BusinessWeek Pieces - Apple Tablet & Other Tech Products

Very interested in what Apple may (or may not) announce as a new product entry in the computer tablet/reader category. Apparently I'm not the only curious party as the recent BusinessWeek piece "Five Ways Apple's Tablet May Change the World" shows.

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Not to completely shun the PC world... there's also been a good amount of (mostly positive) press around the recent Microsoft launch of the Windows 7 operating system. Two different product review pieces were from the (now departed from BusinessWeek) Tech & You writer Stephen Wildstrom. From the Oct 26 issue was "Win 7: Microsoft Gets It Right (Finally)" and the Nov 9 issue "Multitouch Moves to the Big Screen: PCs"... about how Win 7 enables multi-touch capabilities.

Going back to the "maybe forthcoming" Apple tablet, Wildstrom wrote "The Hypothetical Apple Tablet: User Input Will Be the Key" a few weeks ago on his personal blog.

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Also related to said hypothetical Apple tablet was this BusinessWeek piece on the Nook e-reader from Barnes & Noble. Will be very interesting to see how products such as the Nook, the new e-reader from Plastic Logic or Kindle from Amazon compare and compete with whatever Apple may bring to the show.

Business Topics of Note & Touch-screen Technology

As part of my recent trend of looking back on what I've written, I wanted to specifically look at some of the business topics and companies that I've posted on and linked to.

From a perspective of what companies I've most frequently posted on, the following are those that I've written on the most: Hewlett-Packard, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco & IBM.

More to the point of this post, though, below are some (but, not all) of the business topics I've posted on:

- Touch-screen technology
- Cloud Computing
- Workplace Culture
- Customer Service
- Social Media


Touch-screen Technology

For the purpose of looking at the first topic above, I wanted to expand a bit the field of touch-screen to also encompass handheld e-readers along with the more well known smart phones and personal computers. Touch-screen is a fascinating area of business that really came to the forefront with the iPhone from Apple and has huge potential for growth and ubiquitous adoption through multiple product manifestations.

Touch-screen & Apple

In Dec 2008 I did this post that linked to pieces on one of the pioneers in the field, Jeff Han and I've done multiple posts on Apple, the iPhone and associated App Store. The first was back in Aug 2008 on my new iPhone and then in Jan 2009 I linked to an article about digital books via the iPhone and in Nov 2009 did a post on the BusinessWeek apps cover story... with the whole field brought about due to Apple and the App Store. Even though the Cupertino-based company brought touch as a technology into the popular lexicon, they're certainly not the only player in the market anymore.

eReaders & Amazon

Amazon for several years now has been the dominant player in the online book market (among others) and their more recent foray into e-readers is a fascinating play that may bring huge advances to the book and magazine industry just as the iPhone did for smart phones.

In terms of the general subject area, I did a Feb 2009 post on written content online. Writing this pieced (which linked to a Time cover story on the topic) really showed me how desperately innovation is needed around written content online... and how Amazon could move things forward as a result of their Kindle e-reader. Whether it's via the Kindle or a forthcoming competitor Plastic Logic or any new entry from Apple, the market is ripe for innovation. Following up on this idea where two e-reader content containing blog posts I did in June 2009. The first linked to a Fast Company article and second linked to pieces from both Time and BusinessWeek.

Touch-screen & HP

The last two sections written covered touch as a general technology area and the iPhone and e-readers as a product area within. However, blog posts I've written also cover the good old fashioned (well, not really old fashioned) personal computer as a product area which uses touch.

This Feb 2009 blog post references Hewlett-Packard's recent success in the PC business (and links to other HP blog posts done here). HP has done well with the TouchSmart desktop PC, but what really interests me is the prospect of touch becoming a standard component of notebook computer displays. In a way, this seems to me to be a melding together of attributes from smart phones, e-readers, netbooks and full-size desktop computers. You wouldn't see smart phones go away, but the convergence of the various technologies is an interesting prospect.

It's tough to know exactly where this technology (or any technology, I suppose) will wind up, but there's a lot of good stuff out there and some very big companies committed to innovation around touch. Will be interesting to see where it all goes...

Written Content Pricing & Delivery - from Time Magazine

Couple of interesting articles in the Feb 16 issue of Time around online news content... focusing both on the financial viability of the companies that publish it (online and in print) and on the delivery mechanism of that content.

The first piece is by Walter Isaacson, formerly a managing editor of Time Magazine, and details his views on how to make this whole financially viable thing work. The cover story titled "How to Save Your Newspaper" espouses an idea that Apple has made ubiquitous through it's iTunes Music Store... micro-payments.

It's an interesting idea in that it drills down further from the idea of online subscriptions (which are usually on a monthly basis) and questions why content couldn't be received on a micro-basis (with costs that could be anywhere upwards from a penny). This would enable the organizations that create that content to remain open for business and in essence, keep the industry alive. Isaacson's assertion is that even though it would be different than the current mostly-free model around web news content, the idea of paying Apple $.99 per song on iTunes likely seemed revolutionary to those getting content free on Napster.

The second piece around written content from this issue of Time focuses not on the type of content itself, but rather on the delivery mechanism. Whether it be a newspaper, magazine, book or other printed material, there's efforts from multiple companies to figure out the best type of mobile electronic reader for that content, and to deliver that. This is the topic covered in the story "The Race for a Better Read" which looks at both current handheld offerings and what the future may hold.

The best known option out there is the "Kindle" handheld reader from Amazon, but competition will be likely coming in the future. Some companies to keep an eye on would be the Silicon Valley startup Plastic Logic (which is being led by a former HP manager I've met) or Apple if they (as rumored) get into the market with a larger version of the iTouch. Also mentioned in the article is the Adobe AIR software program that serves as a platform for material to to be written onto.

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Not necessarily related to this topic, but two other things of interest I recently found from Time...

The book "How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer is about the psychology of how consumers make purchase decisions and reviewed in the same Feb 16 Time issue.

From http://www.time.com/ is a listing with detailed descriptions on Time's 50 Best Websites of 2008. Interesting stuff.