Hot on the heels of their recently-introduced Laptop Pro, mechanical keyboard maker Matias on Wednesday took the wraps off two new Mac-compatible keyboard offerings – the latest revision to their venerable Tactile Pro series and the new Tactile Mini. The Tactile Pro 4 ships today for $150 while the Mini Tactile Pro will cost $130 when it goes on sale in February.
Both keyboards share common design elements – mechanical keyswitches manufactured by ALPS and Mac-standard layouts, with sculpted, laser-etched keys printed with symbols accessible using Option and Shift-Option key combinations. They also sport three USB 2.0 ports to attach additional peripherals. Both are made in white plastic.
Matias likens the keyfeel of the Tactile Pro keyboard to Apple’s legendary Extended Keyboard, considered by many Apple enthusiasts to be the best keyboard Apple ever made. Mechanical keyswitches are louder than the ones found on today’s Apple laptops and with Mac desktop machines, but they offer better accuracy and a more precise tactile response than those other keyboards.
The Tactile Pro 4 is a full-sized keyboard equipped with navigation keys and a numeric keypad. Unlike its predecessor, the Tactile Pro sports function keys mapped to Apple-standard capabilities like screen brightness, volume, iTunes and more.
The Mini Tactile Pro sports the same keyfeel as its big brother, but in a smaller package. It’s a tenkeyless layout (it eschews a numeric keypad), but it maintains page up, page down and arrow keys, as well as a forward delete key.
Walmart and Straight Talk Wireless have announced plans to offer both the iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 to Straight Talk customers for $449 and $649 respectively. The phones should hit Walmart stores next week, beginning January 11, 2013.
As you may have gleaned, the price of the iPhones is unsubsidized – buyers are paying the full price for an unlocked phone, as there’s no long-term service contract involved. Straight Talk Wireless, a joint venture between mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Tracfone and Walmart, offers iPhone users pre-paid contract-free plans starting at $45 per month. If that price sounds steep for the average Walmart customer, the company is offering a special no-interest fixed-monthly financing offer using the Walmart Credit Card, for $25 a month.
Straight Talk already offers simple phones, feature phones and Android-based smartphones for its customers, but this marks the first time it’s offered its own iPhone. The iPhones Straight Talk will offer are CDMA models (Straight Talk operates on both CDMA and GSM networks.)
Straight Talk Wireless also offers users a “BYOD” (Bring Your Own Device) plan that enables them to use an existing GSM-equipped iPhone on their network. [Editor’s note: In fact, just yesterday I resurrected my AT&T iPhone 4 for my wife to use via Straight Talk. I’ll post more after we’ve had a chance to see how well it works.] A Walmart spokesperson confirmed for The Loop that the Straight Talk iPhones will operate without some of the limitations imposed on BYOD users (On BYOD iPhones, Visual Voicemail isn’t supported; MMS doesn’t work unless you jailbreak the phone, though SMS works without issue).
For $449 users get an 8GB iPhone 4 in either black or white, and for $649 users can get a 16GB iPhone 5 in their choice of black or white.
[7:47 AM: Added information about network and feature support]
A company’s ability to manufacture products using CNC burn tables and sell them worldwide is not the same as having the power to deliver innovation to a market. Apple has proven over the last few decades that it innovates, while many of its competitors are satisfied with building products based on that innovation.
There is nothing wrong with being a company that sees a product and wants to compete with it. Companies have made billions of dollars copying from its competitors and it’s a proven strategy.
Using a 3D scanning service can also help a great deal as it allows you to easily reverse engineer competitor products, I have used the service from https://physicaldigital.com/services/3d-scanning/ and it’s been brilliant so have a look into that if you need a quality 3D scanning service.
However, the ability to manufacture shouldn’t be confused with a company’s desire to affect change by offering new designs and a different way of doing things. In other words, innovating.
The Mac
Over the last 15 years Apple has literally innovated itself out of being close to bankruptcy to being the richest company in the world. It did so by improving the way we interact with the products we use most and offering a rich, attractive design. Apple recognized that products don’t have to be utilitarian “beige boxes” — they can be elegant and functional. They can be something we can be proud to own.
The modern version of this mindset really started with the iMac. Until then, PCs were a mass of wires and confusion, but Apple wanted to make the process simple and the end result tasteful. Out of the box, the iMac was setup by plugging it in and connecting the keyboard. Anyone could do it and millions did.
Apple did the same thing over and over again in the years following the introduction of the iMac. Even things like the Apple Remote is elegant and completely different from other remotes on the market. That design sense went into their software products, from iLife, iWork and the company’s pro applications.
They continued to innovate the computer industry with products like the MacBook Pro. It’s not just another laptop, it’s the material its made out of, the shape of the casing and the technologies it contains. Just look at how many copycat products came from HP, Dell and others.
The Big Three
However, Apple saved its most innovative designs for its mobile products. The iPod, iPhone and iPad are not only the company’s most successful products, they changed their respective industries forever.
They did that with a brilliant combination of functionality and design that no company had brought to the market before or since1. Of course, Apple didn’t invent those markets — there were music players, phones and tablets around before Apple, but it was Apple’s design that made the market what we know today.
Take a look at music players before the iPod. They only held a few songs and while popular, they were nothing compared to the popularity of the iPod that could hold a thousand songs. It wasn’t long before everyone was trying to copy the iPod and piggy back on Apple’s success.
The same thing happened with the iPhone and iOS. Even Google switched gears, taking Android from a copy of RIM’s BlackBerry OS to mimic the functionality of iOS. The iPhone changed the phone industry forever. Everything released since then was built on the innovations that Apple brought to market with that original iPhone.
Apple had one more design surprise up its sleeve — the iPad. Microsoft and its partners had been producing tablet computers for the better part of a decade by the time the iPad came out. They were heavy, clunky and didn’t work very well.
The iPad was sleek and designed for mobile use. It had apps that could be purchased specifically for that device and you can do almost anything you wanted to on that device.
The market’s response? Copy it as quickly as possible and get it to market. The same response that competitors had to the iPod, iPhone and Macs that came before it.
Innovation
I believe that Apple has been successful in innovating these markets because of a fundamental difference in the way they approach a new product. Apple sets out to solve a problem through design, and hardware and software innovations.
While Apple has delivered more innovation to more markets than most, it is important to realize that not every product released is going to be a design or innovative breakthrough.
Innovation is always followed by iterative upgrades to a product. There may be some design changes, added features and other small changes before another innovative change is made.
This is what a lot of analysts get so wrong. Analysts are quick to label a new Apple product as not being innovative, but they don’t even mention innovation with competitors products because they don’t expect anything from them.
Apple designs its products to work, from a software and hardware design perspective, not to be like something a competitor has released.
It’s important to use the right payroll solutions company Singapore to eliminate mistakes in the payroll process. If there are too many payroll errors, you’ll lose employee trust.
Innovative companies and the copycats
There have been some wonderfully innovative companies throughout many industries. We all have our favorites. Sadly, many of them have lost their way over the last decade or so. Sony comes to mind as one of those companies.
Two companies that really led their industries, but have fallen badly are RIM and Microsoft. The latest releases of products from both companies seem to have missed badly in the market2. It seems that both of these companies just seemed to give up a number of years ago, perhaps being a bit too comfortable with their lead.
Then you are left with companies like Samsung, HTC3 and that ilk. They have made successful businesses from copying other company’s products and getting them to market quickly. You only have to look at Samsung’s 85-inch TV to see how ugly its designs are without someone like Apple to copy from.
Every company has a place, but it’s important to remember the difference between innovating an industry and simply delivering a product.
