Hasta La Gadget!

We’re sure just about every company on the map has an opinion on Apple’s new device, but a few big wigs have taken time out of their busy schedules to weigh in on the device. These are their stories.

• Nokia’s Mark Squires, Head of Social Media, was mainly confused by Apple’s statement that it’s the biggest mobile device manufacturer, surpassing Nokia in combined revenue on media players, phones and laptops. Mark argues that the accepted definition for “mobile devices” excludes laptops, and goes on to mention the undisputed fact that Nokia’s still number one when it comes to number of devices sold.
• Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, meanwhile, says that mobile devices aren’t a priority for his company yet. They’re fighting the good fight of the large screen, and once they feel comfortable in their various efforts there, then they’ll move on to small screens. Netflix hasn’t done or submitted an iPhone application, but Hastings did mention that he was optimistic that if Netflix did get into the game, the app would be approved for the App Store, and that it would run on both the iPhone and iPad.
• Satura Iwata, president and CEO of Nintendo, took a much more directly critical approach to the device, calling it a “bigger iPod Touch,” and that Apple delivered “no surprises.” In the same interview he expressed skepticism as to the value of bringing a high definition Wii on the market, as well as expressing doubts about 3D glasses-based gaming. Iwata is clearly a tough man to please.
• Perhaps most threatened by the iPad is Russ Wilcox, CEO of E-Ink. He says dedicated e-readers will outsell iPads due to “simple economics,” and that the iPad is “great entertainment device,” but it’s “not the world’s best reading device.” His criticisms, mostly in juxtaposition to Kindle-style devices, abound, including price, weight, backlight and so on. He’s right on the money about the shortfalls of a straightforward comparison, but we wonder if consumers will feel the same?

Nothing too salacious, unfortunately, and most of the points raised are pretty spot-on — though we do wish Reed Hastings would rethink his priorities just a smidgen and get Netflix onto mobile devices sooner than later. We’re needy like that.

Nokia, Nintendo, Netflix and E-Ink respond to the iPad originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s not every day we get a nice, humble confession of fault from Apple, but it looks like the marketing department has seen the light on those overly optimistic web browsing mockups depicting Flash in “action” on the new Flash-free tablet device. Now the iPad promo video has been reworked to flaunt what we’re coming to know as the Blue Lego Block of Ambiguity[TM] in sections of sites that would traditionally be populated by highly stimulating Adobe Flash-based content. It’s not pretty, and it solves none of the other issues at hand with Apple’s continued avoidance of Flash on its iPhone OS, but at least it’s true.

Apple excises the false Flash in its iPad promo video originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Man, Adobe and its kin are not letting up here. In addition to the company releasing a terse, carefully worded response to the Apple iPad’s apparent lack of Flash, the Flash Blog took a much more truculent approach. Exhibit A: a post entitled “The iPad provides the ultimate browsing experience?” followed by several mockups of sites laden with the infamous Blue Lego Block of Ambiguity[TM]. Adding to the conversation in the comments, Adobe employee / platform evangelist Lee Brimelow accuses Apple of not wanting the Flash player to succeed, and that the company’s tried to work with Cupertino since the iPhone. ”
They don’t want you to go to Hulu or play Flash games because they worry that you won’t buy their apps,” he says. Frankly, we wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the case, and while we understand Adobe’s frustration, this probably isn’t gonna help relations between the two tech firms. Hey Adobe, trust us, we feel your pain — we really want Hulu on the iPad, too.

In other, more amusing news, it seems Apple’s official iPad promo has slipped up a bit in showing off what the tablet can really do. Namely, one clip of the New York Times and an article on 31 places to go in 2010. Here it clearly shows a Flash-based module up top, inaccessible without the plugin. We’re not thinking this is a sign of things to come — if anything, it’s probably just a mistake by the producers. Don’t get your hopes up, folks.

Update: Clarified relation of The Flash Blog to Adobe.

Adobe employee ups passive aggressive stance on iPad while Apple promo forgets its limits originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hey, remember back when Steve Jobs said “people don’t read anymore” when discussing why the Kindle would be a failure? Heh, funny story: turns out Apple just released a device called the iPad and, at its unveiling, spent an awful lot of time showing off what a great reader it is. However, when comparing it to Kindle (as we did here) you have to think about that battery life figure: 10 hours vs. seven days. When Walt Mossberg caught Jobs after the unveiling for a little gonzo-style interview he asked about this, and Jobs said “you’re not going to read for 10 hours…you just end up pluggin’ it in.” So, Steve now concedes that people do read, but apparently they don’t do it for long without coming close to a power receptacle. When asked about price differentials between books on the devices, rumored to be as much as $5 more than on Kindle, Jobs somewhat reluctantly states that “publishers are actually withholding books from Amazon because they’re not happy,” and that “the prices will be the same” — but doesn’t indicate whether Amazon’s prices will be going up or that rumored $14.99 price point is going down. It’s all in the video after the break, including plenty of face time with Walt.

Continue reading Steve Jobs compares iPad battery life to Kindle’s: ‘You’re not going to read for 10 hours’ (video)

Steve Jobs compares iPad battery life to Kindle’s: ‘You’re not going to read for 10 hours’ (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For some of us, amid all the hubbub about revolutions and whatnot yesterday, the most significant announcement on hand was Apple’s supposedly custom A4 CPU. Alas, in the cold and brutal light of the morning after, we’re hearing that it is in fact a system-on-a-chip driven by a Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU “identical” to the one found inside NVIDIA’s Tegra 2, while besting the iPhone 3GS significantly with its 1GHz speed and multicore architecture. The A4 is composed of that Cortex barnburner, an integrated memory controller, and the Mali GPU, making it an all ARM affair — though we still don’t know how much Apple and PA Semi did in terms of arranging and integrating those components within the silicon. While still not 100 percent confirmed, it would seem there were no revolutions on the iPad’s processing front — just a rebranded bit of well engineered hardware.

Apple’s A4 chip is ARM Cortex A9 with an ARM Mali GPU? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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