What will the iPad do for musicians?

[jones-y]

Yea, Sony is pretty good when it comes to following in Apple's foot steps.

Yeah, bet they wish they'd invented and popularised the portable audio playback device.

Too bad they didn't have the wherewithal to capitalize... Too big and too slow. Now they're wannabes...

Its almost laughably sad: There's a Sony Style right next to the Apple store in the Pentagon City Mall in No. VA. The contrast is stark. Apple Store: full of both employees and customers/browser. Sony Style: devoid of both, save the obligatory cash register drone.

To capitalize? On Walkmans? Are you serious? Because honestly I can't understand if you are or if this is a joke. Walkmans defined decades, iPods have been around, since what? 2001? Let's give it 20 more years and see what happens. We'll talk then.

Yes I'm very serious. The iPod should've been Sony's product. Given the legacy of the walkman, it should have been reinvented as an mp3 player. They failed with the minidisc and gracefully bowed out.

The world was ripe for it, with the napster filesharing phenomenon going on at the time.

Instead it went to another company with more vision. And that's the problem. Sony no longer has the vision. Too big and too slow. Look at their tablet announcement....

And I'm surprised if you really think the iPod is not considered to be a decade defining product right now. The decade is almost over (decade ends at the end of 2010, contrary to what they say on the news...) I'm hard pressed to think of another digital product that will be associated with the 2000's more than the ipod... The cultural impact, the visibility, the whole deal.... All very walkman-like, just way bigger. Shoulda been Sony.

As for my second point, I'll concede. I never said they didn't make a good product or have good sales in that market. I'm just saying its indicative of the way they are viewed as a company. Sony: Your dad's cool company...

[jones-y]

Here's my old HP T1100. It comes with a 1.1GHz processor, it's thin, light, runs XP and flash. It's almost 8 years old now. IMO it's still the coolest computer ever designed.

Cool! But the one thing missing is that the OS and apps it runs are not designed for touch interfaces... IMO that's what the tablet market has been missing.

[ericj23]

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

Every month more than 240 million users uses facebook games - Rather more than who download them from itunes.

Some of those games have been converted to games for the iphone. So in order to get his market Steve is banking on people giving up on facebook or so many of the games etc being converted to iproducts. Then as html 5 slowly comes in this little hiccup doesn't matter. The problem comes if google or nokia or whoever get it working in flash 10 - my nokia n900 can run the real facebook at the moment, but real time apps are not exactly in stellar quality

A little improvement and all apples rivals will be saying when advertising is run facebook properly - don't have to end your game to read texts etc. And a lot on nontechie users will gladly buy a cheper device tht does what they want it too

Flash 10 mobile comes out about the same time as the pad - we will see who will win

I hope it's not apple - I have root access on my phone which doesn't invalidate my warranty - in fact the owners encourage it. It's called freedom

[TristezaOrange]

Yea, Sony is pretty good when it comes to following in Apple's foot steps.

Yeah, bet they wish they'd invented and popularised the portable audio playback device.

Too bad they didn't have the wherewithal to capitalize... Too big and too slow. Now they're wannabes...

Its almost laughably sad: There's a Sony Style right next to the Apple store in the Pentagon City Mall in No. VA. The contrast is stark. Apple Store: full of both employees and customers/browser. Sony Style: devoid of both, save the obligatory cash register drone.

To capitalize? On Walkmans? Are you serious? Because honestly I can't understand if you are or if this is a joke. Walkmans defined decades, iPods have been around, since what? 2001? Let's give it 20 more years and see what happens. We'll talk then.

Yes I'm very serious. The iPod should've been Sony's product. Given the legacy of the walkman, it should have been reinvented as an mp3 player.

The world was ripe for it, with the napster filesharing phenomenon going on at the time.

Instead it went to another company with more vision. And that's the problem. Sony no longer has the vision. Too big and too slow. Look at their tablet announcement....

And I'm surprised if you really think the iPod is not considered to be a decade defining product right now. The decade is almost over (decade ends at the end of 2010, contrary to what they say on the news...) I'm hard pressed to think of another digital product that will be associated with the 2000's more than the ipod... The cultural impact, the visibility, the whole deal.... All very walkman-like, just way bigger. Shoulda been Sony.

As for my second point, I'll concede. I never said they didn't make a good product or have good sales in that market. I'm just saying its indicative of the way they are viewed as a company. Sony: Your dad's cool company...

But that's exactly it: the iPod is a decade-defining product indeed. Walkmans defined the portable music player of the 80s and 90s though. Plus, they are still around. So you can't make a fair comparison. You will be able to do that in 15 years, by which time Apple is going to be your kids father's cool company.

Any large corporation is too big and too slow, I'll give you that. One upside of that for Sony is that it can throw money everywhere and see what sticks.

[headquest]

I think it's odd to portray SONY as a huge corporation and Apple as - somehow - the little guy who is flexible, innovative, new, etc. We're talking here about two of the biggest companies in the world!

According to the National Geographic State of the Earth 2010 publication, in terms of brand value, Apple currently ranks #24 in the world and Sony is right next at #25. IBM and Microsoft are nos.2 & 3 by the way, behind CocaCola. Google is #10.

Sony make great products though. And industry statistics show that their laptops are more reliable than Apple ones FWIW.

[robogone]

Not disagreeing, but what does 'brand value' actually represent? Does it correlate with any of the various ways of measuring the wealth of a company such as turnover or value of assets?

[zerocrossing]

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

Every month more than 240 million users uses facebook games - Rather more than who download them from itunes.

Yes, that maybe true but I'd like to see actual income numbers. Facebook games tend to be free.

[emdot_ambient]

Q: What will the iPad do for musicians?

A: Set them back $800

[eduardo_b]

No one here knows anything about the internal workings of Apple as a company, so all of this is pure speculation.

I'm guessing all employees sign NDAs that extend well beyond separation.

[donkey tugger]

I can't see that you can wipe your arse on it if caught sans le bog paper (unless the wee man Jobs has more to to tell..). In that way it'll never replace newspapers or books.

[robogone]

I can't see that you can wipe your arse on it if caught sans le bog paper (unless the wee man Jobs has more to to tell..). In that way it'll never replace newspapers or books.

More easily washable than newspapers or books though.

[emdot_ambient]

I can't see that you can wipe your arse on it if caught sans le bog paper (unless the wee man Jobs has more to to tell..). In that way it'll never replace newspapers or books.

More easily washable than newspapers or books though.

Not as biodegradable, though.

[tomg]

Here's my old HP T1100. It comes with a 1.1GHz processor, it's thin, light, runs XP and flash. It's almost 8 years old now. IMO it's still the coolest computer ever designed.

Cool! But the one thing missing is that the OS and apps it runs are not designed for touch interfaces... IMO that's what the tablet market has been missing.

I just bought a new (my third tablet-pc) Fujitsu T5010. I didn't buy the dual touch/pen interface but they have it for a price. I do a lot of fine pc board and schematic work. A finger is way too fat and clumsy.

The T5010 is awesome! My favorite part is that it came with Vista installed but it also came with XP and a free Win7 upgrade. Naturally I'm running XP. The best thing is every piece of PC software I have runs on my tablets too. I didn't have to buy a single new app or learn a new way of doing anything.

I've still got several touch screen PCs. 3 - Fujitsu 1600s and a 3500. Recently I put a touch screen on my Asus 1000 netbook. The Asus tablet/netpad looks like a good alternative for people that don't want to buy new software but would still like a netpad for less than $500.

http://www.amazon.com/T91MT-8-9-Inch-Bl ... 692&sr=8-1

[robogone]

No one here knows anything about the internal workings of Apple as a company, so all of this is pure speculation.

I'm guessing all employees sign NDAs that extend well beyond separation.

[spaceman]

When it comes out, I'm going to buy two and stick them on a black hat and pretend I'm some sort of technologically advanced version of Mickey Mouse.