither will it have the field to itself any longer.

Read Tablets, Compared here, then pay yer money and take yer choice.

Richard Curtis

If Microsoft keeps introducing the tablet, will they finally get it right?  We’re about to find out. At next month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, MS will present what, by our count, is its fourth tablet.  Not v. 4 of the same tablet, mind you – the fourth of four different machines.

The presentation will be made by MS’s CEO Steve Ballmer, and this time the company does expect to get it right.  The only problem is that another Steve got his tablet out first and has a multimillion unit lead.

Presumably by next month there will be a name for Ballmer’s device. The first, launched about a decade ago, didn’t really have one.  Then came the HP Tablet, released less than a month before the other Steve released his, but the HP flopped.  Then came the Courier. Came – and went. In April 2010 Microsoft announced that it would no longer support the Courier.

How will the No-Name differ from its Apple rival?

The device, manufactured by Samsung, is “similar in size and shape to the Apple iPad, although it is not as thin,” writes Nick Bolton of the New York Times.  “It also includes a unique and slick keyboard that slides out from below for easy typing.” It will run on the Windows 7 OS “but will also have a layered interface that will appear when the keyboard is hidden and the device is held in a portrait mode.” One source speculates it will run on something called Windows 8.

The marketing strategy may tilt in the direction of business applications. Has Apple left that niche open? “The company believes there is a huge market for business people who want to enjoy a slate for reading newspapers and magazines and then work on Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint while doing work,” said one observer.

If it feels like you’ve heard this story before, well, you have. Read Microsoft Snoozed its Way through Tablet Revolution.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by The New York Times.

From TechNewsWorld
First Blood Spilled in the New Tablet Wars by Renay San Miguel

“Two in-development tablet devices that seemed intriguing as details were slowly revealed over the last few months have apparently died in the womb. Microsoft said the Courier is not to be, and HP has hit the brakes on the tablet PC Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer showed on stage at CES in January… In a one-two punch to Microsoft and Windows, various technology blogs and websites reported late last week that Microsoft has ended plans to make its Courier dual-screen tablet, and HP (NYSE: HPQ) has hit the brakes on production of the tablet computer that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed off in prototype form at January’s Consumer Electronics Show.”

Our Courier dreams are shattered. However, manufacturers including Microsoft feel there’s still time to produce a tablet but they want to get it right. Ace in the hole is Android-based tablets  (See What Would a Google Tablet Look Like? Here Are Some Clues).

So, the first round goes to Apple. If there’s a round #2 you’ll hear about it.
RC

Now that our speculations about Apple’s tablet (including a name) have been put to rest, it’s time to play Speculation 2.0.  What are we speculating about?  How about a Google tablet.

Electronista says “Google is in the midst of crafting its own tablet to take on the iPad, a leak late Sunday may have revealed. CEO Eric Schmidt at a recent Los Angeles party purportedly told those gathered that the company is working on an Android tablet. Most of its details weren’t mentioned, but it would be both an e-reader and a general computing device.”

The Electronista staff adds: “Any tablet launch would be controversial for Google, as it would not only stoke the heated battle with Apple even further but risk alienating the company’s hardware partners.”

Can’t pass up a good rumor?  Then Google prepping its own Android tablet? is perfect for you.

RC

David Pogue, the wonderful blogger who tells technology like it is for the New York Times, has weighed iPad in the balance and found it not wanting.

He’s also weighed it on a scale and found it heavy compared to Kindle, 1.5 pounds vs. 10 ounces. But that is not a fatal factor in his evaluation.  In fact there are no fatal factors in his evaluation.  His biggest reservation is the fundamental concept of the iPad itself: why does the iPad exist? At first we were mystified by this enigmatic, existential question. But like a koan the answer came the next day.  More on that in a moment.

Pogue’s approach to appraising Apple’s tablet is divided in two: one column for geeks and one for shleppers.  We take umbrage at the distinction, because it doesn’t give much credit to a generation of lay users who are quite conversant with computer specs.  In fact this shlepper didn’t see anything so complex in Pogue’s “techie” section that could not be comprehended by an English major who did his Master’s thesis on Henry James.

Here are some highlights of Pogue’s analysis:

• There’s an e-book reader app, but it’s not going to rescue the newspaper and book industries (sorry, media pundits). The selection is puny (60,000 titles for now). You can’t read well in direct sunlight. At 1.5 pounds, the iPad gets heavy in your hand after awhile (the Kindle is 10 ounces).
• When the iPad is upright, typing on the on-screen keyboard is a horrible experience
• Things open fast, scroll fast, load fast
• The iPad can’t play Flash video…Thousands of Web sites show up with empty white squares on the iPad
• There’s no multitasking…It’s one app at a time
• The simple act of making the multitouch screen bigger changes the whole experience
• A great AT&T cellular deal
• 150,000 existing iPhone apps run on the iPad and 1000 specially designed for the iPad’s bigger screen

We said Pogue likes the iPad with an asterisk, but besides cavils like weight and glare, his specific reservations are so modest we won’t bother to reprint them here.  You can read them on Looking at the iPad From Two Angles

Pogue’s glowing bottom line is this: “The iPad is so fast and light, the multitouch screen so bright and responsive, the software so easy to navigate, that it really does qualify as a new category of gadget. Some have suggested that it might make a good goof-proof computer for technophobes, the aged and the young; they’re absolutely right.”

So – what does Pogue mean when he says the iPad is a hit except for the concept? The answer came in an article by Brad Stone and Claire Cain Miller published in the Times the next day. “Many consumers do not understand the device’s purpose, who would want to pay $500 or more for it and why anyone would need another gadget on top of a computer and smartphone. After all, phones are performing an ever-expanding range of functions, as Apple points out in its many iPhone commercials.” A banker commented that “I can do everything on my MacBook Pro, cellphone and BlackBerry. I don’t need any more devices. I already have six phone numbers and enough things to plug in at night.” A Silicon Valley entrepreneur was quoted as saying “But let’s see: you can’t make a phone call with it, you can’t take a picture with it, and you have to buy content that before now you were not willing to pay for.”

But that very same entrepreneur said “The first five million will be sold in a heartbeat.” Not very enigmatic or cosmic, but until something comes along to top the iPad, this would seem to be the last word.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

Nilay Patel has posted on Engadget a preview of the excruciatingly long awaited Microsoft Courier tablet. It could well give Apple’s iPad a run for the money.

” We’re told Courier will function as a ‘digital journal,’” writes Patel, “and it’s designed to be seriously portable: it’s under an inch thick, weighs a little over a pound, and isn’t much bigger than a 5×7 photo when closed. That’s a lot smaller than we expected…The interface appears to be pen-based and centered around drawing and writing, with built-in handwriting recognition and a corresponding web site that allows access to everything entered into the device in a blog-like format complete with comments…Most interestingly, it looks like the Courier will also serve as Microsoft’s e-book device, with a dedicated ecosystem centered around reading.”

No news on price or release date except a vague “Q3/Q4″. Below is a video demo. For the full Engadget article click here.

RC

Saving up for that iPad? Maybe you should check out the JooJoo first.

JooJoo? That’s one of a host of tablets in one stage or another of development or release. In fact, in the next year or two we’re going to have more tablets than a hypochondriac’s medicine chest. Some compare favorable to Apple’s iPad in price, power, specs and features. If you’re willing to do a little comparison shopping it might be worth waiting and sitting out a dance or two before making your choice of slate or tablet.

Gizmodo has made it easier to do that shopping with a post called Slate Showdown: iPad vs. HP Slate vs. JooJoo vs. Android Tablets & More

Here’s the short version:

The iPad has the most storage, cheap 3G, the time-tested iPhone OS and its mountain of apps, and a serious amount of Apple marketing juice behind it. But it’s also famously lacking features common to the other tablets, such as webcam and multitasking (only first party apps like music and email can multitask). The Notion Ink Adam is perhaps the most interesting of the bunch, with its dual-function transflective screen from Pixel Qi: It can be either a normal LCD or, with the flick of a switch, an easy-on-the-eyes reflective LCD that resembles e-ink. Its hardware is also surprisingly impressive—but it remains to be seen if Android is really the right OS for a 10-inch tablet.

The Dell Mini 5 and forthcoming Android edition of the Archos 7 tablet are two of a kind, almost oversized smartphones in their feature sets. Is an extra two or three inches of screen real estate worth the consequent decrease in pocketability? Perhaps not. And finally, there’s the maligned JooJoo, formerly the CrunchPad, a bit of an oddball as the only web-only device in the bunch. It doesn’t really have apps, can’t multitask, and pretty much confines you to an albeit fancy browser, sort of like Chrome OS will. The JooJoo is also the only tablet here to have no demonstrated way to read ebooks.

If you want to read about any of these in detail, click on the links below.

Apple iPad: [Gizmodo]
HP Slate: [Gizmodo, GDGT; Tipster]
Fusion Garage JooJoo: [Gizmodo]
Notion Ink Adam: [Slashgear]
Dell Mini 5: [Gizmodo, Gizmodo]
Archos 7 Android: [DanceWithShadows, Gizmodo]
Lenovo IdeaPad U1: [Lenovo, Gizmodo, Gizmodo]
Archos 9: [UMPCPortal, Archos]

By the way, do you know the difference between a slate and a tablet? Nobody does – the terms seem to be interchangeable, but the Gizmodo guy likes “slate” if for no other reason than “tablet” is overused.

RC

Two representatives of Aptara, the digital solutions company, have offered a terrific scenario of a typical school room of the future in which everybody’s using a tablet. It’s just what we imagined when we first laid eyes on a tablet back in 2003.

Here’s the opening passage of Aptara’s scenario developed by John Ott and Eric Freese:
*****************************
Welcome to class. Take your new tablet— your only textbook this semester— out of your backpack. It’s about the same size, but lighter and thinner than your old textbooks. It’s also battery-powered, similar to a big touch-screen, like your iPhone.

Use that touch-screen and download the first chapter of your first lesson. That’s right—your lesson is an app. Plug in your earbuds and tap the screen to begin the introductory video.

Cool, the presenter is that famous scientist from the cable show…

Now the video goes into full documentary mode; scenes from real life. Major ideas from the lesson appear as text at the bottom of the screen; so do vocabulary words. Now the presenter is back and he’s working out a big idea step-by-step on the whiteboard…

Video over. Time to read…
**************************************
Has anyone figured out the flaw in this projection? Consider: with digital technology you don’t have to go to class – because there’s no class to go to. You can “attend” school in your bedroom, living room, dorm room, bathroom or car.

Digital technology is the great disintermediator. Among the things it disintermediates is place. There is no school room, at least not one with geographical coordinates. It exists in the cloud. In Gertrude Stein’s immortal phrase, there is no there there. Unfortunately, Stein used it to characterize Philadelphia, but it’s the mot juste for a virtual school room.

University trustees had better begin thinking about discounting tuition for students auditing classes from their bathrooms…

Aptara’s complete article can be seen on the Digital Book World website, and if you haven’t signed up to receive DBW’s newsletter, do log on. You’ll be at least one light year more informed than your neighbors.

Richard Curtis