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Christina Bonnington reports that the public is not gobbling up iPads like they used to. Analysts had projected iPad sales would reach 19.7 million but Apple's financial results for the second quarter of its fiscal 2014 show they sold 16.35 million iPads, a drop of roughly 16.4 percent since last year. "For many, the iPad they have is good enough unlike a phone, with significant new features like Touch ID, or a better camera, the iPad's improvements over the past few years have been more subtle," writes Bonnington. "The latest iterations feature a better Retina display, a slimmer design, and faster processing. Improvements, yes, but enough to justify a near thousand dollar purchase? Others seem to be finding that their smartphone can do the job that their tablet used to do just as well, especially on those larger screened phablets."
According to Andrew Cunningham the takeaway from Apple's sales drop in iPads is that Apple's past growth has been driven mostly by entering entirely new product categories, like it did when it introduced the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, and the iPad in 2010 and that Apple needs an entirely new category to fuel future growth. "The most persistent rumors [of a new product category] involve TV (whether a new Apple TV set-top box or an entire television set) and wearable computing devices (the perennially imminent "iWatch"), but calls for larger and cheaper iPhones also continue."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RandomSchmoe on Friday April 25 2014, @07:50PM
Apple is due for a product in a new category. None of the rumors or guesses are very interesting.
They should try a whole new market, like health care. It already looks like iOS 8 will contain an API and interface for individual health care stats which could launch a whole new market of home peripherals. But I think they should also go after the professional health care market. Imagine doctors with iPads connected to all their devices, collecting data and sharing them securely with patients and other doctors. That would be amazing if they do it right.
The Best Comments Ever Seen On Slashcode [seenonslash.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Tork on Friday April 25 2014, @08:00PM
I don't agree with this. Well... I do agree that it's not an instant home-run, people will need convincing. You're right about that. But the part I disagree with is that people are already using their phones to consume new news nuggets. Maybe it's alerts about Flight 370, mabye it's Seth Rogan's latest tweet. Sooner or later they're going to make it easier to digest that news as it comes in. That can be conveniently done on your wrist or in your glasses.
There is a demand there to cater to, I wouldn't write off watches yet.
Sent from a satisfied Pebble Watch customer
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Insightful) by black6host on Friday April 25 2014, @08:35PM
I would also add that a wearable, such as a watch, is something that can be seen by others while you are out and about. It's my opinion that having something made by Apple is seen by many as a status symbol. Not all but that's hard to quantify.
Something in the living room, like a TV related product, is not going to get that the purchaser that exposure. Their successful products like the iPod, iPhone, iPad etc can all be carried out and about. And seen and admired by those that are into that.
Now, this doesn't mean that their products can't stand on their own merit, I own an Ipod, I love it. And there are plenty of folks who couldn't care less what others think, they're in it for the functionality, build quality or whatever. But it would be naive to disregard the social aspect of it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Foobar Bazbot on Saturday April 26 2014, @02:02AM
I agree that both standalone and phone-slaved smart watches have mass-market potential. And I say that as someone who fairly recently started wearing a standalone smart watch*, and is all too aware of its limitations.
*a MOTOACTV, which runs Android from the factory, with a custom launcher that only supports the integrated apps. Running a normal launcher, as I do, makes it function like any Gingerbread tablet.
However, the big hurdle, and the reason Apple's next big seller won't be iWatch (IMO of course), is battery tech.
The Pebble works around the deficiencies of current batteries by having e-ink, no sound, no WiFi, etc., and gets a claimed 1-week battery life, which is quite good. (I'm not sure where that claim lies on a scale of engineering to marketing, but the point is, you don't have to charge it every night, much less during the day.) I think the feature set is a bit limited for mass market, though being phone-slaved makes it much more palatable.
OTOH, my MOTOACTV plays videos, surfs the web (over WiFi, bluetooth, or USB connection), and is my main audio player, but the price is an offline battery life of 5-6 hours, playing music and reading ebooks with the brightness dialed down. (Reading with no music, it lasts much longer, but still on the order of a day rather than a week; watching video at full brightness, I get just about 2 hours, and turning WiFi on makes it worse.) And the worst part, from a mass-market perspective, is that it's at the very upper limit of big clunky sports watches -- a more mass-market-friendly size means serious sacrifices in battery life.
I think a successful smart watch will need to be between the Pebble and the MOTOACTV in functionality (e.g. video playback is superfluous, and e-ink may be enough, but I think music and a touchscreen* will be important), but close to the Pebble in size, and have battery life of at least two full days in "normal" use, whatever that is. Advances in processor performance/power will help, but IMO it needs batteries with at least 50% more energy density to happen.
*I generally prefer hardware buttons to touchscreen interfaces, but the general public doesn't seem to agree. For a watch, specifically, I think a good choice would be buttons and touch, but rather than using the touchscreen as a virtual mouse, or to press on-screen buttons, apps would only receive tap (with no information as to where on the screen the tap occurred) and swipe (again with no position info, the angle being the only salient information) events. I'm afraid that such a thing may be too abstract for mass-market "iWatch" or equivalent, and too different from the UI of their other touchscreen products.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheGratefulNet on Friday April 25 2014, @08:44PM
Imagine doctors with iPads connected to all their devices, collecting data and sharing them securely with patients and other doctors. That would be amazing if they do it right.
amazing IF they could do it right.
I'm 100% sure they can't. we have not learned how to secure networks, we have not even learned how to write secure CODE. clearly, we are not ready to let our MOST sensitive info get unleashed to those who want to spy and use info against us.
I will not allow my HC info to be on electronic form if I can have any say in it. when my doctor wanted me to sign up for their 'e-health' pkg with my PPO, I gave her a quick lecture on how insecure our networking technology really is and how foolish anyone would be to trust their HC info to this.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hamsterdan on Friday April 25 2014, @09:36PM
" we have not learned how to secure networks, we have not even learned how to write secure CODE"
Networks can be secured, MBAs and PHBs just don't see the need to spend resources and money on it. Same goes for code (that and people don't know how to code thanks to IDEs). Watch the C64 demoscene, it's obscene what people can do with those machines, yet we need multi-ghz machines to run a wordprocessor.
(Score: 1) by Teckla on Saturday April 26 2014, @12:17PM
What do IDEs have to do with the ability to code?
(Score: 2) by hamsterdan on Saturday April 26 2014, @03:44PM
Like calculators, people rely too much on the software's ability to do things right. (ie: why we still have buffer overflows because inputs aren't checked properly)
Back in high school, calculators were not always permitted because they didn't want us to rely too much on the tools.
I'm not saying using an IDE makes a bad coder, but a bad coder can write code that "mostly works" using an IDE (and will have stupid bugs). I used to work with one guy, god the code was messy. The internet installation kit he wrote mostly worked, unless the costumer ran Win98SE (in that particular case, the software installed a DLL without checking the version already installed, and prevented the costumer's PC from booting)
Not the IDE's fault, but the guy relied too much on the tools...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Teckla on Sunday April 27 2014, @02:14PM
Bad programmers write bad code in any language using any tools. There's no sense worrying about them.
Good programmers, on the other hand, can be much more productive by leveraging good tools.
Thus, tools that aid in productivity, like IDEs, should be used when possible.
(Score: 2) by hamsterdan on Monday April 28 2014, @04:06PM
Agreed, but my point is that it's easier for a bad programmer to write *mostly working* code using IDEs than compiling assembler on a 6809 (like we did in avionics classes back in late '80s). Maybe it's related to the fact it was avionics, but we had no choice than to structure the code and sanitize inputs (that and make the code light due to memory restrictions on the dev boards).
Using tools (IDEs, calculators, etc) is good and helps productivity, I agree.
I can add, multiply, divide and do fractions without a calculator (might not be as fast). Most young people can't even figure out how much tax to add to a price even if it's a nice round number like 15%.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 28 2014, @04:06AM
Years ago, after learning BASIC, I tackled Motorola 6809 assembly language.
BOY IT WAS HARD!
But when I leard how to program on the 'bare metal', my subsequent programming skills benefitted.
I don't need a flowchart or a detailed outline to write code -- just a few notes if that.
I CAN write assembler if I HAVE to but I rather not anymore (except for amusement) thanks to Microsoft's IDE-driven high-level language programing language suites which sweep all the 'heavy lifting' under a rug so you can concentrate on your custom coding and not the boilerplated 'busywork' all such programs need to compile and run.
The code I write now is 'just enough' to get the job done as fast as possible. Take any code out and the program just doesn't run correctly -- no useless code at all.
When you learn assembly, you learn to be EFFICIENT in order to write as FEW lines of code as possible to solve a given task.
Now, however, I am in awe of Steve Gibsion of SPINRITE fame. He writes the Windows apps he has available at his website https://www.grc.com/freepopular.htm [grc.com] in 100% assembler! o_O; They are so tiny yet feature-packed.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Dunbal on Friday April 25 2014, @11:06PM
Never going to happen. I'm a doctor, and you know why it's not going to happen? Every hospital is using its own software. Not only that, but departments in the same hospital are all using different software. Because Dr. X, the bigshot in Pathology, was sold ABCMedicalJunkware and he's too lazy to learn something else. Meanwhile Dr. Y in the pharmacy uses DEFPatientMeds because he's been using it since 1990. All the attendings of course are using Microsoft Office except Cardiology. Dermatology for some reason is using some Macintosh software. And everyone uses different programs on their smart phones and tablets. Of course the above is illustrative, but it's quite true. All these different programs are 0% interoperable. And then we come to the hospital accounting department that uses something straight out of the 1980's.
And THEN I finish at Hospital A in the morning and head to Hospital B. And the software there is completely different.
You'd have to ensure a single, interoperable standard. Good luck.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 25 2014, @11:01PM
http://gizmodo.com/iphone-5c-apples-colorful-budge t-phone-is-real-1278630584 [gizmodo.com]
Went over like a lead baloon, because part of being a fanboy is knowingly paying too much for equipment.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Saturday April 26 2014, @03:54AM
iWatch -> some analyst actually came up with the "high-end" version of it costing what, $1.5K Sure, people will be all over spending 8X what they paid for their phone for a watch that probably will at least partially depend on a connection to said phone.
iTV -> I don't think this will happen. People are bailing from the TV market now, as margins go down and TV's last longer and longer. And all the companies with content are still VERY leery of Apple having any dominance, like they currently do with music...