Hasta La Gadget!

Amazon is on the cusp of busting out a new, large format Kindle. The new e-ink device could be here this week and be big enough to read magazine and newspaper layouts without too much dickering with their designs.

This is the claim made in yesterday’s New York Times, citing “people briefed on the online retailer’s plans.”

Unfortunately, the story then goes off into a kind of newspaper fantasy land, full of unicorns, marshmallows and time-reversals. The big hope for the Big Kindle is that it will somehow reverse the fortunes of the the spluttering print news industry, allowing publishers to charge subscription fees and load their pages with advertising, even though everyone with an internet connection can get the same content free.

The move by newspapers and magazines to make their material freely available on the Web is now viewed by many as a critical blunder that encouraged readers to stop paying for the print versions.

And:

Publishers could possibly use these new mobile reading devices to hit the reset button and return in some form to their original business model: selling subscriptions, and supporting their articles with ads.

This is, apparently, serious. The trouble with this business “model” is that it forgets that there is an internet, while at the same time using that same internet as a convenient distribution system an order of magnitude cheaper than pulping trees, running them through a building-sized press and then moving them around the country in trucks. As others have written, news won’t go away if newspapers go away. The format of a print newspaper is dictated not by the content (the news) but by the technological limits of its production and distribution.

The NYT piece mentions, in passing, the real market for a large-format e-book: Text books. Not only would a big Kindle be easier to carry than a back-breaking rucksack full of college books, it would probably be cheaper. Cheaper, that is, if only the publishers would relent and stop overcharging for downloaded material.

For they, too, profit from scarcity, just like the newspapers, and scarcity no longer exists in a digital world. Charging $100 for a ones-and-zeros version of a $100 book is obviously nonsense, as the record labels found out when they lost their own industry to piracy. And the market here is college students, apparently the most voracious pirates of all. Catch them quick, textbook makers. Subsidize this new Kindle, make the books way cheaper than they are in print and allow students to re-sell them when they’re done, like they can now. Otherwise those students won’t be paying for your books at all.

Finally, while a large-screen Kindle would be very welcome, Amazon should perhaps start selling the regular Kindle outside the US. Just saying, is all.

Update: It looks like the story is true. Amazon has started sending out invites for a press event this Wednesday. Wired.com will be covering it, so stay tuned to Gadget Lab for the lowdown.

Update 3:30pm Pacific: According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, six universities will be offering their students e-textbooks on the large-screen Kindle.

Looking to Big-Screen E-Readers to Help Save the Daily Press [NYT]

It’s now just over a month before Sony’s E3 press event and already the rumor mill is aflutter with what the comapny’s planning to debut on stage. We’ve already heard about PSP’s apparent makeover, and now comes word from Variety that the PlayStation 3’s oft-rumored motion sensing controller, closer in the vein of the Wii remote than of its relative-positioning Sixaxis pad, will be getting some time on stage. A source from Kombo late last month suggested key third-party develoeprs have already been brought up to speed and asked to implement the functionality into their upcoming titles. Like we said, this isn’t the first time we’ve been down this road, and it’s not happened infinitely more times than has, so… take that as you will. Brace yourself, this is only the beginning of the of a flurry of game-related murmurs and speculation in the leadup to next month’s conference.

Read – Variety
Read – Kombo

Filed under: Gaming

PlayStation 3 motion-sensing controller to be shown off at E3? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 May 2009 01:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Apple’s recent hiring spree of chip designers reveals the company may be about to exert even more control over the components that go into its products.

The company may go so far as manufacturing computer processors in-house, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cites only anonymous sources to bolster its claim that the internally designed chips will appear in products no sooner than 2010.

The publication also cites profiles on professional networking site LinkedIn, which lists more than 100 Apple employees with past expertise in chips at companies such as Intel, Samsung and Qualcomm.

These recruitments, coupled with Apple’s 2008 acquisition of PA Semiconductor, serve as strong evidence that the company is moving toward chip design for its hardware, including iPhones and iPods and possibly Macs. Such a move would reduce Apple’s dependence on Intel, which manufactures processors for current Mac computers, and Samsung, which provides an ARM-based microprocessor for the iPhone.

Apple has always kept a tight rein on its suppliers, going so far as acquiring them when necessary to ensure consistent access to critical components. Apple has enough clout that it was even able to negotiate with Intel — a far bigger company — to develop a smaller version of the Core 2 Duo processor for the MacBook Air.

By acquiring in-house semiconductor talent, Apple opens several options: It could more easily customize chips and chipsets from suppliers like Intel, giving Apple hardware unique features (and perhaps raising additional, hardware-based barriers to hackintosh clones — generic PCs running OS X). It could develop its own graphics processors for the iPhone and iPod touch, giving them more serious gaming chops. It could create more compact system-on-a-chip processors that would enable future iPhones (or iPhone-like devices) to be even smaller. Or, in the most ambitious case, it could develop its own CPUs.

In November, Wired.com also speculated that Apple was moving toward in-house chip manufacturing when the company hired former IBM executive Mark Papermaster. Papermaster was a key player in developing the PowerPC chips used in previous-generation Macs.

With control over processor production, Apple will be able to design exclusive features for its gadgets and better guard its secrets from rivals.

Though in-house chip manufacturing would enable Apple to tighten control over its products, technology strategist Michael Gartenberg said it’s unlikely the corporation will produce its own processors for Mac computers. He explained the move would be risky for Apple, as it would cost billions of dollars, and it would be difficult to compete with Intel.

“People have lost fortunes competing with Intel,” Gartenberg said. “It doesn’t make sense [for Apple]. You’d have to get to a point where Intel simply wasn’t able to meet Apple’s needs in any shape or form.”

Rather than producing computer chips, it’s more likely Apple is hiring chip designers to produce custom chipset variants for future products, which could offer special audio and graphic enhancements exclusive to Apple gadgets, Gartenberg speculated. He added that chip experts can also loan advice on manufacturing and design processes to create smaller, thinner and lighter gadgets.

Updated 12 p.m. PDT: Added comment from technology strategist Michael Gartenberg.

See Also:

• Apple’s Core Could Soon Include In-House Chips
• Apple Acquires Obscure Processor Company — Lightning Fast iPods …
• Apple Scrambling for iPhone Flash Chips
• Apple and Intel: Still Best Friends Forever

In Major Shift, Apple Builds Its Own Team to Design Chips [WSJ]

Photo: blakie/Flickr

We’re not sure why Android is suddenly the hottest netbook OS in town, but we’d guess it’s about to hit the scene in a big way at Computex next month. Today’s whispers? Averatec CEO Tae-Hyun Cho says his company will ship a new netbook with a “surprise” OS that blends “cell phone and PC technology” in August or September. Very mysterious. That’s literally all we know for now, but Cho’s comments about what consumers are willing to pay has us thinking this one’ll come in cheap — we’ll keep an eye out.

Filed under: Laptops

Averatec hints at an Android netbook originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Here’s the wildest iPhone rumor we’ve heard in a while. According to BusinessWeek, two sources “familiar with the matter” say Apple and Verizon are working to offer two new iPhone-like devices: a smaller, less-expensive calling device (perhaps an “iPhone lite”), and a higher-end, unnamed media pad, which can place calls over Wi-Fi, display photos, and play music as well as high-definition video.

When will we see these? One of the devices might come as soon as summer, one source told BusinessWeek.

As always, take rumors with a grain of salt, folks. We doubt either of these products will be available for Verizon customers this year. Verizon’s CEO said just two weeks ago that Apple would be more likely to partner up with Verizon when the fourth-generation Long Term Evolution networks start rolling out in 2010. And Apple last week implied it was planning to stick with AT&T as its exclusive partner.

However, we’re not ruling out that there are two new devices. ArsTechnica last month reported that a system configuration file made references to two new iPhone models. Could these be the new iPhone models?

Let’s keep in mind if these two rumored products are indeed real, we won’t necessarily have to wait for Apple to buddy up with Verizon. Apple would likely offer the same phones through AT&T — so yes, we might see one as soon as summer, but we don’t believe it’d be on the Verizon network.

See Also:

• Verizon iPhone Could Be Here Next Year
• Apple: We’re Sticking With AT&T for the iPhone
• 4 Reasons Apple Should Share the iPhone With Verizon
• Verizon Turned Apple iPhone Down

New Gear from Apple and Verizon Wireless? [BusinessWeek]

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com