Slashdot Mirror
MSI Will Launch iPad Alternative
itwbennett writes "Underwhelmed by the iPad? Don't give up on tablets just yet, says blogger Peter Smith. MSI has a tablet coming in the second half of 2010 that measures up on price and size and addresses a lot of the iPad's most noted shortcomings. 'The iPad runs iPhone OS while the MSI runs Android,' writes Smith. 'That means the MSI will multitask of course, and Flash support in Android should be a given by launch time (though that isn't certain). It has a camera. It's running on an Nvidia Tegra2 chip which Ars Technica suggests puts it on par with the iPad's A4 as far as computing horsepower. And of course Android doesn't live in a walled garden.'" The post notes that the MSI device does not support multitouch in its built-in apps. Still, would an Android-powered iPad-alike tempt you?
Update: 01/29 17:58 GMT by KD : Dave Altavilla suggests Hot Hardware's coverage of Asus's recently announced tablet, also based on the Tegra2 chip.
Update: 01/29 17:58 GMT by KD : Dave Altavilla suggests Hot Hardware's coverage of Asus's recently announced tablet, also based on the Tegra2 chip.
I think it has more promise than the iWidgets do.
It's a more open platform which IMHO gives it more potential.
Not to sound like a OSS or Google fanboy, I really am serious, what does WinMo provide that Android lacks ?
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
It's not about "do more things," it's about "do very few things better."
That's why Apple wins.
My wife asked about the iPad last night (she owns a netbook right now) and now she's drooling over one. Why? It doesn't have "files." It doesn't have "windows." She won't have to worry about "flash drives." And so on. She was so excited about all the things it didn't have (and that she therefore didn't have to worry about) that she was disappointed when I told her they weren't in the Apple Store in Manhattan yet.
Meanwhile, the geeks are running around blasting Apple products for all the things they "don't have" and recommending complex alternatives.
That's why Apple is making $$$ these days. Because they're removing 60 percent of the features and making the remaining 40 percent configuration free and so polished they make your eyes hurt.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Not to sound like a OSS or Google fanboy, I really am serious, what does WinMo provide that Android lacks ?
Good apps? It's easier to develop for as you can write apps in C, C++, etc instead of subset of resource hogging Java.
If you don't know the meaning of a common semi-technical phrase, it's probably better to just look it up, than to loudly proclaim what you don't know.
Or, actually, the post asks the right question in the wrong place.
The question is not what'd be popular on Slashdot - we're not representative of the wider population by almost any stretch of the imagination. Of course Slashdotters want multitasking, want to be able to install ssh, want the option to run their own web server on the thing. Slashdotters will want the darn tablet to support FLAC and Ogg Vorbis/Theora.
But the things that'd make this really popular with Slashdotters are not the same things that'll make a tablet a commercial success. It's pretty obvious the majority of people don't care about multitasking (as long as they can listen to their tunes while they do other things - which is true of the iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad, and most any other device), nor about Apple's "walled garden". What they do care about is the availability of the apps they want and that the features the tablet offers are easy to use and work well.
#DeleteChrome
with my wife hating multitasking. She never closes a thing (tab, application, etc.) and invariably runs out of memory. Often, there are dozens of background processes. Her hard drive starts to thrash. Things grind to a halt. I get called.
I've tried to explain about things taking up memory, the problem of lots of background applications, the problem of never closing applications. She doesn't want to know what memory even IS. "Why is the computer so stupid," she wants to know, "that it can't figure out that I only care about what I'm working on RIGHT NOW?"
Say what you want, but a) she's my wife, b) she's rather beautiful, c) it's absolutely impossible to even try to say "okay, let me explain to you why..." and d) Apple's gonna continue to make bank selling devices to people just like her.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
"most likely has", "is most likely several times that", "power consumption is also claimed to be several times lower than"
Oh! the facts!
Fact is: no official info has been given about the internals of the A4, only rumors. And yet you come to the conclussion that the Tegra 2 is faster both GPU and CPU wise, and yet
consumes less power. And you criticize sites of being affected by a RTD -did you mean RDF-? maybe you are also in some kind of RDF yourself, of another kind.
When a Tegra 2 tablet is released you will be able to compare the systems. Until them saying one is better than the other is just speculation. Well, in fact it is quite easy to compare
them right now: they have the same performance and the same power consumption: 0, as you can not get either one.
It's the same with various PC OEMs introducing gestures to their trackpads. The problem is, the trackpads are plastic garbage, the gestures are unwieldy, and it's just nothing like an Apple multitouch trackpad - at all. I think these new tablets are going to be the same. iPod touch and the 2G iPhone were lackluster and "underwhelming" at launch, too. And then OS 2.0 came along and blew everyone else out of the water. Killer apps are on their way for the iPad, rest assured.
.::
Yet here you are on /.
Or maybe Apple decided that the interface with tablets wasn't up to snuff for being a general purpose computer but it could work as a device with specific uses in mind. Apple seems to care about the user experience and they probably figured out that by pissing off the small percentage of people like you they could provide a sellable experience to everyone else.
Trying to be all things to all people generally doesn't work out well. Doing a limited selection of things but doing them well tends to be the better choice. (Do you complain that your chef's knife doesn't have a saw and screwdriver and awl and flashlight?)
A better touchscreen interface is the difference between an app
being something that you are vaguely aware of but never use vs.
something that you use constantly. Your basic input devices are
by no means trivial.
If Apple maintains this edge, it will be hard for competitors that
are more functional in other areas to get any anywhere.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yeah, cause when i am on a packed train, all i want to do it talk my private message into my phone :)
Voice recognition is over hyped, and it will not work as a sole means for data entry, ever.
-EL
Sure, it's "her own fucking problem" and it looks like iPad is how she's going to solve it, judging by her excitement at watching the YouTube videos and my answers to her questions about it last night. I'm sure you don't care.
Maybe you think she's an idiot. Maybe I'm really bad at explaining. Both of those things have little to do with my suggestion that geeks will likely continue to wonder until the end of time why not everyone wants a bare/caseless single board computer that fits inside a coffee cup, runs embedded Linux, and is hackable for umpteen million projects.
I'm just ruminating on all the Slashdot anti-Apple posting and the apparent geek frustration at the success of Apple.
A: "Apple sucks!"
B: "Regular people like Apple!"
A: "But Apple isn't a hackable Linux embedded device with hooks for 23 language APIs!"
B: "Regular people don't want that!"
A: "Then regular people are really stupid and deserve to be dominated and reamed!"
B: "?!!?"
A: "By the way, why don't people like us, and why can't I get a girlfriend?"
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
[...] they probably figured out that by pissing off the small percentage of people like you they could provide a sellable experience to everyone else.
I agree with you except for this part, because it seems that by playing on the massive hype, Apple have disappointed more than a small percentage of people, meanwhile the "everyone else" that this will appeal to is likely to be a much smaller niche market. You can't afford to disappoint a massive section of your potential/existing market even if it does gain you the undying adoration of a very small majority of said market. At least the previous devices (iPod, Air, iPhone, et al) had more than niche market appeal.
Ignoring the fact that a netbook isn't a tablet, there's still a great deal of difference between the two beyond the similar price point:
Acer:
$420
3 lbs
6 hour battery life
8 in x 11.2 in x 1.18 in
No touchscreen
Plastic case with lower coefficient of friction
iPad:
$499
1.6 lbs
10 hour battery life
7.5 x 9.5 in x 0.5 in
Touchscreen
Aluminum case with higher coefficient of friction
The fact that the iPad is half the weight, half the thickness, and has almost 2x the battery life is not something you can easily ignore in a device who's primary goal is to be portable. To setup a litmus test, try to argue that using a netbook to reply to an email while walking through an airport is less awkward than using a touchscreen tablet in the same situation.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Of course I would not expect you tell your wife that.
Really, your wife is really really ignorant or just really good at selling you on her buying a new toy.
I know lots of people who are bad with computers, I certainly do my best to make sure they don't touch one
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I was waiting with baited breath to see what Apple was going to deliver. What a letdown. I typically love what Apple puts out there. I was fully expecting something I could load up with whatever open source software I wanted. Something I could do video iChat on. Etc. After the big release thing I ordered an ASUS Eee PC T91MT. 9" multi-touch screen (yeah, Windows 7, but hey...), 3-5hr. battery life, load whatever software I want, built-in web cam for VTC, not one, but TWO SDHC slots, blah blah blah. Oh, and a real keyboard. I dunno...for my money, the ASUS seems like a much better buy.
Now-a-days they're probably cheaper than iPads.
Floating in the black seas of infinity without a paddle.
"I've yet to see an app that makes me think, "Oh- I have to have that, it is so much better than using a mouse/keyboard/trackpad/etc."
Microsoft One-Note. It's the killer tablet app.
Than and a program to let you pen markup PDF files. I have switched to only carrying a tablet into meetings because of those two apps. Plus I added a nice little microphone http://www.sourcingmap.com/mini-small-mic-microphone-for-laptop-line-chat-p-29294.html to the mic in plug and record the meeting audio as I sit there.
You cant look at a tablet as a pc or a laptop replacement. it's a limited use tool, leverage it's advantages and you really see what it's good at.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Every iPhone app I have (yes, that's the iPhone famous for "not multitasking") stores complete state information when it exits.
Safari comes back with all the same tabs and windows open. It doesn't have to reload them. It is scrolled to exactly the same place I was at. Partially filled out forms are still partially filled out.
The document I was working on in DocsToGo is exactly the way it looked (with the cursor in exactly the same place).
It's COMPLETELY state-stable and FAST, there's no "saving state" when you switch applications, because they store their state continuously as it evolves.
I am a power Linux user. I HAVE a home-built hardware RAID sitting here on my desktop, along with a triple-head display.
I run from the updates-testing repos on Fedora. I have patched my own radeon_drv.so Xorg module to fix the infamous compositing corruption bug (for those who care, when doing copy-from-screen, first do a test to see if the bitmap being copied is smaller than 32 pixels; if it is, don't copy-from, because the bitmap hasn't made it into the buffer yet to be copied back from).
I'm the sort you'd think would be bugged as hell with "no multitasking."
Only I'm totally not. As far as I'm concerned, for an interface on a tiny screen (where you're unlikely to have multiple windows onscreen at once), perfect stateful information is damn close to multitasking.
The only thing that can't be approximated is background processes (i.e. start it and let it compute while I work on something else), but it's not like I'm going to do a 20-day render on my iPhone, is it? Nor on my iPad.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
rather than a better Kindle?
In fact, you're imposing your own arbitrary perspectives.
The Kindle is also your basic good old fashioned Von Neumann architecture computer with inputs and outputs. Even a keyboard and a display, in fact.
So why is the iPad a "poor computer" and not an "insanely great Kindle?"
In fact, why is it either?
I have a Kindle. I love it. I use it to read books.
I have a computer. I love it. I use it to manage data, code, and do research.
I have an iPhone. I love it. I use it to web browse, email, Facebook, and watch YouTube videos.
I don't walk around musing about how the computer is the "real" computer and the other two are just pale imitations of it, or how the Kindle is the "real" Kindle and the other two are just pale imitations of it, etc.
iPad is a device with specific properties and limitations that will serve some users well and other users not at all. The latter should not buy it. But I suspect that members of the latter group who have been marching around on /. for two days making fun of iPad and suggesting either that (1) nobody will buy it or (2) that nobody should buy it are a little myopic, to say the least.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
_No_ _vendor_ _lock_ _in_. No apple store only.
So how do you write apps for the iPad? Do you have to get your builds approved by the Apple Store before you can test them?
The downside to using a conductive stylus is that performance-wise they don't even come close to comparing to a "real" active digitizer (like a wacom tablet) so those of us interested in using a tablet as a digital sketchbook (cmd/ctrl+z beat using an eraser any day since your document doesn't get worn out when you erase that damn line for the 20th time because it's just not right). Using a conductive stylus for drawing is like using crayons for drawing, it may work for certain tasks but it's very limited and with a proper digitizer and good software you can get the "crayon effect" anyway (and even better since you'll have pressure sensitivity).
Incidentally the main reason I'm disappointed with the iPad is that I was hoping for something like a cross between the iPad and Axiotron's Modbook, scaled-down performance and light-weight while still having a stylus.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
"For a Mac user it is obvious and when they switch to Windows they wonder why when they try to close one window every other window with that app closes too."
The "shutdown" button isn't used to close the current window.
One thing that geeks here on slashdot don't seem to understand is the concept of "target market". Often times they assume that just because a product doesn't have some geek feature that they would like, they think the product cannot possibly succeed in the larger population in general. Geeks here on slashdot want certain features. Some of them want more control and configurability. These are not bad things; but geeks here have to understand that they are not everyone. General consumers want different things.
Where Apple has succeeded in the past, contrary to the dire predictions of geeks, is that Apple does not design their products for geeks. They design their products for a target audience. Most of their products are designed for average consumers.
MP3 players existed before Apple. When Apple entered the market, there were two distinct categories: large HD players with GB capacities that were the size of portable CD players and smaller pocket-sized flash RAM players that could hold at most 128MB. While the iPod didn't have all the technical features that geeks here wanted (some of which were not included in other players for years), Apple focused on other aspects which appealed to average consumers. First it was only slightly larger than the flash RAM players but could nearly as much as the larger players. Second, to get music onto a player back then was a pain which required the patience and know-how of a geek. You had to find a ripper and then an encoder which was separate of the program that managed loading the music onto the player. Apple worked on making the music transfer as simple as possible. iTunes did all three.
Years ago, Apple released the MacBook Air. This product was different from other Apple products as it was designed for a different target audience than the average consumer. The MacBook is designed for average consumers; the Air is designed for road warriors who need a lighter computer and some computing needs. But for most slashdot geeks, since it wasn't powerful to decode the human genome instanteously and at the same time, weighed more than a feather, they deemed it a failure.
In 2007, Apple released the iPhone. It was a smartphone designed for average consumers. Unlike the Blackberry, the iPhone was not intended for business or corporate users. Again, the exlusion of a long list of technical features slashdot geeks wanted meant it was doomed to fail.
Some of the same criticisms are being repeated again with the iPad:
Here's where I see this product's market: Those who want more capabilities than a Kindle but not as much as a laptop. Some examples that come of the top of my head: School lessons, digital magazines, personal media players. Basically, the iPad is an appliance not a computer.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Y'know, I love my netbook, but there are some times that it really just doesn't do it for me. Like in a yaris, at night, while someone else is driving down a gravel road. The position you're in is uncomfortable. The keyboard is awkward. The trackpad is tiny and useless when you're bouncing around.
That seems like a pretty high bar. Tiny uncomfortable vehicle, at night, on a bumpy gravel road? It could be that this is one of those times that a person puts the computing devices away. Under those conditions, it may also be difficult to even read a paperback.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
"A flatscreen TV is basically just an iMac with a bunch of features removed."
How does removing features from an iMac add a TV tuner?
An IPS panel is certainly neat, but as you can't really use the ipad for anything that actually demands that kind of screen
You mean like viewing photos and showing it to people who may not be standing directly in front of it? Because the primary benefits of IPS are better color, and greater viewing angle.
Of course, it's not just photos which will benefit. Video, web, and pretty much anything you will see on the screen (and given that you're presumably going to be looking at the screen while you use it, that's pretty much everything) will benefit.
Because some times people with disposable income are willing to pay extra for a product that does particular things well. I could cook my dinner every night on piece of plate steel over a firepit, but I still thought it made sense to buy some nice pots and pans, and a slow cooker, and a microwave, etc.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.