After years and years of wait, 12 years to be precise, listening to Blizzard telling us it will be released when it’s done, Diablo III finally has a launch date: May 15. Until then you can pre-purchase and rest assured that digital copies won’t run out on you :P
We had a town hall meeting at work today. The CEO went through the usual stuff: future plans, operations, logistics, financials, and human resources. During the course of the discussion on human resources, the staff attrition rate was discussed. One factor identified for the high attrition was excessive work hours. He emphasized that they are aware of the issue and declared that everyone should go home on time. Normally, I would wave that off as management rhetoric. But I know for a fact that the policy is being actually put into practice. In fact, I always had a hard time justifying overtime. So here’s management that not only preaches but also practices work-life balance. Meanwhile, the staff can go home instead of rendering extra hours to make up or cover up for the mistakes of others and/or mismanagement. That’s refreshing.
I usually get home when Jeanne and Gretchen are out playing. So when I enter the gate, I always purposely slow down and look around for them. This afteroon, sure enough I saw them on the rear view mirror. They have seen the car and Jeanne was excitedly pulling Gretchen towards the car. The sight of her doing that always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. I stopped and waited for them for the next part of the routine: Jeanne gets on the car rides up the parking building with me while Gretchen packs up the stroller or bike and goes home. After parking, Jeanne and I then strolled hand-in-hand home from the parking building. Happiness.
Hyundai has posted teasers of the upcoming 2013 Hyundai Santa Fe. I personally prefer sedans over SUVs. Sedans offer better handling and more practicality for the daily commute. But SUVs sure can be useful for hauling people and gear around. And looking good while doing that sure doesn’t hurt. The 2013 Hyundai Santa Fe certainly looks good enough for me to possibly consider. Maybe if and when baby #2 comes around. And if Hyundai gets its act together by then.
A lot of people were disappointed with the new iPad. And I can understand why. Personally, I wouldn’t get one because of how I use the iPad. Or rather how I don’t use the iPad, Jeanne uses it more. But I’m not disappointed. Not at all. In fact, I find Apple tablet strategy brilliant.
Most of the disappointment focuses on the new iPad being an Apple product (can’t say anything about that) or on the hardware specifications. What does the Retina display matter? But it does, as you will see later. Why only a quad-core GPU update? But really why go quad-core CPU when the main bottleneck is the graphics? And so it goes.
But Apple’s tablet strategy is not just about hardware, it is a synergy of both hardware, the new iPad, and software.
To full appreciate this, go back to earlier this year when Apple announced iBooks 2 for iPad. With it, the iPad became a serious and fully Apple-supported platform for educational use. Then on to the new iPad launch where the new iPad was, of course, the star of the show. It overshadowed the release of new versions of iWork, iPhoto, iMovie, and Garage Band. But all these recently launched applications are as important because with them the current iPad becomes more useful.
But running all these applications (except maybe Garage Band) on the new iPad, with its Retina display, will be awesome. Books, documents, photos, and movies look sharper and you get an improved perspective, literally. Probably even get a productivity boost. To some of us, these things matter.
Sure, Apple would love current iPad 2 users to upgrade. But current iPad 2 users are not their primary target. Immediately lowering the price of the current iPad 2 stimulated sales and mitigated the new product effect where customers delay purchases because of the announcement of a newer, better version. But it also made it harder to upgrade (i.e. the potential selling price of used iPads became lower and thus making the cost of upgrading higher).
Clearly, the new iPad is targeted more at those who haven’t bought iPads yet, those sitting on the fence just waiting for a little nudge, and those who have the original iPad. And because of the retained price points, instead of buying secondhand iPads they will buy the new iPad directly from Apple.
For Apple, the new iPad matters because it furthers their tablet strategy and puts momentum towards the continuity of iPad sales.