Tag Archives: apple

mobile, tablets

Just three Windows 8 on ARM tablets at launch? Not good for Microsoft

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Bloomberg reports unknown sources stating that only three Windows on ARM (WOA) tablets will be available at launch:

There will be fewer ARM-based devices in the rollout because Microsoft has tightly controlled the number and set rigorous quality-control standards, said one of the people. The new version of Windows will be the first to use ARM processors, which are most commonly found in smartphones. Windows 7, the current version, only works with Intel’s technology. Three of the Windows 8 ARM devices will be tablets, the people said.

This may be nonsense but I can see this playing out badly for Microsoft. I am making several assumptions here:

1. The design of Windows 8 is all about tablets. If it fails on tablets, then it has failed.

2. Windows 8 Intel tablets will not compete with the Apple iPad and will probably not do well. The main reason is the old one: Windows desktop is mostly unusable with touch alone. I mean, you can get it to work but it is not much fun, and that will not change.  Supplementary reasons are that Intel CPUs are less efficient than ARM which means shorter battery life, and that traditional Windows applications expect lots of disk space and RAM, and that OEMs will want to pre-install anti-malware and other foistware, and repeat the mistakes of the past that are driving users with relief towards iPads.

I can also imagine Windows 8 Intel tablets being sold with add-on styluses and keyboards that are necessary to operate desktop applications, but a nuisance in all sorts of ways.

3. Windows on ARM has more potential to be a compelling iPad alternative. Metro-style apps are designed for tablets and will work well with touch alone. ARM devices may be lightweight and with long battery life. The locked-down Windows Store is some protection against excessive OEM interference. With Microsoft Office compatibility thrown in, these might appeal to a business user who would otherwise buy an iPad.

Despite the above, my guess is that Microsoft’s OEM partners will instinctively put most of their effort into Windows 8 on Intel tablets, because that it the way it has always been, and because of an assumption that someone buying a Windows 8 device will want to run Windows applications, and not just Metro-style apps.

The problem is that such people will try Windows 8 on Intel tablets, hate them because of the reasons in (2) above, and end up buying iPads anyway.

The counter argument? That Apple conquered the tablet market with just one model, so perhaps three is more than enough.

apple, development, facebook, google, internet, itunes, javascript, mobile, Web, web authoring

Financial Times thrives on HTML 5, paywall, and snubbing Apple iTunes

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I spoke to Rob Grimshaw, Managing Director of FT.Com, shortly after Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where the FT web app won an award for “Best Mobile Innovation for Publishing”.

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I was interested in speaking to Grimshaw for two reasons.

First, the FT is a publication which has successfully managed the transition from print to online. The latest published results , for the first half of 2011, report that FT Group sales were up 7% and profits up 10%, “enhanced by digital subscriptions.”

Second, the FT took the initiative to bypass Apple’s app store with its onerous subscription terms by remaking its app as HTML5, as reported here .
The award “was the icing on the cake for the whole process,” Grimshaw told me. “When we abandoned the native app and stepped out of iTunes, it was a big commercial gamble, and it was a rueful moment as well because we’d created a beautiful native app and won an Apple design award.”

Was the FT move all about subscription fees, or were there other factors? “It was not all about Apple,” said Grimshaw. “Certainly their 30% tax on subscriptions didn’t make sense to us, because we already have our own platform so why pay somebody else to use their platform? Second, they would have owned the relationship with the customer. That’s important for various reasons, but for example it makes it difficult to manage churn, which is a crucial aspect of a subscription business.

“There were some other reasons. The mobile market would have been problematic if we had to keep developing all our applications for many different  operating systems. The overhead is enormous. It doesn’t stop once you’ve launched the app, you have to keep ugrading and changing.

“HTML 5 offers a way out of that headache by producing code that runs across multiple platforms.

“When you add all of that together, it seems to be smart to go the HTML 5 route even though it was technologically risky because at the time nobody else had done it.”

So what has been the impact of the web app versus the native app?

“A lot of people said, if we leave iTunes we’ll disappear from the world. We haven’t found that to be the case. In the four month period after we launched the web app, from June through to October 2011, our traffic on the iPad and the iPhone increased by over 50%. 1.7 million people have now visited the web application, more than ever downloaded our old iPhone and iPad app combined.

“We have many tools and techniques which help us to promote and build audience in the browser, and they work just as effectively for the web app as they do for our normal web sites.”

Is the success of the web app a reflection of the type of app, which is content-dominated, or will web apps dominate more generally in the mobile space?

“I think that HTML 5 will dominate. The buzz around HTML 5 at Mobile World Congress reinforced that view. It feels to me that there is an unstoppable momentum behind it,” said Grimshaw, mentioning PhoneGap-style native wrappers as well as pure web apps. “The counter argument is that for some of the new features of phones and tablets you have to use native code. However, I think 90% of applications don’t need that kind of support. We produce a very sophisticated app, and HTML 5 covers all the functions that we would ever need to use.”

“Once people discover what they can do within the browser they will start thinking why would you develop in native when it creates all of these headaches.”

As form factors become more varied, do you see a convergence between what you do for mobile and what you do for the wider internet?

“I can see them coming together. I can imagine a day where a single set of HTML 5 code can power our site across the full range of smartphones, tablets and desktop. The only obstacle is that so many browsers on the desktop don’t support HTML 5 fully.

“That doesn’t make all the contexting go away. Now with our mobile development we are dividing screen sizes into four buckets, and the thinking is that we will have to design for those four screen sizes. Device manufacturers are going to carry on producing a device to occupy every possible niche, and as publishers we have to cope with that.”

How important is cloud and mobile to your business, what new opportunities does it offer?

“Mobile is incredibly strategically important. I’m personally convinced that mobile will be the main distribution channel for news in the future. People’s lives don’t stop when they leave their desks or exit their houses. They want to carry on their friendships, their business, their reading. If you have a powerful mobile device that can deliver that, you’re going to gravitate to that device, and pretty soon it does become the main channel.

“We already see the audience migrating onto mobile. About 20% of our page views now come from mobile devices. That could be over half within three years. Figuring out how to present our content, sell our subscriptions, deliver our advertising on mobile devices is hugely important.

“It’s a shift on a tectonic scale. For publishers this is a bigger shift than the shift from print to desktop, and it’s happening faster.

“It does create new opportunities as well. We have a new sales channel, we’re now selling our subscriptions through mobile devices. 15 to 20% of our new digital subscriptions every week are sold directly through mobile devices.

“It gives us the potential to reach new audiences. We’ve seen some good evidence from the mobile operators to show that our audience from mobile is much younger that our audience on desktop or on print. Devices are helping us to reach younger audiences and recruit readers who might be with us for the rest of their lives.”

What about social media and the relationship with the big web portals, Google, Facebook, Twitter?

“I see social media as a parallel trend to mobile. Mobile is the desire of people to take content with them physically. Social media is about the desire of people to take content with them virtually, and equally powerful.

“On the advertising side I find social media a little alarming because of scale. Facebook has a trillion page views a month, which makes them 400 times bigger than the BBC and 1500 times bigger than the New York Times. It’s scale which is unimaginable for most publishers, and they have tremendous insight into their audience. That’s a potent cocktail. And every time someone shares an FT article on Facebook, an extra bit of data builds up on their side that tells them about our readers.

“On the subscription side though it is all positive and they can be powerful sales channels for us. We have big communities in social media, 300,000 odd on Facebook, 1.2 million Twitter followers, and these are to some extend self-selecting marketing audiences, people who stuck up their hand and said we’re interested in the FT.

“We also believe we can find ways to allow people to consume content in the social media environment if they are subscribers. We’re working on finding ways to do that.”

What do you think of paywalls versus free content for newspapers on the web? Does the paywall only work because the FT is a niche publication, albeit a large niche?

“We are very much on the paywall side and unashamedly so, we think our content has tremendous value and people do not object to paying for it. We now have 270,000 digital subscribers and that compares to our newspaper circulation which is around 330,000, so we’ve been successful in building up a paying audience in digital which is now pretty close in scale to our paying audience. It’s been an enormously success business venture for us.

“When you look at the publishers that are giving all their content away, the reason they are giving it all away is in order to build up a bigger audience for advertising. But the scale of the competition in the advertising market is so huge that actually it is a fruitless exercise, unless you can acquire a scale which will give you billions of page views a month. It’s very hard to see how you can build a decent business just from online advertising. The numbers don’t stack up.

“My message to other publishers is not necessarily that you have got to have a paywall, but is that you probably need other ways to make money, other than online advertising.”

apple, cloud computing, microsoft, mobile, professional

Tablets will be bigger than PCs. Are you ready?

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Apple’s CEO Tim Cook spoke at the Goldman Sachs Technology Conference yesterday; Macrumors has what looks like a full transcript. Do not expect hot news; there is little or nothing in the way of announcements. It is interesting though as a recap of how Apple sees its future: iPad, iPhone, iCloud, Apple TV, maybe some future huge acquisition financed by its cash pile.

This is what stands out for me:

From the first day it shipped, we thought that the tablet market would become larger than the PC market and it was just a matter of the time it took for that to occur. I feel that stronger today than I did then.

I agree. The reasons are similar to those that caused laptops to outpace desktops. Mobility and convenience trump the better computing value you get in a desktop PC. Note: we still use desktops, and both desktops and laptops will continue to sell, but in smaller quantity.

Although you can list numerous reasons why tablets are not good enough – no keyboard, small storage capacity, underpowered for cutting-edge gaming, not really expandable, favourite apps not yet available, and more – none of these is sufficient to prevent the tablet taking over in the majority of cases.

You can have a keyboard if you want; build it into the case. Storage is increasing all the time, and we have the cloud. Graphics power is increasing all the time. Most people are happy to sacrifice expandability for the simplicity and reliability of a tablet. If your favourite app is not yet available, it soon will be; or else an equivalent will appear that replaces it.

Tablet benefits? Cost, no flappy screen, light and small, designed for ease of use, reliability of an appliance versus a computer for starters.

In itself, the move from one type of computing device to another is no big deal. The reason this one is such a deep change is because of other factors. I will list three:

  • The lock down

    Pioneered by Apple, this is the idea that users should not have full access to the operating system on their device in almost any circumstances. The lock down is a cost and a benefit. The benefit: resilience against malware, greater reliability. The cost: loss of control, loss of freedom, handing over even more power to those who do have full access, primarily the operating system vendor. Where UEFI secure boot is enabled, it is not even possible to boot to an alternative operating system.

  • The store

    Hand in hand with the lock down is the store, the notion that apps can only be installed through the operating system vendor’s store. This is not a universal tablet feature. Apple’s iPad has it, Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows 8 on ARM has it, Android devices generally let you enable “unknown sources” in order to install apps via a downloaded package, though sometimes this option is missing. Further, both Apple and Microsoft have schemes whereby corporates can install private apps. Still, the consequence of the lock down is that the ability to install apps freely is something which can be tuned either way. Since store owners take a cut of all the business, they have have a strong incentive to drive business their way.

    I have never believed Apple’s line that the iTunes store is intended as a break-even project for the convenience of its hardware customers.

  • The operating system

    I am at risk of stating the obvious, but the fact that most tablets are iPads and most non-Apple tablets are Android is a monumental shift from the Windows-dominated world of a few years back. Can Microsoft get back in this game? I am impressed with what I have seen of Windows 8 and it would probably be my tablet of choice if it were available now. The smooth transition it offers between the old PC desktop world and the new tablet world is compelling.

    That said, this cannot be taken for granted. I watched someone set up a new Android tablet recently, and was interested to see how the user was driven to sign up for a variety of services from Google and HTC (it was an HTC Flyer). Devices will be replaced, but accounts and identities are sticky. Users who switch devices may face having to move documents to a different cloud provider if they know how, re-purchase apps, figure out how to move music they have purchased, re-buy DRM content. A big ask, which is why Microsoft’s late start is so costly. At best, it will be a significant player (I think it will be) but not dominant as in the past.

    Late start? Did not Bill Gates wave a slate around and predict that it would be the future of the PC back in 2001:

    "So next year a lot of people in the audience, I hope, will be taking their notes with those Tablet PCs … it’s a PC that is virtually without limits and within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America."

    Right idea, wrong execution. Microsoft tried again with Origami, the ultra mobile PC, a device that was so obviously flawed that everyone knew it would fail. My belief is that Microsoft, helped by Apple’s example, has a tablet concept that works this time round, but nevertheless the history is discouraging.

    One reason for the relative failure of the Tablet PC and the complete failure of Origami was price. Microsoft’s business model depends on selling software licenses, whereas Apple mostly bundles this cost into that of the hardware, and Android is free. Price of the first Windows 8 tablets is unknown, but could again prove to be a problem.

    Interesting to debate; but however it shakes out, Windows-only is not coming back .

It follows that as tablet use continues to grow, both business and consumer computing are transforming into something different from what we have become used to. Considering this fact, it would be interesting to analyse affected businesses in terms of how ready they are for this change. It would be fascinating to see companies ordered by some kind of tablet readiness index, and my guess is that those towards the bottom of that hypothetical list are in for a nasty shock.

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microsoft, professional, software development, windows

Windows on ARM fixes much that is wrong with Windows, but lack of apps makes it Microsoft’s big risk

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Vendors who create new platforms work hard to attract developers, because high availability of apps is seen as essential for success. This is why, for example, RIM is offering free PlayBooks to developers who submit apps to BlackBerry App World.

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Why then would Microsoft deliberately and consciously choose to release a new family of Windows machines on which existing Windows applications cannot run, even when recompiled? This is what is happening with Windows on ARM (WOA), as Windows President Steven Sinofsky makes clear in his lengthy post on the subject:

Developers wanting to reach WOA with existing apps have two options. Many apps will be best served by building new Metro style front ends for existing data sources or applications, and communicating through a web services API … Other existing applications will be well served by reusing large amounts of engine or runtime code, and surrounding that with a Metro style experience.

This restriction means that WOA cannot benefit from what what might otherwise be its biggest advantage versus the competition: huge numbers of apps that could easily be ported.

Microsoft’s reasoning is that the existing Windows software deployment model is broken so badly that it cannot be fixed:

If we enabled the broad porting of existing code we would fail to deliver on our commitment to longer battery life, predictable performance, and especially a reliable experience over time. The conventions used by today’s Windows apps do not necessarily provide this, whether it is background processes, polling loops, timers, system hooks, startup programs, registry changes, kernel mode code, admin rights, unsigned drivers, add-ins, or a host of other common techniques. By avoiding these constructs, WOA can deliver on a new level of customer satisfaction: your WOA PC will continue to perform well over time as apps are isolated from the system and each other, and you will remain in control of what additional software is running on your behalf, all while letting the capabilities of diverse hardware shine through.

says Sinofsky. It is a view that has merit, particularly when you consider how badly Windows has been damaged by poor quality OEM software.

Note that he is even promising an end to Windows “cruft”, as memorably described by Verity Stob in State of Decay:

Cruft Force 7. Wounded. Description: No longer able to logon using original account as the system freezes, so must logon as "Verity2" or similar

and the like. “Your WOA PC will continue to perform well over time,” Sinofsky promises.

Another reason to like this approach is that the Windows Runtime (WinRT), the platform for which third-parties are allowed to develop, is in my view a great piece of work. The WinRT apps in the Windows 8 Developer Preview perform well, even though they are simple things put together quickly, many of them by students as I recall. The insistence on asynchronous calls for any system API that might be slow to return should ensure responsive applications.

At the BUILD conference last September we were told that the Windows team sat down to create a new platform that avoids the mistakes of the past and while it introduce frustrations of its own, some of which we know about and some of which developers will discover, it does appear to be well thought-through.

Microsoft Office itself is not the best performing of software, particularly Outlook which is prone to long hangs. Fortunately, Outlook is missing from the version of Office 15 which will ship for WOA, and journalist Adrian Kingsley-Hughes reports positively on a recent glimpse at the software.

The big risk

A sure-fire success then? No, because the downside of WOA is that right now there are no apps for it, beyond what we have seen in the developer preview. It is a brand new platform; and the history of personal computing is littered with good products that failed because they could not achieve sufficient momentum.

I am just back from RIM’s BlackBerry conference in Amsterdam, impressed by what I have seen of the PlayBook and forthcoming BlackBerry 10 platform and its tools for developers, but thinking, is this enough to persuade a customer to buy a BlackBerry tablet instead of the safe choices of Apple iOS or Google Android?

Microsoft has the market presence to make this work, you may think; but the Windows Phone 7 story so far shows that this is not enough. The new phone OS has only a tiny market share after a year, and if it recovers, it will be more to do with Nokia than with Microsoft.

WOA also has interesting competition in the form of Windows 8 on x86, which will also have WinRT, but without the restrictions on desktop apps. If partners focus on Intel Windows 8, as the “full” version, it could be hard for WOA to find its market.

There are problems with Windows 8 on x86 too. Most of existing Windows apps will need a keyboard and mouse to work properly, and expect to find large amounts of storage, not the 16 or 32 GB in a typical tablet. Windows 8 Intel devices may end up like the Samsung tablet given to attendees at BUILD: powerful, but heavy, expensive, with short battery life, and complete with the clutter of a separate keyboard. Such devices have their place, but they are not an answer to the iPad.

It is WOA, not Windows 8 x86, that has to win market share from Apple.

Microsoft is choosing to do WOA right, rather than opening it up to the kinds of problems which have afflicted Windows in the past. That does makes sense, because it is those problems which have made users gladly move away from Windows now that compelling alternatives are available.

I also believe that OS vendors work too hard to pump up the app numbers, and not hard enough to ensure quality, resulting in app stores full of poor to indifferent apps. This is why schemes like the BlackBerry effort mentioned above do as much harm as good, enticing developers to submit rubbish in order to win a new gadget. An app store with 10 great apps is better for users than one with a thousand poor ones.

It is nevertheless true that apps make or break a platform. BUILD attendees and those who have downloaded the Windows 8 developer preview have had the tools to make WinRT apps for a few months now, but my impression is that most are waiting to see how it progresses before investing seriously in WinRT development. Another problem is that Windows 8 developer preview works nicely on a real tablet, but not so well in a virtual machine or on a PC without a touch screen.

I still think WOA may work.

  • If Microsoft does a good job with WOA Office, giving it an unique selling point against the competition.
  • If the WOA devices are competitively priced.
  • If the battery life is good.
  • If there are at least a handful of truly worthwhile third-party apps at launch.
  • If there is not some obvious problem with stability, or an annoyance that spoils the experience, like the one I found on the PlayBook when the virtual keyboard failed to pop up when trying to author a tweet in the web browser.

That is a lot of ifs though, and the progress of WOA will be a fascinating tech story throughout 2012.

apple, mobile, smartphones, tablets

What is in BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0: new universal inbox and remote control

Here at BlackBerry Devcon Europe attendees were shown the key features of PlayBook 2.0, an update for the RIM tablet that will run on the existing hardware.

Aside from new runtimes for developers and some usability tweaks, the main changes users will notice are a new universal inbox and PIM (Personal Information Manager), and deeper integration between the PlayBook and BlackBerry smartphones.

The PlayBook 2.0 PIM offers a single inbox for Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter as well as email.

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The PIM includes an embedded web browser so that you can view HTML messages without leaving the application.

The application also covers calendar and contacts.

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If you look in detail at a meeting, you can see the other attendees, presuming that the information is available.

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One of the aims is to aggregate information drawn from social networks and from the internet. It is a compelling idea, and one that Microsoft has also used. For example, when you view an email the Outlook Social Connector automatically looks up status messages from FaceBook and LinkedIn from the author. Windows Phone also aggregates information from multiple social networks in its People hub.

RIM talked about adding web information. We were given the example of getting an email from someone and viewing recent press releases from their company within the PlayBook 2.0 PIM. If this is well implemented, it does make sense, giving you useful background without the need of a manual web search. A contact record is no longer just name, address and company, but a portal into that person’s story and current activity.

The other big new feature in PlayBook 2.0 is remote control. You can use your BlackBerry SmartPhone as a controller and input device for the PlayBook.

What is the point of this? A good question, to which the most obvious answer is that you can use the physical keypad on a BlackBerry to type on the PlayBook. This drew applause when demonstrated.

I asked for other use cases on Twitter. The main other suggestion was using a BlackBerry as a remote when your PlayBook is plugged into a screen as a media player or presenter.

The concept goes beyond this though. Here is new CEO Thorsten Heins speaking in the keynote:

Just take this idea a step further. Think about BlackBerry 10 being a platform, for mobile computing, for smartphones, so it really shows the deep integration of the BlackBerry platform. Think about having your PlayBook somewhere on your desk at your home, and you can control everything just from your BlackBerry, I think that is fantastic

Incidentally, RIM’s operating system naming is confusing. This is how it goes. BlackBerry OS up to and including 7.0 is the old smartphone OS that is being phased out. The new OS is based on QNX and first seen in the PlayBook, which runs Tablet OS 1.0. Version 2.0 of this OS, due out later this month with the features mentioned above, is called PlayBook OS 2.0.

BlackBerry 10 is the next iteration of this QNX-based OS and will run on SmartPhones as well as on the PlayBook. BlackBerry 10 is expected later in 2012, probably towards the end of the year.

RIM’s future depends on wide acceptance of BlackBerry 10. The uncomfortable question: how many mobile operating systems can succeed? It seems that Apple iOS and Google Android are well established, but the future prospects of new entrants such as BlackBerry 10 and Windows 8 is open to speculation.

Update: I visited the exhibition here and spent some time hands-on with the version of the PIM that is installed on the PlayBook devices. It is disappointing, though bear in mind that it is not, I was told, the final version (though if the final version is coming this month you would have thought it is not far off).

Some key points:

  • The embedded HTML rendering in the email client is just for the message itself. If you tap a link, it takes you into the separate web browser app.
  • In order to get social network status updates from the author of an email message, you have to be logged into that social network and the author must already be one of your “friends”, or so I was told. I hope this is incorrect, as it seems largely to defeat the purpose of this kind of integration. Outlook’s social connector retrieves status updates from anyone irrespective of whether you are logged into that network or have them on your friends list.
  • I asked about SharePoint integration and received the vaguest of answers. A SharePoint app is in preparation but there is no word on when it might appear, and it may be dependent on some sort of Microsoft input.
  • There is no official cloud storage service from RIM. You can use third-party services like Dropbox. Enterprises are expected to use internal file shares, via VPN if necessary.

It seems to me that RIM is in danger of missing an important market for PlayBook here. Many RIM customers use Microsoft’s platform because of the link with Exchange. A tablet with excellent support for SharePoint and Office 365 would have obvious value, and Microsoft can be expected to tap into this with Windows 8. BlackBerry could get there first with PlayBook but it looks like this will not be the case.

apple, comment, mobile, rants, reviews, tablets

Apple iBooks Author aims at school textbook market, but beware the lock-in

Apple claims to “Reinvent Textbooks” with the introduction of iBooks 2 for iPad, along with an accompanying free authoring tool for the Mac.

iBooks Author is already in the Mac App Store and I had a quick look. It is template based, so the first thing you do is to make your choice.

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I picked Contemporary, whereupon the authoring screen opened and I started to make some edits. If you divide Desktop Publishing (DTP) tools into those that are more oriented towards longer books, and those more oriented towards shorter but more graphically rich titles, then iBooks Author is in the former category. You can write the text in Pages or Word, and then import to iBooks Author. You can also add images, charts, tables, hyperlinks, and a variety of widgets including HTML, Keynote presentations, 3D models and more. The format of some of the widgets seems to be Dashcode, as used by the Dashboard in Mac OS X; certainly that is the case for the HTML widget.

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I got a bit stuck on one point. I did not want the astronomy images in the template, but was not ready with an alternative. However I could not delete the image placeholder. It seems that the templates are somewhat restrictive.

Once your work is ready you can preview it. This is interesting. In order to preview, you attach an iPad, open iBooks on the iPad, and then select it in iBooks Author. A nice touch: the book appears on the iPad marked Proof.

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There is also an animation as the book opens. In the grab below, you can spot the busy icon: this is because the smart cover disappears automatically so you have to grab it on the fly.

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What about publishing? You can export your work in one of three formats: iBooks, PDF, or plain text.

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Apple emphasises the licensing agreement right there in the Export dialog. You can only sell your book through the Apple iBookstore. Note also that the book is only for iPad. You cannot read it on a Mac, let alone on an Amazon Kindle, unless you choose PDF and make it available for free.

Here is the agreement in more detail:

B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:
(i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;
(ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.

I exported the book in iBooks format and took a quick look at the contents in an editor.

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On a quick look, it seems to have a lot in common with a standard epub, but is nevertheless a proprietary Apple format.

Finally, a few observations. I have no doubt that eBook usage will grow rapidly in education as elsewhere, and the iPad is a delightful device on which to read them, though expensive.

I do have nagging concerns though. In typical Apple style, this is an only-Apple solution for authors or publishers who need to charge for their work. Does it really make sense for schools and colleges to recommend and use textbooks that can only be read on Apple devices? Of course publishers can repurpose the same underlying content for other formats, though they will have to be careful how they use iBooks Author to avoid falling foul of the licensing clause quoted above.

Is there no way to reinvent textbooks without an Apple tax and locking knowledge into proprietary formats?

asus, linux, microsoft, mobile, open source, professional

Users petition Asus over locked bootloader in Asus Transformer Prime

The new Asus Transformer Prime TF201 Android tablet is winning praise for its performance and flexibility. It is driven by NVIDIA’s quad-core Tegra 3 processor and can be equipped with a keyboard and dock that extends battery life and makes the device more like a laptop.

All good; but techie users are upset that the bootloader is encrypted, which means the kernel cannot be modified other than through official Asus updates.

A petition on the subject has achieved over 2000 signatures. Detailed discussion of the implications are here.

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Why do vendors lock the bootloader? One reason is for support, since it increases the user’s ability to mess up their machines. On the other hand, most users who hack to this extent understand what they are doing. This comment from the petition stood out for me:

We understand that custom firmware cannot be supported by ASUS, but we consider that it is our right to customise our devices in any way we wish: once bought, the Prime is our property alone to modify if we choose.

This is something we have taken for granted in the PC era, but the tablet era is looking different, with locked-down devices that give vendors more control. The success of the Apple iPad suggests that most users do not mind if the result is a good experience. It is a profound change though, and one that makes users vulnerable to vendors who are slow or reluctant to provide updates.

apple, gadgets, gaming, tablets

An Apple iPad Christmas

The Apple iPad had a stunning Christmas – at least, it did in my part of the world.

A key factor was that EA Games decided to offer a range of classic board games adapted as iPad apps for 69p ($0.90)  each. So for less than the cost of a takeaway pizza I downloaded Scrabble, Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit and Risk.

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The games are not perfect – Scrabble accepts all sorts of odd words and US spellings, for example – but they are official licensed versions, nicely implemented, and a lot of nostalgic fun, which is the idea after all.

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Trivial Pursuit supports in-game purchases for extra questions, so that could work out more expensive eventually, but nobody could complain about the value.

It is not quite the full board game experience, with wine spilt on the pieces, junior tipping over the board in disgust, and game abandoned early because it is time to visit grandma, but the changes are mostly for the better.

One thought: this is another example of how well a tablet substitutes for physical things. A book, a board game, a photo album: the iPad is a better replacement than a PC or laptop, easily passed round, long battery life, no flapping screen, and a more natural user interface.

I am not sure what are the economics of selling games at 69p, but no doubt EA has drawn the graphs. Currently EA 69p games occupy four of the “Top Paid iPad Apps” category slots in the UK store.

Of course I am interested in the big picture. Looking at user reviews of Android equivalents like Monopoly I get the impression that there are more bugs, partly because EA has a dedicated iPad verson for these games whereas the Android versions are universal across multiple screen sizes, and partly because there are more OS versions and hardware differences to accommodate.

What about other tablets or new entrants to the market like Windows 8 in 2012? Prising users away from their Apple devices will not be easy, though I still think Microsoft has chances if it plays to its strengths in business applications.

apple, tablets

Running Windows on an Apple iPad

I love the convenience of the iPad but there are times when I miss Windows apps. It is not just for work; there is nothing on the iPad to rival Jack Bridge, for example.

The solution is to run Windows on the iPad via remote desktop.

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Most versions of Windows have remote desktop built-in, though you do need to install a client on the iPad. I have tried several and settled for the moment on Mocha RDP. If you tap the up arrow at bottom right, you get a toolbar which controls the on-screen keyboard, extra keys useful for Windows, and a menu with options including a macro of pre-defined keystrokes. It even works with my cheap iPad keyboard.

The downside of this approach is that Windows needs to be running somewhere on your network. However Mocha RDP supports wake on lan, so you can turn it on remotely; note that this normally needs to be activated in the PC BIOS.

In my case I already run a Hyper-V server, a free download. I have installed Windows 7 on a VM (virtual machine), so it is always available.

The iPad also supports VPN (Virtual Private Network), so given a decent broadband connection I could connect to Windows while out and about. Alternatively there are systems like LogMeIn which do not require a VPN, though you have to install the LogMeIn agent on the target PC.

The general approach makes a lot of sense to me. Technically it is a hybrid thin/thick client approach. An iPad or other tablet is smart and has its own local apps and storage, but does not attempt to provide the full capabilities of a PC or Mac. When you need that, you can log into a remote desktop.

It is another example of how the mobile revolution is making us rethink how we do computing. The thin client concept is nothing new, but it is only now that it is becoming compelling for users as well as administrators, giving them the convenience of a tablet as well as access to rich applications like Microsoft Office.

Microsoft no doubt has its own plans for combining tablets with desktop-as-a-service. I would guess that it involves Windows 8 on ARM; but it will take some effort to tempt users away from their iPads.

apple, reviews

Review: my bargain iPad Bluetooth keyboard from a Chinese market

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During my recent visit to Beijing I went along to the Hong Qiao market. It was quite an experience, with lots of fun gadgets on display, mostly fake but with plenty of good deals to be had.

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I did not buy much but could not resist an iPad Bluetooth keyboard. I have been meaning to try one of these for a while. The one I picked is integrated into a “leather” case.

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The packaging is well future-proofed:

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Of course I had to haggle over the price, and we eventually settled on ¥150, about £15.00 or $24.00.

It comes with a smart 12-page manual, which you will enjoy if you like slightly mangled English, though there are some small differences between the product and the manual. A power LED is described in the manual but seems not to exist. The manual makes a couple of references to Windows and in fact the keyboard does also work with Windows, but there is nothing silly like a Windows key and this really is designed for the iPad.

No manufacturer is named, which is odd as the vendor insisted that it is “original”, though the box does say “Made in China”.

The design is straightforward. The iPad slots in to what becomes the top flap of the case. Open the case, and you can set the iPad into an upright position for typing. The lower flap of the case has a magnetic clasp, which works fine. It is a bit of a nuisance though as it gets a little in the way when you are in typing mode. You cannot fold it back to tuck it out of the way.

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I noticed a few blemishes in the case; possibly I had a second-grade example.

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But I have not found any technical problems.

The unit is supplied with a micro USB cable for charging. It did not take long to charge and I think was already half-charged when I purchased.

Here is a closer look at the keyboard itself.

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Once charged, you turn on the power and pair it to your iPad by pressing the Connect button. I had a little difficulty with this until I discovered that you must press down until you feel a distinct click, then it goes into pairing mode. If you then go into the iPad’s Bluetooth settings you will see the keyboard as an available device. Connect, and you are prompted with a code. Type this code on the keyboard to complete the pairing.

The power switch on the keyboard is impossibly small and fiddly to use. If you know how small is a standard micro USB socket you will get the scale in this picture:

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So can you just leave the keyboard on? The keyboard claims a standby time of 100 days, so maybe that will be OK, though the manual warns:

When you are finished using your keyboard or you will be required after the keyboard to carry, so don’t forget to set aside the keyboard to switch the source OFF, turn off the keyboard’s power to extend battery life.

Note: When you normally using the keyboard, or if you are not using the keyboard and didn’t turn off the power switch, please don’t fold or curly, so you will have been working at the keyboard, it will greatly decrease you using the keyboard.

I think this means that turning it off is recommended.

Now the big question: how is it in use? It is actually pretty good. I can achieve much faster text input with the keyboard than using the on-screen option, and it is great to see your document without a virtual keyboard obscuring half the screen.

The keyboard is the squishy type and claims to be waterproof. In fact:

It is waterproof, dustproof, anti-pollution, anti-acid, waterproof for silicone part

according to the manual, as well as having:

Silence design, it will not affect other people’s rest.

which is good to know.

The keyboard has a US layout, but shift-3 gets me a £ sign and alt-2 a € symbol so I am well covered.

There are a number of handy shortcut keys along the top which cover brightness, on-screen keyboard display, search, iTunes control, and a few other functions. There is a globe key that I have not figured out; it looks as if it should open Safari but it does not. There are also Fn, Control, Alt and Command keys, cursor keys, and Shift keys at left and right. Most of the keyboard shortcuts I have seen listed for iPad keyboards in general seem to work here as well.

Learning keyboard shortcuts is one of things you need to do in order to get the best from this. For example, press alt+e and then any vowel to get an acute accent, press alt+backtick and then any vowel to get a grave accent, and so on. Finding the right shortcuts is a bit of an adventure and I have more to discover. Not everything is covered; I have not found any way to apply bold from the keyboard in Pages, for example. I would also love to find an equivalent to alt-tab on Windows, which switches through running apps. There is a Home key which you can double-tap, but then you have to tap the screen to select an app (unless you know better).

I am pleased with the keyboard, though given the defects in the case and irritations like the tiny power switch it is not really a huge bargain. I find it thought-provoking though. Is iPad + keyboard all I need when on the road, or have I just recreated an inferior netbook? The size and weight is not much different.

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Unlike some, I do still see value in the netbook, which has a better keyboard, a battery life that is nearly as good (at least it was when new), handy features like USB, ethernet and VGA ports, and the ability to run Microsoft Office and other Windows apps.

I am also finding that while I like the iPad keyboard for typing, the integrated case has a downside. If you just want to use the iPad as a tablet, the keyboard gets in the way. Maybe a freestanding Bluetooth keyboard is better, like the official Apple item, though that means another item kicking around in your bag.

In the end, the concept needs a little more design work. Having a keyboard in the case is a good idea, but it needs to be so slim that it does not bulk up the package much and gets out of the way when not needed. Perhaps some sort of fabric keyboard is the answer.

Incidentally, if you hanker after one of these but cannot get to the Hong Qiao market, try eBay or Amazon for a number of keyboard cases that look similar to me. Look carefully though; I noticed one by “LuvMac” which lacks a right Shift key, causing some complaints. Mine does have a right Shift key; perhaps it is a later revision.

Hmm, I have just realised that the lady on the stall forgot to give me a receipt or warranty …