Engadget has found what is certainly the cheapest current Blu-ray reader.
This Philips full HD reader is sold for less than $70. At this rate one should go down soon to under the $50 that will make these readers the natural alternatives to the readers of DVD. Keep in mind nevertheless that the first 3D models soon will arrive. Even though they will be more expensive, you will be certainly feel some frustrations in the near future. This is however not certain. This standard already has had an hallucinating number of updates (DB Profiles, standard HDMI, network…). This lack of stability does not help at all with decision to purchase.
A recent study might give RIM some real stress despite its growth. IT indicates that 40% of current BlackBerry owners would exchange their mobile phone for an iPhone, or an Android-based model. The same study indicates that 90% of owners of Google OS-based phone would take another model based on the same system. This study challenging the fidelity of mobile phone users indicate that the growth of RIM might be more fragile than for Apple or Google. The reason might be linked to the fact that most BlackBerry are devices provided by corporates, so end users did not have the choice of their Pro mobile phone. This could also explain why Apple is pushing so strongly to make the iPhone as compatible and native as possible for Windows-based corporate IT services.
It is several years that NVidia, ahead of its time, tried to impose its 3D display system on computers. Up to now, they did not have much success until the advent of 3D television gave it a new kick of life.
For this purpose, they decided an important thing, to modify their software " 3DTV Play software" to be compatible with other glasses that theirs. After all, this is good sense, it is hard to imagine the people wanting to see in 3D on their television set and their computer needing to provide a different pair of glasses for each product, especially as these glasses have a considerable cost, since that the standard selected implies that they have two LCD screens being used to alternatively hide the vision in each eye, the whole being connected, without wires, to the television set to ensure perfect synchronization.
This raises elsewhere another aspect of the arrival of 3D television, the war of the glasses, because there will be one of them. Many manufacturers are waiting to produce them, knowing that their number will be X time higher than that of the television set, since each televiewer is obliged to have a pair, and this market could well be profitable. If one takes, for example, the first 3D television sets from Samsung that must arrive soon, they should be sold without these famous glasses which will cost between 100 and 150€ according to their size and of the fact that it have batteries. Sony will also make this choice to sell these glasses separately and this will inflate in an impressive way the profits…
A last thing worries us on their subject. We do not know if there exists a standard of communication between the television sets and the glasses or if each manufacturer will have his own standard. If this is the case, the customers will be caught and will not be able to use generic products that would not hesitate to be offered at lower tariffs.
Without much noise, Apple quietly postponed the launch of peripherals dedicated to its forthcoming iPad on its Store.
- The protection enclosure originally planned on April 3rd is postponed to mid-April.
- The keyboard is postponed to May.
- More alarming, the USB charger, a rather must have peripheral is ALSO postponed till May...
So, currently there are several explanation: problem in production, all customers who pre-order the iPad also purchased those peripherals, and all stocks are now empty, there is some last minutes issues, or the first sign of a serious delay for the real launch of the iPad. This is particularly true for the keyboard, a basic peripheral for all customers willing to use the iPad as their main terminal.
Many of our readers also noticed it: Apple seems to have entered into a sleeping mode-like phase:
- We are waiting for the update of all MacBook and MacBook Pro models for now 2 months according to the usual schedule of updates.
- While it seems to be finished and validated by beta tester, the update 10.6.3 is still not released.
- We are still waiting for an update of the Airport firmware to fix remaining issues.
- Alors qu'Apple prenait un malin plaisir à lancer ses Mac Pro Xeon avant les annonces Intel, ces derniers sont arrivés, mais point de Mac Pro.
We could have added other examples to the list. They all have in common to require engineer and system supports. We are currently thinking that the iPad, as the iPhone few months ago, completely drained all engineer resources, and could delay all other products as they are mainly working on fixing the issue of the iPad OS.
You should know that Apple does not have endless engineer resources as Microsoft or other software companies. They are composed of restricted teams moving from one project to another one depending on needs and emergency. We know that Apple is working on strengthening those teams, but it is difficult to add need members in strongly unified teams, especially we also consider that there is no real IT course or training leading to Apple engineers, as it exists for Microsoft Windows...
So, we currently think that Apple has decided to have iPad becoming the main project for this year, not even thinking of an half success or failure, it has to be a blockbuster and Apple is dedicated to available resources to complete the work, even if all other products have to suffer delays. Of course if what you want is a new MacBook or a Mac Pro, you might not care at all about the iPad and its future success... Let's hope that this situation will quickly evolve.
