Good morning.
It looks like RIM is going to try and undercut iPad pricing with its upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook. This is very wise: The iPad is overpriced, and thanks to this pricing, the competing tablets coming from the Android world and elsewhere are coming in too high as well. Note, too, that the PlayBook as a 7-inch screen, which is far more desirable than the too-large iPad, though I still don't give RIM much of a chance here.
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Speaking of the iPad, I've got iOS 4.2 installed on my own iPad, and I don't quite see what the fuss is all about. In fact, I don't see anything major here other than the addition of the Xbox LIVE rip-off Game Center and annoying change to the screen rotation lock so that it's now not a screen rotation lock but is rather a mute button. What??
Anyway, looking back to Apple's FUD-tastic September pre-announcement about iOS 4.2, which was made before it released iOS 4.1, we can see that one of the company's number one promised feature for this release is wireless printing support through AirPrint. Which, from what I can tell, is nowhere to be found in the actual software. Turns out it may have been cancelled. Maybe they'll get to it in iOS 4.3. Heck, at least multitasking works.
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By the way, it's hard to look at the Samsung Galaxy Tab and not notice that the form factor is almost identical to that of the Windows Phone-based Samsung Focus, with the same curved, tapered ends. Take the next logical step and it's hard not to imagine a Windows Phone-based Galaxy Tab. That's the tablet I want.
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I was able to test that new RockMelt browser yesterday and it's pretty much what I thought it would be: An ugly and pointless version of Chrome. This thing will go nowhere, and I'm done with it. And can we please stop pretending Marc Andreessen is some kind of genius.
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I'll be appearing on What The Tech tonight at 7pm ET if you're interested. I think the primary topic will be Windows Phone 7, but I'm sure we'll get some Black Ops talk in as well. :)
