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The (Mostly) Sad Fates of 32 First-Generation iPad Rivals
harrymcc writes "Back in August of 2010, I rounded up 32 tablets — existing, announced, and rumored — that weren't the iPad. So much has happened to tablets since then that I decided to revisit my list and look at what happened to all 32 contenders. The results aren't pretty, but they do provide plenty of evidence that competing with Apple was far harder than most companies expected."
Honeycomb 3.2.1 IPS widescreen docking dual-core nVidia Tegra 2 1GB RAM SDHC miniHDMI dual USB Flash Android no rooting quad-core Kal-El Tegra 3
This post explains everything you need to know about why Slashdot simply doesn't get tablet computing, and probably never will.
Nerds are another form of hipster. If something is mainstream, they start hating it to make themselves appear to have more sophisticated tastes.
And yes, I am speaking from experience. I tend to be overly critical of popular movies just to look cool. I like to think I've toned that down in recent years.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Apologies for the long rant. I've seen the 'damn overpriced Apple' screed often enough that I've thought about it a bit.
Unless you're a programmer, you don't really know how much effort that simplicity takes. Your thinking that simplicity is a cheap trick is missing the point. It's not that Apple doesn't see all the good features out there, it's that they wait and spend many hours honing things before they see the light of day. Deleting features takes guts, it's telling a programmer you can't do your fun thing. It's keeping to a list of things that are integrated, even though checkbox marketers (Microsoft is the best example here) try to say you're inferior and you're getting nailed in product reviews. But, every feature that you have is actually usable.
You also seem dismissive of their tech. Apple has managed to put a hybrid microkernel/UNIX device with OpenGL graphics, 4 radios (CDMA, GSM, Bluetooth, Wifi), an inhouse designed CPU, and a capacitive touchscreen in wifes pocket. And as someone whose brain isn't wired for tech, she loves it. If you go out to a cellphone store now, you'll see many phones that copy that formula. For a desktop/laptop company to take over the direction of phone design in a few years says something about the quality of their engineers and designers. You seem to confuse simple with stupid, or rather simple on the interface with simple everywhere. It's actually a mistake Microsoft made with the Zune, and old versions of Windows CE. You also seem to make a mistake many people make where they think everyone is just like them but is missing some fact that would make them agree with you. Not everyone is just like you.
As far as the 'Apple Tax', you've evidently never taken economics. The price in the field is determined more or less by supply and demand. Every vendor would love to sell you their stuff for more. It's called profit margin. No one is ever forced to pay it. Consumers choose to. Only the vendors whose products are loved get to charge a decent margin. If they're not loved, no one will pay their prices. So, Apple charges iTaxes? Then, no one must be buying these things that are overpriced? Apple seems to be moving product fairly well. Only iPhones get to charge margin, and very similar specced android phones can not, because they're not quite the same. Even near-WIntel spec laptops with just MacOSX as a differentiator are getting sold. There must be something in that secret sauce of iOS and MacOSX that makes people want to pay more for them, even though Macs don't run Windows programs. It's all that effort you don't see, all that simplicity that makes iOS/MacOSX just work for most people. We have a macbook, and the wife's plan says to replace the aging Windows machine with some iMac once it finally kicks over. She's no fanboy (err, girl). Macs just are easier for her. And I'm a UNIX programmer, who ran FreeBSD for various jobs (besides Linux, Solaris, etc) and I'm low level enough to have done driver work (which shipped in a UNIX kernel) and I like the iMac idea. MacOS does quite well if it's simple enough for her to use, yet powerful enough for me.
As someone who has been on Macs since 89 or so, I can assure you there was no fanboyism about the Performa days or System 7.1.1. or the 'the Pepsi ex-CEO can design and move computers, right?' fiascos. Apple had their nadir, and they built up since then. There was no reality distortion field back then, they made hard choices, killed projects, (Copeland, Rhapsody, Pink, Taligent, etc) and started slowly building Apple to where it is.
I believe the point that was being made, which you seemed to have missed, is that the vast (and I do mean vast) majority of users don't care how much RAM their tablet (or phone) has. They don't care what processor it has. They do no care. Sorry to all the geeks out there who think that stuff is vitally important but the reality is that it is not. What does matter is that the device works, works well, and that the user enjoys using it. That simple. And, until geeks start to figure that out, companies are going to continue releasing products to compete with the iPad that have superior specs but end up failing utterly on the market - consumers don't care about specs.