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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.
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
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?)
What's really newsworthy here is that the competition is between Apple and Google, Microsoft is nowhere to be found.
I don't know if "Microsoft maintains its 30-year tradition of not entering the consumer PC market" really counts as "newsworthy."
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
It lasted 50 years, and turned a backwards agrarian society into a world superpower and put the first man in space.
you're not looking hard enough. Apple and Google both license ActiveSync from Microsoft. Every iphone, ipod touch and ipad has a fully licensed ActiveSync client that you pay for even if you don't use Exchange email. all the iSecurity features Apple hypes are just ActiveSync features and MS code. iPhone OS 4 is going to support Exchange 2010.
Google licenses it as well, but so far only for Google Docs. if this iGoogle pad will have document transfer then it will be MS code and patents running it. a lot of people do buy Touchdown from the marketplace which is a fully licensed ActiveSync client
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.
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.
Just because a 'niche' is old, it doesn't mean it is pointless. Sometimes old technology can be reshaped and innovated upon, providing a solution that finds a market today when it didn't in the past. There are reasons that technologies fail, including lack of maturity, market not being ready or lack of supporting technologies. The Wii Remote was laughed at for being a modern light pointer, now Microsoft and Sony are doing their best to emulate it. You can't simply right off technology as being old and thus irrelevant.
Microsoft didn't succeed with tablet PCs, partly because like Windows CE, they were trying to shoe-horn a desktop UI into something that would benefit from an adapted UI. To use the automobile analogy: you don't design a car by starting with boat that uses an outboard motor. Computers are the same.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Umm, no we can't.
You compare devices that keep trying to make a desktop OS on tablet HW work. A method which has previously failed several times. To a device that uses an OS from a popular cell phone that was designed from the ground up to be touch enabled.
While Android was designed for cell phone use. The interface was intentionally left wide open to make it usable on a wide range of HW. There's nothing wrong with that. I think it's great. Problem is that it allows different manufacturers to put their own UI on it which when combined with the variety of HW, makes it harder on developers to ensure that their software works as they intended on every device.
Usability will trump capability with consumers. No matter how "superior" the capabilities are. i.e. It's the interface stupid.
I want to shoot the messenger!
This isn't about any of your anti ranting. It's not about you, me, or "people that will buy whatever Steve tells them they need and hype it for him endlessly?".
It's about a pretty good product people want. Not your dreams or anyone elses particularly. There is no need to attempt to brand purchasers of a _thing_ a fanboy, a hero, or a sheep. It just is and this convo is a waste of energy.
It's (the iPad) a great little device, it doesn't blow smoke up my ass and it doesn't do everything but damn it has been nice to have.
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.
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
"Magical and revolutionary" I guess doesn't score high on your bullshitometer. Isn't it funny how people develop blinders for brand loyalty?
http://www.apple.com/ipad/
iPad
A magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.
Starting at $499