Apple out of touch

Like many households we've become locked into the Apple ecosystem.  Not me personally, I'm a bit of a rogue running an Android phone, an Android 7" tablet and a Windows 8 Surface RT tablet, so I'm spreading the love across two operating systems myself.  My wife is the Apple user, with both the iPad and the iPhone.

It was the iPad first, if my memory serves me correctly, followed by the iPhone.  Earlier adopters will have bought the iPad second, but it's all the same as far as locking-in is concerned. Part of me struggles with the locking in part - I'm toying with the idea of moving over to a Windows 8 phone when my contract comes up for renewal later this year. Because I'm not tied completely to either Android or Microsoft I can swap around as much as my contract allows me.

Apple users, though, struggle with this lack of loyalty, and with good reason. Apple were first to the post with a joined up ecosystem, linking devices together so that photos taken on the iPad appeared almost instantly on the iPhone and vice versa. Same with their calendar, music and, of course, apps. Now I've blogged about this a few times previously, but the ecosystem appears to be more dysfunctional than ever. Photos are very sticky, once in almost impossible to remove, so the photo library grows and grows, to the point that my wife has deleted virtually all her musice from her iPhone to accommodate the photos. Moving music seems harder than we remember it, too. Initially my wife used to use her iPhone like a juke box, changing songs to suit her mood and season. As her phone is only 16gb versus the iPad 32gb she always had to take care not to bust her storage, but in the last year or so that has become almost impossible. As her phone contract is up later this year she has mooted changing to a non-Apple product, but then the crisis regarding the ecosystem always crops up.

But now it seems that Apple have come up with a potential solution, albeit unintentionally. They've just revamped their iPod Touch MP3 players, dropping the price a tad while upping the spec. They've also added some colour to the devices, so that may please some potential buyers. The biggest improvement, apart from price, is the inclusion of a 5mb camera. So users could pick up a larger capacity iPod - they go up to 64gb - so all of your photos, music and diary events could be stored on the one device, it could become the go-to camera to carry around, it can share with the iPad and the iCloud.

And users would be free to go with whatever phone, based on whatever OS they wanted. Which is good news for Android and Windows 8 phones, because that is probably where Apple customers will go as soon as their phone contract is up.

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Keep On Taking the Tablets

Aldi, the German supermarket store that has a nationwide presence in the UK, is launching its own 7" Android Tablet, made for it by Medion, a manufacturer of entry level computing devices.  I've owned a Medion laptop before - bought from Woolworths before the credit crunch did for them - and it was a great little machine.  The Journeymen and Skin were written on that machine and it is still in daily use by a family friend.

The Aldi product is coming in at under £80 and although of a lower spec than many competing tablets it does have expansion ports for micro SD cards and features a quad core processor.  Unlike Amazon's Kindle it has full access to the Android market and hopefully doesn't come preloaded with adverts for Aldi products.

It is competing more directly with Tesco's Hudl, a 32GB quad core machine that also has expansion ports and a micro HDMI port retailing for under £120, if you can get one.  Tesco report that they have sold 300,000 Hudl's since its launch less than three months ago and repeatedly state there isn't a supply issue, however finding one in the supermarket stores or on-line is proving a difficult challenge for many.  My local Tesco store told me they last had a shipment of 100 units that sold in a couple of hours and they haven't seen hide nor hair since.  The Tesco machine is made by Archos in France, another electronics manufacturer with a long history of making similar devices.

This is the year that Steve Job's legacy comes home to roost.  He opened Pandora's Box with the launch of the iPad a few years ago and launched an industry that knows no current bounds.  The drive to produce low cost tablets in the 7" category is only going to continue and I expect the specification to increase as the prices drop.  The only real gap I'm seeing in the market is a low end Windows 8 tablet in the 7" format - now that would really complement the Windows 8 laptops and larger tablets such as the Surface RT and Pro as a portable tablet that would eat straight into the heart of Apple and would make many serious users reconsider buying into the Android dream.  I would expect such low cost Windows 8 tablets to have software capable of reading Microsoft Office documents offline and hopefully access to Office 365 through the SkyDrive account in the same way my Surface RT does.

But one thing is clear - tablets are fully established now.  I can see a future not that far away where we will all carry a 7" tablet of one of the three main flavours all the time - as a web surfing portal, an eReader for our eBooks, a games machine to while away our lunch break and our primary email on the go.  Then we'll have our 10" tablets for use at home and wherever the larger screen size is necessary.  Finally we'll have our full sized touchscreen PCs for work and play.  If we stick with Windows 8 throughout then there will be complete continuity across all of our activities however mixing and matching operating systems wouldn't be too much of an issue as long as we can access our documents from any of tablets via the cloud.

With the advent of low cost tablets hitting the supermarkets there's no reason for not joining the tablet revolution.

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Kindle Fire on Discount

Nobody can have failed to notice the impact the Kindle Fire has had in the last year or so.  It was a slow burner, almost rumour-ware with the US release of the original Fire later than expected and the UK release months later.

But a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then and this side of the pond the Kindle Fire has become an accepted standard bearer for the tablet computing brigade.  There's been a few iterations on the way, partly so that Amazon can firm up its control over the heavily cloaked Android OS, partly to make sure that they deliver a market beating product.

And what a market that is turning out to be.  Google, owners of the Android system, have set themselves up as an almost premium retailer of tablets with the Nexus range.  I'd wholeheartedly support their position if it wasn't for the fragility of the screen and the cost of repairing it.  I'm not going to go into this here - I've written plenty of blog postings for you to read through about my experience of the Nexus 7 if you want to read about it - but just to warn potential users that the screen does break and replacements are more expensive than the whole device.

Then there's the Samsung Galaxy range of tablets - pricey compared to many but very popular.  They appear to be well made and robust.  I haven't heard of anyone needing to have the screen changed but have seen quotes and they are a fraction of the Nexus prices.  Let's not forget that Apple make a few tablets, too.  In fact Apple can claim to be the disruptor of the industry, effectively changing the course of computing with the introduction of the iPad. While the iPad didn't - and still doesn't - replace real computers for real computing tasks (most tablets don't), it has managed to crush PC sales year on year.  Part of that is because a PC that was adequate five years ago is still adequate, whereas historically after five years it should have been a candidate for recycling.

Of course Microsoft have been dragged into the tablet world, seemingly a little reluctantly, but are poised to either claim the tablet world for themselves or die in a ball of flames.  The jury is out at the moment but having used a Surface RT for about six months now I'm pretty impressed with the combination of tablet convenience coupled with access to real world computing software such as Microsoft Office.  Although the RT is as expensive as an iPad it is way more functional.  This blog has been typed on it as have about 50,000 words towards the two novels I'm working on.  So far there is no sign of wear or malfunction in the keyboard and my work-in-progress novels are nicely stored in the Microsoft cloud.  The main drawback for me, using RT, is the lack of third party apps - all software has to come via Microsoft and for the RT version it is still limited.  I've also tried the full fat version of the Surface, the Pro.  That is more flexible than the RT in terms of software but you have to buy the Office suite as an extra, it costs nearly twice as much as the RT anyway and is significantly heavier than the machine I'm using.  Bring down the cost and weight and slip Office on as a freebie and Microsoft might just tip the scales...

On top of all this is a plethora of cheap, no-name Android tablets that are probably worth considering if you don't want to pay a premium price to see what the fuss is all about, or if you want to get the kids a tablet that won't cause you sleepless nights because of the cost.

However the real tablet war is not based on productivity, it's based on convenience.  Which is why so many tablets are seven inches - it's such a perfect size for slipping in your jacket, bag or rucksack ready for whipping out and surfing the net or reading a book at a moments notice.  And that is one area Amazon have focussed on - with increasingly better versions of the Kindle Fire culminating in the release a little while ago of the new Kindle Fire HDX - better, clearer, faster than ever before. Or so Amazon say.  However anyone buying the predecessor Kindle Fire HD a few weeks ago wouldn't have been too disappointed - it's a well specified machine that has just been superseded.  A tad irritating if you've just bought one, I guess, but then again such is life.

But my view is that the HD version wasn't a bad device - in fact it was a very good device - and it seems that Amazon have a few left on their hands.  If you mosey on down to the Amazon website in the next few days you will find that they are selling the 'old' HD model for just £99 dead, £60 less than a few days ago. No catch, no tricks, just a good promo.  You'll have to pay £10 more if you don't want the ads popping up, but from what I've seen most people don't even register them. I don't know if Amazon are putting similar offers in their other regions, it may well be worth checking their local website. 

Of course, if you were one of those who paid £160 a couple of weeks ago for a HD, the price drop will just rub salt in your wounds. I sympathise, but that's the problem with technology and the pace of change. On top of all that the Christmas tablet war hasn't even started! It's become an annual mantra that this is going to be the year of the tablet, I think we're to the right of that point now.

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Has Microsoft Got Apple Rattled?

The release of the new Surface tablets, especially the Surface Pro, seems to have started a bit of a measured round of verbal tennis between Apple and Microsoft.  The fact that the rhetoric is restrained indicates that they are playing a serious game here.

Apple are talking up the iPad Air and are touting an Office-like clone that will run on the iPad.  That has to be a way forward and takes the iPad out of the serious toy world into real productivity arena.  Like Microsoft or loathe them, they've forced this agenda.  I've been saying for the last two years that the lack of productive uses for tablet computers has been the elephant in the boardroom.  Sure there's a lot of serious applications for the likes of the iPad and its Android cousins, but until Microsoft launched the Surface earlier this year complete with the ability to run Microsoft Office and to connect to a secure network (for the Pro version anyway), the elephant roamed unchallenged.

But the tablets that Microsoft have launched, along with similar hybrid devices based on Windows 8 by other manufacturers, have changed the game.  Although the RT version of the Surface seems to have stalled, it still represents an amazing amount of productivity for very little cost - around the price of a lesser spec iPad, but weighing only about an ounce more.  You get the touchy-feely iPad-like environment with the tablet, but also the ability to write novels, update spreadsheets, produce PowerPoint presentations with the magnetic clip-on keyboard.  Add SkyDrive with its free 7GB storage and the WiFi connectivity then you have something that is more than the sum of its parts.  The weakness is the apps; Windows 8 is playing catch up with iOS and Android, Windows 8 RT is going nowhere fast.  Because RT has only the Microsoft store available to access apps and won't run legacy Windows 7 or earlier programs it is struggling to convince.

However the Pro, at admittedly nearly twice the price of the RT, can do all of the above and more.  It is heavier, though, and thicker.  I've been using one this last week to see how it compares with traditional laptops when out of the office.  The jury's out at present, but for those situations where a mix of legacy software and business applications are required, the Pro may be the solution.  Connection to a secure intranet seems seamless and the machine is fast in use.

So can Apple catch up with the iPad Air?  Well, one area the Surface Pro is struggling is in the weight department - it is relatively heavy in use.  Apple have a track record of addressing weight issues.  The Pro does have a minimalist approach that Steve Jobs would probably approve of - power button, volume button and one USB port but when used with the new dock it seems to expand nicely.  Apple have yet to get over the USB port concept, which may hold them back.  The unknown quantity is the Office-like software being suggested.  There are a few Office clones around, with Open Office being the best well known.  It works reasonably well and produces MS Office compatible files, but I always feel I'm wrestling with it (I use it on a netbook).  Apple have an uphill battle to create an Office replacement that works on the iPad and makes users feel it is worth the effort. And good luck with printing - after two years we're still struggling to print from an iPad at home, but I find my Surface RT prints wirelessly without any apparent effort, although I suspect that was part of the 8.1 upgrade as I did struggle before.

So Microsoft have challenged Apple and their responses this week suggest that they have struck home.  Apple are getting serious about making the iPad serious.  It should also make Microsoft sit up too - Apple are a very capable company with a track recode of delivering - if Microsoft want to keep their lead in this serious tablet arena then they have more work to do.  Hopefully by the third iteration of the Surface Pro it will have the weight and thickness of the first generation RT.

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Facing Up To The Charges

Keeping your phone charged is a daily problem.  Most phones these days will survive a full day of normal usage - checking Facebook, Twitter, reading emails, even sending texts.  Throw in a few decent phone calls, though, and you may struggle to read your eBook on the train home.  It's the same with tablet computers too, but without the phone calls.  They're just too darned useful for watching films and Skyping, I guess.

There's been a few attempts to address the problem, most noticeably through better batteries and by making the devices more efficient in use.  That makes a lot of sense, but despite the best endeavours they still seems to fail some of us some of the time.

And of course the remote charging idea is floating around out there.  I've written about this before and although I believe it's coming I'm still a little sceptical that it will prove to be a major benefit.  For example in our house we leave the RT, an iPad and a HTC phone charging on the breakfast bar overnight.  It works, the cables are tidy thanks to an enlightened electrician who persuaded me to fork out for twice as many sockets than I thought I'd ever need when he rewired our kitchen.  Now, to move to contactless charging would require me buying a contactless charger large enough for all of these devices, assuming that we replaced them with models that supported contactless charging and they all used the same system - because just like in the bad old VHS/Betamax tradition there are competing versions being produced.  So at home I'm unlikely to use contactless charging and the big push is to mount these charging devices into the table tops of overpriced coffee emporiums so I can sip a latte while staring at my inert mobile remotely charging in front of me. 

Don't take this the wrong way Starbucks, but I'd rather you left me to sort my own charging problems out and reduced your prices instead.  And paid your taxes.

However a French startup, SunPartner Group, has taken a different look at the problem.  They've worked out that although many of us insist on popping our mobile phones in our pockets for much of the day, we actually pull them out more often than we might like to admit - you know, double checking for those missed calls that we didn't get, sneaking a look at our Facebook timeline, posting the odd informative tweet - just been to the loo, again - and sending the occasional text or fifty.  And unless you're a contortionist you probably hold the mobile face up with the screen facing you. 

They've come up with a way to embed solar charging panels in the front screen of the phones.  It's a tricky process that involves stripes of sensors alternating with clear screen.  The stripes are very thin and it seems the clear gaps, while helping with the day job of reading your phone screen, help to focus the light anyway.  Obviously you can't expect to get all those solar panels in front of you without some light transmission loss and currently it stands at 82% transparency, which doesn't sound too bad.  The aim is to achieve 90% which means you may need to boost the screen light levels by a fraction, hopefully not enough to negate the extra charge gained through this process.  The cost of the screen is expected to add less than $2.50 to each phone.

If it works then I expect it might be adaptable to tablet screens as well - let's face it, they could benefit from a little extra charge while on the go.  And maybe they'll provide a bit more anti cracking resilience to the blighters. 

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iPhone and the Cloak of Invisibilty

Apple are working hard to maintain a level of differentiation between their products and the competition.  It's a multi-pronged affair what with lawsuits, cheaper materials and new features.  In fact the lawsuits and the cheaper materials won't help differentiate them from the likes of Google, Samsung and anyone else involved in making smart phones.  But the new features might and to be fair it has been Apple's forte in the past.

It seems they've taken a leaf out of Harry Potter for their latest idea - I don't know if JK Rowling will challenge their latest patent application but perhaps she should as it does have a whiff of 'inspired by' about it.

Apple are talking about invisible buttons.  If anyone is going to be offended by a mobile phone festooned in appendages for turning them on and making adjustments, then it has to be Apple.  Their approach to minimal hardware is famous; Steve Jobs challenged each and everly knob, dial and slider proposed for the original iPods and ended up with the devices that made Apple rich again.  The iPhone has followed in the footsteps of the iPod but does have a lot more buttons than that original iPod did.  I guess it does do a few more things than an MP3 player and there's only so much you can turn over to soft controls.

Plus the iOS is undergoing a radical overhaul that will see it move away from its real world images of torn notebook pages and crackled finishes to a new clean interface that will be minimalist in appearance.  So no offloading hardware buttons onto the iOS anymore, I guess.  Hence the patent for a cloak of invisibility.

In fact Apple's been beaten to this one, and not just by JK.  My wife has identical flower patterned covers for her iPhone and her iPad.  The cry of 'where's my phone?' resonates around our house on a regular enough basis thanks to the phone being left on top of the iPad, so much so it's become a bit of a family catch-phrase.  And the amount of times the iPhone hits the kitchen floor tiles indicates that not all of the cries are in jest.  Luckily the current version of the iPhone is still built with the high grade materials Apple are hinting at losing in future releases.  If they do start making future versions out of cheaper materials - and a less expensive iPhone is a desirable future - then I guess matching iPhone and iPad cases might be off the menu.

The way the patent has it, the new iPhone buttons will only be visible when they are needed.  They will be manufactured to a very high tolerance and will be almost impossible to see unless there is a need to use them.  Some of the time that will be determined by the actions ongoing - an incoming call, for example.  Alternatively they will become visible when your hand or finger passes over them, using heat signatures probably.  It seems that microscopic pin holes in the buttons will allow light through when the  button is needed.

The patent promises the phone will remain as clean as Steve Jobs could ever wish for, while being as festooned with buttons as the new leadership team deem necessary.  My guess is that Steve would still want the button count to be a low as possible - it wasn't clean for clean's sake for Jobs, it was a means to an end where the user had as simple an interface as possible.  My guess is that while the new phones, when they arrive, will look sleek and smooth, clean as a whistle.  I'm not convinced they will be a minimal as Steve would have wanted.

But at least they will be available to Muggles.

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Here's Looking Up and Down At Low Tech

When I was a kid we used to have these cards that changed as you angled them. So you could, say, animate a running man by turning the card to and fro. Sounds cheesy now, but light had only just been invented back then.  Sound came much later.

It's one of those technologies that keeps on coming back, like 3D films and personal tasers.  Well, OK, maybe the tasers are more my household. In the Eighties the cheesy animation technique, called lenticular lensing by the way, was brought back and used on millions of children's' lunch boxes showing their favourite animated character 'moving' in an attempt to make them eat their lunches.

It keeps coming back.  You've probably seen it used on promotional gizmos at trade shows, not unreasonably as those Eighties kids are now the target audience for those shows. 'Hey, this is cool. I used to have a lunch box with one of these things on. What?? Sure, put my company down for a thousand licenses of your software.' Well, maybe the sale isn't that easy, but that's the logic anyway.

Now the technique is being used to reach out to victims of child abuse - not those currently making every Seventies and Eighties rock star, DJ and TV presenter run for their lawyers, but those having to endure abuse today. Underground railway posters highlighting child abuse are showing all adult viewers one image while kids and the vertically challenged commuters are exposed to the same image plus a phone number the kids can call, courtesy of lenticular lensing on the posters.

I'm not convinced it will make a dent in the problem - I can see the logic, the kids can read and presumably memorise the phone number while 'dad' or 'uncle Bill' or whoever is oblivious to the number being relayed to the kid. I guess if it helps just one child it's worth the effort.

But I got to wondering how the concept could be harnessed for other uses. Obviously any practical use needs to exploit the relatively narrow bandwidth of human heights. So let's start with the inordinately tall members of the species - and I'm talking to you, Sion. You know who you are.  Many of us frequent UK pubs and many of the quainter examples weren't designed with modern humans in mind. At a guess, Hobbits would struggle with some of these pubs.  Even at a modest 1.8 metres high I still find some of the doorways too low.  For those who feel the rain a minute or so before me, it must be a running battle.  The correct solution is to make the doorways taller but this isn't always possible, plus a sign stating 'Duck or Grouse' is a hilarious and much cheaper alternative. The problem is that there isn't a consistent height for these low barriers so the 'Duck or Grouse' signs can tend to get over-used.  We all know that familiarity breeds complacency, so a lenticular sign, placed at the correct height, could place a harmless homily for most of us but have a warning for those likely to be affected.

In the same way drivers of tall vehicles have to be alerted to bridges crossing roads that are too low for their vehicles.  Conventional road signs exist to warn the drivers of articulated wagons and double decker buses yet bridges still get smacked into.  Again, the engineering solution is to raise the roof of the bridge so that all vehicles can pass under, but that's clearly not always possible.  My local low bridge carries a main line railway overhead and as far as I know, trains don't take to humpty backed bridges.  Anyway, I reckon the reason the signs don't work is because there's so many of them telling us loads of information that's not necessarily relevant to most of us.  Even the drivers of the vehicles that could potentially have their roof torn off probably drive past the signs in their cars on their way to work, so the signs become over familiar   However, inb general, drivers of tall vehicles are sat higher than most vehicle drivers, so lenticular signs could provide an opportunity to 'flash' a warning to those driving taller vehicles to warn them of an impending hazard that would be invisible to the majority of road users.

And the white knuckle rides that we take our kids on could have a sign that has a code that kids have to be able to read out to prove they are tall enough and a no entry sign only visible to the little ones.

Like 3D films, lenticular lensing will keep on coming back.  It doesn't require batteries so can be used quite passively.  And here's my final lenticular use that as far as I know isn't on the market, but must be a doable project.  An overlay for your iPad, Kindle Fire or Nexus 7 screen.  The ridges should be capable of stopping the reflections that happen outside when the sun is shining.  You may need to push the screen brightness up, draining the battery faster, but you'll be able to read your tablet eBooks on the beach.

And stop those tall geezers reading your book over your shoulder.

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Tablets Set to Reverse PC Decline

The sale of PCs has been sliding for a few years, pretty much in parallel with the rise of the iPad.  It makes sense, given the current economic situation that seems reasonable - there's only so much cash sloshing around so a choice to buy one device limits the options for another.  But more than that, the iPad showed that there are other ways of computing.

The iPad came with an interface that was intuitive, that stretched and slid items around the screen without the need for a mouse.  All you needed was a finger or two, and consequently the computer buying public showed two of them to the PC industry.  Year on year, since the iPad appeared on the scene, PC sales have  declined.

To be fair to Apple, or in fact to Steve Jobs, they pulled a blinder with the iPad and the iPod before it.  I can only imagine the look of horror on the boardroom faces when Steve walked in, sold them the concept of the iPod and then said that anyone would be allowed to develop apps for the device.  Not only that, although nobody was allowed to make a device that could run iOS, anybody could build under license devices that connected to the new hardware.  He wrapped the apps up in the iTunes store, making  millions for Apple on the way while controlling the quality and by letting you, me and the guy down the road make docks for the iPads he ensured that Apple had a wide variety of interfaces for the iPad that Apple didn't have to design or worry about selling well.  Genius.

The only problem is that the iPad, smart that it is, attractive and cool too, isn't a business tool.  When it arrived it was a solution looking for a problem, and quickly it found them.  Apps sprung up left, right and centre, our music management issues - the ones we'd largely been oblivious to previously, was solved by iTunes.  Book management was pretty well sorted too, although Amazon probably thought they'd addressed that particular issue already.  The ability to catapult cartoon birds through virtual air was sorted quickly enough and in no time at all every possible permutation of Maj Jongg, Sudoko and other games for the traveller and individuals short on friends appeared too.  But no true business applications.

Which is a bit of a surprise when you stop and think of it, after all, Apple make some pretty well respected business machines.  They may not have a track record of designing business software - they've traditionally bought that in, although anyone remembering the arguments between Apple and Microsoft initially over Microsoft Office will recall it wasn't always easy.  But they have carved a perfect niche in desktop publishing and arty graphical work over the years.  My guess - and it is a guess, I'm no expert in graphical arts - is that PCs can do pretty much the same task as a Mac can now, for a fraction of the price, but the reputation in the publishing industry resists tarnishing the network with anything not a Macintosh.

But Microsoft have recognised that the humble tablet needs a purpose, have spotted a gap, and have designed Windows 8 to deal with it.  I'm sure, like all previous Microsoft operating systems it will prove to be an advanced beta version until at least the second release version - they do have a habit of letting us normal users shake down their software - but it does allow Microsoft Office applications to run on it.

And they have taken a leaf out of Apple's book, but to be fair I think Apple borrowed it from Microsoft initially.  Although they are manufacturing their own tablets for this software, they're really keen on others doing the hard work - the HPs, Dell, Samsungs of this planet.  That way they are ensuring that Windows 8 will appear in a myriad of forms, colours, features and price points that MIcrosoft really doesn't have to worry about too much.  Of course, they will want them all to succeed, because inside every successful Windows 8 tablet is, well, Windows 8.

So it isn't a surprise to find that analysts believe that PC sales are going to grow rapidly over the next two to three years.  Don't expect much action in the desktop sales - their decline will continue sharply except for those that have touchscreen monitors connected, maybe.  Laptops with touch screens are going to see a real increase in sales and Windows 8 tablets are set to lead the attack.  Especially as the no-name manufacturers in China are now gearing up their low cost Windows tablets for general sale.  The growth in mobile PC sales is forecast to grow from 360 million devices last year to over 760 million devices by 2017.

I'll be surprised if Apple take this lying down - once we start buying tablets that can do our office tasks as well as flick birds with a temperament problem skywards in meaningful numbers there will be less of an imperative to spend what is left of out finite fiscal resources on a replacement iPad, no matter how sexily it is dressed up.  So I'm expecting the next generation but one iPad to start looking like a business tool.  It may even be the next generation - I understand the iOS is undergoing a massive overhaul, being simplified and made less fussy.  Perhaps that's to make the transition to a real business machine easier.  At least Apple have the heritage to do this.  I'm not sure if Google have thought it through.

So before you buy your next tablet computer ask yourself what you'd really like to do with it.  If the answer genuineness is surf the web, send emails, watch you tube, play music and games, then maybe the iPad is for you.  But if you want to do more, then look further afield, Windows 8 devices might just be what you are waiting for.

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Tablet Sales Rise Again

No matter where you look today, somebody is using a tablet.  Some are using them to read books, some to surf the web, many to play games.  Now and again you might find somebody trying to do some work.

The work capability is the elephant in the boardroom problem - outside of Microsoft tablets, you can't do real work on a tablet.  You can draft a blog, perhaps, but it's not an easy write.  Not if you're used to typing on a keyboard and formatting your text.  Writing a report or a novel - well I do both on a regular basis, but I'd rather not attempt it on my Nexus 7, thank you very much.  I've looked at the word processors available on the Play store and I'm totally underwhelmed at the free options and quite cautious about the paid for variants.   I may be judging software I haven't tried, but I don't have money to throw around on unproven products and I've yet to find a product listing that convinces me.

And what is it about printing?  Apple try to pretend you can print from the iPad and  we did manage to print something once using the AirPrint software, but we've really struggled since.  Checking out the Nexus 7 on-line manual, searching for 'print' returned zero results.  I don't doubt someone will have developed an App for it, like the multiple Apps we bought for the iPad that didn't work.

But, despite the lack of business tools for any of the tablets (apart from the Microsoft products) tablet sales are booming.  The increase in sales over the last quarter compared to the same quarter last year is more than 140% and we bought more tablets in the last quarter than we did in the first half of 2012.  It seems a love affair destined to run and run.  At least that's what I think.

Mind you, the boss of Blackberry, Thorsten Heins, thinks tablets are a flash in the pan and gives them five years.  He may be right, but he hasn't proposed what will fill the space they occupy - I doubt it will be Blackberrys.  He does point out that tablets are not good business options - it's all work, work, work with Blackberry I guess - but he neatly sidestepped the Microsoft option, much as I did at the top of this posting.

Microsoft have seen some growth in the tablet market - nowhere near as much as they hoped, I'd wager.  Compared to Apple, which saw record sales in the last quarter with over 19 million tablets, Microsoft were sub 1 million.  The total sales over the quarter were over 49 million tablets, so Apple are seeing their total market share shrink while their total sales increase.  That must make interesting conversations over the water cooler at Apple - are we doing well or are we doing badly?  It's a bit like my conundrum at work.  Last year the boss said I had a thin chance of a pay rise, now he tells me I've a fat chance and I don't know if things are getting better or worse.

Microsoft, I suspect, are going to push aggressively on price and features - you know, Office software and the ability to print plus the chance to join Microsoft networks effortlessly - well for models above the Surface range anyway - they're not Exchange compatible.  But now that Apple have shown that tablet computing is a viable way forward, it only takes a handful of people using tablets to write a few reports that  don't look like they've been drafted on Facebook and Microsoft might be looking at more than the odd million sales a quarter.  Maybe they'll stop showing adverts showing college kids discovering the mystery of magnets and actually show real people, with real jobs, using their tablets to do the kind of stuff that iPads can't.

And Thorsten Heins - I can't help wondering if that's his porn star name or his real one - will have to get used to the idea that people will have business tablets that will let them access their business emails on the move in a package that is small enough to be portable yet big enough to do meaningful work on.  It will unchain the office PC in a way that laptops don't, and that should be a frighting prospect for Blackberry, because once you've done that, what have they got to offer other than as an over-specified mobile phone?

I guess that's another interesting conversation over the water cooler.

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