Hasta La Gadget!

Sure, you might have to be at Adobe’s MAX conference to actually hold a PlayBook in your hand… but RIM’s offering us all the next best thing by turning a beta version of its PlayBook simulator loose on devs way, way in advance of the tablet’s release — ostensibly in the hopes of drumming up a beefy third-party app catalog in time for retail. On that note, we’ve spent a few minutes playing with the simulator today, which is delivered in the form of an ISO that can be loaded as an operating system installer for a VMWare virtual machine on either Windows or Mac. There’s seriously very little to see here so far, but you can play with the on-screen landscape keyboard, confirm the presence of inertial scrolling in text areas, and get a quick look at how the status and app bars work. Speaking of apps, there aren’t any — not a single one — but it’s way early, and that’s obviously where RIM hopes you come into play with that million-dollar software idea of yours. Follow the break for a video walkthrough!

Continue reading BlackBerry PlayBook Simulator Beta hands-on

BlackBerry PlayBook Simulator Beta hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 18:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You had to know that Steve wouldn’t get away with putting his five minute, competition-slamming manifesto out into the ether without some snap back from the competition. We’ve already heard responses from TweetDeck and Andy Rubin, and now RIM’s co-CEO Jim Balsillie has issued a statement in response to Jobs. Here it is:

“For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we know that 7-inch tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience. We also know that while Apple’s attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of web sites that use Flash. We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple. And by the way, RIM has achieved record shipments for five consecutive quarters and recently shared guidance of 13.8 – 14.4 million BlackBerry smartphones for the current quarter. Apple’s preference to compare its September-ending quarter with RIM’s August-ending quarter doesn’t tell the whole story because it doesn’t take into account that industry demand in September is typically stronger than summer months, nor does it explain why Apple only shipped 8.4 million devices in its prior quarter and whether Apple’s Q4 results were padded by unfulfilled Q3 customer demand and channel orders. As usual, whether the subject is antennas, Flash or shipments, there is more to the story and sooner or later, even people inside the distortion field will begin to resent being told half a story.”

Sort of a big one, but we figure RIM at least deserves some equal time. Interesting that RIM is fighting Apple’s assertion of surpassing their handset shipments, we’ll have to see how that one settles once we get some “official” numbers from an unbiased third party. Meanwhile, let the mudslinging continue!

RIM’s Jim Balsillie hits back at the Steve Jobs rant, Apple’s ‘distortion field’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell’s 5-inch Streak tablet may not be on a tear but the company is still moving forward with plans to introduce its second Android tablet.

Dell plans to launch a 7-inch tablet “in the next few weeks” and a 10-inch tablet within a year, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Dell’s founder and chief executive Michael Dell briefly showed the device at a Oracle conference last week but didn’t offer any details about the product.

Dell’s move to a larger screen tablet is in keeping with the company’s strategy of slowly but steadily introducing new handheld devices. In February, Neeraj Choubey, general manager of the tablets division at Dell told Wired.com that the Streak aka Dell 5 Mini would be the first in a series of devices.

“We are going to have a family of tablets,” Choubey said. “The first one is a 5-inch screen but we want to scale that up to a variety of screen sizes.”

Since the introduction of the Apple iPad earlier this year, almost every major PC maker has announced that it is working on devices that can rival the iPad.

Just this month, Samsung, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion and tablet startup Kno announced new products. Samsung showed a 7-inch tablet called Galaxy Tab that will be available on four major U.S. carriers –AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile in time for holiday season shopping.

Meanwhile, RIM has announced the BlackBerry PlayBook, a 7-inch tablet targeted at business users and consumers. The PlayBook is expected to be available early next year.

Tablet startup Kno is focusing on students with 14-inch single screen and dual-screen tablets that are expected to be available by the end of the year.

Apple has sold more than 3 million iPads so far.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has canceled its planned tablet ‘Courier’ while HP is trying to integrate the Palm webOS into its tablet products.

The 7-inch Dell tablet could make the company a real contender in the tablet space. With its 5-inch display, the Streak is more like a super-sized phone than a real tablet. Dell has also priced the Streak like a phone –offering the device for $300 with a two-year contract on AT&T.

So far, there’s no word on pricing for the 7-inch Dell tablet. But Dell will have plenty of competition to keep it real with its upcoming tablet.

See Also:

• Tablet Wars: How the BlackBerry PlayBook Measures Up
• Build Your Own Tablet for $400
• How the Tablet Will Change the World
• Dell’s Streak Tablet Is Priced Like a Phone
• Attack of the Pads: Tablets Take On Apple

Photo: Dell Streak (Jon Snyder/Wired.com)

When Research in Motion introduced its PlayBook tablet Monday, it was diving into a market already dominated by Apple’s iPad.

But there’s other competition too, either already on the market or soon to be: The 5-inch Dell Streak is available now, and Samsung’s 7-inch Galaxy Tab isn’t.

Since the iPad started shipping in April, Apple has sold more than 3 million devices. In June, Dell introduced the Streak, a device billed as a tablet but priced like a phone. Samsung hopes to bring its tablet, the Galaxy Tab to market in time for holiday-season shopping.

RIM announced its latest device, the 7-inch PlayBook, at its developer conference Monday.

The PlayBook won’t be available till early next year. But it’s not too soon to see how its promised specs stack up with the main competitors it will face when it comes out.

*Battery life  as specified by the manufacturer

See Also:

• Kno Creates 14-inch Tablet for Students
• RIM Unveils Tethered Tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook
• How the Tablet Will Change the World
• Build Your Own Tablet for $400
• Samsung Introduces 7-Inch Tablet to Rival iPad
• Dell’s Streak Tablet Is Priced Like a Phone

Photo: BlackBerry PlayBook/Research In Motion

Image by Charlie Sorrel and Tim Carmody

Amazon continues to expand its reading and media software to whole new classes of devices, from new tablets to PC web browsers. It’s just not immediately clear just how far the retail giant is going to go.

We’ll take these news items one at a time, in increasing order of uncertainty:

1. Amazon launches Beta version of Kindle for the Web. Think YouTube for books. You can preview short selections of books in your browser, embed them on web sites with a little bit of JavaScript, and customize the size (it won’t automatically keep the aspect ratio) or even add your Amazon Associate tag to the embed. Click through and it takes you to the book’s entry on the Amazon Kindle store. Level of certainty: This you can actually use right now.

2. Amazon announces Kindle app for forthcoming RIM Playbook tablet. Makes perfect sense given yesterday’s Playbook announcement, natural extension of the Kindle app for Blackberry, iPad, and other platforms. Level of certainty: Actual press release from Amazon after high-profile announcement from RIM. I suppose a bolt of lightning could strike one or both companies tomorrow. But you can’t see it today.
3. Amazon to Launch Android App Store, which my pal Charlie Sorrel already let you know about. Level of certainty: Well-reported rumor. But it makes sense — Amazon sells a lot of stuff, and there are a lot of Android app stores — and it’s confirmed by multiple developer sources. Don’t be surprised if you hear details soon.
4. Amazon to Build Own Branded Android Tablet. Okay, so, a source comes to you with what seem like two wild, fan-fiction stories about Amazon and Android. You ask around, and one of them — an Amazon App Store — turns out to probably be in the works. Is the other story true?

   On the one hand, again — Amazon sells a lot of digital products online, not just e-books: movies, games, music. And it’s not hard to make an Android tablet. In fact, at this point, Amazon has more hardware-production experience with the Kindle than some of the companies that are coming forward with pretty solid products. Add an App Store and it starts to look pretty appealing.

   On the other hand, Amazon’s built up good brand identification with the Kindle, e-books, and E Ink. Will they turn around and say, “oh yeah, multimedia tablets are really awesome, but not, um, more awesome than a Kindle, I mean, um, why not buy both?” Just seems a little surprising. Level of certainty: Pretty cloudy. The source was right about an app store, but as they say, a stopped clock can be right twice a day. If Amazon releases some kind of other media hardware, whether using Android or anything else, it’s equally likely to be a TV box or a smartphone or something else that equally plays to their strength while being a little more differentiated from a dedicated reading machine than a tablet.

See Also:

• Tablet Wars: Amazon Adds Apps to Kindle
• Amazon Shows Off Kindle for iPad
• Scrabble Is First Paid Game App for Kindle
• How to Do (Almost) Everything With a Kindle 3
• Independent App Stores Take On Google's Android Market
• Social Networking Meets Apps in New Android App Store
• Your Froyo Tablet Probably Won't Support Android Market