Why the Lantronix xPrintServer will fail

Lantronix showed off xPrintServer at CES 2012 with a price point of $150. You can buy a new AirPrint-enabled printer for less than that. I contacted Lantronix asking how they can justify the price, Mark Tullio replied with the following:

Hi – thank you for your email about our xPrintServer and your concern about the price point. While we understand your concern about the price, we wanted to clarify the product and the market for it:

The xPrintServer is designed primarily for businesses. A price point on a more consumer version of this product would, as you mentioned, need to be lower.

Regards,
-Mark

There is only one problem with that, Lantronix showed XPrintServer off at CES, which stands for the CONSUMER Electronic Show. You go to a consumer trade show to introduce a business product? Are you a complete idiot?!? By going to CES, you told the world that your target audience are consumers. If you were trying to target businesses, then don't go to CES; go to a business trade show instead.

The Lantronix xPrintServer will fail because it is priced too high. End of story.

The problem with UltraViolet

The problem with UltraViolet is that you need multiple accounts to use it. You can't just create an UltraViolet account and be able to watch movies, you need to create a "client" account (such as with Flixster). Now after you created TWO accounts, let's say you want to download the movie to your computer. Well you need to download two additional pieces of software to your computer, Adobe AIR and the Flixster Collections App. So now you're dealing with four hassles just to watch a single movie.

(What you're presented with after clicking "download")

Another problem is there is no syncing between devices. With the old (or what I call the "real") digital copy bundled with DVDs and Blu-ray Discs that downloaded to iTunes, the movie would be synced between all devices. So if I watched the movie on my Apple TV and then wanted to finish watching it on my iPad, I could pick up exactly where I left off. HOWEVER, things don't work like that with UltraViolet! I'm watching a movie via the Flixster app on my Google TV and then I tried to watch the same movie on the Flixster app on my iPad and I started from the beginning of the movie. It did NOT pick up where I left off, like the Apple digital copy does.

UltraViolet is a complete piece of crap, and I personally boycott any movie that says an UltraViolet copy is included. I discovered a deal Flixster was having, where after creating an account you get one movie for free (from a very limited collection of below-average titles). And I only created an account, to get the free movies, so I could review UltraViolet. Now that I did, I'm glad it was free, because UltraViolet is a piece of garbage!

Apple and education

Today (January 19, 2012) Apple announced textbooks in the iBookstore for high school. More exciting are the improvements to iTunes U. Before, iTunes U was a cluster of files; a fragmented mess. iTunes U is now an app in its own right, which brings the audio, video, and text all in one unified place. This makes getting full use out of iTunes U easier and more user-friendly.

If you haven't done so yet, head over to the App Store and search for "iTunes U" and install the app to get started.