As I wrote in The Sunday Times on April 29, Prof Tan passionately believed that the Internet should be accessible to everyone, no matter what language they speak or write in. In the 1990s, he led a research team to invent a software that could read non-Latin languages and displayed it in a browser.

One language he championed was Tamil. This is a story Prof Tan told me of his involvement in this project.

Since his first software could convert Chinese into readable images, he decided to extend his research to include the Tamil language. But he needed a Tamil speaker who would provide the language expertise.

His contacts introduced him to the late Naa Govindasamy, a Tamil teacher and poet who had also developed a Tamil computer keyboard. Together they took Prof Tan's program and customised it for the Tamil language. Tamil characters could automatically convert to GIF (a computer image format) images that could be displayed on a Web browser.

The duo took their project further because they were convinced they had a world class software. Said Prof Tan: 'The late Govindasamy told me that we should show the world our technology and get others to adopt our software as the standard.'

To demonstrate the software's capabilities, they used it to build a Tamil website called TamilWeb which debuted in September 1995 at the Internet For Everyone exhibition. The software was also used in a prototype called PoemWeb which was an digital selection of poems in all four official languages of Singapore. PoemWeb was launched by the late President Ong Teng Cheong in October 1995.

Since there were few implementations of the Tamil language on the Internet at that time, they felt that to encourage greater use of Tamil online, a standard way of using the language on the Internet should be adopted. TamilWeb, as the website was called, could make it commercially viable for software firms to standardise one version of the Tamil language.

Following this, Govindsamy worked through his contacts in Tamil Nadu state in India and his network of Tamil-speakers located throughout the world to get them to agree on one standard form of the Tamil language which can be used on the Internet.

Meanwhile, Prof Tan through a personal friend, Professor S. Subbiah, met Mr S R Nathan, then Director of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS) at the Nanyang Technological University and former President of Singapore. Mr Nathan supported the formation of a Tamil Internet Steering Committee (TISC), just like how the Chinese Internet Steering Committee was set up by the then Ministry of Information and Communication. These committees were set up to ensure that the different communities did not lag behind in the use of Internet.

Because of his technical expertise, Prof Tan became a member of the TISC.

Both men then organised the first Tamil Internet conference in 1997. Prof Tan was the only Chinese in the conference. 'I had to remember a few Tamil words so as to be able to welcome guests and make them feel at home.'

Over 100 people attended this event which set in motion the discussions for the standard use of Tamil on the Internet. It was a seminal event.

Singapore became a leading player in the world for the development of a Tamil Internet. It led to the formation of the International Forum of IT in Tamil (INFITT) whose founding secretariat was based in Singapore. Prof Tan was a founding member of the INFITT.

However, the INFITT has evolved and moved away from Singapore and Prof Tan is no longer involved. He is fondly remembered in Sri Lanka for his assistance in setting up the country's first Tamil website www.lk.

His list of achievements and awards are long. If you want to read more, go to his website at www.bic.nus.edu.sg/~tinwee/

Read April 29's edition of The Sunday Times as well for Prof Tan's Internet achievements.

Who would think Apple would issue stock dividends and initiate a share buyback scheme?

Steve Jobs, the late Apple co-founder, was terrified of running out of cash. He remembered the company’s brush with insolvency in 1997. So he did what most 'parents' would do: he saved.

And his savings grew and grew to  nearly US$10 billion. Last quarter, Apple had such a sterling quarter, it  added US$16 billion to this mound of money. Apple could afford to drop US$10 billion as spare change to buy Twitter and still have loads money left in the bank.

Ten days before March 19 - when Apple announced the stock dividend and share buyback scheme - I brought the new iPad home from San Francisco.

Wow! In all the 15 years that I’ve been covering Apple’s new launches after Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, I’ve never been loaned a new product for testing.

I did not clutch it close to my chest throughout the almost 20-hour journey to Singapore. But I had to disguise it with older front and back covers so that my fellow travellers would not recognise it.

I mean I couldn’t leave it in my suitcase where it could just be damaged. What would I say to Apple then? It only loaned it to me for 90 days.

Only the favoured American journalists such as Walter Mossberg of All Things Digital and David Pogue of The New York Times were loaned new Apple gadgets for testing on the day Jobs announced them.

The reviews were published on the day when the products hit retail shelves then.

It struck me then, that Apple was behaving differently this time round. Why? Looking back at the news in the last two weeks, I found my answer.

Having covered Apple for more than 20 years, Apple listened to no one except Jobs. His was the final stamp of approval. Post-Jobs Apple was listening to its key public: customers and institutional shareholders.

There’s so much pent-up demand for its products.

Each time a new iPhone or iPad launches in the United States, the queues snake around the key Apple stores in New York or San Francisco.

Many of those queuing are not local consumers. They are buying for customers back home in China, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore.

Winning the public

Apple’s decision to sell the new iPads in these countries and six more including the US, was a good move: it made customers happy.

Loaning the journalists who were mainly from the 10 countries only made good business sense. They wrote the reviews that would influence consumers to buy the new iPad.

Having a US$100 billion in savings was turning out to be about hoarding money. It wasn’t about  putting money aside for the rainy day when sales might decline. The huge amount was becoming an embarrassment.

So paying out US$45 billion over three years as dividend and stock buyback was good press and put a smile on shareholders’ faces especially institutional investors.

It always pays to get feedback and listen to your key audiences.

But I certainly hope that the company’s new CEO would stop here. Apple has always believed that it creates new gadgets people didn’t know they wanted until they saw them.

Listening should not extend to getting customer views on what new products should look like. That would be the start of Apple’s downfall.

chngkeg@sph.com

Apple's new tablet does not have the iPad 3 moniker as expected. The Cupertino-based company have chosen to simply call it the new iPad. -- ST PHOTO: ASHLEIGH SIM

The new iPad was launched in the usual Apple style.

Chief executive officer Tim Cook appeared on stage, wearing a black shirt, trousers and sneakers (but not the New Balance model favoured by the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs).

He updated the audience on Apple’s performance to date: 25 billion apps downloaded, 200,000 plus iPads, 362 Apple stores globally, 315 million iOS devices sold, 110 million more customers in the quarter ended Dec 31, 2011.

Then he called his key lieutenants on stage to introduce the key products such as the Apple TV (which is not available in Singapore), iOS 5.1, new iLife and iWork apps and of course, the new iPad.

The third-generation iPad stole the show. It was what many of the 500 journalists in the Yerba Beuna Centre of the Arts had travelled half the world to see.

Apple’s new tablet did not have the iPad 3 moniker as expected. The Cupertino-based company chose to simply call it the new iPad.

4G LTE feature

Even as the third-generation iPad caused great interest globally, it also generated controversy.

Its 4G LTE (long term evolution) capability works only in the United States (US) and 4G, which enables super-fast download speeds of up to 100 mbps, is incompatible with Singapore’s 4G LTE (long term evolution) network.

In the US, the 4G network runs on 700MHz and 2100MHz while Singapore's network operates on 800MHz, 1800MHz and 2600MHz.

The tablet does work with 3G and the faster HSPA+ network available in Singapore.  HSPA+ is considered 3.5G.  All three telcos have the HSPA+ network and the new iPad can be hooked up to that.

Design

Apple has not done much with the design of the third-generation iPad. It retains its 9.7-inch screen and a bezel in black or white.  It is just a tiny bit heavier.  It weighs 652 grams which is 50g heavier than the current tablet and is also 0.6 mm thicker at 9.5mm.

When you are using it, it is best to rest the tablet on your tummy or on a table, because your hands will feel tired.

Since it is the same size, you will not need to buy new covers and cases because it will fit what you have now.  It comes in three varieties: 16GB, 32GB and 64GB and each comes with Wi-Fi only or Wi-Fi/4G.

I would have liked to see bigger storage since I buy lots of TV programmes. But there is iCloud streaming which means my content will be stored in the cloud format and I can free local storage for something else.

The good news is that Apple is sticking to the same prices as the tablet’s predecessor. Prices start at $658 for the 16GB Wi-Fi model (without telco subsidy and GST). The company has retained the iPad 2 as a budget option, dropping the price by US$100 for each model.

Retina display

The retina display is stunning. Icons seems to float on the page. Words are crisp and images are sharp and details just come alive. Colours are more brilliant. -- ST PHOTO: ASHLEIGH SIM

There is little to distinguish the new tablet from its predecessor until you turn it on. The retina display is stunning. Icons seems to float on the page. Words are crisp and images are sharp and details just come alive. Colours are more brilliant.

The display has the highest definition ever on a mobile device at 2048 by 1536 pixels or over 3.1 million pixels, four times more pixels in the same 9.7-inch screen, or 1 million more than a full HD TV. Text on The Straits Times iPad version appear pin-sharp, making it less likely to zoom in. -- ST PHOTO: ASHLEIGH SIM

The display has the highest definition ever on a mobile device at 2048 by 1536 pixels or over 3.1 million pixels, four times more pixels in the same 9.7-inch screen, or 1 million more than a full HD TV. Words on Time magazine appeared clear and crisp, just like a real hard copy. It makes reading easy.

Text appears pin-sharp, making it less likely to zoom in. -- ST PHOTO: ASHLEIGH SIM

Text on The Straits Times iPad version appear pin-sharp, making it less likely to zoom in.

Even iPhone apps - which can be expanded to fit the 9.7-inch screen - look better on the new tablet. The edges are more defined and they do not look pixellated.

Photos and movies on the new iPad are also very life-like. Throwing the images up to the TV can also be done via Apple’s AirPlay support or mirrored on Apple TV (that is, if you have one.) -- ST PHOTO: ASHLEIGH SIM

Photos and movies on the new iPad are also very life-like. I watched the Oscar winning movie, Hugo, in high-definition. It took my breath away. Then I linked it up to my nearby HDTV with the Digital AV Adapter. The level of detail was just impressive.

At the start of the movie, where the gears of a clock and a bird’s eye view of Paris appeared, I could see every groove on the gears and each house, road, train and horse-drawn carriage moving in the Paris streets. The colours were crisp and absolutely stunning.

Throwing the images up to the TV can also be done via Apple’s AirPlay support or mirrored on Apple TV (that is, if you have one.)

Microprocessor
There is a new chip, A5X, with four graphics cores. This gives the iPad great fluidity. Multi-touch gestures are smoother and faster. Just brush the screen with your fingertips from left to right to view photos, ebook pages and Web pages. Double tap to instantly enlarge photos.

Graphics-intensive games like Infinity Blade play with zero lag. I can dodge my enemy’s blade and move forward to strike him without a stutter. The satisfying playing experience is also enhanced by the beautiful graphics.

Web pages also load faster. The Straits Times iPad version loads at least two seconds faster on the new tablet.

Camera

The rear camera has been improved. It offers 5 megapixel stills and 1080p video recording. -- ST PHOTO: ASHLEIGH SIM

The rear camera has been improved. It offers 5 megapixel stills and 1080p video recording. The optics on the back have also improved. Indoors, - where it tends to be darker - the camera allows in a greater amount of light. Photo quality was much better than those taken on the iPad2.

There is also face recognition for up to 10 people per frame. It also automatically adjusts focus and exposure. Unfortunately, the front-facing camera for video conferencing is unchanged and remains at VGA quality. My friend in California looked rather grainy.

For video, it can produce full HD video clips with good quality comparable to that of the iPhone 4S. Digital video stabilisation is provided, so say goodbye to shaky images. Like the iPhone, simple video editing tools are built-in, so clips can be trimmed down before sending or uploading them.

Apple has improved its US$4.99 ($6.30) iPhoto app but it's a free upgrade if you have the older version. Editing is simple with tools for lightening, darkening and deleting the red-eye effect, all included in the package. Better still, after all that editing and if you prefer the original image, you can still go back to it.

One great feature I like: You can delete your photos in iPhoto without having to do it on the computer. This is a great convenience.

Battery
Apple claims a 10-hour battery life. I charged up to 100 per cent. I watched two movies and three TV episodes continuously, followed it up by reading a Marvel comic and an ebook. Running in the background was email being pulled from three addresses. Traffic, weather and other updates were also being pulled in.

After two days, there was still about 40 per cent of battery juice left.

Verdict
There are many new features in the new iPad which really makes it useful. A photo beam capability lets you beam photos taken on the tablet to your iPhone. You can turn on the personal hotspot location and share the wireless capability with five others.

Apple has focused on making the iPad easy to use with its new features. Slashgear - the online tech website - has this odd but good metaphor: Buying the new iPad is like changing to a set of new tyres for your car. 'You don’t want to reinvent the wheel but you do look at the materials to see how they hold up to the competition,' it said.

The battery life is good, you get two full days of use and have still reserve power. Apple’s competitors have included more features but have not really made them easy to use.

If you are concerned about its incompatibility with 4G, consider this: For the same price of its predecessor, you are getting a jaw-dropping resolution that is four times better and a faster processor and graphics engine. Which other tablet can beat this offering?

Games, movies, photos, text and the icons on the new device look sharp. Text appears clearer and the high resolution means I don't have to zoom in too much.

Apps, websites and videos also load much faster than they did previously.

I accessed a Vimeo website and saw the video clips downloading quickly.

The new chip A5X adds computing power for graphics and is felt only when I play a new game such as Infinity Blade: Dungeons.

A game built especially for the new iPad, I just used my finger to direct the masked warrior to fight monsters. All done with zero lag.

Voice dictation was simple. Not as fun to use as Siri, the personal voice assistant available on the iPhone.

My first try with voice dictation bombed. 'The new iPad is cool and gorgeous' came out garbled instead, reading 'The new iPad is grumbling.'

Blame the tens of journalists around me all trying to dictate letters and emails on the tablet.

But on my second try, speaking slower, I scored 100 per cent. I may not have to type my blogs for The Straits Times Online any more.

Just dictate them into an iPad for your reading pleasure.

Physically, the new iPad looks no different than the current version. It is still a 9.7-inch tablet with a home button.

But it is not a small dumbbell as I imagined it would be. It just weighs a tiny bit heavier at 652g and a little thicker at 9.44mm compared to the old model’s 601g and 8.8mm.

The new iPad needs to be experienced, to feel its power and elegance.

You'll get that chance in Singapore come March 16.

Firstly, gaming company Razer has a bold and stunning gaming tablet concept.

Code-named Fiona, it is a tablet souped up to play PC games such as Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, Tom Clancy's HAWX 2, and Assassin's Creed: Revelations out of the box.

Razer's gaming tablet concept Fiona -- PHOTO: GRACE CHNG

Not for the faint-hearted and definitely not for the casual gamer who wants to play Cut The Cable or Angry Birds, the specifications will set gamers’ hearts beating fast.  It is powered by Intel's Core i7 Ive Bridge processor and Microsoft's latest Windows 8 operating system. It is also a multi-touch device and is equipped with an accelerometer.

Razer's Singaporean chief executive Tan Min Liang said that tablets were not made for heavy-duty PC games. As a gamer, he wanted a device which has an intuitive control and provides a great gaming experience. Hence he built one.

Project Fiona sports a 10.1-inch tablet with high resolution of 1280 x 800 and has controls which sit on either side of it. Each control has four face buttons, a start button, and two triggers. This set-up lets a gamer hold the tablet firmly while playing the game.

Said Mr Tan: 'It will have force feedback and incredible graphics. Gamers can play games in real-time and against their friends. They can start playing on their PCs at home and when they go out, they can continue playing with Fiona.'

Mr Tan hopes to gather feedback from gamers before coming out with a commercial product at the end of 2012. But be prepared to shell out US$1,000 ($1,287) for it.

Innovative

Fiona is now a finalist in the 2012 CES list of innovative products. It comes close at the heels of Razer’s latest 17-inch gaming notebook called Blade which costs a whopping US$2,700.

According to Mr Tan, supply cannot meet demand from now till March. The first units will be delivered to customers in the next two weeks.

The other product that drew much attention was Samsung’s 55-inch OLED TV, which is breathtaking in its beauty, slenderness and brilliance. OLED (organic light-emitting diode)technology is energy saving and able to project sparkling colours.

Tim Baxter (right), president of Samsung Electronics America looks on as Joe Stinziano (left), senior vice president of Samsung Electronics America speaks at the unveiling of Samsung's 55-inch Super OLED HDTV (centre) at the annual Consumer Electronics Show on Jan 9, 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada. -- PHOTO: AFP

-- PHOTO: GRACE CHNG

-- PHOTO: GRACE CHNG

Samsung did not provide a lot of information for it, except that it will feature a quad-core processor and full 3D support. It is expected to hit stores sometime in 2012.

This razor-thin beautiful TV greeted visitors to the Korean company’s booth at CES and attracted huge crowds.

But this Samsung TV and the Fiona are concept products only and will hit stores later in 2012.

All in, there are more than 30 books about him, some written as early as in the mid 1980s, with many written between 2009 and 2011. Presumably the latter titles were published with the knowledge that Steve may not have long to live.

In my ebook library, I have about six books on Steve, who died on Wednesday night. He was 56.

I liked best The Second Coming of Steve Jobs by Alan Deutschman - published in 2000 - because it provides a sneak peek into Steve as a child, college kid, lover, manager and leader. Steve for example likes black and white photos and cultural icons like Albert Einstein.

Describing him as the first businessman rock star, Deutschman also described how Steve put Apple's house in order when he returned to Apple in 1996. Steve spent hundreds of hours on product reviews, deciding which products to kill and which were allowed to live. Then he focused on advertising to make Apple cool again. He hired Chiat Day, the agency that created Apple's advertising in the mid-1980s. Steve got the same creative director Lee Clow who created the Think Different advertising campaign that people see today.

There has always been rivalry between Steve and Bill Gates, the co-founder and chairman of Microsoft. They envied each other, said Deutschman. Steve was the media star while Bill became one of the richest men in the world. Bill shipped buggy products which became incrementally better. Steve was the perfectionist, not shipping until he got it right.

Steve's management style vacillated between seduction and abandonment. Most of the time, he would leave people alone but the one per cent of the time, he would criticise them because of his pursuit of perfectionism. For example, when he chose black as the colour of the NeXT computer, he looked at hundreds of black shades before he picked one.

The second book I liked was Adam Lashinsky's Inside Apple - From Steve Jobs Down To The Janitor, How America' Most Successful - and Secretive Big company - Really Works. This short book - it first appeared as a Fortune magazine article - available on the Kindle book store tries to figure out how Apple turns out successful product one after another.

This is a must read for managers and leaders. Lashinsky describes the weekly meetings that is the 'metronome that sets the pace of the company'. He also talks about the difference between a janitor and vice-president. Janitors are allowed to give reasons for mistakes. Vice-presidents do not have the luxury of explaining why things go wrong. This culture of responsibility is one of key reasons for Apple's success.

Another is the simple organisational structure. There is no matrix organisation. People know who they report to. Only one person is responsible for the bottom line - the CFO. The other key reason is its ability to focus on a few products each time.

But, the book I'm looking forward to is the authorised biography by Walter Issacson. Originally due to hit bookshelves in November, the book is expected on Oct 24. The author interviewed Steve for many hours and he was given access to the executives in Apple.

The wunderkind and enfant terrible that is Steve has ensured that his story be told with all the facts given by him, his co-workers and friends. Steve prepared the last chapter of his illustrious career by finally revealing who he is and how he lived his life.

He sounded weak. He introduced the key presenters such as Mr Phil Schiller, Apple's marketing head.

But I believed Jobs was on stage to give heft to the product announcements and to show shareholders that he was still in charge.

He had been suffering since 2005, first from a rare form of pancreatic cancer, and then other illnesses related to it.  Gradually he lost weight over the last five years.

He was at his thinnest this June. It was obvious the end was near.

The first time I was introduced to Apple and Steve Jobs was when I bought the Macintosh Classic in the early 80s. I used it only for writing and I found it was more intuitive than my first computer, a no-name PC compatible machine. The computer industry was then starting to blossom, and I began to read about Jobs and Apple.

In the past six weeks since he stepped down as chief executive of Apple, there have been many stories about the revolution he unleashed in the computer, mobile phone, music and animation industries.

But who is Steve?

His birth parents put him up for adoption because they were not well to do and they wanted him to have a university education. He did go to university, attended some classes, but dropped out.

He was a vegetarian whose favourite food was shredded carrot. Guests he invited to his home in Palo Alto, California, would be delighted but often, they went home hungry.

Steve was a perfectionist. When he wanted to start an Apple retail store, he had a real store built in a warehouse so that he could visit it, walk around it and think how best to display Apple products.

There are product committees which decide Apple's new gadgets. But only one man could give the green light for commercialisation.

Often, products that were commercially ready were sent back to the workbench to be re-worked because it did not meet Jobs' expectation. He was determined to keep what Apple was developing a secret.

To prevent leaks, product groups worked in isolation. No one knew the entire story. In such instances, leaks could easily be traced to the guilty party, who would then be fired.

When he was thrown out of Apple in 1984 after he lost a boardroom struggle, he contemplated leaving the computer industry. His soul searching led him to re-affirm his passion for computers and electronic gadgets.

So he founded NeXT, which was later sold to Apple and the rest is history.

CONVERTING THE UNCONVERTED

About six years ago, a Lianhe Zaobao colleague, Dr Ng Kin Kang, was with me in San Francisco to cover Jobs' keynote speech at Macworld expo. This was before Apple withdrew from Macworld three years ago.

We woke early to be at the Moscone expo centre at 7am for Jobs' keynote speech at 9am. The corridors to the hall were already packed. Every 15 minutes, we would shuffle a few steps forward.

'What's so great about this man that we have to queue like this?' asked Dr Ng. My response: 'We're going to listen to God'.

Naturally he was sceptical. Later, after Jobs' masterful performance introducing Apple's new products, Dr Ng said: 'He is so good. He's building gadgets that I want now and which I absolutely must have. He's incomparable.'

Even the way he planned his resignation as CEO was perfect. Insiders tell me he had formalised it the way he had led product developments.

His key lieutenants (his successor Tim Cook), software chief Scott Forstall, and Schiller, played greater roles in key product announcements. This was all practice for the day he would step down as CEO, which he did six weeks ago.

Jobs is tenacious, driven and resilient. He has rebounded many times from failure.

The best clue to his character is the 2005 Stanford commencement speech. That was the year his pancreatic cancer was first diagnosed.

He told the graduating students to follow their dreams, to have passion in what they do and to break out of dogma that could hold them back.

Death, he said, was inevitable. Live each day like it was the last, he said then, with so much conviction.

I've lost a role model. Goodbye Steve.

However, do not be deceived. In the old body is a set of new tech innards.

What Singapore consumers will get when they get their hands on the iPhone 4S on Oct 28 is a phone which can, among other things, take much sharper images at faster speed, play more graphic-intensive games, download data faster, and take high-definition video.

There are two reasons why you should buy the iPhone4S.

First, you would not need to get a digital camera or camcorder to take your kids’ birthday photos or graduation ceremonies.

There is a new faster microprocessor called A5 and a new graphics chip. There is a now an 8 megapixel camera and a new lens arrangement that offers more accurate and sharper images as well as high-def video.

The second reason is also the most significant tech feature.

Siri, the intelligent assistant, is cool. It is sophisticated voice technology.

Ask the phone to find out the latest weather report, search for the closest Italian restaurant and shopping centre, convert Singapore dollars to Turkish Lira or find the equatorial circumference of Mars.

The answers appear almost instantly. There is no waiting time.

Critics may say that Apple is playing catch-up because voice technology is already available in Android smartphones.

However, Apple has integrated it with the iOS5 software, such that using Siri is simple and easy.

While I am weighing the cost of buying the iPhone 4S - I have to consider whether my telco provider will penalise me for an early conversion to a new phone - I would also now seriously consider the iPod Nano.

I have avoided it so far because I already have two iPods and did not see a reason to buy another one. But the new Pedometer feature is compelling.

Since I do walk and jog every day, the Pedometer tracks these activities, storing my timings so that I can monitor my performance.

With iOS5 now in the Nano, the display can be enlarged which means I do not have to squint at the small device.

Plus the multi-touch interface means I can swipe from one icon to another. The pricing from US$129 (S$169), makes it a serious purchase consideration.

The iPhone 4S, the iPod Nano and a white iPod touch were the new devices that were launched at Apple’s campus in Cupertino, California, and also streamed live to its London store in Covent Garden.

The new iPod Nano is available in the stores. The new iPod touch is due on Oct 12.

With this message, Mr Bezos launched its attack at the tablet market.

On Sept 28 at 10am (10pm Singapore time) in Manhattan, New York, Mr Bezos lifted the curtain on four new products: the all-new Kindle for only US$79 ($102), two new touch Kindles – Kindle Touch and Kindle Touch 3G – for US$99 and US$149, and a new tablet class – Kindle Fire - a full colour 7-inch device for movies, TV shows, music, books, magazines, apps, games and web browsing for only US$199.

The new Kindle for reading e-books at US$79 is a steal and a drop in price from the US$139 wireless version. Book worms and consumers do not have to wait until Christmas to buy it for themselves or as gifts because at that price, it is an impulse buy.

It is the new class of three touch Kindles that will make the greatest impact on the tablet market. They will give Apple's iPad a run for their money.  Apple's tablet rivals have not succeeded in attracting customers because they matched iPad's pricing without matching its content offerings.

WIDE OFFERING

Amazon has done it better. The Kindle Fire has access to its online offerings including 18 million movies, songs, magazines, books and apps, and it is more than half the price of the cheapest iPad (US$499).

Fence-sitters who like the iPad's coolness, design and ease of use but baulk at the current prices, will jump at the Kindle Fire.

But the new Kindles are also likely to snatch sales away from other makers of tablets, such as Lenovo and Samsung, whose devices are also priced from US$400. They, too, do not have access to substantial content.

The new Kindles are available now. The Kindle Fire can be pre-ordered and are available from Nov 15.

For Singapore consumers, they will be disappointed.

They were unable to use the older generation Kindles because Amazon's digital content is not available here. The situation has not changed.

Some consumers have been able to buy the Kindles here by using work around solutions to get the content. Generally, they buy Amazon's gift cards and redeem the value to get the digital content.

Nonetheless, Amazon will have a sterling Christmas. Its cash registers are going to ring as millions of Kindles fly off the online shelves.

www.facebook.com/st.gracechng

My first close experience with IBM is through the Selectric typewriter which was used in The Straits Times in the mid-80s. There was no ribbon unlike the manual typewriter. Instead there was a golf ball-like device that rotated and pivoted to the correct position before the letter hits the paper.

Although the Selectric typewriter was very popular, it was IBM’s work in computers and computing research that turned it into a global giant. Ranked the 18th largest firm this year in the United States (US) by business magazine Fortune, it is also a rich company worth nearly US$200 billion (S$123.4 billion). More than 250,000 IBMers are found in over 200 countries.

Headquartered in New York, IBM opened an office here in 1953. But Singapore’s first computers – read IBM - arrived in the 1960s when only two government agencies had them: the Central Provident Fund (CPF) and the Finance Ministry. In those days, computing was known as data processing. One of the earliest computers was an IBM 1401 with 4000 bytes of memory, tiny compared to a PC today which has on average 4GB of memory. My old friend, the late Robert Iau, who was the data processing manager of CPF, had bought it for the company. The computer was so big that the CPF had to cut a hole in the wall to haul the computer into the office.

IBM has been synonymous with mainframes and by the time Singapore’s computerisation began in the mid-80s, it was already a well-known IT company with a good training programme and research division. Who better to turn to for manpower training and to develop computing research capabilities than IBM.

So it was that the National University of Singapore (NUS) partnered with IBM to start the Institute of Systems Science (ISS) which opened in August 1984. It had a nice plot of land on a hillock on the Pasir Panjang side of the NUS campus where it built a building. When I visited Robert, who had become the ISS’ chairman then, I could see the Port of Singapore Authority container yards. Robert’s office had a nice view and I am sure, good feng shui too. I have good memories of the ISS, having spent many hours there, learning about computer technology from the numerous IBM executives based here or visited Singapore. The ISS turned out many graduates some of whom are now chief information officers at public sector agencies including James Kang, the chief information officer of the Infocomm Development Authority.

IBM however, did not open a factory here to make computers or related products. Its competitor Hewlett-Packard did - and provided thousands of jobs for people here. In that sense, IBM had always had less publicity than HP, one that quietly irked it (IBM) although it was never discussed publicly.

In the 100 years, IBM did falter a few times. When PCs began to move into offices at the start of the 1980s, IBM was still in mainframes, quite out of sync with the industry. IBM created a special team, located them in Florida, away from its New York headquarters. In the space of months, it came out with the IBM PC in August 1981 which became the industry standard. Its initial dominance of the PC market was soon eroded when nimbler companies such as Dell and others from Taiwan and China came out with cheaper models. The PC became a commodity item where profit margins were low and competition cutthroat. IBM decided that it was better off, selling business solutions to governments and large companies. In 2005, it sold its PC business to China company Lenovo.

In the 1990s, it had a near-death experience when the company was almost split into smaller ones. The prevailing wisdom then was that its core mainframe business was heading the way of dinosaurs. Then came Lou Gerstner in 1993. He was a former McKinsey consultant and was chairman and chief executive officer of RJR Nabisco - an American conglomerate which is now owned by Kraft Foods – when he was hired by IBM as its chief executive officer in 1993. He laid off 100,000 IBMers, re-focussed it on IT services and embraced the Internet, pushing IBM into e-commerce. He retired in 2002 leaving IBM in a much healthier position that when he first joined it.

What of the future? Today’s IT world revolves around smartphones and tablets, and yet unknown gadgets. Will IBM, with its strong focus on business, survive for another 100 years?

I think it will. One key reason is its strength in research. It has thousands of scientists located in the US, Europe, India and China. One of my visits to IBM was to the famous Thomas Watson Research Centre located about an hour out of New York in Yorktown Heights in 2005 and in Almaden in Silicon Valley earlier this year. On some walls of the centres, IBM celebrates its scientists by citing their innovations and work. Some have won major technology prizes or who are IBM Fellows, researchers who are at the pinnacle of their research areas. At the Thomas Watson Research Centre, I found the list of IBMers who won Nobel Prizes. Leo Esaki won a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1973 for his invention of the electron tunnelling effect in semiconductors. In 1987, J. Georg Bednorz and K. Alex Muller shared a Nobel Prize for their discovery of high-temperature superconductivity. Their technological discoveries have led to new or improved manufacturing processes or understanding of how they can be used to improve businesses.

From this research, IBM is bringing its expertise to its customers. In Singapore, IBM is a major contractor for the government and is collaborating on projects to turn Singapore into a smart city using wireless technologies such as sensors.

Innovation is its lifeline and IBM will not see its 200th birthday if it is unable to commercialise its expertise from its labs. I do not expect sexy smartphones and tablets from IBM but I do expect cool technology to emerge which can be used for the improvement of society. Technologies which automatically tell doctors that a patient is going to have a heart attack in 30 minutes or remotely “tell” cars to divert to another route because of an accident on the highway.

Some US-based companies cannot look beyond their quarterly reporting of financial figures as mandated by stock exchange regulations there. IBM would be short-sighted if it is to tailor its growth so as to report good quarterly figures. It cannot afford to play this game. Instead it must leverage its huge strength in its research labs. At a time, when IT companies are trimming their costs including research budgets, IBM is piling more money into research. This is why I believe IBM has a chance of surviving the next 100 years.

Happy Birthday, IBM.