Saturday, September 12, 2009

Mo' Readers


Steve Jobs is back -- and that all bushwah about a "slight hormone" imbalance, which was obviously hogwash from the git-go, turned out to be bad enough that he's got a new liver.

Why'd they lie? Because Apple stock prices are tied to Jobs like siamese twins joined at the hip.

And he's still saying there won't be a dedicated Apple ebook reader. Might be a multifunction touchscreen tablet that can be used to read books, of course. Then again, given the history of prevarication from Apple about, well, everything, I wouldn't bet that the sun would come up in the morning if they said it was gonna.

The big deal this month from Apple is the iPod and iPod Touch, the latter of which supposedly has the new Broadcom BCM4329 wi-fi chip that will allow internet connections fast enough to blow the doors off the iPhone, though it's just there, and not yet activated ...

On the other hand, I got a note from J.D. Have a look at the mock-up and story on the Asus eee-reader.

A couple years from now, the landscape is going to be different when it comes to these things. Or as Bobby Zimmerman used to say, Don't speak too soon/ for the wheel's still in spin/

4 comments:

Daniel Keys Moran said...

The dude you linked just gutted and rewrote the work froom the London Times. I suppose they should be grateful he included a link to their content.

Steve Perry said...

Ah. I'll bypass him and go straight to the Times.

Dan Gambiera said...

If Steve Jobs is as smart now as he was with his old liver he'll start looking for The Next Big Thing. Oh, people will be buying iPods for a while, but a lot of the smart money is saying that dedicated music players have had their day in the Sun.

They already have the processing power to do other things. Phones with oversized solid state storage can hold music and videos. Add wireless connectivity, and non-phone devices can suddenly do a lot of interesting things.

Tablet computing sank without a trace the first time it was tried. with better Internet or phone access it's got serious possibilities. E-reader software would only be one part of the package.

The future is not in single-purpose devices.

William Adams said...

Apple seems to be doing well at morphing the iPod Touch and iPhone into general purpose computing devices --- esp. look at how the former is now being described on Apple's web site.

If Apple would just put InkWell on the iPod Touch, I'd have one --- if Sony just had HWR on their PRS-600, I'd have one --- if there was a convertible (or slate format) netbook w/ decent battery life, I'd have one.

I'm looking forward to the convergence.

William