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Why Google Isn't Pushing Android For Tablets
Brad Linder of Liliputing posted an interesting analysis today about Google's reluctance to endorse Android for tablets. Linder argues that while there may be legitimate concern that Android just isn't polished enough for devices without phone access (because some apps need it), it would be smart for Google to segregate the apps themselves, so users can simply know which apps will work on Wi-Fi-only tablets. But from Google's perspective, he observes, "pushing a version of Android that isn't exclusively for phones could be all it takes for Chrome OS to be dead on arrival."
He has something of a point. What is ChromeOS going to do that Android theoretically can't? Maybe having two competing OSs isn't such a great idea anyway.
I don't think this is the case considering Motorola is expected to launch a tablet-ready android tablet this year. (And so is Acer too, according to rumors)
ChromeOS will probably ship on tablets AND on netbooks, while Android will probably only ship on tablets. (at least officially, since there are already some netbooks running android)
I don't think Google will want to let everyone down releasing non-optimized android versions for tablets, which would only genererate fragmentation (that magical word again) as far as tablet-specific implementation is concerned.
Also, why wait even more when their competition (Apple) is already singing the infamous "Its printing money!" song?
I expect them to release a tablet-friendly Android version this year so everyone can start working on top of that new "standard". (i.e. they want to set the standard so Android doesn't end up having 100 tablet implementations)
Who knows if that will be Gingerbread or Honeycomb...
I mean, why do they really need to have TWO locked down Linux-based operating systems?
I think it should be pretty obvious....Android is taking off, but the idea of an app ecosystem based on the browser is clearly the future as well.
.
I'd wager anything that google will merge the two....if that wasn't their plan from the beginning, it will come to pass regardless.
I don't see this too difficult really.... but it's smart that they didn't attempt it too early though for various reasons.
I use my Android constantly with airplane mode turned on and wifi turned back on since the cdma radio is such a hog. I never run into any app that doesn't work as expected based on this setup.
My Babylon
As TFA explains:
Google Chrome OS, which is basically an OS built around a web browser. Instead of downloaded apps, it will run web apps, although we expect there to be some offline caching capabilities which should let you do things like read eBooks or watch videos even when an internet connection isn’t handy.
I agree with the author that this is a bad idea:
Don’t forget, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, it didn’t have native apps either. He insisted that the development platform for the iPhone was the web, and the phone was designed primarily to run web apps. Today, there are over 250,000 native apps available in the App Store because, let’s face it, web apps just aren’t always going to do the job.
I don't know how much info is in the wild about Chrome OS, so maybe it'll have some wiz bang features that will rule, but I doubt it. Having two operating systems where one will certainly do just doesn't sound like a good idea -- especially when one is out, the other isn't, and the unreleased one is built around a questionable concept.
Guess what? It is in beta.
In soviet Russia, God creates you!
Whether or not ChromeOS is better than Android at this point is largely academic. Android is here, now and (arguably) ready for mass consumption. ChomeOS isn't. It's a shame, and it would suck to jettison all of that work put into ChromeOS, but it's just too late to the party at this point. People are already packing up and heading out to the retail store with Android and diluting the development of Android to push ChromeOS out to market a day late and dollar short does a disservice to both platforms.
They need to retool their Chrome developers to start making Android more tablet friendly and rolling the most positive features of Chrome into Android.
The netbook market is largely static and is likely to self implode or at the very least be rolled into the ultralight laptop market. I mean, really the current generation of Netbooks are really just small laptops; calling them netbooks is paying lip service to the netbook form factor only - a 12" screen really isn't a netbook anymore and people have largely figured out that anything smaller really isn't useful for much in laptop form - but it is in tablet form. So the netbook market is all but gone as separate entity. Where does that leave ChromeOS? Pretty much nowhere. It has no real platform and it is too late to the party to do much of anything.
Meh... I'd really like to see it rolled into Android, that's really the smartest move at this point.
Android was designed from the beginning to fight with guys like RIM and Microsoft, and to a lesser extent, Palm.
I don't know which "beginning" you are referring to, but Android was released on the market to compete against what was at the time iPhone OS.
iOS on the other hand, was inteded for a tablet style device.
No, it was iPhone OS before it was iOS.
Also, with the advanced operating systems today, such as iOS and Android, it doesn't matter what their original release device or the intended device was. They are both equally flexible enough to be adjusted to and support multiple different resolutions, architectures, and other hardware.
What makes more sense is that Android started gaining traction at a much higher rate than Google initially anticipated. So, Android may be stepping into Chrome OS territory with tablets. However, Google still wants to give Chrome OS a legitimate shot. Maybe they think they can repeat what they did with Android. I think it's going to be hard.
pardon? This from the guys that literally double the dimensions of the iPhone's apps just to run on the tablet? This from the guys that didn't and still don't multi-task on these devices? Designed for Tablet computing? What are you smoking?
Android isn't designed for Tablet either to be fair. Both platforms had a very small profile and screen requirement. IOS's GUI core was enhanced to include another GUI profile target. There's nothing specifically brilliant about IOS that makes it a tablet user's wet dream besides the fact that it already had touch as its primary interface (admittedly this is one of the primary reasons that previous tablet computing initiatives died out quickly).
Bye!
Now that we have an MS fuckwit running Nokia, I don't really care what runs on phones or tablets. The available choices all require giving up my right to make choices, period. The whole smartphone tablet space really really fucking sucks.
Your opinion is as valid as anyone else's - but I think it's pretty obvious most people couldn't care less about, as you call it, "giving up my right to make choices". Thing is, most people don't seem to see anything problematic about Apple's walled garden or with any limitations Google might put on their marketplace. They just care that it's easy to grab the Facebook app.
#DeleteChrome
People who think that apparently haven't used both operating systems. Android is a mobile OS designed to run third party apps - the apps are the centerpiece of the OS. ChromeOS is for devices that want to run a web browser. And nothing else. ChromeOS is great for kiosks and a decent choice for a netbook. But tablets are a big in between. If your tablet is a big phone, get an Android model. If it's a slim netbook without a keyboard, ChromeOS should be your choice. If it's a laptop replacement, look to better specs and full Linux or (*gasp*) Windows 7.
Remember this:
Want apps? Choose Android.
Want web browsing? Choose ChromeOS.
Want flexibility? Choice Linux/Windows.
Read this in an interview with Jobs. They basically made an iPad prototype and Jobs said, "let's make a phone out of this". So they did.
No, internally from the ground up it started as an unreleased Tablet OS
http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/01/steve-jobs-at-d-iphone-os-started-on-a-tablet/
Jobs was just never happy with battery performance and other tablet problems... Then they figured out that they could start out even smaller with a phone and do a good job...
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
iOS on the other hand, was inteded for a tablet style device.
No, it was iPhone OS before it was iOS.
If you dig a little further, you will learn that the iPad came first in Apple's R&D pipeline. They had to wait for some reason, and so they made the iPhone in the interim. If you've used the iOS SDK, it becomes pretty clear that it is not something that Apple just shoved out the door in 12 or 18 months or whatever it was. It's obvious that it had already had years of effort put into it. Perhaps the SDK was indeed intended only for iPad, and they rushed it out for iPhone due to popular demand, or perhaps it was a parallel effort. But it's not something Apple just cobbled together and shoved out the door and later updated to work with iPad. iOS was built for a tablet device from the beginning, IMO.
Also, with the advanced operating systems today, such as iOS and Android, it doesn't matter what their original release device or the intended device was. They are both equally flexible enough to be adjusted to and support multiple different resolutions, architectures, and other hardware.
The wildcard here is device and OS compatibility, which Apple obviously had thought through pretty well. While Android seems to just march forward ignoring it, creating a challenge for app developers. I don't have an Android device, but it is my understanding that it needs to be a phone to use their app marketplace, e.g. I'm not an Android dev, either, but from the sidelines, it looks like they just keep making things tougher for devs as time goes on. Not as bad as Rim or others, but not nearly as nice as iOS. My money is on the fact that the next revision of iPad will work with 99.999% of the apps out there. I'm not sure you could say the same for an Android tablet. Correct me if I'm wrong...
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
not just that, but Google TV is based on... Android. I guess all TVs will have to come with cameras and GPS too :)
Ars Technica has a article about it, they say that Google gives out varying answers depending who you talk to.
One one hand, we have a radically new set-top form factor that will supposedly run Android applications, and on the other hand, we have a Google product director saying that Android isn't a good fit for non-smartphone devices and that those devices may pose insurmountable application compatibility challenges in some cases.
I reckon this will quickly be a non-story in the end. Someone from Google will provide the necessary foot to the bum of the marketing department and all will be well.
Only 25,000 out of 250,000 apps are iPad native at the moment, and the iOS 4 updates for iPad have been delayed multiple times.
PC OS struggle even more, having to support from 800x600 to 2560x1600 screens and the almost 30 years worth of x86 based code. Writing operating systems is hard, due to the fact that there is no single concept of a screen.
Most people simply aren't bothering yet.
iPad numbers are still like Commodore 64 numbers at this point.
Making any grand pronouncements from them is a bit absurd and premature.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The official android market is dependent on a sim card. Even a phone wont work unless it has a sim card in it. The trick that Archos did with their tablets is they have their own market for apps that work with tablets. Android market could detect apps that assume its a phone (in fact it does now, see the permissions system) and just not display those apps for tablets. The problem has more to do with the Android team is not confident because they have not set up the CTS stuff for tablets. That's ChromeOS's realm. The CTS stuff however is set up for Google TV already. It probably would not be too much work for them to be confident in Android's ability on tablets, they just haven't invested the time/money in it.
I will buy a tablet when it can run windows 7, with autodesk inventor, all my typical programs, and browse the web from anywhere.
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
Which app? How do you know it's not a problem with the app?
It is marketed as a web OS, as in the only thing the computer will have on it is a media player and web browser. Ok, well putting aside if it is a good idea to make everything web based, that only works for online all the time situations. You know, like not tablet PCs. Seems like what tablets demand are a classical embeded OS. Something that is light weight but can have all the features you need. Sounds just like Android to me.
I think Google gets a little blinded by their web focus sometimes. They think it would be just great if everything moved on to the web, and more specifically on to google.com. I don't think that is going to happen any time soon, if ever. There are plenty of reasons to want stuff that resides on your device. For mobile devices, wireless speed is a big one. Even on the fastest networks it still gets pokey when lots of people are using it, and let's be real about how many places have the fastest networks. There's also battery to be considered. A radio slurps up battery life in a hurry.
I'm not saying they should jettison Chrome OS necessarily but they need to take a long, hard, realistic look at the real demand for a web-only or even web-focused OS. Otherwise I think they risk pushing something that nobody likes and doesn't get them anywhere.
In the mythical future, when Internet connections never go down, wireless is faster than we need, and web browsers all run a version of HTML/CSS/etc that allows for powerful, fast, easy apps to be made then maybe a web only system is a winner. Maybe then people are interested in having a computer that is just a browser. However until that day comes, and I am skeptical it ever will, a normal computer is what's called for.
Isn't Chrome OS already dead on arrival?
I don't think you realize how well the Commodore 64 actually sold....
I am finding lots of bootlegged apps from the Android Marketplace that won't run on my Pandigital Novel, which is running Android 2.0, because it does not have GPS, camera, or phone functions, and, I suspect, due to its 800x600 screen dimensions.
However, it runs enough to be useful to me, especially the ereaders for which it was originally marketed (I "unlocked its inner Android" in the 1st couple days with tips from the active user forum at http://www.slatedroid.com/pandigital-novel-android-tablet-discussion ). The Webkit browser, email client, stock music player, plus Pandora, and some other Android odds and ends are good enough to keep me interested - Google Maps on that 7-inch screen is wonderful (as long as I am near wifi access points), although I am still looking for a weather widget work on it ...
For $150, it beats heck out of a Kindle 3 since I do not read in full sunlight anyway (aside from the weight).
RO
personalty chrome os is doa. it was doa they day it was thought up. there competing agenst ubuntu the number 1 netbook os in terms of linux powered. they are just trying gos all over again and we know how well that turned out for them. they got it right with andoride and if its not broken don't fix it. i love andoride and would whant it on my netbook if they ever officially made a x86 version. its uses little space is fast and with newer version supports abought everything. chrome os is large as ubuntu and isn't even close to the feature set. and i hate the ui and browser all mashed together.
Google Maps on that 7-inch screen is wonderful (as long as I am near wifi access points)
One of my coworkers has that K-Mart Android tablet thingy, and tethers it to his N1 so he can use the bigger screen for browsing.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
pardon? This from the guys that literally double the dimensions of the iPhone's apps just to run on the tablet?
Apple's own apps don't use pixel doubling. That feature is included only for third-party apps that were designed around a fixed resolution, and Apple recommends against that in its developer guidelines.
In fact, they've recommended against it since before they released the iPad, since they knew it was coming.
This from the guys that didn't and still don't multi-task on these devices?
Multitasking is not an inherent feature of tablets. More than any other PC form factor, tablets seem to be designed for single tasks.
If you look at the history of tablets prior to the iPad, you'll find that they were mostly used for obscure nice applications like factory-inventory-tracking that were essentially single-tasking.
http://www.commodoreusa.net/home.html
and now that they have Amiga, the old days are coming back again !
and NOTHING I would want yet.
FTFY, given that web apps can perform any task that native apps can perform
Ayjay on Fedang
I own an HTC hero and uses it without a sim card. Market works just as good...
Tomorrow is another day...
If you dig a little further [allthingsd.com], you will learn that the iPad came first in Apple's R&D pipeline.
You're splitting hairs here though. The iPad is just another computing device like the iPhone except with larger packaging and upgraded components -- the differences are not revolutionary. The entire ecosystem that resulted from and developed around the iPhone clearly came first and may not have occurred if the device was not a mobile device.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
It's not supposed to work without some way of identifying the carrier.
Unless your Android app is specific to some telephone thing, like SMS or a dialer, that app is going to be just fine on a tablet without phone features or even service. WiFi will do.
Really, let's go down the list of apps on my Android phone:
The Google Stuff: Calendar, Calculator, Amazon MP3, Camera, Contacts, Email, Gmail, Clock, Gallery, Google Search, Maps, Latitude, News & Weather, Navigator, Places, Talk, YouTube. None of these need phone service, they are happy with WiFi or nothing at all.
Android Market likes to have your SIM I think to validate ya. OK, ONE.
Messaging, of course, likes SMS. That's TWO.
Phone, obviously, THREE.
Oh darn, Mobile Backup. Oh, FOUR.
Other Apps: AppMonster, Terminal, World, AK Notepad, Astro Player, Barcode Scanner, AndroZip, Barcode Scanner, Bonsai Blast, Browser, Classic Tetris, Craigslist, CraigsNotifier, eBay, Facebook, GPS Status, Music, Pandora, SetCPU, Superuser, Twitter, WiFi Analyzer, World.
None of these need phone anything. WiFi will do where needed.
Out of 44 apps on my phone (not counting some very, very obviously non-phone-dependent one I haven't listed), only 4 need or just use phone service.
Reality check. The many Android apps that want phone permissions just want them to screw with your contacts or to check the phone state. Woop.
It's not at ALL about Android needing a phone. It's about Android being more suited to small screens and small machines (minimal RAM and lesser CPUS), and Chrome pointed directly at the desktop and netbook/notebook markets. More exactly, pointed directly at Microsoft.
Fracturing a market with Android and Chrome competing for share doesn't work for Google, so they will try to avoid it. It's just that Chrome is not as ready as Android is, and Android will have to keep itself lean to be workable on smartphones.
Of course, ARM is working on giving smartphones the power that netbooks have, and Intel is growing the Atom line up and the Duo line down to crush AMD's hopes in emerging markets.
It's actually not a bad strategy to be competing with yourself. IBM gave that a go in the 80s and 90s.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Hmm, I wonder how Model T sales figures compare to Ford Pinto's.
Pure quantity isn't necessarily relevant if market saturation is drastically different.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
50M+?
More like 5M+. They're making between 2 & 3 M a month now.
But they'll hit 17M easily by next year. And probably another 17M the year after.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Holy cow! Someone gets it!!
If Android users already have an Android phone (and a monthly bill to go along with it) what sense would it make from a consumer standpoint to have an additional monthly bill for an ancillary device?
Tether the damn tablet to another connection and be done with it. It's not difficult.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Not official from Google, but Android x86 exists.
Well Captain Donut Hole, I'm going to go out on a wild and wacky limb here with a guess that by "beginning" he means Android's inception, which took place prior to Google acquiring it. And since that day, up until Eric "the snake" Schmidt was blessed with his great idea to shoehorn Android behind a touchscreen, the form factor for which Android was designed was definitely NOT a touchscreen. Here's the original turd:http://tiny.cc/2041u And their long-term strategy:http://tiny.cc/paid_search_is_all_we_do So far as iOs is concerned, Apple had conceived and was planning the iPad BEFORE the iPhone became an idea. So by saying that iOs was designed for a tablet form factor is DEAD ON.http://tiny.cc/ynsy3 Dumb-dumbs should never even pretend to be smartasses.
You do understand that cdma phones have their equivalent of a sim card built in right?
Latest version of Android 'not designed' for tablets, report says
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_gadg/20100910/tc_ytech_gadg/ytech_gadg_tc3593
"Hugo Barra, Google’s director of mobile products, told TechRadar UK that Android 2.2 Froyo is "not optimized for use on tablets," and that while Android itself is still an "open platform," the Android Market — Google’s version of Apple’s App Store — is "not going to be available on devices that don’t allow applications to run correctly.""
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
Give it phone access.
Technoli
The official android market is dependent on a sim card. Even a phone wont work unless it has a sim card in it.
Tell that to my EVO 4G, on Sprint.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Multitasking is not an inherent feature of tablets. More than any other PC form factor, tablets seem to be designed for single tasks.
It should be. That line you spouted above is just rationalizing Apple's fucking-up of a potentially good idea. Instead of revolutionizing and making accesable more compact computing, they just churned out a glorified locked-down iPhone without the actual phone part. Playing with them has been a colossal disappointment.
Instead of porting ios to the ipad, they could have ported the functionality of OSX to the iPad and designed in that extra millimeter of thickness to accomodate the extra power.
500 American dollars for the base model? No way, it's worth $200 tops.
A lot of Google's stuff is in a perpetual beta.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
That's what Ray Ozzie said. The future is ubiquitous fast connectivity to any device, and speed is king. You don't want to wake up at night, think "must remember to buy some milk" and have to wait for the current generation of smart phones to boot up before you can tap that into your tablet. If Google do it right, client devices will be another market like pocket calculators in the '70's. The value is in the network, and the client devices will lower in cost relentlessly.
Oh well they lost a potential android user here. I've waited for months to have an android tablet but even if you ignore the shoddy hardware sometimes, it is hard to overlook the fact that the App Store is something problematic. Because of the fact that Google don't give access to the app store every frikking manufacture introduces their own. And even in the hypothetical case that Google does let tablet users access the app store here in Belgium it wouldn mean sh*t as for some kind of reason it is impossible to buy paid apps in the android market. It is one big mess at the moment no matter how you put it. I was done waiting and bought an iPad yesterday. The Samsung Galaxy Tab (the one that can make a dent in the iPad market) will cost about 700 euro here , making the iPad look dirt cheap.
There have already been - and remain - several netbooks on the market that run Android, so have fun. Asus I think were first to have one in the shops, well over a year ago now. They even ported the full Firefox browser to Android-x86 to give a more desktop-like browsing experience. And I agree, Chrome OS cant compete against Android on any platform
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Not really. You're post is asinine, but you'd never admit it.
And I've hacked a few CDMA phones in my day.
A SIM card consists of an IMSI, some keys, service access data, PIN, PUK and some room for crappy phone book storage, basically.
But it is basically just data. The thing that makes the SIM card concept unique is the physical smartcard use itself.
CDMA phones being cell phones have to have similar data, but there is actually no standardized storage mechanism in the phone. It simply has to comply with the CDMA standards for air interface use, how it is stored in the phone precisely doesn't matter and there is not cohesive standardized "SIM card equivalent". Sorry.
(And this has nothing to do with working with the Market, you could use any generic identifier system.
it was iPhone OS before it was iOS.
And even when it was iPhone OS, iPod touch ran it. The article, as I understand it, is about the general lack of something that could be described as "Android pod touch". And even when Archos does bring out the occasional Android tablet, Google doesn't let it into Android Market, unlike iPod touch, which has had App Store access since iPhone OS 2.0.
Another problem is that some of the older apps makes assumptions based on the specs of the G1 and similar gen android devices.
Take for instance the camera subsystem. All older apps assume that the camera will be auto-focus, so they don't bother asking (or do not have the capability to do so). But many of the cheaper devices with camera use fixed focus. This means that android market (more like google market, but that's a whole different rant) have to assume that if a app asks for camera capability, but do not specify that it is happy with fixed focus, it wants auto-focus.
I would also claim that the Google requirements are not just about market, tho it's the most noticeable, but the whole Google services app pack. Camera for goggles, compass and gps for navigation (a program that is virtually useless without continual connection to the Google motherserver, as all route calculations, POI lookups and such are done on server and streamed to the device) and so on. If Google made it more piecemeal we would probably see more devices with market access, but it seems the people running the android project almost as much control freaks as Apple. Hell, Google could probably branch off a free apps only market that was allowed onto any android device, as there would be no economic risk from the devs or Google as there would be no need for refunds.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Not really. You're post is asinine, but you'd never admit it.
And yet you missed the entire point of the post. The point was that the market restriction was more artificial than anything else. By the way, the biggest thing the sim card or equivalent is used for isn't used as a device identifier. It's used as a carrier identifier. Without it google has no idea who to cut a check for your purchases that you make on that device.
ChromeOS as far as I can judge from what I have seen on the pictures and the emulation is pointless for tablets the entire ui is centered around a mouse and a smallish screen estate. Trying to push chromeOS on a tablet would be a huge mistake. I personally dont think google is that stupid, and I beliefe their arguments the OS simply needs a tablet refinement to work fine. Heck apple did the same for iOS on the ipad, you need to change the aspects of various distances, better even introduce resolution independence, you have to ajust the layout system of the apps so that they can use the bigger real estate better than just presenting themselves blown up (the classical example is the mail menu system on the iPad)
and you also have to adjust the market apps decently.
I would be surprised if google would come up with ChromeOS as solution for Tablets, I rather expect a Gingerbread reference design given first to the Google Employees on christmas with decent Android based tablets following the upcoming months from HTC and co.
Without support for proxies, Android is next to useless in the educational market
I don't know exactly how long it took them to "shove it out the door", but probably less time than you think. It is after all a redo of Mac-OS with touch interface. All the paradigms were imported from Mac OS, and I don't think it would have taken them that long. Remember, it wasn't as polished as it is now when they first pushed iPhone version 1 out the door with no dev kit.
>> Android was designed from the beginning to fight with guys like RIM and Microsoft, and to a lesser extent, Palm.
> I don't know which "beginning" you are referring to, but Android was released on the market to compete against what was at the time iPhone OS.
You're both right. Android was indeed originally designed to compete with older, BlackBerry-style smartphones: small screen on the top half, physical keyboard on the bottom. Check out Wikipedia--Google started in 2005, two years before the iPhone. Then, the iPhone came out and changed the standard, and the first Android phones that actually hit the market were indeed competing directly with the iPhone, with full-size touchscreens.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Google's official position on providing the Google applications (GMail, YouTube, etc.) on non-smartphone devices isn't consistent with what Android, and Android Market, is capable of: Android applications can specify which features they need, how big a screen they can support, etc. So, while it is a legitimate concern that some apps might fail on tablet devices, the vast majority of apps won't, and those that do have a simple mechanism for excluding themselves from being listed for download to tablet devices.
In addition to the criteria for being an officially blessed Android device being arbitrary in light of Android having mechanisms for apps to determine device compatibility, the process is also opaque: There is no published process for getting devices "approved."
And, in addition to all that, while Android Market and Google's suite of apps run on most Android devices, users of ex-officio Android devices are left to bootleg this software onto their devices.
When Google was in the process of wooing first tier mobile OEMs and bargaining with them, it made sense to provide exclusivity and a closed process for OEMs, in order to give Google the strongest possible negotiating position. Now that Google has every first tier mobile OEM except Nokia as a licensee, Google can maximize the potential of Android by providing a more open process for OEMs, and by treating PMPs, e-readers, and tablet device OEMs and the customers of these devices less backhandedly, either by making Google's apps available through alternative markets and direct download, or by making Android Market part of the Android Open Source Project, or otherwise available to OEMs outside of Google's inner circle.
Android has become the de facto "embedded Linux" for 32-bit systems-on-a-chip (SoCs). The fact this happened without Google's encouragement should not be taken as a guide to how to cultivate chip-maker, ODM, and OEM relationships.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Many of the comments here have been about whether Chrome OS has a market.
The answer may have more to do with form-factor than whether Android has already run away with the market.
Turning a browser-oriented OS into a touch OS isn't easy. Chrome is much more easily applicable to netbooks than tablets. Most Web sites are not designed for touch. Just making all of Google's Web sites and Web apps touch-friendly is a huge undertaking. For a netbook, you don't have to make the touch user experience as good as it is in Android.
Tablets are a middle ground: If the Chrome browser part of Chrome OS becomes more finger-friendly, maybe the answer is to make that browser an Android app - or find some other way of combining Android and ChromeOS, as many have suggested.
I wrote parts of this stuff
They gave that up when they switched to an Intel based design as too expensive to compete. Sure they have great design and their software works well but they haven't really come up with anything inovative in actual hardware in the last decade and No the iPhone does not qualify as it's based on existing Phone/PDA technology.
Where Apple has placed their Inovated Efforts though are in the UI and I have to agree they've done things there that "Just Work" and in regards to the iPad and Tablet elements, I think they've finally shown the others "How To Do It" and everyone will soon be following their lead in getting tablets and "PADDS" out to us as quickly as possible.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
People with iPads do the same thing. Personally I like those mobile MyFi type devices like Virgin Mobile sells. This way I can just purchase 3G access when I really need it and not have a data plan stuck on my phone.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Most tech businesses had created a prototype tablet long before the iPad was released, long before the iPhone was released, long before Jobs retook the reigns of Apple. The tablet device wasn't new. There were existing tablets on the market, one of which made Palm a success.
It took years to create the technology and for parts/prices to drop to the point where the average consumer could afford them, and for connectivity to progress to the point that people could benefit from them in a way other than to use them as a todo list or calendar.
The point is that tablets didn't become truly viable till their cost and functionality could be afforded by the average person and that the utility was significant enough to be more than address book, notepad, etc.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
In the UK, you can buy an unlockable and Android 2.1-compatible PAYG phone for 100 GBP
Which make and model? And in case I have 154 USD to burn, where can I get one in the United States? I walked into a Best Buy mobile store a few days ago, and the only PAYG Android phone was about 400 USD (260 GBP).
Although the tablet is a bit (or terribly) unstable, Archos managed to get Android 1.6 on its Archos 5 Internet Tablet.
If you looked at a iPhone OS 1.0 device when they were first jailbroken, it was fairly apparent:
1) completely new UI widget library.
2) completely new display manager (for lack of better name of whatever you call the software necessary to make stuff appear on the screen.)
Essentially, think of how much time and effort it would take for the FOSS-world to take an existing Linux distro minus X11, port to a new architecture, and then build a whole new replacement for X11 and QT/KDE.
The major design decision of ChromeOS was to make it secure even when used casually. It's unfortunately hidden in the press releases and security documents of the ChromeOS project page. The idea is that you can lend or borrow a netbook and not have to worry about keyloggers getting installed or your friend later viewing your private data. To achieve this goal, Google requires a TPM chip installed on the netbook so that a user can easily tell that the OS is unmodified, and the OS is stateless (modulo careful caching). This design is what makes ChromeOS so difficult to reconcile with Android, which is a single-user OS for very personal devices.
I hope that ChromeOS becomes successful because I do care about securely sharing computers, but if not enough other people care about this use case (or even understand the security concerns), then I can see how it may fail in the market.
I'm pretty sure Google isn't pushing Android for tablets because they don't have a good plan for supporting resolutions that high.
or else!
There's other stuff at play here, though. Maybe Google just want to get it polished before releasing an officially-endorsed tablet-compatible version of Android. Nothing stoppign you buying a Froyo Android tablet now, anyway.
Some issues - resolution. Android can cope with different resolution but a lot of apps aren't written that way. Maybe they need to enforce this a bit to avoid old apps looking awful. Also the Google Market isn't officially available to devices that don't run telephony. Any tablet that comes out is going to need to work with something like Google Market as the general public isn't going to want to have to manually sideload apps to their tablet. Maybe something along the lines of Appbrain.com is coming from Google?
Some issues - resolution. Android can cope with different resolution but a lot of apps aren't written that way.
Most apps, if developers follow the proper guidelines, should be resolution-agnostic. But realistically there still would be many cases where that's an issue. I remember reading Samsung was reaching out to developers to fix some of those cases.
Also the Google Market isn't officially available to devices that don't run telephony.
That's an artificial limitation imposed by Google on their partners, not a technical one. Anyone can buy an Android phone, put it in the "airplane mode" or otherwise turn off the radios, turn on wifi, enjoy.
No, it was iPhone OS before it was iOS.
That's just some extra marketing for iPad during the time that iPad was announced. They weren't going to say - "hey this iOS thing worked well for iPhone, so we've slapped it onto this thing and hope it works out just the same." I'm not saying that's the case - I'm saying it was designed to be flexible from the beginning.
If you dig a little further, you will learn that the iPad came first in Apple's R&D pipeline. They had to wait for some reason, and so they made the iPhone in the interim. If you've used the iOS SDK, it becomes pretty clear that it is not something that Apple just shoved out the door in 12 or 18 months or whatever it was. It's obvious that it had already had years of effort put into it. Perhaps the SDK was indeed intended only for iPad, and they rushed it out for iPhone due to popular demand, or perhaps it was a parallel effort. But it's not something Apple just cobbled together and shoved out the door and later updated to work with iPad. iOS was built for a tablet device from the beginning, IMO.
I am not sure what you mean, but yes, Jobs states the idea started from a "tablet" but quickly switched to phone after seeing the initial mockup. That was also during the time of iPad announcement/launch. Nothing like extra marketing for the new device - "hey I've got a secret for you, come closer near the mike."
The wildcard here is device and OS compatibility, which Apple obviously had thought through pretty well. While Android seems to just march forward ignoring it, creating a challenge for app developers. I don't have an Android device, but it is my understanding that it needs to be a phone to use their app marketplace, e.g. I'm not an Android dev, either, but from the sidelines, it looks like they just keep making things tougher for devs as time goes on. Not as bad as Rim or others, but not nearly as nice as iOS. My money is on the fact that the next revision of iPad will work with 99.999% of the apps out there. I'm not sure you could say the same for an Android tablet. Correct me if I'm wrong...
Google's statement of needing a "phone" to use App Market is an artificial/business limitation, not a technical one. This is also NOT a limitation of Android OS.
As far as your iPad claims, why are there 20K apps for iPad, and 250K apps for iPad/iPod touch? Your guesses are not facts.
From the "ground up" it was designed as a flexible OS that could be scaled to different hardware and resolutions, Jobs' marketing statements, iPad launch PR, and initial "mockups" and ideas notwithstanding.
Yup... the iPad isn't much different than a bigger iPod Touch -- there's nothing about it that makes it fundamentally different, in OS needs, than an iPod or iPhone. They boosted the CPU speed a bit, but it's the same Cortex A8 CPU as in the previous iPhones, and exactly the same CPU as in the iPhone 4. There are already Android phones faster than the iPad, not to mention tablets. They are the same kind of device, tablet, smartphone, PDA, etc... particularly when Apple's making them, removing any of the typical I/O-add-on features one might expect from a notebook/netbook replacement.
Not just that, but if the iOS was really so tablet oriented before the iPhone came along, they either seriously screwed that up, or they stripped out all of the Pad-oriented features before progressing to the iPhone. After all, until the added functions in 3.2 or whatever for the iPad (which was only for the iPad), they had completely hardwired the screen resolution to 480x320. That's not a resolution you'd pick for a tablet... and even Android, versions ago, had support for multiple resolutions. That's pretty obvious.
So this has lead to older apps being upscaled on the iPad and even new iPhone 4... and also why the iPhone 4 had to go to 960x640 pixels -- makes the doubling so much easier.
Android is at least as ready for tablets as iPhoneOS was last Spring. The big difference right now is that Google's not sure about... or at least, not fully behind it, not making it easy or even possible for all tablet devices to have Market access, etc.
The simple fact is that only a few different operating systems get consumer buzz at any given time. Android on a tablet is one of those that people want on tablets today. I expect to buy one, maybe this year. I have absolutely no use for a ChromeOS based tablet at the moment -- I need things to be fully functional when offline.
-Dave Haynie
He said the same thing in 2007.
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1575743,00.html
Given that this has been done, several times (the original Qt library was one of these efforts) already, for Linux based devices, I'd say "not all that much". Certainly not something so difficult it wouldn't be done. Like my old Sharp Zaurus PDA, running Qtopia on a 200-something-MHz ARM, etc.
-Dave Haynie
No, he didn't. That article states Jobs instructed his people to produce a better phone, and they took the "video iPod" idea and put a big glass screen on it and replaced hardware with software.
That's a sharp contrast to iOS being "intended for" an iPad-like tablet device. That was marketing and PR then for iPhone, and that is also what it is currently for iPad.
iOS was designed to be flexible from the start, PR and marketing statements from Apple and media notwithstanding.
From the article.
"The iPhone developed the way a lot of cool things do: with a notion. A few years ago Jobs noticed how many development dollars were being spent--particularly in the greater Seattle metropolitan area--on what are called tablet PCs: flat, portable computers that work with a touchscreen instead of a mouse and keyboard. Jobs, being Jobs, figured he could do better, so he had Apple engineers noodle around with a better touchscreen. When they showed him the screen they came up with, he got excited. So excited that he thought he had the beginnings of a new product.
When they showed him the screen they came up with, he got excited. So excited that he thought he had the beginnings of a new product.
First, that "new product" was the iPhone, not the iPad. Second, the part you highlighted is about Jobs noticing the R&D money spent. Third, the prototype design was for the touchscreen device, which likely didn't have a fully functioning OS.
After seeing device touchscreen, Jobs promptly ordered them to start working on the phone, NOT on the tablet. So, if anything, you could argue most of iOS development was geared towards a phone.
In any case, the "intended for" argument is irrelevant as the core of the OS is flexible - people seem to have missed that point.