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Gaming Is the Most Popular Use For Tablets
The Guardian's Games blog reports on a survey from Google's Admob, which found that more people use tablets for gaming than for any other purpose, even viewing news or email. Quoting:
"According to the survey (PDF), 84% of tablet owners play games, ahead of even searching for information (78%), emailing (74%) and reading the news (61%). 56% of tablet owners use social networking services on their device, while 51% consume music and/or videos, and 46% read ebooks. ... The survey found that 38% of respondents spend more than two hours a day using their tablets, while another 30% spend 1-2 hours. It appears that tablets are predominantly domestic devices, with 82% of people primarily using their tablets at home, versus 11% who say they are used primarily on the go, and 7% who said at work. 28% of respondents say their tablet is now their primary computer, while 43% say they spend more time using their tablet than they do their desktop or laptop computer."
Step 1: make some affordable accessories to comfortably set up a tablet as if it were a PC monitor; keyboard, speakers, etc.
Step 2: start marketing parts instead of finished products only so it isn't an entire industry of iMacs. Let people build their own.
Step 3: open things up and give people more control over what they do with their devices; if you buy it you get to decide how it's used.
Boom, tablets are the new PCs. Not a replacement, simply an evolution out of the old form. Until all this happens they'll still just be a gimmicky toy that some people happen to spend a lot of time on. Make these things happen and you'll see business tablets as well.
Some people use their hands to perform surgery. Some use them to play the violin. Some use them to flip burgers. Nearly all, however, use their hands to brush their teeth.
Thus, tooth-brushing is the most popular use for hands.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Do people play with toys more often than they play with tools? Tonight, we investigate.
I thought that the main use for tablets would be programming, blogging and writting books.
Step 1: make some affordable accessories to comfortably set up a tablet as if it were a PC monitor; keyboard, speakers, etc.
With the iPad2 I can mirror to any monitor, or use a keyboard stand that Apple makes, or use any bluetooth keyboard, or buy any number of speaker docs.
Step 2: start marketing parts instead of finished products only so it isn't an entire industry of iMacs. Let people build their own.
And how is that different with the entire iPad ecosystem today, where people are doing just that with a huge range of third party accessories? Otherwise you aren't seriously arguing that people surface-mount components in a homebrew tablet right? Because that is what you'd be doing to keep the size and weight anywhere near current tablet standards.
Step 3: open things up and give people more control over what they do with their devices; if you buy it you get to decide how it's used.
99% of iPad buyers have all the control they can use, they use the web and buy a huge range of tablet specific apps and that is enough.
The other 1% can jailbreak. And that is in fact better for the technical user than using any other device because of how much easier it is to hack ObjectiveC apps to tweak the system and individual apps instead of having to write whole applications from scratch. A huge part of the Cydia app store is not just superficial customization like the home page, but about customization to add features to existing apps (like Mail.app).
Now you may start to understand why Apple calls the tablet the "post-PC", the only missing component is off-pC backup. Hmm, I wonder what Apple is doing with a huge new datacenter?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Here i thought the tablets computers main use was a substitute for toilet paper, or some sort of laxative. I really could not figure out what the main use was.
Stop torturing her with the chinese-app-drip and just buy her an iPad to give her the freedom she deserves to be able to work the device yourself without your help.
It's readable out in the sun. Closing the cover to turn it off and on makes it foolproof (might want to buy a sturdier surrounding case if it's going out in the garden, most now have adopted the magnets that turn it off). Just come over once a week or month to back it up for her but otherwise she can just do everything on the device herself.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I love my Android phone - I'd much rather have a good Android tablet than an iPad. But right now, Android on tablet sucks (3.1 please?) and the Android tablet gaming ecosystem is abysmal. One session of Infinity Blade and then browsing the iTunes App Store for iPad only apps is enough to confirm that unless you're stupidly partisan.
So if gaming is the primary use, there's no reason whatsoever for people to buy a XOOM over an iPad 2. Hell, I wouldn't either right now.
This may change in the future. I sure hope so.
- manage a firewall as powerful as iptables/pf
You can try using pfctl on a jailbroken iPad today.
But isn't it better that a system have zero open ports by default and not NEED iPtables until you start doing things that require it? Remember running any app can only corrupt the dataspace for that app.
- have full control over encryption on all filesystems
The whole filesystem is hardware encrypted, and has been since the 3Gs I believe.
- write an interpreter aka scripting environment
Did you even READ the part where I said the 1% of people who need something more technical can jailbreak? Then you can run local python, perl, bash shells, or whatever.
Or if you don't like to jailbreak for some odd reason you can simply use whatever scripting language pleases you after you buy a $99/year developer license and write any scripting you like into your own apps which you deploy to your own device. But that was what you said you wanted.
So I guess it's time for you to start re-thinking your assumptions.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Putting Windows on a tablet computer. Why didn't someone think of this earlier?
Oh yeah they did! Every year for the past 10+ years and they have all failed.
No offense dude, but it sounds like a classic case of putting the lipstick on a pig. if you need all those accessories to use the thing? Then perhaps a tablet ain't the right tool for your particular job. And tablets as a "gaming platform"? if you call Angry Birds and Farmvillve games instead of time wasters then MAYBE.
I think this is just another case of everybody and their dog jumping on the new fad and thinking its the second coming. Remember when netbooks were the new hotness? Hell I saw "gaming netbooks" pushed then as well, anything to separate your offering from the pack. What happened to those? oh yeah people found out that cheap and little only got you so far and the bottom fell out, same as what will happen to tablets.
Do I think tablets are toast? Nope same as I doubt netbooks will ever truly go away, as both have their uses. For netbooks it is those like my dad who I picked up a nice AMD dual netbook for, it was only $430 and is small enough he can just throw it in his briefcase and if he needs to shoot out an invoice or check on a part on the job site he can just flip it on and BAM, its done. It also gives him an easy way to watch videos and check his mail while waiting on a contractor. But even my oldest who I thought being in college would appreciate the form factor ended up going with a full laptop (I found him a nice deal on a Turion cheap) because he found the form factor too small and limiting (it probably didn't help that he and his buddies frag fest to kill time between classes either).
Same thing with tablets, in that while the average Joe will probably quickly get bored and look for the next new hotness for the medical and warehouse trades the tablet is like a Godsend. All the doctor's offices and hospitals in my area are switching to tablets, which lets the doc have any and all data at his fingertips, lets the nurses update charts, etc, while in the warehouse business several of my customers are using tablets now for inventory management and just love the things to death.
So in the end I think the same thing that happened to netbooks will happen to tablets, we just haven't reached the saturation point yet. it is still too new and many are still in the new hotness stage, once it has been out for a little while and folks see that it isn't the second coming most will get dumped, just like how my Craigslist is plumb full of netbooks ATM. Gaming is simply better done with some buttons or a controller and the tablet FF? Not really made for that.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.