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Tablet Makers Try To Beat iPad's $500 Pricetag

Posted by timothy on from the ok-this-time-you-can-say-value-proposition dept.

The iPad has sold extremely well at a starting price of $500 but "that kind of pricing doesn't work for many tablet vendors," says a story at CNET. And recent price drops reflect this. It's been a rough year for tablet makers, and it's not even Black Friday yet.

2 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Amazon did it by TheGreek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whereas Apple is relying on their lock-in to the "we get a cut of the action, see" iTunes store. It is a tried and true method.

    Except iOS devices aren't loss leaders for Apple. Apple makes a negligible amount of profit off of its App Store. The bulk of Apple's profit comes from every device that goes out the door—whether it's paid for by you or by a combination of you and your mobile carrier.

  2. Re:thrive by Sancho · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can program it without paying a fee.

    You can program the iPad without paying a fee. There's a fee if you want to publish to the store, however.

    To get the best tools for developing for iOS, it's true that you want a Mac with Xcode, but it's not your only option anymore.

    It's open source.

    Could you point me to the Honeycomb source? Last I heard, it's never going to be available.

    It's Linux.

    Why is this valuable? The kernel that runs the Thrive is Linux, but that's almost completely irrelevant. For underlying OS code, I'm going to prefer that which does the job best. That might be Linux, or it might be something else. "It's Linux," smacks of the same kind of kool-aid drinking of which Apple users are so often accused.

    I can run Python apps.

    Certainly a nifty feature. However why should "all the people who ask the question" care about that? How many of them are going to care? Almost every one of them will just use apps from the Market.

    I'm not hating on the Thrive, which looks like a very decent tablet. I'm just sick of the FUD, and I'm really tired of hearing about how open Android is, when it really doesn't follow FOSS principles at all. Most Android phones have to be hacked just like iPhones in order to replace the ROM. On those which don't, you lose all claim to a warranty (absent consumer protections to the contrary, which you'd have to fight in court in order to keep.)

    Android is open in the same way that TiVo is open. You might be able to see the source (not so on 3.1, apparently) but you likely won't be able to modify it and run it on your device.