Well, that certainly Samsucks for Apple...

In the latest in the ongoing Apple-versus-Samsung war, the two frenemies (frenemies because they compete with each other but Samsung also supplies many of the components in Apple's most coveted products), a judge in the United Kingdom has told Apple to run ads saying that Samsung did not copy the iPad.

From Reuters:

Apple has been instructed by a British judge to run ads saying that Samsung did not copy its design for the iPad in the latest twist in the ongoing patent battles between the two tech giants, according to Bloomberg.

Judge Birss, who ruled last week that Samsung did not infringe Apple's designs because its Galaxy Tab tablets were not "as cool" as the U.S. company's iPad, said Apple should publish a notice on its website and in British newspapers to correct any impression that the South Korean company copied Apple, Bloomberg said.

The notice, which is in effect an advertisement for Samsung, should remain on Apple's website for at least six months, the report said.

The judge, however, rejected Samsung's request that Apple be forbidden from continuing to claim that its design rights had been infringed, saying that Apple was entitled to hold the opinion, the news agency said.

As a long-time Apple user but also a Seoulite who recognizes that Korea's fortunes rise when Samsung does well, I don't know which side to take in this battle. While Samsung's tablets look like Apple's tablet, I'm not really sure how different you can make a tablet look.

Anyway, as I'm wont to do in any post involve Apple getting some unexpected news, I'll end this post with, "How do you like dem Apples?"

...

Roundup of iPad 3 rumors

We don't know if it will be called the iPad3 or the iPad2S or (thanks to a lawsuit from a Chinese manufacturer claiming they'd trademarked the name "iPad") the iSlice1, so for the purpose of succinct discussion, we're going to call it the iPadX.

It is not enough for the iPadX to have a retina screen, since its competitors are already on their tail. No, the iPadX will with shrinking-man-retina displays, where the screen's resolution will be so sharp that you cannot detect individual pixels at a distance about the length of your extended hand even if you were inadvertently shrunken in an industrial shrinking accident where you found yourself sitting on top of an iPadX. (This is important because Apple has bought out some company's shrink ray process and is considering incorporating in future post-Siri hardware, just as soon as they can get enough Chinese workers to volunteer for a certain assignment and teach them all English.) Scientists may not agree on what exactly a "retina display" is at that level, but it's something like 1,028,000x960,000.

Apple was roundly criticized for ripping off its customers by calling the iPhone5 the iPhone4S, even though the iPhone4 was called the iPhone 3Gs and no one bitched about that. Apple wants to avoid this problem altogether, so the new iPadX will be called the iPad7. Or iPadπ.

iPads will come in colors. It helps you reveal who you are.

Apple was also also criticized for coming out with an iPhone 4S that looked exactly like the iPhone 4. If it looks exactly the same, the hipsters groused, how will people know we're cool and hip if we buy one? (Samsung wisely picked up on this and made it a theme of their commercials, even though I had the idea first. Samsung is nothing if not derivative.) Sure, it's a flat tablet and the design of the iPad2 is already a work of art, but if the iPadX looks the same, proverbially heads will explode. Consequently, the iPadX will have fins. Though they initially appear to be just ornamental, Apple insists they have a functional purpose; they don't yet know what it is, but after millions buy them and do God knows what with them, one of them will figure it out.

All this extra stuff will be heavy, so efforts must be made to lighten the load. In the past, Apple has gone with titanium, which they replaced with aluminum. My sources in Shanghai say the iPad3 will be made from helium.

Apple is also working on the next-next generation of iPad. My sources say they are currently working on a two-piece iPad that consists of glasses that contain a tiny screen in the lower half of the lens, plus a Bluetooth trackpad you keep in your pocket. It will be released to consumers as soon as they can figure out how to make users look like they're not masturbating in public.

...

I guess they don't like them Apples

Korea bashers like to point to the Lone Star case (in which the Lone Star people ended up making a buttload of money, by the way) as an example of how Korea is too tough a place to do business, frequently citing it as a reason why foreign companies eschew Korea and go instead to China.

Yeah, this China:

Apple Inc.'s fight to use the iPad name in China has hit another snag after authorities seized dozens of the Apple tablet computers from store shelves in northern China.

The seizures in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province, were in response to a trademark infringement complaint filed by Chinese company Proview Technology, according to its attorney. Proview Technology, which is based in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, said it holds the trademark for the hot-selling device in China.

In December, a court in Shenzhen unexpectedly rejected a lawsuit in which Apple said it was the rightful owner of the iPad name.

Since then, Proview Technology has filed complaints in 20 cities, urging authorities to prohibit the California tech giant from selling or marketing its device. The company has also filed lawsuits against Apple and retailers in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Huizhou, a city in southern Guangdong province.

"You'll likely see more and more actions across the country," Xie Xianghui, Proview Technology's lawyer, said in a phone interview Monday. "Apple did not follow Chinese law, so we're confident the authorities will side with us."

Sorta reminds me of how Carrefour left its booming — but not #1 or #2 ranked — operations in Korea for supposedly greener pastures in China, only to become a tool in Beijing's engineered anger against France later on. (Forgive me for sounding bitter about this, but I have long felt that the flood of American, European, Japanese, Korean, and even Taiwanese capital and jobs into the People's Republic of China is borne of a dangerous mixture of intellectual laziness, political and social ignorance, and brazen greed, and it does no one any good, in the aggregate, including the people of China.)

I guess Apple should have seen this coming. And I'll be they're kicking themselves for not going with my iSlice idea.

...

So I'm not going to get the iPad2, but dang do I want that iPad2 cover

Okay, okay. So now the iPad has the two cameras, it's way lighter and thinner (thinner than my iPhone4!), while way faster. Plus all kinds of neato junk on the inside.

But it has no retina display! Steve Jobs, you just don't understand. Ever since you put all those teeny-tiny pixels on my iPhone4, giving me a crisp, clear picture that is just a beautiful pleasure to behold, I simply can't go back. Looking at the iPad1's screen — which has the same pixel numbers as its successor — I just want to go back to looking at my iPhone4. Screen-wise, the iPad is, well, like looking at my MacBook Pro.

Okay, sure. These have great screens in and of themselves, but now I've had a taste of heaven, and everything else seems so, well, plain.

So I'm going to wait for the iPad3*. Don't disappoint me.

Oh, and for those of you in South Korea who will get the iPad2 anyway, it appears it will be released toward the end of the month, a couple weeks after the March 11 release date here in the US of A.



But that Smart Cover. It's perfect: It doesn't obscure the beauty of the product (like my wine-colored silicone case does with my MacBook Pro or even my bumper does a bit with my iPhone4), yet it appears to be highly functional. And that video... it's like Pixar made the product for them [UPDATE: Steve Jobs made the same Pixar comment!].

UPDATE:
MacWorld has a nice overview of the specs on the new iPad, including comparisons with iPad 1.

* But I will be seriously tempted to get an iPad2 to replace my current thirteen-inch MacBook Pro, instead of an eleven-inch MacBook Air, if there is ever a repeat of The Grapefruit Juice Incident of 2009.

A new slimmer iPad with a camera?

That's what's being speculated. If it really does have better resolution, I'd seriously consider buying one. While I doubt they could get it as good as the "retina display" on the iPhone4, if it were at least on par with the newest version of the MacBook Air, it would be very, very tempting. (But then again, that 11-inch MBA is also very, very tempting.)

And then I could do this.

iPad sales in Korea slated for November 30

I probably shouldn't be posting this news, because I managed to jinx the release date of the iPhone4. But I don't care:

South Korea's wireless operator KT said Sunday it would start selling Apple's iPad on November 30 amid growing competition in the potentially lucrative tablet computer market.

KT, the nation's sole distributor of Apple's iPhone and iPad, said the popular tablet PC would start at 218,000 won (192 dollars) with a two-year contract, rising to 865,000 won with additional features.

More than 40,000 South Koreans have pre-ordered the popular gadget since November 17, a KT spokesman said, adding the company would begin sending out products on November 30.

The announcement comes after South Korea's Samsung Electronics launched its own tablet computer last week in the domestic market in a bid to get the jump on Apple.

Just in time for Christmas. Gift of the Pad-i.

KT doing very well thanks to Apple

Thanks to sales of the wildly popular iPhone, as well as some corporate restructuring, Korea Telecom saw profits shoot up 44 percent.

The Reuters article goes on to explain some of the challenges faced by KT in the saturated South Korean market, but the release of the iPad is expected to bring a new wave of cash.

South Korean tech companies play Moses; unveil two tablets

The other day we had KT's offering, and today we officially have one from Samsung.

From PC Magazine:

Can Samsung take on Apple in the tablet space? It sure thinks it can. Its new tablet has Google's Android 2.2 Froyo operating system and a number of specs that compare to the Apple iPad.

First, the display. It is a seven-inch TFT-LCD screen with 1024 x 600 pixels. The iPad's display is 9.7 inches, and has 1024 x 768 pixels. It's possible that the smaller size paired with a similar pixel count could make the Tab's display look better than the iPad's. I can't say for sure without seeing them side-by-side.

The Tab has a Cortex A8 1GHz processor. The iPad also has an A4 1GHz processor. I am surprised that Samsung isn't using the same home-grown Hummingbird 1GHz processor that it is using in its Galaxy line of Android phones.

The Samsung Tab also has 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 (that's a biggie), and full quad-band GDSM/EDGE and tri-band 900/1900/2100 7.2Mbps HSDPA. Missing is the 850Mhz band that AT&T uses in conjunction with the 1900MHz band. Does that mean it won't work properly in the U.S.? Samsung hasn't made that clear, though it did say that the device will launch in the U.S. later this year.

PC Magazine had some more information last month. I gotta say that "Tab" is a kind of uninspired name. I think they were trying to do an anagram of sorts (in Han•gǔl) involving pad.

I, of course, will get neither of these, but not because I'm an Apple fanboy. As I stated in the KT tablet post, once you've gone retina you'll never go back, and that means I won't get an iPad unless they upgrade to a retina display. Even this MacBook Pro screen annoys me.

The watchamacallit is here!

I suppose I would get excited about Korea Telecom's launching of an Android-based iPad killer, but I'm not in Korea where I could buy it.

Also, ever since I got my iPhone 4 with the retina screen, no tablet — not even Apple's own current iPad — can excite me. Nothing. Looking at any other monitor is, well, just so blah.

But I do wish to note that I think KT's timing could mean this product will be a hit. Apple still hasn't released the iPad in South Korea, not even the wi-fi-only version that doesn't require marriage with a cellular service provider like KT (which carries the iPhone). And at $411 without a contract, the pricing is competitive against the iPad.

In fact, just last week at the Apple Store in Ala Moana, I helped two random Korean tourists buy an iPad. Though they hadn't flown to Honolulu just to get an iPad, it was at the top of their to-do list, just above Waikiki and visiting Pearl Harbor to protest against udon restaurants so close to the USS Arizona.

Jon Stewart (from two months ago) on the iPhone 4

I'm not ready with my review of my new iPhone 4 or the "eyePhone" parody of Apple fanboys on "Futurama," but I did run across this...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Appholes
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

... and I find myself surprisingly close to Mr Stewart's thoughts on Apple (and Microsoft). Anyway, John from Taejŏn will have to be satisfied with this for the time being.

The Times on the iPad's expensive Korean innards

The Times has an interesting article (I do say that a lot, don't I?) on the components that make up Apple's latest paradigm-shifting device, the iPad, and how this new life-changing gadget itself represents a paradigm shift of sorts:

The electronic viscera of the iPad reveals a technological power shift: the most expensive and sophisticated components inside Apple’s new gadget are no longer Japanese but Korean.

Analysts calculating the raw cost of the items within Apple’s device believe that the bill for materials amounts to $260 per unit, or $239 less than its retail price in the United States.

Suppliers vary across the range but, in some iPad models, more than half of the component costs borne by Apple will go directly to South Korean companies, say analysts.

The article explains this as a move away from Japan, to South Korea (and Taiwan). It goes on:

In the case of the iPad it is clear that South Korean companies have made a clean sweep of the most lucrative parts. The Korean company LG Display makes the LCD screen on which the device is based — a component representing about a quarter of the total bill of materials. Samsung is identified as the producer of the costly NAND flash memory, the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and, most probably, of the central processor designed by Apple.

Teardown analysis of consumer electronics devices — from the Nintendo Wii to a Samsung camera — have usually confirmed Japan’s prowess at component making. Even cheap Chinese televisions often source components from Japan, underscoring the quality of the country’s manufacturing even as its brands are suffering. But as the digital era has progressed, the component food chain has broadened and Japan’s rivals have grown more competitive.

While the K-blogs are full of commentary about how threatened South Korean companies feel by the iPad and the iPhone, I've never been particularly convinced, especially since the guts of these items are so Korean, like sundae. However, The Times thinks there's some there there in Korea Inc's uneasiness:

The success of component-makers in winning their spot inside the iPad has not been greeted with universal joy in Korea. Analysts are worried that the dominance of the iPhone in the smartphone market presents atough challenge to similar devices produced by the likes of Samsung and LG. The iPad’s status as a rival to netbooks could also deprive Korean manufacturers of sales of one of the few devices that sold well during the slump after the financial crisis.

True, I suppose, but one thing I've seen is that Korean companies often need such competition to put their feet to the fire. And rest assured, not everyone wants to buy an iPhone or an iPad, so there's room for worthy challengers.

Kushibo slices through the Apple iPad

So on Sunday I decided to head on over to the Apple Store in Ala Moana (which was once the largest shopping center in the world, I'm told) to check out the iPad (which should have been called iSlice). We have not one, two, but three Apple Stores within a few miles of each other, unlike Orange County where there are like two that are supposed to serve three million people.

Anyway, it was a madhouse. Predictably, loads of people were there to see the iPad, which had been released just the day before. I don't even want to imagine what the lines were like to get one of those, though I myself did wait nearly two hours in line at the Apple Store at Kahala Mall to get a 3G iPhone in the summer of 2008, so I have some idea.

 Click here to read more... 

The iPad is here, finally.

The iPad has at long last arrived, and it has already been a boon to the economy: In the days prior to Saturday's highly publicized release, there was a significant rise in camping equipment.

I was not among those who braved sub-60° nights to wait for as long as 24 hours outside the Apple Store just so they could get their hands on this masterpiece of glass and aluminum.

In fact, I didn't even try to visit one of the three Apple Stores within a three-mile radius of my abode (why we have such a concentration is beyond me, but I'm not about to complain). I may go tomorrow, as I promised to take someone to Pietro's Pizza (a Japanese chain of Italian restaurants that used to exist in Korea) at Ala Moana, but if there's a long line, I'll just walk on by and check it out later. I'm in no hurry, since I can't buy one now anyway. (Please, dear readers, please, go and click on all the ads every time you come here).

But Apple's doing just fine without me: They sold 700,000 units yesterday. Just as a comparison, the iPhone has only in the past week or so, after a four-month run, finally reached half a million units sold in South Korea, so this iPad thing is crazy huge. Craaaazy!

And now that the public has finally gotten their sticky little fingerprints on the iPad's screen, we're starting to see some reviews. David Pogue at the New York Times wrote not one, but two reviews: one for techies and one for the rest of us:

In 10 years of reviewing tech products for The New York Times, I’ve never seen a product as polarizing as Apple’s iPad, which arrives in stores on Saturday.

“This device is laughably absurd,” goes a typical remark on a tech blog’s comments board. “How can they expect anyone to get serious computer work done without a mouse?”

“This truly is a magical revolution,” goes another. “I can’t imagine why anyone will want to go back to using a mouse and keyboard once they’ve experienced Apple’s visionary user interface!”

Those are some pretty confident critiques of the iPad — considering that their authors have never even tried it.

In any case, there’s a pattern to these assessments.

The haters tend to be techies; the fans tend to be regular people.

Therefore, no single write-up can serve both readerships adequately. There’s but one solution: Write separate reviews for these two audiences.

I definitely see the value in writing a review that caters to us regular, unwashed masses who have no idea how these things run. I'm an Apple fan because I don't know how to write code or solve intensive problems, and so I often just don't give a rat's bum about techies who say the Mac or the iPad is missing some thing on a PC that I've never heard of and despite the lack of which my world has not ended.

And apparently there are millions like me. Millions like the two guys below. They look pretty happy, having just snagged their iPads at The Grove in Los Angeles. Actually my primary motivation in putting up this picture was to point out that these two men, particularly the gentleman on the right, have oversized Jib-Jab style heads that look like they don't belong to the bodies they're attached to.

iPad available in late March April 3

Apple had told us that one of the models of the new iPad would be available in late March, but now they're announcing a date of April 3. and they're taking pre-orders.

Well, I guess April is just March 2.0, right?

At any rate, if you're in South Korea, you're better off waiting for April 3 on the lunar calendar, because according to Apple's plans, the April 3 release date is for the US only. Furthermore, the "late April" release date that Apple is announcing is for Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK.

No Korea, not yet.

But maybe that's a good thing: the later release means either that there are bugs in this thing that haven't been worked out yet but they're going to push through to get close to the originally announced release date anyway (the Microsoft model), or they found bugs or glitches but took the time to work them out (which is usually, but not always, the Apple model).

The Reuters article mentions industry analysts who are describing "supply constraints," which could be a third possibility. At any rate, would-be buyers in South Korea might want to wait to see how those across the big blue pond are faring with their fresh hot iPads before they fork over hundreds of thousands of won.

And the April 3 release is only the Wi-fi version. The 3G version won't be available in the US until late April. If Korea ends up having universal free wi-fi everywhere, you won't need the 3G version: even now with my iPhone, for large files (like a 50-minute podcast of "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!") it tells me to connect either directly to my computer or to a wi-fi network; it won't download via 3G.

Whatever you decide to buy, here's a handy pricing chart, snagged directly from Apple's pre-order site:

Flashback to H. Ross Perot talking about potato chips

The New York Times has an article on the innovative A4 chip (and you thought A4 was just an annoyingly inconvenient paper size) that is going into the iPad and how Apple's decision to design its own chip is giving it the freedom to innovate:

With the A4, Apple has taken another step toward challenging the norms of the mobile device industry. Device makers typically buy their primary chips from specialized microprocessor companies. But for the iPad, Apple chose to design its own — creating unique bonds between the chip and Apple’s software.

The do-it-yourself approach gives Apple the chance to build faster, more battery-friendly products than rivals and helps the company to keep product development secret.

The article also warns of the pitfalls of such a strategy, including ballooning engineering costs, production delays, and a ravenous Al Gore inhaling a handful during a fit of madness. It also mentions that, well, Apple is not going it completely alone in this maverick new approach:

“From what we have seen so far, Apple’s product seems to stack up evenly with the competition,” said Dean McCarron, a chip analyst with Mercury Research. “Clearly, Apple is using their own metric for whatever ‘best’ is.” Apple’s laptops and desktops run on Intel chips, while Samsung has been selling Apple the primary chips for the iPhone. Analysts believe Samsung is actually manufacturing the A4 as well, using a common industry design for the core of the chip, while Apple has tweaked other parts of the processor package to suit its needs.

Now I'm hungry for some apple chips. Off to McD's.

They really should have gone with "iSlice"

Apparently the iPad is not the first device to be called "iPad." There could end up being a long legal battle with Fujitsu.

And then there are the problems with pronunciation of iPad:

Many women are saying the name evokes awkward associations with feminine hygiene products. People from Boston to Ireland are complaining that “iPad,” in their regional brogue, sounds almost indistinguishable from “iPod,” Apple’s music player.

I noticed this when discussing the product with "M," who seemed to be mixing up iPod and iPad in conversation. Being a native Japanese speaker, she was pronouncing iPad with the "ah" sound usually used when an a in a foreign word is rendered in katakana. This, of course, sounds a lot like how the o in iPod is pronounced by North Americans.

In Korea, I guess we wouldn't have that problem, since the ae is the usual suspect for the "short a." Hence we have ae•p'ŭl for Apple, and now ai•p'aet [아이팻] for iPad, which is easily distinguishable from ai•pat [아이팟] for iPod. (Because Apple writes "iPod" and "iPad" in Roman characters, even on their Korean website, it's not entirely clear that that's the official spelling.)

By the way, for those naysayers who think an apparent lack of Korean language support means Apple won't be rolling out the iPad at the same time — or nearly the same time — as the rest of the world, it would appear that Apple Korea is making a big deal about the iPad in South Korea as well. Just as with the US store, it is the prominently displayed opening of the Apple Korea website, and there's a bunch of information on the iPad within the site.

Is it my imagination...

... or is Stafford's new artwork holding up an iPad?

Indeed, that's what could be happening, since he seems to have gone gaga over the iPad.

The iPad won't kill the Kindle

While reading this bit in the New York Times, "M" just made the observation that Amazon can't be too happy about Apple's new iPad because it might seriously cut into sales for its flagship product, the Kindle.

The Kindle is a great product, and at $400, it should be. But now that Apple is going after the same market with its own iBooks store and a piece of machinery that duplicates the functionality of the Kindle and then does so much more, and at only $99 more, Amazon is in trouble.

But is the Kindle dead in the water? Not by a long shot. First off, there are positives to the Kindle, vis-à-vis the iPad, that will make people still crave it. One of my in-laws is a Kindle zealot and he had me craving one (and if more of my textbooks had been available on it, I would have gotten one). If I were hanging out with him today, he'd be telling me all about why the Kindle is still a great device — maybe even better than the iPad — and I'll try to channel him.

First and foremost, the Kindle does black-and-white ink so very well that it comes about as close as you can get to feeling like you're reading an actual book. Obviously, I don't know yet what an e-book looks like on the iPad, but I can extrapolate based on my own experience with the iPhone. It's bright and colorful, and that works for some, but for others those characteristics would distract from the book-reading experience. The Kindle wins for its elegant simplicity.

And that leads to the next advantage Kindle has over the iPad: once you've turned the page, that page is up and running with very little juice. Simply put, you need power to keep a page open in the iPad, but you don't with the Kindle (well, very little power). Apple claims a ten-hour battery life with the iPad (which probably comes closer to seven or eight in real-world usage), but this is simply not an issue with the Kindle (from what I've heard).

Moreover, the Kindle is a lighter machine. At ten ounces (0.28 kg), it is less than half the 1.5-pound (0.68 kg) weight of the iPad. That makes for an easier reading experience, so there's one more plus in the Kindle column.

Of course, simplicity and elegance of the Kindle variety may no longer be competitive at $400. I think if Amazon drops its price to, say, $200 or $250, the Kindle will still be a huge moneymaker for Amazon.

Yeah, it's sad that such an innovator as Amazon may lose out in this battle. Amazon indeed paved the way for this new e-book paradigm and it seems unfair. But let's not forget that Amazon left a lot of other businesses in its own wake when it competed with brick-and-mortar bookstores that couldn't compete with Amazon's ridiculously low overhead. Indeed, many people (myself included), would go into a real-world bookstore, browse for something we wanted, and then order it from Amazon.com after we got home.

So my prediction is that the $400 Kindle will come down in price, and then Apple and Amazon will compete for "scoops" as to who can get the latest authors or the latest books. Kindle may be expanded in functionality — taking advantage of its wifi capabilities — so that it can do email and things like that, negating the need for an iPad amongst Kindle users.

UPDATE:
Well I just went over to Amazon.com and, lo and behold, the Kindle has already come down to $259. Can I call 'em or what? Not a bad strategy on Amazon's part to flood the market with their devices while the iPad still remains unavailable (it will be available to the general public in late March or early April, depending on the model).

UPDATE 2:
I just read an article from last week that says Amazon significantly upped the royalties it pays to those who produce the ebooks its sells. Specifically, it raised the royalties to 70%, which is in line with what Apple pays its content producers (for apps and ebooks, apparently).

Here's another reason they should have called it the iSlice

Yeah, I wouldn't have thought of this either.

UPDATE:
CNN has a timeline of Apple's hits and misses over the past decade. Mostly hits.

iPad (shoulda been iSlice)

Me wants. Me wants. And at $499, me might get.

UPDATE:
Apple's cool video that introduces the whole thing is here.