The Air Force’s Air Mobility Command will be putting in a request for the purchase of a number of tablets soon in an effort to lighten their pilots’ loads. Many commercial airlines are already taking this step, and American Airlines has already gotten FAA approval. The Air Force is feeling the sting of jealousy, and in consequence may be requesting as many as 18,000 devices.

The number could also be as low as 63; the Command was not forthcoming on this point. The lower number would probably indicate a pilot program, so to speak, for a few devices, to determine which should get the big order.

Which tablet would actually be ordered is also not specified. Bloomberg cannily plays up the iPad angle in its report (U.S. Air Force May Buy 18,000 Apple IPad 2s), but the spokesperson they talked to, Captain Ferrero, said the request might also be for Playbooks, Galaxy Tabs, Xooms, or Nooks.

If these were to be general-purpose tablets, this little menagerie would be hard to winnow down. But the fact is they are going to be used as virtual flight bags, and the iPad is the only one that has the thousands of hours in the air that the Air Force will require. In a year, maybe, Android tablets will have a little more experience under their belts, but for now it’s probably safe to say that any tablets purchased by the government for the purpose of being electronic flight bags are going to be iPads.

Eventually, these platform issues will have to be settled, though: if part of the military is going with Android for security purposes, and others are going with iOS for EFB and, say, general communication, there’s going to be a reckoning sooner or later.

Rumors of a 7- to 7.85-inch iPad have been swirling around for a long while now. We’ve seen reports get killed moments after they initially break, only to be sneakily resurrected weeks or months later. The rumor simply won’t die.

The problem, however, is that this one in particular is a tough nut to crack. When you take all the evidence both for and against a little iPad, you’re still left with no real conclusion.

So conclusion aside, here are some of the reasons Apple may, or may not, introduce the little iPad:

For:

The greatest threat to Apple’s iPad is the 7-inch Amazon Kindle Fire. It retails at about $300 less than the iPad, sports a solid browser, has access to plenty of Android apps, and is a great hub for any and all of Amazon’s media content. It also happens to be a 7-inch tablet. Should Apple choose to offer a smaller iPad at a lower price (which the market would most certainly demand), it could snatch back the market share Amazon’s stolen in the past few months.

Gaming on tablets is big, but too big a tablet ruins the fun. According to numbers out of comScore in November, 2011, gaming topped the list of entertainment activities on a tablet, beating out watching video and listening to music, with 67 percent of owners gaming at least once a month, and 23 percent playing daily.

That said, Apple’s 9.7-inch iPad isn’t what I’d call the best for gaming. Graphics and display quality are top-notch, to be sure, but holding the device for very long — especially stretching that thumb around the edge — can be incredibly tiring. Despite the fact that it has failed me considerably, I still prefer playing games on my 7-inch BlackBerry PlayBook, even if there aren’t many games to choose from.

Most smaller Android tablets use a widescreen aspect ratio, leaving a dead zone in the middle of the screen that’s mostly untouchable. The iPad 2 sports a 4:3 screen, which makes even the 10-inch model full touchable. A 7-incher would only be that much better, with greater pixel density and a lighter, easier feel in the hand.

Apple is kind of obsessive when it comes to “thin and light,” and a smaller iPad would also mean a thinner iPad. See, if Apple were to build a smaller iPad, chances are it’d be built using the normal screen assembly technology that allows for the iPad 2′s incredibly thin profile.

However, a smaller iPad/screen means a smaller battery, which usually takes up a solid chunk of space under the hood. Less screen means less power needed for backlighting it, which inevitably takes us back to a smaller battery.

Thin and light! Thin and light! Thin and light!

Amazon may release a 9-inch Fire… Why not fight Fire with fire? The word right now is that Amazon has plans to release a 9-inch Fire to compete with the iPad. While, like the 7-inch Fire, it probably won’t have all the capabilities of the iPad, a larger Fire will still retail at a (much?) lower price point than its competitor. For people who mostly browse the web, read, email, and Facebook/Twitter, a lower price point will be more than enough incentive to venture away from the iPad.

To be clear, it’s not like Apple’s in some dire position. Cupertino still dominates the market with a 58 percent share as of January, 2012. But that’s down 10 percent from the previous quarter, while analysts claim that 40 percent of Android’s 39 percent share in the tablet market are attributable to the Nook Tablet and the Fire.

It’s undeniable: Apple is slowly but steadily losing share to Android, most notably the Fire, and what better way to steal it back then by launching a 7-incher right in Amazon’s face?

Against

The most notable and evidential reason why Apple wouldn’t release a little iPad is because Steve Jobs said so. In an earnings call in October of 2010, Jobs said that “7-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad. These are among the reasons that the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA — dead on arrival.”

Jim Dalrymple points out that Apple made both a 7- and a 9.7-inch iPad right at the beginning and chose to go with the bigger version, which at a first glance would indicate that it’s not going to happen. At the same time, that was a long time ago if we’re counting in tech years and it wouldn’t be the first time Jobs obliterated a product category only to announce something similar to it shortly after. Anyone remember iBooks?

Why release a product to compete in a market you already own? Though its market share has fallen since its debut, Apple still absolutely dominates the tablet market right now. A 58 percent share of a market, with not one of its competitors anywhere near that share, leaves Apple with no real reason to put anything smaller in stores.

I’m sure some of you will say I made an entirely contradictory point up there with Amazon grabbing share, but it’s all about perspective. Perhaps one person thinks that now is the time to plug up any leaky market share dribbling into Amazon’s hands, while someone else may think that Apple should wait until it absolutely has to throw a lower-priced option into the ring.

Too many choices can be a bad thing, and Apple’s well aware of this. Look at iPhone releases: one model at a time. Apple’s all about making one absolutely stellar, blow-your-mind, make-you-believe-in-magic product and selling it well. Design, sell, repeat.

Tablets are meant to be simple, easy-to-use products. It’s not like a PC, where users have to review list after list of specs and configurations before figuring out what fits. Some companies, like Samsung, want to stretch across every category of the tablet market with different spec’d and sized models under a shared brand. One of the iPads greatest advantages is being the iPad, rather than an iPad Lite, or an iPad Air, or whatever.

It would be a deviation from Apple’s current strategy and over-arching mission statement of “Keep it simple, stupid” if they were to start switching things up now.

So… Will Apple release a 7-inch iPad? Truth be told, your guess is as good as mine, but it would seem that there are advantages in either case.

In a few weeks, Apple will unveil the next generation iPad, John Packowski of AllThingsD confirms today. If history (and carrier code) is any indication, it should go on sale shortly after that. Maybe even just a few days later. And that’s interesting because it doesn’t give developers a lot of time to prepare. And they’ll want to prepare for the higher resolution “Retina” display that the device will pack.

The situation is similar to the Summer of 2010. That year at WWDC, Apple unveiled the iPhone 4, the first device to feature a Retina display. That conference took place on June 7. The iPhone 4 first went on sale on June 24 — two and a half weeks later. That timeframe allowed some developers to get their apps Retina-ready, but for many it took quite a bit longer. Again, this year, the window may be even more condensed.

But as Steve Jobs noted at the iPhone 4 unveiling, the Retina display made existing apps “look even better”. One reason for this is that the version of iOS that shipped with the device automatically rendered text to be optimized for the new display. Expect the same for the Retina iPad. But Jobs also noted that apps which updated to higher-resolution artwork would look “stunning”. “We suggest that you do that,” he said at the time.

And that will undoubtedly be the suggestion again. Luckily, because the Retina display iPad has been rumored for a long time and because many developers remember the initial Retina transition, some developers have jumped the gun and prepared the graphics in their iPad apps to be Retina-ready as well.

The first two iPads had a resolution of 1024 x 768 — which actually isn’t all that far from the Retina display iPhone resolution of 960 x 640. The new iPad will have a resolution of 2048 x 1536. Earlier this week, it was revealed that Apple was now requiring developers to submit Retina-level screenshots of their apps to the App Store (for new apps, at least). Some assumed this was related to the gradual fade out of the iPhone 3GS. But it may also be related to this new iPad. Because Apple allows the iPad to run iPhone/iPod touch apps with the option to scale them up 2x, non-Retina iPhone apps (480 × 320) will undoubtedly look pretty bad on the Retina iPad.

Given how many visually-focused apps there are for the iPad, some developers are worried how their apps will look on the new device. Apple, of course, isn’t talking yet. While there may be a handful of larger developers that will get an early peek at (or a heads up on) the Retina iPad, most will get to see the thing the same time the rest of us do — on stage in early March.

Some aren’t just worried about the iPad either. Rumors have been circulating for a few months that Apple may also be on the verge of launching high-resolution Mac displays. It’s looking increasingly likely that Apple will do a one-two high-resolution punch with high-res Macs (probably MacBook Pros or maybe even a new MacBook Air) and Retina iPads in the coming weeks.

Recent code changes in OS X with added HiDPI support suggest the former may be coming very soon.

If you think a 2048 x 1536 iPad sounds great, think about a 2880×1800 MacBook. Unlike resolution changes in the past, elements on the screen wouldn’t get smaller, they’d just get crisper. But to take advantage of all those pixels, Mac developers will also have their work cut out for them updating all the graphical elements in their apps.

My suggestion is that developers get ready. The future is looking crisp.

If you don’t know a resistor from a Mister Mister, this is the app for you. Built by Adafruit, creators of DIY Arduino gear, Circuit Playground is a $2.99 app designed to help you identify and understand various electronic components. For example, the app includes a resistor identification system based on the colored bands painted on the casing as well as a field guide to many electrical components.

The rest of the tools – including converters, calculators, and datasheet storage systems – just makes things a little bit easier when you’re building an electronics project. I’m terrible at this stuff so it would be a boon for me and my slow-witted monkey mind.

The app is available now for the iPhone and iPad.

Product Page

There has been much debate about what the post-PC era is, when it will arrive, or whether it’s already here. But key pieces of new data, emerging last week, are making the case that we crossed the imaginary line from the “PC” era to the “post-PC” era at the end of 2011. According to analysts at Canalys, two major computing milestones were achieved at the end of this year: smartphone shipments outpaced PCs for the first time ever, and Apple became the world’s largest PC maker, if you count iPads as PCs (as well you should).

Combined, what these numbers tell us is that the post-PC era is happening now. Right now. And maybe we need to think about how we define “PC.”

In Q4 2011, vendors shipped 158.5 million smartphones, up 57% on the 101.2 million units shipped in Q4 2010. For the year, there were 487.7 million units shipped, up 63% on the 299.7 million units shipped in 2010. Meanwhile, the global PC market grew just 15% in 2011 to 414.6 million units. The smartphones have won.

The funny thing about that PC shipments number is that, on its own, it doesn’t paint the most accurate picture of today’s PC landscape. There weren’t 414.6 million desktop, notebook and netbook computers shipped in 2011 – those were at 112.4 million, 209.6 million and 29.4 million, respectively. The 414.6 million number includes 63.2 million in “pad” shipments, Canalys’s preferred term for tablets. That means 15% of the “PC” shipments in 2011 were tablets, largely Apple’s iPad. In Q4, tablets were 22% of the total PC shipments. And the tablet segment of the market grew 274.2% year-over-year.

Also in Q4 2011, Apple became the leading worldwide “PC” vendor (if you count the iPad as a PC) with 15 million iPads and 5 million Macs shipped, representing 17% of the total 120 million client PCs shipped in Q4. It overtook HP (now #2), Acer, Dell and Lenovo in the process.

Overall, the PC market grew 16% year-over-year, Canalys noted last month. Without tablets, it declined 0.4%.

Of course, there’s still the question of whether or not tablets should be broken out into their own computing category, positioned against the traditional “PCs” when tracking device shipments. For what’s it worth, I think it’s fine to count tablets as PCs – after all, PC means “personal computer,” not “machine running Windows.” The fact that we still equate the word with a desktop, monitor, keyboard and mouse combo is a testament to the empire Microsoft built, and is now losing.

Case in point: netbook shipments dropped 25.3% from 2010 to 2011. Desktops grew a paltry 2.3% and notebooks grew just 7.5%. This is end of the “PC” era in action. While the 209.6 million notebook shipments still make that the largest category of “PCs,” the growth trends here, if sustained, dictate that’s its only a matter of time before the shift to tablets becomes even more pronounced.

Think about it: what’s the first “PC” you’re going to buy for your kid, as a new member to the post-PC computing generation? If you respond “notebook,” I’d say you’re lying. That kid is getting an iPad, even if they end up stealing yours. If not an iPad, then they’re getting a phone.

And smartphones are PCs, too. The most affordable ones.

This past quarter, smartphone shipments overtook PCs, a hugely important milestone that speaks volumes about the state of modern-day computing. The computer-in-your-pocket has moved from being “a niche product segment at the high-end of the mobile phone market to becoming a truly mass-market proposition,” explains Canalys of the change.

In Q4, Apple broke records by shipping 37 million iPhones – the most ever shipped by a single vendor in a quarter. Previously, Nokia held the record with 28.3 million phones shipped in Q4 2010. What a difference a year makes.

But Canalys cautioned that it expects to see smartphone market growth slow in 2012, as vendors exercise “greater cost control and discipline” to focus on profitability. This is the only discordant note to the report. Smartphone growth slowing? No offense to the analysts, but I’ll believe that one when I see it. Just watching Apple’s sales alone, it’s clear you can’t underestimate its power to deliver record-breaking numbers. In addition, just because vendors like HTC and Motorola are going to launch fewer smartphone models in 2012, that doesn’t (necessarily) mean they’ll sell fewer overall phones. If anything, the companies are hoping that their increased focus on “hero” devices will help them increase sales.

One thing is clear, however: that post-PC era everyone’s been talking about since the day the phrase slipped off Steve Jobs’ lips has arrived. We’re living it. Anyone who wastes their time debating its existence (tablets are PCs! phones are PCs!) is arguing semantics. The shift itself, whatever you want to call it, is happening.

So perhaps “post-PC” isn’t the best terminology. If everything’s a PC, then maybe what we’ve achieved is something more akin to “PCs Everywhere.” Not as catchy, though.

Photo credit top: Lokesh Dhakar, flickr; bottom: agirregabiria, flickr

Apple’s iPad reigns supreme from whatever angle you choose to look at the tablet market (profits, apps, quality, market share, mindshare, you name it), but research firm Strategy Analytics this morning said Android did manage to capture a record 39 percent tablet OS market share in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Apple maintains the lead with 58 percent market share in Q4 2011 (down from 68 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010).

Peter King, a research director at Strategy Analytics, says global tablet shipments (the research firm explains that these refer to ‘sell-in’ and not over-the-counter sales—an important difference, those Android tabs could sit on the shelves forever at Best Buy and never be bought) reached an all-time high of 26.8 million units in Q4 2011, surging 150 percent from 10.7 million in Q4 2010. He added:

“Apple shipped a robust 15.4 million iPads worldwide and maintained its strong market leadership with 58 percent share during the fourth quarter of 2011. Apple shrugged off the much-hyped threat from entry-level Android models this quarter.”

They did indeed, even if these aren’t really ‘threatening’ Apple at all. Android climbing to 39 percent share (up from 29 percent in Q4 2010) is, nevertheless, meaningful, but here’s the thing: Strategy Analytics includes Amazon’s Kindle Fire in the list of Android models it tracks the distribution of.

The Kindle Fire runs a heavily customized version of Android, sure, but it’s a different beast from, say, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab or Motorola’s Xoom. I would love to know how much of that 39 percent market share can be attributed to the undeniably strong sales numbers of the Kindle Fire.

Put differently, imagine if Amazon didn’t opt for Android or hadn’t yet released the Fire. Which Android tablet makers would be posing a serious threat to Apple then?

I wouldn’t go as far as to say Android tablets ‘failed’ miserably in 2011, but it’s a far cry from success if you ask me. A lot of people expected Android to be on par with iOS by now.

Worth noting: Strategy Analytics is not including Android-powered ebook readers in its latest report.

Update: you should also definitely read LAPTOP Mag’s Analyst: Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet Have 40% of Android Tablet Sales

I have no doubt Android tablets will actually end up commanding a larger tablet OS market share than Apple’s iOS over time, but that will be a logical result of its distribution model and not “Android winning” (basically, Apple chooses not to focus on market share but on profit margins). That Android model also comes with a real, unquestionable fragmentation problem.

Apple shouldn’t worry about the surge of Android in terms of tablet market share, desktop PC makers and the likes of RIM, Nokia and Microsoft should. Especially with an iPad 3 coming in 2012.

Something that crossed my mind: Strategy Analytics estimates that Microsoft captured a mere 1.5 percent global tablet OS market share in Q4 2011, which is very ironic if you think about how early the software giant started thinking about tablet computers and their potential in the enterprise and getting such devices into consumers’ hands.

Says Strategy Analytics: “The upcoming release of Windows 8 this year cannot come quickly enough for Microsoft, so its hardware partners can start competing more effectively in the tablet space”.

No shit.

As I watched Apple’s iBooks event in New York City last week, my mind began to race about the ramifications of such announcements. Everyone had a pretty good idea for weeks (or months if you read the Steve Jobs biography) that textbooks would be a focal point for Apple, but there wasn’t much thought given to what this would mean. During the event itself, I just kept thinking, “wow, Apple just incentivized every college student to get an iPad”.

Except, they didn’t. Not yet.

The weird thing about Apple’s event was that it mainly focused on high school education. Yes, the iTunes U update is fantastic, but for now, the textbook side of the equation is about high schools. And again, that’s weird because the iPad plan seems better suited for college students. In fact, it seems almost perfectly suited for college students.

In kicking off the event, Apple SVP Phil Schiller noted that high school students in the U.S. that enter as freshman only have a 70 percent chance of graduating these days. In urban areas, it’s more like 60 percent, he said. Schiller was setting up Apple’s iBooks textbooks as a possible way to  improve this.

The problem is that the cheapest iPad is still $500. What high school student is going to buy that? Basically none — their parents will have to. And that’s fine for some students, but not all. Not even a high percent, I’d imagine. In the inner-cities — again, where education is even more of an issue — it’s probably even less likely of a purchase.

As Josh Topolsky points out, Apple does work with school districts to lease iPads on a four-year schedule, presumably at a nice discount. But that means the school owns the iPads and temporarily gives them out to students. That goes against Apple’s stated mission that students should now buy (or get via redemption code) all iBooks textbooks and keep them forever, keeping their notes, highlights, etc.

The school leasing also probably means the iPads are staying at the schools. How does that help for homework? Or are the schools allowing students to take the iPads home, risking losing them or damaging them? That doesn’t seem like a tenable idea for many budget-minded schools.

Schiller also told The Verge that he felt the numbers worked out favorably if the school districts bought students iPads instead of old-school textbooks and computers for the classroom. Maybe. But computers are a purchase the high schools do in multi-year cycles and students share them. For this new iPad textbook system to fully reach its maximum potential, schools would have to buy one iPad for each student that comes through the school. And again, what if they get lost, or stolen, or break?

My point is that Apple’s textbook plan for iBooks is a wonderful, obvious, and much needed evolution of the current system. But it’s more naturally suited for college students. At least right now.

One could easily imagine students buying $499 iPads and $15 textbooks instead of paying several hundred dollars a year for just the old-school textbooks alone. (Though it wasn’t entirely clear if college-level textbooks would have the same $15 ceiling that high school ones do — again, the focus last week was on high school.)

Yes, college students can (and often do) sell back books once they’re done with them. But having been a college student myself, I feel safe saying the entire experience is pretty crappy. I’d much much much rather have an iPad with all my textbooks on it — that I get for a reasonable price, and keep forever, along with all my notes.

Even better, you could imagine the universities themselves wrapping the cost of an iPad into tuition. Many schools started doing this with laptops years ago. Because college is so expensive — and again, college textbooks are so ridiculously expensive — this works. At the very least, it works a lot better than it currently does for high school students.

Even if when the next iPad is announced, the current model drops in price to something like $400 — or even $300 — that’s still an expensive sell to high school students and/or their parents and/or their schools. If every kid in the world already had an iPad, this would be the most brilliant program ever. Unfortunately, Apple needs to sell at least a few billion more iPads to get to that point.

I’m worried we may have a chicken and egg problem here. Apple is giving students a huge incentive to use iPads, but it’s still prohibitive for many of those students to get one. And if many can’t get one, does the iBooks program take off like it should?

If it does take off, I bet it does in colleges first. And that’s why it’s weird that Apple is starting off by focusing on high school.

The education system in this country (and I’m sure you could certainly argue the same is true in most parts of the world) absolutely needs fixing, and it’s great that Apple is working on the problem. I’m just not sure I see how it’s anything but an extremely slow process with iBooks, if it works at all.

I have no doubt that in the not-too-distant future, students walk around with tablet computers carrying all of their textbooks and other education needs. But we need to get the tablets in their hands to get to that future.

The future was supposed to be all about swooping through pixellated cities, the crepuscular computer ghost-light arcing through the Aurignacian canyons of Neo Tokyo as we trailed our enemies into the dark. Instead we get some of the coolest map visualizations I’ve ever seen with a few social media tricks thrown in to make a very cool mapping platform called UpNext. You win some, you lose some.

UpNext uses 3D renderings of world cities to show points of interest and Foursquare checkins inside a real representation of nearly 50 cities. They’ve just launched their app for the iPad and Android tablets and I am seriously impressed. The resolution is great and the onscreen update speed is amazing. It offers the best of services like Google Maps alongside real city imagery, allowing you to use the map to orient yourself in 3D space. A blinking dot on a 2D street-scape works, but a 3D dot in a 3D city works even better.

“Google launched Google Maps 5 for Android last year. We are bringing the same vector based goodness to iOS, but with more beautiful cartography, faster rendering, and fluid search with our innovative search results system. Our cities are fully textured, our roadways carved in full 3D with overpasses and tunnels and our buildings are all tappable,” said Danny Moon, CEO.

Now all I need are a pair of Virtual Light glasses and a carbon-fiber messenger bike. The app is available now for iPad and Android and is coming soon on the Kindle Fire.

iPad Product Page
Android Product Page

Wow. Talk about not doing your homework. ION Audio has apparently infringed on the patents, trademarks and designs of three companies by debuting a new iOS peripheral at CES. The Guitar Apprentice (which is honestly a pretty cool idea) appears to use concepts that Behringer sent to the US Patent and Trademark office over a year and a half ago.

But it’s not just the product concept.

The trademark on the name “Guitar Apprentice” is actually owned by another company called Legacy Learning Systems and if that were not enough, the headstock design on their guitar shaped controller could be in dispute by Schecter Guitars.

There is a fairly comprehensive account over at FutureMusic, where they are following this little product drama.

I didn’t see this device while I was at CES, so I am not sure how “finished” their booth prototype was. But I have to wonder how much effort and time went into this. Surely it wasn’t a “hey we just threw this thing together and didn’t know any better” moment. If they created their iOS app in house, you’ve got to figure that the development for it alone could easily have been tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, and likely took some time. Not to mention the controller device, which looks to be molded plastic and fairly finished in appearance.

If it was an honest mistake, then I kind of feel bad for these guys because this could be a very costly blunder for a company that has a couple of pretty sweet looking peripherals.

On the flip side, just think of the press they are getting for their other product lines via this problem? Maybe this could even turn into a win?

[via FutureMusic ]

Vodio is a new iPad app that’s somewhat along the same lines as iOS app Shelby.tv. Like Shelby, it also brings you videos being shared by your friends on social networks. But where Shelby.tv only focuses on those “socially shared” videos, Vodio instead uses its social features to bring “a dash” of personalization to its video recommendations.

In Vodio, you get to see what the crowd is watching too. To get started, you configure the app around your interests, by telling it which categories of videos you like to watch. For example, Comedy, Entertainment, Movies, Music, News, Science, Sports, Tech, etc. You can even drill down into these categories further to select the sub-categories that match your interests. So in Sports, you could choose Basketball, Football, Soccer, Tennis, etc. But you can also customize your favorite content sources. Yes to Fox Sports, perhaps, and no to the UFC.

Great idea, in theory. In practice, Vodio seemed a little buggy. You can check the content sources you want to include, but good luck un-checking them. Tapping the categories again does nothing. Apparently, that’s by design. You don’t un-check your channel selections. You go into “Edit” mode and remove them. OK then.

Maybe that seems like a minor complaint, but it’s very unintuitive to have a one-way checkbox. Try it yourself if you don’t believe me. (The company says it’s working on this).

Petty complaints aside, the rest of Vodio’s user interface is attractive and fun to use. You swipe horizontally to move between channels and vertically to scroll through the videos in those channels. In addition to the personalization and (optional) social networking connections, Vodio simply shows you what’s hot on various video sharing platforms and from top media publishers. Videos come from TV shows, networks, comedy sites like College Humor, NASA, newspapers, newswires, movie trailers, music videos, blogs, and more. But for now, the only supported players are YouTube, Vimeo, AOL Video, Facebook Video and Dailymotion.

Vodio Labs Ltd., the company behind Vodio, was founded in early 2011 by Jonathan Messika, Uri Twig and Ishay Weinstock in Tel Aviv, Israel. Last July, it raised a 200K Euro seed round led by Kima Ventures, with Jaina Capital and Orefa Investment participating.

The company is now working on simplifying the channel set up and personalization process, adding more video-driven features like HD enabling, and partnering with premium content players.

The Vodio app is a free download from iTunes here.

Dijit teased us with a preview of their iPad-optimized remote control app back in December, but home theater convergence aficionados will be glad to know that the app is finally available in the App Store.

As previously mentioned, the Dijit app has already graced many an Android tablet, but the iPad-friendly version sports a few new tweaks to improve usability.

Full screen remote? Check. Larger buttons? You bet. And as always, Dijit allows users to manage their share what they’re watching on Facebook and Twitter, manage their Netflix queues, and engage in some good old-fashioned channel surfing with minimal setup.

The app is live (and free) in the iOS App Store, but you’ll need some extra hardware in order to use your iPad for artfully dodging Jersey Shore reruns. Don’t forget to have a Griffin Beacon IR blaster or a compatible Roku device handy, or else you’ll be left checking listings and sharing show recommendations on one device and controlling your home theater setup with another.

Update: Tickets are now sold out. Be sure to keep your eye out for ticket giveaways and for when we release our next batch of tickets.

The nominations have been tabulated and the votes are in. Over 300,000 nominations were calculated across 20 categories. Along with our partners GigaOm and VentureBeat, we are very proud to announce the finalists for 2011′s best in technology. Voting begins now.

For 2011, we’ve added some new categories. Best Location App, Best Cloud Services and Biggest Social Impact join the Crunchies ranks this year. You’ll also find Best Social App, the NYC-dominated category of Best Shopping App, Best New Startup and the year’s best VC’s and Angel Investors. Newcomers like TaskRabbit’s Leah Busque and Keith Rabois for his angel investments (Airbnb, LinkedIn, Yammer, Path, YouTube) made the list of finalists, as well as industry favorites such as Marc Andreessen, Jack Dorsey, Mark Pincus and Ron Conway.

There are some pretty good match-ups this year. Google+ is up against Facebook Timeline for Best Social App, along with the New New Twitter, Instagram, and Path 2.0). The Kindle Fire is competing with the iPad 2 for Best New Device. And Pinterest, Turntable.fm, Nest, Fab, and Codecademy are all vying for Best New Startup (even though two of those were complete pivots). LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman is up for Angel of the Year. His seed investment in Zynga is worth 160 times what he paid for it. But AngelList founders Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi are also finalists in the category for helping to democratize angel investing, along with Conway, Rabois, Y Combinator’s Paul Graham, and Kevin Rose (who has a killer portfolio that includes Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga, and Square). Who will win?

Everyone is eligible and encouraged to vote. The rules state that you may vote once per day, per award category, until voting closes on Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 11:59pm PST. There are 20 award categories open for voting, recognizing the top accomplishments across a variety of fields and roles. If you are one of the finalists, create a badge and get your community excited about this honor and get them to vote for you. Winners will be announced on January 31, live at the Crunchies.

In addition to today’s announcement of the Finalists, we are happy to release our next batch of tickets through Eventbrite. The release begins now, so act fast and get them while you can.

Here are your Finalists:

Best Technology Achievement (2010 winner: Google Self Driving Cars)
Lytro (Related posts)
NFC (Related posts)
OnLive (Related posts)
Siri (Related posts)
Tesla Flat Pack Battery (Related posts)

Best Social Application (2010 winner: DailyBooth)
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5th Annual Crunchies Awards
Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness Ave.
San Francisco, CA

7:30pm – midnight – Awards Ceremony and After Party
A night of celebration with festive attire.

Our sponsors help make the Crunchies happen, if you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities during the ceremony or after-party, please contact Jeanne Logozzo at jeanne@techcrunch.com.

For press credentials, please fill out this request form and confirmations will be sent separately via email.

Who’s browsing the mobile web the most? Apparently, iPhone and iPad owners are. According to end-of-the-month data from statistics provider NetMarketShare, iOS users ended up with a 52% market share of mobile web browsing in December 2011. More simply put, that means that over half of the mobile web browsing last month took place on an iOS device.

Android, meanwhile, had a 16.2% share, behind Java ME at 21.27%, which fell into second place.

Trailing the top three were Symbian (5.76%), BlackBerry (3.51%) and the mysterious “Other” (1.07%) which is where Windows Phone must be hiding.

iOS saw the highest numbers in October, when it reached 61.5%, but has fallen slightly since.

Of course, it may not be fair to compare iOS directly with the other mobile platforms, given that the iPad accounts for a good bit of Apple’s market share in this slice of mobile data. But even when the iPad is excluded, the iPhone still holds its own with a 25.24% showing. The iPad is at 24.53% and the iPod Touch accounts for 2.32%.

Android, when divvied up by versions, sees 8.92% for Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and 4.10% for Android 2.2% (Froyo). Where are the newer versions? Barely there: Android 3.x is just a little over a 1% share and Android 4.x is a tiny 0.05%.

This data may seem a little odd, given Android’s marketshare gains, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, so it could be a reflection on the service’s methodology. But NetMarketShare is fairly reliable, so it could also be a reflection of the varying habits of iOS and Android users in general.

Hat tip: MobileMarketingWatch 

The Apple rumor mill never takes a break, even during the holidays.

In the past months we’ve heard two very specific allegations concerning the iPad — both out of Digitimes — focused on a smaller sized Apple tab at 8.75 inches and a release date of early 2012. As Devin explained so well, the notion of a smaller iPad out of Cupertino is a bit hard to believe. It would mean that Apple is going back on its word that the iPad is the right size.

Today Digitimes backtracks from its previous rumor with a new one: Instead of the 7.85-inch iPad, Apple will supposedly be bringing two new Retina-style iPads to the market to fill in the mid- and high-end market segments, while the current iPad 2 hangs around to take on the Kindle Fire.

Apple’s stuff tends to be a bit pricier than the competition, but Cupertino still likes to round out its categories. Just look at the iPod. Each model, ranging from Classic, to Touch, to Nano, to Shuffle is a very different product, but combined they still cover very different price points.

Digitimes sources claim that the new models will hold true to Apple’s 9.7-inch screen, but with a QXGA resolution (1536×2048) and dual-LED light bars. And if said sources are to be believed, Sharp is now taking the lead on panel supply, with a little help from LG Display and Samsung Electronics.

The report goes on to say that Samsung will continue to supply Apple with its chips, specifically the quad-core A6 this time around, and that Samsung has come on as a supplier of CMOS sensors. Apparently Samsung will be supplying 5-megapixel sensors for the mid-range model, while Sony provides 8-megapixel sensors for the high-end iPad.

Digitimes has also gathered information regarding the new iPad batteries, stating that Simplo Technology and Dynapack International Technology have both taken orders for batteries with a capacity of as high as 14,000 mAh. And if that weren’t enough, Digitimes even claims to know when the new models will be unveiled: January 26, 2012 at the iWorld conference.

Granted, this is quite a hefty amount of information and I’d wager that not all of it is 100 percent spot on (Digitimes has been wrong before… but also right). Still, I think higher-res iPads with better cameras make much more sense out of Cupertino than a smaller tablet just for the sake of following competition. The Kindle Fire is selling great, and Apple doesn’t want even one competing tablet to start draining market share. But Apple has never fought back by copying.

The true assault will be a price drop, and from what we’ve seen happen with the iPhone 4 in recent months it wouldn’t be that surprising to see the current iPad 2 shed a couple hundred bucks from its price tag.

In order to compete with the $200 Fire, it’d have to.

Update: LoopInsight’s Jim Dalrymple, who is certainly one of the more reliable sources for Apple news, has checked with his sources and believes that Apple will not debut a new iPad (or two) at MacWorld or CES this year. As for the supply chain sources and the information they gave… Well, that’s still up for debate.

Amazon has updated the Kindle app for iPhone and iPad, adding some basic improvements to the standard assortment of reader functions. These include the addition of “print replica” textbooks so students can follow along with the paper copy in class as well as improved PDF support and a personal document system that lets you send files to an Amazon address for conversion.

They’ve also improved the magazine interface for easy downloads and storage. You can also sideload PDFs for reading on the go.

As if that weren’t enough, Conan O’Brien brings us someone who may or may not be Jeff Bezos addressing the many complaints folks have had regarding the Kindle Fire, including the poorly-place on/off button and its as-of-yet undiscovered tendency to catch fire.

Another crop of Apple rumors has grown up under our feet, and it seems a little reaping is in order. Two rumors are making the rounds, both of which warrant a little consideration but should, as usual, be taken lightly until more substantial evidence appears. Both have their origins in Digitimes, which prides itself on catching scraps of news from upstream suppliers but isn’t always correct in its conclusions.

Earlier this week a little bird told Digitimes that the upcoming redesign of the MacBook Pro won’t simply be thinning down the body, but will upgrade the displays to a mind-blowing 2880×1800 resolution. And then just today there has been a recurrence of the 7.85″ iPads we first heard about in October. The implications of the first rumor especially are quite serious, and while the second one seems unlikely, its resilience must be acknowledged.

Let’s talk about the little iPad first. I wrote in October that essentially these reports could easily be exaggerations of the usual testing companies like Apple do. They said smaller tablets were DOA, but that was more than a year ago, and things change. The Fire has proven that many people do indeed want a smaller tablet, and everyone would think it a fine joke if Apple went back on that and said “we waited until we could do it right.”

Supposedly this smaller iPad would retain the 1024×768 resolution, which is really the only option they had. The size is significantly smaller, but the fact that it’s 4:3 means that it’s also quite a bit larger than the Fire and other 7″ tablets. Here, I made you this chart, which may even be accurate:

Looks like a fairly comfortable size, this supposed 7.85″, like a slightly stubbier Galaxy Tab 8.9, which I think is a great size. It would naturally be extremely thin and light, much more so than the iPad 2. But it’s hard for me to believe they would simply put this thing out there without any kind of real differentiating feature. The iPod Classic, Nano, Touch, and Shuffle are all very different products, not just different sizes. It doesn’t seem likely that this rumored smaller iPad would be just that — smaller. To simply reduce the size would be to admit a design failure, and Apple would hate to do that. But from the very little info that’s out there (two reports giving the screen size and a late-2012 date) we can’t draw any conclusions.

The resolution upgrade for the MacBook Pro series is what’s really blowing my mind. Apple isn’t the only one looking into high-PPI screens (it’s something of an arms race, really), but they leapfrogged everyone with the iPhone 4 screen and hope to do the same elsewhere.

It would be an extremely powerful sales tool to have all primary Apple products be high-resolution. People see the screen of the iPhone 4 and they instantly understand how it’s better (though competition is getting tougher). They’ll see the screen of the new iPad and these high-res laptops and they’ll understand it there as well. Text will be clearer, images will be sharper, and no doubt Apple will have a few flashy features that demonstrate other benefits.

But it’s not quite that simple. With the iPhone, moving to high-res meant a bunch of upgraded art, sure, though the 2x mode saved a lot of trouble and looked just fine for the most part. But compared to the iPad and especially to OS X, the iPhone is really quite a limited ecosystem in many ways as far as the display and interface goes.

The question of resolution independence, then, again rears its head. Resolution independence, for those who have forgotten, is where an interface does not use bit-mapped graphics like, say, buttons 50 pixels wide and 15 tall, with rounded edges formed by falling off in graduated steps, producing the illusion of a curve. Instead, it uses either very high resolution versions of those graphics or scalable vector-type graphics to ensure that visual elements can be displayed at any resolution with the maximum fidelity possible. The curve on the corner of the button would not be measured in pixels but calculated geometrically and rendered in pixels as best it can be.

It’s not demonstrated perfectly (the proportions ought to be the same) but you can see how a seamlessly scaled UI might look here:

Apple has an on-again, off-again relationship with resolution independence. They’ve made some strides, such as in how icons are scaled, but creating a scalable but consistent interface is extremely tricky; PPI, DPI, scaling, filtering, and all their effects on design are a jungle few care to walk into. And at any rate screens haven’t had a high enough resolution to make the work of creating a resolution-independent interface worthwhile. Until now, that is.

For the present, 2880×1800 is big enough that current high resolution of the 15-inch MacBook Pro (1440×900) would neatly fit inside via pixel expansion, meaning that UI elements would appear the same size on this new device, but would be “rendered” at a higher resolution. For the present, I say, because it is only natural that OS X should, like iOS, be remade with the benefits of high resolution in mind. Given that there has been talk of this change for years, and that we’ve seen concrete examples here and there where it’s useful on current screens, I would say that Apple has been working on this design overhaul for quite a long time. It’s going to be their main volley against Windows 8, which, though it has a lot going for it, is very unlikely to beat Apple to the punch on this.

But they can’t introduce it with the new MacBook Pros, which will likely ship in the second quarter of 2012. Lion has, relatively speaking, just arrived, and the changes are too major to be included in anything less than a full decimal release. I don’t have a solution to this problem, and it may be that the rhythms at Apple will have to be disrupted in order to fully take advantage of this new technology.

The last thing that must be said about all this high resolution talk is that it may mark a return to the high end for Apple. For a couple years now, Apple has been focusing on cost and volume, driving down on-contract prices for the iPhone, aggressively pricing the iPad, and bringing the MacBook Air (once a luxury item and likely could have stayed there) below $1000 — to say nothing of how they’ve cooled towards professional applications like Final Cut Pro.

But this new screen not only commands a premium on its own, it will also actually be expensive. Possibly, in the first round, a major upgrade for several hundred dollars. The MacBook Pros will live up to the moniker; the Air will be the low-cost laptop and the Pro will be the high-cost one. What will accompany this turn? I don’t think desktops are ever going to be an Apple focus again; too much of their IP is in portability. I’m thinking that these MBPs will be able to be specced out to desktop levels, though, as if Apple still wants people to use their computers for serious media purposes, octa-core processors and 16 gigs of RAM will be in demand. That all is just my personal speculation, though.

One more word and then I’m done. I’ve seen a few articles crying about Digitimes as if it were deliberately trying to damage Apple by leaking these items. Let’s be realistic. Apple is one of the biggest companies in the world, and arguably the most important company in consumer electronics. It is perfectly right that Digitimes and other outlets like it should want to focus on this massive, interesting company and the devices which for a few years now have been leading the rest of the industry. They report these things because these things are what they report. And don’t forget that their Apple coverage, while it gets the most attention, is only a fraction of what they cover.

Whether these things are true will only be seen in time, but the topic of resolution independence and high-res displays is one which gives way to many other discussions and has many tangential implications, some of which I felt needed to be explored. It all starts with pixels.

This week the lads and I talk about the iPad Mini, our huge booth at CES, and my new favorite coffeemaker. We also discuss how much it’s going to cost us to interview 50 Cent at CES this year, which is pretty darn wild.

Want to hear this in audio form? I’ve extracted the audio from the video webcast and saved it to a downloadable MP3 podcast that you can subscribe to via RSS or iTunes. Hopefully you enjoy this version as well.

At the few times when I find myself on the bike or elliptical at the gym, I’m always frustrated by the lack of anything interesting to keep my eyes on. The TVs are showing something boring, the magazines are sweaty and old, the people too are sweaty and old, and I end up staring at the wall. Why am I telling you this? Because someone has created a solution to this particular first-world problem that seems rather promising.

It started as a sort of hack by which a Redditor connected his exercycle to his Xbox 360. Since then he’s taken what he learned there and produced an iPad app, Virtual Active, that detects how “fast” you’re going on a cycle or elliptical by measuring the vibration, and moves you at a corresponding speed through a picturesque landscape.

The creator assures me that the accelerometer is up to the task, and no configuration is necessary. You just put your iPad, iPhone, or what have you on the bike, treadmill, or elliptical, and it figures itself out. I’ll believe it when I see it, of course, but it sounds real enough.

It’s free to download, but you purchase videos from different locations: the Alps, the Grand Canyon, even my own Pacific Northwest.

Potential problems: the videos themselves are expensive ($8 each) and quite large (~800MB for around a half-hour video). Gym bunnies with disposable income might lap it up, but it’s a bit expensive for those of us not as dedicated to our fitness, or not as concerned with having fun while exercising.

The BitGym technology behind the videos will expand into games and other types of video entertainment, though. The first will be Fit Freeway, which will use the accelerometer to determine speed and head tracking to steer. Don’t worry, nobody looks cool at the gym, so I doubt anyone will notice you twitching around. User-created videos and other things are on the horizon as well.

Pretty cool stuff — if it works. Nice to see a random but promising hack we covered turn into something legit. There’s more info at BitGym’s site if you’re interesting.

If you’re flying American on Friday, there’s a chance your pilot will be using an iPad instead of the traditional paper flight charts. The airline has reportedly become the first major one to get FAA approval for the device, though smaller charter lines have had it for a while. American announced their intention to make the switch back in June, joining Alaska and Delta and probably a few others by now.

There’s been a bit of a dust-up regarding the actual fuel savings. And while they’re miniscule, airlines are continually trimming things down and the loss of 35 pounds of charts from every plane in a fleet adds up quickly: American estimates over a million dollars a year. Not only that, but as Delta hopes, the iPad (or Xoom) will also improve communications and flight quality.

What’s missing from the report is what software exactly will be used, and whether it will be standardized across airlines, whether it’s private, open, airline-owned, licensed, or what. While it’s not important for the average flyer, who probably didn’t know the pilots carried around 40 pounds of charts with them in the first place, it should probably be at least publicly accessible information to some extent. I’m sure we’ll hear more about this, though, and we’ll see about finding out more.

If you’re worried that the devices are going to succumb to death grip, battery failure, or glitches, don’t be. The devices have undergone a six-month test period with thousands of hours of flight time, and at any rate, chances are if the one in the cockpit bites it, there will be a few spares in first class.

Update:

An American Airlines pilot has kindly provided more information (not secret by any means, but interesting) on this news. AA is certainly using JeppTC, as a commenter suggested they were. It’s actually available in the App store, but licensed pilots (and presumably those from specific airlines) have access to extra charts.

By charts, our pilot informant wishes to emphasize that it’s not just a big book. There are a number of binders covering departures, approaches, runways, operating manuals, and so on. And they must be kept up to date with biweekly inserts, which mine informant describes as “a pain in the ass” and taking hours, whereas the iPad app is automatically updated.

The iPads (and AA is sticking with iPads, the FAA has not approved any other devices, though Delta is looking at Android ones) must have backup batteries, and although I was joking about requisitioning a passenger’s iPad, it could be done if they had internet access.

It is also worth noting that these charts are duplicated per pilot, meaning that on a transatlantic flight you may have four such chart bags, which must be as much a drag on the cockpit’s closet space as it is on fuel consumption. Some paper will still be carried; the iPad program is voluntary, and some navigational charts are not yet considered good enough on the iPad and must still be carried.

Thanks very much to our tipster, who wished to remain anonymous.

The global slapfight between Apple and Samsung shows no sign of abating – a victory here, an injunction there, a ruling here, a reversal there – like Aesop’s goats, neither will give way and chances are they’re both going to end up the worse for it, though not likely at the bottom of a ravine.

It doesn’t mean that the conflict doesn’t furnish some interesting topics for discussion, however. Just recently, Apple submitted written testimony by an expert who shares their perspective on Samsung’s design decisions, and very kindly helped to compile a list of things Samsung might have done to differentiate its product. For example, Samsung could have opted not to make their tablet rectangular, or done away with the front bezel, or given it a “cluttered appearance.” Excellent suggestions!

Not surprisingly, there has been some discussion of Apple’s rather ridiculous list of design elements it claims as its own. It’s a good time to examine the creative decisions around the iPad from a different direction. It seems to me that Apple laid a trap for the entire consumer electronics industry, and they fell for it hard. And it’s really a triumph of positioning and branding. They essentially branded the tablet’s Platonic form.

What set me thinking about this was this article about creating a tablet “from scratch.” It’s good, but unfortunately doesn’t achieve the end its author intended, which is to rebut Apple’s accusations. The article certainly shows that, working from first principles like the limits of vision and grip and so on, and make only the absolutely necessary additions given the limitations of technology at the moment, you end up with something that’s a lot like an iPad. The author suggests that this exonerates Samsung. But alas, it does the opposite: it merely glorifies Apple. No, it’s not fair. But it is true. Why?

It’s interesting to think about objects that can actually be reduced to ideal forms. It’s difficult for a chair, for instance. Does the ideal chair have armrests or not? Does it have a square back or a rounded one? Flat, sculpted, or cushioned seat? You simply can’t settle it. Yet if this Platonic chair existed, and someone made it, they would be able to point at every other chair in the world and say “look how they’ve ripped me off.”

Yet that’s what Apple has done with the iPad. I certainly don’t mean that the iPad is the be-all and end-all of tablets — there’s a difference between ideal in concept and ideal in practice. The first means it conforms to a fundamental concept of the object, the second means it’s the best it can possibly be. The iPad is ideal in the first sense: it’s no more advanced in its design than a ball or a cube. It’s a type, not a design. Which is not to say that is isn’t well-done or that they didn’t put a huge amount of work into it.

A true ideal tablet would be nothing but a magic window into content. Apple made a device as close as possible to this magic window and paired it, somewhat hurriedly and crudely, with a powerful and popular platform they already controlled. Its initial success owes itself largely to the momentum of the iPhone. But once they put it out there and sold more than a dozen of them, their triumph was complete.

See, by making the design completely generic, and don’t kid yourself, that’s what they intended and got, they ensured that no one could look at another tablet without thinking of theirs. You can look at a Asus Transformer without thinking of a Xoom, or a Nook without thinking of a Galaxy Tab, but you can’t look at any of those without thinking of the iPad. But not just because they’ve sold more units. Because you can’t make a Xoom without making an iPad first, just like you can’t make a die without making a cube first. This was Apple’s stroke of evil genius.

I say evil because while it’s admirable, among the highest art in fact, to create objects as close to their type as possible, it’s another thing to claim parentage over everything further out from the source.

Consider the Bic.

Now, I don’t mean to say that this pen is exactly analogous the iPad or Apple’s position. But consider it for a second anyway. This little device is the pen defined – essentially it’s the bare minimum for a pen, designed well and simply for human hands to grip and write with. It has no extraneous elements yet is still functional and easily recognizable as an individual branded object. It’s durable, cheap, and reliable – qualities which emerge from its archetypical design.

And while it does fit so closely with our ideas of what a pen should be (roughly cylindrical, of a certain length and width, with a writing tip and perhaps a cap that fits on and doubles as a clip), no would say it’s the best or only pen in the world, or that other pens, which share 90% of the Bic’s most important characteristics, are copies or descendants.

This Bic pen enjoys widespread popularity and huge sales, has for ages. It sells because it’s a type.

The iPad sells for more complicated reasons, but its form is about as original as the Bic’s. Functional, yes; beautiful, yes; but original? How can something so clearly designed to be the opposite of original be considered so? The iPad was made a dozen times before it was made, just like the Bic. It will enjoy long-lasting popularity and be an iconic product for a long time, like the Bic. And like the Bic, it has no claim to its shape. Its shape, like the pen, the chair, the cup, was determined by necessity, and Apple made sure that apart from a few very small features, its shape was determined solely by necessity. That’s not an easy thing to do, and the result (like all good design) speaks for itself. Apple is reaping the rewards, but they must acknowledge that they don’t own the shape which larger forces than themselves imprinted on their work.

Apple’s allegations regarding UI poaching are more realistic. For a touch-based interface, we don’t yet have a type, a Platonic form, as evidenced by all the experimentation and evolution we see every month in apps, OSes, concepts, and so on. Imitation is obvious when the slate (so to speak) is so substantially blank.

And I am not oblivious that there are certain little design flourishes that set the iPad apart from a totally undesigned device. These were intentionally kept subtle and few in number. It’s these that other companies should feel ashamed of being caught copying.

What can companies like Samsung and HTC do when every tablet they build has the same foundation as Apple’s? They can make real design decisions. If they inherit the design (with minor alterations) from a competitor, and someone else makes the OS, what exactly are they contributing? The placement of the power button? That’s not to say they can’t make a perfectly nice tablet, but if they want to be held apart as a truly different device, they need to take a risk. Apple was first on the field and very pointedly took no risks in design — the risk they took was in offering the device at all. Why not take Apple up on its suggestions? No bezel, not thin, non-rectangular shape? Accept the challenge and make Apple eat their words. It’s what they would probably do if the situations were reversed. It’s all impossible until someone does it.

It’s a period of imitation whether you’re ally or enemy to Apple, because they built the mother of all tablets, or as close as they could manage, and everyone else’s devices look like its children whether they are or not. It will take time for the family tree to grow and differentiate. Apple is in the enviable position of being able to claim they invented the wheel (and patented it), and will take everyone to task for their circles until someone makes something truly new.