By moving SMS from the device to the cloud without the need for a phone client, the device becomes irrelevant, and consumers are given much more flexibility to communicate wherever and however they please.
via Innovation Generation – Sarah Reedy – Got the Message: Texting on Tablets Takes Off.
Back in the day this used to be called instant messaging.
My colleague Zack Whittaker believes Google Docs will take some of these customers away, but that’s not the biggest threat to Microsoft. The longer Microsoft neglects to release the iOS and Android versions of Office, a greater number of customers owning iPads and other tablets will discover competing Office-compatible apps for those platforms. Having used many of these suites for years, it is clear they are robust enough to fill the need for Office for many owners.
via Big winner with Office for iPad and Android delay: Google | ZDNet.
After having used a tablet I can’t see how one could do any real work on one. Tablets are good consumption devices — reading (and perhaps commenting on) documents produced on workstations with real QWERTY keyboards that fit one’s fingers and hand.
The easiest decision is no decision. Let’s have two user interfaces, two modes: The easy mode for my mother-in-law, and the pro mode for engineers, McKinsey consultants, and investment bankers. Such dual-mode systems haven’t been very popular so far, it’s been tried without success on PCs and Macs. (Re-reading this, I realise the Mac itself could be considered such a dual-mode machine: Fire up the Terminal app, and you have access to a certified Unix engine living inside)
via iPad and file systems: failure of empathy | Technology | guardian.co.uk.
The starting price for Dell’s XPS 10 is now US$449 for a 32GB model, scalping $50 off the original launch price. The 64GB model is $499, which is a drop from the original $599 price. By comparison, the price of the Latitude 10 tablet with Intel processors and Microsoft’s Windows 8 OS remained stable at $499.
Microcenter always has a full fledged decent laptop for under $300. Here’s the special this week for $279. I don’t know why anyone would pay double for a tablet which is hard to do any real work on. I recently bought a 7″ Samsung S3 tablet for $180 (on sale) that does everything one would ever need to do on a tablet.
Note: The above link to this special will most likely be dead after the sale.
The Core i5 Razer Edge costs $999 while the Core i7 Razer Edge Pro costs $1299. Plus, each one of the accessories are sold separately. Just the Gamepad Controller is $249. A fully decked-out Razer Edge Pro with Gamepad Controller rings up for $1,698.
The stylus seems to have been built with designers in mind, making it ideal for creating illustrations. Using the free apps “Fresh Paint” or “SketchBook Express,” which are found in the Microsoft Store, users can quickly get to drawing using the stylus.
via Review: Microsoft Surface Pro packs punch, steep price [Video] – latimes.com.
Interesting. I remember the stylus on those Palm Pilots used to work well for what they did. Maybe Microsoft was on to something bringing the stylus back. I suppose you could develop an app on a non-stylus tablet that still accepts the precise touch of a stylus and do things.
“We believe it’s not enough just to put the radios together and put them in software. To get the most powerful, flexible, dynamic system, you want to tie all the video and photo processing together with the radio processing,” says Michael Doerr, the company’s founder and chief technology officer. “And we have a unique processor that can do that, but it’s a question of getting to the right performance and power trade-off.”
At seven inches with a 1024 x 600 resolution screen and 1.2GHz dual-core processor, the so-called Iconia B1 tablet will have somewhat similar specs to Amazon.com Inc. AMZN +0.66%’s Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble Inc. BKS -0.66%’s Nook Color. But Acer plans to undercut those best-selling tablets’ $139 price tag by offering the Iconia B1 for around $99, the person said. The final shelf price will be determined country-by-country.
Shipments of ebook readers by year-end will fall to 14.9 million units, down a steep 36 percent from the 23.2 million units in 2011 that now appears to have been the peak of the ebook reader market. Another drastic 27 percent contraction will occur next year when ebook reader shipments decline to 10.9 million units. By 2016, the ebook reader space will amount to just 7.1 million units—equivalent to a loss of more than two-thirds of its peak volume in 2011.
In a note to clients picked up by Forbes, the firm states that Surface sales in the December quarter are shaping up to fall into the 500,000 to 600,000-unit range, well below its earlier estimates of between 1 million and 2 million units. According to Detwiler, Microsoft’s tablet strategy appears to be “in disarray.”
via Microsoft Surface sales Q4 2012- Less than 1 million tablets sold: Est | BGR.