Except that there is no indication that it will be pushed primarily as an ebook reader (which is your prediction). I wouldn't count your chickens before they hatch, and a lot of people have brought up the idea of an online book store anyway.
Edit: I will give you credit for including comic books as a feature though. It just doesn't seem that your prediction is centered around that though. I doubt that a tablet will have a "primary" feature, different people will consider different features to be the most important.
It looks like the "ebiReader" app on the App Store is a free download, but the program you need on your desktop/laptop is for Windows PC only... at least according to one reviewer.
I don't know how long it's been available, but there is a Mac version available now.
Minimum requirements are Intel Macs running Leopard or above and Safari 3 or Firefox 3.
The blue button at the bottom will take you to a page where you can download the software(the red button at the top), and the blue button at the bottom of that page will take you to a page where you can download sample pages from a couple of manga(the brown buttons beneath the cover images). Sample pages, about eight spreads each, are available for many of the manga/books sold on the website (the black buttons beneath the book covers). If the sample pages display properly, click to step 3 where you'll be asked to register (free).
All I get now-a-days is the Marvel Ultimate line...
Yeah, a good bit of cheese whiz in there, but I like the 'fresh-start' approach...
Now back in the day; during the 'black & white furry creatures' era (aka, the mid 80's), I had thirty plus longboxes sitting in the living room... With a good bit of everything... Helped that I working in a shop...
Old school recommendations?
Those Annoying Post Brothers
Savage Henry
Stig's Inferno
Usagi Yojibo
The Grendal stuff...
The Mage stuff...
Moonshadow
Cerebus
The Dark Knight stuff...
X-Men stuff (which got WAY out of hand, which drove me away from Marvel for awhile)
Daredevil & Elektra stuff
Anything drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz was worth getting...
Frank Miller stuff...
In closing, I had named digital comics as THE killer app for an Apple tablet long ago, and Wolverine is AWESOME...!
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpamSandwich
This is old school now? Good grief, I must be one of the ancients! I consider Krazy Kat, Nemo In Slumberland, and early Mad Magazine the stuff of true genius (although I will buy any of the old Bill Sienkiewicz and the 'fairly recent' Frank Miller and Geoff Darrow collaborations). Also loved the early Blue Beetle, 70's era Spiderman, anything drawn by Jack Kirby, Scrooge McDuck, Archie Comics (Veronica!... Hubba, hubba!), those wonderfully awful Casper and Richie Rich comics, Shazam!, Peanuts compilations (the earliest strips were utterly fantastic), Tintin (every frame was perfection, and it's a shame this series has been largely ignored in America), and The Fantastic Four.
Well, old school enough for me; in my early 40s now, so 'my' old school was 20 years ago & counting...!
I was in the single digits during most of the 70's, and remember mangling many an issue of the X-Men, folding them in half and jamming them in my back pocket...
then you can see the possibilities. It brings comics to life for kids whose imaginations have been rotted away by endless hours of watered-down Disney slapstick entertainment and engages them in some thought-provoking narrative. But the key point is that it's not limited to this function. If you want to do something else you can and this is where so many devices fail.
Oh...
Thanks for posting those links.
My first impression was that the pictures are almost superfluous... the experience is more like radio where the narration (and background sound effects) let each consumer (listener) form his own mental image.
This, IMO, was the secret to radio's success.. it was an interactive medium, rather than passive-- the listener got as much out of it as he was willing to put in.
I am old enough to remember radio before TV-- and it took you to whichever places you wanted to go. No other medium quite matches the experience of radio.
I just revisited Tyrese Gibson's Mayhem comic book iTunes LP...
Interesting, you can turn off the speech bubbles or the but not the video. You still need to manually flip each page.
So you can have:
1) a comic book
2) a comic book with sound (speech and effects)
3) a comic book with sound (speech and effects), byt without speech bubbles
If you added automatic page flip and ignore the video, you would have radio-- not music radio, not news radio, but entertainment radio.
If apple was to just read the forums online, read all that people think could be put in the tablet, and implement even half the features, they could very well surprise the world and launch a complete winner.
Comic books would be an awesome idea for the tablet, and could very well be a major seller for the device. Of course steve jobs now being a major stock holder of marvel helps.
The slightly animated comics that are coming on dvd's these days would be MUCH better on a tablet, cuz then you can actually turn pages. We still want comics, theres aline where a digital comic just becomes a movie, and we don't want to cross that line.
We basically want one page at time, which is slightly animated, and has bubble text!
also the tablet could be awesome not just for viewing but actually making these comics. Obviously, the tablet should be useful for artists, they could go ahead and put some more functionality with some great software, or probably some third party people will do that anyway.
Also the tablet could be the next level of portable gaming, that could totally kill psp and nintendo ds sales.
Obviously the Tablet should have flash support and a great browser.
e-books here will have the advantage of color. magazines if not books anyway. put a matte screen to reduce glare, but that wouldn't be vary apple-y
MULTI-TASKING!!!!
put iphone OS with multitasking, and some file support, so you can open files with different apps and you have a complete winner.
really third party apps will take care of the rest.
Well, not ALL of it anyway after all it is a public corporation but yes with the Pixar deal Steve now is the largest single owner of Disney stock in the world with 7%ish of all Disney stock. Prior to that the biggest single person stock owners were all at around 1%, Eisner and even Roy Disney never owner over 2%.
Pretty freakin amazing... the man who was shoved out the door at Apple those many years ago sure has come back into his own hasn't he?
Yes, it is amazing. Steve Jobs has the golden midas touch. Everything he does turns to big money. Even NEXT, which never really sold anything ended up getting sold twice, first to IBM for untold millions, then again to Apple for 400 million. THen his 10 million investment in unknown Pixar goes to Disney for 7% of the stock. Now Apple in a recession has the most profitable quarter ever. Truly Jobs is the modern Midas of our era.
Yes, it is amazing. Steve Jobs has the golden midas touch. Everything he does turns to big money. Even NEXT, which never really sold anything ended up getting sold twice, first to IBM for untold millions, then again to Apple for 400 million. THen his 10 million investment in unknown Pixar goes to Disney for 7% of the stock. Now Apple in a recession has the most profitable quarter ever. Truly Jobs is the modern Midas of our era.
it is kind of amazing how many times since the original Mac have people said that Jobs? ideas/project/product was making a huge mistake. The Nostradamus of technology, save for a few missteps. \
...people who read comics... ...25-50 year-old losers...
What a stereotype...! Wonder how you feel about other interest groups? Or different races & cultures...?
See, what I am saying is that when you spout off about anyone over the age of 25 who reads comics being a 'loser', you actually make yourself look like a bit of a judgmental bigot...
What a stereotype...! Wonder how you feel about other interest groups? Or different races & cultures...?
See, what I am saying is that when you spout off about anyone over the age of 25 who reads comics being a 'loser', you actually make yourself look like a bit of a judgmental bigot...
My first impression was that the pictures are almost superfluous... the experience is more like radio where the narration (and background sound effects) let each consumer (listener) form his own mental image.
This, IMO, was the secret to radio's success.. it was an interactive medium, rather than passive-- the listener got as much out of it as he was willing to put in.
Video killed the radio star and the radio star's sibling is out for revenge. I think after a few years, people tire of passive entertainment. One day you're watching an adult movie and thinking 'why am I watching other people getting laid?'. Life is more interesting when you engage with things yourself and it's more immersive.
Sitting still and watching things happen means it's easy to lose plot-lines and go away from the experience empty and not much better off than if you'd never bothered. When I see movies like Transformers or the Spiderman films, I wonder why I sat through countless movies like this as a kid? It's such frivolous garbage only satisfying instant-gratification consumerism and leaving no lasting impression.
These days, artists and celebrities arrive one year and are forgotten the next. Movies are mostly sequel after sequel regurgitating the same formulae. The future can't hold anything more if children are raised on such relentless pap and the implications go deeper than entertainment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nama43
If apple was to just read the forums online
I'm sure the employees at Apple do their research to know what the people they want to sell to want. Apple is made up of a lot of people just like us with families and experiences that cover a broad scope. It's easy to think of them as just sitting in brain-storming meetings lost for what their next big product could be, who to sell it to and how to sell it. They deal with thousands of employees in all sorts of companies and they will sift through hundreds of ideas every day.
Even if good ideas are presented, it takes more than that to make them successful. The Newton and 20th Anniversary Mac failed and yet the ipod/iphone and iMac succeed. The economy and culture play parts in it i.e do people need it and does it fit into the price bracket that level of need constructs for that product?
It goes back to the point about the Kindle. It's not enough because the price bracket is high for what is essentially a digital book. Comics alone won't sell a touch tablet, they will be one strong element of many that will sell it to a broad range of people with different needs.
It goes back to the point about the Kindle. It's not enough because the price bracket is high for what is essentially a digital book. Comics alone won't sell a touch tablet, they will be one strong element of many that will sell it to a broad range of people with different needs.
An interesting observation. The 'iSlate' clearly won't be a 'one trick' pony if the iPod/iPhone are anything to go by. It will meet the needs of many a user.
Take iPod. You can read on it. You can surf on it. You can listening to music on it. You ca play multimedia stuff on it.
If anybody thinks the new 'iSlate' won't do this...then they haven't been paying attention to Apple's digital hub for the last 10 years.
The kindle can't display a colour comic or Sony's 'e-reader'. They're just not enough for the price you're paying. They are a 'cheap' (not so 'cheap') re-hash of the real thing. Paper is tactile, cheap, smells great (oh baybee...) and immersive (no fiddly interface...)
Any 'slate' is going to have to be 'immersive' within the context of the digital age. So it's unlikely to be an overpriced bk and wht e-ink wannabee.
I'm still thinking a 'mere' 10 inch iPod/iPhone with some extended interface gesture features. Reading on an iPod touch for internet use is tiresome after about 10 mins or so. Give one that is about A4 in size? Game over. I'm on it for an hour or so, easy.
For digital comic books, great. For a newspaper? Great. For browing the web? Great. For playing a game? Great. For watching movies? Great. I'm sold at £495-£695. Just above the iPhone just below the Macbook.
Comments
I totally called the comic book thing months ago.
Except that there is no indication that it will be pushed primarily as an ebook reader (which is your prediction). I wouldn't count your chickens before they hatch, and a lot of people have brought up the idea of an online book store anyway.
Edit: I will give you credit for including comic books as a feature though. It just doesn't seem that your prediction is centered around that though. I doubt that a tablet will have a "primary" feature, different people will consider different features to be the most important.
It looks like the "ebiReader" app on the App Store is a free download, but the program you need on your desktop/laptop is for Windows PC only... at least according to one reviewer.
I don't know how long it's been available, but there is a Mac version available now.
http://www.ebookjapan.jp/ebj/reader/mac/index.asp
Minimum requirements are Intel Macs running Leopard or above and Safari 3 or Firefox 3.
The blue button at the bottom will take you to a page where you can download the software(the red button at the top), and the blue button at the bottom of that page will take you to a page where you can download sample pages from a couple of manga(the brown buttons beneath the cover images). Sample pages, about eight spreads each, are available for many of the manga/books sold on the website (the black buttons beneath the book covers). If the sample pages display properly, click to step 3 where you'll be asked to register (free).
All I get now-a-days is the Marvel Ultimate line...
Yeah, a good bit of cheese whiz in there, but I like the 'fresh-start' approach...
Now back in the day; during the 'black & white furry creatures' era (aka, the mid 80's), I had thirty plus longboxes sitting in the living room... With a good bit of everything... Helped that I working in a shop...
Old school recommendations?
Those Annoying Post Brothers
Savage Henry
Stig's Inferno
Usagi Yojibo
The Grendal stuff...
The Mage stuff...
Moonshadow
Cerebus
The Dark Knight stuff...
X-Men stuff (which got WAY out of hand, which drove me away from Marvel for awhile)
Daredevil & Elektra stuff
Anything drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz was worth getting...
Frank Miller stuff...
In closing, I had named digital comics as THE killer app for an Apple tablet long ago, and Wolverine is AWESOME...!
This is old school now? Good grief, I must be one of the ancients! I consider Krazy Kat, Nemo In Slumberland, and early Mad Magazine the stuff of true genius (although I will buy any of the old Bill Sienkiewicz and the 'fairly recent' Frank Miller and Geoff Darrow collaborations). Also loved the early Blue Beetle, 70's era Spiderman, anything drawn by Jack Kirby, Scrooge McDuck, Archie Comics (Veronica!... Hubba, hubba!), those wonderfully awful Casper and Richie Rich comics, Shazam!, Peanuts compilations (the earliest strips were utterly fantastic), Tintin (every frame was perfection, and it's a shame this series has been largely ignored in America), and The Fantastic Four.
Well, old school enough for me; in my early 40s now, so 'my' old school was 20 years ago & counting...!
I was in the single digits during most of the 70's, and remember mangling many an issue of the X-Men, folding them in half and jamming them in my back pocket...
The horror...!
Even better is the idea of interactive comics - if you've seen a motion comic e.g:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ipt9hJud8E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ_wuEMwBUo
then you can see the possibilities. It brings comics to life for kids whose imaginations have been rotted away by endless hours of watered-down Disney slapstick entertainment and engages them in some thought-provoking narrative. But the key point is that it's not limited to this function. If you want to do something else you can and this is where so many devices fail.
Oh...
Thanks for posting those links.
My first impression was that the pictures are almost superfluous... the experience is more like radio where the narration (and background sound effects) let each consumer (listener) form his own mental image.
This, IMO, was the secret to radio's success.. it was an interactive medium, rather than passive-- the listener got as much out of it as he was willing to put in.
I am old enough to remember radio before TV-- and it took you to whichever places you wanted to go. No other medium quite matches the experience of radio.
I just revisited Tyrese Gibson's Mayhem comic book iTunes LP...
Interesting, you can turn off the speech bubbles or the but not the video. You still need to manually flip each page.
So you can have:
1) a comic book
2) a comic book with sound (speech and effects)
3) a comic book with sound (speech and effects), byt without speech bubbles
If you added automatic page flip and ignore the video, you would have radio-- not music radio, not news radio, but entertainment radio.
This could be something!
Comic books would be an awesome idea for the tablet, and could very well be a major seller for the device. Of course steve jobs now being a major stock holder of marvel helps.
The slightly animated comics that are coming on dvd's these days would be MUCH better on a tablet, cuz then you can actually turn pages. We still want comics, theres aline where a digital comic just becomes a movie, and we don't want to cross that line.
We basically want one page at time, which is slightly animated, and has bubble text!
also the tablet could be awesome not just for viewing but actually making these comics. Obviously, the tablet should be useful for artists, they could go ahead and put some more functionality with some great software, or probably some third party people will do that anyway.
Also the tablet could be the next level of portable gaming, that could totally kill psp and nintendo ds sales.
Obviously the Tablet should have flash support and a great browser.
e-books here will have the advantage of color. magazines if not books anyway. put a matte screen to reduce glare, but that wouldn't be vary apple-y
MULTI-TASKING!!!!
put iphone OS with multitasking, and some file support, so you can open files with different apps and you have a complete winner.
really third party apps will take care of the rest.
cmon now apple announce it already.
Steve does NOT 'own' Disney...
Well, not ALL of it anyway
Pretty freakin amazing... the man who was shoved out the door at Apple those many years ago sure has come back into his own hasn't he?
Yes, it is amazing. Steve Jobs has the golden midas touch. Everything he does turns to big money. Even NEXT, which never really sold anything ended up getting sold twice, first to IBM for untold millions, then again to Apple for 400 million. THen his 10 million investment in unknown Pixar goes to Disney for 7% of the stock. Now Apple in a recession has the most profitable quarter ever. Truly Jobs is the modern Midas of our era.
Yes, it is amazing. Steve Jobs has the golden midas touch. Everything he does turns to big money. Even NEXT, which never really sold anything ended up getting sold twice, first to IBM for untold millions, then again to Apple for 400 million. THen his 10 million investment in unknown Pixar goes to Disney for 7% of the stock. Now Apple in a recession has the most profitable quarter ever. Truly Jobs is the modern Midas of our era.
it is kind of amazing how many times since the original Mac have people said that Jobs? ideas/project/product was making a huge mistake. The Nostradamus of technology, save for a few missteps.
...people who read comics... ...25-50 year-old losers...
What a stereotype...! Wonder how you feel about other interest groups? Or different races & cultures...?
See, what I am saying is that when you spout off about anyone over the age of 25 who reads comics being a 'loser', you actually make yourself look like a bit of a judgmental bigot...
What a stereotype...! Wonder how you feel about other interest groups? Or different races & cultures...?
See, what I am saying is that when you spout off about anyone over the age of 25 who reads comics being a 'loser', you actually make yourself look like a bit of a judgmental bigot...
See what I mean?
See what I mean?
Gotta love the ignore list...!
My first impression was that the pictures are almost superfluous... the experience is more like radio where the narration (and background sound effects) let each consumer (listener) form his own mental image.
This, IMO, was the secret to radio's success.. it was an interactive medium, rather than passive-- the listener got as much out of it as he was willing to put in.
Video killed the radio star and the radio star's sibling is out for revenge. I think after a few years, people tire of passive entertainment. One day you're watching an adult movie and thinking 'why am I watching other people getting laid?'. Life is more interesting when you engage with things yourself and it's more immersive.
Sitting still and watching things happen means it's easy to lose plot-lines and go away from the experience empty and not much better off than if you'd never bothered. When I see movies like Transformers or the Spiderman films, I wonder why I sat through countless movies like this as a kid? It's such frivolous garbage only satisfying instant-gratification consumerism and leaving no lasting impression.
These days, artists and celebrities arrive one year and are forgotten the next. Movies are mostly sequel after sequel regurgitating the same formulae. The future can't hold anything more if children are raised on such relentless pap and the implications go deeper than entertainment.
If apple was to just read the forums online
I'm sure the employees at Apple do their research to know what the people they want to sell to want. Apple is made up of a lot of people just like us with families and experiences that cover a broad scope. It's easy to think of them as just sitting in brain-storming meetings lost for what their next big product could be, who to sell it to and how to sell it. They deal with thousands of employees in all sorts of companies and they will sift through hundreds of ideas every day.
Even if good ideas are presented, it takes more than that to make them successful. The Newton and 20th Anniversary Mac failed and yet the ipod/iphone and iMac succeed. The economy and culture play parts in it i.e do people need it and does it fit into the price bracket that level of need constructs for that product?
It goes back to the point about the Kindle. It's not enough because the price bracket is high for what is essentially a digital book. Comics alone won't sell a touch tablet, they will be one strong element of many that will sell it to a broad range of people with different needs.
It goes back to the point about the Kindle. It's not enough because the price bracket is high for what is essentially a digital book. Comics alone won't sell a touch tablet, they will be one strong element of many that will sell it to a broad range of people with different needs.
An interesting observation. The 'iSlate' clearly won't be a 'one trick' pony if the iPod/iPhone are anything to go by. It will meet the needs of many a user.
Take iPod. You can read on it. You can surf on it. You can listening to music on it. You ca play multimedia stuff on it.
If anybody thinks the new 'iSlate' won't do this...then they haven't been paying attention to Apple's digital hub for the last 10 years.
The kindle can't display a colour comic or Sony's 'e-reader'. They're just not enough for the price you're paying. They are a 'cheap' (not so 'cheap') re-hash of the real thing. Paper is tactile, cheap, smells great (oh baybee...) and immersive (no fiddly interface...)
Any 'slate' is going to have to be 'immersive' within the context of the digital age. So it's unlikely to be an overpriced bk and wht e-ink wannabee.
I'm still thinking a 'mere' 10 inch iPod/iPhone with some extended interface gesture features. Reading on an iPod touch for internet use is tiresome after about 10 mins or so. Give one that is about A4 in size? Game over. I'm on it for an hour or so, easy.
For digital comic books, great. For a newspaper? Great. For browing the web? Great. For playing a game? Great. For watching movies? Great. I'm sold at £495-£695. Just above the iPhone just below the Macbook.
Lemon Bon Bon.