Well, it will get more memory and a faster processor, eventually dual-core. Not much of a surprise here.
I hope that it’ll get the necessary power to support CoreImage filters, one of the few Core-Animation parts that are still OS-X only. What is in for the user? Well, fast blur and shadows mostly, with all the consequences this has for interfaces.

At least some of the models will have a camera and most likely even a 2nd cam – though I’m not convinced that the latter makes a lot of  sense. I really hope that the old model or a variant without camera will still be available, otherwise the iPad is mostly out in automotive, engineering and related fields, where such cameras would not be acceptable.

The case material will most likely change, as the sharper radius shown in prototypes most likely could not be machined in aluminium. Though rumor sites claim a carbon casing, I’d rather expect a „Liquid Metal“ back that looks similar to th current iPod touch back.

Retina display – would be a dream, yet highly unlikely. A resolution change will (hopefully) come next year. Yet I hope they glue the screen to the glass similar to the iPhone 4, it does wonders to image quality. I see no reasons why the display size should change.

The touchscreen could be improved in two aspects, though this is pure speculation on my part: At least some limited pressure sensibility (or rather pressure area sensibility) would be interesting, and a display that would additionally accept standard pen input without the thick pens we can use today would be great for many applications.

SD-Card slot? Nope. The camera connection kit works fine, this is not an issue Apple will deal with further IMO.

Thunderbolt aka Lightpeak? Maybe this is the small „mystery port“ at the upper edge of the device which was reported by some sites. This would make a lot of sense, because it would speed up synchronizing plus it could double as a high resolution video output. However, not much actually points to that direction. Nonetheless much more likely than SD-Card-slot or Retina ツ

Basic me.com for free? Apple’s invitation usually means something. I doubt that it’s coincidence that the calendar motive is so big here (currently the calender certainly is not the strongest part in the iPad). So I expect that they open me.com for all their customers at least for calendar sync and similar light weight features, with the (paid) option of storing photos, videos, apps, data etc.

The event will start on Wednesday 19:00 European time. Don’t you dare to call me then ツ

For both partners this is a last time opportunity. Android is eating away the profits at the low end and Apple is dominating the high end.  They will have a tough time trying to squeeze in between. Fighting a two front war isn’t fun anyway, and two loosing armies aren’t a strong coalition either.

Nokia is betting big here, but IMO it’s already too late for them.

Update 11/2/11: As expected, they announced it… not that there are short of ambition:

There are other mobile ecosystems. We will disrupt them.
There will be challenges. We will overcome them.
Success requires speed. We will be swift.

Well, let’s see. Neither Nokia nor Microsoft have been swift recently, but they better start now. Symbian will be outphased to milk the cheap end of the market as long as possible, Meego is kept in dormancy mode and likely will not wake up again. Effectively this reduces the number of mobile platforms of any relevance to 5: iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, HP/Palm.

After some delays it was delivered last week, and despite mediocre press the week before launch I took the opportunity to see the device myself. It’s hard to believe that they released this like it is. It is the ultimate storm.

Let’s start with the hardware: The display looks dark very quickly if you’re not looking right into it in a straight angle, it is not even remotely close to the display quality the iPad or better smart phones deliver. IMO this design decision alone would have tanked it already in a mass market scenario.

Holding it “right” isn’t easy, as it gained a bit of weight recently: While a week before delivery it was still announced at 800 grams, about the same weight as the iPad, it suddenly got 200 grams of extra weight on delivery, so it’s about 1 kg. Together with its size, this creates some leverage when you try to hold it in your hand.

Then this thing has a fan running all the time, and getting loud when the processor works. This happen i.e. when anything Flash related is running in your browser, like one of those annoying Flash ads – which become even more annoying with the WePad. Having these netbook class power also sips a bit of energy: In 2 hours we were running down from fully loaded to a bit below 30%, real life battery life seems to be generally between 2.5 and 5 hours.

The touchscreen reacted unresponsive from time to time. Eventually this related to a known software issue with the touch calibration, so the last word on this isn’t out yet, but definitely not a plus in the current state.

Beside these little details it has a lot of interfaces like USB or SD card slot, which more or less worked, and an HDMI, which doesn’t work correctly yet. GPS is not working yet as well.

It’s all about the software – right? Yeah, right… actually the WeTab is one of the first devices of Intel’s and Nokia’s Meego platform - ”MeeGo is an open source, Linux project which brings together the Moblin project, headed up by Intel, and Maemo, by Nokia, into a single open source activity”. Let’s just hope for Intel and Nokia that the WeTab is not a verdict about the viability of MeeGo. If it is, you can wipe MeeGo off the mobile roadmap.

The software of the WeTab is overall by far the worst software I have seen released in 20 years in the software business. There is a nice idea in it, which is how they deal with the 16:9 ratio of the screen: They use a strip on the right and left portion of the screen (in landscape orientation) for navigating on the homescreen and in long web pages. Even this is half cooked though: The homescreen holds applications and web links – in fact, most applications are just web links -, but it seems to be the only place where you can save bookmarks/favorites. Seriously: With the WeTab you likely get the only browser in the 21st century that can’t handle a useful number of bookmarks.

You also get

• a system that takes 3-10(!) seconds to adapt a rotation change
• a highly experimental Multitouch implementation, dysfunctional and inconstistent even in the very few supported apps
• a useless E-Mail app
• OpenOffice, whithout any modifications for a touch interface
• the promise that everything will be fixed by constant updates

Despite their announcement you don’t get (yet at the time of this writing)

• any App market
• access to Android apps – the device fails to comply with Google’s requirements for Android anyway, so it won’t have direct access to Google’s app market.
• an SDK – announced for December

How do customers react? Well, how would you? Most likely you would send it back. Though neither MediaMarkt nor Amazon give out any official numbers, a number of reports clearly show a return rate well north of 50% – before the return period is even over. The WeTab creators set their bets a lot on community efforts to market their products, and relied heavily on word of mouth. The WeTab facebook group created over 20k followers, but has turned mostly against the product by now.

What is going to happen? While the WeTab makers are struggling to get the software in any useful state, they are loosing money and reputation on it. No matter what they do, the hardware alone will not win many customers. I don’t know anything about the financials of WeTab GmbH, but a retail disaster like this burns a heap of money. Consequently I think that it’s rather likely that they will loose the retail channel well before the holiday season or at least suspend further deliveries.

On the horizon we already see a new breed of Android tablets and also other Linux-based touchdriven netbooks providing much better displays. They claim the same niche with claims of “Open” and “Flash-Support”, and rather sooner than later there will be one that is worth a “Honorable Mention”. The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Sure, Android is used in so many different devices that it can’t be considered a “product” or “platform” by normal people. Each product using Android has to make it more or less on its own, very different from a single vendor platform like Apple’s iOS platform for iPhone/iPad/iPod touch, or RIM with their BlackBerries. There are a lot of different versions in the market, and software development for these platforms is start to become a nightmare – very similar to the situation with Windows on the desktop years ago.

However, a number of other issues for Android have surfaced during the recent months, which in my opinion severely affect the sustainability of the platform from the point of view of the users.

Android is (not) open.

Android is open source and free, so it must be good?! Right?
In 9 out of 10 cases: No.

Most Android customers get exactly what they got before Apple: Mobile devices with a closed OS loaded with bloatware, configured to serve the business models of the carriers. It’s about customer control – Elia nailed it down very well in Fighting the wrong Fight

The key issue in the current situation is that there is no significant distribution channel beside the carriers. So, they control the hand sets and they control how you are supposed to use them. They simply use their leverage in distribution to deliver closed system to their customers, and they do so by modifying the “open” Android so that they can deliver a closed system to their customers.

Normal users will only see software updates to their devices when the provider chooses to do so (and most rarely do). Not only do they close down the system, they install bloatware on their hand sets that you can’t remove. Michael Gartenberg nailed that one nicely with his article Will carriers destroy the Android vision?

In theory, Android is open. In daily life, it is open just for the same guys who have the technical expertise to hack any smartphone.

Android is about (controlling) choice

I’m sure that Google does not like what is happening right now: Carriers exchange the default search engine (i.e. Verizon for Bing), without even giving their customers the choice to use another. Providers try to move to their own app stores, sometimes even replacing Google’s Android Market. China is working on an Android version that does not need *any* Google code anymore. Jason Hiner has a good overview on the state of this “alliance”

Of course, Google tries to prevent choice where it can: If you like to have your devices to access the Android Market, Google reviews your device. If it finds software that it doesn’t like – i.e. a competing localization service like SkyHook – the device is not accepted. “No industry player can restrict or control the innovation of any other”, right? Well, except you’re Google.

Whatever they try, in my opinion  Google is going to loose control over Android rather sooner than later. Are we going to see a Linuxification of the Android market? I think this is quite possible.

The bottom line

Android will generate some great devices for geeks, and millions of mediocre devices which are just build to extend the life of outdated mobile carrier business models. If you consider yourself a geek and can get hold on an uncrippled device, then it can be a good choice.

If you buy an Android as a normal phone user to support “Open Software”, or get out of the “claws of Apple”, then you should at least take a close look what you really get. It might be quite different from what you expect.

The HP Slate, presented by Microsoft a day before the iPad presentation, was not just reviewed with slow performance. After HP buying Palm it looks like the whole thing is axed (good for HP). IMO this doesn’t look good for Windows 7 as a tablet OS in general (bad for MS).

The WePad, which despite a catastrophic presentation on April 12th actually seems to exist, is still far from being delivered. It remains to be seen if the WePad can deliver a decent customer experience under Linux while shipping at an iPad price point. Anyway, my main issue with this device is that I don’t get their business model. Yes, at least some german publishers are pressing hard to get that thing into the market as an alternative to the iPad. However, could anybody please explain to me how the WePad’s focus on openness get’s together with the exclusive media distribution channel the publishers dream of? Puhleeaaaze…

The Microsoft Courier was a fresh concept – though I’m not convinced that two screens are better than one. Well, it’s officially steved (Steve B. here, though the verb was coined for Steve J.).

Ok, now what else do we have here – ahhh yes: Android tablets! Well, actually I think those are the only one that are currently making a blip on the radar… not a big one, but they are still a bit away. They will get in the market in numbers. Can they create a market for software and applications? We’ll see.

There’s a key issue with Flash which will impact all Linux/Android devices: Only Adobe can make it faster. The only decent implementation of Flash today is on Windows. It’s a huge performance hog on OS X, Linux and any mobile OS, and so drains the battery of any mobile device quickly. Adobe has to work hard on this to make it into the mobile space, or many sites will look for alternatives to deliver their content.

The device isn’t yet on the market, but Apple already has a battery replacement service in place – for 99$ plus S&H they exchange your unit with one with a fresh battery! Apple is really going after those non computer types, and for a huge market share. They are really changing the rules of the game.

This is as ungeeky as it gets. Great thinking.

A short proof of concept animation for a Bike-Rig. There’s still more to do, especially for a moving center of gravity, and also for mass inertia.

I’m also going for a “looser” control, as bikes tend to produce jumps when the center of gravity is changing direction – just like in the real world.

Great presentation skills as well. I especially liked the part about Disney at 9:15.

Print is dying.
Digital is surging.
Everyone is confused.

The whole publishing business is changing, and the kind of reading devices plays a major role in it. As Craig puts it:

IT’S NO WONDER WE LOVE OUR PRINTED BOOKS — we physically cradle them close to our heart. Unlike computer screens, the experience of reading on a Kindle or iPhone (or iPad, one can assume) mimics this familiar maternal embrace.

After poking them with a stick – or rather an often cited piece of speculative jornalism – Foxonn let out the capacity and early number of iPads in production in Digitimes. 600,000-700,000 iPads in March and one million units in April… looks like my up-to-now estimate of 5 million units was rather conservative compared to Apple’s expectations.

The structure is set, so now I’m about to transfer all the stuff from my other sites to this one.

So, this is it, I hope that the custom CSS works fine on all those browsers. I tested Firefox, Safari, IE beginning with IE 6 and it seems oky. If you experience any issues, please just let me know!