Courier was cancelled because the product didn’t clearly align with the company’s Windows and Office franchises

As a result, Microsoft is in third place in the Tablet space (behind Apple and Android).

Apple re-thought the “personal” computing experience and produced a product so revolutionary that it the implications are still rippling through the rest of the IT ecosystem – and has driven Apple to undreamed of success.

Microsoft did the same thing (ish) but couldn’t bear to release it – that’s the Innovator’s Dilemma in a nutshell. Which Apple appear to have solved, which is an incredible thing to have fixed, if they truly have done so in a systematic manner.

Here’s the original article on CNet.

Well worth a read if you are interested in how new concepts come about.

I am intrigued… do they genuinely believe they’ve got a killer product on their hands, or are they just putting it out there and hoping to buy themselves time.

A few major things jump out which makes me wonder.

• It is directed at business (“The business-centric iPad”) but is called the “Playbook”. There’s confusion for a start. Is this thing for work or play?
• It doesn’t have a ship date except Q1 2011 (for the US – Q2 for the rest of the world). But no 3G yet.
• No pricing!
• It appears to be focused on existing BlackBerry users, so you can use the Playbook as a companion device, sucking content from your BlackBerry… I wonder what’s going to that make a success where the Palm Foleo failed?

It feels like they’ve been panicked into launching something so there’s little detail, long timescales, and little innovation. Doesn’t look good does it?

I am constantly amazed and just what a bad job people do of trying to copy Apple, even after Apple have shown them what to do!

The MaRS blog has most of the PC/Mac competitive Ads in which are interesting if you haven’t seen them before (I haven’t – do they only run in the US?) – worth including this parody which made me laugh:

So Via BoingBoing I found this seriously geeky explanation of how Apple Devices decide what charger they are connected to and what they can do with it quite enlightening.

Basically the charger tells the iPhone/iWhatever device what current it can draw (0.5 Amp or 1 Amp it seems) by putting a voltage on the data line, which the iPhone senses. So when older chargers don’t put this voltage on the line, that’s why you get charging not supported….

It still feels a little tricky as a process, but I would think in a year or so you’ll be able to buy one on arrival at a country, and fill it up with your credit card… which would make a lot of sense. Of course the operators won’t like their loss of data roaming charges, but it will have to happen at some point.

Over the last decade, Wall Street has declined to reward Microsoft for its superior profit. The explanation is simple: Professional investors don’t believe Ballmer, and they don’t see bigger profits in Microsoft’s future. Conversely, they bid up Apple’s shares precisely because they think the company will keep growing revenue and profits. Apple has managed to enter new, growing markets, a feat Ballmer has repeatedly failed to accomplish.

Of course Apple could be in the same situation except for one thing:

Microsoft didn’t have Apple’s stroke of luck. Fire one if its founders who goes on to start two companies, Pixar and NeXT, and then comes back twelve years later, tempered by the experiences, good and bad, ready to lead the company to an amazingly successful second act. Except for Ballmer’s two-year stint at Procter & Gamble, all he and Gates have ever known is Microsoft.

Interesting perspective. It is interesting how irrelevant Microsoft are becoming to daily life. Of course they are still dominant in Enterprise IT, but at work we’re increasingly seeing either their IT folk being much more open to the rest of the IT world, or we’re seeing the business bypassing their IT dept. entirely and going for Cloud-based solutions.

Microsoft—in a nutshell—is a company that had one successful product that we are all beholden to—that then used that capital to buy other people’s products and ruin them. They are not bad people, but they do stab their friends in the back. Also, they are a bunch of nerds, which is probably why they have never managed to produce a decent interface.

Google—in a nutshell—is a company that had one successful product that we are all beholden to—that then used that capital to buy other people’s products and ruin them. They are not bad people, but they do stab their friends in the back. Also, they are a bunch of nerds, which is probably why they have never managed to produce a decent interface.

Apple is a company that produces amazing, human-usable products. I love them for the same reason I love any such company, and I forgive them their eccentricities because their products are so amazing. They make decisions that I’m told are bad for me, yet I don’t see that reflected in their products as I use them.

(from marco.org)

Operators are legally required to send their customers a text message when they enter a foreign country to warn them of the increased cost of using a mobile phone overseas. The iPad is not designed to receive text messages and some networks have thus disabled roaming to comply with European law.

How frustrating! And of course, whilst I would be happy to get a SIM for the countries I visit often, they aren’t going to sell me one are they…?

This is mildly irritating for me, but it’s going to be infuriating for people who live in Western Europe and travel between countries a lot…

So who knows what happened with the AT&T sign-up fiasco.   But there’s a cultural difference between these two companies, and just because folks at Apple are able to pull months of all-nighters to ship the new phone, doesn’t mean their technical counterparts at AT&T are equally motivated….. [snip] There’s plenty of blame to go around, but differences in culture, motivation, and economics all probably played a factor in how this whole situation came to be

I can just imagine the cultural differences between a motivated Apple worker who is out to change the world again, and an AT&T engineer for whom I suspect this is just another one of many problems to solve dumped on their lap by some faceless bureaucrat.

So I’ve changed my mind about the iPad and tablet computers. In my initial review, I focused on capabilities. And tablets are stuck between the power and utility of the notebook and the size and features of a smartphone. But they also create a middle place in terms of usability. And that is what I missed in my first day with the iPad. It feels less like a computer than any computing device I’ve owned. It’s easy on me in a way that the other devices are not. So I’m now convinced that tablets will have an important place in our homes and our lives.

I find it interesting how the iPad is almost always in the same room of the house as me, much more so than my laptop. Of course, my phone is almost always in my pocket, but I am using it a lot less, and even though we have spare laptops in the house (old ones from work), I’m reaching for the iPad first and spending very little time on the laptop now.

Some Apple devices are better than others, but I confess I am nearly always childlike in my thrilled and squeaking pleasure when the latest object of desire chugs off the Cupertino conveyor belt. What Willie Wonka was to Charlie, Steve Jobs is to me.

Very true.

I was talking with a colleague the other day, and it struck me as interesting that Apple more-or-less created the Personal Computer (well, made it viable), and to compete the entire industry had to gang up on them (with the WinTel platform). Now they’ve made Mobile Computing viable and again you can see the rest of the industry, led by Google and their Android platform, ganging up because that’s the only way they can compete.

Say what you like about Apple and Steve Jobs, but the reality is he’s the one who makes the new industry viable, he’s the one they all have to gang up on, and he’s one of the few from the Personal Computing wars who’s even in the fight for Mobile Computing.

For a product that doesn’t ship until Friday. Hmmm. And the two reviews have rated it 3/5 and 5/5. Hmmm. The reviews don’t read like they are planted, but you would have thought they’d only accept customer reviews after the product has shipped?

Having said that, I’ve learned that O2 let you manage your account from your iPad and Vodafone don’t, and O2 bundle WiFi access and Vodafone don’t. So maybe I’ll skip Vodafone!

Here’s a screen shot of the page in case they take it down.

Screen Shot of the Vodafone page this morning

Here’s an old Newton ad:

Someone has pointed out the similarities between one of the current iPad ads and the Newton ad above. The most depressing thing for me is that the Newton is still better than the iPad (or anything else) in some areas… oh well. It was a wonderful, if slightly clunky device (by today’s standards).

Such is the power of focus. I just wish I could get people in our industry to see it…