Thought Garage

iPad is now official and awesome. And in my view, there are two categories of products that will suffer a great deal if not completely get ignored in the market: Netbooks and e-Book readers (like Kindle).  iPad will be a real break-through not because hardware (despite gigantic touch screen) or for software, but for great and intuitive user experience in consuming content. Finally, consuming content on web feels like reading a book or magazine, close to your heart. Something I always wanted. Hmm, I will be poor by at least another $500.

The fact that any of those 140K apps that run on iPhone or iPod touch run on iPad without any modification is quite irresistible. And for those who already have an iPhone or iPod touch, using iPad is just natural and hence nothing exciting. It not only looks and feels like a gigantic iPhone or iPod touch, but powered by the same software core.

These days every device manufacturer is trying to emulate Apple App Store.  Amazon is the latest one to join. With the release of some kind of tablet from Apple around the corner, Amazon is trying to prepare its ground for an onslaught. First Amazon introduced a new Royalty model for publishers, which can be considered as little friendlier than earlier. Now it opens up Kindle for developer apps.

Kindle may not be suitable for all kinds of Apps that we normally see on App Store, for instance Games, but can have apps centered around content and in the long run may help Amazon to make Kindle more useful to its customers.

Read it on WSJ.

Its now official that Apple has something NEW to offer to the market and it will be unveiling its latest creation on 27th of Jan, 2010 at 10AM PST. Rumors already abound that the new product will be a touch screen tablet. And probably an iPhone 4.0 and delivering BOOKS through iTunes.

What’s your guess?

Its no big surprise, if you have ever used linux based desktop and you are not a geek. But for those who believe that open source can beat stalwarts like Microsoft and Apple in UI design, its time to ack limitations.

Red Hat said it has dropped plans, disclosed last year, to develop a version of the Linux operating system for consumer PCs — in part because of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s dominance over the market.

“The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today’s Linux desktops simply don’t provide a practical alternative,” Red Hat officials said in a blog post Wednesday.

“Building a sustainable business around the Linux desktop is tough, and history is littered with example efforts that have either failed outright, are stalled, or are run as charities,” they said.

Linux commands only about 1.2% of the desktop market in the United States, according to research group Gartner

Red Hat Drops Plans For Consumer Desktop Linux — Linux — InformationWeek

When it comes to web surfing there is no other device like iPhone. Nokia fans and Blackberry folks are very reluctant to accept that iPhone from a computer company beat the mobile phone companies flat out. But they all know iPhone has really done it. Data from search engines only confirms it.

On Christmas, traffic to Google from iPhones surged, surpassing incoming traffic from any other type of mobile device, according to internal Google data made available to The New York Times.

A few days later, iPhone traffic to Google fell below that of devices powered by the Nokia-backed Symbian operating system but remained higher than traffic from any other type of cellphone.

The data is striking because the iPhone, an Apple product, accounts for just 2 percent of smartphones worldwide, according to IDC, a market research firm. Phones powered by Symbian make up 63 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, while those powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile have 11 percent and those running the BlackBerry system have 10 percent.

Source: Google Sees Surge in iPhone Traffic