[9 November 2011: Brian: Cheers for Brian, no? I wrote this barely 2 weeks ago. Now Adobe has killed development on Flash for smartphones. I told you *from the beginning* that having Flash on your device was *absolutely not* a selling point. A few Android fanboys argued otherwise. What say they now? Listen to Brian, all.]

It's the iPad! Only better! Cause it has flash!

Probably the nicest honest thing you can say about the Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet is that sales have been underwhelming. Despite creating a device that *borrows* extremely heavily from Apple's iPad.

And runs on the (more popular) Android platform.

Which is open!

And has Flash!

I've detailed the reasons why (pre Kindle Fire) no one will buy a tablet that is not iPad and why no one should buy a tablet that is not iPad. No point in going over this yet again, particularly after having been proven so completely right. 

Rather, I will talk about flash. Or, more specifically, about those who talked up flash as a selling point. Which was dumb. And because Apple so publicly dissed Flash, the Apple haters became all the more fervent in their demand that flash be included in non Apple tablets.

And the weak, possibly dumb people running marketing for Playbook and Xoom and Galaxy Tab and others, charged with determining market requirements, fell trap once more to the grand fallacy that the Apple haters proffer:

that they are a market that matters

Steve Jobs and Apple have famously said they don't do market research. This isn't entirely true. Steve Jobs and Apple have famously said that they build products that they want to use, and not products based on what a bunch of people tell them. This is mostly true. The late Steve Jobs and the present Apple Inc. rarely talk about what they are doing. This is both true and good.

Because, I suspect that if they started talking up what they were doing, planning, working on, thinking about, then there would be no end of loud-angry demands to include or not include feature X and service Y and techology Zed. Which would probably do nothing more than throw Apple far off their game, just as it has thrown the also-rans off theirs. 

My mother has used an iPad. She has zero knowledge what Flash is or does. I have let children, who have never heard of 'Flash' use my iPad.

It works. Great. Easily. Powerfully. Just as Apple said, any benefits of Flash would be far outweighed by its harm to the overall user experience. And Apple continues to sell iPads by the millions. Meanwhile, Tabs can't be found, Xoom appears to be offering a buy anything get one free special, and Playbook, like the TouchPad, is soon to appear in the bins along with the $5 DVDs at the WalMart, I suspect.

Because these companies listened; only, not to the market, but to a very small group of haters and fanboys. HOW DARE APPLE NOT INCLUDE FLASH! CLOSED! BAD! MARKETING! ANd rather than building the best product for the market -- or for a market that did not quite yet exist -- they built a product to satiate the rapatious demands of a tiny tiny group of buyers who, let's face it, weren't going to buy the tablet anyway.

Apple haters my be loud. They may take to social media and find an echo chamber, but they are a blip on a niche market. Listen to them at your peril.

Bet against Apple, sure. But I wouldn't bet on the haters. They won't make you any money.

AppleInsider writes the headline that launched a thousand fanboy taunts:

Wisconsin uses Microsoft settlement funds to buy iPads for schools

The story, which is almost as good, if you're a lover of all things Apple is as apocryphal as you want it to be:

The capital of Wisconsin is buying 600 iPads this spring and plans to buy another 800 this fall, all paid for using funds from the state's settlement with Microsoft related to consumer lawsuits claiming the company overcharged customers for its software. 

Bill Smojver, Madison's director of technical services for the school district, told the Wisconsin State Journal that the tablets are cheaper, more portable and easier to use than conventional computers.

Smojver added that the new iPads will enable students to wirelessly share their work and enable schools to replace textbooks with digital apps or ebooks.

Darrell Etherington examines Level 3's purchase of 1,300 iPads. These are pre-loaded and handed out to each of Level 3's sales team:

2012 will be a breakout year in terms of actual iPad deployments, just as 2011 saw a huge uptick in pilot programs. If that indeed comes to pass, we should see Apple easily beat the 40.7 million iPads it sold in 2011.

The stories we read about the (eventual) rise of the Android tablet may not be terribly relevant, even if they finalliy come to pass. Rather, it's the shockingliy rapid growth of the iPad -- first in cosumer markets and now, perhaps, in the enterprise.

Apple sold 40 million iPads in 2011. Say they sell 60 million in 2012.  That's 100 million iPad 2 or iPad 3 in two years. In those numbers the humble iPad "toy" will be a force that legitimately challenges the 25 year hegemony of the Windows PC.

This year Steve Ballmer will let it be known that 2013 is his final year. 

And despite all he's done, he may not even get to be the one that chooses his (early) retirement date.

If you are a self-published author of a novel, such as I am, you soon become acutely aware of certain facts:

• Kindle, along with the Kindle app, dominate sales
• It is almost comically easier to publish your work on Kindle than iBooks (or anywhere else)
• The numbers are shockingly in your favor. My first novel, The Empty Spaces (go buy it!) is available for $2.99 on Kindle. For that extremely low price, you are supporting a budding writer in a way that just a couple years ago was impossible. For $2.99, I receive about $2.00 per sale. For all but the most established, popular authors, $2.00 per sale on a paperback, say, was nearly impossible. Even if priced at $10 a copy.

All of which means that soon all of us will be published authors.

And the market continues to grow bigger and bigger...From the New York Times, on the cusp of (still another) content revolution:

For adults, tablet computers and e-readers were the gifts of choice, judging by a new report that indicates the number of adults in the United States who own tablets and e-readers nearly doubled from mid-December to early January.

The increased ownership of tablets was especially pronounced among highly educated people with household incomes of more than $75,000. Almost one-third of people with college degrees now own tablet computers, the report said.

Women were heavier buyers of e-readers than men, a finding consistent with surveys that indicate women tend to buy more books than men.

I admire Apple tremendously. They are a true American success story and a global icon. They are simultaneously remaking the music industry, publishing industry, television. They are re-constructing the world wide web, operating one of the best supply chains of any industry and making more money than nearly any company in history.

Their products -- hardware products -- are second to none. Whether smartphone, tablet, computer or MP3 player, soon, perhaps, television, no one makes it better than Apple.

That's the kind of achievement that garners not only praise, but patience. Apple has achieved so much, changed so many industries, improved so many lives, that it's to be expected that customers and non-customers can be quick to forgive and willing to wait when Apple makes a mistake.

As they have with their awful iBooks Author end user license agreement.

I will be patient with Apple, but I will not apologize for them. The iBooks Author program, which is a *free* Apple tool designed to make iPad books sold and distributed via an Apple Store is reduced from revolutionary to disdain all because Apple has lawyered up.

BetaNews pulls out some of the more onerous passages of the iBooks Author EULA:

Apple's software startles by offering several warnings about rights and distribution, which is best summed up in Section 2 of the EULA:

B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:

(i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;

(ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.

In this instance, if you did not, you would not know that Apple is seeking to restrict where you may distribute your work! Yes, it's their store, so they get a cut. But to not allow you to sell your work anywhere else? Is that even legal?

This is bullshit. I'm not going to apologize for Apple here. No one should. This is not an instance of Apple seeking to control their product, their service, their format. Rather, seeking to control my creativity.

Which is very un-Apple. 

Not everything I do with my Apple computer and my Apple iPad and my Apple software will wish to -- or need to -- remain within Apple's walled garden. Even those programs designed by Apple to be explictly used with another Apple product and reside on an Apple platform may very well find their way out.

As they should. 

Apple didn't even create a tool to necesarily prevent this. Rather, they buried their restrictions inside a license agreement they know almost no one reads. 

Shit is fucked up and bullshit.

Ryan Kim writes:

If it is not apparent to retailers already, the world is turning mobile. If it is actual sales they are after, they need to think about how they are serving tablet users. Smartphones are still very important and often serve as a research tool, helping gather data that can be used for a later purchase. But increasingly, consumers are showing that they love shopping on a tablet. This is something Steve Jobs understood really well more than decade ago when he told a Wired reporter in 1997 that the benefit of the web was going to be realized by people interested in selling things.

“It’s more than publishing. It’s commerce. People are going to stop going to a lot of stores. And they’re going to buy stuff over the Web!” he said.

That vision has crystallized with the iPad. 

My readers, of course, already knew this. 

From such posts as...

this one

this one

this one

this one

this one

...and about 30-40 more. 

I'm sure it was just an oversight. 

Philip Elmer-DeWitt examines the iPad's presence in US schools:

Apple has a virtual lock on the school tablet market. 100% of the schools represented (serving about 30,000 students) used iPads. 0% of respondents deployed Google (GOOG) Android tablets, although there must be a few Xooms or Galaxy Tabs out there. At the time of the survey, Amazon's (AMZN) Kindle Fire had been announced but not yet shipped.

A third of the schools represented expected to eventually deploy one tablet per child; one of them already did.

The chief hurdle to getting tablets into the schools, according to the IT folks, was not cost (20%) but "device management" (64%).

How much is the Steve Jobs up in heaven laughing at the fact that Apple is the prime beneficiary of that whole "device management" concern?

But I think this article brings up a larger point that is relevant not just in schools but in government and enterprise: what idiot would *not* choose the iPad?

That's not a fanboy question. Really. Yes, I believe iPad is superior to all other tablets. Yes, it's verifiable that the iPad ecosystem is superior to all other tablets. 

Only, think of it this way: you are the person in charge of buying, say, 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 tablets. They cost money. They require "device management" and necessitate a procurement effort and IP management and a means of tracking and some training and approved applications, etc. etc. etc.

What fool would *not* choose the iPad?

Not choosing the iPad *immediately* makes the person who makes such a decision -- or the team -- viewed as anywere between stupid or on the take by everyone else within that organization.

The iPad is the standard.

As I said, Jobs in up in heaven, listening to As Time Goes By, not because he's sad but because he's, you know, the melancholy sort, and smiling.