No Speculation Zone...OK I'm lying

​Tomorrow Apple will holding what is expected to be the great iPad (mini) event. Just like with the introduction of the iPhone 5, a lot seems to be known about this new product. Spy photos of pretty much every part of this smaller iPad have been circulating around for weeks now, so not much is left to the imagination. And yet, some crucial things are not known yet:

• What will be the product's name​ ?

• What price points will it sell at ?

• What sort of screen will it have ?

• Will it have just WiFi or LTE as well ?

I won't speculate on much of the above. ​Others are much better equipped to do so. I will make one prediction though. No it won't be about the price. If Apple wanted to deal a death-blow to the rest of the industry, it would price the entry level model at $199. Even the Kindle Fire wouldn't survive that. But, hey, this is Apple we're talking about. Could they sell it at such a price and still make money ? I believe they could. Chances are the display will be non-retina. Apple have achieved economies of scale with the iPhone 3GS and the iPad2 that would enable them to go really low on this one. But they won't. We've heard rumors of prices hovering between $249 and $329. I have no doubt that even at those higher prices Apple will break sales records with these machines, but it won't be as "market-dominating" as pricing at below $200. 

No, my prediction is about something else entirely. Last January Apple took pains to unveil their iBooks strategy, and specifically the iBooks Author program that enables mere mortals to easily create beautiful textbooks for school and college going students. ​The main bottleneck for the success of that program was the price of the vehicle it required. Very few school districts could afford to buy large quantities of iPads for their students. So the tools were there, but the vehicle went missing. Until tomorrow. I believe that Apple will tout this new iPad category as the ideal school and college companion. I have a feeling much of tomorrow's presentation will focus on that particular function for this new device. Chances are they will introduce a new version of iBooks Author, and maybe even a new version of iBooks itself. 

Of course there will be other highlights: maybe a new retina 13 inch MacBook Pro, possibly a revamped Mac Mini, but in my opinion we should be paying attention to the iBooks move. Many people have had the vision of "a computer for every child"​ for years now, but this new iPad, whatever its name, could well bring this vision that much closer to reality.

Synergy Squared

I will be the first to admit: I am a sucker for fancy notebooks and beautiful pens. A few years ago this led me to discover Moleskine notebooks. As much as I enjoy using computers and other digital gear to get things done, ​I would always come back to manual note-taking for telephone conversations and certain face to face meetings. 

On the other hand you all know me as a sucker for tech and getting things done digitally whenever possible. ​A few years back this has led me to discover Evernote and I have never looked back since. With Evernote nothing ever gets lost, ideas get recorded and saved to the cloud instantaneously, and you achieve "total recall".  

Now imagine these two concepts somehow meeting: the Moleskine notebook and the Evernote online service. Sounds crazy, right ? Not really: the two companies got together and came up with "The Evernote Smart Notebook designed by Moleskine".​ I can finally indulge those two seemingly opposing urges of saving things both in the analog as well as the digital space. It seems there are other geeks like me out there. I am not alone anymore, maybe I never was.

What are they actually guilty of then ?

The Map App debacle reminds me of Antennagate: the last time everyone went crazy saying Apple had so dramatically screwed up, the game was over. A lot of noise for absolutely nothing. Then it was Consumer Report making a mountain out of a molehill: if you held your iPhone 4 just so (and you really had to make an effort to hold it THAT way), you could loose your connection. This time again it is mostly pundits and so called "experts" making a lot of noise for not much.​

Why do I say that ? Very simply: Apple HAD to release Maps, in its current form, and better now than later, or too late. ​And, yes, I agree, there are some problems with the new iOS 5 Maps App. That much is undeniable. But there are still problems with Siri as well, and what both these products have in common is the fact that they can ONLY be made better by getting millions of people to use them every day. So Apple HAD to come out with a product that wasn't all there yet, because what is happening right now is part of the process of making that product better. 

Let's be honest. Personally I have never used the old Maps app on the iPhone. I have been a dedicated Waze users for years now. ​So this change really doesn't affect me immediately in any way. I don't know why anyone would in fact have used the pre-iOS 6 Maps app at all, it didn't have turn-by-turn directions. But I do fault Apple for one thing. There is one aspect of this that they handled badly. At the introduction of iOS 6 they touted the new Maps app as the greatest thing since sliced bread. That is the one thing they should have better prepared for. They oversold that product. A little more humility would have gone a long way towards managing expectations. I'm not saying the "cognoscenti" wouldn't have raised their voices in horror, but maybe the story would have made a little bit less noise. As is, Tim Cook's apology went a long way towards calming things down. Before long this story too will be forgotten, or at least it will fade in memory. The naysayers will have to come up with some new wrongdoing by Apple, but the iPhone 5 will continue to sell like hotcakes, and the public will continue to vote with their wallets.