Looking at Apple’s education announcement and the later statements by McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw that; 1.  school boards would have to pay the $14.99USD “pilot pricing” per year per student and. 2.a paper text book costs $75.00USD per book and is replaced once every five years or so, and that Mr. McGraw expected to make money on “volume”, I had to wonder how Apple was going to knife the publishers? There has to be a plan to take out the publishers, because it is in Apple’s corporate DNA to screw the old school content providers. They almost have to, because the scheme as presented has absolutely no cost savings to cash strapped American school boards, and the prospect of a huge investment into the Apple ecosystem.Here is how I think it is going to play out.  In the US, publicly funded schools are generally overseen by the various states and each county and or city has its own school board that is for the most part funded by local taxes. Apple is going to point out to the state oversight school boards (if the states don’t figure it out on their own) that they can create their OWN textbooks using their own state university resources (ie graduate students) Essentially, once the primary texts are done, its just  a mater of updating and revisions.  For example, the American State of Tennessee has 971,524 students enrolled in K-12. (Think of it as Grades 1-13) The cost of one Apple iTextbook at say $15.00 USD would be $14,572,680. Admittedly, the number includes the entire group of K-12, but, I could see using iPads in kindergarten even if they were not issued to students below 3rd or 4th grade. Assuming 6 courses per student per year and figure 6 textbooks (at least-don’t forget lab books in upper forms)per student, per year, doing the  iMath comes to at least $90USD a year. per student, not counting the cost of the iPads.  However, if the schools create their own content, even at market cost there is about a five year break even for the cost of an iPad. Over, $14 million  US dollars would pay for a lot of work study time to do the basic research and writing of the texts All that has really stopped many state school boards from doing their own textbooks was the economies of scale for for publication.Take out the printing costs and its a whole new match. One the textbook publishers are likely to lose.

Commentators have mentioned that nothing was said about university level textbooks. I suspect not only that was deliberate on Apple’s part, it is where textbook publishers will start feeling the heat. Uni professors love to inset their own spin on the texts they use, even to almost writing their own. In the US, college textbooks are hitting $200USD a book in many subjects. Whilst UK textbook costs are usually 20-50% lower in the US, everyone is looking to cut costs.  Not to mention the potential savings on classes where you get a lecturer who almost never uses the book, but often has other material to read.  In the college setting, an iPad based textbook ecosystem could pay for itself in the FIRST TERM.  The idea of updated content is particularly appealing for technical subjects. From  the university’s perspective, there would not be any real need to issue iPads, students would be expected to buy them.

Where is Apple in all this? Selling a lot of iPads. Where are the textbook publishers? Trying to steal the pudding of the record companies at the home for obsolete business models.

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Is this Apple’s plan for the textbook market?

Thursday, Apple announced the release of iBooks2  and iBooks Author; new and free textbook reading  and authoring tools.  Apple also revealed a partnership to create and sell low cost interactive textbooks with the big three textbook publishers that account for 90% of the sales of textbooks to the first 13 grades of American schools, known as K-12. Finally, Apple expanded its iTunes U uni lecture series to the K-12 market.   Missing from the announcement was any price break for the beleaguered American school system and that it was a closed Apple hardware only system. Also absent was the fact that if you create content with iBooks Author, you have to sell it in the Apple store.

Apple has not indicated any similar arrangement with UK publishers, but as I mention here, that may not be Apple’s scheme in any case. Stay tuned, there may be a bit more to this story as it plays out.

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Apple announces iBook 2 for US schools. Will the UK follow?

Recently Three lent us a Sony Ericsson Xperia Play to review, which ironically isn’t even available on Three anymore, but anyway we decided to review it as the phone is excellently priced at around £150 – £200 sim free at the moment.

When his was this was released Sony were asking for iPhone-esque prices so for such a big price drop is fantastic for the end user (unless you paid full price in the first place).

The phone itself is a decent size with a 4-inch capacitive multi-touch LCD touch screen with a 480×854 pixel resolution and 16.7 million colours, and a 5.1-megapixel camera recorder with autofocus, flash, image stabilizer and geotagging. It is obviously rather chubby due to the built in controller (119 x 62 x 16mm) and it weighs 175 grams.

It currently runs Gingerbread 2.3.4 and we found it to be very snappy with no obvious lag at all. There is 400MB of internal memory, but an 8GB microSD card is included and this can be expanded up to 32GB. The internal space is an issue if you want to install a lot of games/applications, but with the microSD you have plenty of space for media.

Obviously the major selling point of this phone is the fact it is the “PlayStation Phone” and comes with a slide out controller, and there is no question about it, this is the best way to control games. It is by no means perfect, but comparing it to controlling games via the screen it is infinitely better.

Where the Xperia truely shines, and makes it well worth the investment, in my opinion, is gaming emulation. Sony have released a few games themselves, which have been good, but they are few and far between. However there is a full range of emulators for most old games systems giving you thousands of games to choose from and a phone that can be used to play them properly!

I was also quite surprised with the battery life of the Xperia. I currently use a Galaxy S2 as my main phone, and the battery has been well reviewed, but I have found it hit and miss, however I found the Xperia would often outlast my S2 on daily tasks. Thinking about it, it is not surprising really the S2 has a 1650mAh batter and the Xperia has a 1500mAh batter, but the Xperia has a smaller screen, and a single core processor. It is still nice for your phone to last a good day though!

Overall I found the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play to be a great phone (at its current pricing) and would make a wonderful Christmas present for someone. It is no iPhone, and 3 don’t even do it anymore with the only Sony on 3 at the moment being the Sony Xperia arc S.

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Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Review

A user called kenlo over at GiffGaff has posted an excellent price comparison of contracts over PAYG phones using GiffGaff.

Just in case you missed our review, GiffGaff is our new favourite PAYG provider offering outstanding prices, unlimited texts and internet and great service all while running on the O2 network. What’s not to like?

The comparisons aren’t always like for like, in fact GiffGaff looks less appealing the more minutes you want. If you don’t use loads of minutes, text a lot and use a lot of internet, which seems to be the case for the majority of people I know, then GiffGaff seems to be the way forward. Alternatively if you phone people a lot then three seems to be offering some pretty good contracts.

For light users:

Medium Users:

Heavy Users:

Shorter Contracts:

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iPhone 4S Price Comparison : GiffGaff PAYG vs Contract

The iOS 5 update went live about 1:00 PM -5 GMT.  Users are reporting all over the world that they are having multiple issues with the download and Apple has confirmed that the problem is on their end.  Making matters worse, there are reports that aborting the update is duplicating the contacts list and one user who had set up mail in Mac preferences is getting this message:

The word from Apple is to wait a couple of hours and try again. For those of you with mail issues the link to Apple message boards can be found here.   The smart money is on the iCloud servers being overwhelmed. That said, the Apple iCloud engineers are going to have their work cut out getting ready to activate about three million iPhones in a couple of days not to mention the iCloud music roll out at the end of the month.

Might be some iTerminations come the first of November, but we hope not.

Thanks to crimonsonsky76 for the tip!

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iOS5 install problems-Its Apple’s Fault

Lost in the meda frenzy over the passing of Steve Jobs was Microsoft killing off the Zune HD. No, that was a mistake its alive. Yes, it is dead. Nope, that was another error. Apparently, at least as of this writing, the Zune HD is in fact discontinued.

“We recently announced that, going forward, Windows Phone will be the focus of our mobile music and video strategy, and that we will no longer be producing Zune players.”

Bear in mind that this is found on the Microsoft’s Zune support page. You can find a big  BUY NOW button at the entry for the Zune HD. Following that link takes one to the American retailer Wal-Mart. The Zune UK web site has nothing on offer, nor does Amazon. Further complicating matters is that whoever runs the Twitter account for Zune support seems to have missed the memo as well.

The story here is not so much that the Zune HD has been discontinued, its not surprising as sales have been lackluster at best and Microsoft wants to steer users to Windows Phones as their all in one media consumption device, but that the announcement was so badly handled. It is quite obvious that the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing here. The timing was also interesting in that the original announcement was made the same day that Apple announced the iPhone 4S.  That was a good move on Microsoft’s part as the ending of the Zune HD was pretty much lost in the iPhone coverage.  However, the “red light, green light” of the days after not only ruined that, but given that journalists were looking for something to move on from the death of Mr. Jobs, Microsoft’s indecision has become more newsworthy with each change in direction.

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“Its dead Steve”

The worldwide press is saturating all media with the death of Steve Jobs, who passed away Wednesday from complications of pancreatic cancer. Rather than repeat all the typical reporting of his passing, it is better to focus on a celebration of his life and his many, many accomplishments that has shaped and changed the world everyone lives in today.  The list is long, the Apple I, the Apple II, the Macintosh, the Lisa during his first stint at Apple. During his time away from Apple he founded NeXT Computing and created Pixar out of pieces that he bought from LucasFilms. Pixar under Jobs became the gold standard for animated films, and is widely credited as revitalizing the genre and the fortunes of Walt Disney Studios when Disney subsequently purchased Pixar for almost ten billion dollars.

All this seemed to be only a prologue for the return of Mr. Jobs and what was arguably his and his teams greatest contributions to the way the world consumed its music, media, and used its phones. Starting with the iMac, Mr. Jobs and the people he surrounded himself with, went on to revolutionize the way we consume music, the iPod and the Apple Music Store.  Starting in 2001, the iPod completely changed the music industry and in all likely hood stated the death spiral of music CDs.  Moving from that the iPhone in 2005, and then the iPad in 2009. It is easy to forget that Apple did not found any of those product categories. Music players, smart phones and tablets all came about well before Apple entered the scene. The tribute that should be rendered to Steve Jobs and his team was that in each product area, Apple came along and arguably perfected the category.

What are your thoughts of your experience of Apple and thoughts on Steve Jobs?

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A Celebration of the Life of Steve Jobs

14 months after the release of the iPhone 4, Apple have finally announced its successor, the iPhone 4S. Touted as the most anticipated device ever, announcement turned out to be a massive disappointment to many offering a minor update to the iPhone 4 and leading to a 5% drop in shares.

It was originally rumoured that there would be 2 phones announced the 4s and the 5 with the 5 possibly having a new design and larger screen. Unfortunately the 5 was not announced the the 4S offered minor upgrades including a new Dual-core Apple A5 processor, and an 8 megapixel camera. These are similar specifications to phones like the Samsung Galaxy S2 and the Motorola Atrix which have been around for months now.

While the iPhone 4s will undoubtedly be a fantastic phone but the main improvements come from the launch of iOS5 which will be available on the 3GS upwards.

With the announcement of the Samsung Nexus Prime just around the corner it is quite likely that the iPhone 4S will be outclassed in terms of hardware by Christmas.

iPhone 4S

iPhone 4

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Apple announces iPhone 4s – 14 months to release an out of date phone!

The Internet has been abuzz with rumors that Amazon, fresh off its Kindle announcements is poised to buy the bones of Palm from HP. Those bones would be the web os operating system and the substantial amount of patents Palm obtained during happier days.  This is very unlikely to come to pass for several reasons.  First, Amazon has spent a lot of resources creating the Android variant that the Kindle Fire uses. Second, Amazon has also expended a fair amount of coin in creating the Android App store that directly competes with the Google Android App store.

If the rumor does happen to be true, the reason would be little comfort to the web os faithful as such a move would probably be made to obtain he intellectual property and be able to cannibalize web os features for the forked Amazon version of Android. While Jeff Bezos, has proven time and again that he is willing to make unusual moves, Amazon seems to be pretty well invested in their customized version of Android with the App Store and Silk, although there might be some merit in using web os in a European only version of the Fire to get around privacy problems that seem to be preventing the Flame being deployed in the UK

On HP’s side, if Amazon offered say, $1.6BN USD for everything and took over legacy web os support. HP would more than likely jump on that. Its quick money to bolster theirQ4 earnings, and further lets them save having to write off some of the wind down costs.

If Amazon did buy web os, don’t be surprised to see Todd Bradley exit HP, quite possibly for Amazon. Frankly, since HP is likely to not spin off the personal computer division at this point and Mr. Bradley, who has been courted by the likes of Intel for their CEO sport, but twice passed over for the top job at HP, he is getting ready to go elsewhere anyway.

Time will tell, but I would not bet the rent money on it coming to pass.

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Amazon buying web os?

The most one can say for Leo Apotheker at this point is that he lasted longer at HP than he did at his prior gig at SAP. After less than eleven months on the job, the HP board sacked Mr. Apotheker stating that HP needed an executive who could execute on the details.  The fact of the matter the Apotheker reign, brief as it was saw several executions:

-the Web OS hardware and smart phone business, while making vague statements about doing something with the web os operating system.

- business confidence in the Personal Systems Groups’ ability to sell and support  personal computers and printers was executed by the pronouncement that HP was looking at either spinning off or selling the PSG.  Businesses put a hold on, or canceled outright, purchasing decisions and opened the door to inroads by Dell and Lenovo to take lucrative purchases from HP.

-the execution of the purchase of Autonomy, a UK software company for well over its market value. In fact this purchase was the cornerstone of Apothekers’ stated vision of turning HP away from hardware into a software and services group, much as IBM did in late 2004. However, IBM did not telegraph its intentions before a buyer was found and certainly did not tell industry analysis’s that they wanted to dump the business because it was not making the kind of profits HP wanted to see.

-finally, Mr. Apotheker  presided over the execution of over forty percent of HP’s share value.  When a publically traded company’s share value tumbles like that, shareholders want either a human sacrifice or new leadership.

Lest anyone accuse the HP Board of slipshod incompetence, the board quickly threw Leo out of the sled and to the wolves. Or so it appears. More on that later. The HP board them embarked on an exhaustive search for a new CEO. Provided that taking a quick look around the boardroom and noticing that board member Meg Whitman was not going to be governor of the US state of California after all and was at loose ends was exhausting.  In addition, ex-Oracle COO and non-executive chairman of the HP board, Ray Lane became the Executive Chairman of HP. In plain English, that means that Mr. Lane would become involved in day to day corporate decision making, rather than the broad oversight that most corporate boards exercise.

In subsequent interviews, it has quickly become apparent that Mr. Lane may well share at least equal power with Ms. Whitman.  Interviews and communications to HP staff have for the most part been of a joint nature and Ms. Whitman seems to be adopting more of a communicator role, while Mr. Lane does the heavy lifting as it were.  There may well be very good reasons for this. Ms. Whitman, former CEO of Ebay is widely seen as having little tech experience but a lot of consumer expertise.  HP desperately needs to develop a consistent message and execute on it.  This may be the board’s answer.

As for the timing of the termination of Mr. Apotheker, apparently Mr. Lane has admitted in interviews that the wheels for that decision started turning over eight months ago. Which raises the question, which has been asked quite often, what kind of vetting process was used to hire Leo in the first place? According to the New York Times, not much as it was reported that most of the board voted to hire Mr. Apotheker without ac tually meeting him. Since the gentleman in question was terminated after a bare seven months as CEO of SAP, reasonable people would think that a personal meeting was in order. Of course, Mr. Lane is quick to point out that this is not the same board that hired Apotheker, that there have been eight board members replaced since that decision was taken, including Mr. Lane and Ms. Whitman to name two.

What does all this mean for HP? First, innovation is going to suffer, as anyone who can is going to be looking for more stable pastures. Second, it is by no means certain that HP’s personal hardware business will be able to recover from the doubt and uncertainty.   Finally, there is an excellent chance that if things do not turn around fairly quickly at HP, Ms. Whitman may be the next one to walk the plank.

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More drama at Hewlett-Packard