Day 2 on the ipad - fast cars!

So day 2 and all is going well with the iPad.

I tried out the racing car game called asphalt today and it is incredible! You turn the ipad left and right like a steering wheel. It was such a brilliant design for the game. There are different types of cars, courses and challenges. For £3.99 it was an absolute bargain.

I stopped playing games on computers about 10 years ago because I found I would get too addicted to them. I'm really addicted to asphalt right now. Went out on my morning run and couldn't stop thinking about it.

I think it is the combination about being excited about the ipad, enjoying getting back to playing video games, liking to drive fast cars (ferraris and aston martins), and starting to get into watching formula one racing. It's all combined together.

TV BATTLES
I think the iPad and tablets generally are going to herald a whole new era of TV interactivity.

I see that apple are going to modify their Apple TV offering in response / anticipation of the android TV offering. It is looking like people will be able to control their tv screens using an ipad / iphone - so the TV becomes like a massive monitor.

The amount of great youtube content available on the ipad - it displays it brilliantly - and the the whole living room eco-system is changing radically.

It really is going to shift the living room with Android and Apple battling it out. It should become a new ecosystem where TV rights holders can finally get some content on the TV without going through broadcasters and traditional pay tv platforms.

I think it will really work if it is a kind of an over builder situation. So that the consumer can still have a window into say a sky box. So they can switch seamlessly between youtube, sky box, games, dvds, photos and browsing.

The thing that has changed too is the resolution of the tvs for displaying content. We found that if you get a particular high res tv, it works really well for showing web pages.

So the time is coming - I would say 2012 - when people have a seamless type of viewing experience via their big monitor (the television).

NEWSPAPERS
I downloaded to the iPad the "editors choice" of the New York Times - it's great for a free edition. Gives me 2-3 pages of stories that change each day. I've also got the Financial TImes until end of July as a free version (sponsored by Hubolot watches (sp?). And The Times is available for £9.99 per month. Funny, I just couldn't bring myself to pay the £9.99. I haven't spent that on the Times in the last 9 months, so I'm not going to "pay the man" for content I'm not that interested in. The other reason for not buying it is that I might become interested in it and I'm not sure I want to spend so much time reading the Times.

On the iPad application store they have the application (ie: the Times) and then they have other people's comments on the application. You have to buy the application in order to review it. Loads of people excited about the Times being available. No-one knows if it includes yet the Sunday TImes. So I logged in at 10.30am and didn't see anyone confirming / complaining about their £9.99 spend.

Now I have just logged back in to see the latest reviews. The Sunday Times was not included and there are 100 new posts today all spitting tacks. The posts on Friday and Saturday were largely 5 stars (about 40 of them). Now there are about 100 reviews giving it 1 star and telling people not to waste their money. People rule don't they?

This economy is so fast that a company needs to be able to respond within about 30 minutes on a sunday to a storm brewing. It's no good waiting another two days for business hours to commence. All that hard work by the development team has gone up in smoke thanks to poor explanations and descriptions that were left suitably vague as to what people would get with their £9.99 a month subscription.

And so to bed....