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I’ve been monitoring the Engadget feed like everyone else, and I can’t give a full verdict until I play with it, but at a glance, I’m not excited by Apple’s new iPad.

Why? First, because of what it is:

• A big iPhone. Truly, that’s how it is modeled, from the OS outward. Which means it has a similar form factor, the same beautiful glossy screen, and the same interfaces… which makes it just as scary to drop and very hard to put in one’s pocket. True, the niche is different; Apple is targeting the “I don’t want to lug my laptop” crowd with the iPad’s 9.7″ screen, half-inch depth and 1.5-lb. weight, all good things. But it’s not a true laptop replacement, as I’ll detail later.
• A 3G device–on AT&T’s network. The last thing AT&T needs (and that anyone is going to want) is more devices crowding its 3G bandwidth with unlimited-use devices. If this product is a hit, T is in for a rough year.

More important, though, is what it isn’t. Apple, of course, is often ahead of the game with its focus. The first iPod did nothing but play music; the iPhone didn’t do copy-paste or Exchange sync; and so on. And perhaps the iPad will be more successful because of what Apple deliberately left out of it.

For my $499 and up, though, I’d expect to have some of these things in the iPad, all of which are purposefully missing:

• Multitasking. Apple spent a long time demonstrating iWork, but without multitasking, users can’t pingpong between apps to reference data, copy-paste or preview. Productivity is decidedly secondary.
• Featherlight specs. Yes, one and a half pounds for this device is very nice. But a Kindle weighs 11 ounces, an iPhone less than 5. It’s a portable device that’s only somewhat portable. More like a coffee-table device (as expected) than one to tuck under the arm.
• A camera. What self-respecting Internet-centric gadget ships without a camera in 2010? Between chat, photo and video, cameras have become an expectation, not a perk. And the last thing an iPod user will want is wired peripherals. (Also, as reminded by @chrisfahey: no handwriting or voice recognition.)
• Enticing pricing. Sure, the $499 starting point is alluring, but at $829 for an all-in model, it’s not as cheap as it looks.

I’m no gadget prognosticator, and as an Apple shareholder, I hope I’m wrong. But this looks like it’s going to be a bit of a niche product, at least at first. It may turn out to be an incredible gaming and reading platform, in which case I will gladly make my retractions and add one to my own gadget stable. But from here, thus far? Color me iUnderwhelmed.

Of course, I could always be wrong.

Did you know Google’s Chrome browser already has 5 percent of the global browser market? That it’s bigger than Safari?

And are you aware that, despite your (or your designer’s) disinclination toward it, Internet Explorer 6 still commands roughly 12-15% of the space?

These figures–and the specifics of browser traffic on one’s own website–matter, a lot, when new projects get underway. Google’s 5% market share means it’s officially a player in the browser wars and not just a side project. That means adding it to QA plans and considering some of its innovations, like proper use of HTML5.

At the same time, the continued prevalence of IE6, however sad, means that cutting-edge site design still needs to degrade gracefully to support the many corporate web surfers that can’t upgrade their browsers. Certain b2b or enterprise-positioned websites may have an even greater percentage of IE6 traffic, just as sites with a more academic or creative bent often have an outsize share of visits using Safari.

All of which just serves as a reminder that multiple browser testing and compatibility remain crucial in web design in 2010. The same hurdles the industry faced when balancing Netscape and IE in 1999 exist today, perhaps even more so. Expect the cries for standardized code to get louder this year and next as the market shifts and fragments. And in the meantime, don’t forget to give your site a proper run-through.

Or four.

As an Ai Fender (front-end developer), I live in a world of HTML markup. The next revision of this language is HTML5, though it is currently not fully supported across all browsers. Some of the core ideas behind HTML5 are to create more semantic markup based on usage of modern browsers, and to say farewell to the necessity of proprietary plugins required to access certain types of media on the web – namely audio and video content.

For the first in my series of emerging front-end web technologies, I am going to detail the new <video> tag feature. This may not be the most important new feature of HTML5, but I am certain it will be the most widely-used by the general population of internet users. Video content on the web has evolved immensely over the last five years – YouTube, Hulu, Vimeo, and the list goes on. It would be difficult to find a person who has used the internet and never watched a single video on YouTube.

Currently, users need the Shockwave plugin to view Adobe Flash content, or the Silverlight plugin to view Microsoft Silverlight content. The <video> tag will now allow internet users to view video content without the need to download such third-party plugins to view said content. This could easily boost a site’s traffic and page views if more users can access the video content.

Below is a simple example of the <video> tag in action. Unfortunately, it will only be viewable in Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, or Google Chrome (more to come on those browsers after the video).

For those not using a browser capable of handling the <video> tag, I have also included screenshots of what the players in each browser look like.

Firefox Video Player

Safari Video Player

Chrome Video Player

Each browser has its own unique user interface for displaying video content. The player controls all have the basic, fundamental features one would expect: play/pause, scrub through timeline, view time, and ability to control volume. Negative points to Safari for a lack of volume level slider and only giving mute functionality. Though I am sure that all browsers are still fine-tuning their interfaces as this technology is more or less a work-in-progress.

The major drawback to this new method of displaying video content is the formatting of the files used. Safari and Chrome both require their video files to have an H.264 codec or most other Quicktime codecs (Adobe Flash also utilizes the H.264 codec for Flash Video/FLV files), where Firefox requires the OGG Vorbis codec. What this means for developers is the need for multiple video file formats included in the markup, which is actually quite simple and not time-consuming.

The real problem exists with OGG and how difficult it is to find a means to export a video file to that format. It is not impossible, but a plugin is required to use with video conversion software in order to export a video to .ogg format. Ultimately, it is now the task of the developer to install a third-party plugin needed in conjunction to this <video> tag, even though the plugin is not for a browser. But if it aids in creating a better experience for the end user, I am absolutely okay with it.

YouTube has an opt-in experimental version of their video player built using HTML5, but it will only work in browsers that support both HTML5 and H.264 codec. Give it a try: http://www.youtube.com/html5

Duane Reade introduced a new rewards program today. I happened to be in a Duane Reade this afternoon, where the cashier swiftly upgraded me to the new system and gave me a thick coupon book for my loyalty.

The pharmacy and quick-shop chain is promoting its new program, Flex Rewards, as a consumer-friendly upgrade. They cite the new system’s non-expiring reward points and paperless redemption as the main improvements.

Which is great, until the consumer finds out the real meat behind the change:

What Rewards will I receive?
You will receive a $5 Reward for every 500 FlexRewards points earned.

The old Duane Reade Dollar Rewards Club offered a one-point-per-dollar system that was blissfully simple: spend $100, earn 100 points, get $5 in store credit. It was simple and useful enough that I actually kept my rewards card handy, and I earned a handful of redemptions.

The new program is more confusing and far less valuable. Consumers now get two points per dollar spent and the same $5 reward now comes at 500 points. Or, in layman’s terms, after $250 spent rather than $100. Earning the five bucks just became two and a half times as difficult.

Flex Rewards also has a couple of gimmicks in the system, such as SuperSaver, which encourages customers to not redeem their points in exchange for bonus points back when they finally spend the credit. It’s a cash-back system that feeds itself.

If any of this has heads spinning, I suspect it’s by design. Duane Reade has devalued its loyalty program by a minimum of 60 percent. It cloaked the bad news in technical upgrades and new schemes that try to divert attention away from the devaluing.

With Flex Rewards, Duane Reade stands to give away a lot less value in 2010 than it did in 2009. If I had a stake in the company, I’d be pleased with the new program. As a regular Duane Reade customer, though, I’m probably just going to stop using my card.

Spotted around the Internet:

• Recommended best practices for 2010 are all customer-centric: access to phone numbers, user-focused testing, trust marks, simplified processes.

• One survey of the holidays puts December 2009 online retail at +18%.

• And if you’re wondering, it’s not too soon to pitch St. Patrick’s Day to your readers.

Good little piece on customer reviews from Retail Customer Experience. I like the data points cited, which are worth repeating: 70% of users trust reviews, 64% find them important, and 47% place greater value on reviews than the manufacturer information provided. Crazy? Only if you ignore it….

Spotted around the Internet:

• Mobile ecommerce visits have grown tremendously in the past year; eBay and Amazon are getting millions of sessions monthly, and Netflix mobile traffic is up 240%.

• Email performed well in holiday 2009, with higher open and click rates than in years past, likely a reflection of the bargain-hunting online masses this past season.

• Those bargain hunters mentioned above cite deals and cool site features as the reasons they’re shopping online.

• And a trend alert: Macy’s experienced 1% same-store growth in December, a good-enough result for the season—but macys.com was up almost 30 percent.

The public release of Google’s phone was news but not an event yesterday. (The New York Times used “some polite applause” and “shakes but doesn’t upend” in its coverage headlines.)

Why? Because Google didn’t physically make the phone.

In partnering with HTC, a company that produces cell phones for every US carrier and two different operating systems, Google ceded control of the overall experience. Never mind that the handset is slim and fairly attractive. It’s also generic, and apparently imperfect. When David Pogue pushes your phone’s home button, you really don’t want it to fail.

There’s a huge difference between designing and engineering a device, as Apple did with the iPhone and Palm with the Pre, and a company having a device “built to its specifications”. Google was telling HTC, “We want our phone to do this,” and HTC was putting the requisite componentry in place. This tends to minimize holistic product definition and by its very nature waters down the innovation. In contrast, Palm and Apple (and Motorola and Nokia, for that matter) manage the entire process, and their software is designed to complement the hardware, maximizing user experience. Google, a company that is strictly virtual, doesn’t know how to do this.

Software companies that venture into hardware have to embrace the role of hardware manufacturer. This is true beyond smartphones: consider how Microsoft, which built an empire on software, hit a home run with its Xbox by controlling the end-to-end product creation. (Microsoft makes great computer accessories, too; I’m using a Microsoft keyboard and mouse right now.) But we never saw a Microsoft-branded PC produced by Compaq in the 1990s. All or nothing.

Google is a formidable company with incredible technological prowess. I’m not placing bets against Android just yet. The relative mediocrity of the Nexus One, though, is exactly what we should have expected.

With sources as authoritative as the Wall Street Journal confirming the pending introduction of a tablet computer from Apple, one can assume the cat’s out of the bag for the big Apple news on January 27. But what does it mean?

I’m throwing my hat in the kill-the-small-laptop camp. The iPhone proved that people will use computing power in a portable manner and without a physical keyboard. Despite the name, the iPhone is indeed a computer, with a clever 3.5″ form factor. And people use it as such. Indeed, Ai has ecommerce clients generating sales from iPhone browsers on non-mobile-optimized websites.

Given that, why not continue to redefine the portable computing space? Steve Jobs must scoff at netbooks, with their minuscule keyboards and compromised feature sets. Better to redefine the experience with a new kind of device. Just like the iPhone has redefined pocket-sized power, so too can the tablet redefine the small-laptop market.

Apple is shooting for the personal, casual computing market, folks like me who like to get online sitting on the couch and folks like Nathan who want a three-pound computer to travel with. It will be big enough to type on and clear enough for reading, gaming and web browsing.

I bet the tablet’s pixels per inch will be impressively high, like the 160 ppi of the iPhone. Most Mac desktop and laptop displays hover around 110 ppi. An 11″ screen at 160 ppi will provide almost the same amount of pixel real estate as a 13.3″ MacBook screen does now. This will help minimize people’s perception that they’re giving up detail for size.

Yesterday I postulated to my coworkers that the 13″ MacBook is going to disappear. But now I suspect it will turn Pro a few months after the tablet comes out. Portable computing power is important, and with a tricked-out technology package, the MacBook will differentiate itself. Expect MacBooks to shift in price from $1199 and up to $1499 or higher, with the tablet coming in around the thousand-dollar mark.

Whatever it turns out to be, expect irrational and unrivaled consumer desire and interest for it, on a scale that only Apple creates. Google’s phone news is a business story: “Look at Google aiming for the smartphone market.” But Apple’s news is cultural. Which is why they may succeed in their latest attempt to change the game.