Lots of people are asking for the logic behind Apple’s apparent move into the tablet market. Matthew Miller of ZDNet posted this inquiry-of-a-post asking for any potential reason for why Apple would want to enter the tablet game, but it seems he (and two of my favorite colleagues, Mary Jo Foley and Zack Whittaker) may have missed the answer:

Students.

Many schools suggest tablets for note-taking or engineering work. Heck, some even mandate them. This market is currently owned by Microsoft, and given Apple’s de facto hip-couture status in universities, it’s only logical to see that Apple wants to snatch the remaining Windows tablet users and turn them to the dark side, preferably before Windows 7 strolls along. My own discussions with students of various universities which suggest or mandate tablets (the biggest one which comes to my mind is a school I was considering attending myself and which currently lists as alumni a few of my friends, Virginia Tech), lead me to believe that a vast number of the attending students wish they could use Apple’s own hardware. Sure, there are a few hackintoshy solutions (modbook) but these aren’t official, supported by Apple, or anywhere near as “hip.”

Granted, Apple’s rumored tablet offering isn’t actually aiming for the engineering students, but that’s beside the point. The point is that if one Apple tablet succeeds, they will swiftly aim for turning it into a billion-dollar business, just as they have with the iPod, the iPhone, et. al.

Here’s the problem: Microsoft is coming with Windows 7 on October 22nd. That’s long after classes begin and likely a month after Apple’s seemingly-real tablet offering, which might still find its way into the hands of hipster-poseurs and college students. If Apple’s tablet happens to be an unproductive media device with no purpose other than to watch films and browse the internet, then I suppose only the crunchpad may possibly need to worry, but if Apple’s tablet offers any decent means of taking notes or generally being even slightly productive, Microsoft quickly needs to put it to bed.

Otherwise, Apple’s legions will embrace it like the second coming of choose-your-deity rather than the outcast child the business world would much prefer to see (before these students force said businesses over to the worlds most unproductive OS). Given Apple’s recent streak of screwing the consumer, the last thing people need is another outlet for the consumer to be, well, screwed.

Yes, I wrote this on a MacBook, which thankfully currently possesses no trace of any Leopards, Snow Leopards, or any other endangered sources of luxury furs. I also gracefully stole the article’s image from PC World.

This is the final part in a series of two.

Yesterday, I focused on the un-selling points of the new MacBook Pro line as announced during the WWDC keynote. Today, my focus is going to be on Snow Leopard, Apple’s rather depressing tendency to bash Microsoft, and the rather nasty turn-off this all happens to be. Granted, most of Apple’s recent ad campaigns have comprised of “let’s make things up about Windows!” in order to try and gain market share. Microsoft is only avoiding suing Apple because of the potential for the world’s worst Streisand effect, which is depressing given the libelous nature of the ads themselves.

Having said this, it’s no surprise to see this mentality persist throughout this year’s WWDC keynote, so I’ll pick up from yesterday and explain just why Snow Leopard in and of itself is nothing more than hypocrisy.

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This is part one in a series of two.

Apple’s WWDC keynote on the 8th of June (yesterday, if it seems like forever passed between then and now) showed the world just how bad Apple’s core products and services are without the Reality Distortion Field™ Steve Jobs generates through the waste matter exuded from his pores. Apple’s core offerings boiled down, really, to just three things as discussed in the keynote:

• Updated MacBook Pros
• Snow Leopard
• A new iPhone

The wonder in all of this is how badly Apple happened to damage their first two offerings in this keynote. Today, I’ll be focusing on the new MacBook Pro line.

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(My sincerest apologies; this post was unpublished due to a database error. The issue has since been fixed.

This is a shout-out to all Zune 30 owners who remained patient.

This is to you, the faithful owner of a Zune 30, who didn’t buckle under stress and kept a keen eye on Microsoft, waiting for a solution.

This is to you, the discount shopper who picked up a Zune 30 and didn’t want to lose faith in your hardware.

Low and behold, Microsoft dug deep to find out the problem and, within minutes of finding out exactly what it was, pushed out an answer and a solution that didn’t void your warranty (thanks, Gizmodo). There’s a reason for why I’m bringing all of this up. July of 2008 saw cataclysmic server failure when a vast majority of all newly-purchased iPhone 3G units tried activating at nearly the same time, leaving both new iPhone 3Gs and some iPhone Gen 1 units dead in the water until the activation servers came back online. Poor planning led to the creation of a load-intolerant system on AT&T’s side (though the blame hardly belongs to them, given that Apple mandated this system in the first place). However, people weren’t infuriated by Apple’s ineptitude here. They were complacent and merely went with whatever explanation was fed to them. Meanwhile, a sizable majority of people who stuck with their own platforms of choice decided not to point and jeer.

Fast forward to December 31, 2008, and every Zune 30 device freezes due to a bug in a driver from Freescale Semiconductor in this while loop (between lines 259 and 274):

    while (days > 365)
    {
        if (IsLeapYear(year))
        {
            if (days > 366)
            {
                days -= 366;
                year += 1;
            }
        }
        else
        {
            days -= 365;
            year += 1;
        }
    }

(protip: day 366 triggers an infinite loop. To see the context of the code, check out the pastie link above, or just click here. You can see a breakdown of how this could’ve been handled here) 

What happened? Every Apple-loyal iPhone, iPod, and Mac owner threw a fit even though none of them actually owned a Zune 30 (You can’t run a Zune 30… or any Zune, for that matter, on a Mac). Thanks in part to the additional sensationalism promoted by gadget bloggers and, subsequently, news outlets the world over, a problem with a Zune model sold only in North America suddenly became a "Worldwide Zune Outage."

This is the difference between the Social and the Kingdom of Apple. Those with Zunes held out patiently and were rewarded with verbose output by Microsoft, whereas Apple simply vaguely alluded to some other company being the source of their problems (or were otherwise mute for a long period of time) whenever something on Apple’s side went wrong.

Thank you, Zune 30 owners, for living up to the hype of the Social. I’m now quite proud to be an owner of a Zune myself.

Wired has an interesting article on how the iPhone boosted smartphone sales for other manufacturers (most notably RIM and Palm). With the next version of the iPhone now released, you might be asking yourself

• What will Microsoft do to keep Apple from breaking into the enterprise smartphone market?
• Why haven’t I bought this new iPhone yet?
• What’s that pretty thing in the Crystal Ball?

Now might be a good time to analyze the potential impact Apple’s iPhone might have on Windows Mobile.

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