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The Coming Onslaught of iPad Competitors
harrymcc writes "The iPad is selling as well as it is in part because no large manufacturer has had a direct rival out yet. But boy, is that going to change in the next few months. Over at Technologizer, I rounded up known information on 32 current and future tablet computing devices, from potentially worthy iPad competitors to wannabees to interesting specialty devices. By early 2011 these things are going to be everywhere, and it'll be fascinating to see how they fare." Related: the tablet-type device I've been watching most eagerly, Notion Ink's Adam, seems to finally have a realistic manufacturing prediction and price range (by November; up to $498 for the version with 3G and Pixel Qi screen).
What will I do with 32 tablets in the house?
Most have a question mark next to the review. Steve can sleep at night.
Yep, I bet everyone will abandon the iPad once some of the incredible competitor models are revealed.. I really can't wait for one of those awesome Windows 7 based 'tablets' ... other companies have been making 'tablet' computers since the early 2000's, but not until Apple produced one of their own has anyone
really taken interest in them.
ok but what if I took one of these, added a hard protective plastic coating, and then some ports for keyboards and such. i'd call it a 'laptop'.
When are all those ARM-based netbooks with Linux that we were promised going to show up? I'll take one with a Tegra 2 processor, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and a Pixel Qi display please!
I'll pay extra for one in a form factor more like a Macbook Air, with a little extra screen, decent sized trackpad, etc.
Hello? Anybody out there?
Great... but I do want.
So where does that leave us? Me happy, and you no worse off but apparently whiny.
tablets are great for 'consuming' content (now I feel dirty even using marketspeak like that).
but its true, its not oriented to create things. you basically tap your paw and get some goody back. for that, they work great. to expect more means a true revolution in UI design. not gonna happen with apple (they are too happy with the 'consuming pre-made content' notion) and will take a true visionary to accomplish.
we're still waiting. but hopeful.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
...when checking the one-liner review verdicts for the devices in this list:
"Engadget didn’t find it terribly satisfying."
"The Android Blog tried one and wasn’t exactly knocked out."
"UMPC Portal’s review says it’s not anywhere near as good as it looks."
"Engadget really didn’t care for it."
"Ubergizmo gave it a semi-positive review."
Does this sound anything like the reviews the iPad got? Hopefully the situation will change quickly to bring competition to benefit us customers.
Have you seen some of the art (and, for that matter, heard some of the music) that people have created on the ipad? It sucks for "creating content" in the "i have to type on a keyboard" sense, but it's actually pretty effective when you don't need a full keyboard to create something.
For some things, a keyboard will probably always be better. For others, the keyboard is really kind of pointless, and a tablet with no keyboard works surprisingly well.
I want a good all-in-one reader. PDFs, CBR/CBZ files, Word or Open Office documents... etc. Sure, throw in a media player, but I really just want a book replacement. Most of the ones on the market are limited in scope and frankly, TOO SMALL. Make the screen a standard paper size, make it able to read all kinds of formats, and I will be a happy, happy man.
Oh, and make it cheap.
Go back about five years in the archives of most tech publications and you can find similar stories about "The coming onslaught of iPod competitors." Look how that worked out.
For some reason, the tech community believes that the commoditize-and-cannabalize cycle that typified the 1980s and 1990s is a perpetual law. It isn't, and Apple's success this decade is a resounding rejoinder to that view. Apple's products aren't, in all respects, better than the competitors; what they are is more polished, more refined, and an order of magnitude easier to pick up on and figure out on your own.
The typical screeds about how Apple's success is due to marketing prowess, reality distortion fields, media sycophancy, etc. are all a bunch of red herrings. Apple makes great products, and it's a real shame that more companies haven't picked up on how they do it and why. It's not rocket science to diligently refine your products while at the same time planning their long-term placement growth; it's just more involved than most companies want to be.
So sure, I'm sure there will be an onslaught of cheaper, different tablets that mindless consumers (Who, I might add, the tech community still believes to be largely ignorant about technology. You know, in 2010.) will buy up and the iPad will be dead. It's impossible that, say, every single one of the competitor tablets will be inferior in one or more significant ways that fails to make an appreciable dent in the iPad's adoption rate. Equally impossible that Apple would refine the iPad beyond its current iteration to entice new customers. I mean, really.
I'm not giving Apple the keys to the kingdom carte blanche, as heaven knows they've made their share of mistakes, but on the whole, I think they've been too successful, too visionary, and too aggressive to continue this endless narrative about how, just when they're about to succeed, the commodity tech market comes up aces and wins the hand.
Well, you don't have to worry about it. Most of them are pure vapour, and the rest of them appear to have been thoroughly trashed by reviewers and are unlikely ever to bother you by appearing in a store where you might accidentally purchase them.
Wait now, didn't we agree there was no such thing as a market for an iPad? And now we're suddenly discussing what knock-offs will compete for a slice of the profits?
The latter is quite simple, none of the other really get out of the Catch 22. Users don't buy until there's apps and app developers don't develop until there's a market. Unless you're Steve Jobs and provably have millions of followers, then you hit critical hype and get a sufficient quantity of apps and users out there simultaneously to set the snowball rolling. Exhibit A, the iPhone. Out of the box quite satisfactory but nothing special compared to HTC and the other smart phones. But hell, given all the useful and funny and clever (and gimmicky and useless) apps Ive seen for it, even I want one by now. Not because I think Apple is that great, but because that's where the applications are.
I think next they'll make the home entertainment center common - oh they've been around forever with Windows Media Center and such but so had the Windows tablets. I don't really count the AppleTV as one either, it's more of a warmup. Not as a console replacement, but one taking a big chunk out of the "casual" gaming market Nintendo has shown is there with the Wii too. And really bringing that together has the core in your system setup, not a Mac. And possibly finally bring around the TV revolution where more people get series and movies via iTunes over the Internet than over broadcasts and cable. Well, the legal revolution anyway ;).
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
He totally forgot the Pandigital Novel -- a 7" Android tablet that is pitched mainly as an e-reader but which has many other capabilities. Sure, it's gotten lukewarm reviews, but at least it exists, unlike most of what's on his list.
On a related note, does anyone know if the new WebKit browser on the now-$139 Kindle is any good?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I can't imagine any of the Windows 7 tablets being worth buying. Any x86 chip that can run Windows 7 will burn more battery life and dissipate more heat than an ARM chip. Do you want a heavy tablet (lots of batteries) or a tablet with super-short battery life? I don't. Do you want a tablet with a vent on one side that blows hot air out while you are using it? I don't.
Of the various ARM chips, the exciting one is the Tegra 2. 8 cores: two ARM 9 cores at 1 GHz each, plus audio DSP, video encode and decode, graphics accelerator, an image processor and an ARM 7 core used for housekeeping. All with a typical heat dissipation of 500 milliWatts, or perhaps less. (I saw a YouTube video that claimed a Tegra 2 can decode 1080P video while dissipating only 350 Watts.)
The iPad gets its long battery life and lack of a hot air vent from the A4 chip, which is an ARM core of some sort (IIRC an ARM 8) at 1 GHz. I believe the iPad also has a graphics accelerator. Presumably a Tegra 2 chip can smoke the iPad on performance, and it's already good enough.
Also, Windows 7 was designed for a mouse. Will the Windows 7 tablets come with a stylus for precision pointing? Or will Microsoft make an all-new GUI environment just for tablets? I'd rather just have Android.
So I'm waiting for a smartbook or tablet with a Tegra 2 and a Pixel Qi screen, running some sort of Linux (likely Android). I had hoped that devices like that would ship this summer but I guess they are delayed.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
ppffft. I'll be interested when it has pressure sensitivity. Anybody who can draw something halfway decent on an ipad could make something spectacular on a wacom.
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
It's a great controller for DAW's, lighting rigs... It's already starting to change the workflow for film crews. Great device and I'm left looking at the android pads and scratching my head. I'd like to develop in Vala using clutter/Gtk but android is some braindead also-ran platform that requires me to jump through more hoops than the iPad. I looked at all the devices in that list and there's no serious competition for the iPad there.
The current iPad is underpowered and needs something a bit better than the USB "camera kit" for physical connectivity. If version 2 delivers, it's going to be used for more than control and become an amazingly useful device in it's own right.
Apple is first and foremost a fashion company these days, which is how they get their amazing margins. The fashion industry defies the normal pricing trend in that not only are people willing to spend more, but costing more can even be a GOOD thing.
The iPod was not the first MP3 player or anything. What it was is a fashion accessory. It was, and still is, trendy to have one. Notice that the white earbuds because a status statement, to the point that 3rd party companies had to start making them. Etymotic said they'd never before had requests for white, but when the iPod came out people wanted higher quality earphones, but only if they were white.
That is what really drives Apple business, and is why their profits are so high. Their margins are extremely high. In the tech industry, this is not tolerated. You find consumers are extremely price sensitive. However in the fashion industry it is, and to Apple's good fortune they've figured out how to sell tech as fashion.
Now as for iPad competitors, well how much that'll matter will depend on two things:
1) How technically good and cheap the competitors are. If the other tablets offer as good or better of a system for less, they'll sell well to anyone buying the tablet as a tool. After all as a tool the iPad is rather expensive since there are few tasks a tablet is truly well suited for. Most tasks, there are other devices that do a better job, other devices people usually own. So a good price will go a long way to making a niche device worth it. Likewise a good technical system (like the ability to install custom apps) will help. If the competitors have that, it'll hurt the iPad.
2) How much the buying is fashion driven. If the iPad becomes a fashion statement, then it won't really matter what competes with it. It'll sell largely on its fashion, and thus the price and utility won't be much of an issue. People will buy it to have it and show it off, and need no other reason. However if it doesn't become a fashion item, then competition will be much more of a problem, since it'll have to compete on price and that is just something Apple doesn't do.
That is really what it comes down to. So long as Apple keeps making devices that are fashionable, they are golden. They will sell lots, and they can sell them for a premium price, which equates to massive profits. If they can't do that, then they are in trouble. Not going out of business in trouble, they survived for many years not doing that, but their big profits will evaporate in a hurry and their sales will plummet unless they change.
Who knows when that'll happen, or if it ever will. Some companies can ride the fashion wave forever, others have their time in the sun and then fade out.
When the ipad was first announced, many commentators predicted that there would be a deluge of Android-based competitors with more features (Flash!) for less money. Here we are almost seven months later and frankly, this article sums up the sorry state of competition. Most of the devices are unavailable and many don't even have firm release dates (others are late). The predictions about beating Apple's pricing fell through (e.g. the JooJoo is $499, though it's a larger and significantly different device).
Eventually we will have a nice selection of tablets, just like we now have a nice selection of smartphones. But you may have to wait a year or two for them; meanwhile, Apple will sell lots and lots of ipads, establishing a solid market for which developers will make lots of apps.
Frankly, if I was waiting for one of these competitors I'd be getting pretty frustrated. The Notion Ink Adam has been hyped up all over the place, and keeps getting pushed back. The currently available devices (like the one from KMart) get pretty horrible reviews; it's clear that trying to go too cheap on the tablets leads to some huge sacrifices in quality of the screen, for example.
What's interesting to me is that the major ereaders have responded to the ipad. Amazon and BN released apps for the ipad (Amazon on launch day!), while they both substantially dropped their ereader prices (responding to each other, too). They're carving out a niche - dedicated ereaders with eink screens getting down to the price points where people can buy them as gifts for each other in this coming holiday season. BN's nook actually runs Android, though it has to be jailbroken to make use of it.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I'll be interested when it has pressure sensitivity.
Ten One is making impressive strides in that regard.
The iPad is inferior to a Cintiq as a drawing device, but it will be owned by people who would never drop $1000+ on an art tool. It's also portable in ways Wacom devices really aren't. You could just as easily argue "Anybody who can draw something halfway decent with a pencil and a sketchbook could make something spectacular on a Wacom", but pencils and sketchbooks aren't going away either.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
It's time for computer companies to admit they have no idea who their customer is, or what their customer wants. Most computer products try to be everything to everyone and end up disappointing all.
The secret to Apple's success is simplicity - identifying the smallest list of features that their customer base will find useful. Sure this makes some people unhappy, but the vast majority of their customers are happy with the feature set, and delighted by the ease of use that results from a device that doesn't try to do everything.
I used to want my computing devices to do everything. This usually resulted in building computers that could heat an entire house or carrying a laptop bag that weighed 50 lbs. Since converting my life to Apple's products (AppleTV, Mac Mini server, iMac, iPhones, iPods and iPads) I've been happier.
I was hesitant to get an iPad fearing that it's limited feature set would relegate it to a dust-collector in my technology scrap pile. I couldn't have been more wrong. On a recent weekend in Las Vegas, I didn't even bring my laptop bag. I was able to get remote access to my entire work network, read books and magazines, watch movies, and listen to music. Battery life was fantastic and I never once wished that I brought my laptop bag the entire weekend.
It was damn cool to walk on the plane with only an iPad and a pair of headphones in tow.
I'm not saying Apple's way is the only right way. There may be another company out there that figures their customers out as well as Apple has, but for now, I haven't seen it.
-ted
How have all of those "iPod Killers" fared over the last decade?
Why isn't the iPad designed for creating things, exactly? Who started this myth?
Apple?
I've always gotten the impression that they didn't "design" it for anything in particular, but rather just gave it some features, form factor, and their trendy phone OS, and hoped it would find a niche in the trendy gadgets market. It's worked pretty well for them.
Was it not true that initially there was much head-scratching, trying to figure out what role the IPod was supposed to fill? No matter what market (that it's form and function would suggest) was considered, it seemed the IPad came up lacking in every comparison, except in the trendy effect. From what I've seen, it was designed to be a cool gadget that hopefully users would figure out how to do something useful with, despite the (often intentional) limitations.
That isn't to say that there isn't a market for trendy gadgets, because obviously there is. That also isn't to say that people haven't managed to use it for creating things, they have.
However to suggest it was "designed" for creating, rather than consuming (within their walled garden), seems quite a stretch. I don't even recall Apple pitching that.
I'm glad to see more competition in this market place. I'm not too fond of the IPad, but more competition ultimately increases the likelihood of consumers getting products in general, whether they are from Apple or a competitor. There's a lot that the competition can learn from Apple, and I believe there will be a lot that Apple can learn from the competition as well.
I'm not much of an Apple fanboi, but my observation is that even after 3 years of iPhone, the only semi-contender is Android. Every other imitator has been a half-assed Symbian piece of crap with the typical 4-color graphics and a processor that can barely edge out the 8086.
Sure, a shit ton of idiotic Taiwanese imitations will flood the market, and they will all have the same fundamental shortcoming: poor quality software and no 3rd party apps. Do you really expect app developers to target all these obscure, unsupported, docs-written-in-mandarin slabs of fail ?
It's quite simple: there is room for two platforms. There's Mac, and there's PC. iPhone vs Android. iPad vs ??? GooglePad ? Realistically that's the kind of clout it would take to launch a true competitor.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
There's no reason they need to be so built up that they cost $500. I can build a relatively high-end gaming computer for that much. There's no reason a pad should cost that much.
Form factor and design matters. Way back in the day when watches were the most technical thing people owned, the best and most expensive watches were also the thinnest. The reason was it took skill to make something work in a small package. These days that equates to money. The smaller you make something while retaining the core functionality, the more it will cost you.
However there are key differences between your computer and an iPad. In your desktop or laptop, you don't have a touch screen. It isn't instant-on. It can't sense direction or rotation. And most likely it is probably very warm in your lap. It won't be made with brushed aluminum. Also it won't last 10 hrs active or 1 week in standby mode. Other than these differences, your computer is the same as an iPad. Every time I hear complaints about an iPad is too expensive, I'd like to make a bet with that person. If I give you $500 could you make an iPad? If you can't you owe me double. From what I know about machining, the aluminum frame is gonna cost you a large size of that.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
I'll say. Why, I can remember a time when nostalgia really used to be something.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!