But specs do not sell tablets. Most consumers are looking for a different experience than what they can get on their desktop or notebook. Without knowing it, they’re looking for lasting novelty. Sure, some consumers want multitasking, some want a tweakable interface, perhaps some out there even want a tablet with seven homescreens and an app drawer. That’s where Android tablets come in. The iPad, however, captures consumers with a slightly new paradigm in portable computing and does so with style and class.
If A Motorola Android Tab Leaks And It’s Just Like The Rest, Does It Really Matter? by Matt Burns from TechCrunch.
Simply put: Android tablets are missing the simplicity and elegance of the iPad.
Therein lies the current problem with Android tablets. Vendors are too busy pimping out specs, playing the same game with tablets that they played with desktops and laptops. Customers flocked to the iPad because of its simplicity, not just in the use of the device but also in being able to determine which model to buy. Have the vendors learned nothing from Apple over the course of the past ten years?
Simplicity is key. One of the reasons Apple’s iPad has been so successful is that it transcends these games. The only real questions a potential iPad buyer must ask themselves are: 1) Do I need 3G access in addition to wifi? and 2) How much onboard storage space do I need? With the impending release of iCloud - and other services like Spotify and Dropbox - the second question is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
The new era of mobile computing will not be defined by chip speeds, RAM and storage space. Instead, it will be defined by other more consumer-oriented features such as screen size, mobile carrier access, and immediate availability of applications.
The latter area - tablet specific applications - is where Android currently lags way behind Apple. Until this changes, Android is going to have a tough time gaining any significant traction in the tablet market.
Apple paved the way but Microsoft will get there first with Windows 8. A tablet that can be as fluid and user friendly as the iPad but as capable as a Windows laptop. A tablet that can boot in under 10 seconds and fire up a full-scale version of Adobe Dreamweaver a few moments later. A tablet that can be slipped into a dock to instantly become a fully capable touch-enabled laptop computer. This is Microsoft’s vision with Windows 8, and this is what it will deliver.
Sorry Apple, Windows 8 ushers in the post-post-PC era by Zach Epstein at BGR.
This is pure comedy. If you read any technology news today, you owe it to yourself to read this laughable piece at the normally respectable BGR.
That Epstein believes a product which still requires an entire year of development is going to dethrone the wildly popular iPad shows how utterly insane this linkbait article is. Windows 8 was only demoed at BUILD. Compare that to the first time the iPad was unveiled; it was a finished product available to consumers a month later.
I have great respect for Microsoft and what they are attempting to do with Windows 8. Unifying the desktop and mobile experience is admirable. The Metro UI is completely unique and seems to be the right way to tackle this task. Just count me in as a skeptic that this tactic will be successful, whereby successful is defined as taking a sizable portion of the tablet market, at this stage in the game.
Samsung said at the end of 2010 that it had shipped 1m of its 7-inch Galaxy devices, which were seen as the first real Android competitors to Apple’s iPad. However, according to Barrow, Samsung only sold 20,000 of the tablets. Samsung had not returned a request for comment on Barrow’s claim by the time of publication.
According to Andrew Barrow, director of consumer products and pricing for Lenovo Western Europe, Samsung only sold about 20,000 Galaxy Tab’s out of 1m shipped. This is not the direct iPad competitor, the Galaxy Tab 10.1, but the original 7-inch Galaxy Tab.
It would not surprise me if this were true. Other than the iPad, I rarely see any other tablets in use throughout my travels in and around in Japan, save for a close buddy who is proud to be a Motorola Xoom owner, even if it weighs more than a 1977 Cadillac.
On the rare occasions I do see other-than-iPad tablets, they are generally not of the 7-inch variety. About the only 7-inch devices I have seen are the Amazon Kindles. Everywhere. But Kindles are not tablets. Yet.
I really want Samsung to succeed. Not because I think they make exceptionally special products or are a viable iPad competitor. The iPad needs decent competition, and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 seems to be the device closest to the iPad and the one current offering poised to compete with Apple.
But therein lies the problem - manufacturers are too busy copying the iPad rather than creating distinct products with their own personality. Call it what you will, but Apple is exception at designing and marketing products with an emotional appeal. iPad competitors have yet to truly understand why consumers are buying these devices in troves. Until they really get a firm grip on the market they will continue to flounder.
Over the past few months, I’ve noticed something strange. Among my geekier circles, I’m always hearing the same question: iPad, or Xoom/Galaxy Tab/Android-tablet-name-here? Among less tech-minded folks (you know, like the majority of the population) though, the question seems to shift: iPad, or Kindle? Now, it’s not that the less tech-savvy people wouldn’t like an Android tablet… they just don’t really seem to know they exist. There are just too many strikingly similar tablets, all battling for that one smaller sliver of the pie.
Amazon Is Only Launching A 7″ Tablet? Genius.
Another good write-up on the upcoming Amazon Kindle tablet.
But the key for Amazon is just how deeply integrated all of their services are. Amazon’s content store is always just one click away. The book reader is a Kindle app (which looks similar to how it does on Android and iOS now). The music player is Amazon’s Cloud Player. The movie player is Amazon’s Instant Video player. The app store is Amazon’s Android Appstore. Google’s Android Market is nowhere to be found. In fact, no Google app is anywhere to be found. This is Android fully forked. My understanding is that the Kindle OS was built on top of some version of Android prior to 2.2. And Amazon will keep building on top of that of that over time. In other words, this won’t be getting “Honeycomb” or “Ice Cream Sandwich” — or if it does, users will never know it because that will only be the underpinnings of the OS. Any visual changes will be all Amazon.
Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
This is pretty much exactly what I suspected an Amazon Kindle tablet would be - a device tied to every Amazon service possible. In fact, Amazon is the only company other than Apple which has a mature ecosystem.
The whole idea of this device being tied to all of the Amazon services is orgasmic; they have all the tools to make the Kindle tablet a success: the Kindle and whispernet, cloud-based storage, cloud-based music and video playing and their very own OS-based app store. What other iPad competitor has a similar, mature offering?
Unfortunately the article has no photographs of the device, however MG paints a very good picture of the device, comparing its industrial design to the BlackBerry PlayBook.
I have been, and still do fully expect this to be the most successful iPad competitor once released. It does not sound fair to call this an Android tablet, as it appears Amazon has forked and extensively tweaked the OS, so calling this the “best Android tablet” is a misnomer.
I have been patiently waiting to hear some inside news on the Kindle tablet. After reading this article I’m really jazzed about this device. The upcoming Amazon Kindle tablet is going to be an exciting product to watch. What is going to be the most interesting thing to watch will be to see how much, if any, market-share the Kindle tablet takes from the iPad.
I’m writing this on my laptop (a MacBook Air), but I really just want to be browsing the web on my iPad right now. So I’m ending this post to go do that. Within the next five years, I bet most of you reading this will also have this desire — even if you think you won’t.
Excellent and poignant write-up by MG on the iPad as the PC of the future.
One of the accessories you can buy for a TouchPad is the Touchstone Charging Dock, which wirelessly charges the TouchPad when it’s set in the cradle. It’s a cool and solid bit of hardware, but the software integration makes it even cooler. Once the TouchPad realizes it’s docked, it immediately launches into “Exhibition Mode.” Any developer can write apps that work in this mode, which passively projects information—clock, photos, calendar, Twitter stream, you name it—onto the device’s screen while it’s docked. Once you remove the TouchPad from the dock, the apps vanish. And if you have one Charging Dock at work and another at home, the device knows they’re different and can be configured to run different Exhibition apps in either place.
Hands on with the HP TouchPad by Jason Snell.
This HP TouchPad feature is one of the most intriguing I have read about. The idea that, while docked, the device can display widgets based on which dock the TouchPad is resting in is quite clever.
Overall, the TouchPad has me very intrigued. WebOS looks like a nicely crafted UI and the basics of the tablet sound decent. Given some time and polish, the TouchPad may be a worthy competitor to the iPad and Android tablets.
If any company has the wherewithal I believe it to be HP. They control the entire user experience, from hardware to software, just like Apple. This is the exact opposite of every Android tablet maker.
I am absolutely rooting for HP. If for no other reason than to see iOS and iOS devices with strong competition.
Funnel
See what’s happening in the world in an instance! Funnel is an intuitive interface for Google News, that helps you filter out the most important news items for you to read. Filtering is done based on the number of related articles found for each headline. The bigger the headline, the more important the news.
Funnel is not currently available in the US App Store but is expected to be at some point in the near future.
Oh well. I figured, at this point, I should try to get an actual app loaded on to the simulator. So I head back to the docs to learn how. First up, I have to put the simulator into development mode, which makes total sense because of those times when you don’t want to use the simulator for development. For instance, sometimes you’re obviously gonna want to load up the simulator on your laptop and use it like a Playbook, right? RIM? Bueller? But before I can do that, you tell me that I need to set a password, which is obviously very important, because if someone steals my laptop, that last thing I would want them to do is be able to put my Playbook simulator into development mode without my permission. Good thinking RIM! Next, I need to get the IP address of the simulator, because it’s running in a VM, and as far as my OS is concerned it’s an entirely separate device. Good design RIM! Making things easy and integrated (like Apple and Google have) only encourages those “artsy” types to try to develop software, which clearly should be left only to unix loving neck beards (I use that term endearingly).
The iPad is an intensely personal device. In its design intent it is, truly, much more like a “big iPhone” than a “small laptop”. The iPad isn’t something you pass around. It’s not really designed to be a “resource” that many people take advantage of. It’s designed to be owned, configured to your taste, invested in and curated.
How the iPad Wants to be Used (via) is the very problem with iOS in its current form. Although I love the idea of the iPad, the fact that iOS is not designed to be passed around seems, to me anyhow, to be problematic. All consumer operating systems should, at the very least, offer a basic multi-user capability to facilitate passing the iPad around to family members.
I expect Apple desires families to purchase one iPad per family member so they can sell a lot of devices. This is what separates the iPad from desktop and laptop computers; since iOS does not support multi-user capabilities the device will inherently end up selling more units than a similarly featured computer.
Unfortunately, expecting a multiple sales per household solution is not pragmatic. Although the iPad is a low cost computing device, it is impractical to expect families to purchase multiple devices, especially in the age of the $200 netbook.
I have a lot more to write on this topic so I’ll save the rest for later. At this juncture, I will end with this: if there is one problem with the iPad, its the fact that iOS is designed to be single-user. Maybe at some point in the future this will change, but for now would-by iPad consumers need to be aware of this one striking drawback.
For me, there is no feeling of admiration or no excitement whatsoever. It’s disgusting. On trains, the number of those people doing that strange masturbation-like gesture is multiplying.
Google Chrome for iPad. Interface Design Mockup and Wishlist.
I like the basic idea and concept but there is something about this mockup which does not sit entirely right with me. I can’t quite put my finger on it (no pun intended) but there is definitely something off. Nonetheless, Google Chrome for the iPad would be a welcome addition to the device. Why let Safari have all the fun, right? (via 9-bits)
Google Chrome for iPad. Interface Design Mockup and Wishlist. That is really quite sexy!
Is This Really The Future of Magazines or Why Didn’t They Just Use HTML 5?
Interesting observation on the Wired app for the iPad:
Why is the magazine so large? Being the intrepid hacker that I am (*wink*) I mounted my jail broken iPad via AppleTalk and quickly tore into the app itself to see how it was constructed. Similar to the PopSci+ magazine application, each Wired issue is actually a bunch of XML files that lay out a bunch of images. And by “a bunch of images” I mean 4,109 images weighing in at 397MB.
Each full page is a giant image – there are actually two images for each page: one for landscape and one for portrait mode. Yes, I’m laughing on the inside too. There is no text or HTML, just one gigantic image. The “interactive” pieces where you can slide your finger to animate it are just a series of JPG files. When you press play on the audio file and see the progress meter animate? A series of PNG files.
On the one hand I can see the point but on the other hand I have to wonder what he expected? Surely as publishing for the iPad matures, the manner in which the “magazine” is constructed will change over time.
I cannot help but wonder what he expected as far as the so-called interactivity. Surely Wired could have done some really cool things had they opted to, but I suspect they were more interested in focusing on displaying advertising and the content they created for the magazine - the articles themselves.
It is easy to laugh at an app weighing in at 4000+ images costing almost 400MB in download size. But to criticize without nary a suggestion other than using HTML 5? Consider me unimpressed with the feedback even though I am, too, completely underwhelmed with the Wired app offering.
NTT Docomo To Provide iPad Coverage via Handheld WiFi Access Point?
Buried at the end of this Reuters report regarding the iPad being a huge hit in Japan is this little nugget of information:
NTT Docomo, Japan’s biggest mobile phone operator, will sell wireless LAN routers for the iPad’s Wi-Fi connection next month to rival No.3 operator Softbank, which exclusively provides 3G networks for iPad.So rather than providing a SIM to insert directly in to the iPad itself, it appears NTT Docomo will be selling what I assume to be some form of a portable WiFi access-point which connects to their 3G network on the WAN side and allows your iPad to connect on the LAN side.
This sounds far more beneficial overall, seeing as it ostensibly would provide access to more devices than just an iPhone, than paying Softbank solely for iPad 3G access.
It will be quite interesting if such a product does become offered, especially since it is widely accepted here in Japan that DoCoMo has a far better 3G infrastructure compared to Softbank’s spotty coverage.
