A few years ago Filemaker released the Bento database, a slimmed down and gussied up version of it’s flagship product. Bento has grown up over those years, and now Filemaker has skimmed off some of its easy to use features in a version 1.0 for the iPad. I had a dream of making this pocket-sized product do some of the work that a mobile pro, like my wife the yoga teacher, would need in classrooms. Alas, the iPad Bento can’t perform those deep poses yet.

That doesn’t mean the product isn’t worth the $4.99 it costs at the App Store. Bento arrived with a one-page home screen meant to serve as a manual, a handful of database templates (these are called Libraries in Bento) and three skins to style my creations.

But say, for example, you wanted to assign several attributes to an item in an inventory. iPad Bento doesn’t get the idea of multiple tick boxes for one record. It wants you to create a field for every attribute like overseas item, tax free, custom sized and the like.

As a database Bento has gotten so minimalistic in its mobile versions that it seems suited only for a very personal information manager. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s good to know going on how much you can fit into this Bento’s box.

Apple pointed to the sales of the iPhone as the primary factor in its $13.4 billion Q2 report this week. The device, which Apple sold more than 8.7 million units of, is becoming the equivalent of the inkjet cartridge at HP. High volume, high profit, and a very different product than the company has been known for. You might argue that the iPhone has little to do with the mission of the Mac. But you won’t be throwing away an iPhone every month, like those HP ink cartridges. Using an iPhone in conjunction with a Mac makes the mobile device act like an extension of the computer.

What works in Apple’s favor it that the iPhone has plenty of competition, but no direct knock-offs. It’s the Apple product most likely to introduce the company’s computer solutions to a first-time customer. The second most likely product? The Mac itself. Apple said about 300,000 Macs sold at the Apple retail stores during Q2 went to customers who had never owned a Mac before.

Apple cites a “stronger product mix” including more iPhone sales while explaining how it beat analyst estimates by more than 2 percent for margins. Then there’s the $47 billion in cash the company reported for the period ending March 31: A lot of clams to toss at whatever research and development opportunities emerge.

Apple pointed at its “first mover” opportunity with the iPad as one place where it intends to exploit its advantages with fresh investment. Apple expects to release iPad units in 9 overseas countries by the end of May and ship the 3G versions by the first week of May.

One analyst said the iPad has a chance to become “the Mac of the masses.” In the 1980s Apple called the Mac “the computer for the rest of us.” Many analyst questions during the Q2 conference Q&A covered the iPad. As of this week, one tracking site estimates more than 1 million iPads in use: An introductory rate that outstrips the adoption of the iPhone in its first quarter of sales. Perhaps what the iPhone has done for Apple is a sign of what the iPad might add in several years.

Complete instruction and training, but O'Reilly offers a better deal

An iPhone problem led me into my library of O’Reilly Missing Manuals, an ever-growing sheaf of pages that’s approaching one full foot of dandy advice and training. A Missing Manual for Apple products is often likely to have the crack advice of David Pogue among its authors, making them a pleasure to read and a complete resource. (Pogue created the Missing Manual series.)

But a Missing Manual book is also bound up by the Curse of the Index. Nobody can reference every entry for every word in a book made of paper. The index would run longer than the content. You can spend awhile searching a handful of entries in a paper book, and even if the advice is inside, locating it among 600-odd pages takes time. You might be at deadline on a project and wish there was a faster method to solving a problem — so you can avoid the line at the Apple Genius Bar at the retail stores (if that’s even an option.)

O’Reilly’s got a shortcut for your fixit dilemma. Today the solution is e-books, editions of these Manuals you download and read on a Mac, an iPhone, a Kindle or yes, even the new iPad. Today, all e-book purchases are half-off, in celebration of Earth Day.

I already had the iPhone Missing Manual in my library last weekend, when my iPhone refused to sync up and cough up its photos. I wanted to push a new album onto the phone to show some images to a client. The new iPad was in use elsewhere at Bites HQ. The solution to the iPhone problem was inside the Missing Manual. I might have found it faster if I owned an e-book version instead. Read the rest of this entry »

A friend and marketing analyst sent me his belief that Apple’s campaign against Flash was a mistake and might cripple the company’s empire. Guy Smith of Silicon Strategies Marketing, who consults for software and hardware makers on marketing around the world, looks at CEO Steve Jobs’ anti-Flash campaign as a rare error. Blocking Flash from the iPad and iPhone cuts off content, Guy said, adding in his latest post that “Jobs is trying to string-up Adobe, and in the end might make Apple look like Il Duce on his last day.”

The latest rattling of cyber sabers comes from Apple and Adobe, with Apple’s insistence that Adobe Flash be banished from Jobs’ walled garden of iEverything.  Certain slurs have been sounded, including an odd instance by Jobs proclaiming that Adobe Flash was bug ridden. (Jobs is obviously not a Windows user, for he does not know the true meaning of “buggy.”)

Such bogus blusters are convenient covers for real issues. Flash currently commands a huge share of the Rich Internet Application market by virtual of antediluvian virtualization.  Long ago, Flash did what people wanted, which was to add value to surfing the Web while eliminating cross platform/browser/religious sectarianism.  Want to watch videos of cute kittens or suicidal teenagers on motorcycles, or listen to the latest excuse for music coming out of Nashville on the Web, regardless of  whether you are on a PC, Mac, Linux, minis, odd ducks, occasional mainframes, virtual desktops or smart phone?  Adobe Flash made it happen by bundling [the player] for free into everything. Except iPhones and iPads.

[To be accurate, Flash is only bundled long enough to force you to update it via download, to combat the latest malware and virus attacks. Much of the bundled Flash is already out of date by the time a new Windows or Mac system boots up. But Guy continues on eliminating Flash from Apple's most mobile devices.]

Therein lay Apple’s finest error (aside from the Newton).  As any performer will attest, you give the audience what they want. Putting Snoop Dogg on stage at a cotillion is an error.  So is creating an information/media device that does not deliver information/media.  Since so much of the world’s content is and will for the foreseeable future remain in Flash, and since Adobe is not sitting still in extending Flash for ever better uses, banning it from hardware is inane.  It goes directly against what the audience (market) wants and thus gives them the motivation to consider alternate venues.

First, the Apple devices deliver information and media. Plenty, just not that written to run on Flash Player. To the resulting consideration of alternate venues, I say, “So what? Assume that happens — then what?” So then I’m buying an HP Slate to run Flash? “So much of the world’s content is and will for the foreseeable future remain in Flash,” that’s a real longshot. The key to track the Flash future is the phrase from above, “Long ago, Flash did what people wanted.” Long ago, people watched cable TV for the latest news, too. And Seinfeld. And modems that winked up when you got connected to the Internet.

I disagree with Guy about the iPad’s need for Flash, in part because between the two of us only I own an iPad, and so and have the same 10 days of experience as every other owner. (Perhaps not exactly the same experience; I didn’t buy the $49.95 OmniGraffle app for it [think Windows' Visio planning]. On the other hand, I wrote most of my reply to Guy off an Apple Keyboard Dock, and plenty of people are still waiting for that marvel.) I haven’t missed Flash more than a handful of times out of hundreds of media and content deliveries.

I told Guy he simply needed to see the iPad in action to observe how a Flash-less experience means less than you’d think to business content today — and perhaps little to nothing once content providers adapt to millions of iPads joining the 85 million iPhones and iPod Touches out there. The only difference is that Apple has decided to make a stand against Flash now, after selling 85 million devices that don’t use it.
Read the rest of this entry »

WordPress worked up an app ready for Day One that taps the internal keyboard

Of all of the surprises in the first two days of using an iPad, the biggest one may be the easiest to put my finger on. The keyboard built into this tool is good enough for a first draft at touch typing speeds. That Apple would have been able to concoct such a thing, when others have failed at including such a fundamental, says a lot about the creative utility of this device.

The paragraph above would have taken so much longer to draft on an iPhone, and would have been torture on a OLPC portable computer. I compare the iPad to the OLPC because the latter’s designers believed children would create music, stories, art, even programs with it. Apple hasn’t mounted a big push yet for creating via the iPad. It’s positioned this year as a tool to consume. But give the market six months to fire up the tools and attachments like mics, cameras, input devices and more extensive editing, and this might become the most mobile of workbenches.

The debate around the iPad has included questions about what it might kill, or just replace. These are the wrong questions, but it’s no surprise to hear them. Very new things rattle most of us. We need to find a place for them and so we compare. Like a Kindle? Not exactly, but you can read business books on it. Like a laptop, then. Not so much either, since local file storage and attached things like disks aren’t there yet. Like a netbook, maybe? The iPad might look the same size, but it won’t run several programs at once. Its Safari browser won’t even let you keep multiple pages open using tabs.

All such features that prove to be important to new users will surface. And some tools for existing Macs are already on hand to help. The Bluetooth keyboards and headsets, and a Mac app called PhoneView, are examples of how the demand will create tools for creation. Read the rest of this entry »

The UPS driver was smiling when he delivered my iPad at midday today. “Have fun,” he said while he matched my grin. “I’ve delivered a lot of these today.”

Once the brown truck rumbled around the corner and the brown box was opened, the iPad demanded that it be linked up with iTunes. I’d read ahead enough to have the 9.1 version ready, and even downloaded and bought some iPad apps the night before. (Apple opened the App Store’s iPad wing on Friday. In anticipation of a first-day rush, I downloaded 27, including some fun as well as the requisite work tools.)

That meant that the bill for the download, including a $14.95 Major Legue Baseball app, was $40-plus including tax. One thing to understand about owning an iPad, or an iPhone: it’s a device that carries a cost of ownership bill, because you will want tools and toys to use on it. The App Store bill arrived this morning with a handy list of the initial apps. As you can see, much of the programs useful to small businesses to keep in touch are either free (news service feeds, social networking) or included.

But Pages and Numbers made their way into my budget, because Apple’s got $9.95 versions of the word processor and spreadsheet. More on those a bit later, but this note: the keyboard included in the multi-touch screen will be just fine for short drafts. Apple has moved up its promised date of delivery for the combo keyboard-dock I ordered March 12. Originally set for April 20, now it’s coming on April 8.

One surprise comes in seeing how smooth the device is: I’ve adopted a knees-bent posture on the sofa to type and enter long data. The third party market will do very well in selling cases for these. I’ll be reviewing some from ColaSac and UNIEA as soon as they get them into our hands.

Zinio means to make a big impression by the iPad’s opening weekend. The company has been selling magazines (single-copy and subscriptions) for 10 years online and on computers, admittedly “before the market’s time” according to CEO Jeanniey Mullen. But fast-forward from the time of Windows XP to the Apple touchstone that boots up on a quarter-million laps this weekend, and you can see the numbers rising for publishers and their readers.

Zinio will offer 2,000 issues for purchase (and another 400 back issues) through its free app, something the company designed as soon as Apple released the iPad’s software development kit. The company knew that a digital reader with full motion and interactive hooks would be a lure to readers who expect more from a publication than just words and static pictures. As of Thursday the company wasn’t sure if it would make the initial April 3 iPad app rollout lineup that Apple controls, but the CEO was certain that Zinio was going to deliver business magazines like Smart Money (from the Wall Street Journal) MacWorld, Kiplinger’s, US News & World Report — even Oprah, Yoga Journal and Esquire. All will enjoy the full-screen experience of the new Apple tablet, she said.

The Zinio catalog has been available for reading on iPhone as well as the Mac and PCs, but the Mac version runs on Adobe’s Air platform. Zinio has been working on removing such technology that doesn’t run on the iPad, substituting HTML5 and XML.

“We started to look for opportunities to optimize our iPhone app for the iPad, and have been feverishly de-Flashing our [magazine] files and our reader,” Mullen said. “We’ve been rebuilding our infrastructure to support the non-Flash environment.”

Small business owners won’t see many focused titles that have been optimized for the iPad’s features this weekend other than MacWorld. But Car and Driver, Dwell, National Geographic, Sporting News Daily, Spin and Zinio’s own Viv magazine are coming online first with video features and slide shows that take a reader beyond a magazine’s traditional graphics and text. It’s going to add a new dimension to showing off a publication’s article during a presentation. Publishers will have the chance to create animated, interactive graphics that might bridge the gap towards a need for skills in Keynote, Apple’s presentation app. Read the rest of this entry »

Inventory is among the business uses shown for the Bento iPad version

The new Bento for iPad screenshots are on display this morning, courtesy of media rep Kevin Mallon at Filemaker. In the set on Flickr are several shots that illustrate how this combination of the Apple tablet and Apple-subsidiary’s base-level database can drive a business’s data needs.

Filemaker has always benefited from business interest in its products. There’s only so much cataloging of the garage, the music and film collections, the stacks of books or model trains you can do with a database. Filemaker grew off the backs of small business needs. Bento is a tool robust enough to serve a small business, but with a plucked feature set to get average tasks done.

Databases need data entry devices desperately, so a keyboard has seemed essential to their success. Bento has an iPhone app that has won great reviews. But significant amounts of data entry require a keyboard. This is a lesson learned at commercial IT enterprises, like the sort I cover for the HP market. The mouse-click always fell far behind the productivity of fingers on keys. So this app will be one of the more severe tests of the iPad’s built-in soft keyboard.

Filemaker was being coy about the crossover pricing on iPad and iPhone versions of this app. (Some iPhone apps will be running at no extra charge on the iPad right away.) We’d expect about $9.95 on release, because Apple’s selling the iWork apps at that price.

In a move that looks to be all about boosting first month shipping numbers, Apple has announced it will accept a trade-in of three iPod Touches to get a new iPad.

The trades can only be executed at an Apple Retail Store, the company said in an e-mail to the millions of iPod Touch owners who’ve registered the devices. “Since the tech media has announced that the iPad is simply a large iPod Touch, we’re embracing the comparison,” said marketing VP Phillip Schiller. “We’re Apple and can set the rules for our own products. It’s important for the iPad to succeed.”

The 3:1 ratio is thought to represent the aggregate screen size of three of the Touch devices. Many have begun to experience battery fatigue, according to analyst Rob Enderle. The tech expert lauded Apple on its admission that the iPad batteries might disappoint early adopters, and so would accept three older devices to spread its newest product into the market.

The exchange terms identify a special 8AM to 9AM Swap Hour at the retail outlets in the US. Owners who’ve gathered up three Touches will be admitted to the front of the lines expected to form on Saturday for the first day’s delivery of the iPad.

On a recent trip I picked up a copy of The Atlantic, the aging magazine that used to feature reports from the fine James Fallows on subjects of technology. Fallows is a business writer as much as a technical savant, and he brought a generation of experience to his work. Alas, a replacement editor falls well short of that skill set in assessing the iPad’s chances to change mobile computing. Megan McArdle, the magazine’s business and economics editor, wrote this under-researched assessment of a product she’s never used.

The iPad does a bunch of things, but none of them exceptionally well. You can’t read it in full daylight, and its battery life is much shorter than Kindle’s. With no true built-in keyboard or ability to multitask, it’s not a substitute for a laptop — and unlike my iPhone, it won’t fit in a pocket, take pictures, or make calls. Unless you need it for one of its speciality uses, it doesn’t replace anything you already have; it’s just one more thing to carry.

Pages, from Apple's video demo

It appears McArdle is among the unwashed masses of journalists who didn’t enjoy a few minutes with the real product before writing her April piece on Kindle vs. iPad. I’ve owned the former for a year and expect the latter within the week. But it’s possible that McArdle will want to revise her gradecard about “doing nothing exceptionally well.” All she needs to motivate her corrections are the Apple videos online this week showing off Mail and Pages, the iPad’s e-mail and writing tools. Yes, this might be something else to carry — something more useful to a business than a copy of The Atlantic. Aside from a smartphone like the 3GS iPhone, I can’t see what else she would need to tote. And at just 24 ounces, this new Apple tool is likely to carry a heft to make the 6-ounces of April’s Atlantic seem like dead weight. Read the rest of this entry »