Easily the most interesting thing Apple unveiled today is the new Magic Trackpad. Essentially, it’s a larger version of the trackpads that ship with each MacBook and MacBook Pro. But it’s a stand-alone product, meant to be used with desktop computers. So why did Apple feel the need to make such a product? It’s about trends and the future.

“Looking at the big picture, more users are using our trackpad because there are more notebook users than desktop users,” an Apple representative told me today when discussing the Magic Trackpad. Laptops have been Apple’s best-selling computers for some time now. And as time goes on, despite some of the new desktop products unveiled today, we can likely expect the gap between laptops and desktops to increase. This will mean an increasing number of users who are accustomed to using their computers via these trackpads. So this new product makes sense for users who are interested in buying Apple desktops as well.

“People love the trackpad. People love those characteristics. So we wanted to bring that kind of design to our desktop users,” the Apple rep told me. So Apple designed the product (in conjunction with the wireless keyboard) to bring everything people like about the trackpads over to the desktop experience. Pinch-to-zoom, inertial scrolling, tap-to-click, it’s all there.

But what’s nice is that the Magic Trackpad is actually much larger than any trackpad found on a MacBook (80 percent more surface area). I asked if this meant we could expect some new multi-touch functionality for the desktop experience, but Apple refused to comment on that.

This new Magic Trackpad also makes a lot of sense with regard to the overall trend of where Apple is heading. The company has already acknowledged that it’s now a “mobile devices” company. And a big part of that isn’t just laptops, but the iPhone and now iPad as well. Both of those devices are obviously completely multi-touch-based. There is no mouse.

Apple is slowly but surely moving towards a place where the majority of computer interaction is done through touch gestures. The desktop remains the last great stronghold for the keyboard + mouse combination. But now Apple is chipping away at that too. First they launched the multi-touch Magic Mouse. Now we get the Magic Trackpad.

When I asked if this signaled the death of the mouse, Apple would only say that “we want to offer our users the choice.” They note that plenty of people at Apple have been using the Magic Trackpad alongside the Magic Mouse. “Some operations are better for a mouse, some for a trackpad,” is what I was told.

That said, Apple did acknowledge that some users will likely ditch the mouse in favor of this new device. And while Apple is keeping the Magic Mouse as the standard item bundled with the desktop computers, there is an option to get the Magic Trackpad as well with each new computer purchase (for the cost of the device, naturally).

I know that personally, this Magic Trackpad is going to replace my mouse. Even though my desktop offers the comfort of two huge monitors, recently, I’ve found myself using my laptop more and more simply because I prefer the trackpad and its multi-touch gestures. Now that I can get that full experience on my desktop, I’m definitely making the jump.

Others simply won’t have to. They’ll start with the trackpad on laptops and won’t see the point of the mouse. And further down the line, users may grow up on touch tablets and won’t even understand the concept of the mouse.

The mouse may be destined to become a precision tool that professions such as designers use. History may prove that this Magic Trackpad was the final mouse trap that signaled this end.

More: The Mouse Is Dead. I Just Killed It. Now Can We Move On?

[photo: flickr/Simon Walsh]

When Wolfram Research released its iPhone app for Wolfram Alpha earlier this week, most of the attention quickly shifted away from the features of the app itself and towards the high price of the app. At $49.99, Wolfram Alpha is far more expensive than most apps in the App Store today, where only a small number of highly specialized apps sell for more than $9.99. Today, we got a chance to discuss Wolfram’s pricing strategy with Schoeller Porter, the product manager for Wolfram Alpha’s iPhone app.

Early Reactions

On Twitter and in the tech blogosphere, the reactions to the app’s price were anything but subtle. We called it “too expensive” ourselves, though others had stronger words for it. MIT’s Technology Review called it a “a pricey online calculator for geeks” – a product that’s more like the expensive but immensely powerful Mathematica than Stephen Wolfram’s original idea for Alpha (“Wolfram|Alpha aims to bring expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people”).

It is worth noting that the Wolfram Alpha app quickly appeared in the list of top 100 grossing apps in the iTunes App Store (iTunes link) and has been hovering at the lower end of the top 50 ever since. That doesn’t make it a breakout hit, but some people are clearly buying the app, even though only a small number of users have left reviews.

A Premium Price for a Premium Experience

There can be little doubt that the Wolfram Alpha team was expecting some backlash. As Porter told us today, the Wolfram Alpha team decided to price the app with the cost of a hardware graphing calculator in mind. At $50, the app costs roughly half of what a hardware calculator would cost. As Porter also stressed, the app offers a far superior range of features thanks to its connection to Wolfram’s server farm. The company thinks this price is justified because of the superior experience of using the app over the mobile website.

After using the app for a few days, we definitely have to agree there. The dual-keyboard solution makes entering queries in the app much easier than using the mobile site and accessing Wolfram Alpha from the app is also much faster then using the mobile site.

Porter noted that Wolfram is trying to set itself off from the mass of $0.99 apps that only get used once and are quickly forgotten. Instead, the company hopes that the app will become a regular companion for its users, whether they are using it for help with their homework in school or college, or in their professional life.

At the end of the day, this is an app for specialists. While Schoeller Porter worded this more carefully in our interview today, the basic fact is that Wolfram is charging a premium price for a premium experience. Users who don’t need the app can continue to use the website, while those who are willing and able to spend $50 on the app will get a superior experience. For the time being, Wolfram doesn’t expect to bring the price of the app down and so far, according to Porter, the team has been happy and excited about how the app has been performing in the marketplace.

The Price of iPhone Apps

This also leads into a broader discussion about the current pricing in the iPhone App Store, where even the most complex apps and games have to sell for under $10 to reach a wide audience. At the end of our discussion, Porter noted that the Wolfram app may lead to some changes here, though we have to wonder if anything is likely to change the current drift towards lower prices in the App Store.

It is also worth pointing out, though, that a lower price point opens up the market for an app to a far wider audience – often to the point where the lower price brings in exponentially more users and more than offsets any potential losses from the lower price.

What Do You Think?

Is Wolfram’s price point for the iPhone app a bold move? Hubris? Or would you be happy to pay $50 for the superior experience and ergonomics of the app?

Enterprise content management (ECM) is big business these days. There are scads of companies turning a tidy profit promising to do a competent job of managing every conceivable type of content, from records bound by regulation to Web content and freewheeling collaborative work. What there isn’t as much of is sound advice from experienced professionals on how to save money when it comes to ECM.

At a time when IT budgets are tight and few can afford to spend anything they don’t have to, Gartner’s research vice president Tony Bell is offering some interesting thoughts on best practices for reducing costs. Here’s our assessment of his tactics for increasing efficiency when it comes to ECM.

Clean House

Before you’re ready to make a new ECM implementation of any kind, take the time to assess what content you have and what you can do without. Either as a team or through designated point people, find and eliminate old and duplicate content that bogs down your current solution.

Keeping content around that is doing you no good is a waste of time and resources. If content migration and integration of systems is so important, more enterprises should be paying attention to how they can alleviate the burden that unnecessary content creates.

Develop Automated Policies

As Gartner puts it, “a policy about documents takes the form of rules and metadata that allow some automatic categorization and expiration of content.” In other words, creating document policies for your ECM implementation is going to help preclude the need for spending a lot of time on the need to prune old content to increase efficiency.

Automated processes are a big deal in many enterprise systems these days, but not everyone is applying their understanding to documents. That’s a shame, since it’s a powerful method for keeping junk out of your document repositories and file servers.

Consider Open Source Alternatives & Accompanying Services

Gartner’s specific recommendation is about “content service providers” and open source. The first half of that equation refers to ECM vendors who can also provide services to augment or replace certain needs when in the enterprise. In our view this is the area that needs the most careful consideration.

While Gartner is correct that services can be a boon to your ECM strategy and help you make good choices that will reduce spending, it’s not always the case that services perform as advertised. It’s important to note that what we’re talking about is companies that integrate services with their core business, not those who rely on a partner ecosystem to make up for all necessary consulting.

The latter half of Gartner’s suggestion here is about open source. Yes open source is the kind of thing that tends to scare the enterprise. But running blindly away from a market that has become a stable alternative, complete with SLAs and adequate support, is foolish during a period when enterprises know they need to cut costs.

Leverage the Web

By which we mean stop trying to rely on in house data and content channels for everything, especially in areas where you’re ferrying data from one consumer-facing location to another. It may make IT feel more secure, but not taking advantage of a faster, cheaper network that already exists for content delivery isn’t going to save you any money.

Go Green

Going green isn’t just about acting ethically as a business, it can save you money too. As anyone who works in the B2G space knows, dealing with a heavy paper document workload is a serious drain on company resources. Unless you’ve a special case, there’s no excuse for not pushing hard on becoming as close to a paperless organization as humanely possible.

Get Out of the Email Business

The headline for this one was just too good not to change. Countless enterprise vendors large and small are declaring how hip they are when it comes to fighting email overload and increasing efficiency. But fewer enterprises are tackling the root of the problem by killing their on-premise Exchange servers altogether.

Even if you’re not the least bit interested in “Going Google” there are now robust hosted Outlook options available. Cutting out the enormous IT overhead that email and calendaring creates is a great way to save money when it comes to enterprise content management.

The full release is available here, and you can hear Tony Bell speak on this at Gartner’s Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit in September.

Photo by AMagill