That's an awful lot of "ifs" for a device that's supposedly already perfect for reading. I'll buy one the very second they eliminate that headache inducing let's-invert-the-entire-screen double-flash that occurs every single time you want to turn the page.
I've had about every Kindle shipped. And all were shipped back.
Having read literally hundreds of ebooks on a HP Compaq PDA, various iPhones, and several iPads, I disagree.
First, I never read ebooks (or books) outdoors in direct sunlight. Too hot where I live.
So that means that I read indoors, often in dim rooms where a backlit display has several advantages over a low-contrast device that needs extremely bright ambient light in order for one to be able read practically anything. E-Ink has terrible contrast ratios, and I hate to tell you this, but reading low-contrast dark-grey text on a light-gray background causes eyestrain too.
Not to mention the rather headache inducing let's-invert-the-entire-screen double-flash that occurs every single time you want to turn the page.
I've had about every Kindle shipped. And all were shipped back.
Xerox and others used the term in conjunction with the Alto, as it was considered the first "personal computer" in the sense that (unlike mainframes and mini's) it was to be used by a single person.
IBM put the term into the NAME OF THEIR PRODUCT with the IBM PC in 1981, hence my statement that the term was formally taken over by IBM with the IBM PC in 1981.
I think Steve knew all along that the API and development environment would be needed. If you'll recall, Apple had to do a major reshuffling of development resources just in order to ship the iPhone in time. Doing so delayed Leopard by months.
They barely had enough time and resources to ship the phone, and then ship Leopard, much less polish up and document the APIs.
The HTML/Web Apps were just a stopgap measure and... who knew? Maybe they'd suffice. Or hell, maybe the iPhone would go down in flames and the APIs wouldn't be needed anyway.
"Even the name 'PC' was changed to 'Mac' (Personal Computer, Mah Computer yo), even though it is exactly a PC."
Ahem. When it was introduced in 1984, it was Macintosh, not a "Mac." It ran a Motorola 68000 processor that was distinctly different (and better) than the clunky segmented register-starvedx88/x86 architecture.
Macintosh was a personal computer, though it wasn't a PC. That term had been formally taken over by IBM with the IBM PC in 1981, and then later on co-opted by Compaq and the other "PC" clone-makers.
And incidentally, just to correct your timeline, Macintosh was created well BEFORE Steve left Apple for Next, and before Windows NT came along nearly a decade later in 1993. Steve returned in 1997, and change was needed, true, but it had little to do with his need to compete with NT. The vast majority of people, if you'll recall, were still rolling with Windows 95, then 98, then Me, and were not running NT. Why? Because NT broke many existing applications and because, performance-wise, it sucked for games.
"Mac" is simply the popular nickname given to Macintosh, and over the years it stuck.
"The Newton was not a failure, far from it. However, it was from the "Time Of No Steve Jobs" and so it got dropped."
Compared to the Palm, it was. It was large, a bit clunky, underpowered, but still had poor battery life, and the handwriting recognition was... flakey. The Doonesbury comic strip parodies gave it a black eye that it simply couldn't recover from.
"It's not because Apple magically did something nobody else had thought of to make tablets suddenly the bee's knees. "
Right. I mean, in the years before the iPad, dedicated tablets (if you could find one) were thick clunky plastic notebooks with the keyboards ripped off. They weighed 4-5lbs, got 2-3 hours of battery life, had a plethora of legacy buttons and ports, and usually required a stylus because everyone insisted on cramming a full-blown desktop OS and applications into them.
Apple not only dramatically cut the size, thickness and weight, used better materials, and increased the battery life to 10 hours, but they also designed and incorporated an OS interface and applications designed from the ground up to be used in a touch screen environment.
And did it all in a single, breakthrough device at a price point other manufacturers are still working overtime to even match...
The display is $69. The Touch Screen is $63. $45 for 32GB NAND. $26 for DRAM. $20 for the dual-core processor. $12 for power management. $8 for sensors. $5.50 for WiFi. $30 for the case, connectors, PCB, etc.. $20 for the battery. $5 for box and contents. $10 for manufacturing.
You're right in that there's not one single component that would kill those numbers... IT"S ALL OF THEM ADDED UP TOGETHER.
Your wonderful set of suggestions dropped the BOM down to $273. How many more corners and features are you going to have to cut to hit your numbers? And once you do, is the POS even worth buying? A plastic 5" tablet with an anemic processor, half the RAM needed to do anything, and no storage? Right. Ask Dell how well the Streak 5 sold...
(Oh yeah, add SD slot hardware and a controller chip to your BOM.)
And THAT'S only the BOM. Then it has to be shipped. Distributed. There's R&D, engineering, and development costs. Admin. Marketing. Patents, licensing, and legal. Recouping $1.2 billion in acquisition costs. Costs. Costs, and more costs. And that's before it's even in a store and the retailer marks it up yet again by another 10%. Then there are returns, damaged goods, shrinkage, and demo units.
30% profit? In your dreams. People look at the BOM and COGS and think, "Damn. They're making out like bandits."
Get a clue. To make ANY money selling a tablet at $149, your BOM would have to be less than $50. Good luck hitting that price point.
"Someone should get hold of it RIGHT now and make a proper commitment to WebOS, and to making the devices *at* cost..."
At cost is $318. Well, $328 if you add in labor. And then there's shipping from China. Oh, and last time I checked, stuff on the retailer's shelf came in boxes. So add in packaging costs, manual, printing, etc.. Don't forget the cable and charger. Where are we? Oh, yeah, around $350 at the distributor and/or retailer. Retailer? How did I forget that one? Add 10% or so markup just for putting it on the shelf.
That gives $385. And that's without paying your staff, without marketing, without development, without recouping your $1.2B, and without making a single dime of profit.
He did. But there are also plenty of iPod nanos out there in multiple colors and RAM sizes. And shuffles. And iPods. And Touch's. There's a white and a black iPhone, on two different systems (GSM/CDMA), each with 8/16/32 GB of RAM.
People carry the simplification metaphor too far. Steve is not afraid of SKUs.
First, there's a whole team of engineers that need to eat. They build the stuff, design it, and write the software for it. The platform has to grow for people to buy into it. Look, for example, at the huge numbers of people waiting to buy Android 2.1 tablets...
Second, there's the minor matter of recouping 1.2 BILLION dollars.
Third, the only good way for a seller that's not doing huge numbers to get the BOM down to $250 is to wait for the screen and processor and so on to come down, which happens when better screens and processors become available. You might be able to sell a bunch running a 1 GHz dual-core when everyone else is selling 2GHz quads with Retina displays... but don't count on it.
Fourth, let's say that you do get the costs down and that you do start making an impact. What's to stop Apple from dropping the price of the iPad 2 down to your level when the iPad 3 is released? They did it with the 3GS and the iPhone 4, remember? And they did it with iPods too.
"Let's see. We could buy Joey an entry-level iPad for $299, or we could buy him this plastic POS for $250. What to do? What to do?"
What they SHOULD do is move WebOS into their Enterprise division, and work on special-purpose designs and custom solutions for various industries, and forget trying to out-Apple Apple.
"... but the one that hits those price points with decent specs WILL take a HUGE chunk of the market, mark my words."
That price point AND decent specs? Want a pony to go with?
People pull numbers out of their... ah... the air, and then bitch because manufacturers don't hit their imaginary price points. It's like saying a Ferrari that cost $10,000 with decent specs WILL take a HUGE chunk of the market, mark my words!!!
That said, Amazon will do just that. Unfortunately, they're the only ones who can, since an Amazon tablet will be bound to Amazon Kindle, Amazon MP3s, Amazon movie streaming, and MAYBE the Amazon version of the Android marketplace. All so Amazon can recoup the tablet's subsidized price with future media sales.
It will not be wide open. Or rather, it will be as wide open as the existing Kindle.
".... 400 milliliters... The metric system's rigidity prevents designing units for convenience."
Right. That's why you can't simply say.4 liters, or just round up to a convenient "half-liter". Or, heaven forbid, simply say, "I'd like your regular cup, please...
Assembly cost is $10/unit. And the markup is needed to pay for research, pay down acquisition costs, a minor expense known as marketing and advertising, maintenance, salaries, returns, administrative expenses and fixed expenses, and on, and on...
Once we do, we can also realize that conservation and encouraging the adoption of hybrids, electrics, mass transit, and alternative energy sources reduces our dependence on foreign oil, creates new jobs and helps the economy, dramatically improves our trade deficit and, oh, by the way, reduces our greenhouse gas emissions simply as an added bonus.
The TouchPard cost $328 in parts and labor, and that's ONLY parts and labor. There's also the small matter of trying to recoup the $1.2 BILLION HP spent acquiring Palm and WebOS.
I'd like an "adequate" hybrid car for $2,500 too, but I don't think I'm going to get one...
"The average income may be $40k, but the median is only around $25k. That means that half of all Americans live on less than $480 a week, and that's before taking out taxes. That is normal. The typical American is at or below the poverty line. It's an ugly truth that we tend to ignore, and one that people need to be reminded of, often and loudly."
Need a reference to the stats on this, as your $480 a week assertion is dependent on many, many, things. Does it include jobs for kids and students who live at home? What about married couples and people who live together whose combined income is now $50K? Those with social security income or retirement benefits? How about a woman with kids who makes $25K, but qualifies for an extra $10K in housing and food benefits? What about a student with a part-time job and who's living on a grant or scholarship?
In other words, your blanket statement that" "half" of all Americans live on less than $480 a week is misleading at best, and, at worse, totally false-to-fact.
Apple, with the best supply chain in the business, reportedly has around $250 worth of parts each iPad. iSuppli's BOM on the 32GB TouchPad was $318. And you can only go so low on volume.
So selling 'em for $100 each? Yeah, losing at least $218 per device could have been planned. Canceling the device from the start could have been planned. Shuttering a division on which you spent $1.2 billion could have been planned.
Look up patent troll and non-practicing entities. A patent arsenal doesn't help you at all if you're targeted by jerks who make nothing and want your money.
Not to mention the fact that for the most part we've stopped printing photos. Photos now appear instantly on Facebook, are shared on Flickr, and are synced to our phone and tablets.
HP also said they were going to concentrate on printing, but...
People, including business people, are buying iPads.
They're carrying around iPhones and iPads stuffed to the gills with ebooks, textbooks, manuals, and reams of PDF documents. They're walking around with constant 3G access to the Internet and to corporate intranets. There have apps specifically designed for accessing corporate dashboards and information systems (Roambi). There are Wyse and Citrix apps.
So, given the above, does it strike ANYONE as being a particularly good time to concentrate on PRINTERS???
"What you describe is the exact same model that Android has used for years."
No, it's not. Read the Ars article on Lion security sandboxing and user-driven privilege escalation and privilege separation.
In Android, if you say, "I can read and write to disk," then any malware that takes over your networked app can read and write anywhere. In Lion, you declare no such vulnerability. File open/save operations occur via Powerbox, which grants a temporary escalation that only occurs in response to a user's actions. The application itself needs no general read/write entitlement, and thus the sandbox is enforced.
Privilege separation places vulnerable and hackable operations like video decoding, HTML and PDF document parsing, and others into bare-bones sandboxed processes. Do a overrun hack to gain control of the process, and you have access to pretty much nothing at all. The Android system doesn't have that functionality built in.
Slashdot Mirror
That's an awful lot of "ifs" for a device that's supposedly already perfect for reading. I'll buy one the very second they eliminate that headache inducing let's-invert-the-entire-screen double-flash that occurs every single time you want to turn the page.
I've had about every Kindle shipped. And all were shipped back.
Having read literally hundreds of ebooks on a HP Compaq PDA, various iPhones, and several iPads, I disagree.
First, I never read ebooks (or books) outdoors in direct sunlight. Too hot where I live.
So that means that I read indoors, often in dim rooms where a backlit display has several advantages over a low-contrast device that needs extremely bright ambient light in order for one to be able read practically anything. E-Ink has terrible contrast ratios, and I hate to tell you this, but reading low-contrast dark-grey text on a light-gray background causes eyestrain too.
Not to mention the rather headache inducing let's-invert-the-entire-screen double-flash that occurs every single time you want to turn the page.
I've had about every Kindle shipped. And all were shipped back.
Xerox and others used the term in conjunction with the Alto, as it was considered the first "personal computer" in the sense that (unlike mainframes and mini's) it was to be used by a single person.
IBM put the term into the NAME OF THEIR PRODUCT with the IBM PC in 1981, hence my statement that the term was formally taken over by IBM with the IBM PC in 1981.
Which was correct.
I think Steve knew all along that the API and development environment would be needed. If you'll recall, Apple had to do a major reshuffling of development resources just in order to ship the iPhone in time. Doing so delayed Leopard by months.
They barely had enough time and resources to ship the phone, and then ship Leopard, much less polish up and document the APIs.
The HTML/Web Apps were just a stopgap measure and... who knew? Maybe they'd suffice. Or hell, maybe the iPhone would go down in flames and the APIs wouldn't be needed anyway.
You think this oversized hunk of plastic with a keyboard is a tablet? Or a pad?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2005-04-16_Psion_Serie_5mx_PRO_24MB_beschn_unscharf_scharf.JPG
"Even the name 'PC' was changed to 'Mac' (Personal Computer, Mah Computer yo), even though it is exactly a PC."
Ahem. When it was introduced in 1984, it was Macintosh, not a "Mac." It ran a Motorola 68000 processor that was distinctly different (and better) than the clunky segmented register-starvedx88/x86 architecture.
Macintosh was a personal computer, though it wasn't a PC. That term had been formally taken over by IBM with the IBM PC in 1981, and then later on co-opted by Compaq and the other "PC" clone-makers.
And incidentally, just to correct your timeline, Macintosh was created well BEFORE Steve left Apple for Next, and before Windows NT came along nearly a decade later in 1993. Steve returned in 1997, and change was needed, true, but it had little to do with his need to compete with NT. The vast majority of people, if you'll recall, were still rolling with Windows 95, then 98, then Me, and were not running NT. Why? Because NT broke many existing applications and because, performance-wise, it sucked for games.
"Mac" is simply the popular nickname given to Macintosh, and over the years it stuck.
"The Newton was not a failure, far from it. However, it was from the "Time Of No Steve Jobs" and so it got dropped."
Compared to the Palm, it was. It was large, a bit clunky, underpowered, but still had poor battery life, and the handwriting recognition was... flakey. The Doonesbury comic strip parodies gave it a black eye that it simply couldn't recover from.
"Had Microsoft came out with the ipad(identical design) with their style of marketing, tablets would have never taken off."
We'll never know, will we? MS saw everything through Windows-covered glasses. As such they were no more capable of creating an iPad than you are...
"It's not because Apple magically did something nobody else had thought of to make tablets suddenly the bee's knees. "
Right. I mean, in the years before the iPad, dedicated tablets (if you could find one) were thick clunky plastic notebooks with the keyboards ripped off. They weighed 4-5lbs, got 2-3 hours of battery life, had a plethora of legacy buttons and ports, and usually required a stylus because everyone insisted on cramming a full-blown desktop OS and applications into them.
Apple not only dramatically cut the size, thickness and weight, used better materials, and increased the battery life to 10 hours, but they also designed and incorporated an OS interface and applications designed from the ground up to be used in a touch screen environment.
And did it all in a single, breakthrough device at a price point other manufacturers are still working overtime to even match...
Yep. Apple hardly did anything at all...
First, look at the iSuppli BOM...
http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/HP-TouchPad-Carries-$318-Bill-of-Materials.aspx
The display is $69. The Touch Screen is $63. $45 for 32GB NAND. $26 for DRAM. $20 for the dual-core processor. $12 for power management. $8 for sensors. $5.50 for WiFi. $30 for the case, connectors, PCB, etc.. $20 for the battery. $5 for box and contents. $10 for manufacturing.
You're right in that there's not one single component that would kill those numbers... IT"S ALL OF THEM ADDED UP TOGETHER.
Your wonderful set of suggestions dropped the BOM down to $273. How many more corners and features are you going to have to cut to hit your numbers? And once you do, is the POS even worth buying? A plastic 5" tablet with an anemic processor, half the RAM needed to do anything, and no storage? Right. Ask Dell how well the Streak 5 sold...
(Oh yeah, add SD slot hardware and a controller chip to your BOM.)
And THAT'S only the BOM. Then it has to be shipped. Distributed. There's R&D, engineering, and development costs. Admin. Marketing. Patents, licensing, and legal. Recouping $1.2 billion in acquisition costs. Costs. Costs, and more costs. And that's before it's even in a store and the retailer marks it up yet again by another 10%. Then there are returns, damaged goods, shrinkage, and demo units.
30% profit? In your dreams. People look at the BOM and COGS and think, "Damn. They're making out like bandits."
Get a clue. To make ANY money selling a tablet at $149, your BOM would have to be less than $50. Good luck hitting that price point.
"Someone should get hold of it RIGHT now and make a proper commitment to WebOS, and to making the devices *at* cost..."
At cost is $318. Well, $328 if you add in labor. And then there's shipping from China. Oh, and last time I checked, stuff on the retailer's shelf came in boxes. So add in packaging costs, manual, printing, etc.. Don't forget the cable and charger. Where are we? Oh, yeah, around $350 at the distributor and/or retailer. Retailer? How did I forget that one? Add 10% or so markup just for putting it on the shelf.
That gives $385. And that's without paying your staff, without marketing, without development, without recouping your $1.2B, and without making a single dime of profit.
"...that's why he cut a ton of lines..."
He did. But there are also plenty of iPod nanos out there in multiple colors and RAM sizes. And shuffles. And iPods. And Touch's. There's a white and a black iPhone, on two different systems (GSM/CDMA), each with 8/16/32 GB of RAM.
People carry the simplification metaphor too far. Steve is not afraid of SKUs.
First, there's a whole team of engineers that need to eat. They build the stuff, design it, and write the software for it. The platform has to grow for people to buy into it. Look, for example, at the huge numbers of people waiting to buy Android 2.1 tablets...
Second, there's the minor matter of recouping 1.2 BILLION dollars.
Third, the only good way for a seller that's not doing huge numbers to get the BOM down to $250 is to wait for the screen and processor and so on to come down, which happens when better screens and processors become available. You might be able to sell a bunch running a 1 GHz dual-core when everyone else is selling 2GHz quads with Retina displays... but don't count on it.
Fourth, let's say that you do get the costs down and that you do start making an impact. What's to stop Apple from dropping the price of the iPad 2 down to your level when the iPad 3 is released? They did it with the 3GS and the iPhone 4, remember? And they did it with iPods too.
"Let's see. We could buy Joey an entry-level iPad for $299, or we could buy him this plastic POS for $250. What to do? What to do?"
What they SHOULD do is move WebOS into their Enterprise division, and work on special-purpose designs and custom solutions for various industries, and forget trying to out-Apple Apple.
"... but the one that hits those price points with decent specs WILL take a HUGE chunk of the market, mark my words."
That price point AND decent specs? Want a pony to go with?
People pull numbers out of their... ah... the air, and then bitch because manufacturers don't hit their imaginary price points. It's like saying a Ferrari that cost $10,000 with decent specs WILL take a HUGE chunk of the market, mark my words!!!
That said, Amazon will do just that. Unfortunately, they're the only ones who can, since an Amazon tablet will be bound to Amazon Kindle, Amazon MP3s, Amazon movie streaming, and MAYBE the Amazon version of the Android marketplace. All so Amazon can recoup the tablet's subsidized price with future media sales.
It will not be wide open. Or rather, it will be as wide open as the existing Kindle.
".... 400 milliliters ... The metric system's rigidity prevents designing units for convenience."
Right. That's why you can't simply say .4 liters, or just round up to a convenient "half-liter". Or, heaven forbid, simply say, "I'd like your regular cup, please...
Assembly cost is $10/unit. And the markup is needed to pay for research, pay down acquisition costs, a minor expense known as marketing and advertising, maintenance, salaries, returns, administrative expenses and fixed expenses, and on, and on...
No, but we can acknowledge the effects of both.
Once we do, we can also realize that conservation and encouraging the adoption of hybrids, electrics, mass transit, and alternative energy sources reduces our dependence on foreign oil, creates new jobs and helps the economy, dramatically improves our trade deficit and, oh, by the way, reduces our greenhouse gas emissions simply as an added bonus.
The TouchPard cost $328 in parts and labor, and that's ONLY parts and labor. There's also the small matter of trying to recoup the $1.2 BILLION HP spent acquiring Palm and WebOS.
I'd like an "adequate" hybrid car for $2,500 too, but I don't think I'm going to get one...
"The average income may be $40k, but the median is only around $25k. That means that half of all Americans live on less than $480 a week, and that's before taking out taxes. That is normal. The typical American is at or below the poverty line. It's an ugly truth that we tend to ignore, and one that people need to be reminded of, often and loudly."
Need a reference to the stats on this, as your $480 a week assertion is dependent on many, many, things. Does it include jobs for kids and students who live at home? What about married couples and people who live together whose combined income is now $50K? Those with social security income or retirement benefits? How about a woman with kids who makes $25K, but qualifies for an extra $10K in housing and food benefits? What about a student with a part-time job and who's living on a grant or scholarship?
In other words, your blanket statement that" "half" of all Americans live on less than $480 a week is misleading at best, and, at worse, totally false-to-fact.
Apple, with the best supply chain in the business, reportedly has around $250 worth of parts each iPad. iSuppli's BOM on the 32GB TouchPad was $318. And you can only go so low on volume.
So selling 'em for $100 each? Yeah, losing at least $218 per device could have been planned. Canceling the device from the start could have been planned. Shuttering a division on which you spent $1.2 billion could have been planned.
If you're an idiot, that is.
Look up patent troll and non-practicing entities. A patent arsenal doesn't help you at all if you're targeted by jerks who make nothing and want your money.
Not to mention the fact that for the most part we've stopped printing photos. Photos now appear instantly on Facebook, are shared on Flickr, and are synced to our phone and tablets.
HP also said they were going to concentrate on printing, but...
People, including business people, are buying iPads.
They're carrying around iPhones and iPads stuffed to the gills with ebooks, textbooks, manuals, and reams of PDF documents. They're walking around with constant 3G access to the Internet and to corporate intranets. There have apps specifically designed for accessing corporate dashboards and information systems (Roambi). There are Wyse and Citrix apps.
So, given the above, does it strike ANYONE as being a particularly good time to concentrate on PRINTERS???
$12.5 billion to buy Motorola Mobility... for the patents. $4.5 billion to buy Nortel... for the patents. $450 million to buy Novell's patents.
What a ****ing waste of money.
"What you describe is the exact same model that Android has used for years."
No, it's not. Read the Ars article on Lion security sandboxing and user-driven privilege escalation and privilege separation.
In Android, if you say, "I can read and write to disk," then any malware that takes over your networked app can read and write anywhere. In Lion, you declare no such vulnerability. File open/save operations occur via Powerbox, which grants a temporary escalation that only occurs in response to a user's actions. The application itself needs no general read/write entitlement, and thus the sandbox is enforced.
Privilege separation places vulnerable and hackable operations like video decoding, HTML and PDF document parsing, and others into bare-bones sandboxed processes. Do a overrun hack to gain control of the process, and you have access to pretty much nothing at all. The Android system doesn't have that functionality built in.