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Why 2012 Will Be the Year of the Android Tablet
lseltzer writes "The iPad has dominated the high-end tablet market so far, but that is about to change. At CES in Las Vegas in a couple weeks you will see tablets running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) everywhere and at prices that will make an iPad a lot harder to justify. The competition from the OEM model in the Android markets will massively shift market share away from Apple, just as it has done in the smart phone market."
...first post
If you find this post offensive, don't read it! THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING! I am what I am because of how apes behave.
Sure, and just as with smartphones, "All Android Phones" will be bigger in the market than the mere iPhone. But look at any individual manufacturer, and that "All Android Phone" share is sliced into so many tiny pieces that Apple dwarfs them. Same with the iPad - Android tablets together may take over 50% of the market... but no individual Android tablet is going to have more than 5%.
The Kindle Fire will pave the way, not because people will choose it over the iPad, but because it is opening the market on the low price range, and for people (like myself) that use computers to compute, and midsize tablets for light duty tasks. Of course, the Nook is also helping develop this market. They both prove that there is a sub $300 market for basic tablets that can surf, watch movies, be good book readers, and serve in areas where even a laptop is too large, and a netbook is not efficient.
Rest assured, the iPad will still dominate the large tablet market, it is just that the new products aren't trying to compete and are instead focusing on growing the market in places that the iPad never entered.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Because the Mayan tablets said so? No wonder archaeologists got it wrong. It's the end of the handheld world as we knew it.
This is the year of Linux!
Every time some tech columnist makes some glorious prediction that "[YEAR] Will Be The Year Of [TECH]", I roll my eyes.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Maybe just because the interface is more coherent with itself, the iPad will prevail.
As an example, the youTube app for the iPad zooms from and to full screen by pinching the video with your fingers. In Android this just does not work, even though it does with other apps like picture viewers. A tablet is a very weird device and details like this are the ones that make people hop in or pull back.
Does this mean that the supply for iPads will be able to satisfy the demand?
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
This is just like the "20XX is the year of the Linux Desktop".
I will wait for the end of 2012 before believing the claim.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
And all sides will fire off patent lawsuits over trivial features like form filling and email forming. The lawyers will get rich the market will be blocked and confused.
All hail patents the great pusher of innovation, NOT.
It that's going to happen it will become the year of the Apple lawsuits.
Hmm... Is 1/3 market share much to cheer (or write) about? I guess "Year of the Android" tablet makes a better headline than "Android tablets will make unspectacular gains in 2012".
Then again maybe 1/3 market share IS a spectacular gain for Android in the tablet market.
From TFA: "There are many companies making Android devices and the magic of competition will force them to drive prices down and quality up."
Drive prices down? Yup!
Quality up? Uhm... what? Just like it's done with the current crop of Android phones where there is tons and tons of crap and a few really good ones (Galaxy S2, Nexus, etc)?
I clicked on this thinking the guy might have some insight on why Android tablets were about to make a big jump forward, but all this guy is missing is pom poms and a miniskirt..
Can we please stop with the predictions?
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
The article seems to presume that there is a static size for the amount of people who buy tablets. There isn't. As lower-cost entries enter the market, people who previously could not afford one will be able to buy one. So the market will grow, but it's also likely that Apple's overall sales will grow as the market grows. So, sure, Apple's "market share" may shrink, but it's not like Apple's going to make less money than they did before.
Also, there seems to be an assumption that people buy a tablet sorely based on cost. That is certainly part of how people buy something, but there are also metrics of quality, ease of use and also what you've got already. If you already have an iProduct, I'll bet people are a lot more attracted to the idea they can plug it into the iTunes that's already set up and have it work. Learning something new probably isn't a big driver, even if they save a hundred bucks. Apple could also drop prices on the iPad 2 when the 3 comes out, just as they have done with the iPhone when new generations have arrived, in order to compete with the lower end of the market.
TFA reads...
"The biggest advantage for Android over iOS is that there is only one company making iOS phones and tablets, and they don't make a lot of models. There are many companies making Android devices and the magic of competition will force them to drive prices down and quality up."
I think it should more properly read:
"The biggest advantage for iOS over Android is that there is only one company making iOS phones and tablets, and they don't make a lot of models. There are many companies making Android devices and the magic of competition will force them to drive prices down at the expense of quality."
I thought 2012 was the year of the Linux Desktop!
For sure.
Really!
Anytime now.
Please?
This has been predicted over and over again - pretty much since the launch of the original iPad.
It was always "Oh, the iPad was released for $500 less than everyone was guessing, but it's still way overprice! Just you wait for the cheaper, better, faster Android tablets.... any day now.... next month.... just a few more months! The Xoom is coming and it will destroy the iPad, I mean it will have Flash and an SD card slot, and there's no way it will cost more than an iPad and ship with both of those 'key' features broken... Oh, the iPad 2 is out now... well, what did you expect, honeycomb was never designed for tablets properly, even though we have been crowing about how it was going to be the answer to the 'inferior' iPad... just you wait for Ice Cream Sandwich...."
In short, I've heard it all before. The Eee Pad Transformer is good I guess, and at $400 is cheaper than the iPad but so far not much headway. I really hope there are a few really competitive Android tablets to rival the iPad as there have been handsets to rival the iPhone - the competition is good for everyone. So far though, not seeing it.
that have been saying this kind of stuff for years. iPod is lame. iPhone is a useless device. Nobody in their right mind will buy iPad. iPod's price will drive people to competitors. iPhone's price will make in untenable as a phone. iPad is priced more than a laptop, only idiots will pay for it.
Blah, blah, blah. Once a week someone predicts that Apple has finally reached its apex and it's all downhill from here, as the products lack features, are too expensive, the garden is walled, and new competitors X, Y, and Z have finally figured it out and this will be their week|month|year.
So far, this has always been empirically demonstrated to be so much crap by the time the next week|month|year has arrived. Of course, at some point Apple WILL fail, just like all companies and indeed all things in the universe eventually disintegrate, and because at least once a week someone predicts that this will happen this week, at some point someone will be right.
But when that happens, it won't be because of any insight—just because the pundits have made sure to predict the failure of Apple during EVERY week|month|year cycle. And I seriously doubt this is the time, having just been at the local office supply chain store looking at Android tablets yesterday.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Maybe it will, but I have both an Android phone and an iPhone (one is for my work-related calls, the other is for my personal calls) and I use them both pretty much. The apps on my iPhone just works -better-. They're more responsive, they have a more unified "feel" as to how I work in them etc.
As a programmer I appreciate how easy it is to develop apps for the Android phone and I really do not like the walled garden approach, but I have to grudgingly admit that _IT WORKS_.
And why wouldn't it work? If you know the specs of the hardware you're coding for you can do a much better app than if you just code for a random android phone (where some of them are really slow and annoying and some are rocket-spaceships).
My prediction is that android will steal some of the market, because the iPad is just so damned expensive. But the iPad will still be the "best". Because in the end, we use the tablets to run our apps. The tablet which runs the most apps the best will win. Based on what I've seen on the phone side, my money is on Apple. :/
People want iPads, not tablets. People don't even know what "tablets" are. Apple have defined a new market, most people buying iPads aren't really sure why they want them yet. It will be impossible for the competition to win over mindshare until they have something *better* than the iPad has. Price will not convince many because as said, people don't want tablets, they want iPads.
This will probably change. But it will take a few years yet IMO. Think about how long it took for people to know why they wanted a PC. This is different (people understand why they want a computer nowadays), but it will still take time.
Why 2012 Will Be the Year of the Android Tablet? Because it will die!
No one cares. Apple will keep innovate and sell with a healthy profit. And those android tablet makers will keep flooding the market with mediocre.
There is always a market for cheep stuff and quality stuff. Everyone wins, but Apple the most :)
We will see after the first month in 2012 how the cards get shuffled.
You just described the death of Android.
And anyway, nobody buys an iPad for the iPad. They buy an iPad to be locked into an easy to use environment. Think AOL without the modems.
Deleted
Hopefully you didn't jinx the android tablet in 2012. Each time I see an article like this where _____________ will take off in year _________ then it doesn't seem to happen. I've seen articles like this on slashdot for linux and various other computer tech.
I write video games for a living, and lately, we've been using Unity. Whenever we do an android build, it has to be tested on a wide array of devices just to be certain that there are no issues related to screen layout or any problematic performance problems. To top it all off, we also have to make multiple builds so that the data can be stored efficiently on each type of platform. This is problematic because it requires separate repositories of the same code-base, because trying to switch between different builds on a single repository within Unity can take several hours as all of the art assets of the work must be reprocessed. To top it all off, drivers for each indiivdual device must be installed, because there is no single general android driver that works for all android devices, which complicates setup tremendously.
On iOS, we can simply test on each generation of the iPhone we are intending to support, and also on the iPad1 and iPad2... and there is absolutely no reprocessing of assets required, as all iOS devices store their data in the exact same way. Finally, supporting the iOS device for development only requires having a mac. No additional drivers are required... one is good to go as soon as they have XCode installed on their system and have installed the necessary provision profiles for uploading to a physical device.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
No doubt, this prediction will soon be added to The iPad Death Watch
Your premise is the iPad has dominated the high-end tablet market and that is about to change. You justify this by comparing the tablet market to the smartphone market.
Here is the problem: Android marketshare is due to the number of low-end Android smartphones on the market, not the high-end ones. In 2011 the top 3 selling smartphones in the US will be the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPhone 4S. There are very few 'luxury' Android phones and those don't sell extremely well.
Android will do the same for tablets what it did for smart phones. There will be tablets in all shapes, sizes, form factors, specifications and budgets.
I think that it is more likely that 2012 will be the year the tablet format falls back into its niche. The iPad revitalized the form factor by putting a shiny apple logo on it but I suspect people are already realizing that it's more an inconveniently over-sized phone or handicapped netbook than a revolution.
My spouse wanted an iPad.
For myself, the extra $100-200 premium over an Android tablet is nothing compared to the amount of aggravation I would face
attempting to convince spouse that the Android is equivalent, or even better than the iPad.
Since spouse chose the iPad, she can't blame me for shoddy apps, or confusing interfaces, or crashes.
Sure, it's a case of marketing over facts, but all the other tablets in her office are iPads, so I go with the flow.
If Google/Android really wants to grab market, they should offer a reasonably priced 3G/4G data-only infrastructure,
as I would spend close to the cost of the device on a data plan from the incumbent wireless carriers.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
I started predicting last year that 2011 would be the year that Android tablets would finally become popular. I wasn't expecting Amazon.com to make that happen with the Kindle Fire, though... I was expecting a PC manufacturer like Dell or Lenovo to pull it off.
Next year will be the year where the Android tablets start taking market share away from Apple... the days where the iPad had 90% market share and developers didn't bother optimizing their apps for Android tablets will soon be over.
you mean like the year of the linux desktop that i've been waiting for since 1996?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I'm still waiting for the Year of the Linux Desktop that has been forecast for ten of the last 15 years.
That's because Android is a piece of shit. Problem is, most people are not smart enough to notice that it is a piece of shit. Real developers know it is a piece of shit. Java developers think Android is awesome. That's why Windows beat Mac OS. Because people are idiots. And that's why Android will probably beat iOS. Because people are complete idiots. Android is one of the worst things to happen to computing since Windows. Google is Microsoft.
Having fewer choices is always a lot better for the service providers, manufacturers, and developers. It is not so great for the end users, though. Both sides of the coin do not really have that much in common except for being on the same coin.
... yes, I'd say that a "year of the Android tablet" would be a fantastic thing for all concerned. Apple needs competition to stay sharp, and many customers need a more inexpensive and more open choice than iPad. I probably won't be buying an Ice Cream Sandwich based device, but I'll be cheering them on.
Be prepared. But you can't do anything about it so... have lots of fun, I guess. Hey actually, that doesn't sound like a bad idea even if the world won't end.
The Ipad 3 with Siri is likely to be the best offer for some time to come, for most "normal" people. Tablets cheaper/bigger/smaller than the Ipad and Ipad 2 have been available for quite a while now, without much success. But the author considers a market of "1/3 Android" enough to proclaim such a title ...
The cheap Novo7 in TFA has a widescreen format that makes people feel uneasy. Is it that hard to get aesthetics right?
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
So in summation, Android sucks because all the different phones you have to support, and Apple is way easier because you only have to support all the different models they have made.
No... with iOS we only have to support certain generations that satisfy a certain critical threshold of users. This is quite easy to do and the number of devices that we typically have to test for is on the order of 4 or 5. Only two devices when we are targetting the iPad.
The android environment, however, is so finely divided that the number of distinctly different devices that must be supported to reach that same threshold of users is several times larger. Plus, as I said... device drivers have to separately be installed for each one, which complicates setup tremendously. I've even seen issues where different drivers ended up conflicting with eachother and could not both be installed on the same machine at the same time.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
so you're basically advocating a single vendor consumer market. Indeed, how grand life would be if there where no choices and we all just needed to deal with one platform. not.
Not trying to defend any platform here but the platforms are just now maturing and have gone through a rapid growth spurt. iOS not so much because of how Apple doesn't tend to make large changes in new versions and would never pull the stunt Google did with Gingerbread, Honeycomb, ICS. But ICS should be a much more solid platform going forward but because of the various screen sizes supported, screen layout will always have to be tested along with performance(driver) issues.
life would be easy for a developer with only one platform to follow until that vendor decided they want to own all the cool software on the platform. Choice is what helps prevent that from happening and it keeps products changing and hopefully improving. With Apple strictly controlling the development platform helping to lock devs into a single SDK life will not be easy doing cross platform apps.
So suck it up and enjoy the fact there is competition and the public loves it and is buying product. And hope the platform for ISV's doesn't disappear like the PalmOS platform did just 10 years ago.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
No... there's not a problem with multiple vendors. The problem is multiple standards. Multiple vendors are a problem only in the sense that they don't agree or play nice with eachother.
A single standard driver that worked for all android devices would be a *HUGE* deal, and between that using uniform native image file formats, instead of 4 different standard ones, I would be totally all over Android as superior to iOS, regardless of how many different types of tablets there were.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Around this time every year right before CES this prediction is made!! Blah Blah Blah.
I think it's like this: 2012 is the year of phone ensmartening - which is to say, a big proportion of the world's people will upgrade from a dumbphone to a smaprtphone. Many of them will do it with the attitude "I don't need a damn smartphone anyway, but if it's easier to text with that on-screen keyboard thingie, and my carrier will basically cover the costs, I might as well. So what's my carrier offering me for real cheap?" And you know very well that it will be some crappy Android handset. So yes, I see Android making much bigger gains in 2012 just because it's the default upgrade for billions. The iPhone simply isn't. You have to want one, you don't "get upgraded" to one.
If I'm buying a tablet only for myself, then price isn't really that important.
But this year not only did I buy myself a tablet, I purchased a tablet for my wife, daughter, and mom.
All Androids (2 Nooks, 2 Acers). It would have cost a lot more $$$ had I purchased iPads.
So for me, 2011 was the year of the Android tablet.
Given $100 quality Android tablets, they will start to pervade everywhere.
Apple is not all about "winning" or largest market share. Their philosophy seems to be to push innovative products into the market place at a healthy profit, and let the chips fall where they may.
"prices that will make an iPad a lot harder to justify." Yes, Apple isn't exactly known for cheap electronics. The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime is about the same price but it's QUAD-CORE for crying out loud. The iPad is sleek and has a ton of apps plus a decent processor, but it's just too pricey.
Your complaints about android seem like you choose the wrong game engine and the wrong OS. Your complaint about needing different drivers for each android phone is because of MS Windows. Under Linux (and Mac os X as you stated) you don't need any extra drivers or kernel modules, you just need to have the correct permissions for your user account (http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/device.html).
It's still a pain in the arse... and as I'm not self-employed, I'm required to use the tools that my employer provides... no matter how much I might happen to prefer other ones.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
One word "E-Waste". We have too much e-waste from disposable electronics that become useless within a few months and Android is one of the worst culprits for this. You can buy an Android phone right now which is "brand new" but cannot be upgraded to the latest android release without rooting the device. That is simply unacceptable from an environmental perspective. The iPhone 3GS was released in 2009 and it can be upgraded by anyone for "free" to the latest and greatest version of iOS (5.01) through iTunes. You cannot say the same thing about Android phones even released earlier this year as they will not be officially supported by ice cream.
My opposition to the expansion of Android goes beyond being a user of Apple products at home. I am tired of seeing electronics that are seen as disposable. I hate the pricing model of inkjet printers where you get a cheap printer and then pay through the nose of ink cartridges. I would rather pay a couple hundred bucks for a printer that is guaranteed to work for a few years and pay more reasonable amount for ink cartridges and even see official support for ink cartridges recycling/refilling.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
This comparison of "development ease" between (for lack of a better word) commodity and proprietary platforms is nothing new. For years, Windows and Linux developers have had to deal with varying hardware designs, a constant onslaught of new components and peripherals, and multiple operating system versions.
Apple, by providing both the hardware and the OS from a single manufacturing source, can control their world and make things very easy for developers. There are compromises that have to be made in either world.
That sounds like a bug in Unity to me.
I'll back this up as we had the same problems with mobile Apps to the point of if customers want Android apps, the cost are usually 5x that of iOS simply because we have to test against 4 versions of the OS and we only certify compatibility with the Nexus and Nexus-S. If they want additional handsets tested and certified, there's an extra fee per handset. And again, it's the fact we have to maintain so many different build environments.
With iOS it's generally one repository and we just change the build settings depending on if we're compiling for iPhone, iPad, or for most of our apps the "either/or" option. Then it's pretty easy to test between the simulator and the 3G, 3GS, and 4.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Don't get me wrong, I like Android, carry a Droid X, and am in the market for an Android slate to replace my Winders laptop. But come on! Firstly, "the year of the" anything articles are so full of carp they could breathe underwater. (That's cute, isn't it? I give xkcd permission to use it.) Secondly, "the year of some version of Linux" has been predicted for decades and, you know, it's kinda like predicting the coming of Christ. Maybe it'll happen some day, but don't keep your bags packed.
But thirdly and most importantly, there is room in the marketplace for more than one OS. [1] Android and, iOS for instance, can coexist in the same marketplace just fine, thanks. Decisions will be made on capabilities, apps, features, and which logo is etched into the trendy metal backplate. Users have a choice, and choice is good.
[1] With the possible exception of Windows Phone 7.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I believe the Samsung Galaxy S II is a "high-end" Android phone? It has sold many millions globally.
I believe the iPhone will remain a top selling high-end phone, but there's room for more. I agree that the article is written by an unrealistic "fanboy" of some sort. Wishful thinking.
I like all my various WP7, Androids and iPhones. I just switch handsets when I feel like there's something new to test.
That's wishful thinking in my opinion. Jobs didn't have a hand in everything, and even if he did, we know he was away from Apple several times and for many months prior to his death.
Apple didn't stop working during that time, and I don't believe it will change under the so-called "new" management either. The managers and teams are well versed in their corporate culture.
We didn't stop making yoghurt because the "original" bacteria strain died out.
Apple does not have the dominant market share on tabs and phones, just so you know.
Android does, and has since 2010, and will again in 2012.
Yes, monocultures make life easier for the developer. That's why all developers should write their software for Windows.
Just because you can make an acronym out of something doesn't mean it should be done. ICS stands as the acronym for the Windows XP era routing service and while it sucked very much, it was labeled appropriately so.
If you start referring to Android builds like this then you have to do it for all of them. What's that going to look like? "I just bought a used tablet with Android G on it" or "my rooted phone still runs F". I KNOW this pisses other real IT Pros off, where diddling around with a smartphone occupies maybe 5% of your total daily tech visibility.
I don't tell you I want a WLC for lunch even if I ask for a large chili from Wendy's every fucking day. Get a life and stop trying to get mayor of the water cooler on foursquare.
You're not very smart for a game developer. You should compare making games for the iPhones and the Samsung Galaxy S's or the SE Xperia's. Not the whole bunch - coz then you are comparing apples and oranges.
If Android is such a hassle then why are you writing apps for it? I can just imagine all the money and time you lose by doing so.
Yeah, that decade was hard on Apple, but the more experienced Steve Jobs brought some great improvements with him to Apple when he re-joined. That culture is what you expected to die off now. I see two different companies where you see one.
The board was well aware of the need to secure a future for the company, and five years ago or so they made plans for who would eventually take the reins after Jobs. It was in all the news media. That plan was put into action when Steve left to have his operation and recovery period.
When he died the plan was already in action, the key players were trained, ready and in place.
I think what Steve Jobs brought to the company was a culture of "perfection" (or whatever you want to call it). I think they will be able to maintain that in the future, using different people obviously, expressing it their way. I think they managed to instill it in a new generation. It won't be the same, but it will be similar.
Agreed. I doubt there's much difference in writing and selling a game for every iPhone (2/3/3G/3GS/4/4S) and writing and selling a game for every Samsung Galaxy S / S2.
The contention that Android is taking share from iOS is WRONG. Both iOS and Android are growing market share in Smartphones. This growth is occurring at the expense of RIM, mostly. See: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/14/shocker-android-grew-us-market-share-after-q2-ios-was-static/
Then android is spyware!
Would you prefer that we had a dozen standards for hard drives connections / sizes / etc? The problem isin't dealing with different companies it's the fact that a single OS is implemented in such a way that you lose the benefit of having a single OS. Where as Apple makes it easier to develop across different hardware though admittedly there isn't a ton of variation but they've done well to make it so developing for the 3GS didn't mean you could only sell on that version without jumping through tons of hoops. Android could have it too but no one wants to do that.
Others have pointed out compatibility issues due to differing hardware, different versions of the OS, different UI modules added by manufacturers, poor quality hardware from some manufacturers, inconsistent/poor availability of updates, etc. All of those are valid complaints. But having used an Android phone, here is what I see as the biggest flaw; the UI design is fundamentally inconsistent. It fails to follow many of the user interaction guidelines from the person who is certainly one of the top UI experts, Bruce Tognazzini, aka Tog.
Is it a touch screen system, or a keyboard system? Both, and neither. Almost everything is done using the touch screen, except "back", "menu/settings", and changing apps (plus power and volume controls). You can't complete common tasks using just one or the other, you must use both. Using a separate button to change apps doesn't interfere with normal work flow, as changing apps itself is an interruption in work flow, so it makes some sense. However, having to switch from the touchscreen to the dedicated keys to go back (a critical part of most apps), or to access a menu (e.g. add, delete, edit, change settings, etc.) is an unnecessary, and non-intuitive UI design. It's consistent in that the whole OS and almost all apps use it, but switching between touchscreen and dedicated keys for essential parts of in-app functionality is an interruption in workflow. Everything done in an app should be possible using a single UI model on the touchscreen.
Another annoyance (at least on my phone, don't know about others) is that auto-correct (and automatically adding apostrophes in contractions) only works when using swype. If you want those when typing in text, you must go back after the fact and tap the word to get a list of alternatives. Why would auto-correct only work with one input method? There is no auto-punctuation and it doesn't even offer auto-complete except in the browser.
Syncing my contacts list between the Mac OS X address book, Google contacts and the phone was a challenge. Not all of the blame for that falls on Android, but it took 2 hours to initially sync and eliminate duplicates (there were only 10 contacts in the phone to start with) because contacts and numbers were getting duplicated, and deleting them from one didn't always delete them from another, so next sync they would dup again. Once it's set up, it mostly works, but again, deleting or changing info on one may cause duplication problems next time, so it's an ongoing annoyance. An average user would probably have given up on syncing the contacts, but with 500 contacts, I wasn't going to give up easily.
Individually, these are "little" annoyances and inconsistencies, but they're pervasive and significant enough to harm an otherwise pleasant user experience. Because of these annoyances (and several others) I would much rather have an iPhone.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Oh yeah! Linux!
Though I have to admit I wish half of the people I knew would go ahead and learn it so they'd stop calling me a "fanboy."
oh look, yet another.. year of something that will take over apple's dominance.. give it a break... have you ever messed with androids clunky os? even ice cream sandwich is not any better, because they put more ram in the device rather than rewriting the os to focus on ui, which ios hits perfectly... can't wait to hear this all over again in 2013
Because I get paid to... duh.
I like my job... I just can't say I appreciate every little thing I'm expected to do.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I compare what I have working experience with... I don't get to choose the tools and devices I use at work. And my point is that we have to support a "critical market share", which because of the diversity of android devices, makes it very difficult to do multiplatform development.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
But nobody asked for one.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
- Dock connector is good because you can do more than (shitty) USB with it. Use bluetooth as a wireless replacement. Ever heard of wireless game controllers? Those are the things all the new kids are using these days.
- While you don't get all the new features from 4S, you still get software updates and _some_ of the features. I gave up on Galaxy after 2.3 was a year late on that piece of shit.
- Screen resolution is not the same as screen size. Apple will probably go retina once the GPU is powerful enough.
- You can change the battery on these devices just fine. You call yourself a hacker?
- Safari is better than the Android browser.
- Most people don't want to run bittorrent on battery-powered devices. That's what NASs and cloud storage are for.
As a hacker, I have zero interest in flashing firmware or rooting my Apple hardware. I use the device for what it was designed for instead of complaining I cannot turn it into something it wasn't meant to be. For 95% of people, this is the norm. For the rest, there is Android, and there are even better systems than Android. Is it that difficult to understand this concept, or is it just that you wish to present yourself as a l33t h4x0r?
When you're reclined on the couch or barcalounger or sitting in an airplane seat, the Transformer dock provides a handsfree stand to keep the video you're watching at just the right angle. An iPad you have to hold, an iPad stand typically only has one or two angles to configure. And the Transformer's widescreen format makes for a nicer movie experience.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Of course not... the problem is not the different models by the same manufacturer, the problem is really the sheer number of manufacturers.
This, itself, would not be a problem if there was a unified standard that all would use, the problems are that each manufacturer has its own peculiarities, and that they don't all use the same type of connector (although most are pretty good, standardizing on micro USB), and also that one has to install nearly a dozen different device drivers to support them all (which I can't actually do on one machine, because in my experience, some drivers don't play nicely with some other ones, and if you try to have both drivers installed on one machine that conflict, then neither device type will be recognized when it is plugged in).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
FTFA: "The Novo7, an Android 4.0 tablet based on the MIPS JZ4770 processor. It retails for under $100."
Stop saying it's available for under $100 because it doesn't really exist
There's no reviews, it's not for sale, it's vaporware. How can you claim it's the year of Android based on a vaporware product?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
To top it all off, we also have to make multiple builds so that the data can be stored efficiently on each type of platform.
Can you point me to some info on this? I haven't developed for Android yet and I hear this a lot but I don't understand the issue. Does this have to do with storing data on the internal flash -vs- the SD card? Or is there no standard file system layout?
Nothing about what I said was phrased as an opinion.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
no but we're talking about software and not hardware. I think well be seeing a stabilizing on the Android platform to some extent after the short period of major changes, improvements and revisions internally and graphically. I agree that Apple did a nice job on the initial design and didn't require major changes going forward but there are very few companies capable of doing that. Even Apple without Jobs is being questioned regarding this ability going forward. They were/are unique.
I think Google wants more consistency on the platform but they are fighting those selling hardware who want uniqueness at the software level too. Hopefully it clears up some soon.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
it's going to take a little while for the phone vendors to back off on doing everything unique on their hardware. It's not helped that Android has been going to huge changes over the past couple of years. There's some hope that with ICS and going forward the base system will be changing less and it'll help reduce the other choices vendors are going with and making things tough for developers. They have to know that apps enable the platform and it costs much less when others do the apps.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
The issue mostly involves image file formats. Some use pvrtc, while others use s3tc. Switching between them can take a very long time as the original assets need to be reprocessed.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Seriously, the odds of that happening (asskicking on epic scale) are similar to the odds of Linux becoming the dominant desktop OS.
not about price. about easy , certainty and style.
When me buy angry birds on Ipad, I get the best, solid version of AB ever made. I do not even have to question it.
me go to app store and me buy apps. me buy music and it go to icloud. me like.
me take picture. it go to icloud. wife see it in folder on her windows laptop. i never get "can you floofle the picture from your phone and facebooketize them..."
me happy. drink beer, sleep.
Microsoft's problems are not due to their licensing model. They are due to their own inept management. They have too many layers of middle management, and they just don't get things done effectively anymore.
Apple under Jobs had the clarity of vision that comes from one man unambiguously in charge. Since Jobs was right more often than he was wrong, that worked well for them.
But what you're suggesting would almost certainly have led to Jobs never returning to Apple. Apple bought NeXT because they were desperate. The Apple Renaissance happened precisely because Apple "nearly [went] bankrupt in the 90's as Windows surged."
So if Apple had gone the Microsoft route in 1989, taken over the lion's share of the OS market, and been in Microsoft's position throughout the 1990s, which do you think is more likely—that they would still have fired Gil Amelio, bought NeXT, and given Steve Jobs total control of the company? Or that they would have ended up in a pattern very similar to Microsoft, with businessmen rather than visionaries running the company, and making sure to avoid putting out any highly risky new products?
I mean, obviously your scenario's not impossible. We're talking pure hypotheticals here to begin with. But looking at the reasons things happened the way they did in our timeline, we can make some good guesses as to what would happen in the alternate timeline created by Apple opening the Mac in 1989—and I just don't think it's likely that some of the key events would happen the same.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
With the market being so piss poor for android why do you even bother compiling a version and testing it? I know personally I quit supporting it, the expense of it cannot be justified.
Got Code?
What I said was that Apple's decision to charge crazy high premium prices for Macs in the late 80's made money for them hand over fist, but set them up to nearly go bankrupt in the 90's as Windows surged. Had Apple adopted the Microsoft licensing model, I think the Windows surge wouldn't have happened; it could have been a Mac OS surge instead.
Wrong. When Jobs came back and saved Apple, he didn't take your approach. In fact, he killed the Mac clone. And he cut Apple's endless confusing product line down to four. But Jobs did not cut margins - they are as high as ever. Since then, Apple stock has increased like 100-fold and it's now the biggest, baddest company on earth.
OBTW, Apple is poised to become the #1 PC maker next year.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Never happen. Unless my grandfather could pick up an Android and be able to do something with it, it's useless. There are $100 android tablets on the market now. They are crap.
Price isn't the selling point of a tablet, they're all under $1000 and we know they'll be used as long as laptops (which used to be over $1000 for the cheap ones) so unless you're living pay cheque to pay cheque (those looking for a tablet probably aren't), it's about features and usability.
Androids aren't instantly usable. There's more than one button, there's tricks, there's now malware, it's a train wreck. Android lacks any true competition forcing it to actually innovation -- and by competition I mean another open source good tablet OS. Until another decent OS starts taking contracts from Google, they'll just continue to pretend to innovate. Maybe WebOS will be that, but it'd take some time for competition to have an effect.
Android in 2012? Doubt it. Android in 2015? Maybe.
So far it's been pretty factual on my side, even if it hasn't been appreciated.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I have an Android tablet and I can't understand this story at all. The tablet I have is pretty horrid from a users point of view. I have three browsers "Browser (Are they ashamed to call it Chrome?), Opera and Firefox. On each there are huge display problems, sometimes I just give up and look for my lap top. My son who is reading Computer Science at Southampton University has an iPad and just about every thing on it is better than my pad. Web pages are rendered correctly, documents are more readable, even Evernote on the iPad is better than my Android device. The Android is not intuitive, I can't see anyway to print from it, I am sure it is supported but I will will have to Google it. To be fair I have loaded it with a lot of stuff that does work, but the applications are not as polished as the iPad apps, what do I mean, well they look like work in progress, I don't know how else to quantify it.
I'm living the life swimming in a sea of electronics here in Shenzhen, China. I plan to start drop shipping OEM android tablets to NA, however I could really use some advice from the experts.
Contact me tablets2canada@gmail.com
Thanks.
Actually, there is only one android driver. However, each device has it's own unique identifier, and on Windows for some reason instead of a generic driver with a "register this device" utility, you have separate, identical drivers that only connect to one device.
I do Android dev from Linux, and I just add the device's USB ID to a list that connects it to the appropriate driver. Still a bit of a hassle.
Year of the Android Tablet. Right. Android is just counterfeit iOS. It's like those fat-asses you see at wal-mart, wearing "Gucci" handbags. Looks kinda like it, but stinks like cheap vinyl.