Home theater

If you want to bring your Apple products into the home theater, you might want to start with the new Epson Megaplex projectors with an integrated iPhone/iPad dock. The Epson MG-850HD provides 720p video (and integrated speakers) from a 3LCD system with 2800 lumens, plenty bright to use for business presentations by day and movie screenings by night. You can quickly set up a screening for the kids by playing a movie from the iPad or running an app that allows video output over the 30-pin dock connector. Priced at $800, the Epson Megaplex is perfect for setting up an outdoor movie night for the kids and their friends.

Crestron is well-known for its high-end home theater and automation equipment and they are a first-time exhibitor at Macworld, showing off the Crestron Mobile Pro control app for iOS. The app replaces proprietary touchscreen controllers, which can cost thousands of dollars, with a software solution that works just as well on your existing iPad.

Audiophiles

On the music side, we also have consumer and audiophile offerings. SRS Labs is showing off its iWOW 3D accessory to enhance the audio for headphones or the car stereo, as well as a music player app that incorporates the company’s sound processing technology along with some high-end features like 10-band EQ and tempo adjustment.

Audioengine is showing off its DACs (digital to audio converters) for improved sound quality to powered speakers. The D1 ($169) or the wireless D2 ($599/set) DACs work great with the Audioengine 5+ bookshelf speakers the company had on display. At the high-end, Peachtree Audio is also showing off its converter offerings, ranging from the small DAC•iT ($449) to the world class Grand Integrated ($4295). All of these DACs are capable of playing high-resolution 24/96 audio files, far better than what you can get from CD.

Speakers & headphones

Monster has its Clarity HD bookshelf speakers ($749) on display. You can also check out the Audioengine 5+ speakers mentioned above. Bang & Olufsen is at the show with its BeoSound 8 iPhone dock boombox and the portable BeoLit 12 AirPlay system.

Accessories

MicW has a nice calibrated cardoid mic for the iPhone and iPad that you can use with a sound pressure level meter iOS app to EQ your room or concert hall. Studio Six Digital is showing AudioTools, its acoustical test and measurement app.

Blinq is demonstrating a universal remote app (and IR emitter) to control your whole setup and connect to a social program guide. Another remote is the VooMote Zapper which combines an app with an IR blaster built into a case, coming soon to an Apple Store near you.

That’s my list of highlights for sound, picture and video fans keen on what’s interesting at Macworld | iWorld this year. Let us know if you spotted anything equally interesting.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• A clouded view of Google Music
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE

Tank Riders ($1.99 Universal, $3.99 Mac) is a good cross between a maze, puzzle and third-person shooter game that can be really fun in the right circumstances on the right devices. Thanks to well thought-out maps, Polarbit has done an amazing job at keeping the gameplay interesting enough in single-player mode, while also making multiplayer competitive and fun.

Tank Riders has just two basic controls: one for steering your tank, and one for shooting.  As the levels progress, you’re faced more challenging level puzzles barring your way to the finish line, and more bad guys trying to stop you from getting there. Along the way, you can pick up extra health and special weapons.  But with the start of each level, you get set back to your tank’s starting configuration.

As mentioned, the maps are what make this game shine. In single player mode, crumbling walls and destructible crates make for a delightfully changeable environment.

What’s great about multiplayer mode is that you can have multiple online accounts on your iPhone, iPad and Mac to play against visiting family and friends.  So if you happen to have more than one Apple device at your disposal, you can set up a tournament in the comfort of your own home.

Tank Riders isn’t without problems. On the iPhone in particular, the screen is just too small to spot the enemy, navigate your tank, and shoot your gun turret all at the same time. I did, however, find that using the iPhone like a traditional game controller while playing the game on my HDTV through my Apple TV over AirPlay was a perfect solution to that problem.  On the iPad and Mac, you won’t have the same problem, and the Mac’s controls make the experience far easier.  So if you plan on going head-to-head with your friends in multiplayer mode, get the Mac version to gain the competitive advantage.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Siri: Say hello to the coming “invisible interface”

What Apple does and doesn’t do

For a clue to how Apple approaches the video market, you need look no further than how it’s dealt with every other part of the media ecosystem to date: It creates good user experiences across an ecosystem of great products that publishers can sell their content on.

It introduced the iPod and iTunes and allowed the music industry to sell their songs on the platform, and it took a cut. It introduced the iPhone and the App Store and allowed developers to create games, utilities, productivity tools and the like, and it took a cut. It introduced the Apple TV for the Hollywood studios and TV networks to rent and sell their movies and shows to consumers, and it took a cut. It introduced the iPad, iBooks and the Newstand and allowed book and magazine publishers to sell digital versions of their titles to consumers, and it took a cut.

You notice a trend here? Product, platform, revenue share. That model has been extremely profitable for Apple, in part because it’s had to bear little risk to collect whatever revenues and profits come from its partners’ content sales. What Apple does not do is pay upfront to have the luxury of carrying content and then shoulder all the risk while attempting to create a sustainable new business model for its partners.

The economics of the situation

But let’s talk about the actual economics of subscription pay TV. Time Warner Cable announced in its earnings Thursday that it paid somewhere around $25 a month per subscriber in content costs last quarter. Think Apple could do better? It can’t. Any new entrant to the pay TV market acquiring content licenses does so at rates higher than what others have previously negotiated. This was true when the satellite TV companies entered the business, it was true when Verizon and AT&T began offering IPTV services, and it will be true for anyone that attempts to create a virtual cable company.

Starting costs for Apple — or anyone else for that matter — to build a subscription TV service will be in the mid-$30s at the very least. Which means it’s not going to roll out a $25 or $30 subscription service or undercut your local cable company on price anytime soon.

You know how every quarter analysts dissect however many billions of dollars Microsoft has lost in its Internet services business? That would be Apple TV’s media business, quarter after quarter, if it decided to go down this road. Sure, Apple has a lot of money. And sure, Apple could bear those costs. But why would it? What’s the actual benefit for Apple or its investors?

The misplaced dream of a la carte

“But what if I don’t want all of the channels? That’s where Apple could really disrupt things!” It’s a familiar refrain to hope and wish and pray that a company like Apple will be able to do what others have failed at so far, and negotiate a la carte pricing for individual networks. That sure sounds good, and I’m sure consumers would love it! That is, until they saw the price tags associated with each of the networks that they would want to buy.

Even if Apple were able to convince Disney, for instance, to separate ABC, the Disney networks and ESPN’s sports networks from the bundle, it would be just like breaking up any other bundle: the cost to sell each network separately would be egregiously expensive. Prohibitively so.

As a consumer, would you pay $5 just for ABC? Another $5 each for CBS, NBC and Fox? Then $15 or $20 for ESPN? And $25 for HBO? It’s not like these guys are just going to give those channels away at a small premium over what they get from cable. If they’re going to break the subscription bundle, they’re going to want to get paid to do it. In that world, how many channels do you think you could buy before the cost became more than what you already pay for a cable subscription each month?

The actual market opportunity

Put all that aside, though, and the truth of the matter is that streaming video is still a relatively niche market. How many people are out there who actually have an interest in a streaming TV service? In theory, the addressable market is every broadband household that also pays for cable service. But take a look at the number of Apple TVs that are out there (just 4.2 million) or the connect rate on smart TVs today, and you see that very few people are actually taking advantage of broadband-delivered video. That could change with the introduction of the mythical iTV, but it seems pretty tiny today.

Sure, Apple created the modern smartphone market with the iPhone or the tablet market with the iPad. But it’s not into creating new services. And it seems unlikely that Apple would introduce a new service like this, especially one that is likely to be risky, unprofitable and targeting a market segment that doesn’t yet exist.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• When video gets democratized, who wins and who loses?
• LTE changes everything; LTE changes nothing
• Connected Consumer 2012: A year of consolidation and integration

So the question is, What plans does Apple have for the cloud? Given recent history one can easily assume that the company would build more cloud apps that enhance existing services, like iTunes Match and Photostream. But those are small potatoes. The real opportunity for Apple is to offer a series of network services for its developers and millions of iPhone and iPad and Mac owners: network services such as storage, location data, voice command and control, notifications, and messaging.

• Storage. ICloud is already a place to access your photos, songs and contacts remotely from any iOS device or OS X Lion machine. But what about making your desktop files and apps available everywhere too? Take the way Apple is going with its MacBook Air, a huge hit for the company. A logical next step to make even thinner and lighter machines with very little room for storage is to make a cloud-centric MacBook. Imagine opening up your laptop that has little local storage and being able to access any of your documents you have saved, anywhere you are. We know Apple has been sniffing around this area: Steve Jobs offered to acquire Dropbox several years ago, telling its founder, Drew Houston, that it was really “a feature, not a product.” So a cloud-based storage service that perhaps developers could use for their own apps? Doesn’t sound too far out there.
• Location. Apple bought mapping companies PlaceBase in 2009 and Poly9 in 2010. We also know the company is hiring for mapping-related positions. That sparked speculation that Apple is indeed building its own location-based service. It has some location services in action already, like Find My iPhone and Find My Friends. An interesting step would be if Apple opened up such a service as an API to its developers.
• Voice control. Siri is still in beta, which means it is not even a finished product. What will Apple do with it in years to come? A good bet is it will integrate it into more Apple devices. The future of device interfaces is more nontraditional methods of control, like voice and gestures. In other words, Siri is not an anomaly or a cute, little experiment: It’s the future. A good place to look for clues about how Apple might implement more voice control services is a patent filing Apple made, showing its interest in putting Siri in everything from Macs to cars.

It is true that Apple is not a company that has historically had great success with web-based services. Embracing networked services and the cloud means Apple inherently understands that even hardware companies that extract gazillions of dollars in profit right now can’t go another decade without this. In a way, Apple also has no choice but to pursue this. If it wants to continue to build the post-PC dream, it has to have iCloud and other connected services that connect all of its apps, services and devices.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
• Quality of the cloud: best practices for ISVs

On Friday, IHS iSuppli is the latest to weigh in. The firm says that while Apple came in first place in the last calendar quarter of 2011 in smartphone sales with 37 million, Samsung actually took the crown of world’s largest smartphone vendor of the year with 95 million shipped. (That’s not “sold,” so this isn’t a great way to compare, as we’ve previously discussed, but it’s what we’ve got.) Apple sold 93 million iPhones during the year.

IHS iSuppli is basing its Samsung numbers on information gathered when the company announced its quarterly earnings earlier Friday. I asked iSuppli analyst Wayne Lam how he arrived at the number, and he said he was basing it off the “approximately 30 percent growth” figure Samsung publicly announced. He interpreted that as “under 30 percent but over 27 percent.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Flash analysis: Steve Jobs

A recent report at InformationWeek details the story of Level 3 Communications, which recently equipped its entire sales workforce with iPads loaded with apps that provide access to pricing information; presentation creation; and display, corporate email, customer records and inventory checks. The iPad proved more than up to the task of supplementing and mostly replacing laptops.

InformationWeek goes into much more detail about what the iPads meant for Level 3, but the advantages for salespeople on the ground can be boiled down to three main categories:

1. Instant on. The iPad’s ability to instantly wake from sleep and pick up right where a user left off exceed that of even the fastest SSD-equipped notebooks, and it only sips power in tiny amounts in order to provide that functionality. That, combined with its superior portability, makes it the perfect tool for doing “quick checks between meetings, at an airport, or in a taxi,” InformationWeek says. With a laptop, five minutes in a taxi might not seem like enough time to make powering up worth your while; with the iPad, that’s a nonissue.

2. Connectivity. The iPad (at least the 3G models) provides always-on cellular network access, as long as you are within coverage range. Some laptops can offer that, but the process is still often more complicated than just tapping the wake button and being ready to surf, email or chat. But it’s not just cellular radios that make the iPad great for sales; built-in GPS positioning means salespeople can get locally relevant information, like clients or potential clients in the immediate area, in only a few short steps via task-specific software.

3. On-device demo. A laptop is an ineffective replacement for a catalog, and presenting a slide show on one is awkward. Using an iPad as a presentation tool, on the other hand, is natural. The tablet is easily passed around, can be read like a magazine, and can also output to external displays with less hassle and fewer steps than a laptop. And apps like OnLive Desktop and Iongrid make it even easier for iPads to sub in for notebooks capable of running desktop presentation tools.

Level 3 isn’t the only company to realize the value of iPads in the hands of a sales force. Sears, of all companies, announced in October it would begin rolling out iPads in 450 stores that same month, and TUAW noted at the time that Lowes and Pacific Sun were also expanding iOS deployments.

InformationWeek thinks 2012 will be a breakout year in terms of actual iPad deployments, just as 2011 saw a huge uptick in pilot programs. If that indeed comes to pass, we should see Apple easily beat the 40.7 million iPads it sold in 2011.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• NewNet 2012: companies and technologies set to disrupt
• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
• LTE changes everything; LTE changes nothing

From the article:

And building new capacity isn’t cheap. Everyone — not just the first-class passengers — ends up paying for it. So prepare for higher cellphone bills. And in the meantime? Prepare to sit and wait. That call to Grandma might not get through until the congestion clears.

Other alternatives might be less palatable, especially to anyone who wants immediate downloading gratification. We could stay off the grid or utilize fewer data-intensive functions. Or we could put some traffic cops on the beat to regulate our data demands and limit the traffic snarls and bottlenecks.

But if you think Siri is somehow responsible for the data overload, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Siri is the first generation of interfaces that will make it seamless and easy for us to surf the web from anywhere, and on any device or vehicle. So the author’s problem is one that’s only going to get bigger. Thankfully, it has a solution — one which he seems to ignore.

Paul Farhi, the author of the piece, makes a couple of errors (or maybe omissions is kinder) that are worth pointing out to the policy wonks in D.C., especially as they contemplate bills that would gut the FCC’s ability to make spectrum policy in the U.S. for the sake politics. Onto the problems:

Siri as data hog

Siri, the natural language processing service Apple introduced on the iPhone 4S, doesn’t consume the data Farhi says it does in his article when he says, “Siri’s dirty little secret is that she’s a bandwidth guzzler, the digital equivalent of a 10-miles-per-gallon Hummer H1.” Siri consumes very little data in sending your voice back to the servers to figure out what you want the phone to do, but what it does is make it that much easier to surf the web. Farhi seems to understand this, but his first characterization is blatantly false. Siri isn’t guzzling data; she’s making it easier for us to do so. We’re the guzzlers.

The airwaves as highways

The second problem with the article is more complicated. Farhi uses the popular highways analogy for how we send cellular traffic and explains that building out more infrastructure takes time. (One reason is because it takes about 10 years on average to get spectrum into the hands of carriers thanks to the politics associated with spectrum auctions.) But what he misses, and what is crucial to his point, is that there is more than one set of wireless highways. There are multiple types of licensed airwaves that are used for everything from satellite radio to cellular, and there are unlicensed airwaves where data is currently sent using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and soon, WiGig.

When we’re talking over the air, there’s not one single highway to get us from Point A to Point B; there are multiple spectrum bands, technologies and costs associated with them. In this age, using wireless is like engaging in multimodal commuting. You use cellular to drive to the train station and the high-speed rails of Wi-Fi fly downtown. Meanwhile, you’re sharing those rails and highways with thousands of other commuters in neighboring airwaves that are the equivalent of bikers, skateboarders etc.

We can keep Siri and still call grandma. Here’s how:

That’s where Farhi missed a big opportunity to tell D.C. that instead of focusing on cars and the single highway, it should look around at all the other technologies out there. Stop listening to the carriers, who actually do have spectrum they can deploy if they want to work a little harder and spend a little more, and start thinking about how Wi-Fi or white spaces broadband (Super Wi-Fi) can play a role in taking congestion off over the air data networks.

Passing a spectrum bill that allows for more unlicensed airwaves would be a start, as would leaving the FCC to deal with the highly technical issues surrounding spectrum auctions. Pushing the FCC to investigate special access fees would also help, as it might lower the rate of bringing a fiber pipe out to areas so ISPs can support large-scale Wi-Fi or white spaces networks. But first, we have to understand how the wireless and cellular networks work, so we can propose viable solutions instead of blaming applications that make our lives better for congesting our network.

Since many of those solutions will require action (or inaction) from Congress and the FCC, the Washington Post missed a golden opportunity to educate its readers about possible solutions and push the debate forward with mobile operators about using Wi-Fi more strategically, making it possible for rural areas to use unlicensed airwaves to create broad coverage areas without paying an arm and leg for a gigabyte and helping Congress understand how the industry actually works.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
• Confused about the wireless markets? Here’s a breakdown
• The future of Wi-Fi in the enterprise

SDKs and services

Audible Magic is showing its new TViD content recognition engine which can identify TV shows, including live events or first-time broadcasts. It creates a way for developers to build a second-screen experience tailored to what their users are watching.

Heatma.ps UI Testing SDK allows you to integrate touch tracking in your app to collect aggregate data from beta testers and/or real users of your app. Results are sent back heatma.ps’ server so you can view the data as a heat map of how users are interacting with your software, including where exactly their fingers are tapping.

MLState is demonstrating its Opa programming language targeted at web and social app development. Nuance is at the show talking about its consumer apps, but you could hit the company up for info on its mobile developer program if you’re looking to integrate voice in your iOS  software.

Payment solutions

For vendors that sell digital goods direct to consumers, eSellerate is at the show representing its e-commerce platform. You would use this instead of the Mac App Store, either to save money over the 30-percent fee Apple charges or because your app is prohibited from the App Store sandbox for whatever reason.

Fastspring is also present, talking about its all-in-one e-commerce, merchandising and fulfillment solution, which makes getting your sales tools in order an easy task, so you can focus on zapping bugs and getting a product shipped.

Prototyping and rapid development

TapDesigner is a new tool for prototyping mobile apps. It uses a drag-and-drop, WYSIWYG interface to allow you to rapidly build visual representations of what your app will look like, complete with custom navigation and menu bar elements.

WidgetPress FormEntry is in the Mac OS X Zone, talking about its tool for creating forms-based apps for Mac and iOS. This could have potential applications in any number of industries; for example, a realtor could quickly deploy surveys for customers to help them identify exactly what kind of property they’re looking for.

Consulting services

Carr/Ferrell Attorneys are there to guide you with IP, licensing, contracts, and other legal needs, which are still a big concern with ongoing problems like the Lodsys saga. This is one of the thorniest aspects of software development, and ongoing legal disputes between the biggest companies involved could always potentially result in fallout for smaller players, too.

That’s my bite-sized overview of what iOS and Mac developers might find most interest at this year’s Macworld | iWorld conference. Chime in down in the comments if you saw some other interesting displays or vendors aimed at developer’s at the show.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
• A clouded view of Google Music
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution

KeepRecipes is starting out small. It has signed deals to distribute the contents of five cookbooks from two publishers, Gooseberry Patch’s 101 Recipes and Harvard Common Press’ Not Your Mother’s cookbook series. The site is also hosting individual recipes from seven famous chefs and authors, including Masaharu Morimoto of Iron Chef fame and New York Times food columnist and cookbook writer Mark Bittman, giving the portal’s members access to 1,000 different dishes, priced at 99 cents each. But CEO and founder Phil Michaelson said he is hoping he can build off that small core of cuisine, proving to publishers that there is money to be made distributing their cookbooks online and convincing consumers that some online recipes are worth paying for.

The comparison to iTunes isn’t just a gimmick. It is uncanny how closely KeepRecipes is following Apple’s music distribution model, all the way down to direct integration with the iPhone. The recipes are bought and stored through KeepRecipes’ online portal, where they can be sorted and searched, organized into collections — recipe playlists, if you will — and shared with up to five friends in the KeepRecipes community. A mobile app allows members to access their collections through the iPhone.

What’s more, those paid recipes become part of the members’ overall digital recipe collection within the portal. Michaelson said KeepRecipes is trying to do away with the concept of the digital cookbook as just another e-book, trapped in between electronic covers. Instead, the portal aims to help its members build a comprehensive digital cooking library — a task I can tell you from experience is almost impossible to do — by bringing in recipes from multiple sources.

“We want to provide a place where you can keep all of your recipes in one spot, whether it’s your family recipe, a web recipe or premium content,” Michaelson said.

Recipes found online can be grabbed through KeepRecipes’ bookmarklet or by entering its URL through the website. You can enter your own recipes manually, and you can “keep” any nonpaid recipe in your friends’ collections. Just as customers can annotate, comment and add pictures to their own recipes, they can do the same for the ones they have paid for.

The remaining obstacle to building a complete digital cooking library is integrating the thousands of recipes that sit bound on our bookshelves. But Michaelson is working on that problem as well. KeepRecipes is working with its publishers to allow members to download the digital contents of their physical books for a fee of $5 per cookbook.

If you read my post earlier this month on why digital recipes need to emulate digital music, this idea might sound eerily familiar. I thought I was being pretty creative at the time, but it turns out Michaelson and his developers have been developing that concept since KeepRecipes’ inception. Michaelson has already found solutions for problems that I merely posed, such as how to deal with digital rights management and controlling distribution.

In fact, KeepRecipes seems to have all the tools in place to make a comprehensive online recipe library possible. What it lacks is scale. That is understandable, considering KeepRecipes only launched in August, has only 10,000 members — of which about 15 percent are active — and is still in its early stages of funding. For a company of that size to have attracted the attention of even small publishing houses is impressive.

Michaelson said he has found cookbook publishers are eager to go online, but many of them see the inherent limitations of the e-book format, which is why they are working with KeepRecipes. Publishers are also concerned that once they make their cookbooks more digitally accessible, their recipes will escape into the wilds of Internet, where they won’t be able to charge for them. “They are very intrigued by the idea of a social portal and sharing on Facebook and Twitter,” Michaelson said. “But they’re also fearful of a total loss of control.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Forecast: the future of the digital music industry
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Facebook and the future of our online lives

Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents was in attendance at the court’s announcement of the ruling on Friday and said that Judge Andreas Voss didn’t specify any particular reason for the decision. The first ruling against Samsung last week also didn’t include a reason. Mueller said at that time that the reasons could either be that Apple had been found not to infringe the patent or that Samsung’s rights in exerting the patent had been deemed exhausted, which would result in Apple’s being granted a license by default. The same reasons could also be applied to Friday’s ruling.

For Samsung, this is definitely a setback, but it isn’t the end of the road; the company still has three other 3G/UMTS patents at issue in separate complaints filed with the Mannheim court. As long as the reasons behind the dismissals of these two lawsuits aren’t somehow related to all the patents in question, it could still claim a victory on one or more of those remaining.

Samsung could also still appeal the decision, and given that it, like Apple, posted record earnings for its most recently completed quarter, there is no financial barrier preventing it from doing so. With two companies at the top of their game slugging it out in the legal arena, there is little incentive for either to stop.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• LTE changes everything; LTE changes nothing
• Updated: Forecast: global mobile subscribers, 2010–2015
• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE

The book Stevens created, an archive of a month’s worth of installments from his weekday comic strip, was first hosted on Dropbox, but demand caused the public folder he was using to be shut down. Once Stevens moved the file to his own server, he saw almost 8,000 downloads, leading him to surmise that at least 10,000 in total managed to get a hold of the iBooks Author-created tome.

Stevens called that performance “not bad for a file created by software which has only been out for a week on a single platform,” and we agree. Consider, for example, that the Financial Times‘ How to Spend It, a lifestyle magazine app from a world-class publication, took 10 days to reach 10,000 downloads last September.

Response to the format has been “overwhelmingly positive,” Stevens said in a blog post, but there are some downsides. First, he says bandwidth required to provide the downloads is a problem, which could be overcome by selling the via the iBookstore, but that entails additional costs and operating within the confines of Apple’s marketplace. Stevens says this isn’t palatable since he “[doesn't] like the idea of readers being geographically or economically restricted from downloading [his] comics.”

Apple adds this to every page in PDFs generated in iBooks Author.

The other problem is with how iBooks Author writes to PDF, since Stevens wants to offer the collections to anyone, regardless of platform. Apple adds branding to its iBooks Author PDF output, which Stevens says is understandable since it’s a free tool. He would have to spend additional time, then, creating a second version without said branding.

Stevens’ concerns echo some of those brought up by Vook’s Matthew Cavnar during a recent interview, but the webcomic creator seems excited about the potential of iBooks Author despite its limitations. We should see soon enough if Apple’s tools result in a flood of new iPad-tailored content from other independent creators in the months to follow. I predict it will, because despite the fact that iBooks Author may be tied strongly to only one platform, that platform also happens to be the best venue for digital comics consumption available today.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Will cloud computing push the BRIC market to the front?
• A clouded view of Google Music
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era

Half a year ago, Netflix was only available on around 450 devices. But it’s not only the number of devices that’s changing; usage patterns are shifting as well. Netflix has traditionally seen most of its device usage on game consoles. Network management specialist Sandvine reported last year that the PS3 alone was responsible for more than 30 percent of all Netflix traffic. On Wednesday’s call, Hastings highlighted a few device categories that didn’t play as much of a role just a year ago.

Asked about the possibility of an Apple-made TV set, he said he doesn’t know what Apple has in store for the TV market. He did, however, emphasize that the existing Apple TV set-top box has been “really successful” for Netflix. Apple sold 1.4 million units of the device in the fourth quarter, which brings the total to 4.2 million units sold. As a frame of reference, Roku has only sold 2.5 million devices so far.

Hastings also talked about the growing importance of tablets, which are especially interesting as a mobile device to Netflix because most people use them via Wi-Fi, so video viewing doesn’t collide with carriers’ data caps. And people are using their iPads, Kindle Fires and Android slates a lot for watching Netflix: “We do see people enjoying a lot more of their viewing on tablets relative to the PC,” Hastings said. That’s significant, because PCs used to account for close to 20 percent of all Netflix traffic just a few months ago.

The last device category highlighted by Hastings was Smart TVs. It looks like consumers are finally connecting their TV sets to the Internet, if only to watch Netflix: “Smart TVs is one of our fastest growing device categories,” Hastings said, adding that the long-term trend for connected TVs is “very positive.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected Consumer Q2: Digital music meets the cloud; e-book growth explodes
• Connected Consumer 2012: A year of consolidation and integration
• What Amazon’s new Kindle line means for Apple, Netflix and online media

The new show has been recast as a celebration of the best the Apple community has to offer, drawing from music and the arts for inspiration as well as sharing tips and tricks. The iFanEvent, as it’s being called, goes beyond the usual media personalities presenting tech topics in lectures or panel discussions. The Midway will highlight music performances, interactive sessions, and galleries for visual arts and film. I got a small preview Wednesday, and a visit to the South Park Gallery and the Digital Art Gallery  is worth the time it takes to ride the escalator up to the second floor. There will also be a full schedule of music performances and live art creation, as well as a film festival screening on Friday evening.

In addition to the iFanEvent itself, the concurrent MacIT Conference continues the tradition of more advanced technical training for professionals and educators. All-day workshops took place Wednesday, and various sessions are scheduled for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I didn’t get a chance to visit all the workshops, but I did notice the Educator track presented by Computer-Using Educators, Inc. (CUE) was well attended compared to previous years, especially considering the Wednesday timing which would require teachers to arrange a sub in order to attend.

There was no Industry Showcase this year, but the Media Preview event yesterday highlighted a few interesting vendors, and the First Looks program brought together all the new product announcements in one place. Consigned to a few small folding tables in the lobby of Moscone West, I felt the First Looks program didn’t necessarily present the most attractive venue, but we hope to bring you details on some of the more interesting items in our ongoing coverage.

David Greenbaum and I will be roaming the show floor Thursday and Friday looking for all things new and interesting, in addition to meeting with various companies to get detailed looks at products to share with you over the next little while. If you’re at the show, be sure to stop and say hello if you see us on the floor and let us know what you liked. If you can’t make the show this year, let us know if there’s anything specific you’d like to hear about.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• NewNet 2012: companies and technologies set to disrupt
• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
• Connectivity means making the machine disappear

After blasting the Federal Communication Commission for “picking winners and losers” in the wireless industry by scrutinizing every deal, Stephenson claimed AT&T is now in a mobile capacity-constrained environment which has forced it to raise prices and manage connection speeds (aka throttle) for its highest volume subscribers.

This is just plain vindictive. There definitely is correlation between capacity and pricing: the same correlation that exists between supply and demand. But AT&T isn’t following supply-and-demand logic. While AT&T raised its overall smartphone data plan rates last week, it actually lowered by 20 percent the prices customers pay for a gigabyte of data on its most popular mid-tier mobile data plan.

Stephenson claimed AT&T was the carrier most affected by the explosion in mobile data usage because it was the first operator to get the iPhone, which continues to dominate its sales. AT&T’s smartphone penetration among contract subscribers is now 56.8 percent, compared to Verizon’s 44 percent, yet AT&T’s mobile data rates are 50 percent cheaper than Verizon’s.

If AT&T were really that constrained by network capacity, it wouldn’t be lowering the price it charges to deliver each byte. AT&T’s price hikes are simply a revenue play. By raising the prices of its data plan tiers, it’s guaranteeing it will get $5 more a month on each new smartphone customer, but it won’t be limiting their usage. Instead, it’s actually encouraging its customers to consume more.

To meet this supposed capacity crunch, Stephenson claimed AT&T has been forced to milk as much performance out of its current networks as possible. It’s deploying distributed antenna systems to push its coverage into more nooks and crannies, splitting cells so it can reuse its cellular and PCS spectrum in more places. It also expanded fiber and Ethernet backhaul links to the majority of its cell sites, so 80 percent of its mobile broadband traffic is riding over 14 Mbps HSPA+ connections. The implication is AT&T wouldn’t have to take such drastic measures if the government had let it buddy up with a competitor.

But AT&T began experiencing its huge ramp-up in network data traffic in 2008 when the iPhone 3G was introduced. AT&T saw this data tsunami coming almost four years ago. Why didn’t the company invest in LTE sooner, or use the AWS spectrum it has been sitting on for nearly six years?

Stephenson had answers to those questions as well. He said AT&T can only expect 30 percent of its mobile data traffic to move to LTE in the near term, meaning its HSPA+ network will have to bear its capacity burden for some time. That’s true; Verizon is experiencing similar problems. In its fourth-quarter earnings, Verizon revealed that the vast majority of new smartphone customers are still signing up for 3G-only plans, largely because the iPhone lacks LTE support.

But T-Mobile wouldn’t have solved that problem. AT&T planned to shut down T-Mobile’s HSPA+ so the operators could consolidate their AWS spectrum in order to launch a massive LTE network. If the merger had succeeded, AT&T’s HSPA+ network would have had to pull double duty, handling both carriers’ 4G customers while AT&T transitioned to LTE. I’m not refuting that AT&T’s network is running hot, but its problems seem to be largely of its own making, and buying T-Mobile wouldn’t have solved any of its immediate capacity needs.

Finally, Stephenson lambasted the FCC over what AT&T considers the commission’s arbitrary rulemaking, and he repeated AT&T’s call for Congress to start setting spectrum auction policy. Ironically, today’s more vigilant FCC is AT&T’s own Frankenstein creation. As I wrote in a post earlier Thursday, AT&T’s consolidation ambitions lit a fire under regulators, which had been content to let every major wireless deal slide for the last decade. The FCC and U.S. Department of Justice are now more aggressive, and we have AT&T to thank.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• LTE changes everything; LTE changes nothing
• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
• Confused about the wireless markets? Here’s a breakdown

If you wanted to play Minecraft and ran into this instead, you'd be very disappointed and out $1.

Browsing recent App Store releases, I came across “Minecraft – Pocket Edition,” with a version 1.0 update. Thinking it might be the update that finally brings combat and additional block types to Mojang’s free-form world creation game, I quickly clicked through — only to find a completely different app that’s obviously trying to lure customers who aren’t paying close attention.

The Minecraft – Pocket Edition released Jan. 26 is from developer Onliance, not Mojang, and despite having exactly the same name as the original, and using screenshots from the full release desktop version of the game, actually isn’t a game at all: it’s a guide or recipe list for use with the PC title (and doesn’t even really apply to the genuine Pocket Edition in its current form), but customers searching for the original would be hard-pressed to discover that at a glance.

Here’s the introductory paragraph for Onliance’s app description:

Minecraft is focused on creativity and building, allowing players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. Gameplay in its commercial release has two principal modes: Survival, which requires players to acquire resources themselves and maintain their health and hunger; and Creative, where the player has an unlimited supply of resources, the ability to fly, and no concept of health or hunger. A third gameplay mode, named Hardcore, ratchets up the difficulty of surviving and forces the player to delete his or her world upon death. An outdated Classic version is also available for free, although it is no longer being developed. Creative Minecraft resembles Classic, but with many more features.

Before clicking through to “…More” in the iTunes page for the app, you actually see only about the first sentence of that, but the real purpose of the app is buried much deeper still. Much later on, the description does say the following, but it’s the kind of information that should be right up top, and it still doesn’t convey clearly that this title contains only supporting material, and not the game itself:

This app will help you get to know the basic building commands used within the game and help you fight off those nasty creepers!!

Not sure how this one snuck past Apple’s review process (we dropped them a line to let them know and will update with comments if we receive any), but this is a pretty bald attempt to mislead customers and profit from the success of Mojang’s innovative title. Here’s hoping the game quickly gets taken down, or at least changes its name, description and screenshots to something more representative of its actual function.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• A clouded view of Google Music

Apple CEO Tim Cook said during his company’s recent earnings call that iPad sales haven’t really been affected by the Amazon Kindle Fire, which is no doubt contributing heavily to the success of Android tablets. It’s also likely the Barnes & Noble Nook Color and Nook Tablet are included in the Android figures. Instead, Cook admitted the iPad has had some cannibalization effect on sales of Macs, and he predicted that one day, the tablet market will be larger in volume than the PC market.

Compared to Android, Apple still has a dominant position in the tablet market, with a 57.6-percent share compared to Android’s 39.1 percent, according to Strategy Analytics’ most recent numbers. In terms of year-over-year growth, the tablet space has grown by 150 percent between the end of 2010 and 2011. In other words, even if shares were more evenly split, the iPad would still be seeing big gains in unit sales.

The PC market, on the other hand, contracted by around six percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to research firm Gartner. That’s despite 20 percent growth by Apple’s own Mac line of computers. Kevin Tofel recently pointed out here on GigaOM that half of computing device sales are now mobile. If the trend of growing tablet and smartphone sales continue, and PC sales continue to decline, we’ll soon be in a position where mobiles are considered a primary device by the majority of users.

Apple will continue to sell iPads. A new refresh expected in the coming months might even help it turn the tide of slipping market share, since while the low-cost Kindle Fire may be a success, other Android tablet makers still seem to be having a hard time putting out a product consumers can get genuinely excited about. Kevin wrote last week about how Android 4.0, while it improves the Android tablet experience, still has a lot of glaring pain points. Also, Android’s tablet-specific app library lags considerably behind Apple’s, and isn’t catching up anywhere near as fast as the market on the smartphone side.

The companies putting out Android tablets that fail to achieve the Kindle Fire’s level of success are the same ones being hurt by the slowing PC market, and they’re the ones that stand to lose the most. Amazon’s Kindle fire has reportedly sold as many as 6 million units through the end of 2011, according to estimates, which would make it the world’s best-selling Android tablet.

Apple continues to appeal to a steadily growing audience of tablet users, but Amazon is answering the call of those who were happier buying bargain-priced netbooks for their basic computing needs, rather than spending more on an iPad. That’s the market PC makers should have been trying to retain with their own tablet efforts, and also the one Amazon has positioned itself best to appeal to.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Will cloud computing push the BRIC market to the front?
• Envisioning future strategies for Sony’s success
• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE