Man oh man. This is going to be like the netbooksplosion that happened after the EeePC hit. Roy Chen, a big man at ARM, said at a press meeting that they expect perhaps 50 tablet computers to be made available worldwide in 2010. Of course, in the US, we’ll only see a fraction of them — maybe 15 or 20. Some of these will be knockoffs, some Android devices, some this or that or the other thing, and of course all of them are going up against the iPad and will likely measure their specs against it and not each other.
You’ll also see a lot of fragmentation at the size level before one size gets established as the “standard.” Five inches? Seven inches? Nine? Ten? How about dual screens?
It’ll be interesting to be sure, but I get the feeling that, like netbooks, the first year is going to be ugly, iPad included.
[via Wired]
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9168418/ARM_sees_over_50_new_iPad_like_devices_out_this_year
The magazine business is hurting just like all print publications. And even if their Websites are popular, they generate one tenth the ad revenue of the print side. Since last summer, Time Inc has been working on a “Manhattan Project” to create a digital magazine for the new breed of color tablet computers soon to come to market. (Condé Nast is also working on a similar concept). Today, I got a sneak peak at a demo of the tablet magazine designed for Sports Illustrated.
The demo was shown on an HP table computer with a touchscreen, but it could easily be ported to an iPhone or an Apple iTablet, whenever that becomes available. The idea is to create something so beautiful and fluid that readers will actually want to pay for it. The cover takes up the full screen and you tap it to show a table of contents with thumbnails of the actual layout, which you can rearrange to read in any order you like. To flip through the pages you swipe with two fingers, and you can also tap to get a navigational timeline at the bottom. There is also a navigation wheel which lets you share stories via email, Facebook, or Twitter, favorite a story, go to related videos or photos interviews, other articles, or stats such as live scores.
Many gadgets we use today were inspired by the fictional gadgets in Star Trek. Communicators inspired cell phones,