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Did Steve Jobs Pick the Wrong Tablet Size?
An anonymous reader writes "During the 2010 Christmas shopping season, Steve Jobs famously dissed the 7-inch tablets being rolled out by competitors, including Samsung's Galaxy, as being 'tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the [9.7-inch diagonal] iPad,' adding that 'the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA — dead on arrival.' A year later Jobs was dead, and the iPad Mini, with a 7.9-inch diagonal screen, was rolled out under his successor Tim Cook in October, 2012. Looking at industry-wide tablet sales numbers for January 2013, which show that the iPad Mini surprisingly outsold its larger sibling by a substantial margin (as did 7-inch Android tablets from competitors), Motley Fool's Evan Niu thinks that the 7.9-inch form factor was the correct size all along, contrary to Jobs' pronouncements (which, of course, was partly marketing bluster — but he chose the larger size in the first place). Of course the Mini is cheaper, but not by much — $329 vs. $399 for the larger iPad, for the baseline model with WiFi only and 16GB storage. Had Apple introduced the iPad with the smaller size to begin with, Niu argues, competitors would have faced a much more difficult task grabbing market share. While the Mini is currently available only with 'Super VGA' resolution (1024x768), rumors are afloat that Minis with the Retina display (2048x1536) are close to production."
Brand new $329 product sells faster than $499 product with minor spec bump! Film at 11! (Comparison with iPad 2 is silly - it is an old product which, has lower specs than the Mini, has the same number of pixels as the Mini, still costs $70 more and will probably be discontinued soon).
Meanwhile, the first generation of 7", 16:9 tablets of which his Steveness was speaking didn't exactly sell like hotcakes. The format has since been popularised by Amazon and Google offering extra cheap 7" tablets firmly aimed at media consumption (which they may be treating as loss-leaders).
Its also worth bearing in mind that the Mini isn't a 7" 16:9 tablet, its a 7.9" 4:3 tablet with the same number of pixels as the original iPad. That's a non-trivial difference especially when (e.g.) you want to type in landscape format.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
It's the oblivious mistake, there's one in every summary, just /. editors doing some subtle trolling to get the comments going.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
The majority of people who have bought Android tablets did so because they do not like Apple
Maybe the majority of people on slashdot, but I doubt it's even true with that narrow of a field. There are a few factors:
a) Price
b) Convenience
c) Design/interface
d) Features
I service PC's on the side, so I have plenty of time to talk to "regular folk" who are not technically inclined. I also have buddies in retail. Apple sold on brand-recognition for awhile, but Samsung and Asus have become more well-known now too.
So why do they buy android tablets? Well, basically the price is good and it does what they want. A lot of people just want something that convenient to travel with and that does email, browses the web, and perhaps plays a few games. In the older crowd, the latter tends not to apply.
These folk used to buy laptops, but when tablets became more common the laptops were overpowered and bulky.
A full-sized iPad was more convenient in that it doesn't take up much room in a suitcase or whatever, but at the price-point it still had competition from netbooks etc. While more convenient to pack, it still wasn't very fun to travel with as it didn't fit nicely into many purses or pockets.
The Asus tablets became fairly popular because they had a detachable keyboard (and a lot of people aren't so fond of touchscreens for email), and were a bit cheaper than the iPad.
Then comes Nexus 7 etc. It fits into a back-pocket on most jeans, or an inner-pocket in a jacket. It slips into a purse easily. It's cheap. It's powerful. It does email, browses the web, video-chat, etc. It'll even do flash but you're hitting a more technical crowd to get that installed
What it lacks: HDMI connection to plug into TV's, and no "airplay." Miracast will likely replace those in the future with whatever the successor is to the Nexus 7 (I believe that it has the GPU to handle it, but not the wifi, so it won't be available on this model).
The average person doesn't really connect the tablet to the TV, so even the above are extras.
The other thing it lacks: A nice way to take/transfer pictures. Other tablets with SD slots would be nice for this, but space is limited. iPad is still a bit bulky for this. Phones aren't bad, but the killer feature would be something to connect the two (wirelessly) to manage photo albums on the camera device from a tablet. It seems that for the moment people are still content to manage pictures on a PC though and do the sync thing.
So what is an Android tablet lacking that a regular person needs? Not a Linux/Android/Apple fanboi, just a person who wants a portable device?
a) Price: Check, they're fairly affordable
b) Convenience: 7" is a very convience size for purses and pockets
c) Design/interface: One of the best things iDevices did is bring capacitive multitouch to portables. The cheaper Androids often had shitty resistive touch, but that's changed for the most-part.
d) Features: (remember, regular joe). Email: check, Internet browsing: check, and - dare I say it - porn: check
Normal people don't love Apple or Android. They might love a particular device. Sometimes they get attached to a brand for awhile, but eventually it comes down to: will this do what I want for the price it's available at.
Customers ask me which is better. It really comes down to what they want to do with it. For many, a Nexus is fine. Some people want to use their apps on the tablet, or have a media device. In that case, the convenience of iTunes and the availability of peripherals goes in the favor of Apple devices.
While people may play music on their phones, tablets are often more video-centric, and Netflix combined with the growing Play video collection is turning into a big competitor. If Google (or Samsung, etc) got their sh** together and made a decent platform for music, Apple would really be in trouble, but while they're improving the experience is still rather inconsistent.