The Apple saga never stops. On Thursday, the world was once
again introduced to some new Apple products and they were, once again,
underwhelmed. After all the mixed media they’d been receiving after their
announcement in September, you would think they would want to come out with a
bang, but apparently not. The new iPad Air 2 is, you guessed it, thinner and
faster. Now that it’s 18% thinner, my question is, will it bend? But really,
all Apple had to present was a few changes to their iPad Air: a special coating
to make it the least reflective tablet on the market, Touch ID, new cameras, and
an M8 processor. I’m not sure how that last feature is even useful, unless
there are people out there who carry their iPad around with them absolutely
everywhere. There was also the iPad mini 3 (with Touch ID), a new iMac with Retina
5K display, and an upgrade to the Mac Mini.
I read a really interesting article that said that Apple’s
strategy was to “have its customers fit themselves into a product’s core
principles – and then innovate from within that self-selected box” (Chris
Maxer, Technewsworld). Basically, Apple thinks that they’ve mastered the tablet
and that it doesn’t need any significant form changes. Well let’s just say that
Lenovo disagrees, and has released a stellar product by actually listening to
what consumers want from their device.
This video talks about how Lenovo created the Yoga Tablet 2
Pro (with help from Ashton Kutcher, oddly enough). I have to say, this tablet
looks amazing. It’s a 13 inch tablet with a great display (2560x1440), 2GB of
RAM, support for up to 64GB of storage, 15h of battery life, a subwoofer and
kick stand that flips all the way around to let you hang your device if you so
need to. The special bonus feature is
that it has a projector built in to it, allowing you to project your screen for
others to see. It’s running Android 4.4 KitKat and costs $499. What more could
you want?
Next I want to mention the newest devices from Google. On
Wednesday, Google introduced us to the Nexus 9 (an 8.9 inch tablet), the Nexus
6 (a 6 inch smartphone), the Nexus player and the newest Android mobile
operating system (Android Lollipop). My first comment, is that I think it’s
very strange that they had different manufacturers make each of these devices.
The Nexus 9 was made by HTC, the Nexus 6 was made by Motorola (which is owned
by Google, but is being sold to Lenovo at the end of the year) and the Nexus
Player was made by Asus. This seems like it would cause a lot of confusion and
differences between the products, which is strange considering they are all
part of the same product line. The only reason I can think of, would be that
the more manufacturers they get involved in building Nexus devices, the more
likely these manufacturers will stay loyal to Android.
The Nexus 6 is an interesting move, Google’s first “Phablet”
and a phone that has a larger display than it’s two biggest competitors, the iPhone
6 Plus (5.5”) and the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (5.7”). The Nexus 9 falls between
the iPad mini and the iPad Air. Then we have the Nexus player, which is the
first device with Android TV, which allows people to play Android games on
their TV, and to send entertainment to it from any Chromebook, Android or iOS
device. This is a particularly interesting device considering Apple did not
release a new version of their Apple TV, and appears to be pulling out of the
home entertainment market altogether.
The last company I want to mention, is Blackberry. It looks
like they may be mounting a comeback. In a blog post a while back, I made fun
of the blocky Blackberry Passport, but it turns out that there are people who
like it! The passport pre sold 200,000 units in the first two days of being
available, selling out in 10 hours on Amazon, and in 6 hours on Blackberry’s
website. While that’s nowhere near Apple numbers (10 million iPhones in the
first weekend), it’s certainly a positive turn of events for the Canadian
company that focuses on the “30% of the market that sees their phones as a
tool, not as an entertainment portal” (John Chen, Blackberry CEO).
With all of that said, there are likely to be a lot more products released in the lead up to the holiday season. It will be interesting to
see which kind of products consumers choose.
