More on TechnologyTell: Gadget News | Apple News
Really? Talk of Apple shipping 10M tablets the first year. Good for e-books—IF true
January 1, 2010 | 11:22 am
|
By David Rothman
The Apple-oology fun continues, in the best spirit of the old Kremlinology.
Newest rumor is that Apple hopes to ship 10 million of the miracle tablets the first year. True? If so, a lot more people might be reading e-books through a supplied Apple app, or third-party ones like Stanza, the Kindle app, Kobo or the Barnes & Noble-branded one. Let’s just hope Apple doesn’t shut out the third-party people.
Bloomberg at any rate passes on the rumor as related in the blog of Lee Kai-fu, a former Google executive. Excerpt from Bloomberg:
“The Apple Tablet will be released by Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs next month and be sold for less than $1,000, according to the post dated Dec. 28. The device will feature a 10.1-inch multitouch screen with three-dimensional graphics and look like a large iPhone, Lee wrote.”
|
Previous
SUBSCRIBE TO RSS
Comments:
Appleoology? Is that like Cryptozoology? You know… the study of mythical beasts that haven’t been proven to exist?
At this point, I own a Macbook, a Mac Mini, an iPhone, an iPod Touch (now in my husband’s possession), and have purchased an iPod Touch for my dad. And this is before we get to my Reader collection. Needless to say, there are no less than 4 devices on my nightstand right now (I pulled out the Palm Tungsten e2 the other day for the Mobipocket… le sob. j’taime Mobipocket… But apparently, j’taime le iPhone more.)
Unless the mythical Apple tablet weighs the same or less than an iPhone AND comes in under $500, I really can’t see myself going for it… Oh, and it better be a damn revolutionary eReader, too.
That said, I think the combination of rumors swirling around the new Kurzweil reader app. and the Apple iMyth are too coincidental. I just don’t see Apple going so far as to allow Adobe DRM ePub on their systems if they won’t put Flash on the iPhone.
The Apple Tablet will have the same problem as all prior non-epaper e-book readers: Lack of battery life. I’m sure Apple will put all the same ULV gear into it that is in the Macbook Air to get battery life as good as possible, but that leaves the display, which is the single largest battery user on any tablet or notebook because current color LCD technology requires a backlight in order to be readable. And even the latest low-power LED backlighting is still a power hog.
By contrast, e-paper basically uses no power except when you flip the page. But it’s also too slow for any Mac-style user interface because e-paper works by physically flipping small particles to display their appropriate white or black side, a process which is inherently slower than applying EMF to a point in a liquid to cause that point of liquid to display its color (the basic LCD process). The problem being that with LCD displays you have to keep pulsing that point or else it won’t show the desired color, meaning LCD displays use power whenever they’re displaying something, while e-paper uses power only when you hit the ‘next page’ button to display the next page, however long that takes.
So anyhow — no, the Apple Tablet isn’t going to change how we read e-books any more than netbooks did. Indeed, that’s the primary market the Apple Tablet is going after — the netbook market. Whether they hit that mark or not, we’ll find out when (or if) the Apple Tablet is actually released, but it isn’t going to put Nook, Kindle, or Sony Reader out of business — the deranged business model that has ebooks being more expensive than paperbacks in many cases and DRM’ed so that they’ll be useless in 3 or 4 years (as vs the paperback books I have that are 20+ years old) will do that just fine without Apple’s help, thank you very much.
I hope to sell ten million books next quarter. Unfortunately, the trends don’t indicate it’s likely. I seriously doubt Apple can sell ten million tablets in 2010. I also doubt the price will be less than $1K. Think about it…will they offer unlimited internet access (as Amazon does)? Cell companies and Apple both make money selling subscriptions. If they don’t offer free internet, you’re talking about your $100/month data service. Total cost of ownership goes very high.
Rob Preece
Publisher