Find out the answer for yourself in the video!

Another iPad-owner from Pitssburgh wanted to be the first one to actually destroy the device with a baseball bat. Ofcourse, why not? It shows the iPad’s glass display is more prone to cracking when you drop it than for example the Apple iPhone.

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With the advent of the web, comic books experienced quite a revitalization after fans started scanning them, posting them up in online comic communities and making them available for everyone to read. To avoid being late for the party as music publishers were with online music sharing, comic publishers like Marvel quickly stepped in and started publishing their comics digitally. Marvel has been selling them through its store Digital Comics since 2007 already.

Your PC display won’t cut it

Just like with e-books, a computer screen just isn’t the most comfortable way to read a comic. Computer displays tire your eyes quickly, especially when you’re reading content. And the fact that you can’t really hold your computer like you would a comic doesn’t help the viewing experience either.

Panelfly on the iPhone

Now the iPhone was mostly meant to be used as phone, a digital communication device and to quickly browse the web. However, data shows that a high proportion of users actually use their iPhone to read e-books, comic books and magazines; and lots of them. Applications like Panelfly make it possible to download, save and read comics on the iPhone with great simplicity. All good, right? Well, that iPhone screens just seems a tad bit too tiny to read a comic on that is supposed to be the size of a Letter or A4 page.

The iPad and comics

Here’s the good news: Panelfly announced they are developing an iPad version of their comic book application. The iPad is perfect read comics on. Just like with your comic book you can walk around, lie down or put it against the wall while you read it. The app will feature an interface matched to the iPad; details are scarce but it seems to be looking really good according to Gizmodo. Panelfly already supports Marvel Comics, so you can buy those with ease. Details on how purchasing comics will happen on the iPad with Panelfly are still unknown.

Apple has remained silent if it will include comic books in the announced iBookstore. Many sources say they won’t, as the iBookstore app just is not optimized for the multimedial experience comics can bring.

The future is dynamic content

Seeing how magazine publishers are already mentioning adding dynamic multimedia objects in their magazines like audio and video, I can only speculate that the same thing might happen to digital comics in the future. What about moving to the next page of your comic and seeing Batman jump in to the page fighting the Riddler for some seconds, then slowing down and changing into a still comic book page again? I can’t wait!

Have you been reading comics on your iPhone or other mobile device? Does it work for you and how do you expect the iPad to change things for comic readers around the world? Tell me in the comments!

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Back in 2007, HTC already offered a wide-array of smartphones that offered nearly identical functionality to Apple’s iPhone, albeit lacking a smooth interface. This did not stop Apple from revolutionizing the industry in this segment. With their focus on aesthetics, build quality and a superior interface experience, they won over a 30% market share in the United States alone.

It is a unique moment in time where the cost of parts is low and consumers are ready. The costs are low because suppliers have already experienced a huge demand for touchscreen parts for use in smartphones and are able to produce them now quite well. However smartphone screens are at most 5 inches in diagonal. Suppliers are therefore ready to try larger sizes such as 10 or more inches (the size rumored for the upcoming Apple tablet). In addition consumers are also ready. They have experienced touch interfaces on their smartphones and especially on the iPhone. Everybody knows it and everybody has played with it, or even owns it.

This unique combination will pave the way for tablets in 2010 and making it therefore the year where the tablet computer became a household device.

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PCMCIA cards

Laptop computers since history have been supporting PCMCIA slots. These slots made it possible to extend your sometimes limited laptop computer with extra functionality, like soundcards, GPS radios, hard drives or add-on solid-state memory. The PCMCIA slot has advanced in the past years into the faster 2.5GBit variant called ExpressCard. The card uses a 26-pin 34mm wide connector. There are two ExpressCard sizes: 75mm by 34mm and 75mm by 54mm.

From ExpressCard….to SD.

Technology devices like smart phones, cameras, media players and even laptops (in the form of netbooks) have increasingly become smaller and smaller. The majority of devices are simply smaller than the ExpressCard itself. Thus, they are not able to support card. Thus, for extending your device with extra memory many of these devices now use the smaller SD card. Its size is 32mm x 24mm. It has a micro variant which is only 11mm x 15mm. A standard SD card can hold up to 4 Gb, however SDXC (extended capacity) cards have been released which move the maximum up to 2 Tb (that’s 2000 Gb). The format has become highly popular and is widely suppported.

So Apple adopted SD in their MacBook Pro’s

Finally, Apple has started to add SD card support into their MacBook Pro line up. The MacBook Pro 13″ and 15″ laptops have an SD card slot.  The MacBook Pro 17″ still has an ExpressCard slot. What is the reason for Apple changing their mind all of a sudden and abandoning ExpressCard’s? Because Apple thinks the SD card adoption in mobile internet devices (MIDs) and netbooks is so ubiquitous and its advances in memory are going so fast, that this is going to make it the only standard for removable storage in these devices. Did you hear that? The only one in. No hard drive, but just a removable solid state drive (SSD) in the form of a high-capacity SD card.

So why is this important?

The reason they are implementing SD is because of its high adoption in tablets and MIDs! But Apple does not have any tablets or MIDs right now! It seems highly likely according to Savolainen, that within the next 12 months, Apple will be announcing an Apple media tablet or MID and a netbook. A tablet is supposed to be as thin as possible, thus they will not have CD, DVD or Blu-Ray drives at all. These devices will all solely rely on SD cards for storage.

SanDisk is well-positioned to benefit from greater adoption of the standard. If other laptop manufacturers, envious of the internal dimensions taken up by an ExpressCard slots, move over to the SD Card standard so that they can make their laptopsthinner and lighter, then SanDisk, Toshiba and Panasonic should all benefit.

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