Friday, January 29, 2010

WIRED


Apple iPad Raises the Stakes for E-Readers

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Apple’s much-awaited iPad tablet is a good looking, multi-purpose e-reader but it is no Kindle slayer, say publishing executives and electronic-book enthusiasts. Instead the iPad is likely to raise the stakes and help traditional e-readers evolve into more sophisticated devices.

“The iPad is for casual readers and people who favor an all-in-one type of device, while dedicated E Ink-based e-readers are for avid readers,” says Wiebe de Jager, executive director with Eburon Academic Publishers, a Netherlands-based publishing service.

“The iPad is a great device for casual reading, especially magazine-like articles and textbooks, and to a lesser extent for ebooks but there is no way you can compare the iPad’s backlit LCD screen to low power e-readers screens today,” he says.

Apple on Wednesday launched the iPad, a lightweight tablet with a 9.7-inch touchscreen display that brings together web surfing, books, movies and music in an easy-to-carry device. The iPad, which will start shipping in about two months, ranges from $500 to $830 depending on storage and connectivity.

But that’s still almost twice the price of a 6-inch e-reader with half the convenience, says James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research.

“Now that we have seen the iPad, we don’t feel that the e-reader market is going to be hampered by it,” he says.”Smaller sized e-readers are half the price of an iPad and great for reading.”

But McQuivey expects the iPad to hurt the large-screen readers category, which includes the Kindle DX and the Plastic Logic Que. The Kindle DX features a 9.7-inch black and white screen and is priced at $490, while the 10.5-inch Plastic Logic Que with E Ink costs $650 and $800 depending on the storage offered.

An iPad screen for all seasons?

The fundamental difference between digital book readers and their electronic peers, such as laptops and phones, is display technology.

Smartphones and laptops use LCD screens that offer vivid color images but are difficult to read in sunlight. Electronic ink displays, as seen in the Kindle and other e-book readers, are currently stuck in a black-and-white world but they claim a better reading experience. Take a Kindle or a Sony Reader to the park on a sunny weekend and you could have a day-long picnic with just the e-reader.

The iPad can’t offer the same advantages. Vinita Jakhanwal, an analyst with research firm iSuppli say an LCD screen is not as sunlight-friendly as an E Ink display.

The LCD screen also consumes more battery: an iPad promises 10 hours of battery life compared to a Kindle, which doesn’t have to be charged for at least a week. The Kindle’s E Ink screen consumes power only when the page is turned. Turn off the wireless on the and you can go for a week without plugging it in. By comparison an LCD display is said to drink anywhere from 40 percent to 60 percent of the device’s overall power consumption. Backlighting in LCDs can drain power though companies are trying to use LEDs for the backlight to save on power. Apple hasn’t made it clear if the iPad screen uses LED backlight.

An LCD screen can also be harsher on the eyes. “Reading for a few hours on a handheld LCD screen can be quite a strain,” says Jakhanwal.

Where the iPad does score is in its ability to offer a color display and the ability to embed audio and video files in books. That may not be an advantage for too long. Both E Ink and Qualcomm are working on offering color screens that consume very little power and can be used both outdoors and indoors. At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month, Pixel Qi showed a LCD display that can do switch between a full color and video mode and a low-power black-and-white display.

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Adobe Plays the Porn Card in Flash Campaign Against iPad

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Apple has clearly hurt Adobe’s feelings. When Steve Jobs demonstrated an iPad at Wednesday’s tablet event, its Safari browser clearly did not support Flash. Adobe has published a blog post calling Flash the Apple iPad’s “broken link.” And now Adobe’s platform evangelist Lee Brimelow has compiled an illustrative montage (partly screengrabbed above) in an effort to illustrate what the lack of Flash means for the iPad.

Note row two, column two. Adobe has included a porn site. Though porn is certainly relevant to many people’s web experiences, that’s kind of a desperate move. My friend Matt Drance, Apple’s former iPhone evangelist, summed up what this means on Twitter: “Adobe has resorted to playing the porn card. It’s over.”

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Apple Video Shows iPad Flash Support, But Don’t Believe It

Some of Apple’s promotional material about the iPad implies the device’s Safari browser can load Adobe Flash content. However, demonstration units of the tablet, including the one presented by Steve Jobs, could not, and a consumer has already filed a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission alleging false advertising.

9to5Mac’s Seth Weintraub noticed that a Flash-based section of the NYTimes.com front page appears to load properly in the video above. The “Video” section of NYTimes.com that loads is normally a piece of Flash content. Weintraub points out that the rendering and the resolution independence makes it look like the iPad really is loading Flash.

But that’s unlikely to be the case. If the iPad really did support Flash, it would be quite odd. Steve Jobs made no mention of Flash during Wednesday’s tablet event, and you would think he would highlight that since the lack of Flash for the iPhone remains an incessant complaint among customers.

Also, when Jobs demonstrated the tablet and showed NYTimes.com in the browser, it clearly reveals a missing chunk for where the Flash content is supposed to be. (Check out the keynote video at Apple’s website at the 13:10 mark.)

ipad-flash-100129-6First noted by AppleInsider, a second example where Flash appears to be working on the iPad is a press image (right). It depicts an NYTimes.com slideshow that would require Flash support.

Adobe has already reacted to the iPad’s lack of Flash support, and you would think the company would know if Apple was really going to put Flash in the tablet. So while consumers can wish for adequate Flash support on the iPhone and the iPad, in the near term this seems like a pipe dream.

Paul Threatt, a graphic designer at Jackson Walker design group, has filed a complaint to the FTC alleging false advertising. His statement reads:

On the Apple iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch devices, Apple provides a proprietary web browser named Safari. On these electronic devices, Apple computer does not support the web browser extension commonly referred to as “Flash”. The Adobe Flash extension is a popular browser plug-in that has gained wide popularity due to its ability to easily display video and image based slideshows on the web.

In several advertisements and images representing the apple products in question, Apple has purposefully elected to show these devices correctly displaying content that necessitates the Adobe Flash plug-in. This is not possible on the actual devices, and Apple is very aware of that fact. Despite the controversial lack of support for Adobe Flash on these devices, Apple has elected to depict these correctly utilizing the Flash plug-in. This constitutes willful false advertising and Apple’s advertising practices for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the new iPad should be forcibly changed.

“I’m a huge Apple loyalist, so it kind of annoys me that they’re going and doing stuff like this,” Threatt told Wired.com. “Unless they’ve got something up their sleeve to actually give us Flash, it seems like false advertising in a big way.”

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Flash support or Threatt’s complaint.

Flash has already gotten Apple in trouble in the past. In the U.K., two customers complained that Apple was falsely advertising the iPhone in a TV commercial by saying “all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone” when the handset does not support Flash. The U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority deemed the ad misleading and pulled the ad.

In November 2008, Wired.com explained why it’s unlikely Apple will support Flash on the iPhone. We pointed out Flash was not allowed in the iPhone developers’ terms of service agreement, which stated, “An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise…. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).” (I don’t have access to the latest iPhone developers’ TOS agreement because it’s under strict NDA, but I doubt that clause has changed.)

We also noted allowing Flash would open doors to content that competes with apps in the App Store, so it would probably be in Apple’s best interest to shy away from the platform. Lastly, Flash would potentially introduce a slew of performance problems as well. Flash has been known for sporadic crashing and quickly depleting battery life, as well as security risks, which amount to many potential headaches for Apple.

Updated 11:30 a.m. with Paul Threatt’s complaint filed to the FTC.

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Portable Freezer Concept Looks Cooler Than It Is

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A portable freezer would be a wonderful thing for camping trips and days at the beach. Or would it? This portable freezer, designed by Ruben Iglesias, is a concept design for a product nobody needs. Except for ice-cream, we freeze food for long-term storage. So a battery powered freezer, even if it could actually get cold enough to hold food below zero, is pointless, unless the batteries last for weeks at a time.

But let’s say that Ruben’s design was actually a useful contraption. Here’s how it works: It is powered by a pair of batteries that also house LED lamps (for reasons unknown). “The lamps produce the energy for the freezer to work and they send it by magnetic induction.”

Really? What’s wrong with a wire, or a metal contact? After all, there must already be tubes running through the box to carry the refrigerant, right? That should leave mean you could easily route a cable. But no, this is little more than a cooler with a pair of lights in the lid. Where, for example, is the compressor?

We’re all for concept designs, but only if they have a root in reality. Whipping up a nice CAD illustration and saying it is an “Ecofreezer” doesn’t cut it. It’s like drawing a couple of circles and a square and saying I have made a car.

Still, as a beer cooler it certainly looks nice. And those LED lamps would be great for all-night beach parties.

Ecofreezer [Rubcn via Yanko]

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One of These iPads Is Not Like the Other

ipad-comparison
Above you see two iPads, pictures of which are grabbed direct from Apple’s own pages. Can you spot the difference? Of course you can. The one on the right is the Wi-Fi-only iPad. The one on the left has 3G, and a plastic strip to let the radio-waves in and out. It’s the very opposite of a tin-foil hat.

Owners of the iPhone 3G and newer may not be familiar with this escape hatch for radiation — the entire back of your cellphone is a spectrum-transparent plastic. The original iPhone, and all iPod Touches, sport this strip. What is a surprise is that the Wi-Fi-only iPad doesn’t have this plastic part. Presumably the Wi-Fi needs to get in somewhere.

Apart from its core functionality, this strip serves one other purpose: a badge. If you are nerdy trainspotters like us, you will enjoy identifying exact models of gadgets from afar. This plastic marker will only make that easier.

iPad Gallery [Apple]

Cosmetic Differences in iPad 3G vs iPad Wi-Fi [MacRumors]

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Circular Monopoly Cuts Corners, Cash

monopoly-goes-circular-for-75th-anniversary-does-away-with-cash

Monopoly is about to get a makeover. The 75 year old game will be relaunched with a circular board, and no cash. Other than the lack of corners and currency, the game remains unchanged, which should mean that the inevitably marathon sessions will be just as boring as ever.

Apparently, when the game was first designed by fun-haters all those years ago, one of the original concepts was circular. We like this new, more compact version, and the modern design is a lot cleaner.

But what about the money? Spoil-sports at Hasbro have taken the only bit of fun from the game: stealing money from the bank. Each player now has a credit-card, which is slotted into a computerized console in the center of the board. Or should that read “bored”? This stops you sneaking cash from your brother’s pile when he is distracted by your cunning dice-tossed-accidentally-under-the-sofa move.

New, circular Monopoly will be available as an insomnia cure later this year.

Monopoly goes circular for 75th Anniversary, does away with cash [Pocket Lint]

Photo: Pocket Lint

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IPad Books Are US-Only

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If you are a non-US resident, and are waiting on the iPad as a replacement for the internationally crippled Kindle, think again. The iBooks application, one of the standout parts of Steve Jobs’ presentation on Wednesday, is US-only. Take a look at the iPad “features” page and you’ll see, in tiny letters at the bottom of the page, these words: “iBooks is available only in the U.S.”

This is a disappointment, but certainly no surprise. Here in Spain, for example, there are still no movies or TV shows in the iTunes Store. Nor is it likely to be Apple’s fault — the company would of course love to sell content to whoever wants it. Th holdup is licensing, and the quagmire of international publishing rights.

Still, this is good news for some. Amazon’s Kindle app will work just fine, and there is a slew of e-reader software in the App Store, from our favorite Stanza, through the suspiciously iBook-like Classics, to the wonderful Instapaper (currently being reworked for the iPad). And if that wasn’t enough, there is always this workaround, which should let us get our hands on the iBooks app anyway.

IPad features in the UK [Apple]

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First iPad Stand Steps into View

ipad-case

In the world of iAccessories, first is good. We get so many pitches for cases, stands and the like when a new Apple product is released that the only way to pick which one to cover is to print them all on paper and have Punxatawny Hal, the Wired.com pet tortoise, pick one out for us. Or we cover the first ones we see. Whatever.

Today we have Scosche’s kickBACK stand for the iPad, a polycarbonate kickstand which will hold the iPad almost upright for watching movies or tilted just enough to make typing easier. We foresee many of these kinds of stand, although the Apple solution of a case/stand combo looks to be the best so far.

The price of the kickBACK is yet to be revealed — no surprise as the product itself still appears to be little more than a computer rendering. As a guide, the kickBACK for the iPhone is $35, so expect this to cost more than that.

Scosche kickBACK page [Scosche. Thanks, Mark!]

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The Classic Wrist-Busting Atari Joystick is Back

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Remember the classic Atari joystick, a sure candidate for the least ergonomic game controller in history? Now you can buy a new one.

In case you have successfully blotted the memory from your brain, let me remind you how things were. The joystick, curiously named as it brought he very opposite of joy to your poor wrists, was a short, stiff stick wedged into a thick, hard to grip base. Moving the stick away from its center was akin to crushing a ball-bearing between your fingers: impossible, painful, and it resulted in bruising.

Now the folks at Retro Thing, a blog dedicated to the wonders of yesteryear, have re-fashioned this wrist-twisting classic, and brought it into the modern age. First, it uses USB, so you can hook it up to a new machine. Second, it is clear. Why make it clear, instead of classic black? Because today, every gadget has to have a blue, glowing blinkenlight inside. The Clear Classic USB Joystick has not been made exempt from this awful custom, and lights up as blue as a comedian in a working men’s club.

The stick will cost you $30, and once your hands have recovered from the mauling they’ll likely receive on first use, you can pop open the case and make a new housing for the fully removable controller board inside. Don’t have any old-school games to play? Fear not! The joystick ships with a CD full of old games and the Stella Atari 2600 Emulator for Mac or PC.

Clear Classic USB Joystick [Reflex Audio]

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Apple iPad’s Display Is More Like a TV Than a Laptop

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Apple iPad’s most striking feature, its gorgeous 9.7-inch touchscreen display, uses liquid crystal display technology — but with a few unusual twists — to present a vivid image and a wide viewing angle.

“The iPad’s display uses the same capacitive touchscreen technology as the iPhone and iPod Touch,” says Vinita Jakhanwal, principal analyst for iSuppli. “At the same time, it offers a better picture quality than conventional LCDs.”

After months of speculation, Apple launched its tablet, the iPad on Wednesday. The lightweight device (1.5 pounds) features a luminous touchscreen and a user interface similar to the iPhone. The iPad, which can cost $500 to $830 depending on the model, runs an expanded version of the operating system used in the iPhone.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPad’s screen as a LED-backlit with In-Plane Switching (IPS). Jobs was referring to a type of LCD screen that is more often found in HDTVs than it is in mobile devices.

So-called twisted nematic LCDs have dominated consumer laptop and phone displays. The viewing angle on these screens is limited, ranging from 110 to 120 degrees. When the screen is viewed outside this optimal range, its colors can look “off” and the overall image is faded or invisible.

In-Plane Switching helps fix those problems. In IPS LCD screens, the crystal molecules are oriented so their motion is parallel to the panel, instead of perpendicular to it. For viewers, the result is a very wide viewing angle — up to 180 degrees — with brilliant color.

“TVs have always used some variation of IPS in their LCD screens but now we are seeing this move to smaller computing devices,” says Jakhanwal.

The iPad’s screen, though, doesn’t have a wide aspect ratio, which is unusual in the TV-display world, says research firm DisplaySearch. Instead of a 16:10 or 16:9 aspect ratio, the iPad screen uses a 4:3 ratio.

“Perhaps they were trying to find a middle ground between the requirements for books, magazines and newspapers and the requirements for video and gaming,” say analysts at DisplaySearch.

The iPad display has some other interesting features. It is arsenic- and mecury-free and has a fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating, which Apple had introduced in the iPhone 3G S. The iPad’s 1024 x 768 display resolution, at 132 pixels per inch, has chunkier pixels than the iPhone 3G S, which has a smaller display but a resolution of 163 pixels per inch.

But that may not be a fair comparison, says Jakhanwal. “If you have a smaller form factor, you need a higher resolution to better read the information on the display,” she says. Also, she adds, “the iPad has a more vivid display than a laptop screen.”

The iPad’s display is likely sourced from LG Display and Innolux, says iSuppli.

The biggest disappointment for tech enthusiasts is the lack of an OLED screen option in the iPad. That should be no surprise, say DisplaySearch and iSuppli. Display manufacturers just don’t have the fabrication capacity to create large quantities of big OLED displays, says Jakhanwal.

“The single supplier for active-matrix OLED screen today, Samsung Mobile, [its] current production capacity is all taken up by the mobile phone market,” she says. That means large volumes of very small screens.

“It’s unlikely they will scale back on that to produce lower volume, larger displays for Apple.”

Sony also produces OLED screens but in limited quantities, largely for its own products, like the Sony XEL-1.

Though Apple showed the iPad’s potential as an e-book reader, iSuppli and DisplaySearch remain skeptical about it. LCD screens, even in black-and-white mode, get washed out in bright sunlight. And if users turn on the backlight to improve the contrast, they are likely to draw down the device’s battery. On top of that, reading on an LCD means you’re staring into a light source, which produces more eyestrain than reading words by reflected light, as you do with printed pages or E Ink displays like those used in the Kindle, Nook and Sony Reader.

“Ultimately, reading for a few hours on a handheld LCD screen can be quite a strain,” says Jakhanwal.

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Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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