Selling Like Hot Cakes

Jim Dalrymple writes,

Piper Jaffray Senior Research Analyst, Gene Munster, on Saturday said he believes Apple sold between 600-700 thousand iPads on the first day. This includes the pre-orders that would have been coming in since March 12.

Something tells me he is likely to be right and that there is a very good chance we could see Apple's press release announcing the iPad hitting the million unit mark before the WiFi+3G version even starts to ship (hurry up already, Apple!).

The naysayers of the last few months will be backpedaling about the iPad's impending failure any time now. Twenty years down the road, I think the iPad will be remembered as the device that finally pried people away from the desktop computer user interface model pioneered in 1984 by the Apple Macintosh.

The iPad will define the tertium quid between the PDA/phone and the PC that has been trying to appear since the ill fated Network Computers of the 1990's.

iPad

The iPad goes on pre-order in less than twelve hours. Before it does, let me go on the record to say I think the device is going to be revolutionary and will more than likely run in scarce supply for the first few months. I fully expect this to be the first mass market success for a tablet computer.

I also believe that the iPad's best uses haven't been dreamt up yet and will come out of innovative app developers finding new ways to make use of its huge multitouch display and its non-legacy foundations. The more innovation we see on the app front, the more indispensable this device will become as a third major hardware front for Apple.

With that in mind, and with full disclosure that I am an AAPL shareholder, let me suggest that I think $250/share is not an unrealistic price target within the next three to six months.

See, I'm Not the Only One Complaining About Ad Blocking

Ars Technica's Ken Fisher has a thoughtful piece on how ad blocking is killing high quality web sites.

If you read a site and care about its well being, then you should not block ads (or you subscribe to sites like Ars that offer ads-free versions of the site). If a site has advertising you don't agree with, don't go there. I think it is far better to vote with page views than to show up and consume resources without giving anything in return.

Fisher offers concise and truthful responses to some of the common defenses for blocking ads. For example,

Invariably someone always pops into a discussion like this and brings up some analogy with television advertising, radio, or somesuch. It is not in any way the same; advertisers in those mediums are paying for potential to reach audiences, and not for results. […] On the Internet everything is 100% trackable and is billed and sold as such. Comparing a website to TiVo is comparing apples to asparagus. And anyway, my point still stands: if you like this site you shouldn't block ads. (Emphasis is mine.)

It will be interesting to see how readers respond. More food for thought for those who were dubious about my own musings on the subject here or on OFB.

[HT: John Gruber]

Le Morte de Flash: Gone in a Flash

I am tired of Adobe Flash. Since I have been trying to transition a substantial portion of my work to a laptop, I have become more painfully aware of how inefficient this bloated plugin is (and I was already quite aware!). Never mind the slow performance, when battery life drops in half because of a window open in the background that has Flash in it, something is really wrong.

So, I am seeing how I like the web with Click for Flash installed in Safari. Eduardo got me thinking about using a flash blocker when he mentioned the Firefox-oriented FlashBlock in his blog post on web ads.

When the big brouhaha over the iPad's lack of flash started, that made me think even more seriously about Flash and ask a question: would I miss Flash if it were gone? Since I bought my first iPhone two and a half years ago, I have done a lot of web surfing on it and I have never really missed Flash when doing so. In preparing OFB Labs reviews I have also spent a lot of time with other smartphones such as the Motorola Droid and have found I can do everything I normally want to do on the web and never really even think about the lack of Flash.

Really, the only thing I use Flash for is viewing the occasional YouTube video. Now that YouTube is implementing HTML5-based video (which is doubly great since H.264 is hardware accelerated on modern Macs), there is virtually no Flash content out there that I use on an even semi-regular basis. So, why bother with it loading all the time?

I can hear folks saying, “Tim, aren't you being inconsistent with your stance on ad blocking?” The answer is “no.” Click to Flash blocks all Flash on the pages I view — it is not set up to distinguish between ads and normal content. To the extent this is true, using Click to Flash is similar to choices such as not to install Flash at all or choosing to use a text-based web browser.

Similarly, I have always argued blocking popups is appropriate because it is not my duty to provide the ability for sites to jump out of their box (doubly so to hide something beneath my browser as they do with pop-unders). I have blocked popups for years. Likewise, while I choose to use a graphical browser, I have no qualms with those who think using a text-only browser to avoid all graphics is a good idea.

Key principle: I do not believe I have to provide software to allow people to sell me stuff; I can choose to disable any part of my browser I feel like. But, when I disable it, it should not be in a way that intelligently disables it only for ads, but for all uses of the content method the ads use. If I don't want animated GIF ads, I should disable all animated GIFs. If I don't want popup ads, I should disable all unrequested popups. If I don't want Flash ads, I should disable Flash wholesale.

If I continued to have the system download non-advertising related Flash, that would be a different story. After all, I would be using up the web site's bandwidth without at least viewing the stuff they use to subsidize that bandwidth. Bandwidth is very expensive. In agreeing to quid pro quo concerning web viewing, it is no different than how if I want a subsidized price on a phone, I do not try to get out of having a two year contract.

I digress. I am Flash free now. I like it so far — my browsing experience is running faster and I am hopefully doing my part to send a clear message to other web developers: drop the proprietary plugins and use HTML5. The momentum is already there with the HTML5-friendly Mobile Safari/WebKit has engine becoming the lingua franca of mobile web browsing.

Who knows? Maybe by Mac OS X 10.7, Flash will not even come pre-installed on desktop systems. If that happens, I can't say I would be the least bit sad.

Alas, Poor Flash

Engadget reports,

Now Adobe has issued a statement apparently confirming what we've already heard: Windows Mobile 7 will not support Flash.

I am hoping this is Microsoft jumping on the same bandwagon as Apple and pushing forward with HTML5 as an alternative to Flash. Rumors have already suggested that Windows Phone 7 will have a more iPhone-like web browsing experience; if Redmond can get its web standards support closer to Safari/WebKit, the idea of leaving Flash out to dry would make a lot of sense. HTML5 over Flash results in better performance for the end user and more direct control over development for Microsoft. Everybody wins.

Gruber has already speculated (accurately, I believe) that control of development direction is a major component of Apple's refusal to support Flash on its mobile platform.

Google Launches Buzz

News.com reports,

“It has become a core belief of ours that organizing the social information on the Web is a Google-scale problem,” said Todd Jackson, Gmail product manager, demonstrating Google Buzz at the company's headquarters a day before Tuesday's event. An astounding amount of social-media content is produced every day, across Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and personal blogs, and Google's faith that it could one day index and organize the entire Internet has been shaken by this explosion in Web content.

The second social initiative with that name, the third major social push by Google. Pencil me in as intrigued but “dubious.”

Tabula Rasa

OK, everyone has their predictions filed for the Apple Tablet, iPad or whatever. Oh, and the Verizon iPhone, too, which I am increasingly convinced will be announced, if not actually launched, tomorrow. Let's say that all happens at high noon tomorrow. Then what? I'm glad you asked.

My Predictions

Apple is announcing something Wednesday. That much is official. So, the question is, what will they announce? I'm going to follow David Weiss's score card items just for fun. Feel free to play along.

Basic Features

An Apple tablet computer will be the centerpiece of the event and I'm going to put myself in the camp thinking it will be called Canvas (runner up: iSlate, honorable mention: iPad). I'm going to peg the price at or below $800 for release in March of this year. I think the rumored $1,000 price point will only work if it can replace a full fledged secondary computer (e.g. notebook or small laptop). I think it will have a 10” screen, which will position it nicely against the Kindle DX (assuming it does aim at the e-Reader market — I think it will). If they opted for the previously rumored 7” screen, closer to the normal Kindle size, I can't imagine it being close enough to a laptop replacement to justify the surely steep price.

I think it will have WWAN (cellular) connectivity, but it will be optional, unless they offer some kind of way to bundle it with existing iPhone services to keep costs realistic. My wager would be that it will support both AT&T and Verizon, either as different options at purchase, or through inclusion of both CDMA/GSM in some sort of dual-mode chipset. The latter is reasonable enough since I think Apple is anxious to distance itself from AT&T. But, if it throws its fortunes in with Verizon alone for the tablet while leaving the iPhone at AT&T, that doesn't seem like it will work out very well for getting people to buy both devices. A dual-mode arrangement could allow Apple to deemphasize carriers, perhaps to an even greater extent than Google is trying to do with the Nexus One.

If Apple is going to put the tablet on Verizon, I'm going to guess that AT&T exclusivity on the iPhone will also be announced as being over. Probably, it will become clear, the AT&T exclusivity term began counting down in January 2007 when the iPhone was unveiled, and not when it was launched as was previously believed. This only makes sense: Apple won't want to launch a new wireless device that isn't a cell phone on a carrier that cannot (yet) offer an iPhone. If they did, people might go to Verizon for the tablet but — still wanting a smartphone — become part of the Android ecosystem. That'd be bad (in Apple's book, at least).

Apple will likely announce, but not have ready, a native SDK. Whether it will only use apps from the app store is anyone's guess, but I'll say no. Apple has used the justification that people need cell phones just to work as a rationale for tight control on the iPhone. While the App Store has worked well enough to likely justify pushing out the App Store for the tablet computer, I'm thinking the tablet is going to come closer to being a full fledged computer and looser controls go hand in hand with that. Nevertheless, I will be unsurprised if Apple thinks otherwise.

I'm going to say no to the “existing iPhone apps run on the tablet” rumor. I think there may be a way in the future for developers to support both platforms with one codebase, but running apps meant for a tiny screen on a much larger one seems uncharacteristically messy for Apple. The one code base, two platforms strategy though will be available for new or updated apps, however, because the tablet will use Cocoa Touch as its framework.

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Writing and Typing Speed Comparison

This is a rather ingenious comparison of major methods of outputting text: pen-and-paper, normal QWERTY keyboard, and several different mobile input methods.

HT: John Gruber.

Happy New Year

Hope everyone had a great New Year's Day. I'm finishing it off right now by finally trying out Haiku's alpha release inside Parallels Desktop.

Merry Seventh Day of Christmas!