Analytics firm spots 50 suspected Apple tablets running iPhone OS 3.2 - Page 3

except for the few months after launch, the iphone was never more expensive than competing smartphones. it's still cheaper than a lot of it's competition depending on the carrier

I know that. I was adding that Flurry and others offer developers a choice to determine the location using GPS as well. So even if Apple used some proxy or whatever they can still determine the location using CoreLocation, especially for apps that depends heavily on CoreLocation.

Did you even read what I wrote?

[Edit] Sorry, I see you wrote "his point". I guess you did read what I wrote, it was I who didn't read well...

Affordable is not something that should be based on what you personally have budgeted for a computer. If you have $50 to spend on a computer, there is no such thing as an affordable computer for you personally.

As for the affordability of Mac Pros, those machines are not intended for the general public. They offer far more expansion capacity and horsepower than your average consumer needs.

In regards to the Mini, yes you're right that peripherals are needed to complete the picture but that's about as expensive as your budget can afford. Keyboards and mice are dirt cheap in base form and so too are today's entry-level monitors. Most people wind up burning through their computers before they wear out mice, keyboards and especially monitors. My previous monitor lasted more than 10 years during which time I worked my way through three computers. I did add a Firewire 800 drive to my set-up recently but it cost a little more than $100 and added a terabyte of storage. I did last week splurge on a 24-inch Cinema Display but could just have easily spent a lot less and still had a decent enough monitor. But it's not like I need to replace the display every time I buy a new computer. 10 years from now I'll probably still be using that same monitor. Also, I traded in a Mini to buy the unit I have now and got a surprising amount for it. Low-cost PCs, within a couple of years have pretty much lost their resale value.

Computers are like cars in that there is the cost of making the initial purchase and then there's the long-term picture. Sure you can go out and buy a $300 netbook but where are you a year or two later. Is a MacBook costing three times more to buy really that bad a deal if it lasts at least three times longer, all the while providing superior performance?

Apple is in the business of selling in volume. The new tablet will no doubt be regarded as potentially a device that can be sold in the millions. Consider, for instance, how worried other manufacturers are about this product. At CES the upcoming tablet was the elephant in the room. Apple wasn't even there or had announced anything. Heck, Apple hadn't even sent out invitations to an event to announce anything.

Tech Crunch is reporting that Steve Jobs has been overheard saying of the Tablet - This will be the most important thing Ive ever done

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/24...ost-important/

If the report of this from multiple independent sources is correct, I suspect it will have fewer defects and omissions than you or I have thought.

If he really said that, those are not words to be taken lightly.

Of all the months of boring rumours, analysts belching and speculation, this is the only one that has made me think I might be interested in what happens on Wednesday.

To those who think it will run an iPhone interface/OS:






.

That isnt necessarily true if you read the responses from people not in your ignore list. Sometimes it seems to much to resist when you assume that people arent here just to start a nonsense argument.

I read this 5 times and have no idea what you just said.

By pricing their computers where they do, they make them available to certain percentage of the market and thus profit greatly off that small number of people. You think I don't get that? You think I didn't understand that when I began investing 10 years ago?

How anyone can think that unit sales are not important to Apple is beyond me...they are absolutely important. Its aggravating that Apple fanbois pretend that there is special percentage of people who need to get Online to whom Apple is concerned with pleasing.

It's 2010. No one cares what Apple wants to do. People want ONLINE and they want it cheap. Even professionals are not willing to dole out the same prices for machines that do not a lot more than what they did 5 years ago.

Recall the totally "unnecessary" price drops to the entire Laptop line in 2009? Or is that a distant memory?

Notice the increased adoption rate post price reduction? Best quarters ever? Hmm.

Damn some of you are dense.

You have to give permission to use location. Secondly as far as IP, Geo location is concerned, Apple owns data centers and at that level you can do anything you want to set up tunneling to another data center. But in all likelihood if apple wanted to test applications they wouldn't use ones that called home. If the device was super secret they would set up duplicate versions of typical websites and run them on their own network never to show up in anyone's logs. Apple engineers have already thought of anything the people on this forum can come up with off the top of their head.

It's a bit like spotting a UFO.

We know their out there

There's a significant difference between unjustifiable and unaffordable. A $150,000 Ferrari is unaffordable. A $2200 top end iCore 7 27" iMac is affordable. Whether you WANT to (justifiable) is a different issue.

At minimum wage, a high school kid flipping burgers can make $2200 (before taxes) in 8 weeks (40 hours) over the summer.


If you're sweating to do any work on a computer you're using Linux and a freetard.

Ahem!! That would be basterd.

Sorry couldn't resist.

You have to give your permission if you want to use an app that depends on CoreLocation. Once you have given your permission to an app then the app will share your location to Flurry or similar services to determine your exact location as well. You only need to give your permission once per app and the app can use the location in anyway it wants. As far as I know the information will be sent out as long as there is an internet connection. I have developed few apps and get few hits from Cupertino on regular basis on my app webpage from time to time. I don't think Apple worries too much about such issues. It's a waste of time and money to do so.

Heh...I can just imagine some CoreLocation mode that places all the test units at Redmond or Mountain View for some real red herrings.

Segue I hope the next Macs coem with GPS chips so CoreLocation can work with DashBoard Widgets, Safari (HTML5 Geo Location) and other apps. I find myself grabbing my iPhone even while using my Mac when looking up anything that requires a current location.

I actually think this is one of the best hints thus far of what the tablet will be. An analytics company is not going to talk out of its ass to generate some page hits. No one is likely to trust their analytics collection to a company that just makes stuff up.

The interpretation of the data might be wrong but I assess the probability that they have that raw data to be quite high. But for all they know, the 3.2 testing might be unrelated.

On the other hand, it might also mean that the tablet will see sales sooner rather than later and the app approval process for the tablet is already in full swing.

Notebooks, maybe since they are out and about, but unlikely for desktops since they are often indoors and may not receive the GPS signal very well. Although I am surprised how well the iPhone GPS works indoors.

Testing requires the units and OS to be unaltered from the intended final release. Otherwise, why would you want to test it?!

That was a joke.

Snow Leopard have CoreLocation but no GPS. It works just like the iPod Touch using your WiFi. However, it won't work on places were Skyhook has no data. I hope we see GPS in MB/MBP too.

I know. I thought I should answer it before someone take it seriously

Actually it is not that far fetched as the simulator does that exact thing but sets the location to Apple's front door. I can't remember the actual street name that is referred to but it is at the very beginning of Infinite Loop. I'd have to pull up my dev app to check it but someone else probably can verify it.

I think it wont be ready right away. That there is a demo along with a release of Tablet OS SDK so that 3rd-party apps designed for the device will be ready upon release.



Yes, I meant for notebooks, not Macs. Id hope that when they go that route theyll add Find My Mac in MobileMe, just in case its stolen. That has seemed to work out with for iPhone OS-based devices. I wonder if other iPods could get the GPS chip with setup through the iTunes app.


They use it for the time zone setting in SL. I just wish they would have extended it even farther, even to the point of taking the IP address location, making that into a general location via a zip code and applying it to HTML5 Geo Location, weather widget, theater info, etc. I cant be bothered with spending 10 seconds making the corrections manually. \

no, but they do try to draw conclusions based on the apps they did track


and then later in the report


of course the tablet will offer games and entertainment, but to conclude that productivity and computing aren't also targets is drawing conclusions from data they don't have as they wouldn't have any data from testing with unreleased apps. For example, the rumored iWork touch wouldn't show up in their data.

And it's with new and revised applications that the tablet becomes a bit more than just a larger iPod touch. Is it strictly a new home entertainment device or is it more than that? Certainly it can be used to read books, but can it also be used to do homework? Is it something students can take to class to take notes? Doing homework, taking notes in class, working on a presentation during a flight, etc. Things people use netbooks for today. These potential applications of a tablet aren't going to show up in the data Flurry collects, but they are drawing conclusions that the tablet won't target these kinds of things.

Oh, I don't know. From reading your rants thus far in this thread, it is obvious to me that when it comes to finance and investing and what actually matters for companies, the attribute applies just as well to you.

Btw, not sure if it has been brought up thus far: (i) Couldn't this just be folks at Apple testing out some game/media apps for SJ's presentation? After all, it's not like he's going to be showing us spreadsheet or invoicing or tax apps; (ii) The fact that they are testing on 3.2 says nothing at all -- after all, the final product is not due for another 3-6 months; (iii) Some of it would just be Apple throwing out decoys to throw people off-track or reveal themselves (like these guys did).

How else would you test whether existing apps work on the new device?
It's vitally important that the day the tablet becomes available that a large number of apps run on it. Apple will not release a tablet and tell everyone to wait 2 months for App Store developers to modify their offerings to be compatible.

The time has come to roll out the iVat of Flavor-aid. Gather around children, it will be beautiful.

There will be a _____________ announced Wednesday and it will include a _____________ and ______________ which none of you expect (well, maybe one guessed right) ... and it will also offer ______________ and ______________ but the ____________ will surprise everyone. I'm just saying ...

im not the one refusing to acknowledge that apple lowering their prices in 2009 had a significant impact on sales.

Obvious Guy says: its common knowledge that lowering prices increases sales potential. You implied that the sales werent increasing prior to the price drop despite almost constant, continued record YoY quarters in unit, revenue and profit.

Exactly. All of my seven games has the FlurryAPI.h code added when they were for sale. It's a simply 25 line piece of code that allows developers to gather any number of stats from an app in use, and even stores the info until a connection back can be established. This includes hardware type, OS, etc. For example, in Cloud Girls, I collected the following stats ...




I knew what difficulty level people played, whether you paused the game during gameplay, whether or not you submitted a high score, read the instruction, tried to run a pirated version, and if you clicked through to buy my other games. But I could have easily also added things like device type, OS, how long you'd played, etc.

I'd have to review my contract notes with Flurry but I always had in my app description on the store that I used Flurry. I don't know if everyone does.

Flurry's reporting about device OS, apps used etc is certainly possible and easy to do. And if there's a new device being used and the apps being used have Flurry in them, then this is info, at a very minimum, is what I'd expect to see. I have no reason to doubt the stats, just why they would bother releasing the info.

later post claimed it was 800x900

that was from a different source, not from flurry, and said


I would hope 1280 is correct, so it can show 720p HD content at full resolution - something like 1280x720 or 1280x800.

No, guys, Apple isn't gonna test all 100K apps sitting now in the App Store. No way.

They might have been testing their own applications plus a fistful of those, which they planned to show on 27th.
It's guaranteed, selected apps aren't disclosing anything sensitive to third parties.

I can see your excitement while looking forward to new product, but spotted iPhone OS means testing iPhone at best.

Just if you forgot or never knew it, original iPhone has been perfectly launched without App Store and Cheetah has had minimum of available native applications on its day one. Nothing much.

And the fact that it doesn't have ______________, ______________, and _______________ will cause the usual suspects to complain loudly.

+10

Getting so tired of the same old speculation. Wednesday can't get here soon enough.

And despite the fact that it doesn't have ______________, ______________, and _______________ will cause the usual suspects to defend it loudly.

Anyone else see this??

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_435686.html

Agreed, I would also assume that if OS 4.0 is a big show stopper in some way, but not important enough to be a sent to "outside" developer's to adapt their aps for the tablet then it wouldn't have been put out there for "anyone" to see.

If we were talking about radically new features, then there would be no way devs could have aps ready for the tablet by now. They had relatively small changes to make to their software but will be able to integrate new features of 4 later without the need to worry about a new feature for the demo. Apple just wants to say, "look we have games". Apple can take care of the new touch features with their own software.