Well, beyond the obvious hard work, practice, and attention to detail to each and every one of his slides and keynotes, there are some recurring habits that Jobs uses to make his presentations that much more captivating.

Those who want to find out more about how this amazing man delivers his product presentations can check out his famous speech delivered to students at Stanford.

The way he presents is very simple, using minimum text, almost NO bullet points, minimal jargon (except where necessary, like the spec sheets) and powerful phrases like “the world’s thinnest laptop” when revealing the Macbook Air.

Here is some information on the methods and techniques that make Steve Job’s presentation so exciting and charming. He has even been described as being able to project a “Reality Distortion Field” during his keynotes, allowing people to get excited over things that, in retrospect, aren’t that interesting and can even be downright problematic, such as the absence of a CD-rom or USB port in the Macbook Air.

Steve Job’s make great use of numbers in his keynotes, as it is a simple and powerful way of conveying information to ordinary people. Although he seems to have lost a lot of weight due to a fight with cancer, it appears that if the recent iPad indicated anything, its that he will be around for a while longer to sell us more expensive money-sucking toys.

Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

But for the millions of Apple fanatics out there, the iPad will be the next best thing since sliced bread.

First, Apple is not marketing the iPad as a netbook, and has openly criticized the format as a cheap device that will eventually fail due to the cheap price. Apple may be right on this one as recent research shows that one in three netbooks will fail, and that’s just the nature of having to keep prices low while trying to cram what is essentially a laptop computer into a small envelope.

The iPad will be running on the iPhone OS, which is hardly surprising and brings the iPad squarely into the iPod Touch and iPhone product lineup. Apple is placing the device as an expanded version of the iPod Touch offering eBook capabilities via the iBook application as well as games developed to run with the bigger screen.

But if it’s eBook that you want, Amazon’s Kindle with superior battery life has a sizable headstart already. Good luck to Apple… getting music listeners to read books!

The interface on the iPad has been made to deliberately resemble the experience of the iPhone, but with all the extra screen space, several interface tweaks have been made, most notably the contextual drop-down menus that makes navigation a breeze. As for the specs:

• CPU: Apple’s custom 1GHz A4 SOC, manufactured by Samsung.
• Display: 9.7-inch, 1024 x 786 (132 PPI), LED backlit IPS with capacitive touch and oleophobic coating.
• Storage: The iPad will come in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB variations.
• Wireless: The devices comes standard with 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1. You can also purchase a version which has 3G connectivity (UMTS / HSDPA 850, 1900, 2100MHz and GSM / EDGE 850, 900, 1800, 1900MHz). Sorry everyone, AT&T only here in the US — and if you’re thinking about using your iPhone SIM, think again. The iPad uses new micro SIMs.
• Other sensors: The iPad has a digital compass, there’s AGPS on-board in the 3G version, and both versions have an accelerometer and ambient light sensor.
• Ports / input / output: Headphone jack, 30-pin dock connector, built-in microphone, built-in speaker.
• Battery life: Apple claims “up to” 10 hours web surfing on WiFi, listening to music, or watching video, and over a month on standby.
• Dimensions: height: 9.56-inches, width: 7.47-inches, depth: 0.5-inches, weight: 1.5 pounds (1.6 for the 3G model).

The interesting point to note here is the new custom Apple A4 chip, which has been described as blazingly fast by those who’s had time to sit down with an iPad. We’re not sure how much faster this chip is compared to the current leading champion, the 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, but the A4 can power the iPad up to 10 hours continuously, something the Snapdragon will never do due to the power requirements of that processor.

The new 3G version offers data connectivity for the iPad, but it seems that those outside of the U.S won’t be able to fully utilize this feature, which is just as well because the iPad doesn’t really have voice/sms capabilities yet, that remains the sole domain of the iPhone. There is of course NO reason why Apple couldn’t integrate these features in the iPad, but probably they choose to go down this path to artificially differentiate their products.

iPhone OS hackers have already discovered references to webcams, SMS and voice features buried inside the iPad’s operating system, so expect to see the next incarnation of the iPad to have all these. But for now, this is the official stance and those who wants to use the iPad like a phone will need to get an iPhone.

The hardware is impressive and certainly a joy to hold, touch, and feel. It’s described as ‘weighty’ and ’solid’, spanning nearly 10-inches, rather like holding a stack of A4 papers. It also means that the device is anything BUT portable and you can’t slip it into your pockets, although it will certainly go well into a women’s handbag.

No doubt there will be entire new lineups of fashion accessories designed for men to carry and differentiate their iPad.

The inclusion of iWork for the iPad makes it an interesting productivity tool, but for most of us who do our spreadsheet and slides using Microsoft Word, this will be more of a novelty than anything serious. It is a great strategy to expose the Windows user to the world of Apple productivity applications though, and may even win over a convert or two.

Finally, the product will be available in about 2 to 3 months from now, with the cheapest 16GB version coming in at $499, which is the price point of the iPod Touch 64GB + some extra dollars. Nothing revolutionary, and I definitely don’t expect the iPad to sell as many units as the iPod Touch, which still remains the gadget to beat in terms of functionality, usability and portability.

Commercially, perhaps the iPad will fare slightly better than Apple TV. But I really don’t see it becoming the next iPod or iPhone for Apple’s growing treasure chest.

However, no ground-breaking feature was revealed unlike the launching of the iPod and iPhone.
The ultimate browsing and navigational experience seems to be what Apple is banking on this time round, for its success.
Without further ado, here is an overview of the gadget we have all been waiting for.

1)  Powerful, sleek and ultra mobile
-    1GHz Apple A4 processor
-    ½ inch thin
-    1.5 pounds
-    9.7 inch IPS display
-    10 hour battery life (1 month standby mode)

*Get details of full tech specs here.

2)    Cheaper than the $999 we originally expected
Wi-Fi model
-    $499 for 16GB
-    $599 for 32GB
-    $699 for 64GB

Wi-Fi + 3G model
-    $629 (16GB)
-    $729 (32GB)
-    $829 (64GB)

3)    Remarkable browsing experience
-    Able to view entire web page on the screen
-    Automatically adjusts to landscape or portrait views
-    Internet literally at your fingertips
-    Google-powered maps with high resolution satellite and street view images
-    Almost full sized virtual keyboard

4)    Multimedia galore
-    Organise appointments with, calendar, address book and notes applications
-    Watch high-definition Youtube videos, movies and TV
-    Stack, store and share vibrant photos on high resolution screen
-    Powerful in-built speakers for listening to music
-    iBook app (can be downloaded for free) for the ultimate reading experience.

Here are some screen snapshots of the iPad to help you decide whether or not to pick one up when they ship in March.

Your very own virtual library

Aerial view of your destination route

Flip through photo albums with just a pinch or a tap of your finger

At last! Keyboard made for normal sized fingers

All the HD Youtube videos you can watch

iPad iKnow iLike. Is this on your iWish iList too?

From Microsoft & HP…


From Dell…

From Nvidia…

OK we know that looks alone will not win your hard-earned dollar. If that were so Apple would rule the world right? So here are some specs to look at:

Tablet PC / Slate Comparison Table

Microsoft HP Slate

Dell Mini 5: View at Vimeo

We are still lacking details on all the slates out there but at least this will give you a rough idea on what is it and how it looks like. We’ll be monitering the Apple iSlate closely for an expected announcement this month end, stay tuned.

The iSlate is definitely one of them, but I’m more curious as to whether they will be announcing a new iPod Touch with camera. That’ll surely piss off consumers who bought the 3rd Gen iPod Touch barely 4 months ago, but such is the brutal world of technological advancement and Apple product lifecycle.

Apple has been doing controlled leaks of the mythical tablet for many months now, trying to gauge the reaction from customers while leaving the dirty work for technology websites and blogs and keeping their reputation intact. The price point of $1000 for a tablet was floated a few months ago to see whether this is acceptable. Apparently the fair price has been determined at $600 but the price remains the elusive figure that remains to be revealed.

The tablet itself is still a mystery. Some says it will come with cellular technology but do so because it’s then easy to bundle it with a cellular carrier’s wireless data service rather than because the tablet can act as a replacement phone. The processor is reportedly a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8. The screen will be sized at about 10 inches and running on the same iPhone OS, although with a different screen resolution obviously. Apple have started to advice app programmers not to hard-code the resolution of their apps, presumably so that the apps will function just as well on the new tablet.

The material finish is reportedly aluminium, so prepare to shell out precious money to buy all the newfangled ‘protective films’ that’s sure to spring up due to the notoriously scratch-worthy aluminium designs Apple have been using.

The product is expected to start selling from March – May 2010 onwards, unlike other Apple products which usually go on sale the moment its announced. At the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, many computer manufacturers have pre-empted Apple’s tablet announcement although it should be noted that netbooks and similar devices have a 30% higher failure rate compared to a notebook, so this might not be something you want to skimp out on.

Apple’s push for making quality devices that do not fail may be the reason why their tablet plans have been long rumored yet seemingly never brings fruition. Hopefully all those hours spend on engineering and research will be paid off with a strong, sturdy platform that does not have any reliability issues.

So there you go… the confirmed Apple iSlate Table, any surprises there?

Brace yourself this 2010, for another outstanding innovation from Apple – the company that has remained true to its witty slogans: Beauty outside, Beast inside; 1,000 songs in your pocket; and 25,000 apps and counting.

The Tablet PC is hardly new in the market, but somehow has not taken off in a huge way since its comeback in 2002. However, users can surely count on Apple to revolutionise the way we look at this digital device.

Artist rendering of the Apple Tablet

Apple analyst, Gene Munster predicts the arrival of the Apple Tablet sometime in the first half of 2010.

According to The Business Insider, selected Apple developers have been pre-empted on the likelihood of a product demo next month. The Financial Times has also reported speculation that Apple will be hosting a major event in January to launch the new Apple Tablet.

We can expect nothing less from Steve Jobs than to pull another theatrical presentation leaving the audience yet again in awe.

Up until now, Apple is still denying the existence of such a device but judging from the massive hype surrounding this subject, the odds of it materialising is pretty high.

So, how do observers expect Apple to turn this plain Jane of a device into an irresistibly sexy foxtress?

How big is it?
Smaller than a Macbook but bigger than an iPhone. There have been many speculations on the size, but generally, it is expected to be between 7 to 10 inches in screen size.

How much will it cost?
USD700 to USD900 (RM2,400 – RM3,100) according to Apple industry insiders

What are the features?
Cool Aesthetics:   Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating, Widescreen multi-touch display
Wireless Connectivity:   3G, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 4G LTE
Navigational Tools:   Assisted GPS (aGPS), Digital Compass
Multimedia Lover’s Haven:   Able to read e-books (hold off on that Amazon Kindle purchase just yet!), browse the web, listen to music, watch movies, write notes, work on spreadsheets.
Small but Powerful:   Able to handle complex 3D rendering, HD videos and support much more sophisticated games compared to the iPhone.

How will it look like? Your guess is as good as mine, but here are some possibilities…

At last, a device that looks cooler than an iPhone and packs the punch of a Macbook. I don’t know about you but I am bursting with excitement and anticipation for this new baby!

Can you picture all those yuppies showing off their Apple iSlate in Starbucks and Coffee Bean?

Genius DJ

First off, Steve Jobs is back again after a 6 month hiatus due to illness. His return is great news for Apple and it’s also a great pleasure to see him getting back into the groove and delivering the presentation for new products. First off, there are some great features in iTunes which will be updated to version 9.0. Apple promised a more intelligent ‘Genius’ music recommendation feature which is now expanded to incorporate a Genius DJ. The Genius DJ feature is more or less same as the standard Genius, but offering a single click to generate playlist of songs that work great together. I am still a bit skeptical of Genius, so I leave all my song recommendation to Mufin, which has worked very well for me thus far.

Some other updates are specific to the App Store such as offering Genius for applications, enhanced Movie Store, etc. One important update for iPod Touch owners is that you can finally arrange your apps directly in iTunes instead of doing it manually on the device itself. It’s immensely helpful with the amount of apps that are installed on average on a typical iPod Touch, making organization much easier.

Of course, all the devices got a refresh. The Classic iPod got a bump to its hard disk size with the same price while the Shuffle gets new colors, not a big surprise there. The iPod Touch is apparently going to sport the same processor as the iPhone 3GS making it able to run OpenGL 2.0 providing higher graphical power for the games that are inevitably coming out for it. Apple very clearly makes a stand of positioning the Touch as a viable alternative to gaming devices such as the PSP. Expect to see more focus on this section of the market from Apple. The 16GB model is discontinued while the 8GB model has a price drop to $199, meaning you can get one for about RM700, which is good news if you’ve been holding back on your purchase until the price drops.

The new 32 and 64GB versions are the ones with the faster processor. Other than that, everything remains the same. Finally, the iPod Nano gets the mystery camera that everybody’s hearing about. It is capable of recording ONLY videos, and also has built in microphone for recording voice. The screen also expanded by 0.2 inches. Currently its very hard to get specifications on the camera, but it’s capable of shooting 640×480 VGA resolution videos, putting it somewhere between 2 to 3 MP. It’s very strange that Apple disallows taking pictures with the Nano camera, and I hope someone finds a way to activate the feature.

The biggest surprise is of course, no camera module for the iPod Touch! It’s a big shame, but Apple probably figured that at this stage, the inclusion of a camera into the Touch would make it one step closer to the iPhone, possibly cannibalizing sales from the more expensive device. The good news is that the older iPhone 3G prices are coming down fast in the resale market. There’s probably going to be some confusion too due to the 8GB iPod Touch which is still running on the same platform as the second generation iPod Touch, while the 32 and 64GB version is actually the ‘real’ new iPod Touch with the faster processor. Just be wary of that, as newer App store titles coming out will definitely be taking advantage of the faster processor to create better looking games.

The good news is that the 32GB version will be priced the same as the older generation 16GB Touch (somewhere around RM1000). This will be the one to get if you are considering a new Touch. How much longer do we have to wait for a Touch with camera is anybody’s guess, but I sure hope it’s not another long 1 year wait.

Nevertheless, with the background of iPhone’s struggles, Google have perfected Android, their own answer to the Jesusphone which runs exactly 180 degrees counter to the philosophies adopted by Apple. Google preached open platform development and as little restrictions as possible, in part because they understand how the nature of open source programming works and would like to tap into the power of sharing in order to slingshot their Android platform past Apple’s own.

Initially when the Android first debuted, it was only available on the HTC G1, which wasn’t a pretty looker and not that great a phone overall. However, many reviews praised the Android platform and hoped to see it available on more devices. However, a year on, Android is still greatly lacking in terms of having a killer hardware to run on. Phone manufacturers are only now starting to warm up to Android as a serious alternative on the smartphone platform.

However, it seems that things can only look up from here. Motorola’s Droid will be the first phone in the world to use Google Android 2.0, the latest smartphone OS for the Android platform and early looks on the phone shows it to be a gorgeous phone with great screen and awesome camera. Only time will reveal if the Droid will save Motorola’s phone-making division, which has seen less than stellar market impact in the past couple of years ever since they launched the RAZR.

What’s new that Android fans can expect from 2.0? The first useful feature places more emphasis on communications. Now whenever you tap on a contact’s picture, a popup menu will show listing all the possible methods of communications you can use to reach the person, be it making a phone call, sending an email, SMS and so on. This feature will be available as an easy add-on for programmers to integrate into their software, making communications easy and simple. Combined with multitasking, you can quickly and easily switch from play mode to making a call/sending SMS then resuming whatever you left off.

It is also possible to have multiple user accounts on the phone now, in addition to being able to synchronize with Microsoft Exchange servers. The camera module is also updated with support for manual zoom control, white balance, macro focus, scene mode, etc. This will be wonderful news for the Droid, with it’s 5MP camera module. Finally, the calendar app has been updated to make it more robust and user friendly. New technologies introduced include Bluetooth 2.1 and updated Media Framework to optimize the Android’s graphics system to make it more responsive and increase performance.

For developers, Android 2.0 SDK now supports multiple screen sizes, and the OS will correctly render your application regardless of the size of the screen, which can vary due to the nature of the OS and how many people are using in on their phones.

With 2.0, the bar has been raised. Will we see even greater features on Android 3.0? We will be waiting. In the meantime, I’m sure Apple will be busy working on their iPhone OS 4.0 for release when that happens.

But it appears that with Steve Jobs back at Apple, news that the tablet is true after all have started to emerge. Stories about analysts having personally handled the device have surfaced and claims that the device will be unveiled in September and available later this year and to add some credibility to the report, it was claimed that other ODMs have frozen their product development to see what Apple has in store, possibly so that they can attempt to make a copy of it at a much cheaper price. To be honest, they are probably playing it safe and trying to see if anything new is coming out, which the most certainly will, bringing us to the next rumor, the iPod Touch 3G.

At this stage its pretty much confirmed that the third generation of the Touch will be revealed this September, known as the annual iPod event where every new model of iPod have been announced. The date of 9/9/2009 have been thrown into the mix, a classic example of showboating by Apple which has yet to be confirmed nor denied officially, although judging from the pic shown above, its definitely possible; just wait till the first week of September for the official announcement. The new iPod Touch is expected to have their own cameras and sport the same faster internals as the iPhone 3GS. Its a compelling reason to upgrade if its sold at the same price that Apple currently sells their iPod Touch 2G.

Microsoft however is not taking it down, as their Zune HD has packed more power into the small device, with the bright and awesome OLED display (certainly a sight to behold if you’ve never seen one in real life), HD radio, Tegra chipset from NVIDIA for raw power, etc. The only thing holding the Zune HD back is a less competitive Application Store which Apple has and is populated by millions of games, productivity tools, expenses trackers, etc. It will take the Zune perhaps a few more years before their application support and development reaches today’s Apple standards.

For the rest of us, September’s iPod event may well turn out to be the Tablet event of the year.

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