Hands-on Face-off: IPad 2 V Motorola Xoom

GMGruman writes "Is the iPad 2 all that it's cracked up to be? Or does the first Honeycomb Android tablet, the Xoom, still hold up? I spent an intense weekend comparing the two tablets, detailing in this review how each performs in a battery of tests."

Comments

Extra Extra!

[WrongSizeGlass]

The Xoom has features that the iPad doesn't. The iPad's UI is smoother than the inaugural Android 3 (Honeycomb) release. We needed 7 pages to tell us that??

Re:Extra Extra!

[Americano]

No, we need 7 pages to generate enough ad impressions to pay someone's salary.

We only need one sentence to tell us that they both have significant numbers of common features, and each has a few strengths that the other doesn't.

Re:Extra Extra!

[znu]

Fortunately, you don't have to bother reading past the first page, because it contains a dead giveaway that the article is essentially just shallow filler content designed not to offend anyone.

The iPad, with 60,000 + tablet-optimied apps, scores a nine for application support, while the Xoom, with a handful of tablet-optimized apps, scores an 8? Seriously? And all the arbitrarily chosen criteria are equally weighted? Meaningless nonsense.

Re:Extra Extra!

[tooslickvan]

In many cases, you can simply select the print link and view the entire article at once. In this case the print button takes you to the url http://www.infoworld.com/print/153837

Re:Extra Extra!

[Threni]

No-one's ever going to compare 60,000 apps. Seriously, no-one's going to compare more than 30 apps,ever. And no-one's going to install more than 30 apps, unless they're into gaming and are trying things out. So the number of apps available for a platform is fairly meaningless, once you get past a fairly small number. Everyone's got a text message app, and only the saddest of nerds keeps checking out new ones unless they're really unhappy with their current one (which is unlikely to be the case on iPhone/Android). Same with email, and..well, most other apps.

Re:Extra Extra!

[shmlco]

Are you into social networking? Photography? Cooking? Design? Reading? Watch movies? Like music? Do you fly a plane? Play golf? Go to school? Do construction? Are you an artist? Play in a band? An independent contractor? A consultant? A lawyer? A doctor? Work in IT?

I could go on and on and on, but even if one were to accept that no one would install more than 30 apps (I have about 100, and NOT all games), we'd still be faced with the fact that the 30 apps that YOU might want are completely and totally different than the 30 apps that I might want, and those still are different from the ones that a housewife, my son, and your daughter might want and need and use.

Take a calculator: simple, basic functionality, right? Well... do you want a paper tape of your results? Do you need a scientific calculator? A programmer's calculator that works in hex? A mortgage calculator? A graphing calculator for advanced mathematics? Do currency conversions? Want RPN? Need a photography calculator that can do DOF and hyperfocal calculations?

Sorry, but one size does NOT fit all.

So -- in fact -- the number of apps on a given platform is significant, because it dramatically increases the likelihood that a set of apps exist to suit your interests and suit your needs and suit your lifestyle.

Re:Extra Extra!

[s73v3r]

If that's the case, then why bother with Honeycomb? What's the point of having a tablet specific version of Android?

Re:Extra Extra!

[symbolset]

The Xoom has features that the iPad doesn't.

Apparently one of these features is that you can go into a store and buy it.

Re:Extra Extra!

[fatwilbur]

Not that I've used either to validate the rating, but I could see it being valid. It would only take a handful of applications to reproduce the small subset of those 60k apps which bring greatest value to the tablet. If iPad app quality is anything like it is for the iPhone, I could reasonably see 50,000 of those apps only counting for one point when it comes to application support. I'm sure I could write 60,000 variations of 'Hello world' for the Xoom in short order... would that put them on the same footing to you?

Re:Extra Extra!

[Threni]

Yes, yes, but my point is that you cannot then lazily assume platform a is better than platform b because it has more apps. I'm sure that the vast majority of apps are downloaded 5 or 10 times at most.

Re:Extra Extra!

[Coren22]

I would even say that the article is blatant Fanboism, The Xoom they say costs $800 when the comparable iPad costs $750? While they bash the Xoom for being heavier and thicker, they forget that the Xoom has a bigger screen (10.1 vs 9.7) so of course its going to be slightly larger and heavier...The processor and memory of these models is pretty much the same, but the Xoom has a USB and MicroSD slot that the iPad doesn't, to me, the Xoom is the clear winner. The negatives don't outweigh the positives unless you truly feel that they are the equivalent devices and then the iPad being aluminum somehow matters because it is prettier.

Re:Extra Extra!

[hazydave]

Thing is, many if not most Android apps already work on higher resolution devices, even if they're not fully Honeycomb integrated. So while there are only a few Honeycomb-specific apps out yet, there are 100,000+ that work just dandy. This is not the situation you had last year, when the iPad debuted to a world of iOS apps that were all hard-wired for 480x320.

Re:Extra Extra!

[shmlco]

Vast majority? by the time you get into those kinds of numbers, you're into Long Tail power curves. To wit:

"As a rule of thumb, for such population distributions the majority of occurrences are accounted for by the first 20% of items in the distribution. What is unusual about a long-tailed distribution is that the most frequently-occurring 20% of items represent less than 50% of occurrences; or in other words, the least-frequently-occurring 80% of items are more important as a proportion of the total population."

I want a tablet.

[jason777]

I'd really like a tablet to run my home automation display. But the cheap Android ones are no good (poor screens, buggy), and the xoom is way to expensive. I hate Apple for how the lock down their products, and how they act as a company. But the ipad2 so definitely the better buy. Still, I'm going to wait a while and see what happens.

Re:I want a tablet.

[Sonny Yatsen]

Have you considered a Nook Color? It's cheap - 250 dollars and, if rooted, it is a fully functional Android tablet.

Re:I want a tablet.

[shmlco]

There are already many iPad apps that run home automation systems, including ones that support dedicated IR transmitters. Most of the major manufacturers and systems are on Apple, including Crestron, Savant, X-10, and others.

Re:I want a tablet.

[s73v3r]

You're full of shit.

Apple takes a significant fraction of the revenue as basically pure profit

You mean aside from all the costs associated with running the iTunes store? And don't forget that they distribute free apps as well, for nothing.

because Apple has locked down the iPad to make it difficult to use for anything other than reading magazines and playing games and music

Like what? Go to meeting works quite well, as do a bunch of other VNC apps. There's also the new Garage Band app, and the Office type apps which do quite well.

all of which Apple takes a significant fraction of the revenue from as basically pure profit to offset the loss incurred from selling iPads at or below cost

Stop lying. The iPad itself is making money. It isn't sold at a loss. If you don't believe me, then check out their financial statements, all of which are available to the public.

Re:I want a tablet.

[narcc]

And don't forget that they distribute free apps as well, for nothing.

If by "nothing" you mean $99 a year then yes.

Single page view here:

[teh31337one]

http://www.infoworld.com/print/153837

Tablet Deathmatch?

[cultiv8]

Deathmatch, really? I was hoping to see tablets thrown over buildings and smashed on the ground, not a comparison of iOS 4 vs. Honeycomb.

Re:Tablet Deathmatch?

[Haedrian]

The Xoom would win in that regard. The iPad is thinner.

Re:Tablet Deathmatch?

[MikeDirnt69]

"Does it blend - Deathmatch" sounds more amusing to me :D

commercial uses for iPad?

[Hazel Bergeron]

I used to use the Compaq TC1000 as a tablet for business and pleasure. But I have never been able to get to grips with the iPad: I find handwriting more useful than fingerpainting, there's a lack of hardware expandability, and it just doesn't have the software base of Windows. Can people tell me what experiences they've had using an iPad in a commercial environment for getting work done? Thanks.

Re:commercial uses for iPad?

[drosboro]

I love my iPad, but I'd love it even more if there were a stylus. I'm in education, and so it gets used all the time for reading - I keep all my notes (which were created elsewhere) on it, and refer to them as I teach. The amount of material I can now avoid lugging around the school is rather a lot, so from that perspective, it's great.

If it had a stylus (and now that it has proper video-out), I'd use it in place of the Tablet-PC I keep for writing notes on. That would really make me happy, since the Tablet-PC is expensive, clunky, and I either have to choose between bloat-ware (OneNote) in Windows or mild driver issues in Linux.

Yes, I know there's a stylus or two available for the iPad, but they're completely useless when legibility and speed are both required.

So, I feel your pain (even though I'm not in a commercial environment)...

Re:commercial uses for iPad?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to use the Compaq TC1000 as a tablet for business and pleasure. But I have never been able to get to grips with the iPad: I find handwriting more useful than fingerpainting, there's a lack of hardware expandability, and it just doesn't have the software base of Windows. Can people tell me what experiences they've had using an iPad in a commercial environment for getting work done? Thanks.

First, you have to understand that the new generation of tablets are not replacements for PCs. They're not made for running Windows desktop apps; Windows tablets like the Compaq were a huge flop in the market.

Tablets are useful whenever the user will be moving around, or in meetings or group activities where the lid of a laptop would be a barrier to interaction. Especially a scenario in which users will be passing the tablet around from one to another. Tablets are better at replacing paper or books than they are at replacing PCs.

Software wise, you'd mostly be looking at web sites ("web apps"), document viewers, or media playback situations.

Some concrete examples:

- Focus groups with interactive questionnaires
- Self-paced presentations (as opposed to speaker-driven PowerPoints)
- Architects or designers showing CAD renderings

Slashdotters will point out that a regular PC could do all of that. But many ordinary folks are subconsciously inhibited by seeing something on a regular PC. Tablets seem more approachable. Handing someone something and saying "take this and look it over" has a very different effect than sitting them down and saying, "let me show this to you."

Re:commercial uses for iPad?

[strength_of_10_men]

I was just cross country skiing this weekend and took a lesson from an instructor. He was giving me pointers, instructions, and critique on my form and technique, but it's hard to know what you're doing wrong and how his observations relate to what you're doing (right OR wrong) without visual feedback.

Then it hit me - a tablet with a camera would be perfect for this. He could record me skiing and then show me what I was doing and what could be done differently, all from one device large enough to be useful (not the small LCD screen common on video cameras) but not as cumbersome as a camera+laptop.

I think the iPad would be a tad too large, but something like a Galaxy tab would be perfect; small enough to fit into a pocket but with a usably large screen. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if coaches from all levels were already using a setup like this. I'm not sure if this is a "commercial" use but it just shows that yeah, these things can be used for tasks other than browsing and traditional "work".

Re:commercial uses for iPad?

[Anthony Mouse]

Tablets are better at replacing paper or books than they are at replacing PCs.

This.

The funny thing is that people think they're going to continue to be high margin devices, but what will really make the market is when you can get one for almost nothing, so that people don't have to care about passing it around the room to a bunch of klutzes who will drop it on the floor, or giving it to someone and possibly not getting it back.

That's really a problem with the iPad right now: It costs enough that if you break it you're out a huge pile of cash so you have to treat it with kid gloves, and anything concealable and expensive is automatically a huge theft magnet.

Re:commercial uses for iPad?

[s73v3r]

and it just doesn't have the software base of Windows.

Good. I don't want to have to deal with apps made for a keyboard and mouse on a touchscreen device. Its not a good experience at all.

Re:commercial uses for iPad?

[sarhjinian]

You used a tc1000? You have my sympathy. That thing was awful: the Transmeta CPU was slow as molasses in January, the WiFi reception poor, bits would break off of it at a whim (I lost locking tabs for the battery and keyboard in a month) and XP tablet was just wretched. Going through digitizer tips was just the icing on the cake. And it was the best of it's era.

I think I used the USB ports only a handful of times (and the CF slot and VGA port never), and the stylus I gave up on as it was faster to use the hardware keyboard, what with the digitizing delay and Newton-esque misspellings.

When I saw the iPad, I was fully prepared for it to be the contemporary tc1000. Only, instead of building a device to spec (must have USB ports, must have flash card slot, must run Windows, must be dockable into a full PC, must have removeable battery) it was built to an experience (must not suck to use). I know a lot of people call this the "Ooh, shiny!" factor, but it really is much more than that: the device works, and does so in a consistent and pleasing manner because it was designed to meet an expectation of usability, rather than some geek's wishlist marketing exec's bullet-point spec sheet. It took my days to find something about the iPad that pissed me off; it took minutes to do that on the tc1000.

Better yet, the upper-management types for whom the iPad really works well for haven't found anything that pisses them off. I can tell you that certainly wasn't the case with the tc1000, whose out-of-box experience scuttled a further deployment.

The iPad works really well as a device on which you primarily view content, mildly interact with it, and rarely create it. It's a great replacement for a Blackberry for people who deal with attachments (such as the aforementioned Veeps who read emails and view Excel and PowerPoint docs created by others and get frustrated trying to use a BB and do better with a simple phone). It's a good tool (once wrapped in a tough case) for service technicians and drivers/delivery personnel, assuming your data collection applications are well-designed. It absolutely is the wrong tool for spreadsheet jockeys, order-entry clerks and probably not great for most IT people (for whom it's, at best a complementary tool). In a corporate deployment you have to consider the experience of the user, and this is why the tc1000 (and it's ilk) failed: it wasn't designed for a specific experience, and ended up being a jack-of-no-trades-master-of-nothing.

I don't think you'll ever (for a given value of "ever") see a device that can take decent notes. Note-taking (and voice transcription) is one of those things that computers universally suck at, and that pen-and-paper do quite well. If you're dependent on written input, any technology is going to feel like a solution in search of a problem.

Re:commercial uses for iPad?

[indiechild]

With speed, are you referring to the strokes visually lagging behind on-screen as you handwrite? I wonder if the iPad 2 with its dual-core processor would alleviate this.

Re:commercial uses for iPad?

[yeshuawatso]

As a tablet user of both Motion tablets and the original iPad, the iPad isn't designed to be used in the same manner we use pen based tablets. The styli that do work with the iPad are a crap shoot as to what works the best, and none of them have ways of working with screens that get smudgy with oil from your hands. Accuracy and precision are non-existent on the iPad with styli or your fingers. There are a few good note taking apps that help counter this, but they simply can't compare to a digital stylus and OneNote. The biggest causation that I could find with the iPad (and all iOS devices) is that the screen expects that your touch input come at an angle that corresponds to the direction of the screen. Meaning, if you're in landscape, the device expects your finger/stylus to point to the top of the screen (e.g. toward the time) and input that comes from the side is often ignored (this is a design feature that Apple patented if you're interested). This is problematical for those who write with their paper/tablet at an angle slightly rotated toward 90 degrees away from their bodies.

That being said, the iPad's battery life can't be matched, especially it's power usage when not in use. My Motion tablets won't last more than 4 hours when idle but my iPad can idle all day and still have 90% of the battery remaining. Media consumption is also a better experience on the iPad than pure pen-input tablets. It's just easier to touch your files to play music and movies, read books, and even surf the web.

All in all, if you want a media consumption device (which is what the iPad is classified according to Sir Jobs), then an iPad is a great way to go. If you want to actually work on your device using natural tools and gestures, then stick with Windows based tablets. If you have a little cash to throw around (about $2k), Motion now makes a tablet with digital pen input AND touch input. While the battery life and media consumption patterns won't be the same as the iPad, it's a great way to get the best of both worlds; otherwise, stick with your old tablet for work, and use an iPad for play.

BTW, to stay on topic: Many of the challenges I mentioned above for the iPad will also exist for the Xoom (or any media based tablet), since these devices essentially mimic each other in functionality and capability. Don't try to work with these things are you're just going to be disappointed.

Re:commercial uses for iPad?

[hazydave]

The problem with a consumer-oriented (iPad/Xoom-like) Windows tablet is that, even if it's built without all those bugs, it still will inherently represent the lowest performance class of any Windows device. And even at that, the power consumption is going to be a problem (the tablet needs all-day battery life), apps are going to be a problem (most any existing Windows app will need a stylus or mouse), app size is a problem (I have one application on Windows that takes 20GB of HDD space... fairly daunting for a 32GB-64GB max tablet).

Of course the iPad was immediately useable.. it was a fastest-in-class iPod Touch, not a super scaled down desktop PC. You aren't going to do the same things with the same programs on the tablet as you do on the desktop, but what runs on any of these tablets will be device-appropriate.

As posted before, Anandtech did it very well

[Shivetya]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/apple-ipad-2-gpu-performance-explored-powervr-sgx543mp2-benchmarked

and their review helps as well http://www.anandtech.com/show/4215/apple-ipad-2-benchmarked-dualcore-cortex-a9-powervr-sgx-543mp2

The key items to take away from both are, yeah the cameras suck but this is truly a real upgrade from the iPad. Performance alone puts is ahead of the older model as well as many available tablets. They did find out that the dual core processor is actually running at only 900mhz. While the Xoom pushes more pixels because of its 1280x800 versus 1078x768 the iPad2 pulls far ahead of it, beyond what the pixel count would account for. As for gaming, some games are already taking advantage of the new power, Infinity Blade has been updated and looks fantastic. This brings up the issue, will there be apps sold that are marked iPad2 required?

Better yet, its cheaper than its nearest competition. The only question is, how long before really good Android tablets come along?
\\

* to prevent kharma whoring feel free to mark it funny

Re:As posted before, Anandtech did it very well

[getNewNickName]

This brings up the issue, will there be apps sold that are marked iPad2 required?

The Unreal Engine has no problem scaling to whatever hardware you give it. Compared to various PC configurations this should be much simpler. I foresee in the future there may be apps marked iPad2+ required when the hardware performance gets too disparate, but probably not between iPad and iPad2.

Re:As posted before, Anandtech did it very well

[Anonymous Coward]

Not too shabby considering tablets are designed to run off batteries (as you mentioned) AND do it in a slab that weighs 600 grams. The original Radeon 9700's heatsink alone weighed about that much if not a little more.

Re:As posted before, Anandtech did it very well

[lowlymarine]

Actually, the Radeon 9700 was cooled by a fairly small fan over the GPU. The FX 5800 required a "gigantic" (at the time) two-slot blower, but even the fastest R300 didn't have a full shroud.

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/ati/radeon9700pro/cardfront.jpg

Re:As posted before, Anandtech did it very well

[DeadboltX]

This brings up the issue, will there be apps sold that are marked iPad2 required?

Probably not. Judging by how much IOS updates have slowed down my iPhone 3G, I'm willing to bet that Apple is not concerned about iPad1 users having a sluggish experience by running apps it not fast enough for. Apple probably WANTS you to have a sluggish experience on your previous generation model, because the solution is simple: buy a NEW iDevice!

Re:As posted before, Anandtech did it very well

[shmlco]

Other than it's what a user would see today... with today's software, and today's games.

Funny how the Droid-boys were busy bitch-slapping the year-old iPad one with the Xoom specs, but now are sputtering, "Well, sure.... but, but... sometime in the future I'm sure that things will be different. You know, with updates. Assuming we get updates, of course."

Re:As posted before, Anandtech did it very well

[markdavis]

There was only one Xoom benchmark done against the yet-to-be-released ipad2. It was from anandtech, it was graphics performance only, and it has been re-quoted over and over again as if it is meaningful, which it is not really. It was not even adjusted for screen resolution! It is not objective, verifiable, repeatable, concrete data to draw any good conclusions. They listed the DETAILED results for the iPad and iPad2, but only pulled out three tests to compare to the Xoom. Does that seem reasonable? And it certainly says nothing about any other aspects of real-world performance.

Once the iPad2 is released, I am sure more comprehensive and complete benchmarks will give a real picture.

Case in point- we all know the Xoom was rushed out the door too quickly, and Android 3.0 is very new. But Motorola just pushed an update out that (reportedly) increased OVERALL performance of the Xoom by 28% in the Quadrant benchmark! http://forum.androidcentral.com/motorola-xoom/67196-xoom-hri66-hri39-raises-quadrant-benchmark-23-a.html

Re:As posted before, Anandtech did it very well

[exomondo]

This brings up the issue, will there be apps sold that are marked iPad2 required?

The Unreal Engine has no problem scaling to whatever hardware you give it. Compared to various PC configurations this should be much simpler. I foresee in the future there may be apps marked iPad2+ required when the hardware performance gets too disparate, but probably not between iPad and iPad2.

With a quoted 9x GPU performance difference and 2x CPU performance difference you really think the difference isn't that disparate? The Unreal Engine itself is quite scalable but it doesn't magically scale your art assets or your shaders or anything like that.

Forever Alone?

[MikeDirnt69]

Am I the only one that just don't care about tablets? Ok, it's a cool piece of tecnology, but why all that hype around it?

Everything was calm before iPad1, now everybody needs one plus every company urges to build their own.

Re:Forever Alone?

[Haedrian]

That's how the market works. If there are people who want to buy something, everyone is going to produce more of that thing.

I have a tablet myself, I can tell that they're very useful for certain things, and useless for others. It'll fill a niche. It doesn't deserve all the hype its getting though.

Re:Forever Alone?

[MikeDirnt69]

That's exactly my point. No hype before iPad1.

Re:Forever Alone?

[Andy Dodd]

Part of it is that the iPad 1 was the first tablet to come out with a successful formula. Since then, some manufacturers have been intelligent enough to implement the same successful formula.

The short summary of the secret: Scaling up an OS designed for touchscreen phones (iOS, Android) to tablet size (the approach first used by iPad 1 and used by other companies since then) works, scaling down a desktop OS (Windows) to a tablet (the usual approach prior to iPad 1) doesn't.

Microsoft still hasn't learned - they're still trying to stick Windows 7 into tablets. FAIL.

Re:Forever Alone?

[MikeDirnt69]

That's a reasonable answer. Plus the credit Apple have with innovative products, people were crazy about it even before the launch.

But my point is: most of people who buy this new gen. tablets could accomplish the same tasks they usually do with smartphones or less. Users are overrating themselves!

Re:Forever Alone?

[Locke2005]

Trust me, after a while you'll get tired of watching porn while driving on that tiny 4" cell phone display and you'll want something bigger... or is that just me?

Re:Forever Alone?

[MikeDirnt69]

I don't want the world agree with me, far from it, I just want to understand the facts I've posted. When I have the chance to do a extended try-out with one of these tablets, I will. For now, I can't afford ~U$1k on a device just to try it (here in Brazil theses things are endeed expensive).

Currently, I can't see why I should have a tablet, I don't have any use for it today. My iTouch+Nokia E63 combo works fine for me, and even fits my pocket.

Re:Forever Alone?

[evilviper]

The tablet is just the next evolution of protable computers. First it was the PDA craze, circa 2000. If you were in the Palm camp, you paid a lot of money for a glorified alarm clock and personal organizer. If you were in the WinCE camp you got the high end hardware with an OS so horrible that all the bullet-list features were actually useless. The Psion camp had the only decent PDAs, but they let their device stagnate, not adding wifi, not upgrading the devices, but letting them stagnate as they spun off Symbian and hoped others would do the work, but that didn't pan out.

Then came the laptop / desktop replacement craze several years ago... I HATED the very idea that people would trade the great interface of a desktop for a crap laptop.

After that was the netbook craze. Aim for low specs and you can make something very small, and cheap. A good idea, done poorly by most netbooks I saw.

Somewhere in there was the smartphone craze... Blackberry first, then iPhone and Android. While things have improved slightly, they aren't much better than the PDAs of a decade ago... Many lessons still not learned. Some inherent limitations that never will be overcome.

Now it's tablets. But what is a tablet? It's a wireless laptop running a smartphone OS. Get yourself a bluetooth keyboard and you're better off than you would be with a laptop... The screen and keyboard are seperate, the UI is better suited, battery life is longer, etc. As far as I'm concerned, the only thing they're missing is rootless X11 so that we can port any desktop apps lacking a mobile equivalent. The big ones being NX client and xterm.

There are open source projects porting real Linux OSes to a few popular tablets. A few tablets (like the archos 70 250GB) have hard drives too, if space is the problem.

Re:Forever Alone?

[indiechild]

They weren't tablets at all in the modern sense. They ran desktop operating systems and were far from optimised for multitouch. In short, they sucked, which is why so few people bought them.

Re:Forever Alone?

[Paul1969]

Trust me, after a while you'll get tired of watching porn while driving on that tiny 4" cell phone display and you'll want something bigger... or is that just me?

That's just you. Geeks favor the 4" screen for porn, because then none of the "actors" looks like his junk is bigger than theirs.
Which reminds me - you youngsters are DAMN LUCKY that you will never have the experience of watching porn at a drive-in movie theater!

Re:Forever Alone?

[bryan1945]

A tablet doesn't have much use for me. Now my mom, she could use it for the few things she asks me to do. But that's about it in my family; everyone else has laptops and desktops.

Only needed one page

[name_already_taken]

I stopped reading at the bottom of page 1, where there was a comparison chart detailing that both tablets scored pretty much the same on all the tests, with a slight edge for the iPad in one of the tests.

Really, why bother reading beyond the point that the Xoom scores average 8.0 and the iPad scores average 8.4?

Re:Only needed one page

[Vanderhoth]

I don't know, I saw the chart and on, I believe, page three it goes on to detail the available apps. The Xoom scored lower then the iPad2 in that area, but after reading the reasoning I think the chart might be in error. The article seems to say the default apps that come with the Xoom are more robust, with excellent plans for expanding functionality the iPad2 has no intention of implementing (ie. Flash). The only negative mention I picked out about the Xoom is currently it's lacking choices for apps in the app market. Big surprise there, the iPad one has been out for a while so I imagine they'll be lots of carry over software. The Xoom is using the newest Android OS, I don't know why there wouldn't be the same carry over from the version I have on my phone 2.2. That aside, I'm not sure why that matters as we've seen with just about every other trendy device that uses "apps" almost immediately after they hit the shelves every company, programmer and their dogs starts writing software for them. I'm sure the Xoom won't be any different.

Re:Only needed one page

[peragrin]

The xoom doesn't have flash either. Adobe hasn't approved it yet it might be available some time in April only 2-4 weeks behind the original schedule of mid march.

The xoom shipped with a nonfunctional SD card slot .

The big problem with android is there are to many hardware choices leading to huge gaps in functionality, which vastly screws up the available software.

any iphone app will work on an ipad, but not every android app will work on a honeycomb tablet.

I find this sucks. while I like the ipad as it is a lot smoother interface than android, I find it is to large for my personal tastes. So I have to wait for 12-18 months for some company to come out with a decent wifi only android tablet.

Re:Only needed one page

[coinreturn]

My take of that paragraph was completely different. Here's the money quote:

"...but the number of tablet-specific apps in the Android Market has more than doubled in the past two weeks, from 16 to 37."

You must be f@cking joking me. There are over 65K tablet-specific apps in the Apple app store. And this just nudges the iPad one point over the Xoom? Pfft. Butt-kissing "deathmatch" refuses to piss off either manufacturer by intentionally splitting the final score by a measly 5% difference.

Re:Only needed one page

[Ccmods]

Flash is due in the marketplace on March 18th, according to the last system update I got on my Xoom. It's possible it's been delayed again, but that was their latest update as of last Saturday. Also the SDCard slot appears to have some sort of plastic stopper over it, so it'll probably be a hardware upgrade (and shipping back to motorola), but I haven't attempted to pull mine apart to verify that.

Re:Only needed one page

[Vanderhoth]

I see your point, but IMHO I thing the reason for the small difference in score is probably because the Xoom comes with better default apps. That being said how many of those 65K tablet-specific apps do you think are original? I'd wager most are duplicates, or are just slight variations, of some other app. How many apps there are for a device will grow exceptionally and the device becomes available. The iPad 2 has the advantage of carry over apps from the first iPad.

The Xoom doesn't, to my knowledge, have a predecessor so it's not going to have the same carry over apps. However, It took me about a week after I got my HTC Desire Z phone to start writing apps for it. Since Android is open and it's free to develop for, give it till January and the market will be flooded with duplicate and triplicate apps from developers just messing around with too much time on their hands.

Re:Only needed one page

[Samalie]

Oh come off it already.

There's fanboi-ism, there's anti-fanboi-ism, and then there's blatent bullshit. Guess what category your post falls under?

Tablet-specific apps are barely there for Android...today. Give it a few months, and there will be thousands there too. Apple has the numbers advantage today...and I would also argue they have a "usefulness" advantage today as well. Sure, there are a thousand different soundboard/fart apps and other such bullshit on the iOS app store...but there is a shitton of quality apps there too. TOmorrow...Apple may or may not retain the numbers advantage, but Android will catch up. BOTH are damn fine OS's, with iOS showing a bit more polish over Android 3.0 right now...but Android will close the gap without a doubt.

Being so blinded by hate either way is just fucking stupid, and quite frankly makes you look like a fucking shithead. Anybody who refuses to accept that Apple is the reigning tablet king (and tablet app king) is fucking deluding themselves. Anyone who thinks Android won't catch up is just as fucking delusional.

In the end...when we don't act like fucking children...we all win. Because BOTH companies will be forced to improve their devices and underlying OS's to stay competitive with each other. That is GOOD for all us consumers, period.

Re:Only needed one page

[coinreturn]

Being so blinded by hate either way is just fucking stupid, and quite frankly makes you look like a fucking shithead. Anybody who refuses to accept that Apple is the reigning tablet king (and tablet app king) is fucking deluding themselves. Anyone who thinks Android won't catch up is just as fucking delusional.

While I agree with most of what you say, that last part is a stretch. While it is delusional to deny reality, it is not delusional to disagree on the future (within logical reason). It is certainly possible that Apple will remain king and Android will fade. RIP all kinds of competitors for all kinds of products.

Re:Only needed one page

[coinreturn]

Obviously, I don't think 65K apps are unique. However there are bound to be many many more than 37 unique applications. And I don't see any reason development rate on Android would exceed dev rate on iOS - I know which has more potential customers.

Re:Only needed one page

[Skuld-Chan]

To be fair - Apple had a year head start.

Re:Only needed one page

[jsdcnet]

No, Apple customers still lose. They still can't run Flash

I'm an Apple customer and I consider that a win.

Re:Only needed one page

[coinreturn]

To be fair - Apple had a year head start.

And sometimes that's all it takes. In a "death match" all advantages count.

Re:Only needed one page

[darkshadow88]

My take of that paragraph was completely different. Here's the money quote:

"...but the number of tablet-specific apps in the Android Market has more than doubled in the past two weeks, from 16 to 37."

You must be f@cking joking me. There are over 65K tablet-specific apps in the Apple app store. And this just nudges the iPad one point over the Xoom?

You'd have a point if that were accurate. The 37 apps mentioned are the ones listed under "Featured Tablet Apps". There are lots of other apps out there for tablets that aren't featured--the accurate criticism here is that there isn't a good way to get a complete list of which apps are designed for tablets.

The point may well be moot, though, as Android was designed from the ground up to scale well to all sorts of resolutions. The upshot here is that for most apps, where the programmers did their job right, the phone apps scale very well to the tablet resolution (so well, in fact, many phone apps look like they were made for the tablet all along). In comparison, iPhone apps do the 2x scaling thing and look like crap, making it absolutely necessary that developers write iPad-specific versions of their apps.

Re:Only needed one page

[CharlyFoxtrot]

This. A lot of iPad owners also own an Apple laptop and have first hand knowledge of how crappy flash is. Just the other day I was talking to a college who had installed Flashblock because flash cut his (Apple) laptop's battery time in half. You don't even need to go to a site that uses flash, just the flash ads are enough. At this point, personally, I wouldn't install flash on my iPad if Adobe paid me. If there are multitudes of Apple users clamoring for Flash on iOS devices I sure haven't met them.

Re:Only needed one page

[Duradin]

And a pool is just a stupidly oversized bathtub. No difference in use cases.

Droidbois must be really compensating since they're the ones that go out of their way to show how superior Android is.

Re:Only needed one page

[jbezorg]

Could the stopper may just be a dummy SD card locked in? Is there an option to Unmount the SD card in settings?

I was thinking about getting one but not if I have to ship it back to enable the feature later. I'll wait.

Re:Only needed one page

[TheCRAIGGERS]

You do realize you can uninstall the flash module, right? In fact, it's easier than uninstalling it on the PC- it's just like any other app that you can install and uninstall at a moment's notice. Not only that, but some browsers have the ability to turn it on and off on the fly.

I don't see how having the *option* to use flash can be anything other than a win.

Re:Only needed one page

[Ccmods]

From the unboxing photos I've seen, it appears it is just a stopper over a slot for both an SD Card and a SIM card (to later upgrade to 4G) but I haven't been able to get it off just yet without worrying that I'd hack up the case attempting to. Supposedly the SD card slot only requires a software update according to Motorola's support department, and only the 4G LTE upgrade will require it to be sent in. Either way... it's a great tablet, but needs some polishing.

Re:Only needed one page

[TheCRAIGGERS]

And a pool is just a stupidly oversized bathtub. No difference in use cases.

I bet you're really in shape from swimming all those laps in your bathtub.

Re:Only needed one page

[Yvan256]

You have to divide 65000 apps by 1000 to arrive anywhere near the same numbers, and it's still nearly twice as many apps.

Re:Only needed one page

[Yvan256]

If a head start was so important, Microsoft would own the market by now.

Re:Only needed one page

[vijayiyer]

The whole point is that if flash is there by default, web developers use it, and then you need it. That's why the option itself represents a loss. There's been an explosion in flashless websites precisely because there are millions of mobile devices without flash.

Re:Only needed one page

[shmlco]

"So writing a tablet app for it is fundamentally the same as writing an iphone app. You just make a minor screen resolution change, republish as "Ipad version!" and get a second sale to the fuckwit that bought your iphone app."

Well... no. Many, many iPad apps are updated to actually USE the extra screen real-estate (games, magazine and news apps, etc.), or to use UISplitViewControllers for master-detail application relationships (list on the left, detail on the right).

If all you're doing is adjusting your view size to the increase in screen size, then in all likelihood you're limiting functionality and wasting screen space by simply making your list view wider. Especially on a wide-screen tablet like the Xoom which is primarily designed to operate horizontally in the first place.

A tablet is NOT just a big iPhone (or Droid).

Re:Only needed one page

[Man On Pink Corner]

The ipad is an iphone for people with smaller dicks ... lets face it, most iphone purchasers are compensating for something

I don't know about that, but I'm absolutely sure that the psychology behind posts like yours could mint several new PhDs, if any ambitious grad students looking for research topics are surfing Slashdot these days.

"Let's face it," to use your own words, your whole post amounts to an exhibition of pathology. Either someone paid you to post that bizarre idea salad -- and as a Google stockholder I hope to God it isn't us -- or you're a member of a small but growing contingent of people on here who genuinely need professional help, but don't necessarily fit into any of the current DSM-IV criteria for diagnosis.

Re:Only needed one page

[s73v3r]

Uhhh, no. That's just an annoying, anti-Apple fanboy way of looking at it.

Re:Only needed one page

[s73v3r]

So your point is, the iPad is worse because iPad devs are actually rewriting their UIs to take advantage of the new controls available, and to take advantage of more screen real estate, and this is stupid, while Droid devs are using the same UI on every resolution, and treating all devices the same, and this is somehow better?

Re:Only needed one page

[darkshadow88]

And a pool is just a stupidly oversized bathtub. No difference in use cases.

I bet you're really in shape from swimming all those laps in your bathtub.

Or he's really clean from taking all those baths in the pool.

Re:Only needed one page

[hey!]

I dunno. I have a rooted Nook Color and all the phone oriented apps I've used on it have worked remarkably well, even though the tablet lacks the standard complement of Android phone hardware buttons.

I've done mobile app UI design, so I know you can't just take an app designed for, say, a laptop and expect the UI to work on a phone. It's possible that some apps designed for a 3" mobile phone screen might appear cartoonishly absurd blown up to 7", but I haven't run into anything like that yet. I suppose there might be some kind of magical boiling point between 7" and 10" which would make the apps I've tried thus far into unusable garbage, but I can't see why off the top of my head. Maybe a full screen calculator designed for smart phone would be bigger than optimal on a Xoom, but I haven't found scaling up most smartphone apps to tablet size to be a problem. Not at 7", at least. On the other hand I *have* found apps that work very nicely on the Nook but I think would have been UI garbage on a smartphone sized screen.

Many apps could be redesigned to take advantage of the greater real estate on a tablet. They Honeycomb home screen is an example of that. But if you're telling people they'll be sitting around with their $800 Xoom with only a couple of dozen apps that are even usable on it, that's pure FUD.

Re:Only needed one page

[exomondo]

I'm an Apple customer and I consider that a win.

Lack of choice is a feature? It shits me that i can't just enable flash on a website every now and then when i need it on the ipad.

Re:Only needed one page

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Give it a few months, and there will be thousands there too

That'd be neat if it weren't for the fact that one of the biggest selling points of the Android platform was resolution independence. What was so wrong with the UI, API and OS that they had to retool, well, ANYTHING for tablets?

I can imagine retooling the built in apps for a guaranteed minimum screen spec, but, this is ridiculous.

Re:Only needed one page

[exomondo]

A tablet is NOT just a big iPhone (or Droid).

Of course it is, the ipad is just a big iphone (without the phone), however this single element makes a significant difference to its functionality.

Re:Only needed one page

[coinreturn]

You'd have a point if that were accurate. The 37 apps mentioned are the ones listed under "Featured Tablet Apps". There are lots of other apps out there for tablets that aren't featured--the accurate criticism here is that there isn't a good way to get a complete list of which apps are designed for tablets.

Criticism noted. I have no knowledge of actual number of apps. I was using the data in the article, which I believe is the subject of this whole thread.

The point may well be moot, though, as Android was designed from the ground up to scale well to all sorts of resolutions. The upshot here is that for most apps, where the programmers did their job right, the phone apps scale very well to the tablet resolution (so well, in fact, many phone apps look like they were made for the tablet all along). In comparison, iPhone apps do the 2x scaling thing and look like crap, making it absolutely necessary that developers write iPad-specific versions of their apps.

Now you're the one who needs schooling. Yes, the original, very old iPhone apps do the 2x scaling thing - that was an intermediate step to allow porting of apps. Anyone designing with iOS 3.0 or greater should know better and at least do the resolution independent stuff (same applies for Retina display); the new apps are written as such. However, the tablet-optimized is more important in the LAYOUT of the user interface or content. It is obvious when done right and there are tonnage such for the iPad.

Re:Only needed one page

[Cederic]

I can confirm I was not paid to post that. I also currently possess no Android devices (or other Google products, other than email/docs/picasa accounts).

I just hate the bullshit marketing perpetuated by Apple and its blinkered fans.

you're a member of a small but growing contingent of people on here who genuinely need professional help, but don't necessarily fit into any of the current DSM-IV criteria for diagnosis

Yes and no. I do need professional help, for things that don't fit into those criteria. Ironically I don't really need help for the two things that are classified under those criteria. Hey, nobody's normal.

I fear however you're missing the key ingredient in my post that should assuage your concerns over my mental health. It's called humour. We spell it with a u in this country.

Re:Only needed one page

[Cederic]

You aren't used to changing the material displayed according to the size of window it's being displayed in? Without recompiling/redeploying?

Oh well, not everyone's been doing UI development since 24x80 was considered 'high res'.

Re:Only needed one page

[s73v3r]

There are more ways to take advantage of extra screen real estate than "make it bigger". In fact, I'd argue that is the worst way to do it.

Re:Only needed one page

[Cederic]

I agree completely. It doesn't however excuse a second disparate application with a second price tag attached to it, or indeed people gloating about having twice as many apps because each one needs deploying twice.

Which was the original point being raised by Andy Dodd and unnecessarily (and aggressively) put down by Samalie.

Although often 'more of the same' is a good use of the screen real estate. Documents, web pages, map applications and real-time strategy games are all fine examples. Keep the navigational/control elements the same size and display more content.

Re:Only needed one page

[davester666]

Actually, that's also the selling job Adobe has been doing with Flash.

They claim Flash is universal, and that having it your phone enables you to access the 'whole' internet [assuming you define it to be the Internet + Flash].

Except:
-you need to rewrite all your Flash content UI to work with a touch interface and rework the UI for a mobile-sized screen [or rather, a bunch of similar sized screens] instead of a desktop browser
-you need to reencode all your video content to work with mobile Flash

What exactly is left that you don't need to redo for Flash to work everywhere?

Re:Only needed one page

[darkshadow88]

Now you're the one who needs schooling. Yes, the original, very old iPhone apps do the 2x scaling thing - that was an intermediate step to allow porting of apps. Anyone designing with iOS 3.0 or greater should know better and at least do the resolution independent stuff (same applies for Retina display); the new apps are written as such. However, the tablet-optimized is more important in the LAYOUT of the user interface or content. It is obvious when done right and there are tonnage such for the iPad.

Duly noted, but the point is that the apps did, indeed, have to be changed to look right on the iPad (if only to implement the resolution-independence, which I understand is not as insignificant a task as it may seem), compared to Android, where many of the old apps look fine even without the developers getting involved. Also, resolution independence wasn't implemented until iOS 4.0 (to accomodate the retina display), over two months after the iPad's release. This means that there may be plenty of apps out there that are not resolution independent (though it would, indeed, be a sign of developers that don't maintain their product).

The fact that developers do not need to get involved is particularly important as the Android tablets begin to pick up steam--with the iPad, there was just one device, the SDK was released well in advance, and there was a good reason to believe that single device would sell well (since it's made by Apple). This meant that there were lots of iPad-specific apps from the start.

Android is different, though. Adoption of Android started off fairly slowly (and, likewise, so did the number of apps). Soon after Android 2.0 was released, adoption of Android increased quickly and so did the app count. I think we're seeing something similar with tablets. The Android 2.x tablets were slow sellers, but I think the 3.0 tablets are going to sell pretty well (maybe not the Xoom in particular, but there's going to be a lot of 3.0 tablets out there in the coming months). As the Honeycomb tablets start selling, developers are going to step up (and they've already begun to). In the meantime, it's very important for Android that the old phone apps work well, since not all developers are concerned with the tablet form factor just yet. Android was designed perfectly for this, though, so all the apps by developers who don't care about tablets will continue to work well until those apps' developers get with the program or their apps are superseded by ones that do take full advantage of the screen.

The main point here is that with the iPad, you know exactly what you're getting: what it can do, what apps it has, and what its limitations are--and that's fine for most people. With the Xoom (and other Honeycomb tablets), the shortcomings are ones that can easily be fixed with either a software update (or with just more apps being developed). While iOS could be improved similarly, Apple has consistently shown that it's not interested in your suggestions until everybody screams really loudly (at which point the new feature is "revolutionary" or "magical"). Sure, with Android, there's no guarantee that a nagging issue will be fixed, but you know that if enough people care, someone in the community will fix it. Besides, if something really bothers you, and you have the knowhow, you have the source code with which to do as you please. Motorola has given the Xoom an unlockable/relockable bootloader, which, combined with Android being open-source, leaves the door wide open for custom firmwares without needing to hack around any measures the manufacturer might put in to stop you.

Re:Only needed one page

[coinreturn]

I'm afraid you're just drinking a different flavor of Kool-Aid.

Re:Only needed one page

[DJRumpy]

Not only that but I'm guessing the reviewer wasn't familiar enough with the iOS settings for Mail to know that iOS does indeed let you sync contacts, mail, and calendar with GMail over the air via WiFi or 3G. It will do so with ActiveSync, GMail, Yahoo, and AOL accounts without issue. The only app they indicated was perceptibly better was the navigation app, which I happen to agree with. Apple's navigation app is in desperate need of some updates as it's essentially unchanged since the first version of iOS.

He also goes on about the Finder like column views for folders indicating it's a strength over iOS but doesn't appear to know you can simply click a button and drop a message in any folder on iOS without having to leave your finger in constant contact with the touchpad while you browse through your folder structure. In addition he indicated that Honeycomb doesn't allow nested folders so a significant number of folders would make dragging and dropping a message to a folder in the bottom of the list from the top of the folder list tedious at best.He also indicates that embedded font sizes override your font preferences as he apparently does not know that you can set a minimum font size in the mail preferences.

In the App section, I also agree with the poster above. Even if the number of apps doubled from 16 to 37, it still pales in comparison to the full library available to the iPad. The scoring difference here was very slanted as the difference was almost non-existent. I was also curios about the statement regarding 'lack of popups' on the iOS UI. Push notifications have existed for quite a long time, and various apps like Facebook, twitter, email clients, etc all typically support them.

On the web browser section, nearly every section showed an advantage to the iPad yet it was declared a tie? He does state the Xoom score better on the benchmarks and then immediately states that the iPad felt much snappier even though the Xoom scored higher in benchmarks. In fact that was the only item where the Xoom seemed to win where every other feature was done better in iOS or simply lacking in the Xoom, yet it was declared a tie for web browsing.

On the location piece I probably would have called a tie although I much prefer the Android navigation app, I also see a great need to control individual app's ability to use location services. Leaving the option out to control that access at the app level seems like a glaring omission, where a large number of comparable navigation apps which do include voice capabilities are available for iPad for free or a small fee.

Under the UI, Operational UI, and Text tools, the reviewer again shows an advantage for the iPad again, while at the same time knocking the widget area which he praised in the proceeding paragraph and earlier in the review for taking up too much screen real-estate. He states the settings are difficult to read on the Xoom, and that the keyboard is not full size, unlike the iPad, making it more difficult to type on. In the text section he again calls the iPad superior on text handling capabilities. He then proceeds to call it a tie yet again.

The hardware section shows many flaws in Xoom, from it's plastic casing, it's back facing power switch, and a battery time that's half the iPad's while weighing significantly more. He also failed to test the graphics capabilities of the tablets which are becoming a key area in mobile performance for gaming. Had he done so he would have found that the iPad 2 rips the Xoom to pieces by a huge margin.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/03/12/dual_core_sgx543_dramatically_boosts_ipad_2_graphics.html

I think the Xoom has a lot of potential, but it is a far cry from 'close' to the iPad 2. Candy coated reviews aren't doing anyone any favors, and they remove pressure from hardware manufacturer's to improve their products faster.

A scoring system for the review would have been a good place to start, rather than the fluffy numbers this review is giving.

Re:Only needed one page

[froggymana]

The iPad2 didn't ship with a SD card slot at all

Re:Only needed one page

[Vanderhoth]

Nicely put, I think you should be doing the reviews.

Re:Only needed one page

[Vanderhoth]

Ah, maybe my sarcasm meter is broken, but I haven't worked in an office made up of Macs in the last 20 years.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a Linux user at home and I hate the fact that I'm stuck on a windows machine at work. That being said, I'm pretty sure MS does own the market. It's only been recently, Since Vista that I'm aware of, that MS has been having issues with their market share and even with that they're still kicking the crap out of of Mac and Linux boxes. It's the same thing with a lot of companies. They do well because they're first to market, but over time they get dickish and someone else does something a little different and over time takes over the market.

At the price Apple wants for their products, I doubt you'll ever see an office full of Macs unless it's prudent to the work the office does. I know I'm going to get shot for saying this, but Apple products are a status symbol. They do somethings well, for the most part though it's something to blow a wad of cash on and wave it's shiny back side in front of everyone else to say look at me I have lots of money and can afford shiny trendy toys. I personally know plenty of Apple users who would disagree with me. However, my personal experience with Apple products has been less then stellar and frustrating at times simply because of how locked down they are.

Re:Only needed one page

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Ah, maybe my sarcasm meter is broken, but I haven't worked in an office made up of Macs in the last 20 years.

He was talking about the decade head start MS had with the Tablet PC.

Re:Only needed one page

[Coren22]

I had to read on to figure out why they down scored the Xoom on hardware when they have the same specs. It came down to price, which is comparing Apples to oranges as they are different sized screens. They even admitted that the cameras on the Xoom were actually better then the iPad, and the Xoom had more features at the same specs.

Re:Only needed one page

[Coren22]

Decent wifi only Android eh? Check out the Nook Color. $250 and pretty small.

Re:Only needed one page

[hazydave]

Actually, the Xoom may well have better hardware specs. Apple has mentioned they're dual core at 1GHz, but have not said if the iPad 2 is based on the Cortex A8 "Hummingbird" they got from Samsung, or whether it's using the newer and slightly faster A9. Apple's mum.

They have not spoke of memory... the Xoom has 1GB RAM, the iPad 2 by most estimations has 512MB. How about the relative performance of the graphics.. nVidia's is decent, but Apple may be using some standard core (PowerVR?) we haven't seen before... that's a good match up there, and one deftly avoided by this content-free "death match". The Xoom has a higher resolution screen... does Apple's use of IPS offset that advantage?

In short, there's plenty of stuff to compare.. things that can actually be measured. Why anyone thinks a 100% subjective review, particularly one with the gloves fully intact, is worth anyone's while, is beyond me.

Re:Only needed one page

[peragrin]

I have thought about it, but the whole point of having to fix something I just spent hundreds of dollars on just to make it usable is annoying.

you have to root a nook if anything just to install a decent web browser, and to fix the interface issues

Re:Only needed one page

[Coren22]

I've never had issues with the browser, I assume it is chrome, but it isn't like it tells you :)

But having to root it for the market is annoying.

Re:Only needed one page

[narcc]

Candy coated reviews aren't doing anyone any favors

I disagree. That kind of review seems to benefit Apple greatly.

Re:Only needed one page

[ken138888]

Waiting for the next one

Re:Only needed one page

[Skuld-Chan]

Who says they don't? In 2004 tablet PC's were a 1.2 billion dollar market:

http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/showthread.php?36005-Tablet-PC-Market-To-Exceed-5-Billion-in-2009

Just because they don't have as much Buzz as apple doesn't mean people haven't been secretly buying Tablet machines running XP/Vista/7 since the dawn of the platform in 2004.

It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[bennomatic]

Love Apple, hate them or something in between: nobody is going to beat the iPad, no matter how great a device they build, until they are able to build a competing "ecosystem" like Apple has done with the iTMS/AppStore. Nerds care about the specifications, but nerds aren't the target market anymore; everyone else is. And everyone else is more interested in what you can *do* with the damn thing.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[Kenja]

The "ecosystem" is why I wont buy an iPad or iPhone. I want to be able to decide for myself which software I run on my computer (and dont fool yourself into thinking modern phones & tablets are not computers).

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[TC Wilcox]

The "ecosystem" is why I wont buy an iPad or iPhone. I want to be able to decide for myself which software I run on my computer (and dont fool yourself into thinking modern phones & tablets are not computers).

Do you also want to decide for yourself what software runs on the computer in your car? How about the computer in your toaster? Can't something have a computer in it without needing to be customizable?

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[StikyPad]

And everyone else is more interested in what you can *do* with the damn thing.

Correction: Everyone else is more interested in what *they* can do with the damn thing which, as you state, isn't much without pre-built and easy to access apps.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[Kenja]

I would just as soon my car and toaster not have a computer. If they do, then yes I would prefer to be able to run third party software and modifications. For the car this can change handling and improve performance or mileage. For the toaster this could add support for imported bread.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[coinreturn]

As the parent said - you are not the target market.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[peragrin]

Your car right now has 2-5 CPU's in it for engine management, and control systems.

Unless you bought a car before the year 1995, and even then they still had a few microprocessors on board.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[sconeu]

Precisely.

My mother-in-law is the target market. She could never get the networking to work on her Toshiba laptop (even though I fixed it every time I came over).

She just wants to surf the web and do email.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[sgtrock]

I want the_option_ to choose something else without having to go through unnecessary tollgates, yes. That's what the AppStore really is.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[jsdcnet]

Sorry man. That's why I moved away from apple. Contacts and meetings should sync without iTunes

They do.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[surgen]

Do you also want to decide for yourself what software runs on the computer in your car? How about the computer in your toaster? Can't something have a computer in it without needing to be customizable?

I would. I know a handful of people that do performance tuning on snowmobiles. The things that could once be adjusted mechanically are now done in software. Not only can they not change the software themselves, where they once had the flexibility the entire manual adjustment range, the dealer can only change the settings to preset combination A, B or C.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[rainer_d]

AFAIK, you can upload any app you want to your iPhone, even without vetting it through Apple Inc. You just have to use Xcode to build and maybe the Enterprise Deployment Kit. You need to know what you do, though - but if you don't, you have no business to install anything outside of the iTMS Appstore anyway.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[korean.ian]

I would just as soon my car and toaster not have a computer. If they do, then yes I would prefer to be able to run third party software and modifications. For the car this can change handling and improve performance or mileage. For the toaster this could add support for imported bread.

If I had been drinking coffee when I read the above, it would be all over my keyboard right now. Bravo! +9000 funny

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[Weedhopper]

Surprise! If you bought your car in the last 10 years, your car does in fact have several computers that do in fact control performance and mileage.

Tuning and/or tweaking ECUs is one of the first steps in car performance modification.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[donny77]

I choose every piece of software loaded on my iPhone. Apple has never installed something on it I did not request. If I want to write my own apps, all I need is to get the developer tools and do it. The average person will never need the developer tools, why make them mandatory?

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[exomondo]

The "ecosystem" is why I wont buy an iPad or iPhone. I want to be able to decide for myself which software I run on my computer (and dont fool yourself into thinking modern phones & tablets are not computers).

Do you also want to decide for yourself what software runs on the computer in your car? How about the computer in your toaster? Can't something have a computer in it without needing to be customizable?

Of course not, I'm not sure how you can compare a device that is specifically designed to be an 'appliance device' by way of becoming the device specified by a software program to an actual appliance that is not designed to be anything but that specific appliance. It seems you don't understand the difference between an ipad and a toaster.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[gmhowell]

Nothing like changing jetting and plugs in the middle of a trip because you started out where it was sunny, warm, and sea level, and travelled to cold, rainy/snowy, and in the mountains.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[gmhowell]

You do have the option: jailbreaking.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[AndrewStephens]

This is only true if you are an iOS Registered Developer which is easy to set up but will cost you $US99 per year. Personally I find this a small price to pay since XCode itself is free whereas compilers used to cost hundreds of dollars, but it annoys other people.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[evilviper]

Do you also want to decide for yourself what software runs on the computer in your car?

I do. For the sake of a single sensor going dead, your car won't run. Before 96, you could just jumper two pins and read the flashing lights. Now, you need to buy a code reader, and get a new one every year...

How about the computer in your toaster?

Absolutely!
Before computerization, everything was exposed to the the end user. You can open the thing up, figure out what's wrong. Now, it's a black box that you can't expect to have any way to interface with, debug, or repair. Screw that. If it has a computer, it's mine, an I should have the ability to understand, debug, and replace the software as I see fit.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[rainer_d]

This is only true if you are an iOS Registered Developer which is easy to set up but will cost you $US99 per year. Personally I find this a small price to pay since XCode itself is free whereas compilers used to cost hundreds of dollars, but it annoys other people.

True. But in this world - how can you not annoy some people?
The truth is that by this - admittedly draconian - system, Apple got rid of all the spam and virus problems that dominate the Windows-platform.
In the long run, this will help to cut down spam-levels globally, as people replace PCs with iPads and iPhones.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[sgtrock]

That's not an option if you want continued support, though. Thus, I am personally waiting for a platform that lets me choose where I buy my apps from.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[bennomatic]

Now that's just silly. There's like a gazillion apps in the app store, and if they want to do something custom, they can get a $99 dev license or jailbreak their device. Most people want to decide from a reasonable list, and that's what apple provides.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[gmhowell]

You have a choice. You just don't want to deal with the consequences of that particular choice. Typical modern, western thinking.

Re:It's the ecosystem, dummy!

[sgtrock]

IOW, I've weighed the consequences carefully and made a conscious decision that particular approach is not for me. Rather than accept the flawed offering of a vendor, I have instead decided to either (a) wait for another vendor to produce something that I actually want, or (b) do without indefinitely. Yep, that seems to be "typical modern, western thinking." And this is wrong because...?

Happy Dance

[MonsterTrimble]

Let's cut to the chase -- the iPad 2 that Apple just released pulls further ahead in the battle with the only real competitor on the market: the Android OS 3.0 "Honeycomb" Xoom tablet from Motorola Mobility.

And the engineer in my soul sings! Summary and THEN the backing info!

One other thought. Why the hell can't Thunderbird work with exchange properly if everyone else can?

Re:Happy Dance

[Dog-Cow]

One other thought. Why the hell can't Thunderbird work with exchange properly if everyone else can?

Both Apple and Google license ActiveSync from MS.

Lack of filesystem cripples the iPad/iPad2

[Anonymous Coward]

As an owner of an android phone (Droid), I was keen on buying an android based tablet but eventually bit the bullet and purchased an iPad for $350 (refurb from apple) as I was sure that I wouldn't find a good android tablet at that price point anytime soon. As much as I've wanted to like the iPad (and I do like a lot of things including the amazing IPS LCD screen), I was amazed to learn that Apple has chosen not to have a native filesystem on its products. Making things worse - each App runs in its own sandbox with no ability to access files in another apps filesystem.

This has been a massive disappointment for me. I primarily bought the iPad for reading and organizing a lot of academic publications and texts, so that I could always have my library of papers and textbooks available to me. Right now, I have all my PDFs imported into iAnnotate (a PDF reading/editing app), but none of the other PDF reading/editing apps such as GoodReader or Papers (similar to Mendeley) can access these PDFs. I can only "open" a file from within iAnnotate in another app, but this is fundamentally useless as it doesn't even share the same physical file, but instead, creates a copy that is moved into the other apps sandbox. Any changes made to the file in the other app, do not reflect back in the original copy in iAnnotate.

This alone has rendered the iPad pretty useless to me. Using Dropbox to sync files in different apps helps to some extent, but is still really stupid because a) I am unnecessarily using bandwidth I shouldn't need to use just to share the same file library between different apps & b) I now have 2 complete duplicates of my library stored locally on my ipad for the 2 apps I am using.

This is a complete mess and I can't begin to understand why universities and schools would spend tons of money buying iPads for kids when it can't even handle having a common filesystem - allowing different apps to access their documents. All the other Apple decisions I can understand (closed system, etc), but not having a filesystem? How are you even supposed to consider it for serious use without one? I don't give a fuck if it is dual core or quad core. If I can't even share files across different applications on my iPad, it has very little value to me.

Considering that Apple hasn't attempted to remedy the situation so far, I have very little hope that things will improve. I guess I'll just wait another year or so for Android to get a bit more polished and then buy an Android tablet. I find it funny that Steve Jobs kept reiterating that the iPad2 isn't a "toy", and yet, it seems most suited to run single apps at a time without any ability to share your documents and files amongst applications on the iPad2.

Re:Lack of filesystem cripples the iPad/iPad2

[Dog-Cow]

I agree that it would be nice to have a better app-sharing facility, but it's not as if the current implementation is a secret.

Also, all i-Devices have a proper filesystem, they just chroot apps.

Re:Lack of filesystem cripples the iPad/iPad2

[Teknikal69]

I'd agree with this myself although I only have an Ipod Touch but I do have most of the Apps I perceived could possible be useful from office apps, pdf readers, paint packages, everything really but without any easy way of sharing the files between Apps it has all become a bit of a non starter. Sure you can email yourself the files or use dropbox but like you say why should you have to waste bandwidth and possibly privacy not to mention it's just inconvenient.
It's incredible they haven't at least given all Apps a single shared folder or something it isn't rocket science.

Re:Lack of filesystem cripples the iPad/iPad2

[mozumder]

My guess is that theyll put together a database structure, similiar to what the iLife apps use to transfer data between apps.

Re:Lack of filesystem cripples the iPad/iPad2

[mozumder]

A single shared folder is the worst possible idea. That is too PC-centric, and relies on files instead of systematic end-use goals. Apple is looking at a more advanced use model than what programmers are used to.

If you want a hint at their direction, check out how the iLife apps transfer songs and pics between each other - they transfer standard object types only. My guess is that Apple will increase the support of various other standard objects within iOS.

Re:Lack of filesystem cripples the iPad/iPad2

[necro81]

You spent all this time researching tablets, and didn't know that the iPad (and iPhone, and iTouch) lacked a user-accessible filesystem?

If you've got all that stuff as PDFs, you could sync those into the native ebook reader, iBooks.

It is not entirely true that you can't share files across apps: your contacts, photos, videos, music, ebooks (including PDFs) are accessible by any app that bothers to use them.

Lastly: you can add a filesystem whenever you want, jailbreaking the iPad is trivial.

Re:Lack of filesystem cripples the iPad/iPad2

[Mattsson]

Apple has said that Apple IOS is meant as a media consumption OS. (Or rather, they have said that the Ipad is a media consumption device, but since it's the OS and not the device itself that imposes the real limitations, the statement stands for the whole OS too.)
You weren't originally meant to use it for anything productive. You were meant to buy content, paying Apple 30% of any fee, and then watch, read or play it on your i-device.
The concept of actually creating or modifying content on the device itself has been duct-taped in as an afterthought due to an overwhelming amount of people who actually want to use their phones and tablets for something productive.
Since IOS and it's support infrastructure wasn't planned or designed for this use, the implementation of how to use it for productivity has very serious flaws.

I've had an Ipad through work for a few months and I've really tried to find a professional use for it, but the best I've come up with is reading mail, searching for information and the occasional remote desktop or SSH session.
I've tried a whole bunch of "Office" applications, but it is both faster and easier to walk back to my office, do the Office-application work needed and then walk back to where I was than trying to use the Ipad while away, even if I'm in another building.
Actually, rather than using a native application, I've found it better to use remote desktop in the few cases where I've done some editing. This way, file-locks work and I don't have to download, edit and then upload a shared document while hoping that no one else edits it in the meanwhile. (Haven't found any application that lets me edit an online file, even if the application supports SMB or AFP shares. For some reason all of them requires me to download it first anyway.)

As a game-pad or news/comic-reader, though, it works fine. =)

Re:Lack of filesystem cripples the iPad/iPad2

[surgen]

they transfer standard object types only.

Apple is looking at a more advanced use model than what programmers are used to.

Yeah, structured data passed between applications is SO advanced and innovative, my feeble programmer mind can't handle using anything but the filesystem. If apple had implemented a good system and given it to developers to use, we would see it used to create a way to share files between apps that works better than the filesystem. If that system existed, people would be happy to use it instead of the filesystem. It doesn't so instead they as for the bare minimum that they're used to, but they don't even get that.

Re:Lack of filesystem cripples the iPad/iPad2

[surgen]

It is not entirely true that you can't share files across apps: your contacts, photos, videos, music, ebooks (including PDFs) are accessible by any app that bothers to use them.
 

Thats cute. My android device just looks at the file-type and just asks me which of the applications that support it I want to use. Its got apis for the common data to share, but they know they can't be prepared for everything and a benefit greatly from their solution.

Re:Lack of filesystem cripples the iPad/iPad2

[rvelasquez]

First of all I complete understand your point. It's annoying that applications are run in a sandbox and can't access other areas of the filesystem. But on the other hand I'm sure you recognize that there is a big security risk with applications being able to access any location (or even a shared one) in the filesystem. I'm sure Apple could come up with a secure way for different applications to have some shared space but I guess it's not a priority. Have you tried Papers (http://itunes.apple.com/app/papers/id304655618?mt=8)? It's an iPad application for managing academic papers and other PDFs. It also has a desktop version for Mac OS X which it can sync with. It supports annotations as well as searching within your library. It even integrates with major sources like ACM, ADS, Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore, JSTORE, and PubMed so you can download directly to the device. It imports all kinds of metadata for you. I don't know if this will solve your problem but it certainly did for me (being able to carry around my library of papers and annotate them).

Re:Lack of filesystem cripples the iPad/iPad2

[shadowrat]

I guess you didn't try that hard as ibooks can hold all your pdfs and sync them with itunes.

Re:Lack of filesystem cripples the iPad/iPad2

[illogic]

agreed that the lack of filesystem exposed to the user is one of the most striking desktop PC metaphors omitted from iOS. at least for someone who understands filesystems. I'm the kind of person that used to hand-curate my mp3 collection according to very a specific file naming scheme. you probably are too. (now I'm pretty happy to let iTunes do that.) my coworkers' computers, on the other hand, have APPALLING desktops. piles and piles of files and folders, so buried that they can't find anything, yet that's where they habitually continue to save every file they collect, despite my having shown them how to make their browsers download to other folders by default, etc. the smarter among them have fallen back on exclusively using the search feature in file picker dialogs to find files they can't remember where they saved. (so pretty much everything.)

having used both Android and iOS, Android apps seem to be pretty messy with where they store files. iOS apps might be too, but I couldn't tell, so at least it didn't bother me. as other commenters have noted, the example of the Photo Library is a model that could be extended for passing other kinds of files between apps.

iOS doesn't show a filesystem to the user because it was designed for my coworkers. I think Apple made the right choice. it's one of the things that makes iOS feel unlike a computer, that liberation from the hopelessly disorganized desktop and home folders that most people can't help but spawn.

Re:Lack of filesystem cripples the iPad/iPad2

[indiechild]

I agree this is a frustrating issue. I suspect Apple will never implement a shared filesystem that is accessible to all apps. Instead, they'll probably use the cloud for sharing -- possibly with a Mobile Me-like solution (which will be free to iOS users).

Re:Why buy an iPad 2....

[RightSaidFred99]

You must be new to the Apple Mentality...

Re:Here's the biggest stat: number of apps

[zieroh]

He said "tablet specific". It makes a really big difference. Using a tablet with a software interface designed for a phone is marginal at best.

Re:Here's the biggest stat: number of apps

[slim]

I'm still not sure who would buy an Android tablet. Buying one is like buying a TV that gets only 3 channels. Why purchase a tablet hoping that the app inventory will grow when you can get a state-of-the-art iPad with 65,000 apps?

Well, I'm not buying an Android tablet just yet, because they're too expensive -- and so are iPads. When there's a reasonably specced multitouch Android tablet for around $300, I'll snap it up, and be happy with the web brower, Tweetdeck and the Google suite of apps (GMail, Maps, Earth etc.). Anything else is an added bonus.

I predict those kind of prices within the next 12 months.

Re:Here's the biggest stat: number of apps

[Overzeetop]

Perhaps, but they're just not optimized for the larger screen. With such a large disparity in screen resolution, that makes a difference. An exxample would be a piano keyboard app - on the phone, you get an octave, on a tablet you get two (or perhaps two octaves and a third). That makes a big difference in usability. That's just a simple example, but there are no free tablet piano apps on Android (at least not that I could find three weeks ago). Android will catch up eventually, but it'll take another year to get all the "good" apps to tablet resolution.

I waited to see what Apple would do with the iPad2, and I'm not impressed. I'll probably try to pick up a low end / refurb'd ipad 1 and wait out the year to see what's next...

A serious, non-troll question

[ThatsNotPudding]

When does Apple (and especially iTunes) become too 'big' w.r.t. anti-trust issues? What are the metrics used?

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[PhilHibbs]

When they use a monopoly position in one market as leverage to gain a monopoly in another. Having one monopoly isn't in any way illegal. Abusing it to gain another is. And Apple don't even have one monopoly or overwhelmingly dominant position yet. Don't like the iPhone? Plenty of other phones out there. Same with iPad, iPod, Mac, etc.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[Kenja]

Really there is no metric. Its what ever a judge decides. The "market" can be defined as anything they want in the end. I recall one anti-trust suite in which the market was defined as something like drinks containing x% of apple juice in plastic bottles between y & z fluid ounces.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[robus]

When Apple starts telling retailers that if they want to stock the iPad then they can't stock competing products. Basically when Apple starts interfering with the tablet market in general rather than just offering the most competitive product at this time.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[Dog-Cow]

Size has never mattered. 1) Apple has no monopoly on any (reasonably defined) market. 2) Apple is not anti-competitive in any market in which it participates. There have always been PCs, audio players, phones and tablets that were not Apple's, and likely always will be.

Apple controls its own software and hardware, but it imposes no control on any other player. That's what makes your hypothetical question the wishful thinking of a rabid bigot.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[zuperduperman]

And Apple don't even have one monopoly or overwhelmingly dominant position yet.

Actually that was one of the thing that surprised me about Steve's arrogant and deceitful speech at the iPad2 launch - that he proclaimed that Apple in fact had a monopoly. He clearly stated that Apple had more than 90% tablet market share (a lie, but let's go with it) and then that no competitor could come close (ie. that the competitive market place was not functioning correctly for this market). So he's basically written his own petition to the FTC / antitrust folks asking for some intervention. I thought it was very curious.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[exomondo]

Same with iPad

Last i saw they had ~90% market share with the ipad.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[PhilHibbs]

Like I said: [i]Having one monopoly isn't in any way illegal. Abusing it to gain another is.[/i] And [i]it's only been out for a year[/i], is Apple's position re: the iPad so harmful to society that the FTC need to step in? If you answer yes, then give me your dealer's 'phone number 'cos it's clearly good stuff.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[PhilHibbs]

The market for iPad type devices is too young to determine whether that makes a monopoly or not though. A monopoly is only a problem when you need to have one and you don't have an effective choice because there is only one practical option.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[exomondo]

No it isn't, it's not something determined by age. And a monopoly isn't a problem because there's only one practical option, that's perfectly fine, it's only if u use that market dominance to leverage another market. Apple does have a monopoly in the tablet market, so long as they don't abuse that monopoly there is no problem.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[PhilHibbs]

Of course, the next attack will be "Now that apple has a monopoly, we can claim that they are using that monopoly to try to gain a monopoly in another market", such as music or tablet apps. That would be interesting, but not something that I would support. The two things that makes the iPhone/iPad work well are tight hardware/software integration and brutal inspection of App Store source. If, just speculating wildly, Apple were ordered to split up into hardware and software companies, then out would go the baby with the bath water.

Also, right now, there are alternatives. Android tablets are a viable choice, it is not the case that "if I want a tablet I can effectively only choose iPad", so a 90% or even a 99.9% market share does not make a monopoly until that is the case.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[exomondo]

Of course, the next attack will be "Now that apple has a monopoly, we can claim that they are using that monopoly to try to gain a monopoly in another market", such as music or tablet apps.

They already have a big chunk of the online music market and this was gained with products in markets that apple did not dominate.

Also, right now, there are alternatives. Android tablets are a viable choice, it is not the case that "if I want a tablet I can effectively only choose iPad", so a 90% or even a 99.9% market share does not make a monopoly until that is the case.

Wrong, you always had viable choices in desktop computer operating systems too - in fact more choice than the tablet market - yet MS was labeled to have a monopoly there.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[PhilHibbs]

That the pressure to buy Microsoft was overwhelming is evidenced by the fact that so many businesses made that choice because they perceived that they had no choice. No-one ever got fired for choosing Microsoft. I have friends that still use Internet Explorer because they are concerned that other browsers will not work properly with Windows because Microsoft will make it so.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[exomondo]

That the pressure to buy Microsoft was overwhelming is evidenced by the fact that so many businesses made that choice because they perceived that they had no choice. No-one ever got fired for choosing Microsoft. I have friends that still use Internet Explorer because they are concerned that other browsers will not work properly with Windows because Microsoft will make it so.

And the reason behind that is because they had dominant marketshare, just like the ipad does. There wasn't a lack of alternatives at all.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[PhilHibbs]

It is simply not the case that any individual or company currently considering what tablet to buy would think that the iPad is the only viable choice, in the way that most people still think that Windows is the only viable choice of desktop operating system and that Microsoft Office is the only viable choice of office suite (less so this last one, OpenOffice is making significant inroads in personal use). If someone turned up in the office with a Xoom, I wouldn't think "that's a brave, independent-minded choice" in the way that I would think that of someone turning up with a GNU/Linux laptop.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[exomondo]

It is simply not the case that any individual or company currently considering what tablet to buy would think that the iPad is the only viable choice

Why not? Look at marketshare, look at app ecosystem, look at price. Exactly the same as with Windows. You seem to think a monopoly is based on public perception of choice, you are wrong.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[PhilHibbs]

No, you are wrong.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[exomondo]

wow...fail hard.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[PhilHibbs]

"You are wrong" is pretty much in the same ballpark as Godwin's Law. You bring that phrase into a discussion and it's over.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[exomondo]

well given that your basis for determining whether a company has a monopoly in a market is simply the public perception of alternatives that would be a fact that you are indeed wrong.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[PhilHibbs]

Economics is all about perception. A stranglehold on a market can only be maintained while people believe that it is maintained. And I still think that the tablet computer market is far too immature to make a call as to whether there is a monopoly. In some ways it isn't fair to even call it a market yet, it's just too new. One of the characteristics of a monopoly is that there is a barrier to entry. If that were true, people would be saying that there's no point in Google releasing a tablet version of Android because it's doomed to fail and be crushed by the iOS juggernaut. I work in IT and I've only ever seen one iPad. Some juggernaut.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[exomondo]

Economics is all about perception. A stranglehold on a market can only be maintained while people believe that it is maintained.

No, there are facts and numbers to support it, such as marketshare. Show me where a case regarding monopoly behavior that defined the monopoly based on the "public perception", there is no way that can be done.

And I still think that the tablet computer market is far too immature to make a call as to whether there is a monopoly. In some ways it isn't fair to even call it a market yet, it's just too new.

Yes many people didn't realise there was a tablet market before the ipad.

One of the characteristics of a monopoly is that there is a barrier to entry. If that were true, people would be saying that there's no point in Google releasing a tablet version of Android because it's doomed to fail and be crushed by the iOS juggernaut.

Rubbish, MS has a monopoly with Windows yet Linux and OSX are out there without people saying there's no point in developing Linux or saying the OSX is doomed to fail.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[PhilHibbs]

"Public perception" is not a phrase I've used so I don't feel inclined to defend it. "Market perception" is more like it. And I would say that if Microsoftstill has a monopoly with Windows then it is fading, but they definitely still did 10 years ago. It took the alternatives (many of which failed, such as OS/2, NeXT, Solaris, etc.) a long time to gain a foothold.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[exomondo]

"Public perception" is not a phrase I've used so I don't feel inclined to defend it. "Market perception" is more like it.

Well you did of course say - regarding a barrier to entry - what 'people' would say. But ok, what's your idea of 'market perception' and how does that apply to the definition of a monopoly? And of course show a case where an entity has been shown to have a monopoly defined by 'market perception'.

And I would say that if Microsoftstill has a monopoly with Windows then it is fading, but they definitely still did 10 years ago. It took the alternatives (many of which failed, such as OS/2, NeXT, Solaris, etc.) a long time to gain a foothold.

But it's not like there was ever no alternative, nor the idea that any alternative would fail. And NeXT didn't exactly fail, that product (along with Mac OS) became the very successful OSX.

Re:A serious, non-troll question

[PhilHibbs]

I've lost interest in this discussion, I can't even remember what I'm arguing for or against. It isn't really relevant whether they have a monopoly or not anyway. There's nothing wrong with having a monopoly.

Re:Why buy an iPad 2....

[WrongSizeGlass]

...when the iPad 3 is coming out in the fall?

<sarcasm>But, but, can't I buy both? Why should I be forced to choose? Who makes these crazy rules governing what I can or can't buy relating to an iPad?</sarcasm>

A tie on web comparisons? Really?

[Assmasher]

One has Flash and the other doesn't.

Don't get me wrong, I have an iPad2 (I'm getting a wifi only Xoom later this month) and it's great and seems to beat Xoom in quite a few areas, but I cannot fathom how you can compare their web experiences and call them equivalent when flash still doesn't exist on iOS due to Jobs' ridiculous ego.

Re:Why buy an iPad 2....

[PhilHibbs]

Well, there'll be an iPad 4 next year, so might as well wait for that. Or, maybe even the iPad 5.

Re:Wheres the tablet with SD card reader?

[mickmel]

I agree. Tablets are big enough to handle a standard SD card -- why force them to use microSD?

Re:Wheres the tablet with SD card reader?

[boristdog]

Hear, hear!

Viewing camera photos on a larger screen while STILL away from home is one of the only good "must have" reasons I have seen for a tablet. For now I still need to carry my netbook with me to do this easily.

This is also a great "Aunt Mabel" application.

Re:A tie on web comparisons? Really?

[nwoolls]

AFAIK neither of them currently have Flash.

Apple's stragtegic inclusion of features

[coldsalmon]

It seems to me that Apple doesn't make their devices as good as they can be -- only good enough to be a lot better than the competition. If they can be the market leader without X feature, they won't include it. When the competition catches up with the first generation, then they'll release the second generation with X feature, to once again put themselves one step ahead. Why would they make the iPad 1 with dual cameras, when it would sell just as well without them, because it had no real competition?

Re:Apple's stragtegic inclusion of features

[Zinner]

Apple includes features that actually work when the product is released, not half-cooked or fantasy features for the sake of making a bigger list. The most ridiculous thing about Motorola's product is the lack of real, rather than "real soon now" features and the poor quality and testing of the features it actually has. Rushed and sloppy. No excuse for that.

Re:Here's the biggest stat: number of apps

[Dog-Cow]

You are an utter fucking moron. Please go back to your CGA graphics and leave us XGA users alone. We don't need your jealousy-induced insanity trying to convince us that an app designed for less than half the screen resolution is somehow just as good.

iPad has much wider software base

[SuperKendall]

It just doesn't have the software base of Windows

I strongly disagree. The iPad has a huge range of software now, enough so that if you want productivity or content creation apps for just about anything, the iPad almost has an edge over the desktop (where competition is weakened by huge players like Photoshop and Office).

If you are talking about tablets specifically, then the iPad really has a huge lead over any Windows tablet past or present.

There are even a number of apps geared to writing with a stylus, if that is your thing. Or you could just get a compact Bluetooth keyboard if you find you can't type quickly on screen (I find I can touch type pretty quickly with it sitting on my lap or a table).

Re:A tie on web comparisons? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Xoom does NOT have Flash. That is something that might come "later." No, Xoom does not take memory cards as the slot is, as of now, a non-working dummy slot. No, Xoom can not play Hulu or Netflix because the hardware doesn't support it yet. Just how many YouTube videos can you watch?

I can't figure out why it took seven pages to declare what every other review Xoom has said: Xoom is an $800 buggy beta product not yet ready for prime time. Love them or hate them, the iPad is another iPod: Apple caught everyone off guard and all the competitors will be nothing more than Zune-like also-rans. But hey, at least Zune worked well, unlike the sad and embarrassing Xoom.

Re:A tie on web comparisons? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash can easily be sideloaded on the Xoom today, and it will have "officially" supported Flash very shortly.

Flash on the iPad will not be forthcoming anytime soon.

No, you're not alone, companies always do this...

[tekrat]

No you're not alone. I also consider the tablet market 'useless' because you can't really do any real work on a tablet (unless you're in a niche where keyboards aren't required). Tablets are for media consumption, so it's really a big iPod.

And just to be fair, it wasn't Apple that started this craze, it was Amazon. Yes, Amazon. The Kindle was a more successful product than you thought, because it got lots of manufacturers thinking about a Kindle sized product that did more than read ebooks.

The January 2010 CES show was filled with Kindle knock-offs (because no one had iPad knock-offs yet). Sony alone had three different models, nevermind Samsung and Toshiba.

This year, everyone's finally got their tablet out (only 2 years behind Apple), but it's still for a product that reads ebooks, butb allows you to watch Youtube too. And surf the web. But that's about it.

But yeah, I'm amazed that companies spend a lot of R&D to make a "me too" product that will suffer lackluster sales because it's not even close to being the market leader.

They still think this is like VHS machines, where we will pick a random device off the shelf at the Wiz, and that's where their sales will come from. But that's not how Americans shop anymore. Now there's only one brand worth having: Apple. And that's because they are the market leader, so there's no point in having some other, incompatible device.

Re:Winning!

[doug]

Actually, you need "tiger blood". And believe it or not, you can order it from Paula Dean's website.

What?

[bluefoxlucid]

The Xoom tablet displays mail as black text on a white background (as does the iPad 2), not as white text on a black background in the manner of Android smartphones. Thus, the messages are much more readable.

Uh, my phone displays black text on white background; this of course makes text much less readable than white text on black background like most high-contrast settings for visually-impaired users provide.

No previous hype? Think again.

[SuperKendall]

Come on, you don't remember the UMPC? That had a huge wave of hype around it. You just don't remember it because of how quickly it tanked.

At various times Microsoft also heavily promoted Windows on tablets and there were a lot of stories etc.

What there wasn't ever really, was a lot of consumer interest. So in fact you are about as wrong as you could be, miscategorizing true consumer interest as "hype" and thus claiming there was none before.

Battery Life

[Eponymous Coward]

Too bad the Xoom has such mediocre battery life. There's really no excuse for that. I have an Android phone (Nexus S) and want an Android tablet, but I'm not buying one with a 5-6 hour battery life.

Re:Battery Life

[shutdown -p now]

Too bad the Xoom has such mediocre battery life. There's really no excuse for that. I have an Android phone (Nexus S) and want an Android tablet, but I'm not buying one with a 5-6 hour battery life.

Um, what? One of the few things that actually shine about Xoom is its battery life, which largely matches that of iPad - 8-10 hours of typical usage, depending on what you do.

Re:Battery Life

[Eponymous Coward]

From the linked article:

For battery performance, I found that the iPad 2 lasted nearly twice as long as the Xoom -- 9 or 10 hours versus the Xoom's 5 or 6 -- in regular use with Wi-Fi enabled. In light use, the Xoom stretched to 8 hours, while the iPad 2 ran 11 hours. That matches the iPad 1's battery performance.

Re:Battery Life

[shutdown -p now]

I wonder what, exactly, he defines by "regular use". One of the very first experiments I did with mine was to charge fully and proceed to use it until the battery got to 50% - which took 4.5 hours non-stop. Most of that was web browsing, though there was also about an hour of music playback, and about half an hour of streaming videos from YouTube. On WiFi, as well.

Re:A tie on web comparisons? Really?

[pyite]

Not having Flash is a feature. I don't have it on my desktop and I sure as hell don't want it on my phone or tablet.

Content creation very feasible on a tablet

[SuperKendall]

I also consider the tablet market 'useless' because you can't really do any real work on a tablet (unless you're in a niche where keyboards aren't required).

Except that all current tablets support keyboards quite well, and have really good virtual keyboards in addition. And there are a ton of apps to support writing, including some that support using a stylus if you choose.

But beyond that you have no idea of what can be done on a modern tablet. I have met a number of people who have replaced laptops with an iPad because the iPad works perfectly well at correspondence and writing documents.

I also find it works better at drawing than a PC (unless you buy a tablet) and it's also better suited to playing music than anything other than a real instrument.

At this point the only thing that keeps the iPad being a truly viable replacement for a computer is the need to sync it to a computer. But if you buy in an Apple Store you can have them set it up there, and then just buy apps and media on the device going forward (though it makes me cringe at the thought of people doing that and not backing up the device regularly).

Re:Content creation very feasible on a tablet

[jsdcnet]

At this point the only thing that keeps the iPad being a truly viable replacement for a computer is the need to sync it to a computer. But if you buy in an Apple Store you can have them set it up there, and then just buy apps and media on the device going forward (though it makes me cringe at the thought of people doing that and not backing up the device regularly).

Yeah, I can't imagine doing it myself, but it's not as bad as you might think... Apps can be re-downloaded (you'd lose save games, of course). If you use google/yahoo/mobileme/exchange for your mail/contacts/calendar/notes, that will all be backed up on the server. It's really just the media (music/movies/books) that are problematic - but that's the fault of the publishers.

Re:Content creation very feasible on a tablet

[SuperKendall]

Actually a lot of note apps support Dropbox these days, I could see a lot more applications going this way in a bid to help users preserve data. I think at some point soon Apple is going to provide a simple variant of Dropbox that app developers can easily integrate (or perhaps will just automatically backup app data files). Probably in iOS5.

Re:A tie on web comparisons? Really?

[PintoPiman]

Yeah, I guess you could say that the lack of Flash is an advantage for the iPad, but you CAN turn Flash off on a Xoom, right?

I think you're being a bit unfair to the Xoom when Flash-free nirvana is really like just a check box away.

Is the problem that the Xoom enables Flash by default (I wouldn't know, I haven't got one)? I suppose I could see the argument that users who don't know about the check box will have to suffer...

Then choose

[SuperKendall]

I want to be able to decide for myself which software I run on my computer

Then buy an iPad and jailbreak it.

Stop pretending you don't have a choice when you do, just so that you can claim some rational reason for your choice beyond sheer hatred of Apple. If you want to not buy a product simply because you hate the company than admit that, and don't claim it's a technical issue when it's not.

Re:Then choose

[surgen]

don't claim it's a technical issue when it's not.

Relying on using software exploits to achieve the desired level of functionality isn't sustainable. It isn't 100% a technical issue... YET.

Re:Then choose

[jbezorg]

... YET.

After just one weekend, iPad 2 is already jailbroken

http://www.betanews.com/article/After-just-one-weekend-iPad-2-is-already-jailbroken/1300129072

Re:Then choose

[chromatic]

Then buy an iPad and jailbreak it.

Perhaps you mean "buy a used iPad". Why would I give Apple money for a product that doesn't do what I want?

Re:Then choose

[fatwilbur]

If you want to not buy a product simply because you hate the company than admit that,

No problem. I'll do it the day the fanboys admit they only buy the products because they love Apple!

Re:Then choose

[SuperKendall]

Perhaps you mean "buy a used iPad". Why would I give Apple money for a product that doesn't do what I want?

Actually that's a good idea anyway since you can get them fairly cheaper.

The reason you'd not care about buying, say a refurb iPad cheap and still giving Apple money, is that you'd be paying for really good hardware with the intent of ditching or subverting the software.

Just like someone might buy a car that had an engine they didn't like, because they intended to swap it out. Many times you buy something with the intent of enhancing it - that in fact is the Hacker (or Maker) way. Instead of seeing just limitations around you you see the possibilities of what things can become, greater than what they were.

Re:Then choose

[SuperKendall]

I have an iPad. I've had to jailbreak it twice due to iOS updates. The first time I had to use a tethered jailbreak for almost a month, meaning anytime I wanted to turn my iPad on i had to plug it into my computer. Do you understand how inconvenient that is?

Why did you ever turn it off? I have not turned mine off in months.

Try and download something to your iPad from the internet.
Try to copy files from your computer to your iPad.

I do that all the time on non-jailbroken iPads, there is a lot of software that supports Dropbox. I know a number of people that never even connect the iPad to a computer after setting it up (which you can do in an Apple store or on a friends computer).

Out of the box I can download files from the internet directly to SD and open them. Can you do that on an iPad? No.

Actually I do that via email all the time.

it certainly doesn't have access to the file system out of the box.

The apps do. You just can't run a file browser (out of the box).

iTunes is a huge pile of garbage. I have no idea why people like it.

I wouldn't say it's great but for me it beats hand-organizing media in folders, which I used to do all the time... I got tired of micromanaging position of files, now I just reference things by smart folders or tags.

Thanks Android, you understand me better than iOS.

I'm sure that is true. But that's not the way most people want to interact with a computer, if they do not have to.

Re:Then choose

[indiechild]

I love using Apple products and I would rather he just buy and use an Android-based or other "open" device instead. I've never seen the appeal of jailbreaking, it's far too messy for my tastes.

Re:Then choose

[SuperKendall]

I've never seen the appeal of jailbreaking, it's far too messy for my tastes.

It's not really that messy, and the appeal is that you can get a bunch of really interesting customizations to existing applications, in addition to other applications the app store does not allow. But mainly the tweaking of existing apps and system, is where the draw is.

If you are a programmer it's incredibly easy to hook into existing apps to make small changes, much moreso than on Android.

Re:Then choose

[chromatic]

I find Apple's practices unethical with regard to the app store and the artificial limits they've put upon general purpose computing hardware sold directly to customers; thus it's an ethical question for me. I choose not to reward them with my money, regardless of the quality of hardware or the ease of jailbreaking.

Not everyone shares my concerns and that's fine—but to me the question "What kind of world would I like to see?" influences my purchasing decisions.

Re:Here's the biggest stat: number of apps

[SuperKendall]

I have a 7-inch android tablet. Lots of stuff works simply by resizing. And it looks good.

Yep, that's exactly why I'd never buy a 7" tablet. Because it really is just a big phone (which I already have), unlike a 10" and larger surface (where you have to rethink the UI beyond simply scaling elements).

Not that bad an issue.

[SuperKendall]

I agree that not being able to shift around a master is a bit annoying, but I don't find it crippling - I simply have one creation hub app that I use for different documents, and move documents around to other apps keeping that one as the source (re-importing as needed).

Perhaps if you jailbreak the iPad you could then simply shift files around yourself, most apps will put files in Documents and probably pick up new files automatically (since that's where files would be incoming from iTunes if added there).

Also for photography this is not an issue because applications can work by sharing images across apps via the photo library, same thing for contacts in applications. It's just other documents that have more limited means of local sharing.

I think what you are discounting is the security value in this arrangement, which matters more to most users than the inconvenience this currently causes. As noted, really technical users can work around this issue and people not as technical will be OK with it as it is.

Have you ever told yourself:

[alienzed]

"Man, I wish I wouldn't have to be sitting down this whole time while I type this up or surf this page or watch this video." I have, and the iPad might actually let me really be mobile. Laptops are a joke, you still need to sit down, plug in and BAM, you're in front of a tiny desktop machine. Tablets hope to change the way we compute. Smart phones were a taste of that, now we can get real mobile computers.

Re:Have you ever told yourself:

[Locke2005]

I agree, 'cause people walking down the street while using an iPad is a big win... for the gene pool!

Damn...

[sconeu]

I hate to reply to myself.

I forgot the important part.

Because she couldn't get the Toshiba to work, she bought an iPad.

Re:Damn...

[ArtDent]

How does she do updates, for example, without a desktop or laptop running iTunes?

Re:Damn...

[coinreturn]

Updates can be done directly from the App Store.

Re:Damn...

[exomondo]

Updates can be done directly from the App Store.

I think you misunderstood, you can't update the OS without iTunes, which means you need a computer.

Re:Damn...

[eggnoglatte]

So don't update the OS? For most people OS updates are a nuisance anyways.

Re:Damn...

[exomondo]

So don't update the OS? For most people OS updates are a nuisance anyways.

Oh yeah, just leave nasty things like that pdf exploit in there. Real good idea.

Re:Damn...

[bennomatic]

So don't update the OS? For most people OS updates are a nuisance anyways.

Oh yeah, just leave nasty things like that pdf exploit in there. Real good idea.

That PDF exploit is the easiest way to jailbreak it! Maybe she's a power user ;)

Which is really better

[SuperKendall]

One has Flash and the other doesn't.

I agree; it's a real issue that one supports flash ads when browsing and the other automatically disables them. Can't see why I'd pay (much less pay $300 more) for a device that includes software to make browsing worse.

And it's not like you can even play Flash games using flash on a tablet, since none of them integrate keyboards or mice which PC flash games require to operate...

That leaves the only real use of Flash as video. For watching video pretty much any site I can think of feeds video straight to the iPad instead of some clunky custom Flash player that takes overhead just to pull down a video file that's h.264 anyway. So there again why would I want to pay more to make the video viewing experience worse?

Support for Flash on a mobile device is just a curse at this point, now that so many sites support video properly on an iPad.

Re:Which is really better

[coinreturn]

And it's not like you can even play Flash games using flash on a tablet, since none of them integrate keyboards or mice which PC flash games require to operate...

Damn, I really wanted to be able to click on the target and win a free iPod, iPad, or whatever the fake giveaway of the week was.

Re:Which is really better

[Cederic]

I agree; it's a real issue that one supports flash ads when browsing and the other automatically disables them.

Oh, iPad2 comes with adblock now? Just that it's the first thing I install after the web browser on any web-enabled computer I own.

Or do you mean the iPad2 shows you all the other shitty ads, just not the flash ones? I'm mostly assuming that there are still non-flash apps, as I just don't see ads on the web.

And it's not like you can even play Flash games using flash on a tablet, since none of them integrate keyboards or mice which PC flash games require to operate...

Well, no, you wont be playing Flash games on a tablet if you were stupid enough to buy Apple.

Not all flash games need a keyboard. Or a mouse.

That leaves the only real use of Flash as video.

That is indeed a use, but not the only one. Maybe you don't use many commercial websites, but I do. Many of them use Flash. Many of them just wont work without it. Everything from holiday booking sites to football club sites to parts of the BBC website..

Congratulations on avoiding substantial parts of the web.

Support for Flash on a mobile device is just a curse at this point, now that so many sites support video properly on an iPad.

Support for Flash on a mobile device is perfectly fine. Must be your mobile device that's fucking useless.

Xoom doesn't have Flash

[Brannon]

I guess that makes Motorola evil, right?

Re:Xoom doesn't have Flash

[shutdown -p now]

Officially, it's due to be released on March 18. Unofficially, it has been leaked (likely a prerelease version, but working) for 4 days now.

Re:Here's the biggest stat: number of apps

[Andy Dodd]

If it makes that big of a difference in iOS, that just means iOS is broken.

Non-tablet apps run just fine without tweaks in nearly all situations on Android tablets. I haven't used a single tablet-optimized app on my Huawei S7 - they just properly handled the lcd.density variable and adjusted their rendering to take into account the difference.

What? back at you

[SuperKendall]

Uh, my phone displays black text on white background; this of course makes text much less readable than white text on black background like most high-contrast settings for visually-impaired users provide.

A setting to correct deficiencies in vision is not necessarily the best setting for someone who lacks those deficiencies.

I don't wear glasses or contacts and despise white text on a dark background, I find it strains my eyes horribly. I know some people prefer it but to make a blanket claim that such text is more readable for everyone, is just wrong.

Re:What? back at you

[shutdown -p now]

to make a blanket claim that such text is more readable for everyone, is just wrong.

And yet TFA makes an equally absurd statement, that white text on dark background is less readable for everyone.

Re:What? back at you

[SuperKendall]

And yet TFA makes an equally absurd statement, that white text on dark background is less readable for everyone.

And I am happy to disagree with that blanket statement just as strongly, because I have other friends that prefer reversed text just as much as I prefer white on black.

Although I still think it may be learned habit from too many years in front of terminals before real computer arrived...

Re:No previous hype? Think again.

[MikeDirnt69]

I don't think I'm thaaaat wrong, there IS some hype. People interests changes, I agree with you; but how it changed that much, is a question I don't know the answer.

Re:A tie on web comparisons? Really?

[Arkham]

One has Flash and the other doesn't.

Don't get me wrong, I have an iPad2 (I'm getting a wifi only Xoom later this month) and it's great and seems to beat Xoom in quite a few areas, but I cannot fathom how you can compare their web experiences and call them equivalent when flash still doesn't exist on iOS due to Jobs' ridiculous ego.

They're not equivalent. The question is, how much value is there in Flash, and how much do you care if you don't have it? Aside from youtube and clones of youtube, I keep FlashBlock running on all my browsers at home and at work, and I don't ever look at Flash, ever. I guess if you do a lot of online Flash games or something, then it has value. I've heard a coworker talk about a streaming music site called GrooveShark that depends on it too, but for me, there's little to no value in Flash at all, so lacking it wouldn't hurt at all.

Re:Here's the biggest stat: number of apps

[DeadboltX]

65,000 apps sounds good until you break down how many of them are useless fat-sound apps, how many of them are functionally redundant to hundreds of other apps, and how many of them are borderline scams designed to trick people into unwittingly making in-app purchases. It doesn't matter if an app has been downloaded once, 100 times, or 1 million times, every app is counted into that precious marketing-friendly total. I would prefer not to have to sort through 65,000 apps to find the 12 that I want.

Re:Why buy an iPad 2....

[Locke2005]

How are you going to win an ePeen competition with a device that shipped last year??? When the iPeed 3 comes out, you've gotta be first in line to buy that one too, otherwise nobody will think you're cool and you won't get laid, duh!

Flash is Trash

[gilesjuk]

Why should Flash be an essential for the web? Why should the WWW need to rely on proprietary software from Adobe? Only by killing Flash can something better, open source and available to all (patent free) come along. Flash is holding everything back.

Proprietary browser plugins were fine when everyone was running Windows on a desktop, but things have moved on.

No OS maker should have to crawl to Adobe with their wallet open to request a plugin for their browser. Perhaps if the plugin was a Microsoft one then people would be less friendly to it?

Where would we be if email required a plugin for Microsoft to work?

Re:Flash is Trash

[Assmasher]

What a ridiculous argument.

You might as well argue that everyone dump HTML in favor of a better application development environment not based on an utter mishmash of technologies.

I've never heard of an OS maker having to crawl to Adobe to request a plugin, in point of fact - Adobe has been trying to get a flash player on iOS for years.

Good tool rather than a swiss army knife

[gilesjuk]

Have you ever tried to use all the tools on a swiss army knife? they become cumbersome to use the more you add. They become smaller and not as efficient at their intended task.

The same applies to gadgets, if you try to cram too much functionality in there it just becomes a mass of buttons, icons, control panels, switches and so on. Apple produce a tool to do a few things very well rather than a tool that tries to do everything but sucks at most of them.

What good is 1000 features in a device if due to software bugs and poor QA only 900 of them work or work to a point?

Re:A tie on web comparisons? Really?

[shutdown -p now]

I guess you could say that the lack of Flash is an advantage for the iPad, but you CAN turn Flash off on a Xoom, right?

Yes, it's same as on Android phones - you don't even get Flash immediately as page loads; rather, you see the "download" icons, which you tap if you want that particular Flash animation to run.

Re:Get the HP Slate

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Since when has Flash been used for Actual Work(tm)?

usually flash is used to AVOID work. ;)

The voices are wrong.

[coinreturn]

The voices are telling you the wrong things:

1)Tablet-optimized generally means an application that takes advantage of the extra real estate for a better user experience. No one is "slapping tablet-optimized" on anything - they'd be raked in the reviews, believe me.
2) That statement is nothing but TROLL!

Re:The voices are wrong.

[exomondo]

1)Tablet-optimized generally means an application that takes advantage of the extra real estate for a better user experience. No one is "slapping tablet-optimized" on anything - they'd be raked in the reviews, believe me.

What about many of the games? Ones like Angry Birds where the tablet version just scales to the larger screen because it wasn't written to be scalable in the first place?

Re:The voices are wrong.

[coinreturn]

As I hope you realize, scaling the graphics and scaling the game are two completely different things. Just scaling up the graphics does nothing - you're just watching a bigger TV. Tablet-optimized means designed for a bigger screen. For example, more game elements in view (e.g. Angry Birds HD). That's where 65K advantage comes in.

Re:The voices are wrong.

[exomondo]

As I hope you realize, scaling the graphics and scaling the game are two completely different things.

Yes, and many games simply do the latter, unless of course you think viewport aspect fits into the former (which it doesn't).

Just scaling up the graphics does nothing - you're just watching a bigger TV.

If you had used an iphone app in 2x mode on an ipad - stretching instead of scaling to the larger screen - you wouldn't make such a claim.

Tablet-optimized means designed for a bigger screen. For example, more game elements in view (e.g. Angry Birds HD). That's where 65K advantage comes in.

In angry birds HD for the most part everything is just bigger and you get a slightly different viewport because of the difference in aspect ratio, which is not scaling the game at all just changing the viewport aspect (which should be done automatically based on the screen resolution) and having scalable graphics.

Re:Here's the biggest stat: number of apps

[Locke2005]

You've got a point there -- the iPad is way ahead of Android in terms of number of fart apps supported! So if that's you're most important criteria, by all means buy an iPad!

Re:A tie on web comparisons? Really?

[Assmasher]

You can put flash on it now, and it is officially supposed to be on Xoom on the 18th of this month.

Don't get me wrong, my iPad2 is fantastic, except for one GLARING hole - no prospect of flash.

Re:A tie on web comparisons? Really?

[Assmasher]

Is that you Steve? Shouldn't you be stealing somebody's liver?

What's the difference?

[Brannon]

There are lots of computers we interact with on a daily basis for which we don't have the ability to run arbitrary code--they are appliances which serve a function and there is nothing morally wrong about creating them or buying them.

Your personal preference is to have a Linux PC in your pocket, not a mobile internet appliance--that's fine, but that doesn't make you any holier than the millions of people who have a different preference.

Perfectly sustainable

[SuperKendall]

Relying on using software exploits to achieve the desired level of functionality isn't sustainable.

It has held up through every iteration of every device and every OS change.

The simple fact is that what is not sustainable, is locking users out of doing whatever they like with a device they physically possess. That is what does not hold up in the long run.

Apple doesn't even try very hard (in large part because they know the same truth), many OS updates do nothing to break existing jailbreaks.

Even if Apple were to somehow arrive at a mystical zero-vulnerability state that has never been achieved in the history of software (well, except perhaps for TeX), it wouldn't matter because you can always subvert the update process (which is how many jailbreaks work between finding on-device exploits).

The fact is there is a world of ability there easy at hand for anyone with a small amount of technical understanding, on really well built devices. It is really a shame to avoid that just because you don't like how a device is configured when it ships. A real hacker doesn't care how it ships, they care what they can do when they have one.

Re:Perfectly sustainable

[Namarrgon]

If Apple was really interested in helping its geekier customers rather than just locking people into their own services, they'd provide their own equivalent of Google's "fastboot oem unlock" - voids your warranty, no support, knock yourself out. Even Microsoft gets this.

Oh, and they'd probably relax their "duplication" clause and allow apps that compete with their own services, like better mail clients or even the improved Google Maps, rather than hiding behind their lame "oh the consumer might get confused" excuse. As it is, you have to admit they have their less-technical customers (and their own bottom line) much more firmly in mind.

Re:Perfectly sustainable

[SuperKendall]

As it is, you have to admit they have their less-technical customers (and their own bottom line) much more firmly in mind.

Of course, but that is as it should be. Apple needs to look out for less-technical customers foremost because those people cannot look out for themselves.

Technical people can manage, which is why making life easier for them is not as important. They will find a way to do what they like anyway.

Re:Perfectly sustainable

[Stuarticus]

I returned a jailbroken iPhone due to a SIM fault, I would have been really pleased if google had refused my warranty because of that. Apple sent me a brand new one.

Re:Perfectly sustainable

[Namarrgon]

Guess you were lucky.

The web works fine without Flash

[SuperKendall]

Oh, iPad2 comes with adblock now? Just that it's the first thing I install after the web browser on any web-enabled computer I own.

No, I have morals. I don't mind the ads that are not actively trying to annoy me because they help pay for what I am reading. So I get to support the site but not get annoying ads, win-win.

Well, no, you wont be playing Flash games on a tablet if you were stupid enough to buy Apple.

That's not what Xoom users are saying (who have side-loaded early version of Flash). I can't think of a single Flash game I've ever played that would work OK on a touch-screen device. They just are not built for them.

That is indeed a use, but not the only one. Maybe you don't use many commercial websites, but I do. Many of them use Flash. Many of them just wont work without it.

I use a ton. They all provide Flash-free, fully functional versions of the site for the iPad that work just as well. Or applications that work even better.

Name a site you think "just won't work" without Flash.

Congratulations on avoiding substantial parts of the web.

The only parts I have to avoid are those that cannot work on tablets by design anyway (Flash game sites), so it wouldn't matter what tablet I had. And it's not like the iPad is hurting for games you know.

Support for Flash on a mobile device is perfectly fine. Must be your mobile device that's fucking useless.

Ah, swearing, the last resort of someone who knows they have lost the argument. Perhaps the more useless device is one that burdens users with software that drains battery and processor while providing little benefit in everyday use.

In reality I have installed a Flashblock on my main computer a few years back and have only had to disable it once, and that was for a YouTube video that messed up the h.264 encoding somehow.

Re:The web works fine without Flash

[Cederic]

Name a site you think "just won't work" without Flash.

http://liverpoolfc.tv/

Ah, swearing, the last resort of someone who knows they have lost the argument.

Or, just possibly, someone that knows how to accentuate their speech through use of broader vocabulary. Sorry, I don't appear to have your hangups over certain words.

What sort of cunt gets worried about language?

Re:Here's the biggest stat: number of apps

[vijayiyer]

For an example, go look at http://www.foreflight.com/ipad (an app for pilots with moving map charts, weather, instrument approach procedures, etc).
Now think about how that would scale down to a phone simply by scaling the UI elements. Guess what - it doesn't.
It completely changes how I manage my workload in the cockpit, and if it had the same UI as their phone version, I wouldn't use it at all.

It didn't change at all

[SuperKendall]

Ok, I agree my wording was too strong about you being "as wrong as you could be", but...

People interests changes, I agree with you; but how it changed that much, is a question I don't know the answer.

The thing is, people's interests didn't change at all. People were always curious about tablets. But they didn't sell because the experience was awful for most people, because they tried to be normal computers that you used through a touch screen (or usually stylus). A fiddly thing with a special pen that is really big and doesn't last long, has too many restrictions on how people want to use devices they can carry around all the time. Smartphones didn't even really take off until you could expect to walk around with one for longer than a day without charging.

why so much fuss?

[amn108]

Why so much fuss, everyone knew iPad 2 would be invincible? Look at it, it's polished in every way. Xoom has just about half its battery life and the software still seems glitchy. Did Motorola hope that people would buy into that only to have more "freedom"? I like freedom very much, and I also dislike Apple, but to tell you the truth, if I'd walk into a store where both are sold, I wouldn't give the Xoom more than a finger swipe. And the store clerk would probably agree with me. Apple are in their own league here. If you want to compete with them, you have to work really hard, and not just in one department...

Hopefully UI smoothness should be fixed soon

[0ld_d0g]

There has been a long standing open bug regarding this. Please vote on this if you can. http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914

From waht I can tell google is/was lax with the minimum system requirements and thus doesn't want android to require h/w acceleration so as to not alienate cheaper handsets manufacturers from adopting android. This is why all the rendering is done on the CPU instead of the GPU.

Re:Here's the biggest stat: number of apps

[donny77]

All I can say is go to your nearest Apple store, pick up and iPad, go into the Calendar app. Yes, the calendar app from the iPhone would have worked fine on the iPad, but the iPad version is 1000 times more useful and WOULD NOT work on an iPhone. Can work and optimized are two different things.

Re:I want a tablet. - HP TouchPad

[benmhall]

Maybe you'll like the upcoming HP TouchPad.

WebOS is a fantastic operating system, Linux underneath, apps in HTML/CSS/JS, C++ for those who want 3D and high-performance. The browser is brilliant, multi-tasking is fantastic, development is a snap and is very open. True, the OS isn't fully Open Source, but Palm have a great development platform and a very open approach to development. The hardware looks great too!

Re:A tie on web comparisons? Really?

[TrancePhreak]

One advantage I've noticed is there are a large number of Flash games that will work on mobile Flash. They get very popular, and thus they are remade for iOS and are sold for money. With Flash on your device you can play them for free, without you pay extra.

Let me know

[codepunk]

Let me know when android rips the vm out and can match the performance of IOS native code and I might care.

Re:Here's the biggest stat: number of apps

[zuperduperman]

Using a tablet with a software interface designed for a phone is marginal at best.

On an OS like iOS that's true because it was designed on the premise of one single form factor and resolution (originally 320x480) - so obviously every app developer hard coded around exactly that spec and their apps totally suck when scaled up.

Android on the other hand has always presumed that people will have all kinds of form factors anywhere from 2 inch 180x240 screens all the way up to 4.3 inch 480x854 screens right from the start. The emulator supports switching to any number of different profiles to test with and embraces shipping different layouts and different graphics to suit different resolutions. Basically the existing stock of Android applications scales up far better than the original stock of iOS apps. They might not be "optimized", but most of them are totally usable and work just fine.

I would say that probably half the apps in the Android Market have UIs that are totally acceptable on a tablet and optimization wouldn't even do much to them even if it was applied. So we're actually talking about Android having ~100,000 apps and the iPad only 65,000.

Re:Here's the biggest stat: number of apps

[zuperduperman]

There's also a whole class of applications where such "optimization" does nothing at all. So "optimized" and "can work" turn out to be exactly the same. So one could say that Android has tens of thousands of apps that are "optimized".

Let your voice be heard

[boreddotter]

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html

Follow the links above and let your voice be heard.

Re:Here's the biggest stat: number of apps

[exomondo]

Perhaps, but they're just not optimized for the larger screen.

Unlike iOS, Android devs are used to dealing with different screen sizes and resolutions.

An exxample would be a piano keyboard app - on the phone, you get an octave, on a tablet you get two (or perhaps two octaves and a third). That makes a big difference in usability.

Like one of the Android piano apps (xPiano i think) that gives you a greater range depending on the size/resolution of the device you run it on. The primary difference between a phone and a tablet is screen size/resolution, Android devs have always had to deal with this anyway so any decent app doesn't have to worry about being 'tablet optimized' if it is scalable. (I don't actually have an Android device, i have an ipad and omnia7, but i have a lot of friends who do).

Re:A tie on web comparisons? Really?

[exomondo]

Not having Flash is a feature. I don't have it on my desktop and I sure as hell don't want it on my phone or tablet.

Oh come on, you can stop with the idiocy. I chose an ipad because i think it's the best device in that category, but i don't feel the need to ignore the fact that a lot of great web-content is flash-based and that not having the option to be able to view it is a shortcoming. If you need to be forced to not have access to flash in order to not use it then that's your shortcoming, not flash's.

Yawn, next please, you can watch that on an iPad

[SuperKendall]

http://liverpoolfc.tv/

Further reinforcing my statement that the only thing Flash is really needed for is video...

However in the case you gave, you can view liverpoolfc.tv via Skyfire:

Just to add to what others have posted about the Skyfire web browser you can get from the app store - until recently, it wouldn't play videos from LFC TV. However, a couple of days ago Skyfire issued an update to the browser which now allows many, many more flash videos across the web from a lot more sites to be viewable, and that now includes LFCTV vids.

Next!

Or, just possibly, someone that knows how to accentuate their speech through use of broader vocabulary.

Swearing is the sign of someone who has run out of vocabulary, patience, and wit. Sorry man, you can't walk back out from your own gaffes that easily.

What sort of cunt gets worried about language?

Who said I was worried? I was just noting how unintelligent you were (and are) making yourself look. At this point anyone reading is just shaking their head at how infantile you are becoming.

I'll let you have the last reply, I don't feel the need to read further thoughts from anyone who can't find a single valid Flash example, and has as I said run out of words and wit. What's funny is you will rise to the bait and beclown yourself all the further, even though I've told you what you will do. Quite amusing.

Exactly right

[SuperKendall]

I totally agree with the thought that Flash is the equivalent of iFart.

Of course the thing is, Apple is not shipping iFart as a system update the way Xoom is.

The funnier thing is how many people seek so desperately on Android to install what is the equivalent of iFart, to watch stuttery video and a lot more ads. At least iFart makes no pretenses about the "experience" you are about to have.

No, *real* work

[Namarrgon]

If by "content creation" you mean some basic typing or low-end media editing. I'm sure it's fine for consumers (blogging, youtube etc) and I do know a couple of professionals who prefer the iPad for filling out reports, simple presentations etc, but for almost anything substantial, there's no comparison at all with laptops & PCs. Tablets are sharply limited by screen area, resolution, memory, processor speed, storage, connection bandwidth, graphics power, peripherals - pretty much in every possible way except mobility.

- Substantial writing is a lot easier with more screen area, especially if you want to research stuff at the same time.
- Detailed photoshopping, large images, not the basic levels & color stuff.
- Drawing/painting (with a pressure tablet, as you said earlier)
- Final Cut/Avid-level film editing
- Compositing
- 3D rendering
- Software development
- Web page development
- CAD

and far more; these are just some of the things I occasionally need to do.

Even the many things a tablet *can* do, can be done far more easily with more powerful hardware, larger screens and richer input peripherals. The sole advantage a tablet has is mobility, and that's a pretty small consideration for the vast majority of real, paid work - *especially* content creation. While tablets certainly have their place (I have one), they're never going to replace PCs or laptops for most of what many, many people need to do.

P.S. This of course applies to all tablets, not just iPads, so relax.

Re:No, *real* work

[indiechild]

Well thought-out post. I agree that tablets aren't meant to replace laptops, though for some people in certain specialised jobs, they very well can.

I think the world is still experimenting with these tablets so I think we'll be pleasantly surprised at how the whole thing evolves and develops. That's the beauty of tech.

Re:Get the HP Slate

[sarhjinian]

Many people, especially many upper-level executives, consider the need to boot up into Windows (or Linux, or Mac OS X) and use full, heavy-weight applications to do simple things like reading mail as something they really, really care about.

The Slate is a very different device, and, equipped with Windows, it's going down the same rabbit-hole HP went down already---without success---with the tc1000. People who want a full PC usually don't want a tablet's compromised input devices, and people who want a tablet don't want a desktop OS and it's baggage.

How about 21 months ago?

[Namarrgon]

That's when the Native Development Kit was first released.

Though arguably, since 2.2's inclusion of an automatic JIT compiler, everything is native code now. And of course the system libraries always were, which is what 90%+ of most apps' time is spent in.

Then there's the hardware - CPU speed, available RAM etc, which tend to be higher on flagship Android devices as a rule. But I expect you're not really interested in actual resulting performance, you've probably just got something against VMs.

Re:A tie on web comparisons? Really?

[Assmasher]

Do you have one? I know two people who have them, have put Flash on it themselves and they say it's great. My iPad2 is also great.

Re:A tie on web comparisons? Really?

[Assmasher]

I still find it astonishing that people cannot understand that the actual reason Java and Flash aren't on the iWhatever is because it would let you bypass the app store. Every other excuse is just window dressing bull****.

Re:A tie on web comparisons? Really?

[Assmasher]

Flash is old useless technology? Hell, I think flash development is fundamentally gimpy but it is a million times better than HTML application development, and HTML is an older technology. Should Apple be dumping that too? LOL.

Re:Here's the biggest stat: number of apps

[jmcbain]

You're missing the point entirely. No consumer is going to buy 65,000 apps, but the sheer size and breadth of those iPad apps will: (1) allow consumers to find desired "long-tail" niche apps that wouldn't be found if there were, say, 100 apps like there is with Android tablet apps; and (2) force developers to constantly work on improving their apps since there is so much competition, which is a win for consumers.

Re:Here's the biggest stat: number of apps

[maxume]

I'm not missing the point, I'm asserting (based on no evidence, just my assumptions) that 10,000 apps is plenty enough to get those dynamics.

Especially given how many apps are for wallpapers or whatever.

(And I am quite prepared to dismiss the significance of tablet specific; sure, there are lots of ideas that will be a lot better on a bigger screen, but the number of those ideas that make or brake tablets for a given individual is pretty small)

Re:No previous hype? Think again.

[indiechild]

Back in the day when I was a student, I lusted after one of those little UMPCs. Unfortunately they were way too expensive and out of my reach.

Re:No, you're not alone, companies always do this.

[indiechild]

I definitely don't consider the Kindle to be a tablet, and neither do most other people. In fact, a lot of people own both a Kindle plus a tablet computer (iPad or Android-based tablet).

The Kindle is successful because it does one thing very well, and that's ebook reading. It essentially sucks at everything else. I love my Kindle for reading, despite the fact that it has an appallingly bad and klunky user interface.

The iPad is a completely different beast to the Kindle. And that's why both Amazon and Apple can be successful in the arena. Pundits like to claim they're competing against each other, but they're not -- at the moment. Who knows what the future will bring...

Re:Yawn, next please, you can watch that on an iPa

[Cederic]

I didn't mention the video on liverpoolfc.tv
Does Skyfire display the flash on their homepage, including the news items?
Does Skyfire display the live match coverage?

Trust me, I've already told lfc to stop using Flash so obnoxiously, but writing it off as mere video is frankly a lie.

Thanks for the last reply, it's good to know you realise how wrong you are.

Re:Here's the biggest stat: number of apps

[jmcbain]

User: "I want an interactive python or irb prompt."

There are maybe 10 people in the world who want an interactive python prompt on their tablet. I guess you must really love your sysadmin job.

Re:No, you're not alone, companies always do this.

[paanta]

For what it's worth, I can type on the iPad almost as fast as on my desktop. I have to look at the keyboard a bit while I do it, but I can take notes faster on the ipad than on paper, and I've only had it a week. After some time setting it up so I can access all my documents and media from the tablet, I haven't felt the need to use my laptop since buying it. Obviously it's not a full blown desktop, but it's incredible if you think of it as simply a window to content. It's definitely going to replace the gigantic reams of paper I used to carry around to meetings, replace all my paper auto repair manuals and be the end of hauling a laptop around as a multimedia device. Like the iPhone (and later Android/WebOS stuff), it's a device that truly opens up a lot of possibilities that weren't there before and developers are only getting started with it. It's just going to take a while for people to figure out exactly what its strengths and weaknesses are.

i like the ipad 2

[ken138888]

i like the ipad 2