Slashdot Mirror
How Google Can Make Android Truly Tablet-Worthy
With an Android armada on the horizon (or at least expected), reader androidtablet plugs this piece on ways Android could be truly tablet-friendly. Armchair engineering may be easy to knock, but I like the ideas presented here, such as aggressively using the inactive (locked) screen state to display useful information.
I was thinking I would offer some features an Android tablet might need. I made a list:
Share screen - for educational purposes
Ebook reader.
Internet browser
Citrix client
IRDA capture/replay (media remote control apps)
Skype
Apparently I'm not very creative. Those things and many thousands more are available in the standard package. Truly inventive stuff is offerred in the app store.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Wouldn't it be better for Google make Android 100% perfect as a phone OS before branching out into other areas?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Apple's "fuck whatever you're doing and quit" key is stupidest UI decision ever made.
If you ask most people, they wish they had that button on absolutely every device they have to use.
The "lockscreen" is the screen you see when you start up the phone from inactivity, or a powered-off screen. When the screen powers on, the lock screen is the first thing you see. You unlock it, whether via button, via some "intuitive" slide-to-unlock gesture, or some pattern or lock pin, to go to whatever application you left at. So by "aggressive use of the locked screen", they are just saying, "Dammit! Allow us to customize it," or they're saying put more useful information there. They mention widgets, so it's logical to say they want customization. Honestly, I think they just want a prettier clock and an animated battery "charging" widget. Oh, and maybe Tetris as a widget. Wouldn't that be awesome?
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"
All these demo unit's/available in China, I just want one now!
2.2 minimum, tegra would be nice, standard usb socket to charge (as well as another one to drop in cradle for hdmi output I guess), bluetooth keyboard support as standard so I can use a keyboard with it if I want to, or just lug around without and use the onscreen one if I have to.
Done.
I've got a credit card warmed up and ready to use for something like that. Why all this 1.5/1.6 stuff?
Seems to be true that there's alot of Android Tablets inc, heck, they were showing dozens of them off before Apple even admitted they had a tablet
I do have some fears.
It appears if you've got a non-Google phone, updates are looking risky. As much as the new Dell tablets ones look neat, if Google(htc) brought their own out, I'd probably go for that with a better expectation that it'll be supported for later updates.
Whats the Chome Tablet for? Seems odd for them to fracture their own market when Android seems great and well suited for a tablet. Can the Chrome browser just be chucked on an existing Android platform to give people more choice?
But yeah, if the Dell tablets were going on sale tomorrow at Best Buy, I'd be typing this out on my G1 camped outside.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
The tablets available previously were laptop computers running lightly modified desktop operating systems and applications. Consequently, that's what people tried to use them for. They were not very good at it.
The iPad doesn't pretend to be a laptop replacement, it's for web browsing, casual gaming and media playing with maybe a little light note taking. It's using an OS which is designed specifically for the job. Also, love it or hate it, the iPhone did revolutionise the design of touch interfaces - if you can't see how everything since has copied it then you need stronger glasses.
People describe the iPad as "just a big iPod Touch" as if that were a criticism - I bought an iPad because that was exactly what I wanted. Most of the haters are evaluating it as if it were a small PC.
Its also closer to the original Netbook concept, while Netbooks themselves have morphed into entry-level laptops because they could run desktop software, and there wasn't a lot of alternative net book-friendly software. The iPad arrives with a good developer base, lots of available apps and no option to stick Windows or Ubuntu on it...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
If you ask most people, they wish they had that button on absolutely every device they have to use.
That button is standard on most phones, including all Android phones.
What Apple is missing is the "go back", "search", and "show me my options" buttons. Those functions are inconsistent among many iPhone and iPad apps.
Actually, Apple timed this product just right. The appeal of tablets have been clear for years, it's just that the technological infrastructure wasn't good enough and the implementations were lousy. Windows tablets anyone? I have one, and I almost never use it as a tablet.
If you look at the iPod, iPhone and iPad, they're all cases where Apple chose the right time to capture the second mover advantage. It's a natural role for a company driven by a perfectionist like Jobs who sees the mistakes the first generation products make and does not repeat them.
Now if things go true to form, the third generation competitors will scramble for scraps from Apple's table by copying whatever they can, repeating the mistakes made in the first generation products, and trying to come up with bullets for a side by side comparison. It'll take several iterations before a credible competitor to the iPad emerges.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Apple has a very dedicated herd of followers who buy everything Apple throws at them.
Turn the hate down from 11 and think about why that is. My personal story is that after supporting a series of clunky laptops at home, Vista made me reluctantly buy the wifey a MacBook Air. Wow. Her experience with that made me replace my latest in a series of problematic Belkin routers with a Time Capsule (wireless N with automatic backups). She broke a MBA hinge and because we were no longer supported I got her a MacBook. After 11 months Apple decided to fix the MBA hinge at no charge. Wow. Then I got her a 2G iphone (which at the time the RAZR was the top selling phone for three years). Wow. Then came the 3G and I got one for myself (I got tired of rebooting the work HTC 8500 to make a phone call). Then the 3GS. Got one for myself and gave the 3G to the wifey because she dropped the 2G into a glass of tea. The iPhone makes me use my desktop only infrequently. My work laptop now stays at work. I bought and returned a Windows 7 netbook. Wow (in a bad way). Then the iPad came out (wow) and I got the wifey one and now she only uses her laptop to type meeting minutes and reports. Now that we have kids there is no screen to open, no laptop to lug around with both hands, and no keyboard for the monkeys to lunge at. I bought an old used eMac just like the one the girls use at school ($200US). I look around the house and see all the Apples and wonder what the hell happened, and then realize I wouldn't change a thing.
To do all this I gave up the features that are important to you but got features that turned out to be important to me. I paid more than I would have using the other technologies but they also sold at a higher rate. So I'm in the herd. With the options today, if I was buying my first phone I don't know if it would be an iPhone. But at each point in time what I purchased was the right one for me as compared to the other options.
Example: Brilliant industrial engineering and packaging.
No, just luxury components and packaging. You pay for it. Brilliant would be to deliver the iPad for $199.
Example: High Quality IPS screen: Apple is using a better screen here than practically every product shown so far.
Yes, they buy expensive and high end components. Your point?
Example: Battery life. Apple engineer it to use the lowest power envelop possible
Same thing: they use expensive components.
Example: Capacitive multi-touch. Many competitors are single touch resistive (Yuk).
The choice between resistive and capacitive is not so clearcut. Capacitive is good for fingers, resistive is good for pens. iPad and iPhone are lousy for drawing, and handwriting input is a no-go. I hope someone will start making Android tablets with resistive input (or Wacom or hybrid input) because the Apple iPad input sucks for anything other than poking at oversized on-screen buttons.
Example: HW/SW integration. This is the special sauce that make enables them to build something that is greater than the sum of its parts.
There's nothing "special" about it; it's marketing fluff. iPhone batter life, screens, hardware integration, etc. is no better than on the Droid or the X10 or any of numerous other phones, and those cost much less.
So I would like a more open tablet with and SD-Slot/USB port, but I serious don't think we will have anything with remotely as good technology (Screen/digitizer/battery life/industrial engineering/HW-SW integration) all in one package for a long time to come.
The reason you won't see anything like that is not because other companies don't know how to build these kinds of machines, but because their customers aren't willing to pay as much.
To say Apple is just branding and not technology is completely ridiculous. Did you take any time to consider the technology and execution before you made that claim?
Yes, I did. Nothing you say contradicts what I said: Apple is a luxury brand delivering a luxury product made from premium components. They do use new technology, but most of that they just buy elsewhere.
The reason their competitors don't compete with Apple is not because they don't know how to, but because it's not rational to compete with Apple for a small part of the market. Google, Microsoft, Nokia, HTC and others are going for the mass market.