​Why it's harder to choose which iPad works best for you

â€&lsqauo;Why it's harder to choose which iPad works best for you
Apple has never sold so many different types of iPad tablets all at the same time.After the debut of the iPad Air 2 and the iPad Mini 3 last week, Apple now sells five different models, allowing for 56 configurations with prices from $249 to $829. With so many choices, the iPad lineup is starting to look less and less like the "simple and elegant" design mantra Apple uses to describe its products. It's hard to say definitively yet whether having so many options will confuse consumers or, worse, if it's evidence of a defensive Apple reacting to competitors and a sputtering tablet market. Critics who think Apple isn't the trailblazing company it once was question whether CEO TIm Cook's leadership is steering the gadget maker toward a more confusing and less profitable array of products. Having that many choices isn't a product philosophy espoused by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who unveiled the iPad in 2010 and handed over the reins of the company to Cook in 2011."It's really the difference between Cook and Jobs," said Rob Enderle, an analyst at the Enderle Group. "Jobs created a very unique model. His idea was to create asimple line and drive people to it."If you walked into an Apple store four years ago, when the tablet market had yet to come into its own, the consumer choice was in line with that Jobsian vision. Potential iPad buyers only had to consider a few questions: how much storage (16, 32 or 64 gigabytes), and whether the tablet would to work solely on Wi-Fi networks or have cellular connectivity. As the iPad won over fans (the company sold 225 million units since its debut), the tablet market matured and competitors flooded the market with their own devices. Apple's full iPad lineup is now more complex than ever, offering five different models at the same time.Screenshot by Nick Statt/CNETApple began to offer more choices to lure consumers who didn't think a higher-end, 9.7-inch model was the perfect fit -- the same strategy it employed to win over a mass market audience for its iPod digital media player and is now doing with the iPhone. For the iPad, the expansion of the product line meant not just a smaller tablet -- the 7.9-inch iPad Mini, which debuted in October 2012 -- but a reinvention of the 9.7-inch model with last year's pencil-thin iPad Air. Almost every time a new model was announced, Apple discontinued an older product to streamline consumer choice. The iPad 2 replaced the first generation model, the iPad 3 was quickly replaced by the fourth iteration, and the iPad 4 was replaced by the iPad Air. Yet now, Apple is keeping both the first- and second-generation iPad Mini available alongside the first iPad Air. The iPad Mini 3, which got only only 40 seconds of stage time from Apple marketing VP Phil Schiller atThursday's product launch, is only slightly different from its older sibling: it adds more storage and the Touch ID fingerprint sensor in the home key. That Apple kept the iPad Mini 2 on board at a reduced price of $299 already has reviewers advising consumers to steer clear of the Mini 3 and opt for the cheaper Mini 2, a rarity for a company known for driving consumers upward and commanding premium prices for the best hardware. So what's the deal? Analysts say it may be a sign that Samsung, Apple's chief rival in the market for tablets and smartphones, is winning away more customers with the many models it sells across numerous product lines at different prices."Tim Cook is trying to compete with Samsung," Enderle said. "The customer instead of having a clear choice has a hard choice."That choice manifests itself in consumer doubt around how to avoid making a buying mistake like buying the 16GB iPad Mini 3 when you actually wanted the 64GB iPad Mini 2. "They have so many obsolete products in the market right now that it's pretty damn hard for the consumer," Enderle said. "Therein lies the difficulty for Apple longterm."Apple did not respond to a request comment.The role of cheaper iPadsThere are other factors at play, too. Tablets aren't sold at a reduced or subsidized price by wireless carriers. That's driven consumers to hold on to them longer because there aren't cellular carrier subsidies driving you to upgrade every two years (or less). Apple has built its smartphone business by urging consumers to get the best and latest iPhone. But it can't mirror that strategy easily with the iPad. Much of that has to do with the maturing of the tablet market. Though Apple has sold 225 million iPads since the device's introduction in 2010 and has more than 675,000 dedicated apps for the gadget, the company's tablet share has dropped from 33 percent to 27 percent in the second quarter of 2014, according to market researcher IDC. The iPad is still Apple's second-best selling product line behind the iPhone at about 15 percent to 20 percent of revenue (the iPhone accounts for more than half of revenue). Yet while the tablet market is expected to continue growing, with consumers expected to buy as many as 229 million units this year, its growth is estimated to have slowed from a substantial 55 percent increase last year to as little as 11 percent in 2014, according to a forecast in a report from research firm Gartner this month.Given that competing devices from companies including Samsung, Google and Amazon sell at prices below the iPad, Apple is wading into tricky waters. Google's newest tablet, the Nexus 9, is a quality device that stacks up well against the iPad Air 2, but is priced like an iPad Air at $399.Hands-on with the new Apple iPad Air 2 and...See full gallery1 - 4 / 19NextPrevThere's also the effect it may have on the brand. "I think it's a bad ideas to sell old products as current. It degrades the brand," Enderle said. But that may be where having a wide array of choices comes in strategically, says Rhoda Alexander, director of tablet and monitor research at IHS Technology. "What happens is that Apple starts the customer out on a choice selection of the product that's affordable," she said. That range is now as low as $249 for a 16 GB first-generation iPad Mini, a 2-year-old device that lacks the frills of its newer siblings. "It's all carefully calibrated to move the customer up the decision tree."Rhoda Alexander, IHS TechnologyIn other words, Apple's strategy may be to get consumers into stores with lower-priced models -- and rethinking how much money they're willing to spend when they see what a little more cash can buy them in terms of features. "When you want to move up...to the 64 GB model or to have the gold casing, you think, 'Now that I'm here, do I want this product or the 9.7-inch Air?' Because they're the same price," Alexander said.In that sense, Alexander says, "it's all carefully calibrated to move the customer up the decision tree." So even though a tablet may be something you shop for only once every few years, getting more consumers to want that tablet in the first place -- using the $249 iPad Mini for instance -- gets them thinking about how much bang for their buck they can get once they begin considering, say, the iPad Air 2 for only $500.Are five iPads too much?There is still the possibility that consumers may look at Apple's charts and come away scratching their heads. "There's the risk of that, particularly for someone who is just coming into the product line," Alexander said. However, Apple has played this game before with the iPod. The original iPod, with 5GB of storage, was the one and only device in 2001. By 2009, Apple had moved through multiple iterations of every iPod model it unveiled -- delivering the Shuffle, Mini, Classic and Touch -- changing up the designs and adding colors. The experimentation paid off and the iPod became the dominant digital media player in the world.With the iPod, each model played a unique role that consumers could identify -- the iPod Shuffle for exercising, the Touch for game players who don't listen to a lot of music, the Classic for iTunes junkies. With the iPhone now too, consumers are given an obvious choice between big and bigger screen sizes.The differentiation for iPads isn't quite as obvious -- the smaller iPad Mini can be held more easily in one hand and can fit more comfortably in a purse or backpack. But consumers will still be using them in very much the same way, with the same apps in the same tablet environment that tends to be when we're at home connected to Wi-Fi. That poses a problem when you cannot easily pinpoint which tasks the Mini or the Air are better for. Alexander says that Apple will have to offer clarity there, but that its in-person stores are designed to tackle those kinds of consumer questions."You're looking at a system in a mature market that has a lot of retail stores that help walk people through the decision process," she said.Having 56 iPad configurations isn't as messy as it sounds when you consider the things consumers most care about -- color, storage amount, and display -- are easily communicated."The product line is maturing. There's more to offer," Alexander added. "There's not necessarily a reason to discontinue old products."


How Steve Jobs, Fox studio chief became friends

How Steve Jobs, Fox studio chief became friends
Steve Jobs undoubtedly made a strong impression in the tech and entertainment worlds, including on a Fox executive who started out as a potential business partner and eventually became a friend.Writing about his personal history with Jobs in a recent article for The Hollywood Reporter, Fox Filmed Entertainment CEO Jim Gianopulos recounted both the difficulties and the pleasures of working with the icon.Though Gianopulos had already known Jobs for several years, the two were put in the position of negotiating with each other in the spring and summer of 2006 when Apple was trying to expand iTunes to sell feature films in addition to music and TV shows. The two chatted both in person and by phone trying to iron out an agreement, which apparently was high on Jobs' agenda as he was hoping to announce the deal that fall."We were very eager to make it work--but nowhere near as eager as Steve, who wanted to corral all the studios and make one of his bold and exciting announcements, which he'd scheduled for September," Gianopulos wrote. "We wanted to change things; he wanted to change them now."But by August, the two men still remained far apart, according to Gianopulos. To grab some R&R, the Fox exec snuck off to his retreat on an island near Greece. But a determined Jobs tracked him down by e-mail with an offer to meet. Though Jobs didn't make it to the island retreat, Gianopulos said the two eventually managed to hash out a deal, which "evolved into a great friendship."Related stories:• The death of Steve Jobs, 1955-2011 (roundup)• Steve Jobs, the consummate challenger• What I learned from Steve Jobs• Apple prepping cloud-based movie streaming, report saysA later event at MacWorld in which the two men were slated to appear before a large audience found Gianopulos nervous with stage fright. Offering some advice, Jobs told him, "It's easy, you just imagine you have a few friends sitting around your living room and you're telling them what's new."Gianopulos said he's used that advice in every speech since but noted that "no one did it like Steve, because he knew what those 6,000 people and millions more wanted, even before they did."Jobs also loved and knew music, Gianopulos said, recounting that the first place his friend visited after receiving a liver transplant in Memphis in 2009 was Sun Records, which the Apple chief considered the birthplace of rock 'n' roll. For Jobs' next birthday, Gianopulos gave him a 45 record of Jerry Lee Lewis' "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On," autographed by Lewis himself."That really captured the Steve Jobs I knew: The guy who revolutionized the way we enjoy music in the 21st century thought having a vintage 45 from the mid-'50s was the coolest thing ever," Gianopulos remembered.The last conversation between the two took place a few weeks following Jobs' announcement that he was resigning as Apple CEO. Though Jobs sounded frail, he was still bursting with new ideas and told Gianopulos not to let what happened to the music business happen to the film business and to keep coming up with better ways to offer people content."We all owe it to Steve to do that," Gianopulos said. "We'll just miss him telling us how."Jobs' advice to Gianopulos may still play out as he envisioned. Apple has reportedly been talking with Hollywood studios about offering customers a way to stream movies. If studios sign on the dotted line, such a deal would let Apple users buy films via iTunes and then stream them to their iOS devices, PCs, and Apple TVs. Potentially using iCloud on the back end, Apple is hoping to kick off the new service by the end of this year or early 2012.


$99 Pop Video accessory turns iPhone into pico projector

$99 Pop Video accessory turns iPhone into pico projector
Looking into the future, concept artists often equip their dream iPhones with built-in pico projectors. That feature probably isn't coming to an iPhone anytime soon, but Micron Technology's upcoming $99 Pop Video pico projector accessory may be the next best thing. The key feature here is the 30-pin connector that allows you to dock your iPhone or iPod, forming one compact unit. While some of the larger pico projectors like the BenQ Joybee GP2 have an integrated dock, the Pop Video is designed to be much more portable, fitting into a pocket when not in use.Brookstone's competing Pocket Projector for iPhone 4 costs $229 (click to enlarge).BrookstoneBrookstone is offering up a similarly styled pico projector that's simply called the Pocket Projector for iPhone 4, but its native resolution is lower (640 x 360 pixels) than the Pop Video's (960 x 540 pixels) and the Brookstone accessory costs $229. I've listed the Pop Video's main specs below, but some specs are missing and questions remain. For instance, I didn't see a listing for brightness -- the Brookstone unit is a 15 lumens projector, which just isn't all that bright.I presume the Pop Video is somewhere in that range but no number is given (I'll add it to the post when I get it). The Micron projector also doesn't appear to have a built-in speaker like the Brookstone unit does but I haven't been able to verify that. I doubt Brookstone's integrated speaker is much better than the iPhone's internal speaker, but it's worth talking about sound with these tiny projectors because it's more important than you think. Putting up a big image on the wall with tiny sound just doesn't cut it.Dimensions: 4.4 inches x 1.8 inches x .6 inch (HWD)Weight: 3.5 ounces (97g)Input: 30-pin dock connectorVideo Output: qHD (960 x 540 pixel resolution)Battery: Built-in Lithium-ion rechargeable batteryPlaytime: Up to two hours with full battery chargeCharging: Micro-USB charging (1.2 compliant)Charge time: About 4 hoursiOS version: 5.0 and greaterCompatible with iPhone 4/4S and gen-3 and 4 iPod TouchPrice: $99 (available for preorder now)As for the light engine inside the Pop Video, Micron apparently uses something called FLCOS microdisplay technology, which is cheaper to produce and allegedly more energy efficient. Chances are the Pop Video can project a passable image at fairly large sizes, but you'll need to project in a dark room for best results (as the manual states) and I don't expect to be wowed.All that said, this is definitely a big step in the right direction for the pico projector market -- both in terms of price point and form factor. The killer app for these types of projectors has always been tighter integration with the iPhone (and other smartphones eventually) that makes it much easier to project without attaching any kluge cables. To that end, the projector is designed to be used with a free app that allows you to tweak the projector settings and more importantly, projector more content directly from your iPhone, including Web pages, Facebook, and videos downloaded from iTunes or iTunes U that are not MPEG 3 protected. At least that's what the description for the app claims.When I get my hands on a unit I'll let you know just how good the image is. As I said, it's unclear when the Pop Video will ship, but hopefully it will be within the next few months, if not sooner.