Syntapse

iPad and Safari and RAM, Oh My!

2010-04-08T08:12:00.003-04:00

Analysis of the A4 processor in the iPad has revealed that it includes 256 MB of RAM, the same amount in the iPhone 3GS (and twice that of the iPhone and iPhone 3G). Because of the larger screen size (and resulting frame buffer sizes) the performance of Safari is worse in some ways that the iPhone.

As Daring Fireball notes:

iPad’s Safari isn’t able to keep nearly as many pages open as I can on my 3GS. In fact, sometimes it seems I can only have one, and every page I switch to gets completely reloaded.

This is a serious limitation that affects the performance of Safari in particular, but of the iPad as a whole.

Reloading pages in Safari is annoying and, as John Gruber notes, can cause data loss in cases where you have unsubmitted data on a page that gets dumped.

On WiFi this is a serious problem, but on 3G it is going to be a disaster! I predict a huge customer backlash from the performance problems unless the 3G version of the iPad has more RAM.

It's possible that the $129 difference between the two models includes additional RAM, though I would think it's unlikely.

Imagine for a minute, though, that it does have more RAM. I think that would result in a different, but also huge, customer backlash from those that bought the WiFi version! People will feel like Apple once again offered a better value a short while after introducing a new product.

Either way I think the 3G performance on the iPad is going to cause some consternation.

New Smartphone Sales Numbers

2010-03-10T23:28:00.011-05:00

I took a look at ComScore's US market share numbers from Joe Wilcox's piece on Betanews. ComScore gave relative numbers relating the market share of each OS and, separately, the total number of smartphones in use. Running some of the numbers, I came up with the following:

Total smartphones in use for Jan '10 is 42.7M, up 18% which yields 36.2M for Oct '09.

Running the percentages I get:

OS	Nov 2009	Jan 2010	Change
RIM	14.9	18.4	3.4
Apple	9.0	10.7	1.7
MS	7.1	6.7	(0.4)
Google	1.0	3.0	2.0
Palm	2.8	2.4	(0.4)

Note that new phones does not equal sales as old ones are retired, so it's the difference between sold and retired.

From this it seems that RIM is still leading the pack with Apple and Google doing similar business (my suspicion is that Apple is retiring a lot more phones and therefore selling more than Google). Google's business has accelerated dramatically since introducing the Droid on Verizon in November. The Nexus One has not sold well according to the reports I've seen but when it arrives on Verizon in the Spring there may be a bigger push to move it along.

Windows Mobile is declining pretty much as expected. They have done everything possible to reduce market share: let the old version stagnate, create new versions of the OS which can't run on the release hardware, and pre-announce a major incompatible version that is 6 to 9 months off. Expect more bleeding there before it's over.

Palm is a bit shocking - they are really suffering from being on a single network. They need a Verizon outing like no one else.

iPad + iMac = Winner?

2010-02-13T16:55:00.005-05:00

A few weeks ago I posted about the somewhat surprising success of the new iMac desktops. I was surprised because desktop sales had been trending down while laptop and especially netbook sales had been on the rise.

My explanation for that success was that people were buying netbooks and then opting for a desktop + netbook combination rather than netbook + laptop (which seems redundant).

I think we'll see a similar effect when iPad sales kick in - the combination of an iMac for the home office and an iPad for the rest of the house and out and about seems like a winning combination.

In my house I've got a Mac mini in my office with it's own monitor, another mini attached to my living room TV that hosts most of my media (photos, music, and some movies). I have a couple of old Windows laptops that I use around the house or out and about. I've been holding off buying a new laptop to see what the iPad could do and it seems to be a good fit for my needs.

It's Not Multi-Tasking, But...

2010-02-04T21:14:00.006-05:00

Since the iPad event there has been a lot of complaining about the lack of multitasking in iPhone OS. I break down apps into several categories with regard to multitasking.

The first is an active app that requires your attention and input. This type uses the screen for information display and input. The iPhone screen is only big enough for one app at a time for the most part, so only one app at a time that requires your attention and input makes sense.

The second is an asynchronous app such as IM. These apps need to check in with a server for status changes and alert the user when they occur. Background notifications handle these apps quite well.

The third is streaming audio apps (that are not named iPod). These apps can only run as the active app at this time.

A fourth category are apps that access information from the phone (the GPS for example) at regular intervals. These are different than asynchronous apps because they get their information from the iPhone itself rather than from a network host or other entity. These apps have no background capability at this time (though it seems like a task scheduler of some kind could address them).

The primary concern of most pundits seems to be the first type, active apps. What a lot of people must not realize is that most iPhone apps save their state when you exit and resume when you re-enter at the same point, so quitting and restarting is a lot like just task switching.

Fast switching between tasks is normally rapid and straightforward, but there are cases when the apps you're switching between are on different pages that it can get cumbersome.

Suppose the next iPhone OS update included the ability to quickly show the most recent apps that have been run?

The search screen could be divided into "Search" and "Recents" modes so that double clicking the home button (or hitting home from the 1st home screen or swiping left from same) would bring up the list.

This would provide a more seamless switching experience for most cases.

Apple vs. Intel?

2010-01-30T17:46:00.004-05:00

The iPad is powered by the new Apple A4 chip. I don't know a lot of specifics but the consensus on line is that it is an ARM A9 core with its own graphics core (Imagination Power VR series). The ARM architecture is not surprising at all given that iPhone and iPod touch have used them for years. That Apple designed and had produced its own chips is also not surprising since that what Steve Jobs said would happen with the acquisition of P.A. Semi a couple years ago.

What is surprising is the sudden realization that most of iLife (except maybe iMovie), all of iWork, and pretty much all of OS X runs on it.

Can anyone imagine a MacBook Air running on an A4 (or even an A8, assuming the number refers to how many cores there are)?

I know there are limitations to splitting software over multiple cores effectively, but Apple has also been investing in GCD and OpenCL to best use multiple CPU and GPU cores as well.

So how about a MacBook Air with 128 GB of solid state storage and 10 hours of battery life? For a lower price than the current one?

I'd consider it.

One Reason To Leave A Camera Off the iPad

2010-01-30T17:20:00.004-05:00

I've read a lot of criticism of the iPad for not having a camera for web chatting.

But remember, the working position of an iPad is different than a laptop or desktop machine. Who really wants to iChat with this perspective:

I call it the Nostril View ;)

I Just Can't Stop About This Tablet!

2010-01-04T16:15:00.003-05:00

Seemingly like the rest of the Internet, I'm fascinated by what will come later this month from Apple (and possibly this week from other vendors at CES, and certainly in the coming months from other vendors). But it's the Apple product that has me mesmerized. So much so that when Joe Wilcox blogged that tablets are a niche market and wanted to know what people would use them for, I couldn't resist.

First and foremost, I think the tablet will be a really simple way for people to access the internet and email. That may sound silly in this day and age, but believe me a lot of people do not want to go through the hassle of getting broadband internet, configuring wireless access, figuring out whether to use client email or web email, and diagnosing where problems are when things aren't working. I envision the tablet to be sold like an iPhone - with connectivity and email configured before you leave the store.

Second is ebooks, magazines, and newspapers. The Kindle and the other readers have shown that this market is growing and has a large potential. The killers here are a readable screen, very light weight / easy to hold, and battery life. I expect good performance on the first two but wonder how much battery life they will get when balanced against these desires.

Finally, video. Anyone can watch video on a desktop or laptop computer and it's not bad. But it's not great either. Most computers are built as functional devices, not beautiful ones. They just don't have the clean look that consumer appliances like TVs do. Almost all TVs have hidden their control buttons and moved to a sleek border with few accents. This tablet will be similar - I bet you'll be able to prop it up (somehow!) and watch and not feel like you're bringing a keyboard, trackpad, and a bunch of buttons along for the ride.

Compatibility and Fratricide

2010-01-01T10:01:00.008-05:00

Yesterday on Daring Fireball John Gruber posted an insightful article about the forthcoming Apple tablet. I largely agree with his thinking and am intrigued by the idea of how the tablet fits into the Apple product lineup. In my previous posts Tabula Rasa and Apple Takes Advantage of the Netbook Market I covered some similar ideas.

Gruber compares the relationship between the tablet and current MacBooks to the original Macintosh and the Apple II, saying that the tablet represents the future of portable computing just as the Mac represented the future of personal computing. That analogy contrasts somewhat with my assertion that the tablets would add a major category between MacBooks and the iPhone / iPod touch lines.

Gruber then postulates, as I have assumed, that the tablet will come with its own version of OS X - not the desktop / laptop version or the iPhone version, but a third customized flavor. I think this is the only rational way to go as the other versions are tailor made for the display and input methods and sizes used.

Here is where something interesting occurs though. Thinking back to the introduction of the Macintosh, it not only provided a new computing paradigm but departed totally from the Apple II. No programs written for Apple II would run on the Mac, and no Mac developed programs would run on the Apple II. This complete departure worked against the Mac as time went on. While the Apple II had held an advantage in application software the Mac started from scratch and ended up behind the IBM PC / DOS platform.

One step that Apple could have taken with the Mac but did not was to create an Apple II compatible application or emulator - essentially an Apple II terminal window for the Mac. I don't know why they didn't do that and have not developed enough code on the 6502 or 68000 platforms to know how difficult it would have been. What I think may have had a bearing on it was the fact that the Apple II and Mac teams within Apple were competitive with each other. Putting an Apple II compatibility mode on the Mac may have cut significantly into the attractiveness of the Apple II itself. It may also have cut against the grain of creating a totally new paradigm - what good was the GUI if most people used the command line interface?

The idea of fratricide in product lines is very real; just look at how HP and Dell's revenue and margins have been impaired by netbook sales. Those sales likely would have gone to higher ASP laptops had netbooks not been available (or course, if HP didn't offer netbooks the sale would have gone to an HP netbook).

I believe Apple, at some level at least, was protecting the Apple II line by not putting in the compatibility mode. I also believe this decision contributed to the inability to gain market share against the PC / DOS systems of the day.

Fast forward to the iPod days and it seems that Apple learned from the lessons of the Macintosh. When the iPod mini was burning up the charts and Apple killed it to introduce the iPod nano. The thinking there was that something better than the mini was possible, and if Apple didn't introduce it then someone else would. Therefore the mini had to be replaced even though it was a popular product.

With the tablet things are a little different. The iPhone has created a software environment that is leading the competition, and the OS X environment is also healthy. It seems highly likely that the tablet will run software made for iPhone, though it may take some code refactoring to make that happen. Also likely is that web-based apps will run in a version of Safari built for the tablet.

What is not clear is if the tablet will have a way to run desktop OS applications from OS X. Other tablets that are introduced from other vendors in the coming months will undoubtedly include desktop OS applications. Some will run Windows 7 and others will probably use Linux variants (I can't tell if Chrome OS tablets will run desktop apps at this point, but it seems like they won't).

If the Apple tablet relies only on iPhone apps and new development can it compete with tablets from other vendors in the long run?

Tabula Rasa

2009-12-25T09:04:00.008-05:00

Rumors and leaks about the forthcoming Apple tablet computer are running rampant these days.

It seems as if once everyone's Christmas shopping was done they started seeding the desire for the next thing. It's a good strategy: don't risk Christmas sales now for the upcoming products. They kept an airtight lid on everything tablet until Christmas Eve, when we learned that Apple reserved the Yerba Buena center for January 26th, Steve Jobs was "very pleased" with the tablet, that interacting with it was "shocking", that Apple has patented methods of deforming a smooth surface to add key edges, depressions, and malleable zones, and that Apple acquired a domain called iSlate.

This is an incredible torrent of information released in a 24 hour period after a product has been shrouded in secrecy for years. All this gets people thinking of the next big thing which could be theirs in a few short months.

Opinions range as to the function of tablet (as well as its size and other specifications). The most common applications noted are ebook / newspaper reading, video and audio (particularly using the new iTunesLP software), internet browsing, movie/TV rentals or subscriptions, and video chat. A popular postulation is that the tablet will use a combined e-ink and lcd display (such as the one Pixel-Qi is producing). Many believe it will run the iPhone operating system with some enhancements to allow for larger screen size, multitasking, and other uses. Others contend it will lean more towards Mac OS X or a hybrid between them.

Many industry analysts have predicted that the tablet will fall into a "slot" in the Apple lineup that is between the Mac Mini and the MacBook. The pricing tiers for the Mini are $599 and $799 while the MacBook starts at $999. That leaves $699 and $899 openings for a new product. Conceivably the Mini price could change (lower) to free up $599 or $799 as well, so there is some flexibility in the price tier.

Estimates for sales of the device are already in (with nary a look at an actual device!) and hover around one to two million devices a year.

So, with almost no official information we've got the name, size, uses, price, introduction date, innovative user interface elements, and sales nailed down. Or completely up in the air. The fact is that we don't know many of these things for sure and are extrapolating from existing information with a dash of our own desires.

While I feel the same sense of excitement about the forthcoming product I'm anticipating something more than just a cool tablet device. I believe that Apple is entering a new phase of its product platform and will add tablets to the line with a range of models. I see the existing product line looking something like this:

iPod

iPhone (and iPod touch)

MacBook (White, Air, Pro)

Desktop (Mini, iMac, Mac Pro)

I think we'll see a new entry in this table for tablets between iPhone and MacBook. I think tablets will be an entire product category on par with the others rather than an accessory device. Much like laptops used to be considered the portable, low-powered version of a desktop machine and have morphed into the standard computer, I think we'll see tablets take on a role as a different sort of portable device. I mentioned in an earlier post that Apple's iMac is seeing resurgent sales partly because people that recently bought netbooks and were ready to upgrade their main computer are opting for desktop machines rather than laptops. I think this effect will carry forward with the tablet devices. Some competition with the existing product line is inevitable.

The big question is if this device category can pull in new users or will it leech off of existing Mac and iPhone users. iPod and iPhone both reached out to non-Mac users and drew them into the Apple ecosystem, leading to increased Mac sales as well as device and iTunes sales.

Touch Screens on Laptops

2009-12-19T00:01:00.004-05:00

Windows 7 is out and has built in support for touch screens. Tablets are undoubtedly a focus, but several commercials (and demonstrations for the past year or two) are pushing the technology for laptops and "all-in-one" desktops.

I've seen a number of demos of the all-in-ones with touch screens. Most of them use photo rotating for the demo which looks good but really isn't something that's going to sell me on a new computer or technology. I can't see spending a lot of time photo editting on this type of machine.

With a laptop my hands are closer to the screen, so reaching up to touch it, especially with one hand, seems like a pretty natural movement. I could see using the touchscreen to move windows on the screen (think expose), shrink and expand text or pictures, flick through a stack like coverflow or down a list like the contacts in an iPhone, or even pull up a menu and scan through it. I find reaching with one hand is quite a bit easier than reaching with two, so the multi-touch photo rotation is probably not a good bet.

Apple has multi-touch track pads which offer many advantages without requiring the user to touch the screen, but there is definitely room for innovation using the touch screen.

The key will be to get people used to it by introducing a small set of features that work well and offer a distinct advantage over using the keyboard, mouse, scrollwheel, trackpad, or other interface. Since a lot of laptops are used without a mouse the focus could be on supporting functions like click and drag which are tricky with a trackpad.

Recognizing that desktop, laptop, and tablet are different use cases is paramount. In the past Microsoft has struggled with that - Windows CE and Windows Mobile were essentially desktop Windows using a stylus which clearly was not the way to go.

I'm excited to see the willingness to expand the feature set, and hopeful we'll see improvements in usability and accuracy from it.

Web Apps and Smart Phones

2009-12-17T23:28:00.006-05:00

Following up on the PastryKit discussion, I was thinking about what phones will be like once the processing power, hardware hooks, and UI elements are in place to make HTML / JavaScript / CSS apps that are competitive with native apps.

I recall Steve Jobs saying that with iPhone Apple was moving the competition from a hardware feature comparison to a software comparison. (I'm paraphrasing and couldn't find a link to the actual quote - any help from out there would be appreciated). What is interesting is if all Webkit-based browsers can implement the same functionality, where will the distinction in phones come from?

Hardware features as before? Overall design? Software integration? App discovery and navigation? Multimedia playback, distribution, and discovery? Or will it remain specialized apps that work well on certain phones and not on others (for example, games that use intensive graphics)?

I think recent history has shown that hardware advantages are fleeting while true software integration takes longer to implement. Google has made impressive progress with Android and may be successful in getting hardware manufacturers to lower their margins and place Apple in the "premium price" category as they are with computers. Other phone manufacturers (Palm, RIM, Microsoft) have all faced delays workarounds to assemble the pieces needed for premium mobile ecosystems.

One significant difference between the smartphone market and the PC market that preceeded it is that the phones are primarily content consumers rather than content producers which makes interoperability much easier. This may lead to a marketplace that supports multiple OS and hardware platforms indefinately.

PastryKit and the iPod

2009-12-16T22:50:00.002-05:00

John Gruber posted on Daring Fireball about PastryKit which is apparently an Apple-developed framework for creating mobile web apps for iPhone and iPod touch. Gruber did a nice analysis of Pastry Kit and included a demonstration of a website (http://help.apple.com/iphone/3/mobile/) written using it. He also explained many of the advantages it offers versus other web development tools and how it compares to native app development. I highly recommend reading the post if you are at all interested in mobile app development, be it native or web-based.

While reading about PastryKit and the idea of web apps on the iPhone it reminded me of a strategy Apple used to achieve dominance with the early iPod incarnations.

The idea Apple used was to adopt a different technology for a key component of the product, only to then adopt the original technology after it had matured and other competitors had been forced into defensive "follower" positions.

When the iPod was introduced in October of 2001 there were a number of other mp3 players on the market. Most of them used flash memory to store data and had capacities in the 128 to 256 MByte range. Apple entered the scene with a radically different technology - a miniature hard drive that held 20 times more music than the flash players. Other manufacturers were seemingly caught off guard with inferior products. Now, the Nomad was famously introduced around the same time also with a hard drive but it failed in the marketplace for other reasons. Once the iPod caught on and, with iTunes began pulling away from other competitors, Apple then introduced the iPod nano - based on flash memory. By this time, 2005, flash had improved enough put up to 4 GB in a first generation nano. Once again Creative, Samsung, Toshiba, even Microsoft had channeled their energy towards battling Apple with hard-drive based players and were caught flat-footed without flash-based players to offer up. This was a great example of Apple "skating where the puck is going to be".

Now we have the iPhone and the Cocoa Touch development framework which has become the gold standard of native app development. When it was introduced the initial development platform (Steve Jobs' "sweet solution" for app development) was JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. Soon after, though, the SDK and App Store were introduced, causing a seismic shift in mobile app development. Other companies spent the next year and a half developing their own SDKs, App stores, and developer incentives. Now it seems Apple is putting some weight behind web app development. Might we see another case of other companies following as Apple leads?

Apple Takes Advantage of the Netbook Market

2009-12-15T10:22:00.001-05:00

In September Apple introduced a new line of iMac and Mac mini desktop computers. Apple was running against the grain of the rest of the computer industry, which has trended largely toward notebooks and even smaller netbooks recently.

Surprisingly, the new desktop machines are selling well, based on analysis of NPD sales data by Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster.

I believe that the success of netbooks in particular is related to the success of these desktop machines. People buying low cost, highly portable netbooks are more than likely supplementing a "main" computer. As they begin to replace these "main" computers it makes sense to consider a desktop machine rather than another notebook. The desktops have more processing power and disk storage, bigger screens, and generally better keyboards than laptops. If you've covered mobility with a netbook, why not splurge for the nice screen and comfort of a desktop at home?

So while Apple isn't playing in the netbook market directly, I believe their recent investment in upgrading and improving their desktop line was done to take advantage of the same market. I'm not contending that desktops will make a total resurgence or that notebook sales will decline, but I think there was a bump in desktop interest that Apple predicted and capitalized on.

I will be interested to see any statistics on "other" computers owned by netbook owners in the future.