Computex 2010 Tablet PC Round-Up With Video

MojoKid writes "At Computex 2010, devices like the Eee Pad and Eee Tablet were all the rage. Of course the bulk of these were Intel Atom-based systems, but there were a number of NVIDIA Tegra 2-based models in the mix as well. What is glaringly apparent on all of these tablets — and absent on the iPad — are the multitude of connectivity options built into them, like USB ports, flash card readers, and video output ports. Obviously, from a hardware perspective, the iPad is a sexy device; but Apple's true mastery is that of the user interface. The first big player that steps up with something competitive to Apple in that regard will have the pole position in 2010's race for the hot re-emergent tablet market." Reader Raikus adds an opinionated summary of winners and losers at "Tabletpalooza," i.e. Computex 2010.

Comments

Interesting quote from the summary

[DJRumpy]

I think it would be more accurate to say that Apple already has the pole position (no pun intended), and that any new competitors would be the runner up until proven otherwise.

"The first big player that steps up with something competitive to Apple in that regard will have the pole position in 2010's race for the hot re-emergent tablet market."

Re:Interesting quote from the summary

[Space cowboy]

Neither. It's mainly purchased due to a desire to conform to what the majority have, mainly for interoperability with others (work, gamers, ...). It's purchased because it has the majority of marketshare.

It's tough to make the same claim when Apple went from zero phones in 2007 to what they have today, or the introduction of the iPad which again went from 0 to todays 2 million in a matter of weeks.

Simon.

Re:Interesting quote from the summary

[MarkvW]

That's a ridiculously argumentative question based on a false dichotomy.

I don't buy Windows because it's technically the best AND I don't buy it because it has the best marketing team. I buy Windows because it runs Adobe CS5 and Ableton, and because I am familiar with the Windows interface. Doubtless, other people buy Windows for different reasons.

If your false dichotomy truly represented the only two reasons why people purchase Windows, open source systems would have no trouble displacing Windows.

Fanboi is a modern synonym for eunuch.

Re:Interesting quote from the summary

[FuckingNickName]

or the introduction of the iPad which again went from 0 to todays 2 million in a matter of weeks.

That's the best evidence of good marketing I've come across. It's an unproven device which few people had even seen, let alone had the chance to try out, yet preorders and early orders came in by the hundreds of thousands.

People want to conform to a majority brand: the Apple brand offers social interoperability. No-one does real work on an Apple iDevice - they're for the guy in Starbucks always writing his first bestseller, taken mainstream. If you think you're the exception, you're on the spaceship with the management consultants (how I miss '70s and '80s Apple..).

Re:Interesting quote from the summary

[node 3]

That's the best evidence of good marketing I've come across. It's an unproven device which few people had even seen, let alone had the chance to try out, yet preorders and early orders came in by the hundreds of thousands.

In stores, before you buy an iPad, you can try one. Even before the iPad was announced, you would have experience of the OS from the iPhone. And ultimately, you can return it, if it doesn't meet your expectations.

There's absolutely no way whatsoever Apple's current success can have been achieved primarily by marketing. For marketing to work, long-term, you have to have a great product behind it.

People want to conform to a majority brand: the Apple brand offers social interoperability.

Apple had zero smartphones sold just three years ago. Now they have tens of millions. These people all bought iPhones because it was already a majority consumer brand?

No-one does real work on an Apple iDevice - they're for the guy in Starbucks always writing his first bestseller, taken mainstream.

I can guarantee you more "real work" is done on iOS than on Android OS. But it's a silly metric to use, unless you think that people should only own things that are used for "real work", or that the iPad is primarily targeted as a device for "real work".

"Real work" (whatever that means) is still primarily the role of the PC (whether Windows or Mac). The iPad is useful to augment "real work", but isn't something that's yet set to replace the PC for that purpose. Which is why no one every says it should, outside of those that use it as a reason to put it down.

Re:Interesting quote from the summary

[hairyfeet]

The iPod sold because the other PMPs at the time sucked ass or blew chunk, your choice. One thing I'll give old Steve credit for, he may be an asshole, but that man knows how to get a good UI designed. The players at the time had craploads of buttons, usually menus upon submenus, nothing at all was intuitive or was where you would expect it to be, frankly they all sucked.

As for the other iDevices, never underestimate herd mentality. Sure they work great, nothing wrong with them that I know of, but when my 67 year old dad, who is about as clueless as they come and is about as "cutting edge" as a stone age hammer, says he is thinking about an iPhone cause some of his friends have them and they "look spiffy"? yeah, don't underestimate herd mentality or keeping up with the Joneses. On a positive note, I've been getting all his tech fad hand me downs since he got a Trash 80 when they were all over the TV, so if he wants to play with a new shiny, who am I to stop him? ;-)

Re:Interesting quote from the summary

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Be aware, though, that(contrary to expectations developed in using PCs, including the OSX-running ones), iPad VGA out doesn't just automatically mirror the internal screen. Support is per-application, and at the application developer's sole discretion. Oh the sob stories from people planning to use the netflix app on a large screen...

Maybe so

[osgeek]

The first big player that steps up with something competitive to Apple in that regard

Haven't prognosticators been saying this exact same thing for years about the iPod and the iTunes store?

The song goes something like this: "We've got hardware! It's got MIPS and ports and pixels and gigabytes! All we need now is easy to use software. See that word 'easy'? That must mean it's EASY to build."

As a geek, I'm not interested in an iPad because it's missing hardware options, but to the regular consumer the shiny, easy, hip user experience is everything.

Re:iPhad; hardware is sexy?

[TinBromide]

ditto, the average person wants something that he can poke at and make work. If it's as simple as the interface that biologists provide monkeys in research cells, all the better. He wants to poke at the red square and get a treat, or when he wants other treat, poke at the blue one. Uneducated users are afraid of the unknown, and software that they would have to test and use themselves to determine the quality of is well beyond their knowledge base (unknown = bad). Unless something has been vetted through nerds (us) who have the knowledge and expertise to know quality, OR everybody and their mother uses it, it's unknown and only potentially not ungood.

Unfortunately, until some manufacturer comes out with something that is simple (red square = treat) and as good (face it, the iphone/ipad is quality-ish hardware and its interface does work), the apple products will continue. Just because it lacks a few features that 75% of the population doesn't use (only we wish that we could hook up a keyboard or mouse, everyone will continue to be happy jabbing at the screen instead of jabbing at a keyboard), doesn't mean that something that you can be more productive on will dethrone it.

Re:iPhad; hardware is sexy?

[PIPBoy3000]

For the majority of consumers, the biggest thing you can do with a tablet form factor is to drop the price.

Re:iPhad; hardware is sexy?

[gyrogeerloose]

only we wish that we could hook up a keyboard or mouse

You can connect an iPod to a keyboard--either Apple's own unit or any standard Bluetooth keyboard will work. No joy on a mouse, though. The touch interface doesn't support one.

USB Ports on Tablets

[billstewart]

You must have one of those special iPads, then - the ones Steve Jobs is selling have a Dock Connector Port, though you can hang a cable with a USB connector off of that, or plug into a dock. It's not part of the tablet itself, it's an external device, so it's annoying at best if you're trying to connect things to a tablet as opposed to a desktop-mounted thing. Also, I can't tell from the documentation how many of those things you can use simultaneously - obviously you can't use the Dock-to-VGA cable and the Dock-to-USB cable at the same time, but if you've got the Dock or Keyboard Dock, can you use both the VGA and the USB at once? It doesn't look like it.

With USB, if the device only has one port (boring), you can hang a powered hub off it to support keyboard, mouse, Ethernet adapter, etc, but AFAIK there's no equivalent fanout for Dock ports. So your iPad battery had better be charged up before you use it with an external screen, and you'd better have a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and Wifi.

It's one thing for Apple to try to use proprietary connectors to keep you locked in to Apple's world. But it's another thing entirely to be Not User Friendly as a result, or to be Ugly and Klunky instead of Insanely Cool-Looking.

Re:iPhad; hardware is sexy?

[Concerned Onlooker]

No, people CAN handle choices. And they're choosing the iPad.

Re:iPhad; hardware is sexy?

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

Wow, a blatant troll at +3 insightful. Well, I suppose it only takes a handful of mods.

1. There is nothing sexy about a crippled CPU with no connectivity.

There is something intriguing, and perhaps sexy from the right viewpoint, about a device that responds instantly and smoothly to your input, and which has consumer-level (finished) applications that look gorgeous. A device that was nothing but "shiny" would have no, or few, practical applications, and any consumer level app is or can be considered a "practical application"--it's something you would pay money to do, use, or have. Or, well, not any, I guess, but I think the size of the market supposes pretty clearly, if only by sheer virtue of statistics, that there are in fact practical applications for it.

2. People can't handle choices. If you give them a device with only a few buttons, then it's like a microwave and they're happy.

I disagree with your oversimplification. A platform like Windows or Linux allows anyone who develops applications to say, "You need to be this geeky to install and use this application." This is by far one of the most straightforward, and yet it is somehow one of the most hotly debated, reversals of the iOS: they do not allow you to jump through hoops in order to get extra functionality, which means that the programmers either have to begrudgingly improve their GUI skills or limit functionality altogether.

The reason is simple--the people they're marketing to will go cross-eyed if you talk to them about a topic they would need to study for months or years to understand at the same level you would, and believe it or not, computers and programming are such a topic. If your life is already computer-centric, understanding computers is no big deal. If your life is centered around construction work, business deals, hair salons, clothing design, or any of the other (completely fucking legitimate) career paths out there, saying "You have to spend months learning computers before this $500 tablet and this particular $2 application become useful to you" is going to lose you customers.

If instead you tell those same customers, "We promise we won't let the programmers do anything that's going to confuse the crap out of you, for instance, try this $2 app that you can start using right away! And there are more that are just as easy!" you now have a customer, and probably more on the way

I mean, in some ways I feel you. I've been a computer user literally longer than I can remember, and the idea of having a tablet that can also have cron jobs and shell scripts running in the background is delicious. But no, dude, don't yell at the Norms for being Normal. Give it a year or two and there will be some kind of really excellent Linux tablet that does everything a geek could ever want. You don't have to try to turn this one into that miracle product. Just let it be.

Really?

[N0Man74]

I'm probably going to get modded down by fan boys for my blasphemy, but...

Lack of USB ports, card readers, and video outputs and the like are features? Seriously!?

You do realize that the reason that there are compatibility issues that exist within the PC world is not simply because of hardware options, but because of the fact that every single piece of the system is customizable. Every piece of hardware, every piece of software, and even the OS can be picked by a user. The more variables there are, the more possibility that there can be unexpected interactions.

However, if you have a locked down platform where you control the OS and the hardware that is present, then the chances of random compatibilities goes down incredibly. That's without even taking into account having control of the software too.

My XBox 360 has more hardware features than my Wii does, and amazingly I haven't had a single compatibility problem with it. My friend has no issues with his DSi, even though it has more hardware features than his old DS. I'm going to take a stab in the dark and guess that if Apple had added additional hardware features to their iPad, then the chances are they'd work without compatibility issues.

I think that one could argue legitimate reasons for exclusion of certain hardware exclusions. I might disagree, but reasonable arguments could be made. However this one just seems silly. I might have a lot of criticisms for Apple, but they seem to do well in quality control; I have faith that they could pull off hardware features that work.

Re:NO NO NO! BAD TABLET, BAD!

[Totenglocke]

Oh, so you have a bandolier of SD cards strapped around you, and you change "mags" a dozen times a day with your phone/tablet device? Why not just get the storage space you require, INTERNALLY?

Well, your beloved Apple limits the iPad to 64 GB (for way too much money) or a measly 16 GB which stores....well, not much. SD cards would fix that just fine - cell phones have been doing it for years.

If you want a file, why not email or otherwise FTP it to where you want? Rather than carrying things about on little bits of plastic? Or...do it all..."on the cloud"!

Once again, with your "email it" "solution", you're back to needing a second computer just to get a damn file. That's absurd and one of the major failings of the iPad. Secondly, if you want Google / MS / Apple / Other Big Company to have ALL of your personal files (pictures, home videos, word documents, everything) that not only they have access too but a mistake could mean you lose all of your files FOREVER, then to be blunt, you're a damn fool. A little extra convenience is NOT worth losing your privacy or potentially losing all of your files for.

Give me an example of an iPad competitor, thats in the market right now (pretty much worldwide too), that I could have bought instead of my iPad.

Well, you know, there's this thing called "impulse control" - you could start by learning some of that. Then you could wait a few weeks as the Android tablets flood the market. I know - researching before you buy something, it's a crazy idea!

We also have no Apple Stores, those damn attractive, ultra profitable stores, damn them! *shakes fist*

Please, go in one sometime when you're in the US. You'll never want to do business with Apple again. Everything about their stores (from the way the employees talk to customers to the giant displays they have with "tips") tells you blatantly that they think you are a complete moron. It's rather insulting, not to mention that Apple intentionally has about one store per 5 million potential customers, which ensures that you'll always have long waits.

I would personally assume the iPhone 4 is far better than the EVO, but I have actually used neither.

Making decisions about two products you've never used based purely off Lord Jobs' advertising. I can see now why you bought an iPad. I have an iPhone 3GS and I've used phones running Android 2.1. Android not only allows you to run whatever apps you want, to customize whatever apps you want, but it also adds new features at a pace that Apple can't even dream of.

Whats the EVO got? Faster network...actual tethering (although the iPhone can be tethered in basically every OTHER country apart from yours....)....what else?

More memory, expandable storage, higher res cameras (yes, BOTH cameras are higher rest), mini-HDMI port, FM tuner, a kickstand to watching movies / Sprint TV, Flash support, a much bigger screen, and other things I can't think of off the top of my head.

The iPhone 4 will be about the same price (I buy unlocked and run on prepaid plans normally), is slimmer, I think it will have better build quality (my opinion) and definitely a better rear camera, from what we've seen.

Being .1 inches slimmer is an unnoticeable difference. You're basing the "better camera" on what exactly? As for build quality, the Evo has gotten great reviews for build quality, as has just about every HTC phone.

Listen, I know its all cool to hate "the establishment" and all, but judge tech on its own merits, not how your peers feel.

I do buy based off the merits of the technology - that's what my whole disagreement with you has been about. You've been saying people should buy a device because "OMFG it looks cool!" instead of it actually DOING something useful.

Re:iPhad; hardware is sexy?

[jedidiah]

> There must be something sexy about the iPad hardware since all the tablet computers shown on the page linked to in the summary look pretty much identical to one.

There's plenty you could do to bring a tablet into the 21st century and still leave it looking pretty similar to an iPad.

1) USB port
2) SD card port
3) HDMI port

4) Decent CPU

5) Respectable GPU

6) Correct screen geometry for video

7) Some means of accomodating an external hard drive.

8) An internal hard drive.

9) non-crippled OS

10) Allow for multiple "app" vendors.