Great Weekend (2/3): iPAD's Arrival Tomorrow Means Tablet Technology Meets Comics

Every once in a while, all the awesome in the Universe seems to converge within a two day period.  We're not sure why it happens, but it has, it does, and if our experience with the power cosmic means anything, we're sure it'll happen again. Dabblers  might very well call these spectacular spectaculars Comic Convergences, but sometimes, even those words aren't enough. 

This weekend 02-04 April  promises to be the first of  2010's potentially Great Weekends, with 3 mega-events exploding nationwide: (1) San Francisco's own gigantic comic convergence, Wonder Con, begins it's three-day stay today in the Bay Area, while (2) Louis Leterrier's remade Clash of the Titans charged into theaters this morning - and in some places, even last night. Apple's game-changing iPad makes our (3) as it the game-changing tablet technology makes its public appearance just hours from now.

Yes, Apple confirmed Monday that their new iPad Wifi version (not the Wifi + 3G) will go on sale nationwide in all 221 Apple retail stores, as well as “most” Best Buy stores, beginning Saturday 03 April 2010 at 9am.  The company also said that their earliest iPad pre-orders have begun shipping as well, meaning at least a few lucky dabblers - along with  Stephen Colbert, who announced he received a free on during last night's episode of The Colbert Report - are probably shopping the App Store even now. 

Based on a 2007 survey, over 10 million or 30% of Americans own or will own an iPhone , and it's estimated that sales of the iPad should hit the 1 million mark within the next week.  Numbers like that mean, well, a lot of things - but in general, they translate very well as a technological tidal wave that, once it hits, will even give places like Des Moines, Iowa the metaphorical beach front property its always wanted. 

In other words, iPad's tablet technology will be a game changer. A plethora of other companies - among them  Lenovo, HP, Archos, Enso, Asus, and Fusion Garage - will be releasing their own media tablets this year, and cumulative orders are expected to hit 4 million by year's end.  By 2015, the world-wide number is forecasted to be 57 million annually.

To both usher in and ease the inevitable process, Apple's  posted several  iPad tutorials and guided video tours to their website, focusing on their new device's core features, such as Safari, Mail, iBooks, and the iWork suite. Of more interest to dabblers may be the tutorial for Apple's new iBookstore, which will first require a user to download an App before iPad can go cyber-shopping.  To begin your new iPad education, go HERE.

  

Reading iBooks on the iPad will be akin to using an e-Book reader,  but in a far better way than is currently offered by any e-reader currently on the market.  Apple’s iBookstore will designate about 20 main tier categories, including Fiction & Literature, Reference, and Cookbooks. Comic Books & Graphic Novels  will also rank among the Top 20 -- which we think is excellent and reassuring news. Manga will be delineated as a subcategory beneath the Comics tier, just one of over 150 total iBookstore subs available.  (And for our gamers on the blog, Apple reports their video game catalog will be just - if not even more - impressive.)

Apple's iPad capabilities are perfectly suited for comic books and graphic novels.  Online sites like ComiXology have become instrumental as the comics industry marches toward its own digital evolution; ComiXology itself boats an impressive, non-stop shop destination for the comics crowd, featuring not only weekly digital  comics and graphic novel content, but blogs, reviews, previews, forums, user ratings, and mobile applications for users on the go.   Expanding on the ComiXology model is Longbox Digital, a device and hardware independent platform for the secure distribution, sale and enjoyment of digital comics.  While Longbox is currently in private Beta test mode, public Beta testing is expected to come soon.

And that's an event that could be huge - especially in the months and years to come. Longbox has the potential to be the future of comics distribution, eliminating the monthly paper comic book format entirely. Longbox will function in a way very similar to iTunes, and like Apple's music store, plans to offer $.99 content.  With individual comics priced  anywhere from $2.99 to $4.99 or more, collecting has been prohibitive for many readers.  The potentials of Longbox suggest that may not be the case in the future. Still, that time won't arrive anytime soon. The new models of comics sales and distribution that the industry would need to adopt also predict the end of comics' current system - the independent direct market. With an entire industry structured around the direct market, the future will not be won easily.

Of course, that doesn't mean it won't be coming. Several comics publishers already offer digital content for iPhone via their individual apps,  and porting them to iPad and other media tablets will be a seamless process. Among the companies offering their comics digitally are: Image, Arcana, Archaia, Antarctic Press, Bluewater, Boom Studios, Devil's Due, Dynamite Entertainment,  Moonstone, Red 5, Robot Comics,  Slave Labor Graphics, Studio 407, Top Cow, and Viper. 

If anyone will have trouble adapting their comics to digital, its the Big Two, Marvel Comics and DC.  We'll take a closer look at both these companies digital designs in Part II of our Digital Comics review - coming this weekend!

iPad Goes On Sale March 26th; e-Readers Headed For e-Nnihilation

Lingering rumors to the contrary, our resident fortune teller insists that the next technological revolution from Apple - the iPad - is literally just around the corner. We'd tend not to believe her, but we've learned that she's not alone. Both the MacRumors website and the Examiner have (also) reported that the Apple iPad without 3G will be on sale at 6:00 pm on Friday 26th March.

Analysts have predicted that Apple will ship 10.5 million iPads this year alone. According to Apple's website, the company will begin pricing their newest tech at $499, with the top-priced model going for a cool $829; 3G enabled models will set you back another $130. Like the recent and rather dramatic rise in the popularity of netbooks to satisfy the computing needs of many users who no longer require the capabilities of a desktop computing system, the iPad-lead 'Tablet Revolution' will undoubtedly change the Personal Computing landscape.  And, like a bigger, stronger if not older brother, Apple's iPad will not only follow in the footsteps of the iPhone, the device credited with overlapping the PC and mobile phone industries, it and its kind will very likely - and quickly- surpass its smaller sibling.

Like a technological Tunguska, the coming iPad / Tablet event will dramatically change the ecosystems of the PC and mobile phone worlds. Suffice it to say, they won't be the only ones.  Apple Insider reported earlier that iPad's commercial campaign is expected to begin March 15th, with the emphasis being on the iPad's e-book capabilities.  E-readers, such as  market-leader Amazon.com's Kindle, Sony's digital Reader, and the Barnes & Noble Nook, have been hot commodities as recently as last Christmas; however, even as the e-Reader industry announced just yesterday that color capabilities, among many other improvements and 40 new models to come this year,  Kindle and co. seem woefully outmoded - and far less sexy - than vastly superior iPad tablet.  abbracadabbling has developed a mathematical equation to quantify and qualify exactly why iPad will dominate and quite possibly destroy the e-Reader marketplace:

Although the situation for Kindle and kin doesn't look good at this juncture, we didn't want to jump to any hasty conclusions, either. Three of us independently checked our formula (using our respective Mac Pro's, we should add), yet the answers yielded bore remarkable similarity. We sum up our conclusion like so:

For a more in-depth comparison of iPad and Kindle, hop on over to Computer World HERE.

For such a new technology, e-Readers have gone from being last Christmas' new hotness to today's old has-been in less than the blink of an eye.  (If you're wondering exactly how fast the blink of an eye actually is, there's an app for that.)  Although Sony introduced a very early digital reading device in 2004, e-Reader tech didn't really get going or get noticed until Amazon.com's Kindle hit in 2007. Three years later, very unexpectedly, it's nearly outmoded.  What other technologies and industries will also be effected, altered, otherwise drastically changed, revolutionized, or at worst, completely outmoded by the advent of Tablet?

For the comics industry, a business built upon the foundation of the monthly published pamphlet-style comic book magazine, that is the One Billion Dollar Question. As the era of motion comics, digital comics, and web comics has already dawned, and as the consumer base of the monthly comic book remains small preventing negligible sales growth, the  possibility of e-Comics supplanting traditional comic books is a very real possibility.  Some have already predicted that the Tablet is also the harbinger for the end of the traditional comics industry distribution and sales model, the Direct Market.

abbracadabbling will be taking an in-depth look at the possible changes coming to comics because of emerging technologies like the iPad over the next few weeks.  We'll also be taking a better look at how the internet and digital technologies - from digital comics in general to  devices such as the Longbox Digital comics platform - have already affected comics present  -- and future. Keep it here, dabblers!

Find Apple's official iPad website - here.