Surface Duo - the end of an era

 

This blog entry is way overdue - I promised to update on my original Surface Duo review in 2022.

I've recently retired my Microsoft Surface Duo, I unfortunately had to.  I got it for my my birthday in 2022 and it has been my favourite mobile phone ever, bar none.  Unfortunately it started playing up, overheating and the battery wasn't lasting more than a few hours.  Repair wasn't really an option - Microsoft didn't make this device to be opened and mended, support is due to be stopped probably this year or early next and you can't buy a new one for love or money.

It's a crying shame Microsoft bottled it again - they really don't seem to have the sticking power for the mobile phone market.  I loved the Microsoft Windows Phone OS.  It never took hold, to be fair, and developers failed to produce variants of their apps for it.  That was a big deal to many users, but the small amount of business apps that were available worked fine for me.  I wrote about my Windows phones here back in March 2017 and if you stick to the end you'll see I was actually right about what Microsoft would do,

I actually battled on longer than most with the OS.  When I dropped the Hewlett Packard phablet and broke it I bought a second-hand one off eBay.  What tipped me over the edge was when WhatsApp was discontinued - it was and is our family go-to messaging platform.  So I moved to a OnePlus 7 mobile phone, which was pretty cool and then on to the Duo 2 when it was launched, as described in the earlier blog post.

If it had a fault it was too slippery if I wore Chinos or linen trousers.  It would slip out of my pocket as soon as I sat down.  I sourced a felt slip to hold it in place and that was the big problem solved.  In the three years (nearly) it's been in daily use it hasn't lost its sheen.  It still looks brand new apart from the corner bumpers, which did start to show their age.  I would have replaced them but Microsoft stopped selling them.  The internal screens are spotless and they've never seen a screen protector.

Everyone who saw it commented.  It looked and was cool.  It should have been a runaway success, but wasn't.  The reason, no, the fault is Microsoft.  They never marketed it properly.  I only ever saw one other Surface phone in the wild and that was a battered version 1.  Clearly they saw it as the aspirational professional phone and it fitted the bill, but the cool executives getting their phones on expenses clearly stuck with Apple products.  Most normal people prefer to pay a bit less for their phones, I guess, and you probably wouldn't know they existed unless you got lost on Microsoft's online store or you bumped into me in the street.

Compare and contrast how Microsoft have marketed the Surface Pro laptops, like the one I'm typing this on, my third so far (the first suffered a fatal drop onto the drive and the second one is upstairs in working order.  There just happened to be a really good offer earlier this year for the 1Tb version and I'm a sucker for storage).  Surface Pro laptops are so popular in part, I'm speculating, because every other laptop on TV is a Surface Pro.  I've read somewhere that Apple don't let TV and film companies allow bad guys to use Apple products, I'm guessing Microsoft aren't as sensitive about these things.  If Microsoft had flooded the film and TV world with Surface Duo 2s I reckon they would have been able to drop the price and shifted loads.  But they didn't and last year they broke up the team working on the Surface Duo 3 and announced they were ceasing support for the OS as soon as they legally could.

All of this is a crying shame and I was endeavouring to keep the Duo going as long as I could - my banking apps would probably stop working as soon as support stopped for starters but the battery situation brought the timetable forward.

As it happens OnePlus launched a folding phone called the Open earlier this year and I stumbled across a sweet deal with a decent discount, plus they offer seniors, veterans and a host of other categories an additional discount on top.  If you're in the market for a OnePlus product, check out their discounts - it could be worth £££s.

The Open is good, very good in fact, but bulkier than the Duo and just not as cool, partly because you only have to open it for certain applications.  Don't get me wrong, it's a great phone, but I was really looking forward to eking out the last few months of the Duo and welcoming version 3.  But it was not to be, I'm over it now.  I'll post a review of the Open in a little while.

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In the US Bronze is on a countdown promotion starting Sunday 14th September at $0.99 for the eBook, rising to $1.99 on the 17th September before reverting to the full price of $2.99 on the 20th September.  All promotions commence at 8:00 am PDT on the stated days.

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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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Assassin Avalable For Pre-order Now

 

As mentioned in a recent posting, I intend to use the pre-order process for my latest book 'Assassin'. For those of you completing a book for publication I can assure you that the process is fuss-free. The Smashwords forms guide you effortlessly to the point where you can release the book instantly, which historically has been the normal route for Smashwords, or you can set up a deferred date. All of the component parts - book, cover, blurb, etc need to be in place but you can go back and make edits before the release date if you need to. Personally I would recommend getting the book as right as you can before starting this step.

Irritatingly the pre-order only works on the stores Smashwords distributes to - Apple and Barnes & Noble being the most influential, but not at Smashwords itself.  What this means is that you can accrue pre-orders at the main bookstores, but not at Smashwords itself.

Once you have submitted your work you will probably need to do the customary dance with Smashwords - I had to do a little reformatting again and the auto-Vetter kept telling me I hadn't uploaded a cover when I had, but all in all it was quite painless. As I've mentioned before, it's worth importing the whole novel into WordPad, then back into Word. This removes all formatting from your manuscript, including the odds and sods that Word inevitably introduces over the gestation of the book. As Assassin has been written over a seven year period it is likely that the original file was quite buggy. An hour reformatting sorted out the remaining issues. Be prepared for a delay in the book appearing, though.  Assassin took about two days to appear at Barnes & Noble but a week to appear at the Apple store.  Due to a backlog all new books are taking a lot longer at Kobe, perhaps due to the transfer of the Sony store. If a link appears before release I'll add it.  The following links are to just one of the stores - you may need to search your own region to find the book locally.

Assassin is available to pre order at Barnes and Noble on this link

And Assassin is available to pre-order on iTunes at this link

What about Amazon? I hear you say.  Good question, it seems that Amazon don't support 'self-service' pre-orders.  If they want to set a book for pre-order they can, and I guess they do this for the bigger authors all the time, but for those of us hopefully on the way up, it's a no, I'm afraid.  What this means is that I will have to wait until Assassin is released on the 1 May then upload the files to Amazon and CreateSpace - that may not happen until the weekend following the launch I'm afraid.  If you want a Kindle version sooner, then I would recommend you pop along to my Smashwords page and buy a copy direct from them.

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It's a Gift

At this time of year many of us are lucky enough to have our fair share of presents. Some of us will have emboldened our sock drawer with comical socks, a few garish ties will have been worn on Christmas day, possibly for the only time ever, and of course there was a lot of tech unwrapped on the 25th.

It's not always easy to decide what to get the person who has everything or maybe nothing - where do you start?  And in today's acquisitional world it isn't always possible to know what everyone has at any given point in time.  Many are resistive to the idea of giving cash as a present, even though it ensures that the recipient gets what they want, however the very close cousin, the gift card, doesn't seem to have the same degree of resistance.  To be honest, though, a gift card is cash in another guise with a significant difference - it can generally only be redeemed in one store or chain.

What isn't always realised is that these gift cards have a finite life - if the recipient fails to spend the money on the card within a specified period, often around two years, then the cash that has been sitting in the store or chain's bank account earning interest for the last two years suddenly becomes a cash bonus to the store. So if you pull out the sock drawer and decide to get rid of the joke pair of socks you received two years ago, perhaps to make room for this year's offering, and you find a gift card wrapped up in them that has expired then you have inadvertently made a store a little bit wealthier.

This isn't universally correct.  At least ten US states have enacted laws that make the expiry date illegal, although some have just extended the period to give the recipients an opportunity to redeem over a longer period, but then creaming off any unclaimed credit for the public purse after, say, five years.  Probably still as unreasonable, but at least it should alleviate local taxes a smidgeon.

But store cards aren't the only source of gift cards and the two biggest sources available are the Apple iTunes card and the Amazon gift card.  One reason for giving these - or using them yourself - is that they avoid the need to register a credit card with the online stores.  The main reason is as a gift, though.  These have probably been given in their thousands, possibly millions, over the Holidays.  It makes sense - for everyone getting their first iPad or Kindle a gift card is an excellent idea, or so it seems.  It's also convenient if you're stuck for ideas and know they have a suitable device that would benefit from one of these cards.  If the recipient fails to register the card within two years or even just fails to spend it all then the balance reverts back to Apple and Amazon - like they need the cash.

I can't see the reasoning, apart from greed, because there's no cost associated with holding onto the cash value of the card electronically, although I'm sure their accountants would point to the liability hanging over their company.  It's a problem many traders would love to have, but in a technical accounting sense every gift card represents a potential credit note against their stock.  I'm sticking with greed in the main.

If you received such a card as a present then do ensure you register it and spend it.  If you gave such a card then let the recipients know that the card will expire in time and encourage them to use it - after all, you've already made Apple or Amazon wealthier than necessary by lending them a sum of money to invest while your son/daughter/brother/sister/mother/father/mate etc thinks about downloading a few eBooks or the odd iTunes.  Send them a link to this article if you like.

My advice for the future is to avoid giving gift cards.  If you must, keep the value as low as you can get away with.  And make sure you always spend any card values you hold while encouraging others to do the same.

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Sullivan's Almanac 2014

Last year I made some suggestion on how 2013 might pan out in the weird and wacky tech, social networking and ebook worlds. Not surprisingly I didn't get everything right and in the time honoured tradition of making forecasts out of nothing more than a misguide sense of my own opinions, I have decided that history was wrong and that I could do better this time. All I need is for my version of the truth to be accepted and for that time machine that I've been working on to give me the edge this year.

But not everything I forecast last year was wrong. I guessed the stock values of Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter would rise and fall. They did, if not in that order and heck, Twitter wasn't even listed back then! I did consider that Google or Amazon would rule the planet by this time this year, so I guess I was right after a fashion. Google didn't build the time machine I've been working on, or if they did I haven't noticed the temporal tear as they attempted to go back in time to invent Facebook. Or perhaps it was the other way around and the timeline has been rewritten. I guess I'll never know.

So what does 2014 hold in the tech world? Well we'll see the demise of the dedicated eReader. I've mentioned this a few times this last year, but this holiday season will be the last time significant amounts of these fine devices will be sold in quantity. The rise of tablet computing, with the attached benefits, has made the dedicated eReader all but redundant, especially as you can now buy basic tablets for under £50 and reasonably well specified models for just over £100. The trend is going to continue, we'll just accept the daily routine of charging our tablets and learning to read in the shade - a no brainer in the UK thanks to the clouds. There will be a small surge in sales of dedicated eReaders as companies holding stagnant stock offload them - that'll be me at the front of the queue making sure I've secured a spare for a knock down rate. Just in case the sun comes out.

Apple will have a crisis of confidence mid year when they realise that they are losing market share big time. They've translated a loyal and essentially niche customer base to the general population, not realising that real people are less forgiving than the long term Apple aficionados. To be fair, if they hadn't made such a mess of iOS 6 then upset nearly everyone with iOS7's new layout, they might have got away with it. But of course they still only provide one size of phone, two sizes of tablet and everyone knows they make over 65% of the product price as profit. Arrogant we can take, arrogant and greedy - taking the Michael surely? I know of people seemingly locked into the Apple environment seriously considering turning their backs on Apple next time they replace their tablet or phone - especially the phones with their outrageous lock in periods - aiming to adopt the cheaper and more varied Android devices. They'll probably keep their old Apple devices limping along to access the content they've bought on iTunes, but it's a slippy slope for Apple. If they're smart, and they do seem to be a bright bunch over there, they'll allow others to make devices that can run iOS, which might just turn sentiment around, but I doubt it. They've crashed and burned from a stellar position before and this time Steve Jobs won't be back to save them.

Google are going to have a rough year, along with Facebook. Normal people will start to realise that the NSA snooping on our emails to try and keep the majority of us safe from the evil minority is nothing compared to the shameless way these guys cut, dice and hawk our personal data. The Snowden scandal will have its second wind as journalists start to ask the real questions. Such as why Facebook saves the text we choose not to post. There's a background rumble about the way these organisations accumulate and sell on information about us, it could turn into a backlash this coming year. Of course we all accept that search engines and social media is here to stay, but expect alternatives to surface this coming year. Perhaps they'll have a model that doesn't involve stripping every piece of data out of us just for interacting with them.

Amazon will come under fire internationally as governments start to realise that the downside to a phenomenally successful company investing in their country is that it cuts the legs from underneath the small and medium sized traders who cannot compete with the likes of Amazon. When the politicians realise that Amazon employ less potential voters than they displace, and the tax revenues from the failed home-grown companies lost is greater than Amazon's less than generous tax avoided donations to the exchequer then things might get a little awkward.

So my forecast for next year is that between the people and their governments the excessively large players in the tech world will have a stormy ride. They'll survive it, of course, and may well come out stronger than ever. But I suspect there will be plenty to blog about this coming year.

If we don't meet before 2013 is out, have a happy New Year. Unless you're a tech giant.

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Did Apple Reach An Evolutionary Dead-end?

About this time of year the Royal Society, the august scientific organisation created by Charles Babbage amongst others, hosts a series of lectures for the BBC. Ostensibly the lectures are pitched at bright, inquisitive kids, but most normal adults will find the subject matter interesting and perhaps a little challenging. One series a few years ago introduced me to the concept of the evolutionary tree. The idea behind this is that as all species evolve, they effectively choose branches that my lead to further branches or they may find themselves at the end of a branch going nowhere. Which is why some species have rudimentary eyes that cannot improve, no matter how many mutations their DNA goes through. I found this difficult to accept initially as the whole evolutionary idea suggests that ultimately all species should evolve to a sentient state. At least that was my uninformed perspective before watching the lectures that year. Now that the BBC pretty much gives its content away to every citizen on the planet except for those of us in the UK where we have to pay a national tax for the privilege I should commend any of my overseas readers to try and catch the Royal Society Christmas Lectures on the BBC iPlayer. Don't worry, I'll pay.

I mention this because a few days ago I read that 200,000,000 copies of iOS 7 had been downloaded since its release. Make that 200,000,001 now. We downloaded the new version after realising that Apple were preventing crucial access to the annual 12 days of Christmas promotion that it runs at this time of year. Clearly if the 12 days are going to be held to ransom, there is little hope for other applications.

So the iOS was downloaded and the skeumorphisms apparently hated by Jony Ives were banished to the virtual waste paper basket. The iPad works much as before, but is a lot less interesting visually. And because it is being used on an iPad 2 there isn't much in the way of compensating features. I am aware that newer variations of Apple's incredibly expensive hardware does get some benefit from the new iOS, but that doesn't apply to items almost two years old, apparently.

It got me to thinking - did Apple find themselves at the wrong end of an evolutionary branch? Did they realise that they couldn't move the iOS forward unless they backtracked to the joint in the tree where they had committed to the previous direction? Of course iOS6 probably helped with the decision. Microsoft have taken the nuclear option of creating a radically and polarised interface with Windows 8 but Apple have tried to cling to the shadow of their previous iOS. Perhaps the idea is that once everyone has gotten over the disappointment of iOS 7 they can move forward and develop the next generation of iPad and iPhone functionality without the baggage of the previous incarnation.

If that is the case, can they make it quick? And could they make it work with the older devices they happily took our hard earned money for. Evolution should be a gradual process, hence we have small irrelevant parts of our bodies no longer needed, but still there. OK, sometimes they go rogue and hurt us, but I'm personally quite fond of my appendix - if I ever have to have it removed I'll press it flat and stick it in the back of one of my books. Critical these body parts may have been redundant for generations but haven't been thrown completely on the scrap-heap by evolution. We should be able to use older iPads and iPhones while they still work, not until Apple decide we should but a new one. Because the buying decision might not include Apple next time around.

In the meantime, while Apple decide on the next step of their evolution, consider catching the Royal Society Christmas Lectures - perhaps they're discussing technology this year.

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2014 - Downturn for Apple?

Apple have had it all their own way for the last seven years or so, and justifiably so given they gave the mobile phone market a massive kick in the rear and created the tablet market.  And did they dominate? You bet.

Then along came Google with Android, playing a long game on the apps and the OS.  Now they have the lion's share of the mobile phone market if not the revenue.  Apple have maintained their traditional pricing structure, positioning themselves as the premium product and for a while that was certainly true.  However their reputation is wearing thin, their products are not as diverse as the competition and critically they are failing to win market share in developing regions.

While mobile phone growth has remained steady in the western markets the effects of the credit crunch on disposable income has slowed down discretionary spending, although the queues around the Apple stores seem to belie this.  Android phones are seen as more versatile in the developing regions - it has a similar number of apps to Apple now and there is a wide variety of products at virtually every price point available.

Google aren't getting it all their own way, though.  In these critical markets Microsoft are seeing major growth.  They're late to the party, but in these regions they're catching up. Their alliance with Nokia means that there are some competitive phones in the developing regions and Microsoft are expected to see serious growth and market share in 2014.  They'll not get anywhere Android, but they could equal or better Apple worldwide.  Apple may have a certain cache with discerning customers, but their product line is looking limited and not at all diverse.  If you want a larger screen, better consider an iPad mini, because the mobile phones are all pretty much the size they were when they were launched many years ago.

But it is in the app sales that the war will really hot up.  Google are recompensing app developers pretty much the same the same amount as Apple do, an area they haven't previously competed well in.  Given the larger market share of Android this may affect development choices, which have traditionally favoured Apple.  Microsoft's app store, although only one fifth of the size of Apple's and Android's, is growing at a faster rate than either, possibly through developers cashing in on existing code as they get used to Windows 8 programming requirements.

Apple may have to consider expanding its range of products to retain its market share in both hardware and apps, but due to its long established principle of only developing in-house it will struggle to compete with the range of Android and Windows 8 mobile phones coming out.  Consequently it will have to change its model or see itself side-lined in 2014.

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iPad Pro for 2014

There are strong rumours circulating that Apple are likely to launch an iPad Pro device in the first half of next year.  If anything, this is an overdue development for the Apple tablet and one that Microsoft have shown to be ripe for the taking with its Surface tablets.

There's no argument that the iPad has infiltrated itself into business use way beyond its capabilities - lets be honest here, it's not the most secure of computing devices.  However it became such a must-have device but was and is priced as a premium commodity that inevitably it was those who were heading up the upper echelons of businesses and organisations who managed to get hold of the devices first, flexing their corporate budgets to obtain something that was initially quite elitist.  The question of security was probably swept under the carpet - if the boss wants an iPad, he gets an iPad.

Roll forward a few years and the iPad is still a premium commodity item, is still as insecure as ever and to be fair there's a few other premium tablets vying for part of Apple's business at a similar price point, although the trend has been towards the budget end.  Ultimately the iPad and most of the other slates are just consumer devices, only some tablets cost more limbs than others.  However Microsoft have shown that there is a need for a secure tablet in the market - or as secure as any Microsoft product can be as they are inevitably the target for the majority of the attempts to compromise their OS due to their ubiquitous position in the business and domestic sectors.  Whether it has been Microsoft entering the tablet arena that has spurred Apple, or whether if was always part of their game plan, isn't known.  But it seems like they are moving towards a Professional-orientated iPad next year.

Whether the device will be iOS or based on iMac software is an interesting starting point for consideration - the systems are too far apart to be merged at this point in time.  But there is a compelling argument for either approach - make the iPad Pro an extension of the MacBook range and software and you have what Microsoft have been aiming at, at the risk of alienating the traditional iPad power users who would happily pay for the Pro as an extended iOS device, or base it on a secure version of iOS so that it can access all those apps - now understood to have passed the 1 million mark - at the risk of limiting its compatibility with traditional Apple computer users.

Cost is going to be an interesting element, too, given that the consumer device is already priced high.  Apple tends towards premium pricing generally and let's face it, Microsoft have eased the market for this with its Surface Pro pricing strategy. Apple laptops and desktops have tended to be more expensive than their Microsoft software based competitors historically, so pitching just above the Surface Pro price point probably wouldn't be unreasonable to the Apple faithful. Of course Microsoft have the initiative here and could drop the Surface Pro pricing ahead of any iPad Pro launch, increasing the differential price pressure on Apple.

The biggest question, though, has to be around connectivity. Apple really has to think long and hard about its resistance to using industry standard interfaces such as USB, HDMI and micro SD slots. OK, we're all getting our heads around the cloud now, but Wi-Fi isn't as omnipresent as it should be. Of course Apple would likely include 4G as standard in a Pro model, but that may not fit in fully with every commercial organisations security profile.

An iPad for the grown up world is long overdue and looks like it should be here before mid 2014. Not only should it gladden the hearts of the iPad professionals and their long worrying ICT managers, it should exert a downward pressure on the prices of the consumer devices of all flavours.  In fact Google should worry because this is a race they currently cannot compete in and could lead to an erosion of the Android brand. Microsoft should view this as healthy and supporting their strategy; Apple competing validates the sector and makes it more robust.

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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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Blame the Triple Breasted Whore

Last weekend I went to see the live theatre production of the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy Radio Show, an ambitious performance that attempts to draw inspiration from all five books of Douglas Adams' famous trilogy.  To be fair, most of the production covered the original subject matter from the original radio series, but by carefully excising some significant parts of that story the cast were able to shoehorn some less familiar parts of the H2G2 story.  I may have missed it, but one omission appeared to be the triple breasted whore of Erotica.

It seems I'm not the only person to have missed references to erotica.  A British national newspaper pointed out, or exposed in the parlance of the industry, that WH Smith, a stalwart bookseller of the British high street and the internet was selling erotica on its website.  It answered a question I asked myself in passing some time ago but never bothered to research.

You see, Smashwords, the eBook aggregator that supplies self published books to Apple, Sony, Kobo (and by inference WH Smith as they have tapped into Kobo's catalogue) and Barnes& Noble, to name a few, has forged a home for erotica books alongside many other genres.  Now I don't write or read erotica, but I don't judge those who choose to either.  It's just not my bag.  My guess is that if Smashwords hadn't become the distributer of eBooks that it has then it would have faded into insignificance as a niche seller of erotica books by now.  What Kobo may or may not have realised and WH Smith clearly didn't was that once the authors of the erotica market had achieved the formatting standards required by Smashwords their books were eligible to be shipped to all of the above eBook sellers unless they excluded them themselves.  Apple realised this about a year ago and started to vet the content of the eBooks they took from Smashwords.  This was a very public happening that Kobo and WH Smith should have been aware of but clearly didn't think it worthy of following, possibly because it requires effort and therefore costs money.

Now WH Smith have been outed by the newspaper they have taken their eBook store down completely, Kobo have removed a lot of eBooks, possibly everything they have received via Smashwords.  I haven't carried out a lot of research (spotting a pattern here?), but I can confirm that my books, which do not contain erotica, have disappeared from Kobo.  My guess is that once W H Smith have identified all of the self published books, regardless of content, then they'll restore their eBookstore.  Which means that they'll resume selling 50 shades (originally a self published book) and of course the Hitch Hikers Guide, along with its harmless references to the triple breasted whore.  They will stop lots of erotica being available, and that's fine, but many other good books are going to be blocked from the public.

Smashwords owner, Mark Coker, is understandably outraged by the reaction.  I'm actually surprised it has taken this long to come to a head.  The self published phenomenon has trundled along unregulated for quite a while.  It has challenged the established publishing industry and caused it to take stock.  That is healthy, the old way of working wasn't moving literature forward as well as it could and the prices were, and to some degree remain, too expensive.  But one price has been the lack of control over self published books.  Apple have taken some control over this matter; it's time the other eBook sellers do so too. 

Taking all the books off sale should be, at most, a short term solution.  While  I agree that under the current paradigm, like the one it left behind, good, well written books may or may not be successful but in general badly written books of any genre should fail.  The issues around the subject matter of some books being objectionable to people need to be addressed - the young and the vulnerable especially should be protected from inadvertent exposure and WH Smith is right to want to remove them from their catalogue, but it's really important that a sense of perspective is maintained.   Smashwords is looking at a voluntary metadata process where authors declare if their book is unlikely to be suitable for Apple or Kobo.  I think this is pie in the sky - some authors may play ball, but some, perhaps many, might ignore it.  Also, I suspect that Sony and B&N may go down this route sometime soon.

What I suspect Smashwords needs to do is what Apple have been doing - adding a vetting process to all books before they accept them in their premium catalogue.  I'm sure most of this could be automated with perhaps a process for the public to alert them to books that have slipped through.  Then they can earmark any books that contain offensive (to some) subject matter - we're talking about incest, rape and other unpleasant subjects here.  They can then alert any resellers who want to limit their exposure to corporate risk who want to avoid these books.  They could also dispense of the prude filter they put on their website and just keep such books corralled in a subsection that potential readers have to overtly access.  That way, trust in the self published book industry would be restored and newspapers would be free to move on to something else to disrupt.

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