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Google Preparing iPad Rival?
dazedNconfuzed noted an update in the ongoing rumor train about the Google iPad Competitor. It would be based on Android (not ChromeOS) and supposedly Eric Schmidt was telling people about it at a party in LA recently. If any Googlers want to leak me s3cr3t information, I promise anonymity, though without an actual product, price or date it's tough to get really excited. But the iPad clearly has significant limitations that someone else can capitalize on.
You can already buy it.
Could be the Enzo zenPad. Pure vapourware.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/09/ensos-zenpad-is-vaporware-get-refunds-while-they-last/
What's really newsworthy here is that the competition is between Apple and Google, Microsoft is nowhere to be found. It's temping to declare that their relevance has hit a new low. Competition is good, regardless of which side you're on, but it's really, really nice to see Microsoft no longer be competitive in a market.
Really hoping this rumor is true - not that I need to buy another "pad" device (yes, I stood in line for an iPad) - but I'd really like to see how the Closed vs. Open platform models play out. Best case: Apple revises its Closed stance in response to a thriving gPad ecosystem.
I really like my iProducts, but having been a proponent of open platforms for so long I am uneasy at the tight hold Apple holds over developers and users.
For example, why hasn't Apple approved the Opera Mini yet? I'd welcome a choice in browsers, personally.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
The alternative is that they produce the HW themselves, but we saw what happens when they do that (Nexus One).
But Nexus One is manufactured by HTC
Apple is selling a phone with outdated hardware (screen size and type, low screen resolution, bad camera etc), while Android vendors continuously improve the hardware - look at Samsung Galaxy S specs, for example. The same will hopefully be true for android MIDs
By the way, I own nexus one, and with the right firmware (latest cyanogenmod with UV kernel), it's a great phone.
Apple revives a ten year old niche that no one really liked for reasons that are still entirely relevant, and now it is speculated that Google will compete with a Google-style "open" alternative. It was interesting when their battle was over smartphones, but when it is over shoveling out pointless generic consumer electronics, it is not.
I have an iPad. I liked it, until I tried to compose a blog post. Mobile Safari doesn't support content-editable fields.
Typing HTML code into textareas in order to compose blog posts and web pages is NOT fun. Google Docs doesn't work. and rich HTML in Gmail or other webmail services doesn't work. There are HTML editor apps, but that doesn't mean what I think it means, because they are all code editors not rich text editors.
The bottom line is that Apple supports rich text output in PDF and proprietary formats, but not HTML. Not even a little bit.
Everyone has their own priorities, of course, but until Mobile Safari supports tinyMCE and other rich text editors, I have to consider the iPad a toy. Then again, it's perfect for posting on Slashdot! (And it even supports unicode, so why should I complain?)
a device with those specs and 3G would be receiving much more noise than, well... none
Well, clearly it's the wrong story. "Company releases new multi-touch tablet device with accelerometers and 3g capabilities." That thing fizzles at the gate.
"Apple releases magical and revolutionary device with mindblowing features. It will change the future of media and the planet, and it's glory will echo throughout eternity!" Send out the skin tight girl jeans, put on some popular music and a novel graphic overlay. Hey, you just made a billion dollars!
That's why you need marketing departments. They are depraved human beings, but someone has to polish the turds.
Archos has been making an Android based tablet for some time now well before the iPad came out. Of course Microsoft has been trying to sell various tablets for years since Pen Windows plus various WinCE devices, UMPCs, Windows XP tablets etc.. Universal reaction tablets are dumb and waste of money. Steve Job's throws on his magic turtleneck and tells everyone "This is a magical device. I am really proud of the team. I really think your going to love it." And people go stand in line to get a tablet. Umm so can we all just agree there is a certain group of people that will buy whatever Steve tells them they need and hype it for him endlessly? Sorry folks but you who behave this way represent an abnormality and are not really representative you are iPeople.
Did you miss CES when a dozen Android tablets were announced? Did you not notice the multiple android tablets that were released this month and last month?
How come when Apple does something people take notice. But when a hundred others go through more traditional channels such as trade shows people who think they are industry insiders don't have a clue?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I can tell you all there is to know. It will have 4 cameras, 2 on both side, for 3D video conferencing. Obviously the display is 3D as well. It will have a number of sniffers to detect chemicals. It has more than one so that you can easily detect who it was that farted in the elevator. A 3D holographic arrow will pop up to tell you! The sniffed data is used to automatically update your twitter and facebook accounts. It will have 4g, WiMax, WiFi, and Token Ring networking support. The touchscreen display can give tactile feedback, making an onscreen display feel like real. Obviously it has uses in internet porn as well.
Most importantly, the product is not only free, Google will pay you to use it. In return you will give Google the rights to all data the device collects or sends. In order to unlock the device though you have to brand the google logo on your buttocks.
My sig will be released in 2015 third quarter. Rating pending.
It lasted 50 years, and turned a backwards agrarian society into a world superpower and put the first man in space.
I believe that Google should spare no expense in SOLID build quality. Even if it's expensive, a high-resolution, magnesium-cased, tough, PADD-style device would make Android the platform with clearly the BEST tablet device. Put the best of everything into it; cameras, good speakers. Enough to mesmerize the tech journalists. Other, more reasonable, price-points would benefit from being in that market.
It also butchered it's own people by the 10's of millions.
Russia also wasn't quite as backwards as you're trying to make it out to be.
Their big problem was being a corrupt inbred aristocracy rather than being primitive.
Also, Russia put their first man in space the same way the US did: captured German rocket scientists.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
But the iPad clearly has significant limitations that someone else can capitalize on.
Yeah, less memory than a Nomad.
When was the last time that a /. opinion on anything counted for something? The track record of this community on what the greatest thing ever is and what will fail is not exactly stellar.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It lasted 50 years, and turned a backwards agrarian society into a world superpower and put the first man in space.
Pre Soviet Russia was not a backwards agrarian society, any more than other states were.
It was never a world super power, but it was a nuclear one, driven by fear after being driven by hate.
The soviets were so powerful, they signed a pact with Nazi Germany, and offered many congratulations to Hitler, each time he domino'd a single state, including france. And during this time it decided to get a bloody nose picking on Finland.
Afterwards, when the panzers rolled across these so called previous agrarian lands, the soviets screamed for a second front from people it had cast into the fires of history to be crushed while it stood by and watched (and in the case of Poland, decided to go join the fun.)
Despite all is supposed power, it spread a failed political doctrine far and wide, caused untold damage to the planet, and now 1 in 5 people have an AK47, and a higher percentage have failed and weak governments. It never got true amphibious power, and spent the whole cold war in agressive posture, yet never able to make a move, failing in the end because of its own weight, and inability to go on.
And this summary does not count the millions killed and enslaved and left in misery by this comparitive short period in human history.
Oh don't worry, You won't quit publishing garbage, because its what good socialist and communists do.
We`re all equal
Jobs: If you see a stylus or a task manager, 'they blew it'
Google: If you see a proprietary, locked-down OS and App Store which may not support your model in three years, 'they [Apple] blew it'
There is so much potential to blow the iPad out of the water:
- Dual cameras for video Skyping,
- non-Integrated obsolescence (at least not having your hardware vendor determine what updates you get)
- Open App store
- Google voice / Apps.
Though I still think that the most open phone platform is still Maemo5/Meego. There are rumors to the affect that Nokia is also planning a tablet... But Nokia's execution has always left something to be desired. (In what they envision isn't want is actually delivered)
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Pre Soviet Russia was not a backwards agrarian society, any more than other states were.
I'm afraid that it was. The communist revolution leaders (e.g. Lenin, Trotsky) had to make major philosophical changes to Marx's theories to accommodate the fact that the bulk of the people were "peasants" and not "working class." It was under Stalin that the Soviet Union really industrialized.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
It is utterly ironic that the debate about openness has been twisted into one of elites vs honest folk. These anti-elistist sentiments are so powerful they drive much of American politics and scientific backlash (e.g. creationism). Moreover, Apple - long seen as the maker of elitist products for snobbish users - has been recast as the ally of the common man (or grandmother). If I were a PR manager for Apple I could not hope to do better.
There is definitely a strong strand of elitism among technical folk, from the the old idea that users are losers to the incredible resistance to ease-of-use I remember from the 1990s ("If they can't use a command line I don't want them using my software). A lot of technology really is obtusely designed; the people who get frustrated (which is to say all of us) are not stupid. Tying the open vs closed debate to this experience of disrespect and frustration, and the wider discourse of elite domination by entities from bankers to bureaucrats, is very effective for evoking (legitimate) emotional responses, passing over the need to make thorough arguments.
Because the linkage is wrong. There is no necessary connection between something being open and it being hard to use. The iPad is easy to use and it is relatively closed. That is correlation, not causation. Apple is simply very good at designing (and marketing) the user experience. This ability seems to be rare among its competitors.
There is a historical precedent for a more open system that turned out to be easier to use than what it (partly) replaced. You allude to it in your post. The Web was a huge step up in intuitive usability compared to the desktop software that had previously performed many of its functions. It was also a huge step up in terms of capability (compare searching Wikipedia to searching Britannica). And it is open. Too open, in fact, for the iPad and its prohibitions on running interpreted code. Fortunately for today, it is already established and was granted a special exemption. If the iPad lockdown had been the norm 20 years ago, the Web might never have been invented. If lockdown is the norm in the future, the next huge improvement in usability and functionality might not happen.
I am fully confident that Apple has the talents to develop an easy-to-use and open system. (After all, my computers are Macs.) But the temptation for control is hard to resist. Especially when you can remake yourself as the computer of the people with that wonderful anti-elistism PR.
Uh, wrong. The Russian Empire was - compared to the rest of Europe - a backwards agrarian state with a huge percentage of illiterates, almost no industrial base (nearly all machines had to be imported from Britain and Germany), crazy cultists who've cutted off their own dicks and an absolute monarchy comparable to the French monarchy just before the revolution.
Also wrong. The pact was only because both Germany and the Soviet Union were isolated by the rest of the world.
Poland likes itself in the victim role, but the truth is that Poland itself has invaded the USSR in the 1919, occupying western Ukraine, a huge part of Belarus and a good half of Lithuania. The division of Poland between Nazi Germany and the USSR was pretty much the revenge.
The rest of your argumentation is even more laughable (OMG the evil communist AK47!!!1111one one one eleven)
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
What an interesting mismatch of fact, propaganda, and ignorance.
Where to start?
* Pre soviet Russia, was very backwards. Look at their performance in WW I where they showed up with ancient weaponry.
* It was a super power, no other way to describe a country that controlled half of the world, put the first man & satellite in space and was capable of destroying the world umpteen times over.
* Yes, it was a super power *AFTER* WW I, not before or during.
* And finally, being a super power doesn't mean you are a nice guy. If that's a requirement to super power, then yes it was not a super power.
I neither endorse nor condone any violent actions the Soviet Union performed during its history, but your account was just too messed up to leave un commented upon.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
It has not. Simply by the fact that the USSR was able to sustain the population after the second world war. FYI the soviet losses in the WW2 were about 20 millions. The total population of the whole USSR was about 100 millions in 1920ies. If there really were tens of millions butchered then by 1945 the USSR would have a population of 50 millions or less. Frankly, it was not the case.
And yes, russian empire was as backwards as it gets.
The Russian populace at 1920 was around 137,727,000 , so you can quit lying.
On 26 January 1934 Joseph Stalin reported to the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party as one of the main achievements "Growth of population from 160.5 millions in the end of 1930 to the 168 millions in the end of 1933". On 1 December 1935 Joseph Stalin made a speech, on the Meeting of Kolkhozniks with the Soviet and Party leaders:
“ Everybody says that the material situation of workers has dramatically improved, that life has become better and more fun. It is of course true. But this has led the population to breed much faster than in the old days. The birth rate is higher, the death rate is lower and the pure population growth is far stronger. It is of course good and we welcome it. [Jolly murmurs in the auditorium.] Now every year we have a population growth of three million souls. It means that every year we grow as much as the whole of Finland. [Everybody laughs.] ”
Combining his reports, one could have expected to have a population of about 180 million in 1937.
Official statistics based on the registered birth and death rates implied that the 1937 census should show a population of 170-172 million. On 21 September 1935 Sovnarkom adopted a decision On the organization of registration of natural population changes most probably authored by Stalin
Stalin's population growth, meant that he enforced a change in the agrarian system - one that was implemented by force and was focused on the Kulaks and 'mechanised farming'
According to data from Soviet archives, which were published in 1990, 1,803,392 people were sent to labour colonies and camps in 1930 and 1931. Books say that 1,317,022 reached the destination. The remaining 486,370 may have died or escaped.
In the region of 24 million people, civilian and military were lost in WW2, but you can add in plenty there was killed by their own side, in the red human sausage machine.
Afterwards, millions were enslaved, and sent or killed by the regime, and stalin's words ever echo in the imphamy of history;
"One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic".
The butchering of people by the 10's of millions might be an expression too far, but millions fits, and thats before any expression about the misery caused to the rest of the populations involved in soviet misery
We`re all equal
Please, just stop talking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#USSR
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_pogroms
Orwell was an optimist.
I don't care whether Google prepares an iPad rival. A whole bunch of new Linux tablets are coming, likewise a whole bunch of "smartbooks" (netbook computers with non-x86 processors).
I'm really excited about the nVidia Tegra 2 chip. Typical power dissipation of about 500 milliWatts, 8 cores: ARM7 "housekeeping" core, dual 1GHz ARM9 processing cores, audio core, graphics accelerator core, video encode core, video decode core, and "image processing" core (which will support a high-resolution camera). nVidia showed off prototype smartbooks with a Tegra 2 playing HD video, and claimed that the chip was dissipating 150 milliWatts; elsewhere I have seen 500 milliWatts as the typical number.
I'm also excited about the Pixel Qi screen. That's the same display technology from the OLPC. A nice-looking display that dissipates 2 Watts when the backlight is on, and about 0.2 Watts with the backlight disabled. If you want to sit outside in the bright sun, you turn the backlight off and you get a nice, readable, sharp display that's very suitable for ebooks and web surfing, but you could watch movies that way too if you wanted.
A typical Atom system dissipates 15 to 20 Watts while operating. That's why netbooks need cooling fans. A Tegra 2/Pixel Qi system ought to have tremendous battery life, especially with the backlight off, and won't need a cooling fan. Win/win.
So, what I want is a tablet and a smartbook with a Tegra 2 and a Pixel Qi screen. I want Linux, but that's no problem, because Windows doesn't even run on a Tegra 2, and I don't think anybody is going to ship a Windows CE tablet. And I insist on a device with USB ports: I want to be able to plug in a keyboard, a mouse, a memory card reader, or USB storage devices.
I imagine that Acer and Asus will both ship products I will want. But the actual announced product I know about is the Notion Ink Adam tablet: Tegra 2 chip, Pixel Qi screen, capacitive multitouch touchscreen, Android OS. It also has an intriguing feature: a trackpad on the back of the device, which allows you to use Flash applications that were designed for use with a mouse (you use a finger on the back to drag the cursor around, and tap on the front with your other hand to click the mouse). It also has a camera that can be flipped around to point at you, away from you, or in between. It was originally announced for June, but recent news casts doubt on that.
By the way, one reason why tablets are the hot new form factor: people who see something that looks like a notebook computer expect it to run Windows, but people who see a tablet device have no expectations. So, there will probably be more tablets than smartbooks.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Imagine the situation like this:
Google would have brought out the ipad.
Afterwards Microsoft would ready its rival - trying to copy all the best things from the ipad.
Do you think MS would get the same positive (or even lukewarm) reception here? Nope - it would be 'Redmond's "innovating" (i.e. copying/stealing/plagiarising) again!!'...
But because this time it's google doing it: Hey! It's all fine! I hope it will have a bigger screen, better xyz, more foo-bar, additional ...
Note: I love linux - I have used it since early slackware days - but with the ipad, apple has done something, noone has succeeded at yet, and immediately we applaud if someone else tries to build a clone.
Note 2: The same, btw. is true between open and closed source. If closed-source comes up with something open source has done first - oohh - bad guys!
But when plex86 (first attempt at a vmware clone) was 'announced': "Yay! Go, open source!".
The Soviets used far fewer and less knowledgeable Nazis and they abandoned them much sooner than the USA. To suggest that the Russian space program was a German affair is incorrect. By the time they sent the first man into space they didn't use any significant German scientists.
My thoughts exactly - there are other tablets around, and there's no need to give free hype to Apple even when we're covering other products (for once) by calling them "iWhatever Rival/Killer/etc". It was bad enough with the Iphone (who cares about rivalling Apple, when there are loads of bigger companies in that market?) It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - these products aren't compared to Apple because of anything to do with Apple, it simply results from the media always comparing to Apple in the first place.
Or maybe we could just quit with the astroturfing and say "Google Preparing Tablet Computer". This is supposed to be a place for geeks - we know what products like mp3 players, phones and tablets are, without needing to be told in terms of brand names. (Was the news of Google releasing ChromeOS announced with "Google Preparing Windows Rival (or worse, OS X Rival)"? Was Firefox announced as being an "Internet Explorer Rival?" Was the first Iphone announced as being a "Windows Mobile Rival"?)