Sam Iles's Blog

Amazon are missing a trick here. There isn’t yet a good way to read graphic novels (comic books, you could say) in a digital way. Sure, you can buy graphic novels on the Kindle, but they are few and far between and certainly aren’t the popular ones. There’s no Walking Dead or Watchmen or even the old DC/Marvel comics.

But if they created a proprietary format (like they did for normal Kindle books) which could display comics well on an iPad or any other screen by automatically adjusting to fit the screen size, they could totally own the space.

Of course, there is the fact that most comic book artists like to lay out their books very precisely, with boxes overflowing others and such, but, still, I’m sure Amazon could do something good.

Geez.

A.

Lou.

For a blog which started out almost exclusively about technology, I sure haven’t blogged about technology for a long time. So here goes: The iPad 2. It will be announced on Wednesday, if the hints from the invitation are anything to go by. I figured I had better write some kind of prediction post with what I think we might see. Naturally, nobody will care. But I like writing.

The first issue will be who does the presentation. I assume it will be Tim Cook, the acting CEO since Steve Jobs is on medical leave at the moment, or someone like Schiller. One thing I have seen thrown around is that the idea that it may be announced that Jobs will not be returning to the company at all at this event, or that a plan of CEO-succession may be announced. This will not happen. When Jobs does quit, Apple’s share price will have a seizure and nosedive. For this reason, any kind of announcement like this will be made after trading hours, giving the market the night to reflect on the change and time for Apple to explain why it won’t happen. The announcement won’t happen at ten o’clock in the morning at the start of a full day of trading. Moving on:

So, about the actual device. Firstly, what major changes will there be? Screen size, for example. I expect it will stay exactly the same as it is now. Apple has been more than happy to berate the 7″ devices as DOA and pointless. (I agree, too. I have used a Galaxy Tab and, for me, I found it to be portable but not at all useful.) The only reason I can see Apple making a 7″ device is if demand for them is very high and taking product sales away from the iPad, which certainly isn’t happening now. But, you never know. And, remember, just because Steve says he hates something, doesn’t mean it won’t happen – he said nobody wanted to watch video on an iPod, he said Apple would never make a phone, he said Apple would never get involved in books because people don’t read and he said they’d never make a tablet because they were so bad.

And, about the screen resolution. I think it’s perfectly good. Fantastic, even. I wrote a piece about the idea of it having a retina display before:

Then there is the issue of the screen. People are throwing around the idea of a retina display for the iPad. I think this is complete crazy talk. Let’s remember what the definition of a Retina display is: a display with which the average human eye cannot discern the individual pixels. Apple found this to be 300 PPI. Consider what this meant for the iPhone: Original iPhone: 480 x 320 = 153,600 pixels at 165 PPI iPhone 4: 960 x 640 = 614,400 pixels at 330 PPI This is a big jump and these remain very big numbers but let’s transfer this to the iPad. Giving the iPad a retina display with at least 300 PPI, the resolution would be 2560 x 1920. That may not sound a lot, but it is. That’s more than my 17 inch MacBook Pro. It’s twice as much as Dell’s highest class 24 inch monitor. We’re talking about a 10 inch iPad which would be displaying as much information as two 24 inch monitors. Imagine how much rendering this would take. There is no way that an A4 could do that. Even assuming a new processor was powerful enough for general apps, even an Xbox could barely render a fast moving game at sizes like this. You would to tie a generator to the back of the iPad to use it without a power source.

I stand by all that. I don’t think it will have a retina display. I also think people need to be more careful when they talk about things like a “slight resolution increase”. I do not think Apple will do this. The iPad is currently 1024 × 768 and increasing the resolution a bit would create a weird number of pixels. The problem is for developers. Android has this problem and Apple have slated (PTP) it before, saying that developers have to make several different versions of apps to cope with all the different possible resolutions and sizes. With the iPhone 3GS to iPhone 4, the pixels were doubled to make the retina display. This meant there was no problem for developers – Apple could easily deal with resizing things and just ask developers to make higher quality graphics whenever they could.

You can’t make 1.3 times more pixels and have it work this flawlessly. Developers would need to change things and there would be multiple inconsistencies and unpleasantness. I think there will either be a doubling of resolution (which will take us to 2048 x 1536 pixels and 264 PPI, just short of the 2560 x 1920 and 326 target for a retina display) or no change at all.

Of course, resolution doesn’t have to change for a better screen. The screen can have better contrast and colours or better viewing angles or better response to sunlight. I’m not saying it will be the exact same screen – just I don’t think a resolution change will happen.

So, what else. A camera? A cameraS? Sure, why not. While I don’t think Apple will always do things that make sense, everyone is just certain there will be two cameras. Just don’t be so certain. As I wrote before:

Apple doesn’t mind saying no to something. I can picture Steve on stage right now, saying that the iPad has a camera on the front because, ‘FaceTime is great, everyone loves FaceTime,’ and then smoothly explaining away the lack of rear camera with, ‘but, nobody wants a camera on the back, nobody wants to hold up their big iPad, nobody wants that.’

And the SD card slot? Well, I don’t think so. Again, as I wrote before:

Consider the rumour of SD slot. Right. Hmm. Well, I don’t think so. Currently, Apple sells a small piece of hardware which plugs into your 32 pin connector and acts as a SD card reader. That’s great. I can look at my photos. Yay. But thats all. It’s a reader, nothing more. If Apple puts in a SD slot, would they allow you to simply use it as storage space? I don’t think so. Apple sells three three storage sizes of iPad. There is a bigger markup on the bigger devices and I don’t think they’ll throw all that away by adding an SD slow. Reader, perhaps. But, it’s seems like too much trouble to go to to add just a reader when they can charge you an ungodly amount for an adapter.

And the boring stuff. RAM increase? Sure. New processor? Sure (I don’t it’s the A4unicorn). Storage bumps? Probably.

Then, the other news.

iOS 5: I HOPE SO. Apple usually shows it off before it ships and this seems like the ideal time. I expect one of the tent poles to be a new notifications system. And that’s really all I care about.

MobileMe for the peasants: Will it be free? Is this why Apple built their big data centre? They recently stopped selling boxed versions of MobileMe, so it’s almost certain that something will be changing. I hope it gets free.

iTunes in the clouds: Will it happen? Is this why Apple built their big data centre? I sure hope so.

“Oh, and there is one more thing:

We are making a hydrogen car! It’s called the Apple Car.

Oh, and we’ve made a super intelligent robot to clean your house and stuff!”

Man, that would be cool.

Firstly, a confession. I did not know that Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was written by Robert Louis Stevenson (of Treasure Island fame). I must also admit that I didn’t know the book’s title was prefixed with “The Strange Case of…”. I also didn’t really know the full story other than the basics which we all know. How much I had missed out on.

Few books have ever commanded this much excitement and enjoyment from me. Whenever you read one of the classics – the A Christmas Carols and the like – you soon realise just why it’s become a classic and why its themes and quotations have ever entered our every day life.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is one such book. Every new page is incredible – genuine work of art. Imagine a book with a story as ingenious and unique as The Lord of the Rings and prose as haunting and beautiful as A Christmas Carol. Imagine a book so incredible that you sit down to read it and can’t stop. And, one that you want to reread as soon as you’ve finished it.

The story was so different than I expected. Nothing could have prepared me for it. I expected to follow the story of Henry Jekyll but the journey Stevenson takes you on is far from that. It’s easy to see why this book became so popular and was reproduced in stage and television and movie form time after time.

Few books have I enjoyed as much as this one. If you read any book in the next year or so, please, make it this one.

November is NaNoWriMo, so I figured I’d write a short story.

We join the story in medias res, as Henry finds himself trapped underground with no way to escape…

Download and feel free to copy to your Kindle or iPad or read on the computer. Print if you want, but it is about 18 pages…

PDF: Download

Hope you like it! Comment below if you want to share your thoughts…

This is not a review of the Kindle, but of the entire Kindle platform. I don’t read tree books anymore, only Kindle books as they’re better for the environment and I find them generally more convenient. Being able to buy a book and have it on your device in under 60 seconds really is great.

The store full of books – hundreds of thousands of them. If you want a book, it will nearly always be in the store. Books are usually cheaper than their paper counterparts, too. Some newer books are a little more expensive (often the same process as the hardback if that’s all they are available in). But, there are also books that are much cheaper for example, you can buy all 60 entire books by Dickens for just a couple of pounds. This would cost a few hundred pounds if you bought them all in paper form. There are many collections like this. Dickens, Shakespeare, Lovecraft, Wodehoouse, Austen, Wilde and thousands more for a few pounds. I think these incredibly cheap collections more than make up for some slightly expensive newer books. There are, however, somembooks which aren’t available, some very notable. For example, Harry Potter is nowhere to be found, and nor is James Bond. This are books which really should be in there, but I expect they will be soon.

I have the second generation 3G Kindle, which I got just over a year ago now. I think it is a fantastic device. It is very light and thin (with the new third generation Kindle being even thinner). The keyboard isn’t that nice to type on, but the third generation’s is said to be much nicer. I find the screen of very high quality, but the refresh rate in undeniably slow. Again, the new Kindle is much better. Moreover, the new Kindle is just £109. If you read books: it’s worth it.

The Kindle iPad app is well designed and works great. It offers all the features you could need and allows highlighting and bookmarking. Your place is also synced between the iPad app and the Kindle, meaning you can switch between them effortlessly. If you own an iPad, I really see no reason that you would use Apple’s iBooks for reading. The Apple iBookStore has very few books, and is far more expensive than Kindle books. Plus, with iBooks you’re tied to Apple iBooks. Sure, it’s available on the iPhone too, but if you buy a Kindle book, you can read that one books on the Mac, PC, Kindle, iPad, iPhone, Android, Blackberry and more. It just makes so much more sense than iBooks.

The Mac app is simple, but does what it says. I use it rarely, as I don’t see much of a reason to read on my Mac. However, it would be perfect for, say, a programming book. I’ll never buy a programming paper book again. It makes a lot more sense to have it on the iPad and Mac (because it’s searchable and highlightable).

I’m currently reading The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky (one of my favourite authors) and I stumbled across this paragraph, which I thought was more than worth sharing:

Consequently, he had about five minutes left to live, not more. He said those five minutes seemed like an endless time to him, an enormous wealth… The ignorance of and loathing for this new thing that would come presently were terrible; yet he said that nothing was more oppressive for him at that moment than the thought: ‘What if I were not to die! what if life were given back to me—what infinity! And it would be all mine! Then I’d turn each minute into a whole age, I’d lose nothing, I’d reckon up every minute separately, I’d let nothing be wasted!’

I think that ‘I’d reckon up every minute separately’ is particularly poignant. I’m going to print it off and stick it up above my desk.

I’ve decided to write a book, for no other reason than I think it will be fun. I always wanted to be a journalist. And I don’t really do anything else with my life, so I figured it’d be relaxing too.

I don’t really expect to finish it – or to even attempt to get it published in the sense of sending manuscripts to people. But, if I decide to I will publish it to the Amazon ebook store so that anybody with a Kindle or iPad or iPhone or Mac or PC can read it – and everyone has at least one of those…

The book is about something I’m passionate about – animal rights. That makes it really interesting to research, if nothing else (it’s amazing learning about all the people who cared about animal rights too, like Albert Einstein).

To write the book, I’m using Scrivener, which is simply amazing. It is one of those few Mac apps that feels like it was developed by Apple and that is really quite perfect. I love it and would recommend it to anybody doing any kind of slightly long writing project – you won’t regret it.

I’ll keep you updated…

eReaders are bigger than ever right now. It seems tech – and non tech – companies are talking about them everyday. At CES this year many eReaders were announced. It isn’t just Kindle and Sony anymore.

But in this post I don’t want to talk about the hardware – just software. Specifically, the book prices. That’s probably the major problem holding people back right now.

In terms of store availability Amazon has to win. They have the most books from the most publishers. It’s around 300,000 books now.

In delivery mechanism, Amazon also wins. Other eReaders use wifi or plug into the computer, but Amazon use cellular data networks which allows you to get a book in under 30 seconds from nearly anywhere in the world. This means you can take your Kindle on holiday and download books in any country on the beach. That’s great.

But the big problem is pricing. Many eBooks cost more than print books right now. This really should not be when you compare the costs: print books require paper, ink, printing machines, staff, rent for facilities, delivery to book shops. eBooks require nothing but the costs of the cellular network data.

So why aren’t eBooks cheaper? Well, most are. Most new realease best sellers are less than $10. And out-of-copyright books are much cheaper. I recently bought all 51 books Charles Dickens has ever written for my Kindle at the incredible price of around $2. That’s insanely good value compared to what that would cost in print. At least $150.

But some books are much more. The infamous $9.99 boycott has gained some momentum on Amazon now. People who believe eBooks should not cost more than $9.99 take advantage of Amazons user features and tag them ‘9.99 boycott’. I do them same, I must admit.

Remember, the price of eBooks is set largely by publishers. They don’t want to sell more e than print, so they price highly. But many big publishers now say their eBook sells account for around 15%.

But I don’t think publishers should be worried. If they at least set their price the SAME as print then people would still buy them – what is the difference if they spend their money in e or print? The publisher does not have to worry about people sharing books – becaus they can’t with eBooks.

If they sell 100,000 eBooks for $7.99, what’s the difference to selling 100,000 print books at $7.99?

The much better delivery mechanism would only lead to more sells, yet they are still afraid…?

But then, I have a Kindle, so I guess I am biased…