OT: Apple Tablet Tomorrow - Mgraw-Hill CEO soon to be dead

[Sport73]

Mgraw-Hill CEO let slip that the iPhone-OS based tablet would indeed be announced tomorrow, and include a significant focus in ebooks for education. Moments later, the Apple death Ninjas were summoned by Steve Jobs; the Mgraw-Hill CEO is catching an expletive-filled rant right now, but it will be followed by a demonstration of the tablet from inside his colon.

As resident fanboy; I'm excited. Expect another REVOLUTION tomorrow.

PK, here's where you can begin urinating on this parade

[dbdynsty25]

Ooohhhh...big surprise. Who really gives a flying F what McGraw Hill says? No kidding there is a tablet coming tomorrow. Why is this such a shock to the interwebs?

[JRod]

Sport, I'm right there. I'm also waiting in line for this thing because I can't help myself and Apple products!

[Diablo25]

Hey Sport, when do you think this thing will be available to order/preorder? If this thing does what it is rumored to do I will be very interested in getting one.

[dbdynsty25]

Hey Sport, when do you think this thing will be available to order/preorder? If this thing does what it is rumored to do I will be very interested in getting one.

If it's anything like most of Apple's announcements...right after the news drops, they'll take down the Apple online store and then voila...it's available for order. Who knows how long it'll be till they can meet demand though.

[Diablo25]

Hey Sport, when do you think this thing will be available to order/preorder? If this thing does what it is rumored to do I will be very interested in getting one.

If it's anything like most of Apple's announcements...right after the news drops, they'll take down the Apple online store and then voila...it's available for order. Who knows how long it'll be till they can meet demand though.

Thanks dude. I figured that much. I am anxious to see all the features this thing has.

[Murph]

One thing we probably won't hear tomorrow is Apple ending it's iPhone exclusivity with AT&T. I'm hoping it happens sometime in 2010 though.

[F308GTB]

Yawn. Another overpriced product from an overrated company.

Glad I don't drink the kool-aid.

[Danimal]

You would think if they were going after the text book market they would of struck a deal with the #1 or at least #2 text book publisher. I guess Mgraw-Hill is a name the casual fan user will recognize more.

[pk500]

As resident fanboy; I'm excited. Expect another REVOLUTION tomorrow.

PK, here's where you can begin urinating on this parade

I'm sure it will be a fine product. But the "REVOLUTION" talk cracks me up.

Apple is superb at taking existing products and making them better and more intuitive, and marketing them better. That's evolutionary, not revolutionary.

There were personal computers before the Mac. There were MP3 players before the iPod. There were smart phones before the iPhone. There were tablet computers and readers before the iSlate.

About the only thing that Apple has done that's been truly revolutionary is building the microtransaction model around the music industry through iTunes. That has been a revolutionary change for the music business.

The rest is all well-designed, well-marketed evolution. And Apple should be complimented for that. Jobs and Co. do evolution better than any consumer electronics company out there.

But Che Guevara they ain't.

[JRod]

As resident fanboy; I'm excited. Expect another REVOLUTION tomorrow.

PK, here's where you can begin urinating on this parade

I'm sure it will be a fine product. But the "REVOLUTION" talk cracks me up.

Apple is superb at taking existing products and making them better and more intuitive, and marketing them better. That's evolutionary, not revolutionary.

There were personal computers before the Mac. There were MP3 players before the iPod. There were smart phones before the iPhone. There were tablet computers and readers before the iSlate.

About the only thing that Apple has done that's been truly revolutionary is building the microtransaction model around the music industry through iTunes. That has been a revolutionary change for the music business.

The rest is all well-designed, well-marketed evolution. And Apple should be complimented for that. Jobs and Co. do evolution better than any consumer electronics company out there.

But Che Guevara they ain't.

Why too narrow-minded on this one Paul. Here's why...in one quick swoop the iPhone changed the market. I'm not talking about how consumers use a phone, that was more of an evolution. But they did a few things on the business side that once again proved they are leaders in this market.

iTunes Downloadable Apps - This existed before but Apple's infrastructure allowed this microtransaction market flourish.

Visual/Touchable UI - iPhone is released and now all the phone makers are going to the same design or trying to replace the iPhone. Possibly Google was developing their android system but they didn't get it to market and their infrastructure for apps lags behind.

I like Apple products but from a business side they are getting these new products to market faster than their competitors. And they are making people want them. But more importantly Apple is taking market share in these new markets.

I don't know how this isn't called revolutionary. It's not like they are releasing slightly tweaked products and raking in the cash. Maybe the iPad will be nothing more than a glorified Mac OSX touch screen. But however you look at Apple they are leaders in the market.

[pk500]

So market share is the barometer of revolution?

Microsoft has 80 percent market share with browsers and 90 percent market share with operating systems. Since when has Microsoft been called revolutionary?

My belief stands: Apple takes existing concepts, improves upon them greatly by smart, ergonomic engineering, gets them to market quickly and then markets the living crap out of them with lethal effectiveness. It's much more innovation than revolution.

Tim Berners-Lee was a revolutionary. Thomas Edison was a revolutionary. Alexander Graham Bell was a revolutionary. Johannes Gutenberg was a revolutionary.

Steve Jobs is a driven innovator with incredible focus, intelligence and evangelical zeal. But he's not a revolutionary.

If anything, Sergey Brin and Larry Page are more revolutionary than Jobs. They're bringing more of the world's information to the fingertips of anyone with an Internet connection than anyone could have dreamed even 15 years ago. That delivers way more power to the people than owning an iPhone or iPod.

[wco81]

Tim Berners-Lee was a revolutionary. Thomas Edison was a revolutionary. Alexander Graham Bell was a revolutionary. Johannes Gutenberg was a revolutionary.

Steve Jobs is a driven innovator with incredible focus, intelligence and evangelical zeal. But he's not a revolutionary.

If anything, Sergey Brin and Larry Page are more revolutionary than Jobs. They're bringing more of the world's information to the fingertips of anyone with an Internet connection than anyone could have dreamed even 15 years ago. That delivers way more power to the people than owning an iPhone or iPod.

Hypertext and full-text search were longstanding concepts.

Berners-Lee produced the first implementation of hypertext which excited people but didn't conjure it out of thin air.

Similarly, full-text search and even search engines existed before the world had heard of Brin and Page. The scale they devised was impressive though.

So in almost every case, it's a new implementation of an existing concept, not an entirely new idea. However, I would agree that the web and Google have reached far more people, mainly because people don't have to directly pay for the web or Google.

Meanwhile, Apple makes sure you pay them.

Somehow, they managed to package slick design with services and content deals which have gotten people to pay their premium prices, at least since the iPod.

For this tablet thing, it'll have to be more than just books and magazines. And they can't sell only SKUs which require their own data contract. Very few iPhone customers will take on another expensive data contract.

[macsomjrr]

Count me among the worshippers of the Cult of Apple. This tablet is gonna be cool beans:)

[JRod]

PK.

Give me a break your benchmark for revolutionary is ridiculous.

The definition says... involving or causing a complete or dramatic change.

I'd say apple fits into that category easily.

[macsomjrr]

PK.

Give me a break your benchmark for revolutionary is ridiculous.

The definition says... involving or causing a complete or dramatic change.

I'd say apple fits into that category easily.

PK is just being a "hater."

[JRod]

PK.

Give me a break your benchmark for revolutionary is ridiculous.

The definition says... involving or causing a complete or dramatic change.

I'd say apple fits into that category easily.

PK is just being a "hater."

PK and technology are moving in different directions.

[10spro]

Supposedly the apple tablet will change the way we access to media and people are willing to pay huge bucks to have immediate content at their fingertips other than the internet. nd i would call it 'revolutionary' if the new apple medium delivers a new way to be informed as this guy (pretending to be S. Jobs) smartly wrote:

http://www.fakesteve.net/2009/09/nobody ... -true.html

Hey, and if apple can push gaming to a new level as well with this itouch on steroids tablet, even better.

Is this it, sitting on top of the Macbook Pro?

[pk500]

Give me a break your benchmark for revolutionary is ridiculous.

The definition says... involving or causing a complete or dramatic change.

Your appetite for hype also is ridiculous.

Your definition fits iTunes perfectly, which I have acknowledged repeatedly. iTunes was a sea change; the Mac and iPod were not. I would lean toward sea change with the iPhone, but its effect was not nearly as dramatic as iTunes. That is, unless you consider the creation of an industry of "phone apps" as a revolution.

[pk500]

Supposedly the apple tablet will change the way we access to media and people are willing to pay huge bucks to have immediate content at their fingertips other than the internet.

I'm curious about this and ask sincerely:

If the tablet is wirelessly connected to the Internet, how is it more of a game-changer than a laptop or a smart phone other than its larger touch screen interface? It's more portable than a lappy, for sure, but it's not more portable than a smart phone.

If the tablet does wireless downloads of media that traditionally is in print, how is it more of a game-changer than the Kindle or Nook?

This seems more like a "revolution" of interface than device. But then again, nobody does interface better than Apple. No one else is even close.

[Rodster]

Gotta agree with PK's take on the Apple tablet if that's what's released today. HP and others are also releasing their Slate PC's. Also Windows 7 also incorporates Touch technology as well.

[pk500]

I promise I will refrain from any comments other than those about the iSlate's features once the messiah is born today at the hands of Jobs.

Seriously. Especially since I don't own a raincoat thick enough to protect me from the saliva-and-semen glaze that will coat this thread.

[pk500]

Interesting note this morning from The Daily Beast:

"Apple may unveil its new tablet on Wednesday, but the business side is still being worked out: The company has been hosting 11th-hour negotiations with book publishers, says The Wall Street Journal, to figure out how to take on rival Amazon. Amazon's cut-rate staple of $9.99 bestsellers, on which it accepts a net loss in order to build its market share, made publishers anxious that the public would come to expect cut-rate ebook prices, while Apple's new system will allow publishers to set their own prices, shifting the balance of power back to publishers, at least partly. Apple has reportedly asked publishers to set ebook price points for hardcover bestsellers at $12.99 or $14.99, with fewer books offered at $9.99. The gamble for publishers is whether Apple's new device will increase ebook sales the way Amazon's Kindle did."

If bestsellers are $9.99 on Kindle and $12.99-$14.99 on the iSlate, can Apple prevail as it has done with online music?

iPods always were very popular, but Apple didn't cement its vise-like grip on the MP3 player market until it dropped the prices of its lineup to reasonable levels a couple of years ago. Then the game was over.

An Apple iPod Classic that holds 160 GB for somewhere between $225-$250 is a stupendous value. But iPods didn't always used to be that cheap. Their prices used to be significantly higher than similar offerings from Creative and Archos.

After the Apple price drop, now only Sansa is in the game -- and just barely, with cheapo players.

Will Amazon undercut Apple? Should be interesting to see.

[Rodster]

I promise I will refrain from any comments other than those about the iSlate's features once the messiah is born today at the hands of Jobs.

Seriously. Especially since I don't own a raincoat thick enough to protect me from the saliva-and-semen glaze that will coat this thread.

[Brando70]

If bestsellers are $9.99 on Kindle and $12.99-$14.99 on the iSlate, can Apple prevail as it has done with online music?

I think that depends on what the iSlate does. Even though Amazon is promising apps for the Kindle, it's seen as a one-purpose device. If the iSlate has the kind of multi-functionality of the iPhone, that's a huge plus to the kind of consumer who wants this.

Also, publishers will side with the platform that gives them more pricing flexibility. They're really unhappy with Amazon's remainder-level pricing plan for books. That could seriously impact the availability of titles for the Kindle.