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Say, When Did Apple Become an Enterprise Company?

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:45:18 +0000

Perhaps it’s just that I haven’t dialed in to an Apple earnings call in more than a year since leaving my old job. But it sure sounded like a new thing to me when Apple CEO Tim Cook rattled off a list of large companies using the iPhone.

Here’s the direct quote taken from the transcript:

“IPhone continues to be adopted as the standard across the enterprise with 93 percent of the Fortune 500 deploying or testing the device, up from 91 percent last quarter and 60 percent of the Global 500 testing or deploying iPhone, up from 57 percent last quarter. A recent example of iPhone’s enterprise success is Lowe’s. Lowe’s is in the process of rolling out over 40,000 iPhones with a custom application to allow their store associates to execute real-time inventory checks, product orders and interactive customers with how-to videos.

Additional examples of companies around the world supporting iPhone on their corporate networks include L’Oreal, Royal Bank of Scotland, SAP, Texas Instruments, Jacobs Engineering Group, Tenet Healthcare, Jaguar Land Rover, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Lincoln National and CSX Corporation. And of course, we’re thrilled to begin shipping iPhone 4S this month.”

And later, a similar section devoted to the iPad:

“Every day, we learn about innovative new ways our enterprise customers are using iPad. The airline industry is a great example of the momentum we’re seeing. United Continental Holdings is putting iPads in every cockpit to replace heavy, paper-based flight bags. In Japan, All Nippon Airways is now using iPad in training programs for flight attendants.

Sonic Automotive is using iPad for customer check-in at the service department and also to provide analytics to regional managers. Aflac, Biogen and General Mills have developed internal apps that their field sales teams leverage daily, and technicians of Siemens Energy are bringing iPads along when they do maintenance work at the top of their wind turbines.”

It turns out that it’s not a new thing, exactly. Cook has recited similar lists on Apple conference calls before. But as recently as 2008, when Businessweek published its cover story called “The Mac in the Gray Flannel Suit” (which, full disclosure, I worked on), Apple was generally considered an outsider in the enterprise IT business, and Apple products a novelty in the office. In broad brushstrokes, Macs tended to show up at media and advertising companies, and in the creative and marketing departments of other companies. The iPhone, and later the iPad, changed all that.

Here’s about as good an indication of that trend as I’ve ever seen: Intermedia, a company that operated a hosted Microsoft Exchange service for small and mid-sized businesses, said earlier this month that among its 41,000 customers, 78 percent are using Apple devices to get their mail, contact lists and calendars.

Meanwhile, look at all the companies that have developed enterprise applications for iOS: Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Citrix immediately come to mind. And Tidemark — the business intelligence start-up I wrote about yesterday — is iPad-ready from the start. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of examples I’m missing.

Apple has cumulatively sold 40 million iPads since the device launched last year. The company doesn’t offer much in the way of a data breakdown of how many of those are sold to businesses, but it almost doesn’t matter, because in so many cases, people buy one and just take it to the office. When you hear the phrase “consumerization of IT,” which already feels pretty worn out to me, it refers mostly to people who want to use iOS devices at work, and to a lesser extent, Google’s Android. A recent survey of 750 IT managers found that the iPhone led the pack of personal devices used at work, followed by Android Phones and the iPad.

I probably shouldn’t be surprised by all this, but when I heard Tim Cook list all those big companies using iThings to get things done, it finally dawned on me: Apple is as much an enterprise story as it is a consumer story.

Keeping Family, Sitter and Car on One Calendar

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:31:47 +0000

Sometimes, too much technology can be a bad thing. Busy families struggle to coordinate schedules among all the devices they have using Microsoft Outlook, Web calendars and a multitude of apps. Yet, no single program unites all of these calendars in one place.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I tested something that attempts to do just that. I’ve been using Skedi, a $10 app for the iPhone and iPod touch made by Rodax Software. It imports third-party calendars, lets family members create activities to which they invite or delegate one another (or other people, like a baby sitter) and it syncs Skedi events back to other programs, like Google Calendar. The best feature of Skedi is that it displays family members’ availability, much like Microsoft Outlook, so a person can see when others are free or busy.

As dreamy as this app sounds, it needs work. It’s only accessible on the iPhone and iPod touch and won’t work with Microsoft Outlook calendars. It also needs more adjustable settings. Future iterations will make it more accessible via other devices as well as the Web, according to Rodax. An Android app is planned for this year and an iPad app is expected this year or early 2012.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve come to really appreciate the value of an app like Skedi. My husband has been at a conference in California and I’ve made several attempts to make plans with friends for when he returns. One by one, I’ve had to cancel a Friday night dinner, a Saturday night concert and an attempted Sunday night rescheduled dinner because I made the mistake of thinking that no news of plans meant he had no plans.

Unfortunately, my husband couldn’t step away from the conference to test Skedi with me. (I tested it with a colleague.) This brings up another matter: Scheduling is a participation sport. The more people who use a scheduling app, the more useful it’ll be.

Skedi gives different people different permissions. Kids aren’t required or even asked to respond to an event, which is fine for younger kids whose parents plan their schedules. (The term “parents” can be used loosely; a grandparent or friend can be added as a “parent.”) One prompt encouraged me to add a car in the “kid” section so it was automatically reserved for an activity.

Left to right: The Skedi app lets you create an event, respond to the event and see when family is busy.

To set up Skedi, I created an account using my email and a password, and then followed prompts to add other parents, kids, baby sitters and friends to the account using their names and emails. People who are invited to Skedi get an email with a link that walks them through setting up an account. But they’ll each have to buy the app for their devices if they want to use it. The Rodax Software website suggests using Apple’s workaround for this: signing into each device with the Apple ID originally used to buy the app, but this can be a pain.

After adding people, I was prompted to add my calendars, though only calendars that follow an Internet standard called CalDAV will work. These include the Apple Calendar and MobileMe, Google Calendar, Yahoo and AOL. I added Google Calendar by entering my Google account email and password. In the final setup step, I told Skedi to use my Google Calendar as the default calendar for adding events.

Once setup is complete, Skedi doesn’t let users add or remove people from accounts. Rodax’s president and founder, John Boyer, said that fixes over the next two weeks would enable making these and other changes to calendars.

Skedi looks a lot like iCal on the iPhone, including “+” icons in the top of the screen that add events. Skedi is divided into three sections: Family Calendar, My Calendar and Notifications. Family Calendar shows an overall view of each person in the account, and color-shading—blue for parents, tan for kids and brown for baby sitters—on calendar dates represents when people are busy.

If someone in your Skedi account imports a calendar to his or her account, like her work calendar, appointments on that calendar are represented with the colored shading but are marked as Private. This lets family members know the times aren’t free but prevents them from seeing the details of that work calendar.

I created events by giving them titles, adding a location, specifying the start and end times, designating a person in charge and selecting the people in my Skedi account who I wanted to join. Skedi checks each person’s availability so I know who’s busy or free. Even if a person is busy, Skedi still lets me add them to the event.

The Notifications section tells you if someone has invited you to an event, delegated you in an event or canceled an event. Alas, these alerts are only accessible through the app, though Mr. Boyer said email alerts will be available in the next two weeks.

Back at my computer, I opened Google Calendar on my Web browser and saw events other people in my account and I had added using Skedi. A “booked by Skedi” note beside each event clued me in on how these events were added. This is especially helpful for people who add events on the go and forget they did it.

The current iteration of Skedi has too many kinks in it, and the app will be much more useful when it’s accessible by means other than the iPhone and iPod touch. Still, the idea of saving time by automatically showing family members’ availability is a big plus.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

Analyst Sees BlackBerry PlayBook Buzz Building Ahead of Rumored April Launch

John Paczkowski — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 18:05:26 +0000

RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook doesn’t yet have a firm price or launch date–though new rumors suggest it may arrive at market by mid-April–but already there is developing demand for it–according to some analysts, anyway.

In a research note issued this morning, Peter Misek of Jeffries said early indications from retailers and others point toward pent-up demand for the device. “We were optimistic about the PlayBook but were still surprised at how positive the feedback has been from the channel and retailers regarding the product,” he writes. “Many view the tethering as a positive since it does not require a separate data plan, and enterprises see it as an easy fit into their existing security and device management protocols.”

Misek, too, expects the PlayBook to launch in April. And he doesn’t seem much bothered by predictions that it will be “dead on arrival.” The PlayBook isn’t going to be a flop, he said. And there are four reasons why:

It’s effectively a PC category player. Therefore any sales are incremental and importantly create new avenues of growth and expansion.
It’s been a success with enterprises that have trialed it.
Its lack of native calendar and email applications isn’t the deficit that it’s been made out to be, since accessing those functions from a browser as one might do on a PC is logical and easy.
It will account for far less than 10 percent of sales and earnings in even the most optimistic models on the Street.

Plausible reasons, certainly. But ones potentially subsumed by a few remaining wild cards Misek doesn’t note: price (not specified beyond RIM’s co-CEO’s claim of “under $500″), battery life (also not yet specified), the size of the PlayBook’s app ecosystem (will it support Android apps?) and the breadth of its distribution channel.

The Streak 7: Bargain Tablet From Dell Is No Real Deal

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 02:01:23 +0000

If you could get a tablet for the price of a smart phone, and if it also worked on one of the new, faster, 4G-class cellular networks, you’d jump at the chance, right? Dell and T-Mobile hope so, and that’s why they’ve brought out the Dell Streak 7, at just $200 with a two-year service contract.

[ See post to watch video ]

The Streak 7, Dell’s second effort to compete with Apple’s $500 iPad, is the least expensive tablet I’ve seen from a major manufacturer, and claims to be the first capable of 4G cellular speeds (it also has Wi-Fi). Like many planned iPad competitors, it runs Google’s Android operating system. It’s also the first I’ve tested using a fast new processor from nVidia, the Tegra 2, which will power a number of new tablets this year.

Unfortunately, after a week of testing, I found the compromises Dell made to get to that low price make it impossible for me to recommend the Streak 7. Its screen, battery life, and software are all disappointing, and vastly inferior not only to the iPad’s, but also to those on the Samsung Galaxy Tab, a high-quality Android tablet about the size of the Streak 7 released late last year. In other words, you get what you pay for.

Like the Galaxy Tab, the Streak 7 has a 7-inch screen, measured diagonally, or less than half the size of the iPad’s. But it’s large enough to be properly called a tablet, unlike Dell’s first Streak, an odd tweener device with a 5-inch screen—more like a big phone—that was released last year to a tepid response.

Dell concedes it wasn’t trying to build “the Cadillac of tablets” with the Streak 7, but was aiming for budget-conscious families and home use. Dell notes it has plans for a range of tablets with different prices, screen sizes and specs.

The Streak 7′s screen, battery life, and software are all disappointing. In other words, you get what you pay for.

The Streak 7 has some strengths. Like the Tab, it’s smaller and lighter than the iPad, so easier to hold in one hand. It plays Flash videos, which the iPad can’t. And it has front and rear cameras, unlike the iPad. It can also be used, unlike the iPad, as a Wi-Fi hot spot.

Also, I found its cellular data speeds impressive. In tests I conducted in Silicon Valley, the Streak averaged 4.63 megabits per second in download speed on T-Mobile’s souped-up 3G network (which it calls 4G because it claims similar speeds). That was nearly twice as fast as the download speeds provided by my hotel’s Wi-Fi network. Cellular upload speeds were a bit slower than Wi-Fi, but still averaged about 1.2 mps.

But, in my view, the Streak 7′s minuses outweighed its pluses. Let’s start with battery life. In my tests, the Streak 7 conked out after a pathetic two hours and 10 minutes of watching movies. That compares with about 11.5 hours of continuous video playback for the iPad and just under seven hours for the Galaxy Tab, when I tested them. In a more mixed-use pattern, including Web surfing, game playing, music, email and social networking, with some short videos thrown in, the Streak 7 lasted between 5.5 and 6.5 hours, still underwhelming for a tablet.

Dell says its target audience will use the Streak 7 plugged into wall outlets and TVs through an extra-cost dock, but I wouldn’t buy a tablet with battery life this poor.

Screen resolution also was so low as to be fuzzy at times, especially in reading small type, and viewing the screen at an angle often reduced the image to a ghostly outline. The Streak 7′s screen has a resolution of 800×480, below the much smaller iPhone screen, and well below the resolution of the iPad or the Galaxy Tab. While the internal chips drove video fine—as long as the batteries lasted—it looked worse than on the other two, as did photos.

The software also is a problem. It’s an older version of Android, called 2.2, which was never intended for tablets, and whose core apps—such as email, contacts and calendar—were designed for the smaller phone screens. Months ago, Samsung used the same version of Android on the Tab, but compensated by rewriting key apps to take advantage of the tablet screen, with more PC-like designs. Dell has done none of this on the Streak 7. All it added was a thin user interface called Stage featuring big, blocky widgets that group things like contacts and social updates, an old concept. It preloaded some kid-friendly and family-friendly apps, but some are mere come-ons that require downloading the full app.

Worse, the Streak 7 appears shortly before the true tablet-optimized version of Android, called Honeycomb, and Dell can’t promise that Streak 7 buyers can upgrade to Honeycomb. The company says the device has been designed to accommodate an upgrade, and is hopeful that it’s possible. But there is no guarantee. Buyers might get stuck with the old version built for phones.

Even on a tight budget, the Streak 7′s deficiencies might not make it worth the price. You’ll pay T-Mobile $30 or $50 a month for a capped data plan for two years. By contrast, the base iPad requires no payments to a cellular carrier, as it’s Wi-Fi only. Even if you buy the iPad with cellular connectivity from AT&T, there is no contract. You pay $15 or $25 a month and end the cell service at will, with no penalty.

You can buy the Streak 7 without a contract, but then it costs $450, too much for a device with its drawbacks, and only $50 less than the far superior base iPad. Even the Streak 7′s subsidized price of $200 is only $50 less than what its carrier, T-Mobile, charges for the better Galaxy Tab with a two-year contract.

Dell is serious about competing in the tablet wars, and it may produce a winner yet. But its first efforts, in my view, missed the mark.

Find all Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

BlackBerry PlayBook: Looks Good on Paper, But…

John Paczkowski — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 11:50:20 +0000

The PlayBook’s hardware specs might beat anything on the market, its QNX OS might be rock solid and its “Web fidelity” might outshine that of the iPad, but Research in Motion’s forthcoming “professional tablet” will be poorly received when it finally ships. This according to Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair, who believes the device to be signifigantly flawed and claims it will be “dead on arrival.”

A scathing appraisal, but Blair has his reasons.

The PlayBook’s lack of native calendar and email applications, a core RIM strength that has oddly been left out of the device’s first iteration.
The need to tether it to a BlackBerry to access those applications, a feature intended to appeal to enterprise by obviating the need for additional security measures, but one that will inevitably alientate non-BlackBerry users.
A profound lack of applications and a sub-par application storefront.
No easy mechanism for content delivery and consumption. “How will users get music or movies on there?” Blair asks. “Through the BlackBerry Desktop download manager? Well, we have tried this and it isn’t easy.”

(Considered drag-and-drop, Brian? Not the most elegant solution, I know, but a solution nonetheless).

These are the makings of a sharply inferior tablet, Blair argues. To launch it in a market alongside the likes of the iPad and its successor, as well as with forthcoming offerings from HP’s Palm unit and Motorola, is folly.

“The PlayBook demo impresses many people, including many tech writers, and we believe it’s because of the outstanding multitasking capability that is showcased in a coverflow manner,” Blair concludes. “This slickly shows apps running in the background while a main app runs in the foreground. While we agree this is a leap over what other tablet operating systems can do, we see it as a visual ‘smoke and mirrors’ because of the aforementioned shortfalls in getting content onto the device, offering limited applications, and excluding a native email application. In short, the PlayBook’s screen and hardware specs and multitasking capability look excellent on paper, but without the other pieces to the puzzle, it feels in many ways like an expensive web browser.”

Microsoft and HP Show Off the Fruits of Their Partnership

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 05:00:51 +0000

About a year ago, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft announced a three-year, $250 million deal to team up around cloud computing. It was a strange announcement chock-full of buzzwords. They said they would “collaborate on an engineering roadmap for data management machines; converged, prepackaged application solutions; comprehensive virtualization offerings; and integrated management tools.” Know what any of that means?

Today’s the day we all find out. The two are showing the first fruits of their combined quarter billion dollars worth of labor. The pair announced they have built four enterprise-focused appliances that they say will combine applications, infrastructure and productivity tools into a single unified system. The first half of this quartet is being announced today, with more to follow.

One is the HP Business Decision Appliance, which is intended to run business intelligence applications. The appliance, they say, greatly reduces the time and effort for companies to deploy and manage business intelligence, which is a fancy way of saying you’re analyzing the data from the operation of your business, and looking for patterns or trends that might not otherwise be apparent. It’s optimized to run for Microsoft’s SQL server database software and its SharePoint collboration software, and takes less than an hour to install, they promise.

The second is the HP Business Data Warehouse Appliance, a data store designed for small- and mid-size companies that they say delivers performance that’s suitable for a big enterprise, but doesn’t require an administrator to run it. It’s a smaller version of the HP Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance, which the two first previewed in November and is available now.

Next up is a messaging appliance geared toward making it easy to install Microsoft Exchange 2010, the server piece of Outlook, Microsoft’s all-purpose email, calendar and contact software that’s so widely used in companies around the world. Its formal name is the HP E5000 Messaging System for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, and the two companies say it’s the industry’s first self-contained server for enterprise-class messaging that can be deployed in only a few hours. It comes pre-configured and with “best practices” designed in. The mailboxes are large, centrally archived and available to any device. It will be available in March.

What’s after that? HP and Microsoft are also working on something they call the HP Database Consolidation Appliance, which can bring hundreds of databases into a single appliance. This one will run SQL server and Microsoft’s Hyper-V Cloud.

It’s all about making IT projects easy to deploy, says Mark Potter, HP’s senior vice president and general manager for industry standard servers and software. “It can take anywhere from one to 18 months to roll out a sophisticated service to end users,” Potter told me in an interview yesterday. “About 32 percent of all IT projects are rated a success. It takes our customers a lot of time, planning and risk. We’re trying to bring a solution to the market that does for business applications what Microsoft Office did for desktop productivity.”

Why spend so much to team up? Microsoft and HP think that by 2015 there’s a combined market worth $55 billion for business intelligence, data warehousing, messaging and online transactions, making that quarter billion potentially worth it. Now they just have to prove these appliances can sell.

TripIt Travel Planner Bought by Concur for $82 Million-Plus

Liz Gannes — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 19:02:18 +0000

Expense and travel management company Concur today announced it would buy travel planning start-up TripIt in a deal worth as much as $120 million, including $82 million in cash, stock and restricted stock units up front.

TripIt is one of an emerging group of services that help users format travel information for easy mobile consumption. That might sound simple, but it can be incredibly useful. A user emails any travel itinerary from 1,000 different airlines and other travel sites to plans@tripit.com from a registered email account, and it can be saved to a mobile app and sent to a calendar. Once downloaded to a specific device, it can be accessed offline. If you’ve ever heard of Instapaper, it’s kind of like that for travel planning.

In a phone interview, TripIt CEO Gregg Brockway said that as TripIt moved into small-business services from the consumer market, and the publicly traded Concur began offering products for small- and medium-size businesses in addition to enterprise companies, the two realized they had a common opportunity around “unmanaged travel.” By some estimates, unmanaged travel–where employees book their own trips and expense them, rather than using a company travel agent and preferred providers–is half the business travel market.

TripIt, which says it has “millions” of consumer users and 15,000-20,000 corporate customers, offers many of its tools for free, with premium services like flight-tracking alerts available for $49 per year and a business-oriented offering starting at $399 per year. The company will stay intact in its San Francisco office following the acquisition, which is expected to close next quarter.

Brockway said users of the consumer TripIt product can rest assured it will continue to be free and available.

TripIt had raised $13.1 million from investors such as Azure Capital Partners and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.

Weathering the Storm, RIM Makes Its Business Case in Boston

Ina Fried — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 15:11:48 +0000

Mobilized is trudging through the snow in Beantown Thursday to hear Research In Motion talk about its plans for the enterprise. RIM is set to talk about why businesses should bet on both the BlackBerry and the forthcoming PlayBook tablet.

The event, at the Marriott Copley Place downtown, is just getting under way. I won’t bore you with every detail, but will post whenever things get interesting.

In the meantime, enjoy this take on Angry Birds for the BlackBerry.

Update, 10:17 am ET: The intro is still going on. RIM Vice President Alec Taylor is talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis for some reason. However, RIM was nice enough to pass out slides for the whole day. Here are some of the highlights:

BlackBerry Mobile Voice System
Launching in early 2011, this is an update to RIM’s effort to unify the desk and mobile phone, offering a single identity, voiceover Wi-Fi calling, a single voicemail box, dialing office extensions and more. RIM says the new version will support more types of business phone systems.

Other features coming later this year include automatic hand-off from Wi-Fi to mobile networks, a “move call from desk” feature and more.

BlackBerry Balance
A new effort to support mixing personal and corporate data on the BlackBerry. RIM is adding features such as the ability for IT to choose to wipe only corporate information from a device or to limit users from cutting work data and pasting it into a personal application or email. Other features include warnings when sending emails or calendar invites outside of the organization, the ability to encrypt media cards and options for preventing access to work data by third-party applications.

BlackBerry client for Microsoft SharePoint
Launching in early 2011, this will bring data from Microsoft’s portal software directly to BlackBerry handhelds. It will work with both the 2007 and 2010 versions of SharePoint and integrates into a number of BlackBerry programs, including E-mail, calendar, Documents To Go and the browser.

PlayBook
As for the forthcoming tablet, RIM says it will ship with 1GB of memory, have 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of flash memory, include a 3-megapixel front-facing and 5-megapixel rear-facing camera and have micro USB and Micro HDMI ports. (I can’t remember if they have said all of that before.) The slides say only that it will ship this quarter and will be “competitively priced,” reiterating past company positioning.

According to the slides, the company also plans to talk about cloud-based device management and changes to allow one BlackBerry server to support multiple corporations.

10:35 am ET: The Cuban Missile Crisis is apparently over, and VP Pete Devenyi is now outlining the company’s business product road map and making the pitch for its strategy.

“We really do have a great story,” he says, noting that the enterprise is different from the “arms race” of the consumer market.

“It’s not just about the number of apps in App world,” he says, noting that businesses can and are building programs just for use within the corporation. Some businesses, he says, have hundreds of internal apps, none of which show up in the public storefront. BlackBerry, he says, also allows businesses better control than rivals over what programs are on a worker’s device. For example, Devenyi says, when workers change groups within a company, the programs they have access to can be updated automatically with programs deleted and added from their devices.

“That kind of power is power that no one else has,” he says. “We don’t read about that much.”

10:43 am: In addition to both the paid BlackBerry Enterprise Server and the slimmed-down free “Express” version of the server, RIM plans to launch an email system aimed directly at small-to-midsize businesses–MDaemon Messaging Server, BlackBerry Edition. The idea is to give smaller businesses a full email server that has full BlackBerry support. The product stems from an acquisition RIM made a year or two ago and offers what RIM says are features similar to Microsoft’s Exchange Server but at a fraction of the price.

The company is also launching “very, very soon” a modest update to its flagship server product, BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0.3. It will add more support for employee-owned devices (including the BlackBerry Balance feature described earlier), support for encrypted attachments and certification for Microsoft’s Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and the latest version, known as Lync 2010.

11:18 am: RIM is launching yet another server this year, known as the BlackBerry Enterprise Application Middleware (BEAM). BEAM, which companies would have to buy in addition to their BlackBerry email server, aims to streamline enterprise content for use on a BlackBerry. ‘What that results in is a much more efficient application than you would otherwise have,” Devenyi says. It’s in beta now, he adds.

11:25 am: BlackBerry is launching its equivalent of Find My Phone, known as BlackBerry Protect, which will allow individuals to remotely wipe or post a message if a device is lost. Protect will launch later this year, Devenyi says.

Finally, the company is talking about a number of changes it is making to the core BlackBerry Enterprise Server so that it can run via the cloud. Launching later this year, RIM will have the ability for its server product to be remotely hosted and support more than one business. It’s not clear yet if this will be RIM offering BlackBerry as a cloud-based service or if this is a product for hosting partners, though it sounds more like the latter.

11:32 am: Devenyi told Mobilized that the company is just showing the architectural changes it is making, not saying how it will bring the cloud-based capabilities to market. “We’re still working through a number of those details ourselves.” Devenyi said. “It could be both, but we are not announcing.”

11:42 am: On to the PlayBook finally. Senior Product manager Ryan Bidan gives the spiel. He says there is a lot that the company isn’t ready to share. Addressing concerns around battery life, Bidan notes the PlayBook has a 5300-miliamp battery, but doesn’t give specifics on how much battery life that will translate to.

“We’ll have good battery life,” he says. “Don’t worry about the battery life.”

Other details:
Software updates will be pushed down to the device on an ongoing basis. There will be a version of App World on the device for downloading developer-created programs.

And with that, the formal part of the event is over.

PlayBook on Track for Q1 Kick-Off

John Paczkowski — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 11:00:00 +0000

Research in Motion’s PlayBook tablet is on schedule for launch in the first calendar quarter of 2011. That’s the word from the company itself, which was forced to issue a hasty clarification after its announcement of a 4G version of the device launching this summer raised fears that the Wi-Fi-only version might be delayed.

“The BlackBerry PlayBook is expected to begin shipping in the U.S. in Q1,” RIM said in an email statement.

And there you have it.

Meanwhile, the device is garnering mixed reviews at CES. After some hands-on time with it, Engadget described the PlayBook as “blazingly fast, comfortable to hold, and intuitive to use.” Gizmodo liked it as well, talking up its hardware, responsive display and UI. “RIM’s got something here that could really stand on top of the bajillion other crappy tablets that are going to launch this year,” the site concluded. “They just have to take it the rest of the way.”

Wunderlich Securities analyst Matthew Robison agreed. “RIM’s PlayBook strategy [is] exceptionally compelling— pending successful execution,” he wrote in a note from CES. “The company’s ace card in tablets is sure-fire security for IT departments who loathe adding another piece of client software to enterprise networks.”

But others, like Wedge Partners analyst and RIM bear Brian Blair, were not so impressed. Though he praised the device’s sturdy build and crisp screen, he slagged its lack of native email and calendar support.

“There is not a built-in e-mail program that we saw, nor is there a calendar: arguably the two most critical features of a Blackberry,” Blair said. “Calendar and Email are only available, if the PlayBook is “tethered” to a Blackberry. Short of that, users need to use the browser for e-mail and calendar.”

And, admittedly, that does seem silly. Unless you’re a CIO. In which case, you probably prefer to push data (and remotely wipe it, if necessary) from one device instead of two, and appreciate the gesture.

Still, Blair came away with the impression that the PlayBook isn’t yet fully baked, and to be fair, it isn’t–after all, this is a pre-release device.

“We know this is an early build and that bugs are being worked through over the next couple of months, but nearly every feature we tried on our demo unit was having problems,” he concluded. “The video player froze and the games wouldn’t play. The only thing that worked was the ‘Coverflow-like’ scrolling of the different applications, which the device did with ease.”

But as Blair himself observed, a lot can change in three months. And presumably RIM is doing its damndest to ensure that it does–before Apple debuts the iPad 2, which will undoubtedly become the new standard against which all tablets are compared.

In the meantime, here are a few PlayBook promo videos RIM released in conjunction with CES.

Following Layoffs, Yahoo Cuts Products: MyBlogLog, Delicious, Yahoo! Buzz

Liz Gannes — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 19:58:59 +0000

At an all-hands meeting for the Yahoo product team following a round of layoffs yesterday that significantly impacted that group, Chief Product Officer Blake Irving showed off a slide of plans to “sunset” eight products and consolidate others.

Products on a list to be sunsetted–whatever that means–include MyBlogLog, Yahoo! Picks, AltaVista, Yahoo! Bookmarks, Yahoo! Buzz and Delicious. Some of those properties came from acquisitions and others were internally generated.

The news of the Yahoo plans first came out via a screenshot of the Webcast posted on Twitter by Eric Marcoullier that included a slide with a list of impacted products next to an image of Irving, along with EVP of the Americas Ross Levinsohn, announcing the news.

Marcoullier was founder of MyBlogLog, which created one of the products being shut down. (MyBlogLog was bought by Yahoo in 2007 and has been pretty much neglected ever since.)

The slide also shows plans to merge additional products, including Fire Eagle and Yahoo People Search, and make features out of many others, including Yahoo! Alerts and Yahoo! Calendar. (If you have better eyes than I do, please help identify some of those logos in the comments.)

Marcoullier is no longer at Yahoo, although the validity of his Webcast screenshot was confirmed, after he was quickly criticized on Twitter by various current Yahoo employees who didn’t appreciate it getting out, including Irving himself, who insinuated he would fire whoever leaked the Webcast. (Click on image here to enlarge.)

While the layoffs and shutdowns obviously indicate a de-emphasis of technology products by Yahoo, they aren’t necessarily unwarranted. Some of these products were the same as those mentioned on then-SVP Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter Memo way back in 2006 as candidates for streamlining.

Update 12:21 p.m. PT: Yahoo’s statement on the matter just came through:

Part of our organizational streamlining involves cutting our investment in underperforming or off-strategy products to put better focus on our core strengths and fund new innovation in the next year and beyond. We continuously evaluate and prioritize our portfolio of products and services, and do plan to shut down some products in the coming months such as Yahoo! Buzz, our Traffic APIs, and others. We will communicate specific plans when appropriate.

In response to a follow-up question about Delicious, which seems to be the “sunsetted” product people are most upset about, the spokeswoman replied:

“We continue to operate Delicious today, and will communicate specific details when appropriate.”

GSA Goes Google

John Paczkowski — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 11:00:43 +0000

The General Services Administration–which oversees government procurement–will soon become the first major federal office to move to cloud-based email and calendar apps on an agency-wide basis. And it’s chosen Google Apps to do it.

A hard-won victory for Google, which beat out Microsoft for the $6.7 million five-year contract, leaving the folks up in Redmond more than a little peeved to see Office’s ubiquity in government threatened in this way.

“We are disappointed in the GSA’s internal e-mail decision,” the company said in a post to its “Why Microsoft” blog, adding that it is nonetheless “gratified that so many federal, state & local governments have chosen Microsoft to meet their business needs.”

You can almost hear the gritting teeth, can’t you? The horror of 15,000 GSA employees all using Gmail….

So again, a coup for Google, which has been working hard to push its cloud computing suite of messaging and collaboration apps to the government.

Interestingly, sources close to the negotiations tell me that the RFP (Request for Proposal) for the GSA contract was amended midway through the process to allow for offshoring of government data outside the United states–as an accommodation for Google.

Which is odd, because you’d think that if the United States government is embracing cloud computing, it would prefer the clouds in which its data is stored to be within its own borders. That Google requested and was granted the option to store GSA data offshore isn’t necessarily troubling (it must meet GSA security requirements regardless), but it is…interesting.

Google wouldn’t tell me the reason for its request, although I’ve heard it may have something to do with how the company segregates data and apps geographically. It was, however, quick to insist that it isn’t planning to offshore any U.S. government data entrusted to it–at least, currently.

Said spokesman Andrew Kovacs, “The government’s starting with Gmail and Calendar, and their data will be stored in a segregated system located in the continental United States that is exclusively for our government customers.”

Aro Offers a Parallel Universe Where Mobile Apps Work Together

Liz Gannes — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 05:00:29 +0000

Aro Mobile on Tuesday will be presenting at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The company makes a set of search-driven mobile apps for Android that link together so they can be more useful. (It is still in private beta, but as of tomorrow those who sign up on the waiting list will get in more quickly.)

After analyzing your address book, emails (only Gmail and Google Apps for now), calendar and other information you give it, Aro compiles a linked library of topics and people that are relevant to you. Then it uses that information to help you complete actions that usually are tedious on a smartphone because they require users to open all sorts of different apps.

Say you’re using the Aro mail client: Any name that’s mentioned in an email will be highlighted in a bubble that you can click on to see all the people by that name in your address book and call one directly. You can also search through all your correspondence with that person over time, through various email addresses and phone numbers.

Or if someone schedules an appointment with you and you view it in Aro, you can add it to your calendar from within email, look up more information and get directions to the location right there.

Aro synchs all this information back to the original hosts of your email and calendar, though you don’t ever have to open the old apps on your phone.

I’ve been trying Aro for the last couple of days and I can start to see the potential. However, it’s pretty awkward to have the Aro parallel experience layered on top of everything I’m used to doing. My existing phone, email, SMS, address book, calendar and mobile browser apps are now all redundant with Aro versions. The simple action of making a phone call on my setup now requires clicking through an Aro dialog, then a Google Voice dialog–it’s a little too much.

These tools would be much more awesome if they were more tightly integrated into the operating system itself rather than as a whole bunch of apps. Aro CEO Jon Lazarus says he’s working to strike deals with carriers and handset partners to release phones with tighter Aro integration, which would help a lot.

Playing around with Aro makes me think about the potential for a smarter mobile phone that combines Aro-integrated apps with something like Siri’s voice-activated commands. Siri, which launched at D7 and was bought by Apple, is a virtual personal assistant iPhone app that helps users tie into a whole bunch of Web services to do things like make reservations at nearby restaurants. You can start to imagine how a phone would understand a lot more about its owner, and actually help get things done.

Seattle-based Aro, whose parent company is called Kiha, has raised more than $20 million over the past three years from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen (the company was originally developing for Windows Mobile, actually, but it switched to Android last year). Aro came out of stealth only a few weeks ago in the run-up to Web 2.0. Here’s a (somewhat cheesy, yes) demo video of how it works:

Would Facebook + Email = Gmail + Google Me?

Liz Gannes — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 16:21:44 +0000

Facebook this Monday is reportedly set to announce a “full-fledged webmail client” with integration of Microsoft Office Web Apps at a press event the company is holding in San Francisco.

As displayed by its policy of declining to give Google a way to extract user email addresses–which Google called it out on last week–Facebook is clearly worried about Google extending its excellent Gmail product with a rocket booster of emails imported from Facebook for a competing social tool. The timing of all this is coming to a head as the companies seek to release products before the end of the year.

So, is a social network that adds email better or worse than an email service that adds social?

Put another way, if you had to give up your Facebook or Gmail, which would go first?

An email service from Facebook would almost certainly have novel social features and the company’s trademark opt-out viral hooks. The Facebook emails will supposedly include @facebook.com addresses (and probably be the unique usernames that people have set up through Facebook’s vanity URL program). They would also be integrated into other Facebook products along with Office.

Meanwhile, a social product from Google, if done well, is one of the only things that could knock the young Facebook out of its dominance in the category. So many people today already depend on Google (you may have heard of its search product) and trust its brand.

Will Facebook email have Gmail’s hallmark feature, conversation threading? Will some young people who only use Facebook and texting for communication even notice a difference? Will Facebook finally release a better calendaring tool alongside email? We’ll let you know as soon as we find out.

By the way, this comment from Facebook platform tech lead Mike Vernal explaining why Facebook doesn’t want to export email addresses to Google (even though it already sends them to Yahoo and Microsoft) looks a bit different four days later:

Email is different from social networking because in an email application, each person maintains and owns their own address book, whereas in a social network your friends maintain their information and you just maintain a list of friends. Because of this, we think it makes sense for email applications to export email addresses and for social networks to export friend lists.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Samsung's Galaxy Tab Is iPad's First Real Rival

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 02:02:56 +0000

After seven months of unchallenged prominence, Apple’s hot-selling iPad now has its first credible competitor in the nascent market for multitouch consumer tablet computers: the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

[ See post to watch video ]

The Tab is being introduced over the next week by three major U.S. wireless phone carriers at $400 with a cellular data contract, or at $600 with cellular capability but no contract. The iPad starts at $499 for a Wi-Fi model with no cellular-data capability or contract, and is $629 for the least expensive model with cellular data capability but no contract.

Like the iPad, the Tab, which uses Google’s Android operating system, is a good-looking slate with a vivid color screen that can handle many of the tasks typically performed on a laptop. These include email, social networking, Web browsing, photo viewing, and music and video playback. It also can run a wide variety of third-party apps. But it has major differences, most notably in size.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab has less than half the screen real estate than that of the iPad.

The Tab has a 7-inch screen versus the 9.7-inch display on the iPad. That may seem like a small difference, but the numbers are deceptive, because screen sizes are always described using diagonal measurements. In fact, the actual screen real estate on the Tab is less than half of the iPad’s. That’s a disadvantage, but it allows the overall unit to be much smaller and lighter, and thus more easily used in one hand, something some users will welcome.

The new tablet will be introduced in coming days by Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, with a variety of cellular data plans. AT&T also will carry the Tab during the holiday season but hasn’t announced its timing or data-plan pricing. Although it is being sold by cellular carriers, the Tab, like the iPad (which offers optional month-to-month cellular data through AT&T) can’t make cellular voice calls.

I’ve been testing the Tab for a couple of weeks and I like it. It’s a serious alternative to the iPad and one that will be preferred by some folks. It includes the three most-requested features missing in the iPad: a camera (two in fact); the ability to run Web videos and applications written in Adobe’s Flash software; and multitasking, though, to be fair, the latter feature is coming to the iPad imminently via a software update. Another strong point is that like Apple, Samsung has rewritten some of the standard apps, such as the email and calendar programs, to make them look more like PC programs and less like smartphone apps.

On balance, however, I still prefer the iPad. For one thing, I like getting twice the screen size for a little more money up front—as little as $29 for the no-contract model with cellular capability. For another, the iPad has vastly more apps specifically designed for a tablet versus a smartphone—about 40,000 according to Apple, compared with just a handful for the Tab. And it can run about triple the apps overall, if you count smartphone apps that aren’t optimized for tablets.

Also, in my tests, the iPad’s battery life was about five hours better than the Tab’s, its maximum storage capacity is higher, and its aluminum body is more rugged than the Tab’s plastic casing. Finally, the iPad can be bought in a Wi-Fi-only model that frees you from any entanglement with cellphone carriers. The Tab also has Wi-Fi, but, so far, no Wi-Fi-only version, though Samsung is promising one next year.

Still, the Tab is a very attractive product and I enjoyed using it. For buyers who want to spend less up front, don’t mind the smaller screen, prefer the more compact dimensions and one-handed usability, and place high value on the cameras and on Flash, it may well be a better choice.

Hardware

The Tab is a rectangular slate about two inches shorter and three inches narrower than the iPad. It is also a tad thinner. It weighs less than a pound, compared with 1.5 pounds for the iPad. While its screen is smaller, it has almost the same resolution as the iPad, so almost as much material can be displayed on it.

The screen is sharp and generally responsive to touch, though, in my tests, a bit slower than the iPad’s screen. The Tab comes with 16 gigabytes of flash storage, the same as the base iPad. But with some carriers, this storage is internal and in others, it’s on a removable memory card. The card slot comes on all models and can hold up to 32 gigabytes at extra cost. The iPad, also at extra cost, comes in versions that go up to 64 gigabytes, all internal.

With its lighter weight and smaller size, I found the Tab easy to use while standing and moving. It easily fit in one hand, though for many tasks you’ll still need two hands.

Battery Life

Samsung and its partners make wildly varying battery claims for the Tab. The former says it can last up to 13 hours on a single charge, while T-Mobile claims just eight hours. I gave the Tab the same test I used for my iPad review: I put the screen on nearly full brightness, left the Wi-Fi on to collect email and played back-to-back videos until the unit died. My test Tab lasted six hours, 50 minutes, though at six hours, 10 minutes the screen dimmed irrevocably to a darkness level that made it useless. In the same test last spring, the iPad logged 11 hours, 28 minutes.

Cameras

The Tab has a 3-megapixel rear camera with flash and a 1.3-megapixel front camera mainly for video calls. Still-photographs and videos I took were of average quality, but videos taken with the front camera were fuzzy.

I tested video calling using a pre-release, tablet-optimized version of Qik, the software being preinstalled for this purpose on the Tab. Results were mixed. It will work over either cellular or Wi-Fi connections, but the version I tried wasn’t tuned for cellular, so we used Wi-Fi. In my conversation with a Qik executive, the call at first failed to go through. When it did go through, it worked fine for awhile, and then failed when I tried a feature designed to hide my image. Later, the audio dropped altogether. Qik says it is fixing the problems.

Software

The Tab uses the latest version of Android, and it generally worked very smoothly, even though Google has warned that Android isn’t yet ready for tablets. I was especially impressed with Samsung’s attractive and usable rewrites of the calendar, email and contacts apps, which, like their iPad cousins, use multiple panels to make them more computer-like, while still remaining touch-friendly.

I found the Web browser to be a bit jerky in zooming into text and scrolling through long pages. I tested several Adobe Flash videos and websites written in Flash. Sometimes they played and sometimes they didn’t. In all cases, they slowed the browser down. On one site written in Flash, I got a warning saying I might want to “abort” lest the computer become “unresponsive.” In another case, the Tab crashed. So I conclude that while the Tab does play Flash, it needs work on that score.

I downloaded a few third-party apps. I couldn’t find any that were rewritten with extra features for tablets, nor any way to discover these in the Android Market. Some of my downloaded apps scaled fine to tablet size. Others were surrounded by large black bars.

Cellular pricing

On an iPad, if you opt for cellular-data service, there is no contract and only two monthly prices—$14.99 for 250 megabytes and $25 for 2 gigabytes. On the Tab, it’s much more complicated. Verizon, which is selling only the $600 no-contract model, says its pricing will start at $20 a month for 1 gigabyte of data. Sprint charges $29.99 monthly for 2 gigabytes and $59.99 for 5 gigabytes. T-Mobile has different prices for no-contract and contract models, and different rates for new and existing customers. Just two examples: a new customer under contract on a Tab can pay $30 monthly for 200 megabytes or $50 for 5 gigabytes.

So, I urge Tab buyers to do the math carefully on the overall cost of the device under various carriers and plans.

Bottom Line

The Tab is attractive, versatile and competitively priced, though monthly cell fees can add up. It’s different enough from the iPad, yet good enough, to give consumers a real choice.

Find all his columns and videos at walt.allthingsd.com Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Apple Beats Earnings Estimates, but Low on Guidance, iPad Sales

Peter Kafka — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 20:37:11 +0000

First hit from Apple earnings: EPS of $4.64 and revenues of $20.34 billion. The consensus was $4.05 and $18.8 billion.

The Street won’t like guidance, though: Apple is predicting Q1 EPS of $4.80, below the $5.04 analysts were looking for. They will also sputter a bit on this number: Apple sold 4.19 million iPads, and the consensus was 4.7 million.

And then on the other hand, Apple sold 14.1 million iPhones last quarter, well above both the official 11 million consensus and the 13 million “what we’re really looking for” number.

Ominous/hopeful Steve Jobs quote: “We still have a few surprises left for the remainder of this calendar year.”

UPDATE: Live earnings call coverage here.

Other numbers you care about:

Macs sold: 3.89 million.

iPods sold: 9.05 million.

Press release text:

Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results
Record Mac, iPhone and iPad Sales
Highest Revenue and Earnings Ever

CUPERTINO, California—October 18, 2010—Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2010 fourth quarter ended September 25, 2010. The Company posted record revenue of $20.34 billion and net quarterly profit of $4.31 billion, or $4.64 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $12.21 billion and net quarterly profit of $2.53 billion, or $2.77 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 36.9 percent compared to 41.8 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 57 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Apple sold 3.89 million Macs during the quarter, a 27 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 14.1 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 91 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 9.05 million iPods during the quarter, representing an 11 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. The Company also sold 4.19 million iPads during the quarter.
“We are blown away to report over $20 billion in revenue and over $4 billion in after-tax earnings—both all-time records for Apple,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iPhone sales of 14.1 million were up 91 percent year-over-year, handily beating the 12.1 million phones RIM sold in their most recent quarter. We still have a few surprises left for the remainder of this calendar year.”
“We’re thrilled with the performance and strength of our business, generating almost $5.7 billion in cash flow from operations during the quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the first fiscal quarter of 2011, we expect revenue of about $23 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $4.80.”

Mac Users Are Getting New Outlook From Rival

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 02:03:34 +0000

A new, faster, better version of Microsoft Office is coming out Oct. 26. But it isn’t for Microsoft’s own Windows operating system. It is for the Macintosh computers made by the software giant’s archrival, Apple. And, among other things, it will bestow upon the Mac a benefit heretofore available only on Windows: Outlook. The popular email, calendar and contacts program is finally arriving on the Mac in a version that looks and works very much like the Windows version.

[ See post to watch video ]

The advent of a robust, full-featured Outlook for the Mac isn’t all that’s new in Office for Mac 2011, but it’s a big deal, especially for Mac users, or those wishing to switch to the Mac, who work in companies where Outlook is the standard. These folks already have been able to use the Windows version of Outlook on their machines, using special software that lets the Mac run Windows. But now, they can use a native Mac version of the program that can import data directly from Windows Outlook.

I’ve been testing this new version of Mac Office—in fact, I’m writing this column in its new edition of Word—and I like it a lot. While it isn’t an exact clone of Office for Windows, I found in my tests that each of its key components—Word, Excel and PowerPoint—has been significantly improved and made more compatible with its Windows sibling.

So, even Mac Office users who don’t use Outlook will be pleased by the changes. And, while there are some features in the Windows version still missing in the Mac edition, there are also some new Mac-only features. In general, there’s now more parity between the two.

Like the prior Mac version, Office 2008, released nearly three years ago, the new Office 2011 uses the same file formats as the Windows version. It can read and write Office files without any conversion or translation, so a document produced in, say, Word for the Mac, can be read by a user of Windows Word without the latter even knowing it was created on a Mac—and vice versa.

Unlike the 2008 version, the new Mac Office can seamlessly interact with Microsoft’s new stripped-down, free, online version of Office, called Office Web Apps. And it can save to, and open documents from, Microsoft’s free online SkyDrive file repository, or its SharePoint online service for businesses.

The first thing Mac Office users will notice about the new 2011 version is its speed. While the 2008 version was faster than its predecessors, this latest version is dramatically snappier. In my tests, all the components launched much, much faster than their 2008 counterparts, and opened even large documents much more quickly.

A new full screen view in Word shows just a single line of minimal tools.

High Fidelity

Another big plus is fidelity with Windows documents. Because the Windows and Mac operating systems are different, fidelity isn’t perfect, but, in my tests, it was much better in this new version. For instance, some fancy Word layouts and font treatments created in Windows that formerly looked wrong when opened on a Mac now look the same. This is especially noticeable in Excel, where charts and layouts on complex spreadsheets sometimes didn’t carry over. In my tests, I found that many of these incompatibles have been banished.

These fidelity improvements, however, are much better with documents created in the latest Windows version, called Office 2010, and are weaker with those created in older Windows versions. Also, the new Mac version has restored the same macro system present in the Windows version, so automated actions created by power users and companies in Windows documents can now be used in the Mac version.

There still are some things the Windows version does that the Mac version doesn’t. These include pivot charts in Excel, full video editing in PowerPoint, and the new “backstage” feature that presents printing and other options in a large, easier-to-use mode. But there also are some Mac-only features, including the ability to dynamically reorder PowerPoint slides in a 3-D view, plus a new Full Screen view in Word that allows reading and editing documents with no toolbars, or with just a single line of minimal tools.

The radically different Ribbon toolbar that appeared in Windows Office several years ago—a series of tabs organized by function—is also in this new Mac version. But, unlike in the Windows version, the new Mac Office retains the familiar menus and toolbar icons, and the Ribbon can be turned off completely, except in Outlook. However, unlike in the latest Windows version, you can’t add custom tabs to the Ribbon.

Outlook replaces a Microsoft (MSFT) email, contacts and calendar program in Mac Office called Entourage, which itself succeeded an old, very limited version of Outlook for the Mac produced years ago. Many users found Entourage clunky and complicated, and it couldn’t directly import data from Outlook on Windows.

Microsoft strove hard to make the new Outlook look and work like the one on Windows. There still are some Windows Outlook features the Mac version lacks, such as side-by-side calendars and task status reports, but, overall, I found it worked well.

Microsoft strove hard to make the new Outlook look and work very much like the one on Windows.

The Sync Situation

I was able to import a nearly 3-gigabyte Windows Outlook data file with no problems. And I was able to easily and perfectly import all my messages and settings from Apple’s own built-in Mail program and to sync with Apple’s (AAPL) built-in Mac address book. But Microsoft is still working on syncing with Apple’s iCal calendar program, and the Outlook calendar can’t sync with Google Calendar. Also, while the new Mac Outlook can import Windows Outlook data, it can’t export its data to Windows yet. Microsoft says it is also working on that.

In general, Outlook on the Mac proved fast and capable in my tests. It doesn’t work exactly like its Windows counterpart, but Windows users will find it very similar. And it has some Mac-specific features. For instance, its contents can be easily searched by the Mac’s built-in universal search feature, Spotlight, and can be backed up by the Mac’s Time Machine backup system.

Office for Mac 2011 will be available in two versions for average consumers: a $199 Home and Business edition, and a Home and Student version, which costs $119, but lacks Outlook, whereas Entourage was included in the $149 similarly named 2008 package. Prices on both new editions are higher if you want to install them on multiple machines. There is also a $99 special academic edition, mostly aimed at college stores, that includes Outlook, but has no option for multiple installations.

Microsoft’s new Mac Office is by far the best Mac version of the suite I’ve used, and I can recommend it.

Find Walt’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

Online Help for Parents Who Volunteer

Pui-wing Tam — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 01:03:29 +0000

It takes a lot to organize a classroom of 20 children. It can take even more to organize the kids’ busy parents—and that often means turning to technology to get everyone on the same page.

Over the past nine months, my first-grader’s school has seen that in spades. Like many elementary schools, ours relies on parent volunteers to help out with one-on-one reading with students and math exercises. In my 6-year-old’s class, at least two parent volunteers are needed a day. In the past, volunteers were organized the old-fashioned way on paper, with parents signing up for their preferred time slots for the month on a calendar sent home with their children.

But in recent years as more schools and families have gone digital, parents are opting for an online solution to organizing volunteer class time. And a host of volunteering and calendar services have popped up on the Web to oblige them. When I asked our school’s room parent which online sites people were using to organize volunteering, he blasted out an email to poll his network of room parents. The informal survey yielded one conclusion: Each classroom was using different services, each with their own perks and drawbacks. Among the hodge-podge of choices were well-known applications such as Yahoo Inc.’s Yahoo Groups and Google Inc.’s Calendar, as well as less familiar names including VolunteerSpot Inc.’s VolunteerSpot and Doodle AG’s Doodle.com.

All are easily accessible on the Web and are free (though some charge a fee for premium users). All allow a central organizer to set up a master calendar or group online and invite other people to join, thereby getting everyone onto the same technological platform.

VolunteerSpot lets an organizer create a calendar, with tasks parents could volunteer to do.

Each also has limitations. Some make it difficult to print a volunteer schedule. Others don’t have automatic reminders to notify a participant that their volunteer session is coming up, or they make it tough to export the calendar to be integrated with, say, your calendar at work.

Of all the technologies our school’s parents are using, Yahoo’s Groups has been around the longest. Launched in 1999, Yahoo says it now hosts more than 10 million groups that are accessed by some 120 million members. Signing up to create a Yahoo Group is a breeze—with a few clicks, people can name a group and invite others to join. Once set up, parents can post comments, send photos and other attachments to the group, and sign up for spots with an integrated calendar application. Over the years, Yahoo has added new features, including tools to help build an event and to gather RSVPs.

But some parents complain that using a Yahoo Group creates unnecessary spam when some people forget they’re communicating with a group instead of one on one. In addition, Groups’ calendar application is difficult to import and export. Yahoo says that later this year, it will roll out a refresh of Groups that will “enable smaller groups to do things more efficiently.”

Google Calendar, launched in 2007, got a fresh new look for the application last month. The application is also easy to create and to invite people to join. Other parents can share the calendar, see at a glance what volunteer spots are available and fill in the ones they want. Reminders are built in, and Google Calendar can sync with Microsoft Outlook or other calendaring systems.

One of our school’s first-grade classes, though, faced a hurdle when it came to joining their Google Calendar. Some parents said they couldn’t join because they didn’t have a Gmail email account and didn’t want to jump through the hoops of creating one. Google says people don’t have to have a Gmail account but adds there is often confusion between a Gmail account and a plain-vanilla Google account, which only requires people to enter a username and password.

No such puzzlement should exist with Doodle.com, which doesn’t ask users for their email. Launched in 2003 by a developer in Zurich, Doodle.com allows people to quickly get on a calendar, select dates and times for an event, then send out the link so people can fill in when they want to volunteer. But Doodle.com is designed primarily for setting up a business meeting, the company says. Organizing a month’s worth of classroom volunteers thus requires clicking each specific date to create a volunteer spot for it. In other services, you can bring up a month’s calendar. Printing out a Doodle.com calendar also entails someone first exporting the calendar to a PDF or an Excel spreadsheet.

One parent, who is a Doodle.com fan, says she finds the application is better used to organize one-off events such as a school field trip rather than maintaining an ongoing volunteer calendar.

VolunteerSpot was launched early last year by entrepreneur Karen Bantuveris, who says she was aggravated with the lack of tools to solve volunteer-coordinating problems at her child’s preschool. VolunteerSpot allows an organizer to create a calendar, use a tool called the planning wizard to choose tasks they need people to volunteer for, and then send the link out so people can chime in for what slots they can fill.

VolunteerSpot has gotten mixed reviews from our first-grade class. While our parent-volunteer coordinator said the website is very “usable”—with reminders automatically sent two days before a volunteer session, among other things—it was less smooth in some areas.

VolunteerSpot doesn’t allow people to see a month’s worth of volunteers at a glance; people have to click on each day to see who is volunteering, for instance. Printing a calendar isn’t easy. When I clicked on our class calendar, I could print out only my volunteer slots and not the entire class’s since I wasn’t the calendar’s administrator.

My first-grader’s teacher was particularly frustrated by those things since they prevented her from easily seeing who was volunteering when and from printing out a calendar to prompt laggards to volunteer. She says it meant she often had to bug our parent-volunteer coordinator for updates and to make changes to the calendar.

Ms. Bantuveris says the site is constantly adding features and that more than one person can be a calendar’s administrator, which allows them to make changes to a calendar’s settings. She adds that the site in February added an option allowing an administrator print out a master calendar.

Still, there’s one thing these technologies can’t overcome: parental resistance. One of our school’s first-grade classes started the academic year with VolunteerSpot—but quickly abandoned it. Instead, they switched to a paper calendar. “We just couldn’t get anyone to sign up online,” says the room parent for that class. With a paper calendar, she adds, the volunteering has gone much more smoothly.

Walter S. Mossberg will return June 10.

Write to Pui-Wing Tam at pui-wing.tam@wsj.com

Twitter Will Look Different in Some Way, Someday

Peter Kafka — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 11:39:22 +0000

The Twitter world is still trying to figure out how to interpret investor Fred Wilson’s “inflection point” blog post about the service’s future. But here’s a less controversial piece of news: Twitter may be getting a new look.

Doug Bowman, Twitter’s creative director, has posted a small screenshot of what he says “may be a significant redesign.”

Drumroll…

Okay! So. When are we doing to see the rest of it? Why will we care? Bowman won’t say. “Not final yet. What we can show without giving away the farm,” he writes.

In the absence of other information, there’s no choice but to speculate wildly about what Bowman is up to. So this may help: Check out the designer’s portfolio, which includes overhauls of Google’s (GOOG) Blogger and Calendar services, as well as Wired News. Enjoy.

Using the iPad as a Standalone Device

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 21:42:40 +0000

Can the iPad can be used totally on its own, or must you sync it with another computer? If I bought an iPad for my grandmother, who has no other computer, would she be able to just download apps and music and rent movies solely via the iTunes Store on the iPad?

Yes, but with a catch. Based on what Apple (AAPL) has said, iPad owners will be able to buy apps, music and books, and buy and rent video, right on the device, without requiring a PC or Mac running iTunes software. You can also synchronize contacts, email and calendar items over the air, from an online source, instead of over a cable from your computer.

However, Apple’s Web site suggests you’ll need to connect to a computer running iTunes in order to back up the iPad, and, if the iPhone is any guide, you will likely need to do the same to upgrade the iPad’s operating system whenever Apple updates it.

I enjoyed your article on the two new Lenovo computers you’ve tested. The ThinkPad Edge sounds like a machine that will suit my needs quite well. You mentioned in the article that the machine you tested was upgraded from the base model. What were the specifications of your test machine?

The $799 model I tested differs from the $579 base model by having a more powerful Intel (INTC) processor; 4 gigabytes of memory instead of 2 gigabytes; a 320-gigabyte hard disk versus 250 gigabytes; a different graphics card and a higher-capacity battery. Full specs are in the left-hand column on this Web page: http://bit.ly/7jNBcw.

In your column of March 18, you gave the advice: “There are easier ways to erase all cookies, by using a function in your Web browser.” How do you do this?

In Internet Explorer 8, select the Safety menu, choose “Delete Browsing History,” uncheck everything but “Cookies,” and click “Delete.” In Firefox 3.6, select the Tools menu, and then “Clear Recent History.” Then click “Details,” uncheck everything but “Cookies,” and pick “Everything” from the time range list.

In Safari 4.0, go to Preferences, then “Security,” then “Show Cookies,” then choose “Remove All.”

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online, free of charge, at the All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com.

iPad Battery and Nook vs. Kindle

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 01:56:35 +0000

Does the new Apple iPad have a removable battery? I haven’t seen any mention of this issue in all the stories about it.

A: No. Like Apple’s (AAPL) other current portable devices, the iPad has a sealed-in battery that isn’t user-replaceable. The company claims the battery gets about 10 hours of running time between charges.

When I use the zoom control in the Firefox Web browser, the whole page zooms, but I can’t seem to get text to enlarge very much. Can you help?

A: I have found that zooming in Firefox increases text size considerably. But there’s a feature that might help you. In the View menu, under Zoom, you can check on “Zoom Text Only.” This focuses the zooming function solely on the text and, in my quick tests, seemed to make the text get larger more rapidly. I was able to make the text really huge, in both the Windows and Mac versions of the browser.

I upgraded to Windows 7 and discovered that the calendar is no longer in my Live Mail. Why did Microsoft (MSFT) eliminate the calendar?

A: There is indeed a calendar in the latest version of Windows Live Mail. It can be called up from the menu in the lower left corner–it’s the second item, just beneath “Mail.” If you aren’t seeing it, you may have an older version, and you may want to download a fresh copy of the latest edition. You can get it at: download.live.com/wlmail.

It’s almost my birthday and my husband says he wants to get me a Kindle or a Nook. I read your review of Nook but was wondering what your thoughts are now that Nook has been updated and some glitches repaired.

A: I haven’t tested the Nook with the latest fixes. But, when I tested it in December, I found it not only to be slower than the Kindle, but to have a clumsier user interface, and a catalog of e-books that was mostly made up of pre-1923 books that are out of copyright.

So, unless Barnes & Noble (BKS) managed to overhaul the whole thing in a couple of months, I would still recommend for the moment going with the Kindle.

The other option would be to wait for Apple’s iPad, which will work as an e-reader and have a better screen and elegant software. But that product hasn’t even been released, so I can’t yet say how it would measure up.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and all of my other columns, online, free of charge, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com.

iPad Mania: Confessions of an Apple Luddite

Rachel Emma Silverman — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:30:15 +0000

Tech-aficionados the world over (and some Juggle commenters) are abuzz over Apple’s (AAPL) iPad, a new tablet device that falls somewhere between a laptop and an iPhone.

It’s too early to know all the myriad Juggle-friendly uses the iPad may have (reading novels and magazines or watching videos on the commute, for one). But its sister product, the iPhone, has already proven to be a necessity in many busy families, providing apps that do everything from pacifying antsy children and keeping them entertained on long plane rides to calendar and organizing programs. (Some of the top kid-friendly apps can be found here and here.)

Although I’m thankful that my husband’s iPhone can make all sorts of nifty animal sounds that keep my son amused in a pinch, I confess I haven’t yet succumbed to the lure of an iPhone, preferring the old-fashioned keypad of my trusty BlackBerry.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

New Mozilla Email Is Easier to Use, But Not Easy Enough

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:04:53 +0000

The good thing about open-source software is that it harnesses the talents of techies around the world. The bad thing about open-source software is that it’s too often geared toward such techies, not average folks. That’s why there haven’t been many widely popular open-source products for mass-market computer users. The shining exception is the Firefox Web browser, which is published by the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation.

Now, Mozilla is trying for another win, with a new, overhauled version of the companion email program for Firefox, called Thunderbird. Unlike Firefox, Thunderbird never really caught on, partly because it was too complicated. The foundation has spent two years streamlining, simplifying and automating the email program. The result is the newly released Thunderbird 3, which will compete with products such as Microsoft Outlook on Windows and Apple Mail on the Mac.

[ See post to watch video ]

While many people these days are content to store and manage all their email using Web-based interfaces provided by Yahoo (YHOO), Google (GOOG) and others, plenty of folks still want to use local programs. These save the messages to their own hard disks, include oodles of customized features, and can be more easily used offline.

But the choices among such local email programs are dwindling. Outlook, which can be bloated and slow for consumers, has driven out many competitors on Windows, and the new Windows 7 doesn’t even come with a built-in email program. On the Mac, most people seem to use Apple’s (AAPL) very good built-in email program, Apple Mail, but it’s hard for third parties to customize.

So, can Thunderbird 3, which is free and runs on Windows, Mac and Linux computers, become the Firefox of email, the go-to choice for average users looking for an alternative to the big guys?

After testing the new edition for about a week, I believe that Thunderbird 3 is a significant improvement over earlier versions of the product. It is indeed a step forward, with some interesting new features and generally simpler operation. But, in my view, all the techie rough edges still haven’t been sanded off and it’s still clumsy in a few places.

First, the pluses. Mozilla has brought tabs, now standard in Web browsers, to Thunderbird. If you simply double click on an email in a list, it opens in its own tab. That way you can consult key emails when you need them without opening a welter of overlapping windows. If you do a search, the search results appear in their own tab.

The new Thunderbird also has a very cool filtered search system. It not only brings up all messages containing your search term, but shows a graphical timeline of the message traffic on that search term. In a left panel next to the list of search results, it lists all the people mentioned in the messages turned up by the search—even if you weren’t searching for them—and lets you further refine the results by just clicking on their names.

There is also a rapid way to add email addresses in a message header to your address book: You just click on a star icon next to the name. There also are multiple ways to view folders. With one click, you can choose to see a list of only unread folders, or favorite folders, or recent folders.

Another cool feature is an attachment reminder. If you are writing a message and you include words like “attachment,” “attached,” or “enclosed,” Thunderbird will pop up a yellow warning at the bottom of the screen reminding you to attach a file.

And, throughout the program, the designers have tried to simplify things, so you don’t have to be an engineer to use it. One example, which is a catch-up feature, is an account set-up wizard that spares you from knowing the names of servers.

But there are still too many issues for me. Thunderbird can’t be set to automatically show a CC or BCC line in a new email you’re composing. Every new address you add is set as a “To” address, and you must click on a drop-down menu to change it to CC or BCC—an extra step that becomes tedious quickly.

In addition, unlike in Outlook or Apple Mail, you can only have a single signature for each account. The program also doesn’t support Microsoft Exchange for corporate mail, unless IT administrators make changes at their servers.

And I found that the program’s preferences and settings, while improved, can still be too techie. For instance, to tell the program to display certain graphics in email, even though they can pose a security risk, you must choose an option called “mailnews.message_display.disable_remote_image.”

To be fair, because Thunderbird is an open-source program, it relies on third-party add-ons and extensions for some features, such as multiple signatures. But some of the add-ins I tried, like a built-in calendar that can synchronize with Google, took multiple complicated steps that would likely deter a mainstream user.

If you’re looking for a new email client, the new and improved Thunderbird is worth a try, but it’s not yet the Firefox of email.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Apple iPad Event Liveblog

John Paczkowski — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:00:40 +0000

After months of feverish speculation and as many years of wishful thinking, Apple uncrated its tablet computer–the iPad–at an invitation-only event in San Francisco this morning.

Liveblog

9:13 am PT: Quite a scene here this morning; the queue for media credentials is nearly as long as some of the iPhone 3G launch lines I saw a few years back. Moments ago, an Apple PR rep slipped through the doors of the Yerba Buena Center to ask that the press waiting outside take two big steps back. The last time that happened to me, I was at a Jesus Lizard show.

9:54 am: The doors open and the press enters the event hall. Initially, at least, the scene is pretty crazy. “This is like the subway in New York,” an attendee behind me jokes. More like the subway in Tokyo, I think to myself.

A Bob Dylan soundtrack plays as media and guests file in. It’s momentarily interrupted by a “please take your seats, our event is about to begin” announcement.

10:00 am: Interesting stage set-up today: Instead of an empty stage or a simple table, there are a black leather chair and side-table. Lights are dimming….

And Steve Jobs takes the stage to a standing ovation.

“We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical product, but first a few updates….A few weeks ago we sold our 250 millionth iPod…I didn’t want to let that moment pass without recognizing it.”

10:05 am: Jobs offers a quick overview of Apple’s retail operations and some of the new stores it has opened recently before moving on to the iTunes App Store. “A few weeks ago we announced that three billion applications had been downloaded from the App Store–that’s in 18 months…amazing.”
He notes, as he did in the company’s earnings release the other day, that Apple is now a $50 billion company.

Apple is a mobile devices company, says Jobs, “the largest mobile devices company in the world now. Larger than Sony’s mobile device business, larger than Samsung’s and, astonishingly, Nokia’s as well.”

10:07 am: A quick historical overview now. Jobs touches on the first PowerBook, introduced in 1991. He moves on to the MacBook and then the iPhone.

“All of us use laptops and smartphones, now. And the question has arisen lately: Is there room for a device in the middle?…We’ve pondered this question as well.”

This “middle” device, says Jobs, must be better at doing certain tasks than either the laptop or smartphone. If there’s going to be a third-device category, it must be better at browsing the Web, video, photos, music, etc.

“Some folks say this device is a netbook…. The problem is, netbooks aren’t better at anything.”

10:10 am: But we have something that is, says Jobs, “and it’s called the iPad.”

Photos of the device appear on the giant screens. Very thin. Very slick. “IPad offers the best Web browsing experience there is–way better than laptops.” There is no camera that I can see. That’s not going to go over well with folks hoping for a device that supports video iChat.

10:13 am: Further details: The “iPad is a dream to type on,” Jobs says, pointing out its life-sized onscreen keyboard. It’s also an awesome way to enjoy media. iTunes, iTunes University and YouTube HD support are built in.

10:14 am: Jobs sits down to demo the device: “Using this thing is remarkable. It’s so much more intimate and capable than the laptop.” He loads Safari and surfs over to the New York Times (NYT). The iPad loads quickly and Jobs is able to easily navigate the page, loading stories and zooming in on articles.

10:15 am: Demonstrating landscape and portrait now. “This device adapts to the way I want to use it.”

Definitely an impressive browsing experience. Fast and elegant.

Now, an overview of Mail. Also elegant. Nice split-screen presentation. Hit compose, and a nice onscreen keyboard pops up. Jobs types out a message to his colleagues at Apple. Seems relatively easy.

10:19 am: Moving on to iPad’s photo capabilities. It supports iPhoto’s Events, Faces and Places features. It also offers built-in slideshows complete with soundtracks and transitions.

Running a slideshow demo, Jobs pauses and looks out at the audience with a Chesire Cat-wide grin. He’s clearly relishing this moment.

10:22 am:: The iTunes experience on iPad is much as you would expect. Similar, if not identical, to what the software currently offers. Calendar and Contacts apps are also nice and, again, similar to what you’d find on a MacBook or iPhone.

10:24 am: Demoing Google Maps now. The iPad supports Google Street View and the implementation is very slick.

10:25 am: Moving on to video. Jobs calls up an HD clip from Google’s (GOOG) YouTube and displays it in both portrait and landscape. That finished, he fires up iTunes and loads “Star Trek” to demo the device’s video features, scrubbing, etc. Then he shows us a clip from Pixar’s “Up.” Tap to go full-screen. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

10:27 am: Watching that is nothing like actually having one in your hands, says Jobs.

iPad is one-half-inch thick, weighs 1.5 pounds, and comes with 9.7 inch IPS display–“very high-quality display”
Full capacitive multitouch
16GB-64GB flash storage
iPad is powered by our Apple’s custom silicon–“We did it inhouse and it just screams,” says Jobs.
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, accelerometer, compass.
Battery life: 10 hours.

“And in addition to 10 hours of battery life, iPad offers a full month of standby time,” Jobs notes. “It’s also a good environmental citizen,” he adds, noting that it’s a very green device.

10:31 am: Jobs invites Scott Forestall to the stage to talk about apps on the device.

“We built the iPad to run virtually every app in the App Store right out of the box,” Forestall says.

Evidently, a built-in pixel-doubling feature automatically scales iPhone apps to full-screen iPad apps.

10:35 am: Forestall runs an unmodified racing game from the App Store. He first demos it in the screen size of an iPhone. Then, using the pixel-doubling feature, he blows it out to full screen. Very slick.

“So you can buy the iPad, take it home, hook it up and download all your iPhone apps and run them with no problem at all,” he says.

Forestall announces a new iPhone software development kit specifically geared to the iPad. He notes that iPad-specific applications will be featured “front and center” in the App Store.
He then invites Gameloft’s Mark Hickey to the stage to demo some new games the company has developed using the new SDK.

Hickey notes that the iPad’s additional screen space is a boon for developers, particularly those building games. He demos a first-person shooter that showcases this. “We’re now able to interact with the game world in ways that we weren’t able to before.”

10:40 am: Next up, the New York Times. Martin Nisenholtz takes the stage to talk about its iPad effort.

After talking up the Times iPhone app, Nisenholtz segues to the the paper’s new iPad app: “We think we’ve captured the experience and essence of reading the newspaper.”

The app is largely what you’d expect. Tap to resize text, zoom, breaking news updates, video. “This is everything you love about the paper and everything you love about the Web.”

10:44 am: Now, a painting application called Brushes that was famously used to create a New Yorker cover.
The app is impressive enough on iPhone; it’s even more so on the iPad. It supports “playback” of paintings, and as the presenter notes, brings us one step closer to a real virtual painting studio.

10:46 am: EA’s Travis Boatman take’s the stage. The topic of his presentation: Need For Speed.

“Building for the iPad is a little bit like holding a high-def TV screen a few inches from your face,” he says.

The iPad version of Need for Speed boasts a number of touch-activated enhancements: Tap on the car to view its interior, tap on the rear-view mirror to look behind you.

10:52 am: Up next: MLB.com’s Chad Evans. He demos the outfit’s iPad-optimized app, which uses the device’s additional screen space to display video excerpts and MLB TV.

MLB TV can be streamed like and enhanced with onscreen stats and data. “This big display really allows us to create a much more immersive experience,” Evans says.

10:52 am: Forestall returns to the stage to make another brief plug for the SDK before Jobs takes over for him.
“Let me show you another one of our apps that we’re very excited about,” Jobs says. “An e-book reader.”

Behind him a photo of Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle appears. “Amazon did a great job with their reader and we’re standing on their shoulders here….Today we’re announcing the iBooks store,” says Jobs, adding that it will be supported initially by Penguin, Simon & Schuster and a number of other big publishers.

The iBooks Store interface begins with a simple bookshelf view. Tap the screen and it loads a more iTunes-like view. Purchase a book and it’s added to your bookshelf with a slick little animation.

The reading experience seems very appealing. Much more book-like. From where I sit, the pages look like they’re written on paper.

“We use the e-pub format, the most popular open-book format in the world,” says Jobs. “We think iPad is going to be a very popular e-reader not just for bestsellers, but for textbooks as well.”

10:58 am: And here’s another new product announcement: A new version of iWork tweaked for use on the iPad. Jobs invites Phil Schiller on stage to demo it.

“We have a completely new version of Keynote, a completely new version of Pages and a completely new version of Numbers–all optimized for multitouch.

Schiller demos Keynote first. Creating presentations appears intuitive and simple–a slide navigator on the left, tap to load individual slides in the main window, drag to rearrange.

Nice use of multitouch gestures to enhance the app. Pinch to resize photos, tap to insert animations and transitions. These are all fairly advanced techniques and the device seems to handle them well.

11:05 am: Moving on to Pages now. Also impressive, though creating a written document on a tablet device like the iPad seems like it might be a drag. A nice tool for editing, though. Simple controls.

11:07 am: Moving on to Numbers. This application also makes good use of multitouch gestures and boasts a data-entry keyboard along with some 250 built-in functions. The software’s gesture capabilities makes Excel look antediluvian.
Powerful and fast.

So what’s Apple going to charge for iWork? $9.99 each, says Schiller, who notes that all three applications are compatible with their Mac versions.

Jobs returns to the stage, grinning. “Isn’t that great?” he asks for what’s easily the 10th time. iPad, he says, will synch to Mac or PC via USB.

11:14 am: Evidently, there will be two iPad models–one with Wi-Fi-only and one with Wi-Fi and 3G. The 3G device will come with two plans: 250 MB per month for $14.99, unlimited data for $29.99.

And who’s the carrier? AT&T.

A small groan ripples through the audience.

Jobs allows that AT&T is also throwing in free Wi-Fi at its hotspots. He follows that up by noting that there are no contracts for the iPad. You can cancel at anytime.

All iPad 3G models are unlocked and they use new GSM micro SIMS, so chances are they will just work, Jobs says, after noting that Apple hasn’t yet worked out international carrier deals.

11:16 am: Now a quick overview as a wrap-up. Jobs touts the overall tablet experience along with the new iBook app and iBook Store. “This is an amazing product with tremendous breadth. What should we charge for it?…When we set out to develop the iPad we not only had aggressive UI goals, we had aggressive price goals, because we wanted to put this in the hands of as many people as possible….IPad pricing starts not at $999, but $499,” Jobs says to a huge round of applause.

$499 for 16GB base model.
32GB for $599.
64GB for $699.
Adding 3G requires an additional fee.

Apple will ship Wi-Fi models in 60 days and 3G models in 90.

11:20 am: Apple has created new accessories for the iPad: A standard dock and a second dock with a keyboard attached to it. “Keep one of these in your den and you can write the next “War and Peace” on it.” The final accessory, a new case that doubles as a stand.

Running a video now. It features a number of Apple execs enthusiastically talking up the iPad.

11:25 am: Let me circle back here for a moment to pricing. Adding 3G to iPad requires an additional $130. So we’re talking $629 for the 16GB model, $729 for the 32GB and $829 for the 64GB version.

Designer Jon Ives on the iPad: “In many ways iPad defines our vision, our sense of what’s next.”

11:32 am: Jobs returns to the stage and recalls the “middle device” scenario he mentioned earlier today. “Can we create this new category? The bar is set pretty high, but we think we’ve got the goods.”

“This is our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price,” he adds. “The reason the iPad is going to be so great is because Apple has always strived to be at the junction of technology and liberal arts.”

And with that he concludes. Lights go up and Dylan begins playing over the speakers again.

View the slideshow

PREVIOUSLY:

Apple’s Tablet: A $2.8 Billion Business?

Apple’s Tablet: MacBook Airbus?

Apple Announces Jan. 27 Special Event: “Come See Our Latest Creation”

Major Apple Product Announcement Set for Wednesday, Jan. 27

Apple Pitching Tablet to Publishing Industry; Spring Launch Expected

Time (Finally) for the Tablet? Apple Developers Supersizing Their Apps for January Event.

The Apple Tablet Is Delayed? So What?

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Apple’s Tablet: Read Different?

Imaginary Demand for Mythical Apple Tablet Exceeds All Estimates

Apple Tablet Coming to AT&T?

New From Piper Jaffray Analyst Gene Munster: The Apple iPad

Rumored Apple Netbook Actually an E-Book?

iTablet: Apple’s Killer App for Higher Ed

iFugly

More on the Nexus One

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:08:52 +0000

In reviewing Google’s new Nexus One phone, you said its memory is expandable to 32 gigabytes, but that the portion of memory used for storing apps is just 190 megabytes. Is the expandable memory unusable for apps? Is memory for apps expandable?

A: On the Nexus One, the Motorola Droid and other Android phones, there are two main types of memory: one internal, which is fixed, and the other external, in the form of removable memory cards, which the user can increase in capacity. In general, apps can be stored only in a small, restricted portion of internal memory, which on the Nexus One is a meager 190 megabytes. Although there are exceptions, apps can’t generally be stored on the roomier removable memory cards, though some files they rely upon, like graphics, can be offloaded onto the cards.

Google acknowledges this is a limitation, but says it designed the system to protect apps from being copied by merely removing the memory card and inserting it into a PC which could duplicate its contents. The company says it is working on ways to secure the memory cards to the satisfaction of the app developers, so that apps could be stored on them. Meanwhile, Android phones can’t hold nearly as many apps, especially sophisticated large apps, as some users might like.

AT&T and Verizon are each saying that they have wide areas of coverage. Can you tell me who really has the widest area of coverage for cellphone signals?

If you are comparing basic cellphone signal availability, each of the two leaders has a very wide footprint. However, Verizon claims a larger geographic footprint when it comes to 3G networks, which are currently the fastest widely deployed cellular data networks. AT&T claims its 3G is the fastest. But, partly because AT&T has the iPhone, which is both popular and makes heavy data usage very easy, its network too often seems overwhelmed in large cities, in my experience. Verizon so far lacks a specific phone with similar popularity which users employ to consume as much data, and thus network capacity, as iPhone users typically do. However, iPhone-class phones like the Motorola Droid and the Nexus One, if they sell well, will test the Verizon network’s robustness.

Any idea how well or badly the new Google Nexus One syncs with Macs for things like Calendars, Notes, Address Books etc.?

The Nexus One doesn’t come with software for syncing with computers, whether Macs or PCs. It is primarily intended to sync with online calendars and address books, not those stored locally on computers. It also lacks software for syncing even larger files, like music, photos and videos. Its method for transferring those files from Macs and PCs is to connect the phone via a USB cable, causing the phone to appear to the computer as an external hard disk. You then must manually drag and drop files onto the Nexus One’s icon. In other words, Google doesn’t supply any equivalent to Apple’s iTunes or the BlackBerry media-syncing software. However, the third-party program doubleTwist, available at doubletwist.com, is designed to function as a sort of iTunes for syncing Android, Palm and BlackBerry devices. It runs on Macs and PCs and even looks a bit like iTunes. But it only syncs media files, not calendars or address books.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Droid Memory, Palm to iPod Touch, and iMacs for Older Users

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:22:58 +0000

I have read that the Motorola Droid from Verizon has a limited amount of memory for storing third-party apps, no matter how much total memory you add to it. Is this true?

A: That’s right. It’s a characteristic of Android, the Droid’s operating system made by Google, and it’s something I noted as a weakness when I reviewed the first Android phone over a year ago.

Even though the Droid comes with 16 gigabytes of memory, in the form of a removable card, apps can’t be stored on this memory card. They must be stored in a special area of internal memory, which in the case of the Droid totals only a measly 256 megabytes, about a fourth of one gigabyte. The memory card is reserved instead for things like documents, music, videos and pictures. That limits the total number of apps the phone can hold at any one time.

Google says the amount of internal memory allotted for apps is up to the hardware makers, and notes that the Droid has twice as much as the original Android phone. It also says that makers of complex apps that use things like graphics that are ancillary to the core app itself could theoretically offload these files to the memory cards.

But users of Apple’s competing iPhone can devote nearly all of its 16 gigabytes of memory to storing third-party apps, allowing many more apps to be stored on the phone.

I have all my data (addresses, calendar, notes) stored on my Palm Zire. I’d like to get an iPod Touch, but can’t figure out how to transfer the Palm calendar. Can you help? Or, do you know of any other “smart” handheld that will allow me to import my Palm data and give me Internet/email access?

A: There are various workarounds for doing the transfer to an iPod Touch, but, since you ask, there is another smart phone with great Internet capabilities that comes with a way to do it simply and directly: the Palm Pre. It’s based on a new and different operating system than your Zire is, called webOS, and is designed to sync with wireless contact and calendar sources rather than desktop programs.

But Palm has developed a one-time, one-way utility for transferring data from desktop software used by an older Palm to one of the wireless calendar and contact services with which the Pre was designed to sync. More information is at: http://bit.ly/2ivFI.

I want to buy a new computer and I really like the new iMac with the 27″ screen. I am 72 years old, which is one of the reasons I want the larger screen. Please tell me if you think my buying this iMac is a good idea. Is there some negative aspect of the iMac that I should be aware of?

A: I gave the new iMac with the huge screen a positive review, so I obviously think it’s a good computer. But, if by mentioning your age you mean to imply that you have vision issues, you should be aware that the new iMac’s screen isn’t just physically large, but is high resolution.

That allows it to pack a lot more content onto the screen, but, depending on what program you’re using, it can make the text small. Word processors, email programs and Web browsers usually allow you to enlarge text, but not all programs do.

The Mac itself has a system-wide zooming feature, but that makes some tasks harder to work with. I recommend you go to a store and play with the big iMac for a while to make sure you feel comfortable with its screen resolution.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.