Gary Marshall: What to expect from the iPad 3

It's coming! It's coming! Fire up your eBay account and get that iPad 2 listed pronto, because the iPad 3 is here!

Details? You want details? OK! I've got details! I've got them straight from the horse's mouth, and by "horse's mouth" I mean "launch invitation, leaked case designs from no-name Chinese case firms and a whole bunch of ill-informed speculation".

So what can we expect from the iPad 3?

iPad 3 display

First up, the iPad 3 display will be blurrier than Alex James' underpants. If you look at the launch invitation the Calendar app icon is nice and clear and Retina-y, but just look at the Keynote icon to the right. It's so blurry you can barely make it out.

It's clear what Apple's doing here: because its Retina display is so powerful and awesome and amazing, it probably uses quite a lot of battery power. Apple's solution? Make the bits you aren't looking at go blurry to save pixels. Thinking like this is why Android can never win.

iPad 3 multi-touch

Next up, there's touch. Apple even mentions it in the invitation: "And touch," it says. See? Told you. If you look at Tim Cook's hand - because it is definitely Tim Cook's, or maybe Jonathan Ive's, or Phil Schiller, or one of the other top Apple guys nobody can remember the name of, like Bert McThingy - you'll see that Apple's clearly taking multi-touch into a whole new dimension.

We've had touch. We've had multi-touch. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? If you're thinking "knuckles" then you are thinking what I'm thinking: there's clearly some knuckle control going on here. Nobody outside Apple is thinking about knuckle-controlled computers, and that's why Android can never win.

iPad 3: button-free

Last but not least, the iPad 3 won't have any buttons. The internet has decided this based on the text of the launch invitation, which says "We have something you really have to see. And touch."

That, clearly, means that the iPad 3 doesn't have a home button, because "touch" means "touch the border" and "see" means "you can't see the button, because there isn't one. See?"

Android fans don't indulge in this kind of speculation when there's a new Asus Transformer en route, and that's why Android can never win.

iPad 3: what's really going on

I have no idea, and neither does anybody else. The Retina display looks likely, of course, but the only thing we know for certain is that that iPad 3 - if indeed it's called the iPad 3 - will have an Apple logo on it and a nice box.

Speculation is fun, but it's purely speculation: while some stuff is pretty predictable - let's face it, Apple's not going to unveil a device that's like the current model but rubbish - the only people who know for sure what Tim Cook's going to show off - at least, until Apple does its traditional leak-to-the-Wall-Street-Journal thing - are the chosen few inside Apple.

It's like Christmas Eve: instead of going to bed and letting Santa do his stuff, Apple fans and observers are hiding under the blankets, trying to divine from the lumps and bumps whether we're getting a shiny new bicycle and a glow in the dark Buzz Lightyear or a sack of coal.

In fact, it's worse than that: while Dad's sticking a top-end skateboard under the tree we're imagining nuclear-powered hoverboards that totally fire laser beams and control robots and stuff.

I suspect that whatever Tim Cook unveils, it'll be the iPhone 4S all over again: a great product that isn't quite as great as a completely imaginary one.

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Gary Marshall: These pirate ships won't sink

It's been a rum old week for the pirate business.

The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) shut down music site RnBXclusive.com for sharing music "stolen from artists", replacing it with a warning that "SOCA has the capability to monitor and investigate you" that was presumably written by Robocop.

While SOCA was throwing its weight around, the world's largest Bittorrent database, BTJunkie, decided it would shut down before the copyright cops came a-knocking.

And then The Pirate Bay decided it was going to get out of the torrent business.

Inevitably the Pirate Bay isn't taking down its sails and scuttling the ship: it's merely moving to a harder-to-prosecute form of file sharing. And equally inevitably, the SOCA shutdowns aren't going to stop downloading.

Like the war on drugs, the war on piracy can't be won. So is it even worth fighting? Of course it is.

For the win

You'll find exaggeration and outright fibbing on both sides of the debate here. Copyright holders pretend that every time you download a song God kills a puppy, and pro-piracy advocates pretend that the overwhelming majority of downloaders are free-speech activists rather than free-stuff opportunists. Neither side is telling the truth.

Organisations such as the MPAA, RIAA and their European and British equivalents may appear greedy, and backwards, and occasionally breathtakingly incompetent, but they aren't as dumb as they often seem to be.

They know that DRM isn't unbreakable. And they know that for every RnBXclusive.com they shut down, another one will spring up.

The copyright industries are largely based on selling performances, and their anti-piracy crusade is a performance too: the industries don't really believe that they'll eradicate piracy, so what they're trying to do instead make casual copying that little bit more difficult, scare a few site owners into shutting up shop and intimidate a few more into going deeper underground.

If that works - and of course, for it to work there needs to be decent, legal options that aren't unnecessarily crippled - then piracy becomes just enough of a pain in the arse that most people will go to legitimate sites instead.

The copyright industries aren't really fighting. They're acting.

Gary Marshall: Are you experiencing Mountain excitement?

Good news! Apple hasn't run out of cats!

Mountain Lion, announced today, will ship this summer and make OS X even more iOS-y than ever before. That's bound to annoy some purists, but I think the majority of Mac users will be delighted.

Apple promises that there's more fun stuff to come, but what's already been announced ticks some of our wish list boxes, particularly iMessage on the desktop.

There's a new Safari, AirPlay mirroring to Apple TVs, Twitter integration and the option to disable non-approved apps - handy if you've got kids - and you get the same Reminders and Notes apps that you get on iOS, enabling Mail and Calendar to concentrate on what they're supposed to be concentrating on.

• OS X Mountain Lion: what you need to know

What's really interesting about it isn't the iOS-ification of OS X, though. That's been obvious since the Back to the Mac event in late 2010. The interesting bits of Mountain Lion are iCloud and Game Center.

Mountain Lion's iCloud integration effectively delivers the kind of cloud-based OS Google's been promising for ages with Chrome OS, and it'll do so with user numbers Google's notebook OS can only dream of.

It may well beat Windows 8 to market too, in which case the much-heralded SkyDrive integration and Windows Live ID sign-in will look to Mr and Mrs Punter as if Microsoft's been at the photocopier again. I'd imagine Apple finds that quite funny.

And then there's Game Center. By bringing it and AirPlay Mirroring to the Mac, Apple's making some interesting gaming-related moves: cross-platform multiplayer, in-game voice chat and display mirroring - not to mention the ability for developers to create titles that work on iOS and on OS X - indicate that Apple's starting to take gaming very seriously indeed.

While Mountain Lion is a stand-alone OS, it isn't designed to stand alone: it's a gateway to iCloud and part of the wider Apple ecosystem. The vision here is simple: your stuff, on whatever device you happen to have handy. That device could be a Mac, or it could be an iPod touch, iPhone, iPad or an enormous HDTV with an Apple TV tucked underneath it.

It's personal computing with the emphasis on the personal, not the computing.

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Gary Marshall: Should Microsoft save the Start button?

According to The Verge, Windows is about to lose something precious: the Start Orb, better known as the Start button.

We're already familiar with the new, touch-optimised, orb-free Windows 8 Metro interface, but it looks like the Orb's getting booted from the traditional desktop too.

There's no doubt that many people would like to see the back of it - we've had comments of the "OMG LOL YOU HAVE TO PRESS START TO SHUT DOWN YOUR PC BUY APPLE BUY APPLE BUY APPLE" variety since it was introduced in 1733, and there's no doubt that Metro looks much more modern and friendly than the ageing Windows UI.

But in the whoosh of Microsoft throwing out the bathwater, some people think they can hear the waaah of a baby.

Stopping Starting something

The rumours, I'm sure, are right: Microsoft has been making Windows 8's interface more Metro-y for some time, and killing off the Start button makes sense from that perspective.

The thing is, though, Microsoft isn't killing it: it's hiding it. When you move the mouse to the bottom corner the Orb magically appears again. You'll still be able to access the Orb from the Start key on your keyboard, too.

If we were living in a time of great pixel shortages, where gangs of graphics card manufacturers fought in the streets over packets of stolen pixels, hiding the Start Orb might be a great advantage.

However, we aren't, and as a result all that's really going on is that Microsoft appears to be making the classic Windows desktop a little bit more confusing, choosing to hide a key part of the user interface. Maybe once we get our hands on the Consumer Preview we'll think the new way is fantastic, but right now it looks like a step backwards in user-friendliness for no real benefit.

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According to Windows boss Steven Sinofsky, "people 'in the know' who valued efficiency were moving away from the Start menu, and pinning their frequently used programs to the taskbar so that they could access them instantly in one click."

Program pinning is handy, but you can't pin everything to the taskbar or things start getting silly - and if you're in legacy mode rather than Metro mode, surely you want Windows to work like Windows always has?

Sinofsky says that the old Start menu is bad because it provides access to lots of programs and features people don't use very often, but for some of us that's exactly the point: we *like* having something that provides access to the things we don't use very often.

I'm imagining Sinofsky as a crazed vivisectionist here, cutting up cats and gluing their heads onto horses to make the cats better at showjumping.

Maybe, like cats and horses, Metro and classic Windows are best kept separate. Anyone fancy FrankenWindows?

Gary Marshall: Tablets are no longer just idiot toys

From time to time even jaded tech hacks get a "wow!" moment. I had one last night when I saw that Avid had launched an iPad app.

Avid? The high-end video and ProTools firm? An iPad app? Yep, yep and yep.

Avid reckons the iPad makes a great wee video editor, and its Avid Studio plays happily with the firm's high-end desktop software. It's right, and it's not the only firm thinking along the same lines. Apple, of course, already does Garageband and iMovie, Adobe has Photoshop Touch, and there are stacks of digital audio products such as Auria and the tasty-looking Bitwig music studio.

Not bad for toys, eh?

Getting better all the time

What's really great about this is that we're still in the very early stages, both in terms of technology - we've gone from single core to dual core to quad core tablets already; imagine what horsepower tablets will have in five years - and in terms of what's possible for our tablets to do.

Take music, for example. You can use your tablet as a quick and dirty composition device, or as a controller for a desktop music production program, or as a fully-fledged studio, or you can slot it into another bit of hardware such as Behringer's utterly brilliant/completely demented iAxe or its faintly frightening iPad mixers.

This isn't about whether tablets are better than PCs or vice-versa; it's about people, and what they can do, and the ever-expanding universe of possibilities today's technology delivers and tomorrow's promises.

We've only had iPad-y tablets for two years. What on earth will we be doing with them in ten?

Gary Marshall: Does Apple want to be more like Dixons?

Good news for anyone who's ever wished Apple Stores were a bit less friendly, a bit more incompetent, a bit more you're-not-leaving-until-you-buy-an-extended-warranty.

Apple has decided that it needs some expertise from Dixons, and it's poached Dixons CEO John Browett to become its senior vice president of retail.

So does that mean Apple Stores will start flogging washing machines, trying to sell you a whole bunch of crappy accessories and asking twenty-seven times whether you want an extended warranty on your iPad?

Er, probably not.

There are only two possible explanations for Browett's appointment. Either there's more to Dixons - and to Browett - than most people imagine, or Tim Cook has gone completely and utterly insane.

I don't know about you, but I'm betting on the first option.

National service

If your experience of Dixons is limited to the airport shops or a dim memory of a buck-toothed simpleton trying to sell you Coverplan on a pack of triple-A Duracells then you're bound to think Tim Cook's gone crazy, but the truth is that Dixons is very different to the way some - perhaps even most - of us see it.

While most of the consumer electricals market is firmly in the toilet - Best Buy blew it, Comet's currently worth about ten pence, most of the industry only really exists online - Dixons is still hanging in there, helped considerably by a change of approach that improved store layouts, integrated online ordering and introduced the KnowHow installation, support and repair service.

It's easy to mock KnowHow, especially if you're reasonably tech-savvy, but it's part of a wider change that's seen Dixons try to differentiate itself from rivals by concentrating on service, not box-shifting.

I think Browett's focus on service, along with Dixons' sheer scale - it's an enormous, pan-European operation - is what's attracted Tim Cook's attention.

Apple wants somebody who cares about service and who can handle a truly massive retail operation. John Browett ticks both boxes.

Maybe I'm wrong and maybe Tim Cook has gone completely nuts, and the future of Apple Stores involves red-jumpered loons with no product knowledge breaking Macs all over the place.

It would certainly be quite funny, but given that Apple's just posted yet another record-breaking quarter and annexed yet more of the world's money, I'm inclined to think Tim Cook knows exactly what he's doing.

Although I bet you'll get asked more often about AppleCare.

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Gary Marshall: iPhone 4S: Apple's getting Siri-ous

The internet, and the stock market, is disappointed: rather than unveil an iPhone 5, Apple merely made the world's most popular smartphone much better.

It seems that I'm in a minority: I much prefer the iPhone 4 design to any of the iPhone 5 mockups I've seen online, and every change Apple announced suits me just fine.

In my head I know that the Siri personal assistant will be a bitter disappointment - my accent, a mix of Scottish, Irish and English, is guaranteed to flummox any voice recognition system - but my heart's already ignoring the screams of my bank manager and wondering how many days I can go without food in order to afford an upgrade.

A better, faster camera addresses one of the things that annoys me about the iPhone 4. Better battery life is always handy. And more storage never goes amiss.

But the interesting thing here isn't the iPhone 4S. It's the 3GS.

Shiny new thing joy

It's easy to get caught up in Shiny New Thing Joy, but the 3GS is only two years old, works just fine and will run iOS 5 - and now, it's free (on contract, anyway; SIM-free it's a "how much?" £319) while the new 8GB iPhone 4 will be a pretty reasonable $99 on contract.

The combination of up-front costs and hefty monthly fees exclude a lot of people, so free/cheap iPhones with low contract prices could mean significant sales in sectors where Apple isn't currently playing.

Meanwhile at the top end, the iPhone 4S addresses the key criticisms of the iPhone 4 (camera, processor, storage, battery life), adds a sprinkle of iOS 5 goodies and gets the impressive-looking Siri too. So there's an iPhone for the early adopters, one for the "I'll wait until the price comes down" crowd and one for people who fancied an iPhone but couldn't justify the cost. That's a lot of market coverage.

What's happening here is history repeating. Ten years ago, there was just one iPod, and rivals cackled: "Haha! Our MP3 player is smaller!", "Haha! Our MP3 player is cheaper!", "Haha! Our MP3 player has an enormous hard disk!".

And over time, Apple launched iPods that were smaller, iPods that were cheaper and iPods with enormous hard disks, not to mention a whole new kind of iPod that nobody else was making, the iPod touch - now, according to Apple, the world's most popular portable games device.

In 1997, there was just one iPhone. "Haha! Our phone is cheaper!" "Smaller!" "Has a better camera!"... you get the idea. Now, there are three iPhones spanning most of the market, and come next year there'll be an iPhone 5 too. Factor in the iPod touch and the iPad 2 - and next year's iPad 3 - and Apple's quarter-billion iOS device sales could just be a warm-up.

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