iPad – Page 3 – ɔimoɈɒ

Amazon comfortable?

Electronista writes: Amazon seen with 61% of e-book market, Apple under 5% Amazon still has a comfortable lead over Apple and other rivals in the US e-book market, an analysis by RR Bowker found. The group disputes both claims by Amazon and said Amazon’s Kindle Store controlled 61 percent of e-book downloads, or 10 to … Continue reading “Amazon comfortable?”

Electronista writes:

Amazon seen with 61% of e-book market, Apple under 5%
Amazon still has a comfortable lead over Apple and other rivals in the US e-book market, an analysis by RR Bowker found. The group disputes both claims by Amazon and said Amazon’s Kindle Store controlled 61 percent of e-book downloads, or 10 to 20 percent less than Amazon itself thought. Barnes & Noble’s store has 20 percent where Sony has five percent.

I don’t see what Amazon has to crow about. Sure – these numbers contradict Apple’s numbers – but once you really look at them, Amazon has more of a problem than they think.

The Kindle was released in November 2007 and in the thirty months that they’ve had pretty much a lead in the market, they’ve managed a 61% market share. Not too shabby. Kindle has a lead which shows in the quality of the content in their store – they have more and better books. And they’re on Kindle (hardware), Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad and Android.

The iPad was released in March 2010 and in the four months since release, they’ve managed nearly a 5% market share. This is through their iBooks app which was released on iPad and last month came to iPhone as well.

It’s evident Apple likes the eBook market. I’d be nervous about crowing about market share with such shaky numbers in a market where Apple has only been operating for just over 1 quarter.

IPaducation

Fraser Speirs teases us about his new iPad school project: In January, I convened a meeting to suggest ways that we could get past this problem that everyone wanted access to computers in almost all classrooms almost all the time. We talked about the iPod touch. It was cheap and small, tons of software and … Continue reading “IPaducation”

Fraser Speirs teases us about his new iPad school project:

In January, I convened a meeting to suggest ways that we could get past this problem that everyone wanted access to computers in almost all classrooms almost all the time.

We talked about the iPod touch. It was cheap and small, tons of software and we could easily give everyone a device. When it came to discussing capabilities, I constantly ran into three major problems:

1. You can’t connect a hardware keyboard (remember this was iOS 3.x days)
2. You cant connect it to a projector
3. You can’t do proper word processing

That was January 15th and the meeting broke up with general approval to move forward and see how many educational ‘bases’ we could cover with an iPod touch. We still had our computers, so we hoped that even just giving access to the web for everyone would be a big step up.

That was January 15th. On January 24th, Steve Jobs convened the world’s press in San Francisco and traduced the iPad along with iOS versions of Pages, Keynote and Numbers.

The rest isn’t quite history yet, but it felt inevitable.

For many schools, the iPad is the perfect compromise. It’s a lot cheaper than a full laptop, the batter lasts the whole day, the app environment is “safe” to a degree – . It’s a logical choice.

There are limitations: the lack of printing being something that is being addressed by Apple – but then I hardly see that as a disadvantage in a modern classroom. Another problem is the need to power the devices but, as others will attest, the battery life is phenomenal. The devices themselves have limited storage (which is not expandable) but then this is a large multiple of the space normally available to students for document storage in the education cloud and iPad is an excellent network citizen.

I know there are iPad-in-education case studies to be found around Northern Ireland and we, as a province, have always enjoyed ~~god~~ good technology in the classroom. We also have a much higher than average number of iOS developers in the province (greatly assisted by InvestNI’s support of local companies attending WWDC) so we are well placed to take advantage of the new trends in education technology.

iPhone vs Android: software lock-in and halo effect

From CNNMoney.com 77% of iPhone owners say they’ll buy another iPhone, compared to 20% of Android customers who say they’ll buy another Android phone. I’ll address these as the result of two separate things. SOFTWARE LOCK-IN Software lock-in on the iPhone is high for most people. Once you’re in there with Angry Birds, Plants vs … Continue reading “iPhone vs Android: software lock-in and halo effect”

From CNNMoney.com

77% of iPhone owners say they’ll buy another iPhone, compared to 20% of Android customers who say they’ll buy another Android phone.

I’ll address these as the result of two separate things.

SOFTWARE LOCK-IN
Software lock-in on the iPhone is high for most people. Once you’re in there with Angry Birds, Plants vs Zombies and any of the other paid-for iPhone apps, you’re going to suffer from an unconscious lock-in. This hasn’t really occurred on Android initially because of it’s slow adoption but more recently because it’s still not possible to actually be paid in many countries if you’re a developer which is slowing adoption as well. And because the good paid apps aren’t there, normal people aren’t buying them which is again reducing the lock-in.

Software lock-in (essentially meaning the ability to transfer your software to other similar devices but not other platforms) is working well for iPhone but is currently worthless on Android. Software lock-in is not a bad thing in itself – it can’t be used as an argument for or against any mobile platforms because all of them practise lock-in – but it has an effect.

For example, this is my page of folders on iOS:

Every one of those folders is an incentive to stay with iPhone. Primarily because there’s some good fun in there but also because my kids are really happy to be distracted by lots of different colourful games when we’re waiting in the car or during a long journey. Therefore I get additional lock-in pressure from my kids.

HALO EFFECT
In the office where I’m based there are six people. When I started there, one had an iPhone (me!). The others had a variety of Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices. Now, two years later there are five iPhones and one Android device in use. (One of the individuals went to HTC Magic running Android from Blackberry and since then has had a iPhone 3GS and is now on an iPhone 4.) The one Android device left here in the office is a HTC Hero still running Android 1.5. I would describe this as a Halo effect. Different to the common Halo effect (easily described as the effect of buying one device with an Apple logo meaning you buy a lot more), this is showing that experiences with the device are leading to others buying the device. This is partially related to software lock-in; people are interested in getting the same software as you.

For the record, the one Android device will apparently disappear from this office when the contract ends. This is not a good trend for Android.

I, myself, have bought each iPhone as it has been released (I’m still waiting for my iPhone 4 to arrive) but despite my interest in Android, I’ve yet to buy any hardware. This is entirely because the hardware churn in Android is extremely rapid which means there never seems to be a good time to buy. With the iPhone, you know there’ll be a new model every June but with Android, there’s a new model with slightly tweaked specifications coming out every month or so. And some of them have Android 2.1 and some have earlier versions of the OS but I’m expecting Android 2.2 – hence my reticence to buy now. The minimum specifications for Android seem to be rising and some features (such as the ballyhooed Flash) do not run on sub 1 GHz devices so this is again putting me off – 1 GHz has become the new minimum and currently shipping devices don’t seem to be exceeding this. Where’s the high end device?

All of this contributes to a ecology where Android is selling briskly (helped by Buy One, Get One Free tricks – also used by RIM but never by Apple) but that people are not returning to Android as a whole. It’s something that Google needs to resolve. And Nokia needs to respond as well – though they may have sold 10x the number of handsets as Apple, Apple is making more than 10x the amount of profit (creating a factor of nearly 100 difference between the companies). iPhone with it’s singular presentations (ignoring the current ‘legacy’ iPhone 3GS still being sold) is a clear marketing position. Nokia still produces dozens and dozens of different models. This is why iPhones in cafés are so recognisable but it’s so hard to identify the market share for any other individual model of phone. This contributes to the Halo effect I mention above. You can easily spot people using iPhones (and due to the dearth of ringtones, hear them). How about the frequency of spotting any other model or brand of phone?

iOS Development Resources by ManiacDev

Just some links to remind myself. ManiacDev has a host of iOS development resources from tutorials on how to make glossy buttons to comparisons of open source and commercial game engines. iPad Development Tutorials iPhone Game Development Resources Related posts: So, I want to start a games company… Putting some meat on the bones A … Continue reading “iOS Development Resources by ManiacDev”

Just some links to remind myself.

ManiacDev has a host of iOS development resources from tutorials on how to make glossy buttons to comparisons of open source and commercial game engines.

Wells-Fargo, SAP…on the iPad

Rachael King writes at Businessweek: Wells Fargo spent two years studying the iPhone before letting bankers use the device at work. Apple’s iPad, released in April, took just weeks to get cleared. This time around, safeguards against security breaches are stronger from the start, according to Megan Minich, a senior vice-president at the San Francisco-based … Continue reading “Wells-Fargo, SAP…on the iPad”

Rachael King writes at Businessweek:

Wells Fargo spent two years studying the iPhone before letting bankers use the device at work. Apple’s iPad, released in April, took just weeks to get cleared.

This time around, safeguards against security breaches are stronger from the start, according to Megan Minich, a senior vice-president at the San Francisco-based bank. Her colleagues used two of the first shipment of 15 iPads to demonstrate financial products at an investor conference in May. More are on the way, Minich says. “We’ve got a bunch ordered that we can’t get yet,” she says in an interview.

While banks may not be the flavour of the month with right-minded individuals in the western world, the adoption of modern technology is welcome. Many of the websites at the bank where I worked would only function with Internet Explorer 6 and there wasn’t much movement to update them to modern, secure browsers.

Apple has a real opportunity here to gain even more mindshare. And it starts to prove a point that I believe is crucial to the adoption of platforms in the modern world. The platforms will be pushed by the users not dictated by IT experts.

The same goes for Rob Enslin, North America president at SAP, the world’s largest maker of business-management software. Enslin says that when he travels, the only device he carries besides a Research In Motion BlackBerry is the iPad. “It’s allowed me to almost run a paperless office,” says Enslin, who uses it to access business applications, briefing documents, customer information, and other data.

This is the sort of soundbite which Apple loves – one that could only be improved on by the executive gushing about videoconferencing with FaceTime. I’ve been using the iPad as a main machine for a few weeks now and while there are times I enjoy a keyboard and a massive screen with multiple visible apps, I can cope well with the iPad as is. I still believe that some of the insanely great software for the iPad is still to be developed but these reports from Wells-Fargo and SAP show that the software may exist – but it may not exist on the AppStore if they can secure enterprise app distribution with their customers. And why not.

Some companies may also be reluctant to entrust their data to the iPad after a breach on the AT&T website revealed the e-mail addresses of as many as 114,000 iPad users.

This sentence ruins a nice piece. A breach on the AT&T web site has nothing to do with the security of the iPad itself. I have asked the author to amend this because, frankly, it’s nonsense.

Oklahoma State University and the iPad pilot

Oklahoma State University’s School of Media and Strategic Communication and Spears School of Business will provide approximately 125 students across five courses with Apple’s iPad. (Source – Macsimumnews.com) Original Press Release: OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY TO LAUNCH APPLE IPAD STUDENT PILOT INITIATIVE Written by Oklahoma State University Saturday, 19 June 2010 14:39 Oklahoma State University will … Continue reading “Oklahoma State University and the iPad pilot”

Original Press Release:

OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY TO LAUNCH APPLE IPAD STUDENT PILOT INITIATIVE
Written by Oklahoma State University
Saturday, 19 June 2010 14:39
Oklahoma State University will pilot an Apple iPad initiative during the Fall 2010 semester with select courses in the School of Media and Strategic Communications and the Spears School of Business at both the Stillwater and Tulsa campuses, announced OSU President Burns Hargis.

“This pilot initiative will provide valuable insight into the research benefits of the Apple iPad in the classroom,” said Hargis. “The iPad has had an amazing impact since it was introduced last April and we are excited to be able to put this powerful and creative tool in the hands of students and faculty and see what happens.”

Bill Handy, visiting assistant professor in the School of Media and Strategic Communications, and Tracy Suter, associate professor of marketing in the Spears School of Business, will lead the initiative. Each class will integrate the iPad differently but will focus on specific measurable outcomes.

The iPad pilot will be launched this fall with approximately 125 students in five different courses.

“This limited pilot will be focused on fields of study where we believe we can best determine the higher education value of the iPad,” said Handy. “We will evaluate the academic enhancement to the courses, how the iPad and its specific apps and web-based tools can be integrated in this capacity, and perhaps most importantly, how the integration of these mobile tools can expand the tactical abilities of students as they enter the workforce.”

The iPad and other mobile tools are already integrated into daily business use. In both schools, the iPad will be used for academic purposes and to explore innovative uses and tactical uses specific to each school’s industry needs.

“In addition to mobility, the iPad will allow us to work in real-time,” said Suter. “For example, data collection and analysis in a research context can be a multi-day to multi-week process. By using the iPad, we can replace paper-and-pencil research with the immediate process of data collection, review and summary over a Web interface.

“I certainly have ideas of how I would like to use an iPad.” Suter said. “But collectively we will discover new uses a single individual might not have conceived independently. Putting the newest technology in the hands of students allows them to stretch the limits of how it can be used.”

Cost savings for students will also be evaluated. In one case, students using the iPad in a single course will save more than $100 on a single textbook, which can be downloaded in an ePub format.

OSU is leading the way in the integration of technology in the classroom. It is already using a variety of tools such as iTunesU and YouTube, along with other collaborative tools. OSU is also exploring the development of mobile applications to integrate current publications into an online and app platform, offering expense savings and enhanced distribution.

One of the conversations had at WWDC this year talked about the will to put together a similar pilot at the University of Ulster.

Going Live

LiveNet is a project by Mencap to help “children and adults with learning difficulties and their carers to use ICT to improve health and wellbeing, gain access to information, connect with their community and help achieve their full potential” OpenLiveNet aims to involve the wider tech community in Northern Ireland in the production of some … Continue reading “Going Live”

OpenLiveNet aims to involve the wider tech community in Northern Ireland in the production of some of these solutions by providing MenCap with some much needed technical expertise, some development muscle and to provide something of a “many hands” approach to the aims of the project as well as much needed awareness in the wider community.

What’s the end goal here?
The creation of user interfaces and software which are easily learned, provide meaningful feedback and can help provide an improved quality of life for individuals with learning difficulties and their carers. Such as (but not limited to) these:

new models for web-based social network creation, interaction, identity and privacy
mobile apps which will help with development of independence, communication and personal safety
touchscreen applications to help with communication, creativity, learning

This project, plus my interest in the presentations by Jesse Schell at DICE 2010 and Jane McGonigal at TED were a primary influencer in my ideas for Alien Salvage. The company, which I announced a few days ago aims to create experiences which align with much of this – with the additional remit of compelling design for the wider community as well.

For OpenLiveNet we still need some technical experts and development and design brains to help shape the future. There is a commercial angle on this and savvy individuals will be able to see the opportunities here. If you’re interested, enter your details on the OpenLiveNet page or drop me a line.

The first meet-up I plan to hold in July if you’re interested.

Immersion in a device

I bought an iPad on April 17th … On May 24th, I sold the 64GB iPad to a friend for a little less than what I paid for it. He since bought two more iPads (one 3G). But I missed the iPad and couldn’t quite say why at first. … On further reflection, I realized … Continue reading “Immersion in a device”

I bought an iPad on April 17th
…
On May 24th, I sold the 64GB iPad to a friend for a little less than what I paid for it. He since bought two more iPads (one 3G). But I missed the iPad and couldn’t quite say why at first.
…
On further reflection, I realized that iPad offers fresh functionality: Immersion. I find there are fewer reading distractions, and content is better presented than on a laptop and browser. I’m more focused and retain more of what I read. For reasons not easily explained, I find myself more thoroughly reading iBooks than defaulting to the skimming I sometimes do with physical books. Part of this immersive experience is the technology, but also how iPad is used. Apple’s tablet is a sit down and focus device, as much because of size and shape as screen and user interface. The totality — physical design and software benefits — is immersion.
On June 10, I bought another 64GB iPad.
Read More

Why the iPhone still is #1 for business

At DevDays last week, Dermot Daly replied to a question about ‘other mobile platforms’ by saying that the amount of money changing hands on iPhone is enough for most people to consider but the important point is that the falloff in money when you go to other platforms is so severe that they’re not work … Continue reading “Why the iPhone still is #1 for business”

At DevDays last week, Dermot Daly replied to a question about ‘other mobile platforms’ by saying that the amount of money changing hands on iPhone is enough for most people to consider but the important point is that the falloff in money when you go to other platforms is so severe that they’re not work considering yet unless you already have a customer who’s willing to pay for the effort i.e. if there’s not enough money in iPhone then there’s definitely not enough money in any other platform.

But you also have to look at the engagement. Hyper-local review site Yelp state they have 32 million unique visitors from all sources and only 1.4 million of them were iPhone users which sounds tiny. But those 1.4 million users were responsible for 27% of Yelp searches, they make calls to businesses once every 5 seconds and nearly a million people used Yelp’s iPhone app to find directions to businesses in May.

So aim for deep engagement, aim for people to carry you around in their pocket, make it easy for people to use you and they will use you.

They Make Games

Of course, they don’t make any yet, but they will. And I went for the retro Battlezone-type graphics because I have zero skill with Photoshop and Illustrator any more (never mind not having a copy that would run on Snow Leopard) so my varied tweets last night are generally about finding folk who can put … Continue reading “They Make Games”

The aim of the company (as you can tell from the Twitter profile) is to apply game-like experiences in mobile, mhealth and e-learning. I’ve a heap of ideas in this and my next steps will be to start to put together people who will be important to the development of the company.

Alien Salvage will be contributing to the Digital Circle-initiatived BLOC54 collaborative network focussing on the Games Development Industry in Northern Ireland.