Prompt's Blog

In history, January 9th has played host to quite a few notable events.

For example, it was on this date in 1861 that Mississippi became the second state to secede from the Union before the outbreak of the American Civil War. In 1947, it was the last day that Elizabeth "Betty" Short, the (legendary) Black Dahlia, was last seen alive, and was the birthday for the 37th President of the United States, Richard Nixon. Well known Jamaican ragga-hip hop musician Sean Paul celebrates his birthday on January 9th each year, along with one of the Backstreet Boys (bet you can't guess which one). Not only that, it was the date of the first eclipse of the third millennium in 2001 and would eventually become the date in 2007 that Steve Jobs would introduce the iPhone.

Even more importantly, however, January 9, 2001 was the date that the world was introduced to and began its obsession with Apple's iTunes.

Further to iTunes' success from 2001 on, Apple launched the iTunes store in April 2003. Five years later, it had become the number one music vendor in the United States and now boasts over 11 million songs available for download accounting for 70% of online digital music sales worldwide.

Beyond music, the iTunes store currently has 150,000 podcasts available for download, 20,000 audio books, countless hours of video content and over over 75,000 educational audio and video content files available to download through iTunes U.

Now just over nine years old, iTunes really is 'the world's most popular way to organize music and download songs online' - just how Apple puts it. On Wednesday this week, the iTunes store celebrated its 10 billionth music download coincidentally on Steve Jobs' 55th birthday.

The iTunes store was launched on April 28, 2003, making it just under seven years (or 2,494 days) old. Given its age,the iTunes store has averaged a staggering 4,009,623.1 downloads for each day that it's been in existence.

The lucky downloader of the milestone track was a 71 year old man from Georgia who was downloading Johnny Cash's "Guess Things Happen That Way." Once the download finished he received a phone call from Steve Jobs himself to let him know he had just won a $10,000 (£6,500) iTunes gift card redeemable against song, movie, TV show, and application purchases on the iTunes Store.

Jealous? I know I am.

Labels: apple, downloads, itunes, Steve Jobs

Considering the frenzy of excitement that preceded Wednesday's launch of the Apple iPad -- you couldn't move on Twitter, Facebook or tech blogs for rumour, speculation and general pant-wetting anticipation -- it was somewhat surprising to wake up on the morning-after-the-night-before to find the huddled online masses shrugging and underwhelmed.

A prolonged news conference spearheaded by Apple supremo Steve Jobs and his magical assistant Jonathan Ive was precisely scripted to reveal the wonders of the iPad feature by feature - hyping the innovation and revolutionary claims, pushing the lifestyle benefits and dropping the odd price-bomb along the way. We got to see a stylish device twirled around, and to preview that stunning display streaming multimedia marvels and handling productivity apps with aplomb. So why exactly are so many potential customers now seemingly feeling deflated and dismayed?

It's hard to pinpoint really as there’s not really anything wrong with the iPad, but the hype cycle would suggest the market is merely experiencing 'the trough of disillusionment'. I believe we were basically spoilt by the huge sea change brought about with the launch of the iPhone/iTouch design. Apps, screen-pinching, accelerometers, GPS, Wi-Fi, 3G, HD... ...it was all massively impressive the first time round and now the iPad is giving us more of the same, pretty much. Yes the SDK is a leap forward, the browser experience is better, the screen is sharper, mail is better integrated, eBooks will look terrific and so on. But to many observers the overall impression was much the same as it was to a five year-old who saw me streaming the launch: "Hey it's just like your phone, only for giants!"

Whatever your own personal reaction has been to the unveiling of the iPad, you have to admit that Mr Ive has conjured up a gorgeous chunk of techy eye-candy, and that this is likely yet another launch pad device for Apple to take off from, taking millions of followers along for the journey. No doubt it will work hard to earn its place in the Apple product stack and in the affections of many customers throughout 2010 and beyond.

What did you think of the unveiling? Please let us know.

Labels: apple, iPad, Jonathan Ive, Steve Jobs, Tablet

More evidence this week that Apple will pull even further away from the pack in the race to put intuitive, state-of-the-art computing into the pockets of consumers.

If it wasn't exciting enough for Apple fanatics to hear Steve Jobs say that a new generation of iPhones is likely to appear in stores sometime in late June, there was agreement across the IT press this week that the long rumoured Apple Tablet is also now on its way.

TechCrunch wrapped up some nice insights and predictions for the device in its article 'What we know about the Apple Tablet So Far'.

Google around for myriad other links and rumours.

Our knee-jerk reactions to the news so far included the following:
- If any firm can popularise the problematic 7-10-inch screen size, it's going to be Apple
- What the heck will be the impact on the embryonic eReader market if the Apple Tablet really takes off
- Will the Tablet use the iPhone OS, or some version of OS X?
- How will Apple handle the ever-troublesome battery life / power / weight trade off?
- Will Intel get a look in?
- A predicted price bracket of $500 - $1000 is pretty vague and smats of several different models aimed at very different market segments. Do tell.
- Why doesn't Apple leak and deny like a seasoned pro, such as rival Microsoft?
- Will we see these babies in Apple Stores before Christmas?
- In the UK? Really?
- If Apple staff are being taken off iPod and iPhone projects to get the Tablet readied, does that mean the iPhone 3.0 is 'good to go'?
- Seriously, can we have a play with a new iPhone or two and worry about the Tablet later?

Let us know whether you're more excited about the Apple Tablet, the Apple iPhone 3.0, or whether you shun anything with an Apple trademark on it on principle (in which case the best we can do is tell you that the Pre is still rolling down the Palm pipeline and will be in US stores on 6th June.)

Labels: apple, iPhone, Mac, Steve Jobs, Tablet