Amazon Web Services + Amazon Prime + Amazon Kindle + Amazon App Store + Amazon Instant Video + Amazon MP3= KINDLE FIRE
Live Blog from Amazon’s Tablet Press Event http://tnw.to/1B2HJ
We’ve read a lot of comments about the Kindle Fire’s seemingly-diminished book-reading abilities. To defend Amazon a bit, it doesn’t look like they’re aiming for their original Kindle target audience here. The original Kindle is still on the market at a far lower price than it was a week ago. This isn’t for the heavy readers, just as the iPad wasn’t for the heavy readers. This is for the people who want a little bit of everything, something which, by the way, Amazon is better-suited to give than most of the other companies out there with tablets. As far as infrastructure goes, Amazon’s got streaming video, it’s got music, it’s got shopping, it’s got a cloud accelerated browser (Editor’s note: !!!!!!!!!!!) and on top of all this, it has books. Barnes and Noble doesn’t have most of this stuff, so even if Amazon’s device itself is a bit thin on the innovation side, the content makes up for it. That’s why we need to take it seriously.
Woman buys wooden iPad from scammers: Protip: If a couple of dudes come up to you in a McDonald’s parking lot in Spartanburg, S.C. and offer to sell you an iPad, it’s probably not an iPad. Kudos to them on the replica icons, though. That took some extra attention to detail. They’re still total jerks, though.
I was on he phone with a really helpful tech support guy from Apple the other day, it was on a unrelated topic. So, I mentioned to him that my AT&T contract was up, and what would be the best way to go about getting a discount on a iPhone 4, you know, use a contract extension as leverage. And he told me to wait, Apple had hoped to release the iPhone 5 this past June but he thinks a Sept. release is a done deal.
The iPhone thing doesn’t surprise us … the word that they might subsidize the iPad and sell it for $199 does. That would be huge.
(Source: thedailyfeed)
Download of the day: AOL’s take on the iPad personalized magazine craze, Editions, is really good from a design perspective, though we gotta wonder why The Washington Post’s local content isn’t in there, but there are numerous stories from The Examiner and The Hill. It’s a great way to look at AOL’s own content (they have a lot, remember), but outside content is a little lacking. That said, there is a ton of potential here. (Ed. Disclosure: When not posting pictures of cats, I work for the Washington Post’s Express. — Ernie)
Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn will replace some of its workers with 1 million robots in three years to cut rising labor expenses and improve efficiency, said Terry Gou, founder and chairman of the company, late Friday.
The robots will be used to do simple and routine work such as spraying, welding and assembling which are now mainly conducted by workers, said Gou at a workers’ dance party Friday night.
The company currently has 10,000 robots and the number will be increased to 300,000 next year and 1 million in three years, according to Gou.
Don’t get us wrong. It’s probably better that a robot spray chemicals onto your iPad than a worker do it and risk getting sick. But considering the reputation that the company already carries, it makes you wince just a little bit knowing that they’re going to replace all those workers who got huge raises to discourage their suicides with robots. And they’re doing it because it’s affecting their bottom line.
EDIT: Note bolded phrase in middle of story.
![newsweek:
From The Atlantic: “An aid worker using an iPad photographs the rotting carcass of a cow in Wajir, near the Kenya-Somalia border, on July 23, 2011.”
[via The Dish]
We have a hard-and-fast rule against people taking pictures of things with iPads, but we’ll make an exception this time. The issue is too important.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lp1t7x3FXm1qzs5cqo1_500.jpg)
From The Atlantic: “An aid worker using an iPad photographs the rotting carcass of a cow in Wajir, near the Kenya-Somalia border, on July 23, 2011.”
[via The Dish]
We have a hard-and-fast rule against people taking pictures of things with iPads, but we’ll make an exception this time. The issue is too important.
» Openly gunning for Apple’s market: The TouchPad, coming out on July 1, doesn’t just share the same cost as the iPad; it’s also the same size, and has many other striking similarities as well. However, what does set it apart is WebOS, which will also make its way to HP laptops eventually. It will be interesting to see how this feature-for-feature cage match pans out.
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#@#$%!.tumblr.com
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Apparently they heard that they lost The Financial Times to this mess. While Apple didn’t back down from the 70/30 split that gave publishers pause, they did change a rule that won’t force companies to offer app subscriptions at the same price as an outside subscription — or if they don’t want to, offer an Apple-sanctioned subscription at all. Apparently, developers’ loud grumbling about the policy (which led the Financial Times to create a HTML5 version of their iPad app, shown above) appears to have gotten through to the company, which updated their App Store Review Guidelines earlier this week ahead of a June 30 deadline. The differences:
Intel has plans to release a computer to compete with the Macbook Air and the iPad. The new computer — called an Ultrabook — would be extremely thin and have tablet-like features. It’d also be less than $1,000. The Ultrabook is a lot like the Macbook Air, so it’ll be interesting to see how well it can compete. It’s interesting to note that Intel hasn’t been so lucky with things like this in the past, though. A few years ago they tried something similar called an Ultra-Low Voltage notebook and it failed to catch on. But if Mac can do it, why can’t they? source
Source: White House
Here’s your first look at the iPad-in-Chief.
Question of the day: What kind of security does this iPad have? Is it an off-the-shelf model, or did the Secret Service have to do some crazy stuff to it? Still, though, now we have something in common with the president! WHOO!
No, Lodsys is methodically selling its product (patent rights) in the most efficient means it can. … Ideally, we can sell as much as possible through direct sales, rather than having to use litigation. It’s less expensive and more efficient for both parties.A message from the Lodsys blog • Discussing their reasoning for pressuring iOS developers to pay the company to pay its licensing fee to allow in-app sales on their app. Here’s the total crap part of the whole thing: Lodsys already got Apple, Google and Microsoft to pay money for the license. But instead of just leaving it at that, the company is going after small developers, saying that the license isn’t transferrable. Which means that they’ve already lost the PR war and will have a hard time winning anyone over. And also, if they’ve dared go after News Corp. (which uses in-app purchasing for The Daily and the Wall Street Journal), they should expect to get their asses handed to them by Rupert Murdoch’s auditorium full of attorneys. source (via • follow)
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