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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.
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?)
I don't think either will "win." They are two worlds with two different goals.
Apple's model will always compromise developer flexibility when user experience is at stake. Google's model will always compromise user experience when developer flexibility is at stake.
People will choose based on what is important to them.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
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."
Totally agree. This is totally exemplified by dmesg0's comment above: "By the way, I own nexus one, and with the right firmware (latest cyanogenmod with UV kernel), it's a great phone." Do you really think that Apple would ever let it's users deal with something that nerdy? It's a totally different target audience. The iPhone/iPad is about simplifying things so much that the actual hardare gets out of your way. Android is more about tinkering and spec sheets and more nerdy goods. If you look at the iPad's spec sheet on the Apple webpage it doesn't even show the GPU or RAM! What nerd on earth would ever stand for buying a product with no RAM numbers given? Different strokes for different folks. It is 100% obvious that the iPad was not created for Slashdotters. It was created for Slashdotters parents, grandparents and sisters or anyone else who has come to a Slashdotter wondering why "the internet doesn't work".
Apple's model will always compromise developer flexibility when user experience is at stake. Google's model will always compromise user experience when developer flexibility is at stake.
People will choose based on what is important to them.
That's the most succinct and accurate synopsis of these two companies I've ever seen. Give this man a cookie.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
It lasted 50 years, and turned a backwards agrarian society into a world superpower and put the first man in space.
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.
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 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
So Apple targets people who aren't really interested in doing anything that Apple doesn't allow. ... They're a successful company that now makes a fortune from limiting peoples' options.
What's amazing to me is how persistent this meme is on Slashdot, of all places.
I bought *my* mac because it came with gcc, perl, apache, CUPS, and X-windows pre-installed on an open source Unix kernel. As a result, I could install just about anything on it.
You'd think that would count for something around here.
For those of you who haven't beaten yourself with a cluestick recently, the closed platform is not Apple; it is iTunes. This is Apple's variant of Xbox Live or Playstation Network, nothing more. You want onto an online media service that is integrated with your hardware, pick one of these, buy the appropriate gadget, and quit your whining. Want an online media service that doesn't integrate with your hardware, then get a multi-purpose computer, roll up your sleeves, and roll your own.