Jan Zdarsa The company Flurry, which deals with the analytics of applications in mobile phones such as the iPhone, released a report today in which it claims to have captured in its statistics about 50 devices that fit exactly on the new Apple tablet.
These likely tablet prototypes were first spotted sometime in October of last year, but testing of these devices picked up dramatically in January. Apple is likely tweaking a tablet for Wednesday's keynote. There have been many speculations about what the Apple tablet will actually be primarily used for and what operating system it will run on.
And Flurry caught just about 200 different apps in its statistics. If we look at which category these applications belong to, it will form an opinion on where Apple will probably aim with the tablet.
According to Flurry statistics, games clearly have the largest share. With a bigger screen, maybe more power and more memory, some games will play perfectly. There's no doubt about that, after all, playing Civilization or Settlers on a small iPhone screen isn't quite the same (although I was more than happy with that!).
Another important category is entertainment, but mainly news and books. The tablet is often said to revolutionize the digital delivery of books, newspapers, magazines and textbooks. The Apple tablet should also allow for multitasking, this could mean significant use of music apps according to this graph. In most applications, great emphasis was placed on social networks, playing games with friends, sharing photos, and applications for moving files appeared. Many games were allegedly multiplayer games with an emphasis on social networks.
As for the significant use of the tablet as an ebook reader, we should already take it as a fact. There has been a lot of news today regarding Apple's dealings with book publishers. The 9 to 5 Mac server was summarizing all the information it had received over the past few days. Apple is reportedly trying to put as much pressure on publishers as possible to reach an agreement to publish their content on the tablet. The tablet should revolutionize the ebook market with a model that gives publishers more control over content and price than Amazon's Kindle model. The large ebook library won't be ready until mid-2010. The tablet hasn't been shown to publishers, but it's being talked about as a 10″ device and the price shouldn't be around $1000.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times team worked very closely with Apple. They often traveled to the company's headquarters in Cupertino and were supposed to work there on a new version of their iPhone application that would offer video content and be more optimized for the larger screen of the tablet.
iPhone OS 3.2, which has not yet been released, was detected on the tablet. These iPhone OS 3.2 devices never left Apple headquarters. iPhone OS 4.0 also appeared in the statistics, but devices with this OS also appeared outside the company's headquarters and identified themselves as iPhones. So maybe Apple will introduce a tablet with iPhone OS 3.2 and not version 4.0 as some of us expect.
The TUAW server came up with an interesting speculation, which places the tablet in the role of a device intended for students, something like an interactive textbook. TUAW is based on Steve Jobs allegedly saying "This Will Be The Most Important Thing I've Ever Done" about the tablet. And the TUAW server is currently analyzing the most important word. Why that and not, for example, the most innovative or another similar word? TUAW tried to find out what Steve could mean by that.
Steve Jobs spoke several times about the need to reform education. At one conference, he even talked about how he could envision schools replacing textbooks with free online resources filled with information from up-to-date experts in the future. So will the new tablet be an interactive textbook? Was the iTunes U project just the beginning? We'll find out soon though, stay with us on Wednesday during online transmission!
Source: Flurry.com, Macrumors, TUAW, 9 to 5 Mac
I am very curious about it, there is quite a lot of information and in the case of Apple we have something to look forward to until the last moment :)
I am very curious about it, there is quite a lot of information and in the case of Apple we have something to look forward to until the last moment :)