TECHNOLOGY and MEDIA

Welcome to the party – Apple

This week Apple released its newest product, the iPad mini.  As the name indicates it is a clone of the iPad 2 but smaller.  If you go to the Apple website,  http://www.apple.com/ca/?cid=wwa-ca-kwg-ipad-00020, and watch the promotional videos, you would think Apple has created a whole new and revolutionary product line, but that is the company’s spin on things. 

In reality, the iPad mini is a late comer to the small-size tablet market which was long ago developed by such well known names as  Kindle, Nook, Blackberry Playbook, Sony Reader, HP, Dell, and practically every computer manufacturer in the world!!!  

And just do a Google search for “iPad mini vs. Samsung Galaxy Note 2” and you will find reviewers are consistently rating the new Samsung product far superior to the iPad mini.

The long anticipated Galaxy Note 2, the second generation of the Samsung Galaxy Note (combo smart phone-tablet)  goes on sale in the U.S. October 24 and 25.  Is Apple’s ‘announcement’ of the iPad mini on October 23 a fluke or is Apple running scared?

The iPad mini will not go on sale in the U.S. until November 2, or 10 days after the Samsung Note 2.  It will be much pricier (as is Apple’s long standing markup policy), has no slot to add/change the memory card and no access to change the battery -- unlike all other manufacturers!!!

Steve Jobs, when the Blackberry mini-tablet Playbook was released in April, 2011, publically and on camera berated the mini-size Playbook and all similar sized devices.  Only the large tablet size, he asserted, would meet consumer needs.  So no mini-tablet from Apple or, at least, only over his dead body.

Well, now that Steve Jobs is no longer, Apple has blinked and joined the crowded market.  Its video promotional says it all:  the iPad is too big to hold in one hand while walking or moving and needs a table underneath; and it is too big to fit into a woman’s purse!  So the iPad mini was designed to solve both problems. 

Wow, what an insight!!!!   Surprising how the same ideas occurred to and were marketed by Sony in 2006 (and whose Reader mini-tablet computer is now on its 10^th version), Amazon in 2007, Barnes and Noble in 2009 to name the best known.  The Samsung Galaxy Note 2  is the second generation of this remarkable mini-table series, so who is kidding who when Apple claims it is being ‘innovative”?

Apple may be the most valuable stock in the world and the darling of North America’s media hype but its sales worldwide are nothing to brag about and its latest invention, the iPad mini, is proof that Apple is no longer – if it ever was – a world leader in computer innovation.

Welcome to the real world, Apple, and, sorry, Steve Jobs, you were wronnngggg!!!