Apple’s event on Tuesday was fun. The company offered up a slew of hardware products for consumers to drool over, and it did a fine job of appealing to everyone from mobile customers to computer purchasers.
The iPad mini will undoubtedly be a fan favorite, as will the fourth-generation iPad. The new iMac is downright beautiful with a thinness that has yet to be matched. Even the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, which is admittedly expensive, should attract quite a few customers.
Apple’s iPad Mini is right around the corner, and as expected, just about everyone is talking about the tablet. What’s more, the device isn’t even on store shelves, but a host of people are saying that they plan to buy the tablet. It’s a fascinating thing. And it speaks to Apple’s ability to attract customers.
But for all of the other people on the fence about the iPad Mini, trying to decide whether to buy the tablet isn’t so simple. Those folks want to see what kind of features the tablet will come with before they make a decision. And chief among those elements in decision-making is the price.
Now that Apple has announced that it will hold a special event on Tuesday, just about everyone believes that the show will be used to unveil the iPad Mini. That device, which has been rumored for months, will complement the current iPad and take on the Nexus 7 from Google and Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD.
As with every other Apple announcement, the excitement surrounding Tuesday’s event is palpable. Both Apple lovers and haters are wondering what the company will offer up, and chances are, many of those folks are getting their wallets ready to plunk down cash to preorder whatever it is the iPad Mini becomes.
If you’re asking yourself if the brand new $249 Samsung Chromebook is going to get you through the school year, you’ll want to know a few details on how this device actually functions. First of all, it may look surprisingly like a MacBook Air, but it’s not a full-fledged system in the way you’re used to – this device isn’t made for massive video editing and it’s certainly not ready for any big-name gaming adventures. What it is made for is web-based action – and lots of it.
Not as big as the new iPad; not as small as the iPhone 5 or iPod touch; it’s Apple’s own “tweener” and by all rights and intents the iPad mini should be nothing more than a gap filler. Yet anticipation is high for the presumed 7.85-inch iOS tablet, and while spirits always tend to get, well, spirited in advance of an Apple event, sometimes the justification seems more inexplicable than others. Arguably, in the context of the tablet market – and post-PC computing as a whole – Microsoft’s Surface is far, far more important than the iPad mini.
I love my televisions. One of them, a 55-inch set, sits in my living room, ready and willing to deliver all kinds of entertainment. Another set, a 42-inch model, is running in my bedroom for those times when I want to relax and catch up on some shows on my TiVo.
Recently, when I was watching a movie on the aforementioned 55-inch set in my living room, I got to thinking about screen size. On numerous occasions, people have come into my house, looked at the screen, and made some sort of laudatory statement about how “big” my television was. To them, the size, and not the fact that the set is extremely thin and delivers outstanding picture quality, was most impressive.
There’s an addiction in the modern news reporting universe online to updates on details so very small that less than 10 years ago they’d never have left their respective sources lips. With Apple, we’ve got an addiction to details on the devices we’re holding right this minute. Chances are, in fact, that you’re working with a device right now that we’ve written about in the past 24 hours, and it doesn’t just have to be an Apple device.
I was wrong. If you’ve been following along with the strategy Samsung has been working with over the past year, you’ve noticed that they’ve been doing rather well the Samsung Galaxy S III as a single hero smartphone across the globe with no design compromises. They’ve just thrown that all away with the Samsung Galaxy S III Mini. In a move that very well could have expanded the power of the Galaxy S III with a little cousin in the Mini, Samsung instead opted to tear off the skin and the nametag from the larger device and place it on a disappointingly low-level afterthought in this newer handset.
Now that the Samsung Galaxy S III Mini has been confirmed, the first question you should be asking yourself is this: if the original was too big, will this device be just right? It’s exactly that that Samsung wants you to be thinking – even though the components inside this “Mini” version of the device may be rather different from the original, it really depends on your perspective whether or not you’ll accept the Samsung “Hero” branding that’s taking place here. It worked with the simultaneous launch of the Galaxy S III on multiple carriers in the USA with the same model and name intact – will the “S III” magic continue forth with another nature-toting smartphone?
If you’re hesitant to work with your data stored in this ephemeral location called “the cloud”, you’re not alone – but AT&T and IBM have announced a team-up today that’ll send a shock through the market that’ll have masses of users converting. When you’ve got a new technology – or any technology that people may be hesitant to use in general – your best bet in making people adopt it is to prove to them that it’s reliable at the same time as it is either fun or helpful to use. To do that you need brand power and better yet, cross-brand power like AT&T and IBM are demonstrating this week.
Google, if the rumors are true, has turned to long-time Android supporter (and arguably the only OEM really making a success out of Android) Samsung for the next Nexus tablet, and unlike the budget Nexus 7 it’s a direct challenge to the iPad. Blasting past Apple’s “Retina” boasts with a 10.1-inch, 2,560 x 1,600 display, there’s no doubting that such a slate would be a joy to the eyes, but it’ll take more than ribald resolution to address Google’s lingering Android tablet problem, and no amount of fancy Samsung hardware can do that.
With the exclusivity of the Nokia Lumia 920 on AT&T announced at the start of this Windows Phone 8 generation of phones, the future seemed to dim a little for the company’s chances at taking on the rest of the market in the USA. When the Nokia Lumia 810 was announced this week for T-Mobile, it instantly became apparent that Nokia wasn’t limiting its wares to one carrier – not at all. With rumors abound that Verizon will be in the mix soon as well, we’ve got a real collection of Nokia device out to take on the USA – will it be enough to keep users interested in the Windows Phone 8 universe?
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