I have to really question the market for the iPad. Is it supposed to be an upgrade for iPod Touch and iPhone owners? Is it supposed to be for potential netbook purchasers? Is it supposed to circumvent the macbook all together? It’s the first time Apple has released a whole new product line, where I just cant for the life of me figure out why I need to have it, or even want to have it.

Door #1) iPhone Owners:  I love my iPhone because it’s small, fits in my pocket, runs the 140k apps, does all of the things the iPad does, while having that instant on 3G and voice. If your sell is that the device is bigger, and does everything you can already do, I’m not all that compelled to spend 500 minimum for a few more pixels.

Door #2) Netbooks:  If the iPad was going after the netbook market, shouldn’t it be able to at the absolute very least run more than one application at a time?   I mean, even clunky slow windows netbooks, which I’ve had the privilege to suffer with, can do that.  Seriously, a hackintosh Dell Mini 9 is more useful than the iPad in its current iteration (albeit less elegant), at less than half the cost.

Door #3) E-Book Readers: If it’s going after the Kindle, which iBooks seems to be, I really don’t think that market warrants it.  It’s nice to have a horse in the race, sure, but there’s no way this just blossoming segment of the market alone dictated the device’s inception.  Perhaps with great content deals, and live results, not just logos on a slide, this would have made more sense.

So, how the heck did they even get here?  From an outsiders view, it would seem they just couldn’t decide on what they wanted it to be, so it tried to be the bare minimum for everyone.  They are a victim of the iPhone’s success as far as public image goes.  It’s as if we had the tablet Apple always wanted to make for the past 2 years, and when people expected a larger device, that’s all they did, make the device larger.  It’s the first new Apple product line in a long while that comes off like an uninspired, logical addendum to the status quo.

Why raise the bar this high at your own press conference?

Presentation was incredibly important with a device that is rumored, even from within the company, to define a new computing market.  Focusing on key demographics that could really find a use for the iPad would have been great for this launch event. Go after college students.  Hammer home a deal to buy a discounted 1 year license for text books; offer some sort of educational library, with the ability to check out a book for some minimal fee.  Seriously go after gamers.  Don’t give devs two weeks and expect anything other than scaled up iPhone games, then invite all the gaming press flaunting its prowess. You’re not going to get a good reaction.  If you really want to kill print, communicate with the big publishers out there and get infrastructure up and demos showing the future of the medium.  The NYT is a newspaper, show us the future of magazines, show some pizazz for pete’s sake.  When one of your largest demos is iWork, you’ve got to re-evaluate your game plan.

It's an iPod Touch's UI, with a ton of space between the icons. Come on Apple, seriously?

Getting past the fact that this device exists with the features it has, lets talk about the features it’s lacking.  It’s got the ports and OS of an iPod with the size of a laptop, I mean, how are you supposed to treat it?  Why not OSX?  Why keep the exact same UI from the iPhone when you can utilize all that new space?  It baffles me.–Another ridiculous choice, 4:3 aspect ratio.  This is the movie machine, the perfect mid size screen to watch video content, and apple utilized a soon to be dead standard so we can cut off massive parts of our videos to watch them full screen?–No flash. Still. There must be some really bad blood with Adobe, to just outright not include even an optimized version of the most prevalent web plugin out there.–I know Apple is trying to keep the price down, but the lack of even a mediocre camera dashes all hopes of some augmented reality tech, which would have blown everyone away on a 9 inch screen, and sold the promise of “the future”.–That front facing camera has been on people’s minds because of how potentially awesome the utilities are.   If you want to wow people, show the iPad as a portal looking right at another person in a slick new version of iChat, maybe with some augmented reality overlay for interaction. You know, really really cool stuff nobody has done before.

It seems underdeveloped on all fronts. Given, it’s probably better than anything else competitors are looking to put out in the near future, but it’s no game changer as far as technology is concerned.  Sure some companies will be compelled to react, and Apple very well might grab a massive chunk of market share from netbooks and ebook readers, but it isn’t doing so by reinventing the wheel, or presenting a totally new experience.  Lets hope the initial reaction will begin a push for some big additions on the hardware front for v2, which seems like a much better time to buy, once the platform finds its sea legs.

I really REALLY needed to get that off my chest!   It feels good!  It’s time to go back to hoping for a revamped iPhone OS to reflect some of the changes I expected with the tablet.

I’m loving my classes at Gnomon this semester, things are really going well! I’m especially loving my Anatomy in Zbrush class with Ryan Kingslien. Above is a turntable of my work from Week 3. It’s rough, and still needs detailing, but the form is there (which, prior to this class, I had an absolute horrible time getting right). Gnomon FTW!

Just wanted to let you guys know about an awesome program going on at Gnomon! They have what they call Master Classes once a year, where renowned artists spanning the spectrum of the production world teach their specialty. For the amount of money you spend in comparison to the people you’re able to interact with, It’s a ridiculous deal! Give it a look!

Gnomon Master Classes

After a nice summer back at home, and getting to see friends after a long hiatus, I am now back in Los Angeles!  It was certainly nice to take a break from certain things, and push other ventures forward, but now its time to get back into my formerly regimented schedule!  Classes at Gnomon start up in the next two weeks, so until then, I’ve got plenty of time to jump back into the swing of things.  Above you can see photos of the apartment I just moved into (still looking for a roommate by the way if anyone is interested!).  Pretty swank!

So on the topic of new things coming to fruition, I’ve got a few things coming down the pipe.   Hopefully in the next two weeks Zack Luye and I can figure out the logistics and launch our new daily podcast Social Bite, covering a tasty chunk of breaking news in the social web.  Keep an eye out on www.socialbiteshow.com, we should have some content on there in the near future.

In addition to that, I’ve been working on something for a solid year which is finally ever so close to launch, for which I’ll have more information in the next two weeks!  I’m really really excited, it’s been a long time coming, and many many days have gone into making sure it’s something that’s going to wow people on first sight. Get a teaser below!

So with that, I’ll leave you with some Crunch Time information! Yes, we were off last week while I was sorting out the move, but we’ll have a show up tomorrow evening covering all the events of the last two weeks in a big show you won’t want to miss! Stay tuned everyone!

This is a video play test of my final for Intro to Unreal at Gnomon. I completed the course at the end of March, 2009.

Excuse the horrible aim, I was playing on my MacBook Pro’s touch pad…yeah I don’t suggest it.

You can give the level a try! I would love your feedback! Download it here:

To install , copy the contents of the “Intro to Unreal Final” zip into My Documents/My Games/Unreal Tournament 3/UT Game/Published/CookedPC/Custom Maps

But first, Step 1: Move to LA. Hello new neighbors and old friends (who happen to live in LA). How are you? I’m going to need a little help around here getting situated, so if you think I should know someone (or you think I should know you), shoot me an email at me@jeremybogdan.com . It’s going to turn into something of a whirlwind trip; buying a car, finding a place, getting settled, starting school, etc, so any assistance would be most appreciated!

On the status of Crunch Time, Brendan and I are working out a time to record in the next few days, so we’ll be back up and started here soon.  Hopefully with a special guest!  Also, I guess I should mention, if you work in the video game industry and find your job interesting, we’d love to have you on to talk about it along with the latest news and releases!  -OR- If you work at a publisher and either know or are a PR person, we’d love to review your games! Just email us at crunchtime@jeremybogdan.com.

Obligatory slideshow of move photos is posted below.  In addition, I recorded some Flip video of the plane that I’m hoping to do something neat with when I start my Motion Graphics class at Gnomon.

This week was focused around expanding the space and starting to make it feel more real. I haven’t yet nearly placed all my static meshes, but the room should be fully covered to hide the blockyness.

This week you can actually give the level a try! I would love your feedback! Download it here:

To install , copy the contents of the “Published” folder into My Documents/My Games/Unreal Tournament 3/UT Game/Published/CookedPC/Custom Maps

This week I relit the whole level, started adding sound effects, tweaked the BSP and added more static meshes. You can start to see how things are progressing, with the bottom level acting as sort of an industrial machinery room, with the (future) steam rising up to the plant beds on the second floor.

Above you can see the fruits of my labor this week on my level for Intro to Unreal at Gnomon Online.  The majority of my week involved adding static meshes and changing the BSP to allow for easier navigation.  I’ll probably have more tweaking to do on the BSP but it feels pretty good to run through right now.  I’m going to art it up as a power station, with generators on the basement floor shooting steam to plants on the second floor.  It should turn out pretty cool, looking forward to next week’s lesson.