Firstly this is a device for ‘normals‘ (though I do like the term ‘muggles‘). It is intended for the consumption of media, not its creation. It was not really made for the geeks that have spent months drooling over what it might be. Many of those geeks will buy it anyway, but I suspect that there will be a hefty side order of remorse with many of those purchases.

Firstly this is the end of the beginning. Tablets have been around for a while now (and I really liked my X60T) but Apple has shown the world how to do this stuff properly. Prediction 1 – by the end of 2010 the market will be flooded with copycat devices, most of which will run Android.

Secondly, the convergence of netbooks and tablets is starting to happen. One of the CES launches that I missed at the time was the Lenovo s10-3t. It lacks the HD screen and built in 3G that I’ve been hoping for, but I may just have to get one anyway (particularly as fan noise from my S10e is starting to drive me mad). Prediction 2 – the needs of ‘creative’ users will be served by similar form factor devices that run ‘desktop’ type operating systems like Windows 7 and Chrome.

It’s worth taking a look at the media that underpins the consumption experience on these devices (and think about their relationship with sales portals like iTunes):

• Music – I’ve had an iPod since before iTunes came to the PC, which was well before the store came along. I’ve never much liked the iTunes model, which is why the only thing I’ve ever bought there was RATM last Christmas (and I didn’t actually listen to that track). There is now plenty of choice around where to get legal mp3s from, and services like TuneChecker that will find you the cheapest source for what you want. Those that find a close coupling between the iTunes store and music on iPods/Phones/Pads really put the mug into muggle.
• Video – I use my iPod touch a fair bit for video (and used it a lot more before getting a netbook, though these days it’s been relegated to the backup device when the netbook battery can’t hold up). I don’t use iTunes for video either – there are plenty of tools out there that will create me a suitable mp4 file from whatever the source happens to be. Clearly there can be copyright issues going down that track, and I’ve moaned before that the market isn’t really satisfying it users, but I won’t hold my breath for a pragmatic solution.
• Books – this seems to be where all the action is right now, with a fierce battle brewing between Apple and Amazon. I’ve yet to see any meaningful detail about the iBook application, its relationship to the iTunes store, and just how horrible the DRM will be; but I’d be amazed if it’s not horrible. Of course Amazon already have a Kindle app for the iPod/Phone, so surely users can choose between two different types of abusive DRM (provided that Apple don’t use the AppStore approvals process to edge Amazon out). Of course when the various flavours of AndroidPad come along they too will probably get a Kindle App. Part of me wonders whether Kindle (the service rather than the device) will become sufficiently ubiquitous that people will ignore its limitations, but I think that the more open tablets that will follow the iPad into the market will create a demand vacuum for open eBooks. Predicition 3 – if Amazon or Apple can find a way to do DRM free eBooks, where they preserve the rights of the buyer more strongly than the rights of the ‘content owner’ (aka content distributor) then they will clean up, otherwise they’ll be leaving a gap in the market for a new player (and let’s not forget Google here).
  • Something else worth dwelling on here is that the iPad isn’t a direct competitor for an eBook reader like the Kindle. There are compromises each way in terms of display quality, battery life and flexibility. I’m still not entirely sure whether I’d like (and be willing to sacrifice the space an weight to) another device just for eBooks, but it’s a largely academic question until somebody starts selling eBooks that I’m willing to buy
• Games – people will want to run games on these things. Popular stuff will be ported across platforms. Gaming won’t be a major factor in product or service choice.
• Web – the iPhone revolutionised browsing on the move, and web access will remain an important piece of the tablet experience. All devices will end up with a good enough browser, and people are going to have to think a bit harder about the bits where we do text input (URLs, search boxes, forms) to better suit those with no keyboard.

Commercially I think the iPad will be a success, following the usual Apple formula – by being a premium price high margin product for people that care a lot about design and an integrated end to end user experience. I don’t think that this will be a slam dunk for Apple though (in the same way that the iPhone has been). The iPad will succeed in the same way as something like the MacBookPro rather than the iPhone.

I didn’t do my usual extensive research, just a quick dive into some end user reviews on a few online shopping sites. The Sagem seemed to come out less badly than some of the others, and was in stock for £129.99 at my local Argos (along with a £10 voucher offer) so I ventured out into the rain and bought one.

The big shock is that it has no UHF output. Perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise, as analogue TV is being progressively decommissioned, but one of the nice things about the Twin was being able to watch it on any TV in the house. I briefly considered buying a UHF modulator from Maplin to fix this omission, but in the end plumped for a jury rig arrangement with my ancient VCR (Scart in -> UHF out).

There are however some good things about the new box:

• It can record on both tuners at once
  • and you can watch another recording at the same time
• Series linking seems to work, even for those Saturday evening shows that jump around the schedule every week
• The 320GB (~160hrs) drive is much bigger than the 60GB (~30hrs) that I had in the Twin, so I can leave the kids stuff on there
  • and it allows me to put stuff into sub-folders so there’s not too much clutter in the programme list
• It has an ‘exportation’ feature that allows programmes to be copied onto FAT32 USB devices
  • and the exported files seem to be bog standard MPEG2 .ts files, no nasty encryption or silly file formats

There are also a few areas where I can see a need for improvement:

• It can play mp3s off USB media (FAT32 only, though it seems to work but whine with regular old FAT), which is cool but:
  • You need to switch mode from media list to player if you want it to actually play successive tracks
  • It is supposed to be able to copy stuff from USB to the local HDD for more convenient access, but this is a totally unreliable process. I have given up on trying to copy my music library (16GB) onto it. It seems to struggle with a single album’s worth of files, never mind a few hundred.
• The favourites lists are not all that easy to edit, and the split between TV and Radio can also be confusing (it seemed to me initially that I had to choose TV or Radio, but in fact you can have both in a favourites list).
• The UI/remote control combination can seem a little sluggish at times.
• The skip forward function (achieved by pressing >|) skips 5mins. UK ad breaks tend to be 4mins, so the function becomes pretty useless, as you either have to miss or rewind a minute. The 1min skip on the Twin was fine, and the 30s skip on my Panasonic box is OK (though 8 button presses per ad break is a bore). C’mon guys, either make this configurable, or make the default fit for purpose.

It would of course be killer if:

• I could use it to replace my streaming media player (a Kiss DP-600), which would involve:
  • Having an Ethernet port and UPNP support
    • Better still if you could do ‘exportation’ over the LAN
  • The ability to play DivX (HD)
• If the media player stuff actually worked then a directory sync tool would be handy for managing large libraries.

Overall though I’m finding it hard to complain given the price, and the fact that it hasn’t failed in any meaningful way (yet – fingers crossed). Even if it does end up missing a recording, then that doesn’t seem too much of a big deal these days. I wonder how much longer it will be before the whole concept of a PVR becomes redundant, and we just have a local cache of the media library in the sky (for those times when it just doesn’t make sense to drag those bits across the internet)?

In the bag today:

• Lenovo s10e (with a Novatel Merlin XU870 3G datacard)
  • 320G HDD so that I can have all my music and plenty of videos
  • Atheros WiFi NIC so that I can do packet injection
• BlackBerry Curve 8900
• iPod Touch 16G – for when the battery on the netbook isn’t going to last
  • Koss ‘Spark Plugs’ – comfortable for long flights, and excellent sound quality even in noisy environments
• Fuji FinePix F-45fd – great little camera with excellent low light performance
• iGo Juice 70 multi adaptor (works on wall sockets, in the car, and on planes [at least the ones with power outlets]). I keep lot of bits in the bag:
  • iGo Peripheral Power System – to charge the smaller devices
  • iGo DualPower – so that I can charge two small things at once
  • iGo tips for everything I’m likely to have with me (or need to help out a friend)
  • Swiss adaptor – to plug into UK/US/EU sockets
  • D-Link DWL-G730AP portable WiFi router – handy for turning a fixed connection into a hotspot (which helps a lot when you want multiple connections pretending to come from one MAC)
  • The ethernet cable that came with the mini router
  • Retractable sync’n'charge cables for BlackBerry and iPod
  • A Microsoft USB GPS
  • Various USB flash drives, at least one with BackTrack on
• A 2.5″ SATA drive enclosure, with a 160G drive in it and the USB cables it needs for power/data
• Audio cables
  • 3.5mm-3.5mm
  • 3.5mm-phono
  • 3.5mm Y splitter (so that I can share my music or videos)
  • An airline adaptor (just in case they have a movie I want to watch and use those weird old 2×3.5mm mono things)
• MS Bluetooth Presenter Mouse
• Plantronics Voyager 510 Bluetooth Headset – comes with a USB device that makes it appear as a sound device

I’m pretty sure I’m not missing much, but could I do better?

I’ll break from my usual tradition of not mentioning brand names. Many of the brands I encountered are now consigned to the history books, others are still going strong. I don’t imply any endorsement, choices were mostly down to what made best (economic) sense at the time.

1. Cassette recorder: age 4. The first electronic item I ever owned. It was a no brand front loading portable, mono only. I still have a tape I made of some bedtime stories – ‘I’m huff the hedgehog and I want my dinner and if I don’t get it soon I’ll get finner and finner’ – those were the days before speech therapy.
2. Pocket calculator: age 7. A basic Texet LED model that chewed through 9v batteries at a shocking rate. I later modded it to work off a mains adaptor.
3. Electronics kit: age 8. A Tandy (Radio Shack) 50in1. This was probably the real turning point for me, making up circuits for things like transistor radios and burglar alarms. I have still never managed to get a crystal radio to work (my most recent attempt being a few weeks ago). Thanks dad.
4. Scientific calculator: age 9. A Casio fx-81. Playing with this got me into trig and other types of maths that they weren’t teaching me yet at school, which all proved to be a good grounding for engineering.
5. Music centre: age 10. I wanted an Amstrad tower, as they were all the range, but got a cheaper unit. It still served me well for making mix tapes until I started collecting discarded HiFi separates a few years later.
6. Computer: age 14. A Commodore Plus/4. It hadn’t been a great commercial success as the follow up to the C64, which meant that I got it with a huge package of software for £99 from Poundstretcher. It did however have a better BASIC interpreter than its predecessor. I coded my first programs to be published on this machine. This wasn’t the first home computer, dad got a ZX-81 when they came out, and we later got a Dragon32, but this was the first that was mine alone.
7. Colour TV/monitor: age 14. This was kind of necessary to use the Plus/4 in my bedroom. I got an ex demo Philips set that had RGB and composite video inputs that worked with just about all of the 8 bit home machines (though I had to make my own video leads as it had obscure connectors). It’s still working today.
8. Modem: age 15. Ever since seeing ‘Wargames’ I’d wanted a modem, and a deal on the Compunet modem put one in my reach (though the service fees and phone bill became a problem). It did 1200/75, which I also used for tinkering with Prestel and other videotex services and 300/300, which was the going rate for most BBSs at the time. The C64 that I needed to use this thing was extensively modded and hacked over the years.
9. 16 bit computer: age 16. Another Commodore, this time the Amiga 500. This got me playing with A/D converters and making up MIDI interfaces for my brother and his friends. I came up with a design that switched a transistor for an op amp saving component costs and making fabrication easier (everything got soldered to the pins of the chip, which was then glued into the case – no PCB required). This machine was the one that made me learn C.
10. PC: age 18. An Amstrad PPC-640. I bought this mostly for the integrated V.22bis modem, but it proved useful for many other purposes including PASCAL programming at University and my earliest forays into internet services.
11. ISP: age 21. I needed a way to get online beyond the University network (which had JANET connectivity) so I got a CIX account in order to use there recently launched internet gateway. I still use it today, though I’ve been through many pure ISPs since.
12. Palmtop: age 24. Life after university came with many moves, and little space for stuff, so I got a Sharp PC3100 to use on the hoof along with a ‘pocket’ 14.4k modem.
13. Homebrew PC: age 25. Over the years I had built many PCs for other people, but this was the first for myself. I had a 486-DX2-66 that needed a home, and started out with 1MB RAM, though this quickly became 4MB. I have never bought a complete desktop PC unit for myself.
14. DVD player: age 27. This was actually a kit for my PC with a DVD-ROM drive and an MPEG-II decoder card (as CPUs at the time didn’t have the grunt to run the codec in real time). I had to make a huge S-Video lead to watch stuff on the TV whilst it played upstairs in the study, and for some odd reason the chrominance and luminance on the decoder outputs were reversed forcing me to put crossover connectors into the cable.
15. Mobile phone: age 28. I held out for some time on getting one of these, but when buying my first house it became something of a necessity. Prepaid one year contracts (at rates that we still haven’t really returned to) helped sweeten the pill.
16. PDA: age 31. An early Sony Clie. The best feature may have been a multi system remote application that I once used to turn off a very annoyingly loud TV in a pub. Everybody glanced around for a second and got back to their drinks and conversations.
17. Smartphone: age 32. When I realised that the Treo 600 gave me something that could be a phone and PDA in less pocket space then I was sold. I’ve not gone back to a regular phone since, though I still use the GSM mobile I had before as a host for foreign PAYG SIM cards when I’m travelling.
18. MP3 player: age 32. Attempts to put music onto MMC cards on (smart)phones had proven a bit lame so I bought a 2G iPod. The crucial thing was that I owned about 11GB of music at the time, which fitted comfortably onto its 20GB hard disk. I still use it in my car (which I did not buy from new).
19. PVR: age 32. Unlike Charlie I do watch TV, but I don’t like to run my life to the schedules, and I don’t watch adverts. I bought a Pace Twin as soon as they came out, and almost immediately invalidated my warranty by upgrading it to 60GB so that it would record 30hrs. I was an Alpha tester for the TwinRip app that lets me copy stuff onto my PC.
20. Streaming media player: age 32. I had been tinkering with video on my PC for ages, and a network attached appliance that allowed me to watch stuff on the TV was pretty irresistible. The original machine is still going, though its DVD player is long dead, and it’s sat on top of its younger HD capable sibling. I still wonder at the lunacy over ‘rights’ that means there isn’t a product that successfully brings together the functions of the last two items (and no, I don’t count ‘media’ PCs).

Wow – it’s 6 years since there was a cool new product category that I felt the need to get into. Maybe the netbook I ordered yesterday will change things. I also wonder if I should have included more services, like webmail and social networking?