HP Drops Price Again For Its WebOS-Based iPad Challenger

oxide7 writes with this selection from IBT: "Hewlett Packard reduced the price of its TouchPad tablet computer again, highlighting the uphill battle manufacturers will need to overcome as they go head-to-head against the dominant Apple iPad line of tablets. Much of a tablet's success is based on the ecosystem of apps that is available to the end-user. HP is far behind Apple or even the No.2 tablet platform, Google's Android."

Comments

Obligatory Robocop reference

[MrEricSir]

"I'll buy that for a dollar!"

Re:Obligatory Robocop reference

[hairyfeet]

You joke but I think you just hit the nail square on the head on how to unseat the iPad. What they need to do is cook up a reasonably performing (I'd say 1.2Ghz ARM single with 512Mb of RAM and a couple of Gb of storage) pad and sell it in the $150 range, probably with Android.

The thing I've noticed is perfect will nearly always be defeated by "good enough" if that good enough is substantially cheaper. I'd say the sweet spot for a mass market pad would be right on or as close to $150 as you can get and then you can always charge extra for a 3G module add on or do various tie ins with carriers.

There are a LOT of folks out there (me included) that wouldn't mind playing with a pad but at current prices for anything usable simply aren't worth it to them, but the $150 price point is close to "impulse buy" territory. And just look at how netbooks jump started the entire laptop field and changed the game, going from uber expensive to decent laptops in the $300 range? the same can be done with tablets, it just needs someone to do a EEE with the form factor.

Re:Obligatory Robocop reference

[amiga3D]

No problem, all they have to do to compete is sell a 1+ ghz dual core equipped tablet with retina class graphics and plenty of storage and ram for $150. Easy. All it takes is bleeding off a few billion dollars. The only company I know of that does that just to crack open a new market is MicroSoft. I can't see anyone else throwing tons of money into a hole on the chance that when they start giving tablets away that Apple wont just jump to a new tablet that changes the game all over leaving them with billions gone and no market still. So far the only tablet I've seen that I like other than the iPad is the Galaxy Tab and frankly at the same price point I'll still take an iPad because iOS is still better although android is narrowing the gap quickly. I've got to say though...if I can find a tablet just as good as an iPad for $150 I'll take it.

Re:Obligatory Robocop reference

[malloryweis]

Actually lots of people seem to be buying it for $397/$460, bearing in mind the 16 and 32 gb versions are respectively the 2nd and 5th biggest selling tablets on amazon at the moment. Having said that, the question you ought to be asking yourself is, can you fly bobby?

Re:Obligatory Robocop reference

[Hadlock]

I don't think that hitting the $150-250 android tablet price point is the problem; it's the "making Android work on a tablet that isn't frustrating to the end user" that is the problem. Perhaps when android tablets hit 3.2 or 3.3 I will consider one, but there's quite a bit of work to be done in the mean time to make the $200 savings worth it over an iPad. If you're buying a tablet, you probably already have a use for one, and plan to spend a lot of time using it. If the difference between a half-hearted android product and the industry leading, bleeding edge tablet technology is only $250, and you plan on using the device 2-3 hours a day (what I'd consider the minimum usage before I'd invest in the product), you might as well go ahead and buy the iPad.

Re:Obligatory Robocop reference

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...dude? didn't read what I wrote huh? No dual, 1.2Ghz single. Most folks are single tasking on one of those so duals are pointless. you could also use the cheaper (resistive?) screen, again folks won't expect an iPad for $150.

You see all you need is to hit "good enough". Not great, not second coming of iJesus, just "good enough". Folks see that PC sales are slowing down and going "Tablets are killing them!" and that is simply bullshit. I should know, I sell and fix the things all day long. It is simply for the vast majority a dual core with 2Gb of RAM is "good enough" and they see no reason to replace it.

You could do absolutely the same thing and come in at a $150 price point. 512Mb of DDR3 is dirt cheap, so is 2gb of NAND. Add a 1024x800 screen along with a wifi chip and MicroSD slot and you'd be good to go. Nobody is gonna expect 3D gaming, or HD video. put a stripped down browser that will load basic web pages (add $30 if you want one with a flash decoder chip), play MP3s, and read eBooks. That's all, that's it. I bet my last dollar that just like the EEE it would be a game changer simply because for what the masses want to do it would be good enough.

Re:Obligatory Robocop reference

[tehcyder]

If the difference between a half-hearted android product and the industry leading, bleeding edge tablet technology is only $250, and you plan on using the device 2-3 hours a day (what I'd consider the minimum usage before I'd invest in the product), you might as well go ahead and buy the iPad.

I think you've got that backwars. Most people using tablets do not use it for several hours a day to do work on, they use it to browse facebook and play Angry Birds a bit. And if the price was down to less than $200, it hardly counts as an investment, it is in the "slightly expensive boy's toy" category.

Re:Obligatory Robocop reference

[shilly]

I buy the theory. The practice may be quite tricky, because I think the aspect most consumers are unlikely to want to compromise on is the UX, which is the bit that's expensive to produce. They want a fluid and responsive interface. That means a good screen, a decent chip and a range of good apps that are optimised for the reduced processing power and ram the tablet has cf an iPad. I really doubt resistive screens can be made to fly, tbh.

Re:Obligatory Robocop reference

[hairyfeet]

I think you're wrong, and here is why: While everyone else was dealing with 300MHz PCs that were struggling with some of Win98s features I had 100Mhz running it just fine, when everyone was saying "You'd be nuts to run XP on less than 1GHz" I had it running great on a 400MHz, even now I'm playing with a version of Windows 7 that runs like a champ on a 1.4GHz with 512Mb of RAM. What do all these systems had in common? Instead of running a generic OS they were running one that was tailored for the system which gave it a hell of a boost.

All you'd have to do is recompile Android for the hardware and do the same to the software that came with the thing. Since Android is FOSS you can also tell anyone that wants to put apps in your market what flags they'll need to use to compile or give you source so you could compile it for the system. We spent many a year getting real work done on machines a HELL of a lot slower than a 1.4GHz CPU with 512Mb of RAM and they were snappy. The same thing could be done here, it just takes a little more work at design time. I'd say one of the failings of the lower priced tablets is they are throwing vanilla Android on it and generic OSes just don't work on lower spec'd hardware.

Then you could do like dell during their heyday, sell units where you are making $8-$9 a unit and sell millions of them. You sell 20 million units and are making $9 a unit? that is some good scratch right there and nothing to sneeze at. Then once you have the brand well known like ASUS you start selling all kinds of units at different price points.

Re:Obligatory Robocop reference

[shilly]

I think we're in agreement on what's needed, but disagree about how much it cost. I said "a range of good apps that are optimised for the reduced processing power and ram the tablet has cf an iPad", you said "recompile Android for the hardware and do the same to the software that came with the thing". But:
- good screens are expensive
- putting the effort into effective tailoring of the software is also pricey, if you want to do a decent job

I agree that the chip doesn't cost that much and that vanilla Android is a non-starter.

momentum

[__aazsst3756]

There was a time many tech users and writers were excited about WebOS. I have read many reviews claiming it was possibly the best OS, compared to iOS and Android at the time.

But HP has taken an extremely long time to ship anything running WebOS. They have a tablet out, but still have not shipped a phone with competitive hardware.

They lost their momentum......

Re:momentum

[Penguinisto]

Even worse, they've lost mindshare among developers.

Anecdotal example, but my missus saw a tablet ad last night (RIM Playbook, IIRC), and asked about getting one. I replied that we could, but it doesn't have a lot of the games and apps she wants just yet (though they probably will). Her response was pretty instructive about impulse buying: "Well, tell me which ones have them, and we'll get one of those instead."

I talked her out of it (her laptop is less than a year old, FFS...)

Re:momentum

[Pieroxy]

More time spend on a screen = less sex maybe...

Re:momentum

[mwvdlee]

OTOH, not buying your girlfriend gifts tends to get you lots of sex.

Re:momentum

[Pieroxy]

Then maybe we should buy gifts that doesn't consume their time? Perfume, jewelry, etc. But no tablets !

Re:momentum

[vga_init]

My dad recently got an ASUS TF101. The things are dirt cheep and first class Android tablets (Nvidia Tegra 2, 10" screen, latest Android, micro SD, HDMI out). All the apps are there, and the games are amazing. I'm still curious about the Touchpad, but it kind of seems pointless now.

Re:momentum

[Unequivocal]

How's the screen input quality? Specifically can you write on it with any stylus? I want a tablet for pen-like notetaking and can't find one that gets good reviews on this front.. Thanks!

Re:momentum

[symbolset]

No stylus. Optional keyboard though. I have one. It's very nice. Quite a lot of tech for the money. Battery goes all day and then some.

Re:momentum

[Unequivocal]

Thanks! Have you tried a generic touchscreen stylus on it (e.g., http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0028YFQ5U)? What I hear is that while a lot of tablet touchscreen are good for fingers, their resolution and response time is too poor to make effective hand-writing capture devices.. All input welcome!

Re:momentum

[amiga3D]

Buy her some fancy lingerie and jewelry. It might cost more than the tablet but you'll probably enjoy it more at least.

Re:momentum

[amiga3D]

resistive or capacitive screen?

Re:momentum

[lowlymarine]

The EEE Transformer is a capacitive touchscreen; the stylus you linked wouldn't work.

Re:momentum

[symbolset]

They sell capacitive Styli (styluses?) for capacitive touchscreens. This isn't one, but you can find them. The capacitive styluses are for using the tablet with gloves on, or women with long fingernails, or people fussy about fingerprints. Capacitive touchscreens aren't good for pen input for the reasons you said - you want a resistive touchscreen for that. Resistive touchscreens aren't good for multi-touch though. It sounds like the iPad, TouchPad, Transformer, Xoom and Galaxy tabs are not for you. Fortunately resistive touchscreen tablets are much cheaper.

I haven't tried that one by the way - but search for "resistive touchscreen tablet" and you should find something that meets your needs.

Re:momentum

[Unequivocal]

Don't care - so long as I get a reasonably fine pen point with low lag from the ink when writing.. Any thoughts?

Re:momentum

[dreamchaser]

You should care. A resistive touch screen is far less capable than a capactive one. For one you can't do multi-touch on resistive screens.

Re:momentum

[narcc]

You should care.

True, one will meet his needs, the other will not.

A resistive touch screen is far less capable than a capactive one. For one you can't do multi-touch on resistive screens.

Fail. For the parents stated need "a reasonably fine pen point with low lag from the ink when writing" a resistive touch screen is quite obviously the better choice. A capacitive touch screen simply can not do what the parent wants.

Re:momentum

[xeno]

Resistive is "far less capable"? Bzzzzzt. Not true. Not even close. You can't do multi-touch on a resistive screen, but the accuracy on a capacitve screen is far lower not because the technology, but because it's limited by design to input from a big smudgy finger. If you want fine-point or pen-style input (e.g., I do floorplan sketches, my friend runs apps in an emulator and needs to click on tiny menu items, and the UPS guy wants my signature), then you gotta have resistive. A capacitive screen totally strikes out. Is resistive as kid-proof as capacitive? No, but then they're just poking at web pages and playing games. Different usage profile.

( Oh, and BTW, blowing thru levels on Angry Birds is WAAYYY easier on a resistive screen... :)

Re:momentum

[tehcyder]

Why don't you want her to have a tablet?

Because they are addictive and she will become a computer bore. And that's our job.

Re:momentum

[d3ac0n]

They lost their momentum......

Really? Somehow I doubt that.

1. HP does this with ALL it's products. They release a new product line. and then about a month after release toss a big discount out there to further stimulate interest beyond the early adopters.

2. Staples has sold out of it's stock of 16GB Touchpads. Stop right there and let that sink in for a minute... Who, other than Apple, has been able to SELL OUT of a tablet device in stores across America in a single weekend? Samsung with it's much-vaunted Galaxy Tab? Nope. Blackberry's Playbook? Nope. ONLY THE TOUCHPAD has been able to come close to Apple's sales figures. All they needed to do was price it competitively, which as per point #1, is par for the course for HP. One last item of note; Staples was one of the larger Touchpad partners and had a VERY large stock. It's all sold now.

3. On a personal level, I am hearing from completely non-techie people how "That Touchpad thing is really cool looking." and "The Touchpad looks like it's one of the better ones." This is from the older ladies that work in my office and from neighbors who I know aren't tech people. The kind of people who normally say things like "Does that 'iTab' thing do Kindle books from Barnes and Noble?" (Yes, one of them actually said that to me. Yes, it nearly broke my brain.)

The point is, the only people who are saying that "WebOS is dead" are people who have some kind of vested interest (IE: Astrotrufers or True Believers) in one of the other platforms. Is WebOS struggling? No doubt. A couple years of bad or non-existent advertising and a company buyout will do that to a platform. Is it dead? Not by a long shot. HP is just getting warmed up. They're betting big on WebOS, and they didn't get to be the single largest PC maker on the planet by making bad bets.

Re:momentum

[dzfoo]

I guess you missed the reports of Staples employees claiming huge numbers of returns.

        -dZ.

Re:momentum

[__aazsst3756]

I think your confusing "lost momentum" for "Dead".

As Miracle Max might say... See, there's a big difference between lost momentum, and all dead. Now, lost momentum: he's slightly alive. All dead: well, with all dead, there's usually only one thing that you can do...

Personally I am rooting for WebOS, competition is good. Good to hear some positive anecdotal evidence.

Re:momentum

[d3ac0n]

I guess you missed the reports of Staples employees claiming huge numbers of returns.

                -dZ.

Because they don't exist. Unless you care to share a link to a verifiable source?

Re:momentum

[amiga3D]

Thanks for that info. I'd never thought about it in that manner and just assumed that resistive was inferior. Now I know something new.

What good is a phone if you can't speak?

[Overzeetop]

Until there is a robust application ecosystem for the tablet, it will remain niche. Who cares if you save $100, but you can't do anything fun with it? Hundreds of apps - even if they're all good - means very little competition on pricing and features, and lots of black market segments (insert fart app joke here). It the reason I skipped the android tablets this past spring - a dearth of full screen apps.

Re:What good is a phone if you can't speak?

[oakgrove]

I am posting this from my Xoom right now which has 101 apps installed on it all but one of run full screen. incidentally, I'm presently being dunned to update to 3.2 so that last lagard app will also run fullscreen. I've had this thing since February and it is the extreme exception for something not to run fullscreen. Whwn i see that, I chuckle and promptly uninstall.

Re:What good is a phone if you can't speak?

[Anonymous Coward]

While this is true, I,ve had a tablet for a few months and I'm still looking for something useful to do with it beyond web surfing and family calendar.

Sure, I play casual games and watch Netflix, but the productivity apps generally aren't productive - at least when compared to even any PC, laptop, or Timex Sinclair :-)

My point is that people buy the tablet with the most appps, but end up using it for surfing 70% of the time, calendar 10%, and casual games 15%, Netflix 5%. It seems silly to get too hung up on buying the "right" tablet when none of them are really useful.

Re:What good is a phone if you can't speak?

[Overzeetop]

It depends on what you do. I'll admit I got my iPad (v1, after the 2 came out so I could save ~$300) because I knew it had certain apps in the store that would be good (I have an iPhone, which won out over the Nexus 1 about 20 months ago).

There are some apps that work regardless - web surfing, netflix, local streaming, email, text input. Then there are productivity apps, like the software for the remote storage service (aka cloud) I use, PDF reading and annotation, calendaring/journaling, structural steel design and property apps (I'm a struct engr) etc. And, of course, stuff that's just fun - like a good piano app, games that my 9 yo likes, flipboard, and a host of others.

I actually use it for a pretty wide variety of tasks. It's the cheapest way (at $15/mo) to get cellular data so I can pull up calculations, cut sheets, specs, and drawings from my office server when I'm in the field or in a project meeting. I can also store and synchronize my entire sheet music library for my chorus, quartet, and special event groups on it so I can review/practice music wherever I am. When my daughter went on a vacation this summer with my wife and in-laws, we loaded up a couple of books and about 2 dozen movies for the trip. She watched about 4-5 movies and read something close to 1000 pages, while my wife got directions and planned side trips on it, all in a form factor that fit easily into her mini-backpack.

Mine is actually quite useful, and I prefer the form factor for reading, sharing, and consuming information. It sucks rocks at creating, and I still have a small notebook for when I'm going to go somewhere and have to do work (reports, drawings). It fills a niche, and does it very well - but it would be useless, or at least cumbersome, without a wide variety of purpose-built software.

Re:What good is a phone if you can't speak?

[666999]

I see the autocorrect isn't working so well.

Re:What good is a phone if you can't speak?

[oakgrove]

heh heh. indeed. was using Firefox and the autocomplete gets confused on slashdot sometimes.

Re:What good is a phone if you can't speak?

[symbolset]

I've had my tablet for about a month and a half. At the current rate of use by the time I'm done with it, it will have cost me about $0.25 per hour of entertainment. I can live with that.

Re:What good is a phone if you can't speak?

[tehcyder]

My tablet is used for casual web browsing in bed or on the sofa - and very little else. It's not supposed to be a replacement for my laptop, gaming desktop, TV or phone.

Finally, a cluestick

[Compaqt]

Folks, if you want to beat iXYZ (of which I'm not a fanboi):

1. You have to have better hardware
2. A lower price
3. Or both (best)

Otherwise, why would anyone move to your platform?

That said, WebOS is an awesome open-sourceish platform. It looks great too, and it's easy to make apps.

I hope it gains traction to preserve some sanity in the marketplace and prevent a total Steve Jobs monopoly.

I see it as a partner, and not enemy of Android in this endeavor.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[DJCouchyCouch]

1. You have to have better hardware 2. A lower price 3. Or both (best)

Some Android tablets already have both. Seems like some items are missing on that list.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[netsavior]

Geeks care about better hardware, regular users (i.e. the actual profit base) don't give a shit. Regular users care about
1) Brand recognition and reputation (Marketing)
2) Application availability
3) perceived ease of use
4) Black turtlenecks
5) Price, except when they can finance it over 2 years through a cellphone carrier.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[somersault]

Apple have pretty much never had superior hardware when it comes to iPods, iPhones, and the iPad. No expandable storage being one of the main issues I have with them. What set these Apple devices apart was the improved interfaces (which yes for the iPhone/iPad involved hardware, but now everyone has capacitive touch).

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[TheRaven64]

Care to give some examples? And when you say 'better hardware', remember that physical dimensions are one of the most important aspects of the hardware to a typical user, while CPU power is significantly less important. So, your mission (should you choose to accept it) name one Android tablet that:

• Is 8.8 mm or less deep.
• Has a 1024x768 display.
• Has a 10 hour battery life.
• Retails for under $499.

Last time I checked, there were no Android tablets that even met the first requirement, and the ones that matched the second two failed the third. I don't really see the point of this kind of device, so I've not looked very closely, but I have read comments from Samsung about how difficult it was to compete with Apple because they could get the components significantly cheaper due to their large volumes (purchasing volumes, that is, not the girth of their users).

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[Bryan3000000]

Here are at least some of the missing requirements, that Android fails (badly to very badly) 4) You have to have some basic level of quality control 5) You have to at least try to prevent developers from exploiting users 6) You have to have some level of consistency

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[leonbev]

How many people really care about how thin their tablets are? I know that I don't, and I'm an iPad owner. It's not like we're going to be sticking these things in our pockets and that extra 2 mm of case depth is going to put a crease in our pants pockets.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[PNutts]

1. You have to have better hardware

This is a recurring theme on /. and misses the point. Better hardware is irrelevant if all it can do is warm the lap of the target consumer. I doubt a large percentage of iPad owners fixate on / can tell you what's under the hood.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[NatasRevol]

now everyone has capacitive touch

Everyone???? Uhhhh, no.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Android_devices#Tablet_computers

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[hedwards]

That happens fairly often actually. The problem is that Apple has a really amazing marketing department. Which is why most folks bought iPods even though they were inferior on all three of those points to something at pretty much every point in their development.

But, they became a status symbol and after that folks were willing to pay too much for too little. I mean for god's sake for the longest time you couldn't even replace your own battery even though the battery life was terrible.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[SomePgmr]

I don't have any research on this that I can cite, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say, "If Apple cares about this metric, a LOT, it's probably for a good reason."

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[obarthelemy]

right. software catalog, os features,, advertising, distribution, buzz, design... don't count at all !

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[hedwards]

So, people are going to buy a tablet that's 8.7mm deep, but when somebody sees an 8.9mm deep table, it's suddenly not buyable? I've got a Nook which is 13.1mm deep and it's hardly a ridiculously huge device. A large part of why it's that deep is because it has a user replaceable battery and microSD slot.

I realize that there's a lot of Apple cultists that believe that smaller is better and that you can't get too small, but at some point reality has to overpower the famous Steve Jobs distortion field.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[obarthelemy]

"better hardware" is so vague it's useless: it could mean more powerful, cuter, more robust... or whatever, depending on what one's hardware tastes are.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[hedwards]

So, walled garden good, consumer freedom bad?

What Apply fanbois tend to forget is that you shouldn't have to jail break your devices in order to install what you want. Unfortunately the consequence of that is that you have to be mindful of what you install.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[Compaqt]

>Geeks care about better hardware,

Alright, I'll give you that normal people don't care about abstract numbers.

But I think they'll care that if Android device is flaky or slow due to a slow CPU or low memory.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[oddaddresstrap]

The Acer Iconia A500 is too fat (13.3mm) and weighs more than an iPad, but otherwise:
1280x800 display
10 hour battery life
$399.99 at Staples

It also has:
hdmi 1080p / Dolby Mobile output
full-size USB so you can hook up standard keyboards, hard drives, etc.
microSD card slot
wifi, bluetooth, dual core, cameras, etc, etc.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[CrackedButter]

My mum techie mum just ditched her iMac for an iPad. I'd say she cares about thinness. Last night a friend of mine got an iPad for her birthday, she loves how thin it is! Two examples though anecdotal.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[CrackedButter]

You might be right initially about the marketing (any product in general), but the iPod is ten years old now, I'd say its standing on its own merits technically and on a ease of use basis.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[paiute]

So, walled garden good, consumer freedom bad?

What Apply fanbois tend to forget is that you shouldn't have to jail break your devices in order to install what you want. Unfortunately the consequence of that is that you have to be mindful of what you install.

And what Android/HP/etc fanbois tend to forget is that the vast majority of tablet customers don't even know what jailbreak means, let alone want to do it.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people really care about how thin their tablets are?

Well looking at the sales results lots of people.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[TrancePhreak]

Just like they care about not having buttons? I dunno, sometimes Apple is just on another planet.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

The desire for thinner tablets is a Steve Jobs creation...?

When we're talking about Reality Distortion, we are talking about Apple fans, right? Every day we go without tragic Apple news it gets harder and harder to tell.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

You really supported his point with that last line.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[Pieroxy]

Are we talking marketshare over here or our own preferences? Because all that you cite is well and good, but grandma doesn't give a shit.

Consumer freedom is still there, and you can return your product, sell it used, buy another one. Heck, you can even not buy it.

Are you going to say that most alarm clocks are bad because your OpenAlarmClock is the same but you can compile your kernel on it? Who gives a flying fuck about that? I buy an alarm clock to get woken up in the morning, not to compile linux on it.

I buy a phone to place calls, get called, send/seceive SMS, browse the web, mail, install apps. Steve's selection of apps IS GOOD FOR 99% of the population.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[TheRaven64]

At 13.3mm, it's 50% thicker than the iPad, and I also question your price slightly - from Acer's web site it's £427, which is about $700, and that's with £100 off the RRP, so the price you quote is half the price Acer quotes, and a lot more than the iPad. Staples' web site refuses to give me a price without entering a US Zip code, so I can't tell if it's really that price.

So, 50% thicker, and the UK price is over 50% more than the iPad, although the display does seem nicer. If I had a use for such a device, I'd be quite tempted, but it's the kind of thing I'd buy, use for a few days, and then never touch again.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[vgerclover]

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1:
Dimensions: 256.6 x 172.9 x 8.6 mm
Size: 800 x 1280 pixels, 10.1 inches
Battery: around 10 hours
Price: $499
So for the same price, and the expectation that the software catalog is going to expand, you get a better hardware, with an OS designed from the ground up for tablets, with tablet-only semantics. Personally, as a dev, I can't wait to get my hand in one of these.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[davester666]

The iPod killed everything else because it wasn't a clusterfuck to get music on it. You could easily RIP CDs and/or buy music in iTunes, connect one cable then hit a single button to get the music onto the player. NOBODY else had anything that worked in that straightforward a manner (until the Zune, but then it was WAY too late).

Everybody else had the user come up with some way to manage their music, and manually get it on the player.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[somersault]

I was exaggerating - I know there are still cheap resistive devices out there - but anyone who cares can get a capacitive phone or tablet at a very reasonable price, as long as they don't want the official Google branded app/Market. One of my co workers recently got a 10" advent tablet with capacitive touch and Android 2.2 for £190. Sure it isn't at the bleeding edge, but it does all that most people need, for less than half the price of an iPad. The only reason I went for an Android 3.x tablet was for the video editor, which to be honest I haven't used yet..!

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[TheRaven64]

Looks nice. Now if they'd only sell them with a proper *NIX install instead of Android, I'd be tempted...

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[somersault]

(The Advent tablet has a dual core nVidia Tegra 2 processor for those that think it may be under powered.. I can't wait to see what will be available in a year :)

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[DusterBar]

Actually, they care more about the quality of the display (how it looks) and the quality of the software (how it doesn't crash)

So many of the other tablets don't have high quality IPS displays. They have software that has unexpected failures. They run out of battery before the day is over.

These are key features - the raw specs don't matter. If the product works, looks good, and gets the job done all day, they don't care if it was a V8 or a turbo-V6 or a super-charged L4 in there. (Or an ARM or ATOM / dual-core or quad - does not matter as long as it works and is enjoyable)

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[oakgrove]

Posting from my Motorola Xoom.

quality control

Let's see, all aluminum chassis check, wide viewing angles check, high quality Honeycomb 3.2 check. Yes, there are niggles here and there but there are issues on iPad too.

developers exploiting users

Full disclosure of app permissions requests check. Official app store that weeds out problems as they are exposed check.

consistency

App navigation/menu button always in the same place check. Settings in the application always accessible from the same button check.

As an owner of both a Xoom and an iPad, your arguments fall flat.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has a higher-res display, 10 hours of battery life, is faster, is thinner and lighter than the iPad, and sells for $499.

This is why Apple is trying to ban imports on it - they know it's a better product, and they can't build anything better.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[vgerclover]

:o)

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[vgerclover]

And a video of it running.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[dloose]

I think a lot of people care about thickness, but more probably care about weight. Of course, the two are pretty closely related.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[dloose]

The desire for thinner tablets is a Steve Jobs creation...?

So THAT'S why he's lost so much weight!!

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[painandgreed]

How many people really care about how thin their tablets are?

How many people plan on carrying their tablet around in a bag with something else?

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[Duradin]

"Geeks care about better hardware"

Actually, I'd say they care more about better bullet points.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[dloose]

Can you at least spell "boy" with a y? Fanboi looks like the title of a Avril Lavigne song. Nobody deserves that. I get that you don't like fanboys, but they're human beings.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[dloose]

Expandable storage is a workaround for a product flaw. It's not a desirable feature. "Sorry, we couldn't make an affordable product with a reasonable amount of on-board storage. Why don't you fiddle around with these tiny little pieces of plastic instead."

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[ColdWetDog]

Quality control....

I think he means this sort of thing. Yes, you can get a quality Android device (although I seem to recall Xoom's getting panned for being glitchy) but you don't necessarily GET a quality Android device.

Yes, freedom of choice and all that. Wonderful thing. But at least some of us are talking about how the iPad is the tablet for that enormous (and apparently profitable) swath of Appliance People that wander blankly through malls and upscale stores through this great country of ours.

Of course, YMMV. I'd like to see a Slashdot poll on what level of sophistication and openness can be found in everyone's coffee machine. How many coffee makers have been hacked to run FreeBSD? Who raises their own coffee plants? Is there an app for that?

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[Duradin]

"How many people really care about how thin their tablets are?"

Anecdote time. When I got my first notebook I thought "Cool, I can take this with me anywhere!" before I tried taking it everywhere. It didn't take too long before it just sat on my desk with the occasional weekend trip.

Then each successive notebook got smaller and lighter and a repeat performance of the above happened. Even including my 2006 MBP, the thinnest and lightest notebook I've had. (Yes, I have a netbook. It was cool for a bit and then the itty bitty screen and cramped keyboard over took its size. It is small, but it weighs a ton and is rather thick (Acer Aspire One), though it feels sturdy enough to just be chucked into a bag without much care.)

Then, after having really enjoyed my iPod touch, I bought a gen 1 iPad a month or so after they came out. Guess what? It gets thrown in a bag and hauled everywhere. Plus, I don't need a table to use it or an outlet near by. (It's even taken places without a bag.)

So for me, the iPad was the first truly portable computer because of its size and weight and sturdiness.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[stewbacca]

While I agree there are Android tablets that have better hardware, and others that have lower price, but I haven't seen any that have both.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[A12m0v]

I do that's why I gave my 1st gen iPad to my mom and got an iPad2, easier to carry around.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[Duradin]

"How many coffee makers have been hacked to run FreeBSD?"

I, for one, am quite happy with the default OS of my iBrik.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[NatasRevol]

as long as they don't want the official Google branded app/Market

Not a good sales pitch. At any price.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[somersault]

*facepalm* would you listen to yourself? You are redefining "reasonable" as "whatever Apple wants me to think is reasonable". Even the cheapest Chinese tablets have expandable storage, but if Apple provided it, very few people would pay for their more expensive iPhones and iPads.

What if I want to carry around a large collection of ROMs to play on an emulator, or I don't have a subscription to a streaming music or TV service? What if I want an easy way to keep my porn collection or some other data collection private while still letting other people use the device (no tablet has user accounts that I'm aware of). What if I want to take an HD quality TV series or movies on holiday where I won't have access to my media PC, and maybe don't even a net connecction? It's bullshit to say we are at the stage where expandable storage doesn't improve mobile devices (ones that don't have HDDs anyway, but who wants a HDD in a device that will be moving around a lot?).

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[somersault]

No, but some people care more about value for money than getting the best money can buy. I prefer to edgfe towards the quality side of the scale, but those with more limited income or families to support are able to rationalise away things like not having the official Market. For a lot of people, the cheaper devices are perfectly adequate.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[UnknowingFool]

You could easily RIP CDs and/or buy music in iTunes, connect one cable then hit a single button to get the music onto the player.

Even then you didn't have to hit a single button. Connecting your iPod with a cable was enough for a sync to begin. It's not that their competitors were not capable of doing that, it's that not many of them tried until after Apple did it. Apple seems to have always favored polish over some technical feature.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[Bryan3000000]

Motorola makes decent hardware. But for Android as a whole, quality is EXTRAORDINARILY uneven. Google has, and can have, no quality control on Android. In that regard, it makes the platform as a whole somewhat of a fail. In my book.

Look, I tried to like Android. I've had to jail break an Android phone (HTC - relatively high quality as Android phones go) just to get it to behave properly.

"Full disclosure" means nothing, nada, zip. So you get an app that legitimately needs network access to function -- Android notifies you, but the developers have tacked on all kinds of their own secret sauce to exploit you. Google doesn't weed these out up front. It's after the fact, and only those that happen to be discovered. And the "good" apps that are left don't necessarily meet any kind of basic standard for software. Sorry, Android market is a fail compared to Apple's app store.

Consistency. Seriously? You're going to argue that Android devices have any level of consistency on the platform? Even app to app, there is UI fragmentation in Android because apps aren't reviewed.

I like to hack things. Android's good in that regard. But handset makers and carriers pre-hacking the device I want to buy, making it crappy and inconsistent and exploitative? Sorry, no thanks.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[node 3]

How many users? Very few. How many potential buyers? A lot.

Users of the thinner tablet, however, almost all of them.

I can't see many iPad 2 owners who wouldn't be bothered to some extent by a thicker tablet (including an iPad 1).

If you go into a shop and pick up two tablets, you're a lot more likely to buy one that's 20% thinner. If you only pick up the thicker one, you probably won't think it's too thick.

Well, the context here is comparing various Android tablets with the iPad, not just looking at the Android tablets alone.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[oakgrove]

Please. I've used iOS. There are tons of inconsistency between many apps. If you get thrown for a loop because all of your apps don't behave similarly what platform do you run at all?

Yes, the permissions system is very good. I read them and if an app asks for too much, I don't install it. Not that hard.

If you don't want a "pre-hacked" device, get a real Android device sanctioned by the people that maintain the OS. It's called a Nexus S.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[node 3]

So, walled garden good, consumer freedom bad?

False dichotomy. iPad owners have consumer freedom.

What Apply fanbois tend to forget is that you shouldn't have to jail break your devices in order to install what you want.

What "fandriods" (i.e., jackasses who use words like "fanboi") tend to forget is that iOS users *do* get to install what they want. Have you seen the App Store? Many hundreds of thousands of apps.

Unfortunately the consequence of that is that you have to be mindful of what you install.

Exactly, and on iOS, you don't have to be careful at all . On Android, you even have to be wary on Google's very own Android Market. This is *HUGE* to 99+% of the people out there. Calling people for whom this matters "fanbois" shows just how out of touch with reality you are.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[dwightk]

5) Price, except when they can finance it over 2 years through a cellphone carrier.

the funny thing is that, while I've heard rumors of android devices w/o cellphone radios built in, Android seems to be nearly completely ignoring the iPod Touch/ iPad w/o 3G segment of the market that iOS is completely dominating.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[node 3]

Apple have pretty much never had superior hardware when it comes to iPods, iPhones, and the iPad. No expandable storage being one of the main issues I have with them. What set these Apple devices apart was the improved interfaces (which yes for the iPhone/iPad involved hardware, but now everyone has capacitive touch).

Actually, Apple almost always has "superior hardware", just not always in tech specs.

It's a silly argument anyway. It's extremely rare for anyone to *ever* buy anything of sufficient complexity based purely on numbers. Rarely is any specific number a critical value. For example, people aren't going to buy an Android tablet because it has a 1.2GHz CPU instead of a (presumed to be) 1.0GHz iPad. Who gives a shit? Even most geeks know this isn't very important.

One of the biggest, and most classic mistakes many nerds make is to think that design and materials aren't hardware. Glass and metal, thickness, aesthetics, these are *ALL* hardware features. Long gone are the days where internal specification values are terribly important. Nobody cares if their pictures are 14MP or 18MP as much as they care if it fits in their pocket, or has a flip out screen, etc.

After a certain point, these differences in specs become less and less important, while differences in design and user experience become more and more. This is a long term trend that favors Apple considerably.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[node 3]

For a lot of people, the cheaper devices are perfectly adequate.

Reality does not agree with you here, unless one is very generous with interpreting "a lot of people". How many thousand of these "perfectly adequate" devices do you think people buy in a year? Probably less than buy an iPad in a single day.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[Bryan3000000]

The permissions system might appear very good, but you basically have to run a firewall and a debugger to figure out whether apps legitimately need what they ask for (and whether once granted that their only use of the permissions is in fact legitimate).

I thought about the Nexus S. I was tempted (I'm on Sprint, and having a really good available device is welcome). But it would still need to be flashed to cyanogenmod just to work for me. The iPhone would not need rooting to work for me. It's worth waiting a little longer on the off chance Sprint gets it. Plus I'll be a bit more comfortable with the integrity of the few apps that I'll need.

There's just no question in it for me. I'm certain that Apple will not glow so brightly forever. I'm always waiting for them to trip. They regularly eat other's lunch and stomp on a few people. Almost every time so far, I believe they've had good, legitimate reasons for doing so. But they still make mistakes. They still protect their own interests first, like any company. I'm sure the time will come when I will no longer defend them. But for now, nothing compares. It's not even a close race.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[node 3]

You didn't address what dloose wrote. He said that expandable storage is there to address a product flaw, and it is. How many times does someone list a "4GB storage, expandable to 64" Android tablet? The iPad does this better, buy just putting the 64GB into the device itself.

The number of users who would benefit from having expandable storage instead of just having the same amount of space built in is very small. Fucking around with SD cards makes Apple's lame iTunes-centric app file transfer system actually look good.

But there are definitely a small number of nerds for whom the hassle involved with SD cards isn't a big deal, and the benefit is of sufficient value to them. That's cool, and definitely nice for them. But please don't confuse most people for nerds. It leads to false conclusions.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[oakgrove]

close race

That's your own opinion and you're welcome to it. For me, it's the other way around.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[dloose]

Hey. FYI, my name isn't facepalm. Not sure why you thought it was. That'd be a pretty weird name, don't you think? Maybe that's what you kids are naming your, uh, kids while you juggle 200 gigs worth of ROMs, HD videos, and porn on yourmother fucking vacation. Seriously, dude, you're doing it wrong.Go out and get some sun. Soak up the local culture. Eat. Have fun.

So, anyway, just wanted to say hi. Have fun hiding your massive porn collection. Remember to label the card something boring and innocuous like, "My Favorite Martian SD ripzzz" (you know, 'cause you don't want to confuse it with the card that has your HD MFM eps).

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[symbolset]

The Asus Transformer has very similar specs to the Iconia. I bought the Transformer. I can confirm that the thickness is not a problem, the weight is very similar to the iPad, the all have very much the same feel. The Transformer's back has a nice texture to it, which helps prevent droppage. I can also confirm that the prices are legitimate in the US. UK pricing will vary.

The widescreen format is a huge deal. 1280 pixels lets you browse the web in a format that looks right. Movies display perfectly in 720p resolution without scaling issues.

The Transformer is reported to have sold 400,000 units in June. The Iconia came out later and at a higher price point, but was lowered to meet the Transformer and now also seems to be ramping volumes.

It seems only two of those three things are critical. These things won't "beat" the iPad yet, but it seems the Android makers have found the critical metrics to variate around to move some products. Apple's not standing still, but it's definitely their turn to go to the next level.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[symbolset]

Quad core. 5x video performance. Extreme HD. Christmas this year.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[somersault]

I agree with your points, especially when Apple first brings out a product, though my one experience of buying an Apple product in the 00s (I grew up enjoying Apple products, went off them when the pod turned their brand from what I saw as geeky to more "hipster") didn't end well. Bought an MBP for nostalgia's sake, and it had serious overheating issues when using 3D acceleration. At that point I just got fed up with them again. It feels like they care far more about image than about making good products. Reliability of more recent MBPs is meant to be better, but for now I'm happy with more generic brands.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[somersault]

Having that space built in is great yes, but what if you want more? I love solid state storage, I got a netbook with a 32GB SSD, and putting in a 16GB SDHC card allowed me to fit on a decent amount of music. I would probably have bought an iPod Touch last year if they had more than 80GB of storage. A 64GB model with an SDHC slot would fit in my whole collection. As it is I've ended up using Spotify, which has side-stepped my own space constraints for now. Media slots are very cheap to add into devices, and allow for a lot of flexibility.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[somersault]

Those use cases weren't my own, I was just thinking some up. On my last holiday I only used my tablet for Kindle and a couple of Facebook messages.

I guess everyone should restrict themselves to using their tech in the way that you consider correct though.

My flatmate is the one that watches his HD content on his iPad despite having an AppleTV and 1080p TV through here.. he can only fit 2 or 3 episodes on at a time.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[shmlco]

"What Apply fanbois tend to forget is that you shouldn't have to jail break your devices in order to install what you want."

Is that why there are instructions galore out there for rooting Android tablets and smartphones? Seems like Android device manufacturers lock things down too...

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[cgenman]

You also need that lust factor. That one amazing thing that will make it worth overcoming all of the transition problems. That could be a low, low price. But it could also be a really well integrated feature that nobody has thought of, of a completely new way of looking at computing (which is what the iPad was).

If you can get a consumer to lust after your device, it will sell.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[CharlyFoxtrot]

After years of having "internet" buttons and the like on my cell phone, which was just code for "charge me a lot of money for something that does't really work when I hit it accidentally" I am a fan of Apple's approach. In fact I'm mystified by Android approach to put a mess of buttons for specific functionality right there on the front of the device. It seems like a throwback to a less happy time to me.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Anyone who grew up on computers with 64k of memory or less that doesn't marvel at the sheer engineering that goes into an iPad has no soul. The thing still blows my mind everyday.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[symbolset]

Apparently a lot of people are buying them, or scores of manufacturers would not be making hundreds of different models.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[cgenman]

iPods, when they first hit the market and made it big, were the first HDD-based MP3 player to actually fit in a pocket. I was a longstanding Archos fan, with upgradeable laptop based hard drives and hackable firmware. But even I had to admit that putting an MP3 player in your pocket was long overdue. The RIO's, etc of the time had about `128 MB of available space (I had 3 of 'em)... about enough for a CD.

Also most mp3 players were shipping with godawful earbuds at the time, which manufacturers expected people to replace immediately... but everyone used as default anyway. Apple had a strong edge in "how it sounds" to the average person in no small part because they shipped moderately adequate earbuds.

Creative Labs puts out some great-sounding modern MP3 players. And Zunes are totally serviceable. But Apple does keep putting out new and impressive devices. They were first with a searchable database system (artist, song, album, etc). Then the easy and fast touchwheel. They had the first flash-machine-with-a-real-screen in the Mini. The Touch is a pretty good MP3 Player / Video Game device. And, of course, they're now integrated into the iPhone... not the first phone to feature an MP3 player (even my old Treo could do that) but the first one that wasn't horribly tacked on.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[node 3]

Not to start a whole new argument, but I've never run across a notebook (from anyone) that didn't get either hot or loud (or both) when under load. Not since the PowerPC notebooks, until the 2010 MacBook Airs. Everything in between could get quite hot/loud.

I don't know if that's what you meant by "overheating", or if you mean it actually overheated and started causing problems. If that's what happened, Apple surely would have taken care of the problem for you.

But, like I said, it's really nothing I want to really argue about, as long as you have a computer you like, it really doesn't matter to me what your brand choice is. The main point of having a computer is for it to serve your needs, not the needs of some internet stranger.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[node 3]

If "a lot" is many thousands, then sure. Otherwise, not so much...

Scores of manufacturers made hundreds of models of mp3 players. iPods still ruled. Same with the iPad. The iPhone is the only anomaly here.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[node 3]

As long as we can both agree that this is primarily a nerdy feature, I don't really disagree with you.

And what I mean by "nerdy feature" is that most people don't have such large data storage needs, and even those that do will find juggling SD cards a hassle. Even just one card permanently inserted involves notably more user attention than just using internal memory, which any nerd can handle (SD cards), but will be somewhere between annoying and impossible for non-nerds.

An interesting aspect of this is that it's a problem that will solve itself over time. An 80GB iPod would cover your needs today, but they only go up to 64GB. Next year (or maybe this fall), they will be 128GB, which should outpace your library size, but maybe not. However, it should double again to 256GB faster that your library will get to that size.

Eventually, storage will be a complete non-issue. Also, iCloud (*IF* streaming ever becomes a part of it) will solve this, as does switching over to services like Spotify (although not ideally suited for a portable WiFi-only device).

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[TrancePhreak]

To which I counter with: the home button is far too overloaded.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[bedouin]

As I'm reading this thread I'm holding my iPad 2 with my right hand only, using my thumb to scroll. Weight and size matter to me.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[caseih]

Having used an android phone for the last few months, I have to say having a menu button and a back button is really nice and I feel quite hobbled when I go back to iOS. My particular phone only has home, menu and back. A pretty good compromise between lots of useless buttons and minimal buttons.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[somersault]

Yep I meant it would hang completely, and other people with the same model were having issues too. It was before we had an Apple store unfortunately. I grew to hate fan noise by that time, which is why I have a netbook now.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[dzfoo]

Actually, sounds like a fruit dessert, with some kind of berry. Hmmm.

        -dZ.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[dzfoo]

They're throwing spaghetti at the wall to see which noodles stick.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[shilly]

Mod this puppy up! *This* is what consumers care about. And rightly so: they want something that feels high-value, works smoothly out-of-the-box with little learning, and that won't break.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[tehcyder]

Anyone who measures a potential tablet to the nearest 0.1mm and bases their purchasing decision on this really, really, really needs to get a life.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[tehcyder]

I don't have any research on this that I can cite, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say, "If Apple cares about this metric, a LOT, it's probably for a good reason."

Yeah, it's because most of their customers are shallow fucking idiots.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[tehcyder]

For every button, the user asks "what does this do?", and remembering what each button does becomes a burden. Each additional button is a button that, for some users, becomes the "button that I accidentally press which does something I have no clue about, making me have to start all over".

I suppose you've still got a one button mouse?

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[tehcyder]

Anyone who grew up on computers with 64k of memory or less that doesn't marvel at the sheer engineering that goes into an iPad has no soul. The thing still blows my mind everyday.

My cheap android phone is more powerful than the computers they used to land a man on the moon. Big fucking deal.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[tehcyder]

My mum techie mum just ditched her iMac for an iPad. I'd say she cares about thinness. Last night a friend of mine got an iPad for her birthday, she loves how thin it is! Two examples though anecdotal.

Is she a "mum techie mum, techie mum, techie mum, well goodness gracious me"?

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[tehcyder]

Once you need a bag to carry something around in, it really does not make much difference if it's a few mm thinner or a few grams lighter. Such small differences are much more noiceable in a phone that you carry in your pocket.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[tehcyder]

As I'm reading this thread I'm holding my iPad 2 with my right hand only, using my thumb to scroll. Weight and size matter to me.

I really don't like to think about what you're doing with your left hand.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[tehcyder]

A large part of why it's that deep is because it has a user replaceable battery

* blank looks from all the apple fanboys *

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[tehcyder]

It cannot be lighter than the iPad2, to make it so you would have to meddle with the very laws of nature!

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[tehcyder]

Can you at least spell "boy" with a y? Fanboi looks like the title of a Avril Lavigne song. Nobody deserves that. I get that you don't like fanboys, but they're human beings.

So was Adolf Hitler.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[tehcyder]

What "fandriods" (i.e., jackasses who use words like "fanboi") tend to forget is that iOS users *do* get to install what they want. Have you seen the App Store? Many hundreds of thousands of apps.

Yes, many hundreds of thousands of apps that have been approved by Apple. Talk about mind-forged manacles, you can't even see what the possible problem is.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[Duradin]

"Once you need a bag to carry something around in, it really does not make much difference if it's a few mm thinner or a few grams lighter."

Tell that to a backpacker. Let me know if they pass out from laughing or not.

 

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[tehcyder]

as long as they don't want the official Google branded app/Market

Not a good sales pitch. At any price.

Not true about the "any price" thing., I got one of those Advent tablets, you just need to install a custom ROM and you get the full Google set of apps, Market etc. Saving a hundred quid for half an hour's work seems like a good trade off to me.

Also, the machine was perfectly fine for web surfing (with Flash) straight out of the box, which is probably all that most people would want to use it for anyway.

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[tehcyder]

But there are definitely a small number of nerds for whom the hassle involved with SD cards isn't a big deal

That's like saying it's a hassle changing a battey, but then again as an Apple-lover you don't have that problem either...

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[CrackedButter]

non-techie, whoops!

Re:Finally, a cluestick

[NatasRevol]

Yeah, that's real marketable.

Just install a custom ROM, easy even for Mom!

Maybe you can write a jingle for it too.

Just how bad is the battery life?

[vlm]

lukewarm reviews criticizing the ... poor battery live

Just how bad is it? Merely journalistic hyperbole where it runs about 5 minutes less than a ipad, or is it so bad you can't watch a full length movie on one charge?

Much of a tablet's success is based on the ecosystem of apps that is available to the end-user.

B.S. journalist doesn't know anything, just repeating what other journalists say. Every user I know spends 99.99% of their time in safari, mail, facebook app, or the video/music player. With an honorable mention of the kindle app.

No one buys based on which platform has the most fart soundboard apps or the most "20 pictures of attractive women for 99 cents" apps.

Re:Just how bad is the battery life?

[stewbacca]

B.S. journalist doesn't know anything, just repeating what other journalists say. Every user I know spends 99.99% of their time in safari, mail, facebook app, or the video/music player. With an honorable mention of the kindle app.

Yay!!! Somebody finally gets it. You've succinctly explained Apple's success. See, it's not the shiny hardware; it's the nice stuff that comes preinstalled, no mucking about, that people are buying. Surprisingly enough, fewer iOS users are shallow hipsters with too much money than the average slashdotter is willing to admit.

This is why many Apple fans don't mind the supposed lock-in, because what they are locked into works 99.99% of the time for them. Of course the App Store is just icing for those folks. I've found the most vocal opponents to iOS/OS X are ones who don't appreciate the quality of the built-in functionality in the first place.

Re:Just how bad is the battery life?

[somersault]

What app are these non-"boring" people using?

Re:Just how bad is the battery life?

[GrumpySteen]

Angry Birds

Re:Just how bad is the battery life?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Grindr.

Re:Just how bad is the battery life?

[paimin]

The notion that 99.99% of iOS users are not downloading and using apps is laughable.

Re:Just how bad is the battery life?

[somersault]

So to be non-boring, you must do what everyone else does? I see.

Re:Just how bad is the battery life?

[UnknowingFool]

Well poor is subjective. According to Engadget the battery life is about 1 hr shorter than the original iPad whereas other reviewers found that it was less than that. While none of these are definitive on how bad the battery life is, the fact is that it is not as good as last year's iPad.

B.S. journalist doesn't know anything, just repeating what other journalists say. Every user I know spends 99.99% of their time in safari, mail, facebook app, or the video/music player.

While I don't disagree with how people spend their time on the tablets, you missed the point. People will use the availability of apps as a factor in purchasing said tablet. That translates into sales. Especially if the app is being purchased for a specific purpose beyond the obvious ones.

Re:Just how bad is the battery life?

[ceoyoyo]

They might just buy based on which table will run Angry Birds, etc. though.

Re:Just how bad is the battery life?

[symbolset]

The HP TouchPad can run Angry Birds HD.

Re:Just how bad is the battery life?

[narcc]

Well poor is subjective. According to Engadget [engadget.com] the battery life is about 1 hr shorter than the original iPad

So what? Steve Jobs said that specs don't matter -- only nerds care about specs. What matters most is the User Experience. Right now, WebOS offers a better, more polished, UE than iOS.

Re:Just how bad is the battery life?

[ceoyoyo]

How about the etc?

Re:Just how bad is the battery life?

[shilly]

Just on the offchance that this is a serious question:
- Cooking apps
- Medical apps
- Property search apps
- Online banking apps
To name but four categories where people are making extensive use of apps. I also use TVguide.co.uk and iPlayer an awful lot.

Re:Just how bad is the battery life?

[somersault]

It was a serious question, and I had asked "apps" instead of "app", but it seems my tablet auto-corrected it.

I don't see how these apps make a person particularly more interesting than one who doesn't use them - considering you can do all of that stuff in a browser too (perhaps with the exception of the medical apps, depending on what you meant by that - maybe stuff like Google Body?)

Re:Just how bad is the battery life?

[shilly]

Eh? "Make a person more interesting"? That's not the point of an app. Apps help you get shit done more effectively.

A dedicated cooking app works much better than a web app. Ditto for medical apps, property search apps and online banking apps. More responsive, greater flexibility, etc etc.

I don't want to have the Epicurious website open when I cook, I want the Epicurious app (at a minimum -- I'd rather have a Jamie Oliver app or ebook open).

Re:Just how bad is the battery life?

[somersault]

Eh? "Make a person more interesting"? That's not the point of an app.

Yeah, that was my point. The post I was initially replying to implied that only "boring" people end up using the basic browser/email/media apps and Kindle, whereas really you can do 99% of what all the other apps do with these things anyway.

I agree that dedicated apps can be better, as long as they're well designed and implemented. When I've downloaded apps for specific sites I sometimes find they're less flexible though, as they've had less development time than the real thing and are missing a couple of features that I take for granted when using the website.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[MrEricSir]

You can buy a $99 tablet at Walgreens. Of course, it's a piece of shit compared to the iPad, but if you really want a cheap tablet, they are available.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[couchslug]

"Bring the price down to less than $200."

Computer businesses want to preserve margin. That's why they don't keep producing older models and dropping the price. Anyone not liking that can buy a used machine instead.

Re:Apps?

[somersault]

The only 3rd party app I would really miss having on my Droid is Kindle.

Death knell of WebOS.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Which is a damn shame, because WebOS is such a damn good mobile OS.

I'm not sure if it's this price drop or the fact that it showed up on Woot for 20 bucks off a few days ago that really is the final bell for WebOS.

Re:Death knell of WebOS.

[cshark]

It is. I've been waiting to buy one.

Personally, I really like the API they're using for WebOS.
The whole thing is a Javascript toolkit, and it makes a lot of sense. Developing apps for it will be a piece of cake.

You have the best Slashdot cig ever, by the way.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[stewbacca]

Apple fans have too much money, huh? That must explain why many of the iPad competitors actually cost more?

The fact you are, 1) calling the iPad a "tablet", and b) comparing its hardware specs to a netbook, tells me you don't get what makes the iPad the dominant device in its segment.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[drinkypoo]

There's also an assortment of them down to maybe $79 now on DealExtreme, free shipping on a slow boat from China. Actually, it comes by air, but you couldn't tell by how long it takes to show up. Some of them are actually quite credible, DX has relatively uncensored fora so it's relatively easy to find which ones they are.

That reminds me, I need to see about reporting some defective Foakleys.

Shoe is on another foot now?

[macraig]

"Much of a tablet's success is based on the ecosystem of apps that is available to the end-user."

It seems like the summary author needs to be reminded that this was precisely Apple's dilemma for decades, and to a degree still is with its desktop OS versus Windows.

Personally I'm inclined to resist any browser-as-OS solution with every fiber of my being, just as I have been software subscriptions. The writing is on the wall: the browser-as-OS gambit is intended to warm people up to the notion of software in the "cloud", and software in the cloud will inevitably lead to subscriptions. Once the instructions no longer even execute on your hardware, you're a hostage.

Re:Shoe is on another foot now?

[darronb]

It's INTENDED as a way to pull developers from the web into their mobile platform. There's no smoky-room-with-old-white-billionaires-playing-poker here.

People need to stop looking for conspiracies everywhere. I understand that humanity is hard-wired to look for a presence behind any random thing in the universe (the fundamental basis of religion)... but get a little perspective. ... can it potentially LEAD to that? Sure, I suppose it's possible. A lot of stuff is possible. If that's your point of view, you'd help your cause out a lot more if you skipped the little gestures like avoiding webOS and simply skipped using the entire WEB.

If you want to get yourself all worked up over and over again over a 1 in 10,000 chance there's a real conspiracy, the only person you're hurting it yourself. Scratch that, you're hurting anyone who listens to you too. I know way too many people personally who see conspiracies everywhere and say "Dude, I'm NOBODY's tool! You're acting like a sheep!" Is that actually rewarding? It turns people paranoid and suspicious. At what point is the remote risk of being fooled by some schemer simply not worth the effort of burning yourself into a bitter old cynical asshat?

While critical thinking is sorely lacking in general... just to evaluate things yourself on their merits should go plenty far enough towards avoiding sheep-like behavior. Don't give in to the temptation to search for conspiracies everywhere.

I like webOS because it's extremely developer friendly. Personally, I put Qt apps on it for my use and my clients use... no HTML5/JS required. I'm not particularly happy with HTML5/JS as an upcoming platform in general.

(I suppose since I'm an advocate I must be part of this web conspiracy? ... or just a tool?)

Re:Shoe is on another foot now?

[oakgrove]

When you say you put Qt apps on it, let me ask you this. How hard is it to port a generic Linux app to webOS? If I wrote a python app with pyQt, could I have a resonanle expectation of getting it running without basically rewriting the whole thing?

Re:Shoe is on another foot now?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

The writing is on the wall: the browser-as-OS gambit is intended to warm people up to the notion of software in the "cloud", and software in the cloud will inevitably lead to subscriptions. Once the instructions no longer even execute on your hardware, you're a hostage.

You have a point in general - the "trend" amongst the more scheming and greedy software (and many other) companies is definitely towards attempting to exact rent and ultimately to recreate the ole landed gentry/peasants dynamics.

But on the other hand with platforms using web-browsers as primary interface which allow applications based on HTML5/JavaScript - which are fully open standards - we do have Linux/Apache/Postgress/what-not available to us where we can make and host these apps, free as in "beer" and "speech" both, completely outside control of any would-be gatekeeper and his "app store".

So its in actuality a browser based system (as long as its APIs are completely open) that is far less likely to become a hostage-taking platform then any other system which requires - say - a specially licensed SDK or a signing certificate from its lord and master, since there is nothing whatsoever stopping you from making and running your own app-hosting server.

Re:Shoe is on another foot now?

[darronb]

Oh yeah, "unwitting pawn"... that's one of the pretty common ones too. How come free-thinking conspiracists always end up with the same language? :)

Sorry about being a bit of a jerk... it's not nearly as much about you as it is the people I work with at a couple clients.

Look, HP as primarily a personal computer company has no reasonable incentive that I can see to want all apps to go into the cloud. You'd go even further from a bunch of PCs running apps to a relatively lower number of highly virtualized datacenter hosts running the apps. The extra servers aren't going to cover the loss in PC sales when people in that environment get cheap web terminal PCs.

Do you see HP massively into software at all? No. I'm 99.99999999% sure they don't want what you say they want.

I can tell you that the people at the top of any particularly large or successful corporation are in my experience generally self-centered, and usually at least a little sociopathic. They're not terribly cooperative. They're mega-competitive. They don't trust much. They're constantly trying to get ahead by any means necessary. Conspiracies take a lot of cooperation and whole lot more trust.

Just from the nature of the people I've met and the behavior of companies in the news, etc... I'd think a conspiracy of any scale would be extremely unlikely and very rare.

Frankly, I'd think it more plausible that an alien body-snatcher race had taken control of our political and business leaders than I'd think our top execs and politicians collude at the degree my conspiracy friends say they do.

I'm totally willing to be wrong, and I am sure I occasionally am. I suppose the world needs a -few- conspiracy nuts to smoke out the particularly gnarly real conspiracies. I just think we don't need NEARLY as many conspiracy nuts as we have.

Re:Shoe is on another foot now?

[darronb]

Hmm... I'm not sure about pyQt. I haven't used that one. It's probably easy, though.

Qt itself ports extremely cleanly. In fact, the sum total of my changes to the Qt source tree are two short changes in the QCoreApplication class file to force the display plugin to my own. (WebOS 2.x+ adds a QWS_DISPLAY environment variable that overrides my plugin with theirs, which doesn't work in the general case)

In my opinion, it's easier to compile than the Windows one. (Although that's assuming the cross compiler is set up)

I have worked a bit on my webOS platform plugin, though (webOS QScreen, etc implementations). That's LGPL'd and available for use... but... I haven't updated that in a little bit. That's basically just writing an SDL wrapper, though. Pretty simple.

Re:Shoe is on another foot now?

[darronb]

Oh, I forgot to menton the app port itself.

The last three apps I ported to the Touchpad just worked. I think I added "w.showFullScreen();" in main.cpp, two lines to declaring my platform plugin, and a little .pro file editing to link in my plugin. That was pretty much all that was required. For the one client that doesn't need static, it was even easier (only showFullScreen).

Of course, I was keeping the code fairly clean platform-wise. My clients usually need the apps on Windows and I prefer to work on Linux.

I'm not doing OpenGL, though.. that'd take a little more on the platform plugin side. Check Palm's open source releases, they've got some OpenGL plugin stuff in the qt package diffs there I haven't got around to looking at that closely.

Re:Shoe is on another foot now?

[darronb]

Also also,

My app requirements are fairly simple. Looking and acting like a PC application while not ideal is perfectly good enough for what I'm doing currently on the TouchPad.

I haven't tried to match any webOS look and feel, or even really make that many buttons/dropdowns fat finger friendly. I don't bother to rotate the screen orientation, etc.

If you want to match look and feel and behave like a really slick tablet app, then that would probably be a lot of work.

Re:Shoe is on another foot now?

[darronb]

Oh, and generally it's software geeks (like us?) that define the platform to start with. Executives come in much later, when they smell money. They're just overpaid car salesmen trying to sell what they've got.

The reasons behind the HTML5/JS platform are mostly mundane software developer religious fanboy-ism reasons. Some high level Palm guy did a proof of concept, and everybody got the fever. (Just guessing)

The execs get involved and if they want to lock you in it's because they think they might be able to pull an Apple. They're not thinking much further than that. It's a pretty stupid idea, really.

Re:Shoe is on another foot now?

[macraig]

How come free-thinking conspiracists always end up with the same language?

Because we have a finite grammar to begin with and people like cliches? Does it translate exactly the same in French or Chinese?

You'd go even further from a bunch of PCs running apps to a relatively lower number of highly virtualized datacenter hosts running the apps.

That sounds quite a bit like the "content delivery networks" that we now have springing up like rabbits everywhere. Really all that inconceivable that they could deliver the equivalent of X11 streams as well? Most of the apps that people use are not really instruction-centric, anyway, they're I/O-centric... a perfect fit for a CDN, right?

Conspiracies take a lot of cooperation and whole lot more trust.

It wouldn't be an actual conspiracy with heads of corporations plotting in a back room, it would be a synergistic convergence. They would all have recognized the potential value of the subscription model and be independently working towards it. At some point their actions could begin to align, even without plotting.

I've seen so many different separate attempts over the years to condition software consumers for subscriptions that it's hard not to see a pattern. Mostly they were just that, attempts, but they keep trying because of the obvious potential. Software in the cloud, i.e. software as a service, lends itself so perfectly to subscriptions that it would be shocking if those "people at the top" didn't try to leverage it. Historically people are used to paying initially for software, waiting for "upgrades" and paying for those, and getting interim "updates" and "bug fixes" for free... BUT they're also paying every month for phone, TV, Internet, etc. How much would it actually take to shift the public perception or expectation of software such that they would be willing to pay a weensy bit every month for continuous "upgrades"?

It would take a lot for me, obviously, but maybe not much for many people.

Re:Shoe is on another foot now?

[macraig]

Hmmm... you have a point about Web OSes in general. I might have to retract that part of the theory. As I said in another reply, it's not necessarily that various execs are actually plotting in a room to do this... it's just convergence of goals. All good tyrants think alike.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[somersault]

you don't get what makes the iPad the dominant device in its segment.

Marketing?

What is it if not a tablet?

(posted from my Xoom :)

Re:It's not apps, it's marketing

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

so why are so many iPads syncing to Windows machines?

I like the fact that browsing and doing stuff doesn't have to be constrained either by small screen size or having to gently handle a laptop.

I can flip open my iPad's smart cover and be ready to browse. Can't do that on a cheap ass netbook or laptop.

HP technical support issues too

[sjwest]

OK some of hp greps linux [printers and enterprise], but at a 'consumer level' its all windows.

I use a lot of linux, but at a consumer level who buys hp computers for technical support. Can consumer support at hp do linux and windows ?

Re:It's not apps, it's marketing

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

With the iPhone they had an innovative product, one worth copying, but people who buy iPads do so because they're Apple's new thing...

It's an attractive thought, afterall it's fashionable to think that Apple has some unearthly power to summon money out of the masses, but that's not what's happening. Lots of people have iPhones and iPods. The vast majority of those people love surfing from the couch and purchasing interesting/fun apps. A number of people I've personally encountered told me that they wished they had a bigger version of the iPod Touch. Now that's anecdotal, I'll concede that, but they basically described the iPad. When you purchase apps from Apple, you're allowed to install them on all of your iOS devices. So the risk of getting an iPad and it turning out to be useless is pretty low. There's a difference between "oooo new Apple thing!" and "hmm I really do like this device, now they've got one that has a bigger screen... can't wait to see what I can do with that!"

With that said, I'll tell you one thing about the numerous iPad users I've encountered that partially supports your point: I watched a number of them spend a couple of weeks bringing their iPad to work trying to figure out how to elevate it above being a toy. It's difficult to fit it in when we've got desktops with 30" monitors and laptops. They knew the iPads were effectively big iPod Touches, but they didn't know at the time of purchase just what to use it for. On that note, I've seen a number of people buy cheap netbooks and do the same thing. Heh.

Re:It's not apps, it's marketing

[NatasRevol]

So, 30 million people though that they needed Apple's new thing?

Or maybe 30 million people thought it was better than any laptop out there, for their needs, for the same price?

Or maybe you're just plain wrong.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[obarthelemy]

the ipad is not a tablet, it's a rectangular slab of magic !

Re:It's not apps, it's marketing

[brim4brim]

My boss is hardcore Apple fan, has everything except a Mac or Macbook. Just thinks everything is on windows and is used to it so OSX isn't intuitive to him. iPhone was first touchscreen phone that was heavily marketed and had a good brand behind it. Nokia's were king of the previous generation because people got used to the keypad layout for things like full stops and didn't want to adapt to another manufacturers keypad who put those options in other places at least among the people I asked at the time. Xbox 360 took the console market by providing the next generation console ahead of everyone else but Wii took the motion market despite the other manufacturers adding their own to their consoles, they have not taken off in same way.

All the above have one thing in common, first to market and many got a largely non-technical audience who don't seem to want to adapt to new interfaces once they get comfortable with one. Time to market and heavy marketing to ensure brand recognition and show that the manufacturer heavily believes in the product and is there to support it is what makes users buy into these products in my opinion. Well that and most of the above were also shiny :P

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[SomePgmr]

The iPad is a tablet. I'm not sure what else you could possibly try to call it.

It's somewhat reasonable to consider tablets specs to netbook specs, in that they're often used for similar tasks. Not a lot of heavy lifting going on with either.

And there are lots of reasons why the iPads are hugely dominant. They're good products and all, but not least of which is a great track record with their previous (and somewhat similar) devices. Virtually no one who owned an iphone 4 is afraid to own an ipad too, if they're in the market for a tablet.

I mean, I wouldn't be the first to say the iPads are really just large iPhones, without the phone. It's not a hard sell for most folks.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[WrongSizeGlass]

You can buy a $99 tablet at Walgreens. Of course, it's a piece of shit compared to the iPad, but if you really want a cheap tablet, they are available.

It's a piece of shit compared to the iPad, quality Android tablets, HP's WebOS tablet and RIM's Playbook. It's even crap when compared to other low-end craptastic tablets (either 'dime store' Android offerings hacked together from second rate parts and companies, or other Android wanna-be's). At some point the value to the consumer will become the yardstick upon which purchases are based. The real question is will other players (besides iOS & Android) survive the lack of apps and features in their current crop of offerings. WebOS has a lot of upside, and Playbook needs to handle web, email, etc without pairing with a separate Blackberry.

Consumers are impatient and fickle, but they also have relatively short memories.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[jmorris42]

>You can buy a $99 tablet at Walgreens. Of course, it's a piece of shit compared to the iPad..

Well yes, $99 is pushing the envelope a little. But seriously, why can't hardware on par with an iPad or more important a Xoom be sold for $199-$250? For $250 you can buy a new, not discontinued, netbook. It has a 10" display, an expensive, battery sucking Intel CPU, a Windows license and a more complex housing including a pointer and keyboard. Compare to a tablet that replaces the Intel Inside with what is supposed to be a cheaper ARM based SoC solution, replaces Windows with Android and a tablet with an Arm uses smaller (and cheaper) LiPo slabs for batteries. On the plus side it adds a touchscreen and accelerometer and if it has 3G you usually get GPS as part of the phone plan. Why does the tablet cost so much more? A lot of people who aren't able to run the bill of materials just look at the two and know one is jacked up beyond what it should be; they are right.

Thus the only ones buying are the ones immune from price effects, or more bluntly, the iDrones. And everyone else is left wondering why they can't move product as fast as China can deliver it and make insanely great margins too. Guys, you can't, get over it and compete the only way anyone has ever competed with Apple, sell at price points they refuse to compete with and drive the bastards back into their single digit boutique niche.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[CrackedButter]

This is informative? A post laden with Apple stereotypes and a comparison of hardware without taking into account software and Q&A testing? Also a comparison between a charity to a business? There's a reason why the iPad costs more, the hardware and software is top notch over anything else.

Re:It's not apps, it's marketing

[spire3661]

I have had a Palm Pre Plus since they came out. I WANTED a WebOS tablet, but thre is NO software for it. I look at the WebOs market at least once a week and its jsut shit apps . There are NO big 3rd party names, just a bunch of little bullshit apps. I was surprised when Angry Birds showed up on the market. Also, the WebOS tablet FEELS LIKE SHIT IN YOUR HAND compared to an ipad. Its a giant hunk of cheap looking plastic. I really wanted HP/Palm to come through here , but htey have failed very hard. If it drops to $250 i MAY consider picking it up, and thats coming from someone who uses WebOS every day.

The Curse of HP

[Anonymous Coward]

anything they touch turns to sand.
They could have written the book on 'How to take over a profitable business and destroy it' or 'Business Destruction for Dummies'.

I should know, having worked for them for 20+ years and seen it all happen.
Now I'm an HP Pensioner my opinion of them is that they couldn't make a decent product to save themselves.
It is a shame really. Once upon a time the was a lot of really good talent there but the Dilbert PHB says everything you need to know about HP management,
Carly was known as the 'Wicked Witch from Elbonia' in my former group (which she disbanded despite increasing business by 25% year on year).

Re:Speeling?

[BeerCat]

Ooh I love it when someone brings an old piece of flamebait up to date :-)

Even including the details of inconsistent spelling. Genius!

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[cshark]

Agreed. Although I think it's fair to point out that everything could magically change tomorrow. It wasn't long ago that Apple wouldn't even try to play in this space because of the massive failure that was the Newton.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[UnknownSoldier]

> Apple can get away with a huge margin because they're the market leader and quite frankly, Apple fans have too much money.

There is more to the computer then just hardware and software young grasshopper. There is the User Experience, ergo, a consistent and well-designed UI for a touch device, or I should say, lack of them, is what makes all the other touch devices look like toys compared to the iPad. You are paying for Apple's brand because you are paying for (relatively) good UI design.

Repeat after me:

- Consumers, counter-intuitively do NOT want choice (1) which is why Android's fractured hardware is a hindrance.
- Consumers, for the most part, don't give a shit about tech specs. Look at the demographics at WHO is buying the majority of iPads: people > 40 years. They just want something that works.

(1) http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

Re:Apps?

[the linux geek]

Er, yes. Why wouldn't there be?

Should buy Borders

[Doctor-R]

Buying Borders would give HP about 400 stores in US overnight. Remove the stationery, most CDs and DVDs, keep the books. Divide into thirds: 1. HP tablets, phones, computers, printers, Kobo e-reader, show how WebOS connects them; 2. Coffee bar, event space with huge internet TVs, sponsor book clubs and author interviews; 3. Books, magazines, top CDs and DVD/blurays. HP will need to demo directly to customers why WebOS is great. HP should either get serious or just give up.

Re:Should buy Borders

[wesgray]

Buying Borders would give HP about 400 stores in US overnight. Remove the stationery, most CDs and DVDs, keep the books. Divide into thirds: 1. HP tablets, phones, computers, printers, Kobo e-reader, show how WebOS connects them; 2. Coffee bar, event space with huge internet TVs, sponsor book clubs and author interviews; 3. Books, magazines, top CDs and DVD/blurays. HP will need to demo directly to customers why WebOS is great. HP should either get serious or just give up.

Waste more assets buying a Failed business to market a failed product ?

WebKit hook your clients up please

[sgt scrub]

If WebKit would support textArea (SVG Tiny 1.2) the applications I write would work on any device using it. eg. They would scale to any screen size. As a result they would have more applications to list.

Software lock-in

[HalAtWork]

If software titles were platform independent then people wouldn't get locked in to a certain platform, and wouldn't care about buying what their friends have in order to have apps/games that talk to each other nicely. More people probably would be buying HP (or other) tablets if it weren't for this. Funny, because Apple originally wanted only web-clips and not native apps, it's the users and developers that were screaming for that. It's like they walked right into a cage and demanded for a padlock. Of course then devices probably could not run any apps locally.

Re:Software lock-in

[ninetyninebottles]

If software titles were platform independent then people wouldn't get locked in to a certain platform, and wouldn't care about buying what their friends have in order to have apps/games that talk to each other nicely. More people probably would be buying HP (or other) tablets if it weren't for this.

Apple still supports HTML5/Javascript apps and developers can make cross platform apps using this technology. Some do, but most don't see value in cross platform and are focused on developing something quickly.

Funny, because Apple originally wanted only web-clips and not native apps...

Apple originally championed HTML5/javascript as the only native development platform, but developers wanted a more full featured dev environment and toolset so Apple adapted their existing Xcode.

Of course then devices probably could not run any apps locally.

Why not? Apple has a very nice standard HTML and javascript engine on the phone and you don't need an external server to host it as javascript runs client side. Heck Apple even committed to supporting phonegap so you can compile Web apps for sale in the app store. There are hundreds of apps, some fairly major that are cross platform using this dev platform.

Re:Software lock-in

[gl4ss]

local apps is where mobile apps started. well, before that there were WAP apps, but using them sucked big time and was expensive as hell.

it's the different ui and platform kits which make porting bothersome, but web technology isn't really there yet for creating a lot of the apps you see users like.

flash had a good chance but they fumbled it, so did sun with j2me which they let stagnate.

Re:Apps?

[fluffy99]

The only 3rd party app I would really miss having on my Droid is Kindle.

It's planned. http://www.slashgear.com/amazon-kindle-for-webos-touchpad-confirmed-09132141/

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[Cute Fuzzy Bunny]

Its completely doable. I have a $169 tablet that has essentially the same or better internal specs as the original ipad (1.2GHz A8, 512MB ram, 4GB nand flash upgradeable to 64GB), runs android 2.3, 6 hour battery life...but obviously its a little thicker and a little bit heavier and the screen isnt quite as nice as the ipads. But its $169.

Perfectly usable, runs everything I've thrown at it. Since I bought it last month I see A9 based tablets with perfectly decent capacitive screens for under $200.

The really nice part is when my six year old says "Dad, can I play angry birds?", I can hand it over to him without any concerns. Saw a mom pass her new ipad 2 to her kid the other day, who dropped it during the hand off. Smasho.

Android's strength is also its biggest weakness

[RotateLeftByte]

The diversity of the android market is a strong point. The fragmentation is also its biggest weakness.

Given that Android can match the Apple Platform in terms of Hardware and are pretty well on a par with the software why do Android makers act the way they do?

What do I mean?
  Well
      - The lack of updates. How many posts do you see where people complain that maker xxx won't upgrade their device.

Look at Apple's history with IOS. They don't abandon a device until it has been replaced by at least two models. Android makers? Well many Android devices are using software that is frankly obsolete by the time you buy the device and the maker has already moved onto another release of Android and left your newly purchased device in the dust for dead.
This IMHO is not sustainable
You might argue that people can root their device and install an unsupported version of android.
Well, aside from the fact that MOST people are not geeks and would even consider such a move, by doing so that have plainly thrown any warranty validity right out the window.
If you treat a tablet as an Appliance much like your Washing Machine do you purposley go out to invalidate the warranty? I'd be willing to wager that 90% of consumers wouldn't. Again the Apple business model wins. You buy one in the full knowlege that the IOS updates will come out and you can install them at will.
The Android market needs to get its act in order. This direction can only come from Google.
Sadly this direction seems to be totally absent because they want to keep the market diverse.
See, Strength & Weakness in the same breath.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[fluffy99]

OK, I'll throw in a software comparison for you: Windows: $$, Android: free.

Also, I suppose netbooks are sold without any Q&A, so you might have a point there: A device with no moving parts and much fewer buttons and internal connectors is certainly going to have a higher Q&A cost.

If you think that everything above $200 is not margin, YOU are part of the reason why these things still cost too much.

Spend any time at all comparing apps on Apple versus Android apps and you'll understand his comment about software Q&A. Apple apps get Q&A before published, stick to a gui convention, and almost always work. Android apps on the other hand are generally of a lower quality. Read the Android market reviews on a dozen apps and at least half will have lots of users complaining about force-closes, poor screen layout, cpu hogging, etc. The only reason I own an Android tablet is because I don't mind debugging apps or having to dig into the OS to get things running. If Apple had a 7" iPad with GPS for $250 I would sell the Android and get that instead.

Plus Apple still has far more apps than Android, even counting all the Android apps that are listed in the market multiple times under slightly different names (is that app spamming?)

Hype it up

[p51d007]

Apple, for good or bad, knows how to build up anticipation to the masses of somewhat "drones", to stand in line to get their products. They are, in my opinion, pretty good at the device, but personally, I can't see paying for their devices, when I don't use mp3 or video that much. Unless HP, or any other tablet maker figures out a way to overcome the "iFans", they won't be able to compete. You have to give the ifans a REASON to leave their beloved apple products.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[stewbacca]

A product is priced based on what people are willing to pay. The fact that the iDrones are buying iPads at lower costs than usually inferior products, I guess they aren't as mindless as you suggest.

HP

[ericdano]

I guess those Russell Brand ads and that boxer.....whatever his name is, aren't working huh?

Multitasking is the killer app

[dcherryholmes]

I have a palm pre phone and a color nook running CM7. I really like the nook and felt like I got a good value for my money. But going from my pre to my nook feels like getting my hands lopped off when it comes to actually using the thing. Android feels like only being able to run one app at a time, whereas with the card metaphor in webOS I can seamlessly bounce back and forth between apps, have many things running in the background, and just generally be more efficient. The number of apps in the webOS marketplace is not that big a deal to me. When I got the nook I thought "hot damn, now I can finally get some of the android app goodness." But in fact, all *I* really use is the nook app, kindle app, a good filesystem explorer (EZ Explorer), mail, the web browser, a FB app, and a Google+ app. I think that's about it. Not too long of a list, and basically all those apps are already there.

I mat be wrong but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't this the very same problem with Linux at the start? (and some say till today they rather be buried with a copy of Photoshop than Gimp)

And it may not be the best solution, but what about offering a repository -- like Ubuntu's? Once people start to download things like Firefox, Opera for free, one can start charging little money for music, videos and fad apps (like that bird thingy).

BTW, this hint is not just for HP... ;-)

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[mosb1000]

When is Shashdot going to get a "like" button?!

Re:Apps?

[vga_init]

That article was written in February. I read the other day that the Kindle app is already out.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[mosb1000]

He's not complaining that it was called a tablet. He's complaining that it was called a tablet and then it's price was compared to that of a netbook, this implies the poster knew the comparison was flawed.

It's somewhat reasonable to consider tablets specs to netbook specs, in that they're often used for similar tasks.

But it's not reasonable to complain that they are overpriced based on that comparison, since since you can use tablets in ways that you can't use a netbook. It's a different kind of device.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[node 3]

What? The Newton wasn't a failure at all, let alone a "massive" one. Jobs axed it, along with a lot of other things at Apple, to streamline their focus. Apple was working on the iPad for years (and in fact, the iPhone came out of this project).

The only thing it failed was Jobs' return to Apple. What it wasn't was a massive success, like almost everything Apple has done for the past decade.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[node 3]

Guys, you can't, get over it and compete the only way anyone has ever competed with Apple, sell at price points they refuse to compete with and drive the bastards back into their single digit boutique niche.

That hasn't worked well in any market of than the PC market.

The premise of your question is flawed: the reason these tablets cost so much is because it actually costs them a lot to make them.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[node 3]

Ugh: "any market other than".

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[node 3]

No, the reason they don't keep producing older models is that older models will eventually cost *more* to make, not less, and newer, *FASTER*, models will cost much less than the older model.

There's no way to continue producing older models at a profit. It's not about preserving margin (hell, in the PC world, margin is a fairly elusive thing as it is), it's about having a *positive* margin. If they could make even $10 per old PC, they would. Just take a look at the $300 shit models from Acer, Gateway, and Lenovo at your local computer store.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[node 3]

you don't get what makes the iPad the dominant device in its segment.

Marketing?

No, delivering a product people want. Marketing tells people about your product, but you can't keep something as popular as the iPad (and the iPhone and the iPod) popular for as long as it has been primarily on marketing.

That's what you guys have been saying about the iPod for a decade now. When the truth is much simpler: most people don't like what you like.

What is it if not a tablet?

Not a netbook, which was his point.

(posted from my Xoom :)

Funny, I recall a rather strong marketing campaign for the Xoom. As I understand it, Motorola has sold many thousand of them. But since it's what you like, these sales had nothing to do with marketing. Only the "mindless drones" who like things you don't like are that stupid!

The obvious reason

[toriver]

Even this Slashdot thread quickly diverges into talking about the iPad. HP and the others struggle because not only fans of the iPad are constantly talking about it, but "enemies" of it, too. So the iPad becomes the de facto tablet.

Re:The obvious reason

[ChunderDownunder]

Yep, 200+ comments and the majority are iOS vs Android.

A bigger challenge for HP is where is the Pre3? Conquering a new, saturated, tablet market is one thing but announcing a product 6 months in advance with last year's specs to begin with is worrying for a flagship device.

Re:The obvious reason

[Targon]

Back in February, a single-core 1.4GHz with 512MB of RAM was still solid and not "last years specs". The problem is that we are six months later, the Pre 3 is still not out, and HP isn't talking about it.

Re:The obvious reason

[ChunderDownunder]

Solid but not spectacular. [Though I've not seen a 1.4Ghz phone to benchmark :-) ] By "last years specs" I meant that at the time android makers were announcing dual-core with a gig of RAM, which are actually now shipping .

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[somersault]

I knew since the Xoom had a large company behind it (and a large userbase from the marketing drive) that it would be more likely to receive updates to the OS. Not strictly necessary, but nice to have. I already knew I wanted an Android 3 device, and it fit the bill perfectly (large high quality display for YouTube and LoveFilm streaming via Flash, expandable storage and plenty of RAM for the movie editor).

I have nothing against iPods since the pricing became competitive. If I hadn't already switched to Spotify rather than buying music, I'd probably have bought a 128GB Touch, whenever they get around to making it.

Actually C.M.Kornbluth reference

[alispguru]

Although in The Marching Morons it was "Would you buy that for a quarter?" which reflects inflation between 1951 and today.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[node 3]

Exactly, somehow *your* choice had nothing to do with marketing, because you're so superior, but anyone who chooses something you don't like? Why, that can only be due to marketing!

At least, that's what your one-liner response of "marketing?" conveys. The iPad dominates the market because people buy it. People buy it because they like it. You bought a Xoom because you like it. Just because someone likes something you don't like is no reason to lash out at them.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[toriver]

And that is the focus which dooms the non-Apple manufacturers. I mean local TV ads for the LG Incredible 3G tells the viewer it has "dual core, dual channel, dual memory" - what does that mean to the average consumer? It's just pointless tech masturbation.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[toriver]

Argh, 3D not 3G.

price isn't everything

[milkmage]

"This coupon, plus a few rebate cards I'd been saving meant I was able to snag a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 for about $227. Sweet deal."

http://www.sethclifford.me/stream/2011/7/25/why-yes-that-is-a-galaxy-tab-101-in-my-pocket.html

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[symbolset]

Some consumers want reliable consistent quality. Some are more willing to risk that to get choices, or simply must have the choices to meet their needs - price, keyboard, ports, storage, display resolution or size, availability, performance.

There are only two iPads, and intermittently they can't be had at all because they're sold out. When they can be had they don't meet the needs of all users, which creates demand for fairly similar products that do meet those needs. If it doesn't have a feature that you must have in a similar product the iPad may as well not exist at all for you, and you don't exist as an iPad customer for Apple either. This need, unmet, is a vacuum. It serves noone to leave this need unfilled. Nature abhors a vacuum.

Fragmentation is choice. It's that simple. Apple will continue to make a few products that are excellent with a strict set of features that serves a vast mass of people. Everybody else will serve the rest of the world's needs. Isn't that wonderful? Everybody gets what they want.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[gtall]

eh...by this time, all the iDrones have already bought theirs long ago. So who are Apple selling to? Might it be new customers impressed with iPad over other fondle slabs? Or is it the sheep simply aren't intelligent as yourself and are mindlessly buying because everyone else is? C'mon, enlighten us, which excuse do you have for Apple succeeding where others are failing (so far).

Did they plan this?

[greywire]

One of two things are happening here:

1. TouchPads are selling poorly and HP is so impatient about the bottom line that they can't handle having a 6 to 18 month plan to get the system popular. Oh and they must not be able to afford possibly losing some money during that time.

2. They planned this from the start. I read somewhere that the breakdown on the parts and manufacturing costs for the TouchPad were around the $300 mark which means even discounted to $400 they are making a profit, or at least not losing money. They discounted it $50 and then offered a $100 rebate (which wont last I'm sure). So they got whatever early adopters they could, then lowered the price a bit. Then offered a steep temporary discount to pull in any early adopters who were perhaps a little undecided.

I think HP probably knows better than to give up after a couple months (if that?), and I imagine they have a year or longer term plan in progress. They also arent going to be running out of money any time soon. Granted I think they could have gotten this out sooner, and they should have had the Pre 3 out at the same time. I'd like to think they had this as a plan, or least as a backup plan. I'm sure if it sold like hotcakes they wouldnt have discounted it. But to think this is indication they are already dead or giving up seems shortsighted.

Re:Did they plan this?

[Targon]

The Touchpad only started selling retail on July 1st, so any reports about how well/poorly it was selling would have come after this promotion was launched. It is true that a sale like this will push units out to the public quickly, and you can't really fault them for that. WebOS is a VERY solid OS, and hype about how well it works is needed. How do you generate hype without getting it into the hands of users to test out?

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[symbolset]

Amazon is showing 274 Android tablets in the $100-$200 range, 310 at $200 and up. You know what? Some of these are a whole lot of technology for about the price of a Kindle, or less. With hundreds of thousands of apps, that's a lot of value. Not everybody needs the $500 tablet.

Re:You're funny

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Before the iPad was officially announced, there was speculation it would start at $1000. And people were ready to buy it at that price point. The fact you can get them now for less than half of that is amazing.

Crucial point that shows what brilliant bastards Apple has working for them: they were so confident they had a winner they priced the iPad so sharply that they took away their competitions' only edge, price. Love them or loathe them, and plenty of people here loathe them, that was a ballsy move and one that paid off. No one can touch them on price so they forced the consumer into a comparison: do I get the iPad or the would be contender for the same or higher price ? Now HP and Android vendors alike have stooped to discounting their offerings which only makes them look like also-rans: get the real deal, or buy this one "real cheap !!!" "limited offer!!!" "buy now!!!" "as long as stocks last!!!" (who are they kidding.)

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[narcc]

There is more to the computer then just hardware and software young grasshopper. There is the User Experience, ergo, a consistent and well-designed UI for a touch device, or I should say, lack of them, is what makes all the other touch devices look like toys compared to the iPad.

Take a look at WebOS and the QNX OS on the PlayBook -- both are vastly superior in terms to the iPad in both the UI and the nebulous "User Experience".

They make the iPad look like a clunky antique. Hell, they STILL haven't managed a notification system that's even comes close to what a 10-year-old blackberry!

Maybe someday Apple will catch up to the competition, but I'm not holding my breath. They seem to be doing quite well selling the myth that their product is easiest to use and had the best "user experience"; why bother innovating when you can dominate the market on that basis alone?

Gnome 3

[dave87656]

Are there any tablets running Gnome3 or Ubuntu Unity? Wouldn't this be a way to get something out the door albeit with Apps which are not explicitly designed for the tablet format.

Re:It's a sale they're having

[xeno]

Mod parent up!

HP is taking a note from MSFT, and willing to put some real push behind this. They're in it for the long haul, and about to bring out a speed upgrade across the phones and tablets. Why not have a sale? Did anyone have a reflective moment and notice that this weekend we're all talking about... HP's product? WebOS is nowhere near dead. It's Linux made safe for grandma. On the phone, on the tablet, on all of the most popular printers, and soon to be on the desktop as your instant-on (read: dual-boot) option. HP is serious about this, and they have deep pockets. As for articles like this one...
If they're predicting your death, they're still talking about you... :)

God forbid someone post first-person on-topic info

[xeno]

Based on very positive experience with the Palm Pre, my s.o. bought HP's 32gb Touchpad when it came out, and loves it. She just wooted another during this weekend's HP sales -- partly for the kids, and partly for experimenting with all the homebrew geekery. From a purely consumer perspective, the Touchpad rocks. On the plus side, the hardware is top-notch, with build quality as good or better than the iPad2. WebOS is truly inspired & makes iOS and Honeycomb look a little crusty. (A game of leapfrog, I know, but currently WebOS is clearly on top in terms of usability and extensibility). On the downside, I do miss having video out and a microSD slot. Iirc only Asus officially offers USB host, but it's been provided on other devices thru their communities -- I trust WebOS community efforts will exploit the MicroUSB port.

Other cool things? Going supernOOb with JustType to have it figure out what app is best for what I need to find. Then in the next breath going supergeek and installing the UbuntuChroot environment, realizing that there are thousands of "apps" available, and firing up a full office suite (OpenOffice) in an Xwindow. My bet is that our second Touchpad will have Backtrack 5 on it within an hour of arrival. I find it interesting that the Touchpad converges both the best un-geeky grandma-friendly UI (besting even the vaunted iOS), while sweeping in vast tracts of uber-geeky tools and capabilities (lands once occupied by Maemo and MeeGo) into one unified experience.

Lack of apps? Not a problem. The as-shipped config is tremendously well-thought-out, and most core apps are there. I find it hilarious when iPad-toting friends show me a "super awesome gottahaveit app" they paid $$ for... and it's essentially a browser bookmark on the desktop. Thanks, I'll take the Touchpad's skinny app catalog over iOS's app store full of thousands of iLighter/joke apps and paid-bookmark suckerware.

This rocks. Go, HP, Go!

Re:Apps?

[tehcyder]

Are there even third party apps for this tablet? Selling it as a email/web/video playbook device doesn't do it much good if there's no third-party functionality available.

An email/web/video playbook device is what 99% of consumers want. Having access to, on the one hand, thirty fart apps, and on the other hand, serious developer tools are of no interest to many people.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[tehcyder]

This is informative? A post laden with Apple stereotypes and a comparison of hardware without taking into account software and Q&A testing? Also a comparison between a charity to a business? There's a reason why the iPad costs more, the hardware and software is top notch over anything else.

Apple's own software is generally vile (judging from experiience with quick time, itunes and safari on Windows) and the hardware is just commodity stuff that everyone else uses.

The only genuine advantage that the iPad has is the relatively large number of apps compared with Android.

Re:Apps?

[shilly]

I'm pretty sure that the facts don't bear your assertion out. I can't find it readily, but I'm sure I've seen research that says that iPad users download quite a lot of apps, spend more per app than the iPhone/other smartphone users do, and use the apps more extensively. The larger form factor makes a big difference.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[tehcyder]

There is more to the computer then just hardware and software young grasshopper. There is the User Experience, ergo, a consistent and well-designed UI for a touch device, or I should say, lack of them, is what makes all the other touch devices look like toys compared to the iPad. You are paying for Apple's brand because you are paying for (relatively) good UI design.

The UI of a decent Android tablet is as easy as that of an iPad. How hard could "use your finger to press the internet icon to access the web browser" be anyway?

Web and email are what most tablets are used for.

Yes

[helios17]

Can consumer support at hp do linux and windows ? Yes they can. Worked at an HP Customer Service Center on contract close to LA two years ago, doing hardware and network upgrades. Several large (read fortune 500) companies have service contracts with HP and many of them are running HP desktop with Linux and HP servers. They can certainly support Linux, and they do.

Re:Apps?

[justforgetme]

nice now I can't buy a cheaper tablet, that I like more than the stoooopid eeepad, that is more user friendly to programming literates, that has a better homebrew community, that won't try to lock me in with a shitload of fruits of a Rosaceae plant; because no one still imports it into my country...

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[UnknownSoldier]

> Isn't that wonderful? Everybody gets what they want.

Wonderful is relative -- there are advantages and disadvantages...

Capitalism isn't about efficiency -- it is about freedom to chose.

Meanwhile we waste thousands of man-hours duplicating efforts because everyone is trying to make a buck off the consumer.

Re:Tablets are massively overpriced

[CrackedButter]

Try Apple's software on a Mac dude. Yes Mac hardware is commodity stuff, nobody said it wasn't but have you seen how it works compared to windows hardware? Clean, no screws, anodised aluminium, solid build construction and integrated so nicely with the software. By the way, the iPad's advantage is not just reasons I cited regarding the Mac but regarding software, surely the quality of the Apps matter as well?

The Cathedral and the Bazaar

[symbolset]

Eric Raymond. Read it.

In the Cathedral one group offers one thing, and tells you to like it. This works for some. Apple's making a good go of it.

In the Bazaar "anything in the explored universe can be had by a man with cash, from a starship to ten grains of stardust, from the ruin of a reputation to the robes of a senator with the senator inside" - Citizen of the Galaxy, RAH. Android's making a good go of this one.

Somehow these different paths keep leading to the same places, which speaks volumes about the nature of humans.

Re:The Cathedral and the Bazaar

[dzfoo]

I read the Cathedral and the Bazaar, and find little relevance here. I take your point as valid, but I disagree with it. In a Bazaar, the idea is that it is a collective of ideas and hence the diversity of offerings. All participants are of equal value and stature, and all get to call the shots. It's like running an industry by committee. It is an honourable goal for sure, but doesn't always work best. I do agree with most of Mr. Raymond's ideas, I just do not necessarily agree with the practicality of some of them.

More to the point, Google is not a Bazaar, and does not even attempt or presumes to be one.

Google is a large corporation, run by a board and various levels of management, as many other companies. They are trying to expand their reach beyond their single profit center so far: web search advertising. As such, Google is closer to Microsoft in the early 2000s than the Apache project: they see someone making money in one market, decide "let's try that," and throw money at it to see what happens.

My central point is that Google has no centralized vision of what they want to do or be. They know they are making hand over fist in search ads, but like Microsoft, they know that this well will eventually dry up and they need to diversify. And that's where their internal compass breaks.

Should they be a mobile platform or a PC operating system provider? A social network or an applications framework developer? Should they be a SaaS provider or just a cloud infrastructure?

Of course, they could be all at the same time, but the fact that they don't put equal focus nor equal marketing muscle, nor equal engineering effort behind them suggests that they are not really sure which one to go for. And this hesitation is what reveals their lack of internal direction.

They have so many brilliant people, at least one of them--any one of them--must be able to come up with the next killer thing. They have a pot full of undercooked spaghetti, made by a thousands hands, and they're throwing it all at the wall to see which ones stick.

              -dZ.