Day: 27 March 2012

163 Reasons ⇥

A. T. Faust:

Still, rumors are just rumors, and they aren’t particularly convincing in and of themselves. It doesn’t matter how many sources echo some generic sentiment. What does matter is a rumor’s singular specificity. In this case, it’s that pesky 7.85 inches.

And what makes everything even more convincing is that the leaky sources never sought to explain why that number’s so darned significant!

Nice detective work by Faust. At the end (spoiler alert!), he is certain Apple will launch a smaller iPad this year, to be called the iPad mini. Watch it destroy everything in its path. Via John Gruber.

Taposé for iPad ⇥

Remember Microsoft’s Courier tablet concept? One of the ideas I enjoyed most from it was the lack of a clipboard. Instead, one could drag things into the “spine” for temporary storage. Now that, and many other Courier-esque ideas, are on the iPad. Looks great.

Google Drive in April? ⇥

Om Malik:

According to the details from my sources, Google is going to offer 1 Gb of storage space for free, but will charge for more storage. The market leader Dropbox currently offers 2 Gb for free.

It doesn’t make sense that they would launch with less space than is offered by either Dropbox or Gmail.

In addition, they’re facing a similar problem to that of Google+. Google Docs, for example, was launched into a market dominated by Microsoft Office. Google Docs was free, though, which allowed it to gain market share quickly, and retain a large user base. Google+ was launched as a competitor for Facebook, but without any differentiating factors (apart from easier privacy controls). Facebook is a free product, so nobody switched on price, nor stayed because nobody else stuck around.

Google Drive would be launching as a competitor to Dropbox, based on Malik’s sources. But Dropbox is free, and people love it. There’s no reason for someone to switch away, especially not when they’re launching with half the storage (again, based on Malik’s sources).

Fixing the App Store ⇥

Wil Shipley on the need for paid upgrades in the Mac App Store:

Right now developers selling through the Mac App Store face a lose/lose choice: either provide all major upgrades to existing customers for free (thus losing a quarter of our revenue), or create a “new” product for each major version (creating customer confusion) and charge existing customers full price again (creating customer anger).

I think this is necessary on the iOS app store, too, hence the title. There are many little things to fix in both App Stores: trial/demo versions, easier transition from elsewhere-purchased applications to Mac App Store copies, and easier discovery of the best apps in the each store. Paid upgrades are part of what needs fixing, especially from a developer’s perspective.