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BlackBerry CEO: Tablet Market Is Dying
Nerval's Lobster writes "BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins believes that tablets will be dead by 2018. 'In five years I don't think there'll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,' he told an interviewer at the Milken Institute conference in Los Angeles, according to Bloomberg. 'Maybe a big screen in your workplace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.' That may come as a surprise to Apple, Google, Amazon and Samsung, all of which have built significant tablet businesses over the past few years. Research firm Strategy Analytics suggested in a research note earlier this month that the global tablet market hit 40.6 million units shipped in the first quarter of 2013, a significant rise from the 18.7 million shipped in the same quarter last year. So why would Heins offer such a pessimistic prediction when everyone else — from the research firms to the tablet-makers themselves — seems so full-speed-ahead? It's easy to forget sometimes that BlackBerry has its own tablet in the mix: the PlayBook, which was released to quite a bit of fanfare in early 2011 but failed to earn iPad-caliber sales. Despite that usefulness to developers, however, the PlayBook has become a weak contender in the actual tablet market. If Heins is predicting that market's eventual demise, it could be a coded signal that he intends to pull BlackBerry out of the tablet game, focusing instead on smartphones. It wouldn't be the first radical move the company's made in the past year."
I agree completely. Tablets are a fad. The form factor is terrible and the functionality is lacking. I think that most people are going to continue using phones and laptops.
I don't respond to AC's.
World to Blackberry: In five years there'll be no reason to own a Blackberry.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I might be able to take their word seriously if they didn't paint the blackberry playbook in a positive light at all. After running one of the worst launches in history, no wonder that thing fell flat on it's face. My favorite review said something along the lines of "It's like paying $200 to see Bruce Springsteen and having to settle for a homeless guy in the subway air guitaring it"
In five years, I don't think there will be a BlackBerry market
Because BlackBerry is doing so well these days, ofc they know what's going on. I'd trust them more than Apple for example or even Samsung.
BlackBerry seems incapable of judging where there market is going. That's why they were blindsided when the iPhone came out. They still had a chance to adapt, but they pretty much pretended like the iPhone didn't exist. Even after Android came out they had their heads in the sand. By the time they finally woke up, it was too late.
From the company bleeding money for the last three years because it has absolutely no idea what customers want, comes the grand declaration "Customers won't want tablets."
Maybe if Blackberry had released a tablet that had full access to the Android market, they might have sold some. My daughter got a playbook from her boyfriend's parents a few months ago, and while the hardware is nothing to sneeze at, the fact that you couldn't even install the Netflix app was a revelation to me as to just how clueless RIM/Blackberry really is.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Blackberry is dying. That's correct
Dead company walking.
Considering that laptops are basically turning in to hybid tablets, I believe you will see the opposite. I believe that laptops will continue to reduce in size and become high-end tablets. Dell just released a really cool 18inch i-series tablet.
Screen Real Estate.
There is some stuff you Just. Cant Do. On a phone. The screen is too small.
IF his idea that phones will be a little bigger, do we really want to look like an idiot walking around with a giant brick to our head? Or have to wory about always using a bluetooth earpiece? And where will you stick that larger than you prefer phone?
IMHO an iPhone 5 is starting to get a little too big. The larger samsungs are even worse.
...Apple CEO Tim Cook believes that RIM will be dead by 2018. 'In five years I don't think there'll be a reason to buy a BlackBerry anymore'.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Since they are in the tablet biz and their other form-factors have done so much better...
Keep talking, no one is listening anyway :D
I personally don't have a tablet as I can't find any use for it. My phone does everything the tablet can do (except having a bigger screen, but bigger is not always better) and if I want to do something more productive I start up my computer.
Most people seems to just use it for entertainment - and if that is the case, there is no reason to upgrade it everytime there is a new model.
Mats and tables are the future!
Guy who was late to the party says the party was boring anyway.
Market saturation.
The people with disposable income that want gadgets have them already, the people who need to do work own ultrabooks and laptops, the consumer level crowd have smartphones that are nearly at "I can't fit this in my pocket anymore."
We just witnessed a microcosm of what's happening in the PC market happen in the blink of an eye.
BlackBerry Is Dying
I think he's right, but perhaps not in the way that people think.
I predict that within 5-10 years we'll see tablets that are really hybrids of today's laptops and tablets. They'll have the small tablet screen and run tablet apps but will also run full-fleged apps when given a keyboard and maybe a plug-in monitor or portable 15" LCD display.
So, I think tablets (as in small and almost-but-not-quite laptops) will die.
Most tablets sold are used for cutting fruits in games and just because "everyone has one".The years to come will test its real value and whether the tablet has any real uses. I believe that the sales will start declining soon , because it is not really essential to buisness or home and its uses are limited since phones can do most of the stuff a tablet can plus all the phone functionality. I am dissapointed by software makers that decided that they should ignore all their customers using laptops and desktops,and started adjusting everything just to fit in the tablet market(like windows8)
The major issue is that tablets are great content consumption devices for watching video or reading but piss poor content creation devices.
The real issue is that anyone still thinks that.
People who actually own tablets know they can be great for creation also.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've had several smart phones but recently picked up my first tablet. I do most of my smart phone stuff on the tablet now. I'm now looking at the end of my current cell contract and realizing I'd be better off going to a basic cell.
I have an Asus Transformer TF700T tablet with a detachable keyboard. I can VNC remote desktop. I can access SMB shares. I can game, surf, and do stuff I never would do on a phone (or Blackberry).
The thing in my house that's collecting dust? My old dell laptop. If I need to do real work I'm on my desktop. It's been months since I opened the screen on my laptop. I'm going to wipe it and give it to the kids. There's your dying form factor.
Did he hire Cmdr Taco to perform his market research?
This really hasn't caught on in the main stream. If anything it's mostly the laptop manufacturers struggling to stay relevant with gimmicks. For business purposes even those tablet/laptop hybrids really aren't that useful. Hell even for school when I lugged a laptop to class I'd still prefer a more durable laptop than these gimmicky looking laptop/tablet cases.
As someone who works in educational technology, I can say with confidence that tablets are going to be sticking around for well beyond 2018. Take a look at all the schools that have or are starting 1:1 programs, and you'll see that more than half of those programs are using iPads or some other tablet. Look at the OLPC tablets and what's been happening with them. Certainly there's a certain group of people who might not "get" tablets because they're not "traditional" computers, but that does nothing to discount how intuitive they can be, especially to children and the elderly. No, you're not going to be doing extensive command-line work from a tablet, but nobody is suggesting that tablets will entirely overthrow traditional computers. Tablets are an educator's dream. You don't have to teach a child to use a mouse--they just touch what they want. Hell, you hardly have to teach any of the basic functions of a tablet to a child at all; they can figure just about everything out themselves.
Despite blackberry's performance lately I tend to agree. I've got a iPad 3rd gen, an android tablet, and a Samsung s3. I use the s3 everyday for all the same tasks I would have used tablets for. I'm not even sure the other two tablets are charged right now. When I do real computing I use my laptop.
Oh, and the laptop is dying.
And the desktop.
And the smart phone.
And TVs.
And VGA.
And DVI.
Have I left anything out? I'm sure there's plenty.
Some random dude, especially an idiot CEO who's only proficient at spending money, saying "THIS IS DYING" isn't newsworthy, and they're almost always wrong.
Fun to say and fun to type! On the other hand, I'm not sure how two people could share (view, point, manipulate) the same image with google goggles.
Of course the tablet market isn't dying. It could possibly be described as a bubble at the moment, but that doesn't mean that that sales are going to disappear within the next five years.
The issue is more that tablets are essentially as powerful as they'll need to be for the next five years, if not longer. They're designed to be highly portable devices that can access the internet and be used as ebook readers, but are large enough to be easier to read from than a smartphone. Aside from the people who need to have the new shiny, most people who own or are thinking of buying a tablet will only upgrade when it can no longer handle their needs, much like Windows XP computers.
I think tablets are fine for the niche they fill. They make great little consumption devices that are somewhat inexpensive, and handle web content just fine. I have a few sitting around at home that we can just pick up and check email with, or my kid can go watch netflix on the bed, or whatever. They certainly aren't going to be replaces computers for anyone but the most casual of consumers, but they do fill a technology gap very nicely.
One thing that he hints at, which I agree with, is that tablets aren't going to change too much in the next five years. Overall sales will level off once everyone has one, and I do suspect the wifi-only versions will be the primary sellers after that. Prices will probably settle in the 100-200 dollar range, at most, with plenty of $50 options. They'll basically take the same route that MP3 players took 10 years ago.
so many delicious tears, mah bucket cannot hold dem all
Not a single "Netcraft confirms it." This just isn't the slashdot I used to know. Now get off my lawn.
Translation: Tablets are skyrocketing, just not ours. Maybe if we tell everyone tablets are dying they'll buy ours!
They were in star trek. They'll be around. Everyone likes phones for communication. Tablets will replace books eventually. Tablets will replace phones even.
Think about a tablet with a flexible screen. One that you can roll up. Now think about a cell phone type stick device that you can put to your ear. Now think about pulling out a display for when you need to use it's screen. And then when you're done just let it roll back into the device.
Welcome to the next tablet device.
Blackberry is completely short sighted.
I have a couple of cheap tablets with the Allwinner A10 SOC. One is running Ice Cream Sandwich, and one is running Jelly Bean. The Ice Cream Sandwich one could be running Jelly Bean, if it were worth the bother. So, they are reasonably up to date. Use? One is used mostly as a glorified remote control for MPD[1]. But it also lets me know when I have emails (I go to a real computer to deal with the emails) and is used as a clock. The other is used as a clock, and both a MPD remote control and streamer. Very useful they are. I can only afford to use them like this because they are reasonably inexpensive. (I even have an old Nokia N800 in the shed (garage) which I use as a MPD remote control and streamer.)
They are fine when used in this way, and I think that the touch interface helps to make them ideal MPD remote controls.
[1] I used to use it for steaming as well, but now have a Raspberry PI with pulseaudio in place of it, so I can have the music in that room in sync with the music in other rooms.
Best wishes,
Bob
But I think the tablet is just to useful in mobile situations, and phone screens are often just to small. For my work purposes, Real Estate, 10" tablets are useful, but cumbersome. Phone screens are to small when trying to show a client something. 7" to 8" seems to be a good balance.
I still keep a desktop & laptop [Chrome devices] going for the 'hard core' stuff. Marketing, word processing, contract writing and the like.
Keep in mind...this assessment is coming from a company that released a tablet...without the ability to use email on it. You couldn't use what is arguably the best feature on the Blackberry...rock solid email integration. I used to think that tablets were going to be a fad too. But I'm seeing more and more of them and at the end of the day, most people are consumers of content not producers. Sure, tablets suck for coding but how many people are coding vs. the general public? A very small percentage I would venture. Are tablets going to replace laptops and desktops? I doubt it. But I see tablets evolving, not dying out.
To me the most compelling feature of the tablet is all day battery life. With a desktop, you're tethered to the desk. With a laptop you've got mobility but only for a few hours. Then you're looking for an electrical outlet to charge up. Only the tablet and smartphone currently offers 8-10 hours of battery life and that's huge. When laptop batteries can last that long I see a big upswing in laptop sales. Until then, I see more and more tablets getting sold.
The other thing tablets have going for them is that they are so damn easy to use. Compare iOS or Android to Windows. Windows is far more complicated and, for a lot of people, they just want the simplicity of the tablet OS.
I'd say they're okay for creation at best...at least the kind that I do.
Given the choice I'd *far* rather use a full-sized keyboard/mouse and big monitor (1920x1200 but I want to go bigger) for just about anything creative--writing code, retouching photos, editing video, or even just writing this comment.
They didn't want to alienate the people who loved their devices because they had full physical keyboards. They tried a full touchscreen device with the Storm and Storm II, but it failed miserably. The touch screens were horrible, buggy, and their attempts to provide tactile feedback were not very well done (you had to not only touch a key, but also apply pressure, which made it awkward). The Torch was a nice device, with a decent touchscreen and a full slide out keyboard, but it was, as you note, way late to the party.
Blackberry thought they had a lock on the enterprise market. Then apple licensed exchange making expensive BES systems uncessary.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I think he's right. Have you noticed that phones are getting bigger and tablets are getting smaller? I think phones are about to eat tablets in the same way they ate other stand along devices. People don't want two devices. They want one.
Personally, I hate the idea.
there are two or three more to follow in that time, by which time only media detail pros (movie editing, zillion-track music recording, etc) and the odd developer will be the PC market. everything else will be on phones or tablets.
tablets.
you know, the 6-core things you carry in your hand with 4DTV resolution that cost $400 or less.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
It's undoubtedly true that there are niche markets for tablets, and I suspect that's what he was trying to say.
Five years is a very long time in computing, and clunky tablets look to have the shelf-life of DVD players (if not Blue-Ray).
If wearable development continues as it is, big gray bricks don't have much of a future at all, they are a transition technology. Specific niche markets: health-care, and some forms of education, yes. General purpose devices? Probably not.
....do tablets have value for getting actual work done? No. Are they useful for watching video in a much larger format than a cell phone (for about the same price or in certain cases much, much less than an iPhone), playing music, doing a bit of browsing, playing games? I.e., as media/information consumption device? Yes, they are very good for that. To get any real work done that involves typing and benefits from a large monitor or monitors? No, they suck for that, badly.
With 6-8" Android tabs hitting the $50-$75 price point certain to go lower I see tabs as basically mini game, Netflix, Facebook, video, music etc. machines for kids, adults, teens, college students. Yes some will use them to maintain order and organization in their lives (Evernote, OneNote and other sundry productivity apps) and do creative things like art, freehand writing, etc. For most Westerners at those point the tablet price basically makes them disposable and also makes them affordable for third-world/developing nations where the OLPC, a sturdy but not great computing device. Best of all a tablet doesn't require subsidization to be viable in the third world and when very very cheap Chinese Android devices can probably be made in the $15-$25 range they are nearly disposable even for the third world.
Junior dumped your $50 6" Android tab in the toilet and it's a sparking mess? Just toss it and buy a new one from Wal-Mart or Target. That's where tablets are headed, very quickly: Ultra-cheap commodity junk.
For a certain percentage of the population tablets essentially provide them with a meaningful entry point into the world of computing without buying a full laptop which, while very cheap these days, are more work to maintain and have more moving parts that can fail (hard drives, fans, power supplies, etc.) not to mention very vulnerable OSes like Windows that constantly have to be watched over.
Pity Mr. Heins didn't see his own business model going down the tubes 5 years out.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
between the fruits, guess which one tastes more like sour grapes?
The difference between netbooks/chromebooks & a tablet? One has a keyboard attached... one uses a bluetooth keyboard.
That and 10" netbooks tended to be cheaper than a 10" tablet, a Bluetooth keyboard, and a case to keep them together. And netbooks shipped with an operating system that supports tiled or overlapping windows, unlike tablets whose operating systems inherit the all maximized all the time window management policy from the smartphones that they were originally designed for. And when you do need a more precise pointing device, there's more of a culture of using an external mouse with a netbook than with a tablet.
Even using today's technology, one can plug their tablet (nexus 10) into a large format display. I use a 52 inch display when I'm in workstation mode, and a bluetooth full sized keyboard. I can use the tablet's display surface as an input device for handwritten notes and drawings. The best voice interface I've experienced is with my tablet. When I take a crap or a bath, I read books I've downloaded. All of the input and output modalities of the tablet will continue to improve the content creation experience. This decade, tablets will have 64 or more cores. For most purposes, they will replace desktops, laptops, game consoles, dvd players, and hard copy books. Phones will be wearable, like watches or glasses.
Isn't that the company that, 5 years ago, expected they'd still be a leader in commercially used mobile phones, instead of being pretty near extinction?
making tools for content producers (sometimes pretty exclusive tools) is a big business.
It's a big business, but it's not necessarily a business that takes advantage of the economies of scale of serving the mass market. It's a very niche market, and niches can demand a sticker price beyond the resources of students or hobbyists. Case in point: a video game console devkit costs upwards of $3,000 and requires at least some of the buyer's employees to have had verifiable experience in the commercial video game industry.
typing more than a couple of sentences in a row on a tablet touchscreen gets old quick.
Then include the price of a Bluetooth keyboard in the price that you quote to people who ask about tablets.
new form factors made possible by the same techniques that worked in the tablets have closed the size gap. If I can get an 11" laptop that does "real computer" stuff, boots instantly, and runs quietly and comfortably in my lap... I don't really have a use-case for the tablet anymore.
One problem is that they don't make 10" laptops anymore. The 10" form factor hit the sweet spot for my own use case, and nobody appears to make anything smaller than 11" anymore that isn't a tablet.
In short, it was worth the inconvenience of trying to type on a touchscreen when tablets had so many other advantages-- but those advantages have all either gone away or shrunk considerably.
Unless your Ultrabook laptop is "convertible", there's still the problem of how to use it while standing up.
I'd *far* rather use a full-sized keyboard
Every tablet that isn't a Kindle Fire supports Bluetooth keyboards.
big monitor (1920x1200 but I want to go bigger)
Both the current iPad and the iPad before it have a bigger built-in display than that. So does the Nexus 10.
Is this just because the playbook sales were horrible. In 5 years, given the current state of processing / memory power I think tablets will be very much integrated into our lives even more so. Currently I'm on a tablet for probably 1 - 2 hours a day because of it's connivance, if the processing power in tablets keep increasing then I think we can start to transition over to tablets for much of the work we do day to day. The tablet is the best of both worlds, it's in between a phone and computer, what you can't do on a phone and don't want to pull your notebook out for a tablet is prefect. I think Blackberry's CEO is just a little bit sad that his company just couldn't make a great selling tablet, although I will say that the Playbook physically is a good piece of hardware, if only it would of hit the shelves on time to be a contender.
I own 3 tablets: The N10, The iPad4, and a Surface. I can't do any significant coding on any of them, and forget compiling.
Coding is not what the vast majority of people do with any device. It's a niche interest, and other Slashdot users keep reminding me that it is fair to charge substantially more for devices that serve a niche interest.
Let me know when you can run anything remotely like Xcode on your iPad and Bluetooth keyboard without using your iPad and Bluetooth keyboard as just a terminal for a Mac. An SSH or VNC terminal doesn't work when you're away from open Wi-Fi. Or are Codea and Pythonforios enough?
Bitching about how a tablet is awkward for editing audio or under powered for rendering special effects, is about as insightful as pointing out that a television doesn't enable one to make their own movies.
Consider a television that will only play video from the major networks (over the air and cable/satellite), not video from your camcorder, unless you buy a specific brand of DVR manufactured by the manufacturer of the television and subscribe to the DVR's service with an annual recurring fee. Some of the cryptographic restrictions on tablets resemble that, where "television" is an iPad, "DVR" is a Mac, and "service" is the iOS developer program.
[Installing CyanogenMod is] a nuisance, but less of a nuisance than installing Windows upgrades.
How so? Installing a service pack into Windows doesn't necessarily wipe user data. Installing CyanogenMod does. Better have already bought a PC with which to back everything up with the Carbon app.
Or, rather, it tanked horribly, the huge unsold inventory they tried to shove through "the channel" (retailers and distribution chains), but which users never bought, was so bad that it became a logistic problem of its own.
Vacuum cleaners suck. Kings rule.
Say you want to read something while standing in line. Would you rather do this on a 7" tablet or a 13" laptop?
Laptops are bulky and heavy. Netbooks offer a terrible user experience
So why aren't there any Ultrabook laptops (which eliminate the "heavy" and the "terrible user experience") with a 10 inch screen (which would eliminate the "bulky")? Is there some law of physics that keeps manufacturers from shrinking Ultrabook laptops from 11 inches to 10 inches, or is it artificial market segmentation again?
Netbooks were a fad, and the reason for that is that you can get an i3 laptop now for pretty much the same price you'd pay for a well-specced netbook just a few years ago.
But can I get one with a 10" screen so that it'll fit on my lap on a crowded bus and fit in my bag? Or would I have to buy a bigger bag that screams "there's a computer in here; steal it!"?
...if something like an upgraded/improved Google Glass takes off in time.
It's hard to beat the subjective screen size of a thing that draws on your eye.
If it's got eye tracking and is combined either with peering with other devices that have tolerable input mechanisms (phone? keyboard?) or with something Kinect-like, then sure, physical tablets may become less common.
I doubt that's what they mean, though.
I can't think of a point of view that I disagree with more then tablets are not the future.
Just because his failphone isn't selling doesn't mean the tablet is dead or dieing. I find my iPad extremely useful for what I do a lot of: surf the internet. Instant on and easy to use. Can't beat "works". Sounds like sour grapes to me.
While I disagree with those that say the PC is dead / will be dead soon, it really comes down to computing power, connectivity, ease of use, and screen real estate. Depending on your application, for most users, a smart phone is too small to do much other than check email, play Fruit Ninja, and tick people off on Facebook. Actual decent web browsing, movie watching, paper writing etc... becomes a reality with a tablet, especially when you throw a decently usable case and keyboard in the mix... (On screen keyboards do have a huge suck factor...). For serious computing tasks, graphics / video / audio editing / processing, well... tablets have a LONG way to go... Of course having said THAT, I would put my cheapie Pengpod 1000 up against my old top of the line AMD Athlon 1400 512MB ATA100 hard drives PC from the late 90s / early 2000s.... any day of the week, without any hesitation... But compared to my newer octo core 32GB SSD box.... Forget it...
Look at all of the corporate douchebags that show up to meetings with their tablets, only to go back to their desks and print out the notes that they struggled to type on a small touchscreen.
Tablets will still work for home use, but are a real pain in the ass when it comes to office productivity. They are single-app based. It is difficult to multitask on a small screen.
What's the difference between Blackberry and Apple? Well, a Blackberry is a small, bitter fruit.
Most people seem to want to upgrade their phone every time a new one comes out... but people seem more content with their tablet. I dunno why. Marketing, perhaps?
Until very recently, the major United States cellular carriers haven't given a discount on service for buying your phone up front or for keeping a phone whose 2-year contract has already been paid off. So to them, a $350 phone is free because they won't save any money on the next two years of phone bills by not taking it. T-Mobile is the first major U.S. carrier (apart from the prepaid MVNOs) to itemize financing of the phone as a separate, optional line item on the bill that drops off after two years.
I think it should have been clarified that the market for expensive tablets is dying. The fad aspect with first adopters has peaked, and now that people are getting them for more practical rather than trendy purposes the low-cost tablets are becoming more popular. (Android is Android - at least if not locked down, the average touch screen quality isn't too bad, and sufficient processing power and batteries that will last for a day are ubiquitous.) Also it's a tail-end thing as the market becomes saturated, it's a race to the bottom in price. Whoever can make a half-decent sub-$100 tablet will be considered the winner of this market in the future.
I can get to my emails or to a website in less than a second from picking it up, whereas with a laptop it takes maybe 20-30 seconds if it is on standby
So in other words, the big difference is that tablets stay associated to Wi-Fi while asleep and laptops don't. Am I understanding you right? Because I've noticed this as well between my Dell laptop and my Nexus 7 tablet.
... when reading dies. Or, alternatively, when everyone has bionic, microscopic vision to make out the fine print on small screens.
We had mostly forgotten BlackBerry, and now that he says something absurd, suddenly everyoone is paying attention. Negative attention is still attention. The only bad news is no news. etc.
Wow. I normally come to slashdot to read intelligent tech news comments. These comments are as bad as the ones on CNET. I can't defend the way Theins said it but he is absolutely correct. If the mobile technology keeps developing at its current pace, you would be an idiot to ever carry around more than one computer in 5 years. There will be tablet like screens to dock your phone in and there will be laptop like devices to do the same. Likely there will be hybrids of those two as well. Functional independance always wins in the end...
Actually, I take that back. It will take longer than 5 years because of everybody being 'stuck in their ways'.
Perhaps he is looking at rolling out holographic display and input, which work with a device much smaller than a tablet.
Why is it so hard to imagine a technology that "only" stays relevant for 8 years or so? The iPod became relevant in 2004 and stopped being so shortly after the iPhone's introduction. That's less than 8 years of relevance. The iPad is in its Year 3. By the way, there are so much dissing around here that it seems Slashdot has become just another site where haters and fanboys gather.
It's just like netbooks a few years ago, except netbooks are actually a lot more useful than tablets, and are vastly underrated.
I was not interested in buying a tablet, but then my wife bought an ipad 3 because everyone else has one. Initially she was very excited. But when she had to do some real stuff, like filing income taxes, booking airplane tickets, or just send emails, she finds herself going back to her main computer: a 3 year old netbook. She watches some online tv shows and find the netbook actually more convenient, because you can place it on the table without having to prop it up. After maybe two weeks, my wife declared she won't be using the tablet anymore, and the ipad was transferred to me. I actually use it a lot, for playing "hay day"!
Speaking of the ipad specifically, I find it to be rather an oxymoron. It's supposed to be a highly portable device, yet it's connectivity is so limited and transferring data in and out is such a chore. My wife asked me how to get pictures and movies onto the ipad to view on the road, and I said "well, you hook it up with a desktop, and copy through itunes, ..." before I could finish, she said "forget it". The ipad is supposed to be mainly a web device. Yet so many websites do not function well under it. And a lot of websites have a special mode for the ipad, which I find rather annoying because the special edition cuts out functionalities that I actually want to use, and often there's no way to switch to the full version! Having used the ipad for a while, it's just what I thought it was, a beautiful toy, for me anyway.
Not sure Thorsten is someone with a good record of making predictions. Certainly blackberry hasn't done that well seeing where the market is heading. Nah....I'll stay put with Apple.
Sounds like a cry of sour grapes on BlackBerry's part.
Whaa.
n/t
PC's are dead.
No, tablets are dead.
No, PC's are dead.
No, TABLETS are dead.
You're stupid.
No. YOU'RE stupid.
...
Did I get enough sarcasm in there? I'm oozing it as hard as I can!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I've got the feeling that this is just RIM being predictably frustrated with their own failures in the tablet market. Just look at the Playbook when it shipped. It lacked so much native functionality, requiring owners to already have or purchace a Blackberry just to do things that other tablets had by default. It took them forever to get those features built into their platform. So is it really any surprise RIM is trying to make these claims? It's jealousy and little else over the fact they couldn't compete with iOS or Android. This is true for both the tablet market AND the smartphone market. Don't believe it, take a quick look at sales and market share.
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
Thorsten's view is obviously from a business or work based applications use, which is highly likely as regards the bulk of tablets. However as the price drops for tablets their real target market becomes far more accessible, a toy, content consumption and a remote control. In fact tablet computers are becoming very popular children's toys.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
... CEO of a one of the lowest selling tablets on the market predicts end of the tablet!
The tablet market is not dying, but I think the device is still looking for a purpose beyond casual consumption of content. I'm desperate to switch from a laptop to a tablet, especially in the field, but the apps for content creation just aren't there yet. Android and iPad devices have the touch paradigm down very well, but the apps oriented towards content creation still aren't much beyond "let's take a picture of Fred and then draw a moustache on him. Hee hee."
Remember those futurist commercials a few years ago where someone is doing serious design work with just gestures on a surface? That's what's (still) missing.
For content consumers, tablets are sexy and convenient. For content creators, tablets are still unrealized potential. And I can see where people, frustrated by what they *could* do but still don't, could start to be seeing them as a passing fad.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
And so do I
Still waiting for my projected holographic screen. *sigh* Then marble-sized computers will totally replace smartphones and tablets.
Ever since they stuck their heads in the sand and said the iPhone cannot be done, therefore it would not be done, BB has had a habit of pretending challenges can't exist, therefore they don't exist, and they keep on the track they had already decided to follow.
The iPhone got done. I can't stand the device myself but I admire the heck out of Apple for upsetting the, er, apple cart that was the feature phone and forced everybody to innovate. Except BB. No, they had it mapped out and figured out and BES was going to live forever!
Except, well, the sand BB stuck their head into got fused into glass when the fires of innovation rolled across Waterloo.
Sig for hire.
Actually blackberry is a sweet fruit, with no bitterness whatsoever. It is not bitter or sour like a raspberry or black raspberry that it resembles. It is a mellow fruit, but the sweetness has a great taste to it. Delicious. I would much rather eat blackberries than apples. In fact, if it weren't for the much greater cost of blackberries, I wouldn't even eat apples but on rare occasion!
Really, tablets have been itching to become the main computing platform since ill-fated attempts from Bill Gates windows tablets in the 90's. The future of PC's is tablets or small factor boxes with complete wireless connectivity to input and output devices.. it's not really hard to see why..,..
Tablets will continue to get more powerful and more functional. Of course they are not content creation devices today, but that's because they are hampered by early generation mobile OS's . Future version of tablets will be dockable into keyboards (for power reasons mostly), support a wide variety of input devices (mouse support is already part Google android nexus ) and support wireless HDMI (something like miracast) to display on anything you want. What's really preventing tablets from becoming content creation devices today, is limited input support but that will change and it will get much better over time. The traditional PC is done, all that's saving it is the windows application software, once mobile OS's catch up in performance (likely a few years away) and mobile OS's become more flexible, we'll see a lot more content creation, that means things like autocad, photoshop , excel etc. will all be tablet based. Now that doesn't mean you'll just be using a tablet in the traditional touch sense, rather, the tablet will serve as the computing engine with a touch screen, but the bulk of input will still be done on keyboards, mice, stylus etc...
This guy is completely out of it and is just trying to sure up Black Berry stock until they can find a buyer.. this post was written on a tablet..
I have watched people use their BB devices with some morbid fascination for some years. I would say that BB got it right in the early years in identifying that people wanted a pocket computer with a phone feature. They also nailed it in selling these devices to go-getter MBA bring-your-A-game business types. They solidly earned the name Crackberry. But somewhere after 2000 they just seemed to drop the ball. My brother called it when one of the BB owners bought a sports team. He said, "If you are a nerd and suddenly you are able to hang out with the cool kids do you go back to hanging out with the nerds?"
The horrible thing is that BB had just about everything right but just kept missing out on the little things that were show stoppers. They had apps long ago but it was almost impossible to sell an app as they really didn't seem to want to help. People blah blah about the toughness of older Nokias but older BB were at least as indestructible.
But then suddenly there were 8,000 different models and as the phones genuinely became more capable BB gave IT departments huge capabilities to disable all kinds of features like connecting to WiFi. So you had a bunch of people running around with smartphones that had IT inflicted brain damage. The result was Fortune 500 companies handing out free BB phones to their executives and management who then went out and bought their own $700 iPhone. This was because the iPhone was cool but also hadn't been molested by the IT department in the name of security or some nonsense.
Then they created the hot-mess of the playbook. I have written at length about how crappy that thing is even though it has good bones. BB put layer upon layer of stupid and then dipped it in a bath of frustration. It just popped into my head. I should check to see if there is an Android hack/port for that thing.
About the only thing that I would say about the tablet (dying) is that smart phones are almost the size of iPad minis. I would call them tablet phones. By that measure the tablet market is about to boom. Personally I am not a tablet phone fan but for those who don't buy a desktop/laptop and it is their primary interface to the internet then bigger is better. If smart watches then can reduce the need to pull out the monster phone to see texts, check the time, etc. Then the boom will become a full on explosion of tablet phones.
All in all I would ignore just about anything a BB person has to say as they clearly haven't talked to(as in listened to) any customer/potential customer in 10 years.
A simple example of this would be that I noticed that nearly all my 13 year old daughter's friends had BBs. They loved the great texting. I suspect that many of the BB phones were hand me downs from parents getting one for free and then replacing it with an iPhone. But many were actually going out and buying them. BB didn't seem to exploit this market in any way that I detected. Now the 14 year old crowd has all gone iPhone (not android much).
Now when I see someone with a BB I think: Middle management slave.
Don't think it's BlackBerry that's being shortsighted as much as posters here being close minded.
The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) concept video from 2010:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7_mOdi3O5E
BlackBerry Concept video from 2012:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=__tW8zEEC7w#!
Note: Blackberry acquired TAT back in 2010(?) and TAT was the force that created the BB10 Cascades UI.
Market to Balckberry: You Are Dying.
eventually wireless displays and cloud - like computing ad-hock mesh networking personal mobile clusters will replace tablets... I think that is MUCH faster off than most people expect.
I have designed and are demoing to a major telco a self adjusting mobile cluster system where effectively the display of the "tablet" is automatically attached to a large screen HDTV using WiFi Direct and many of the hard core computing is offloaded to a companion Android Micro PC (quad cores, two GB RAM) so the phablet is then offloading most if not all of the heavy tasks to specialised, temporally available and constantly updateable devices very specialised.
it is like when at first specialized graphic cards or math coprocessors appeared... you enhance the native power of a computer by adding a expanzion board.
This means that NOW a very low end phone, tablet or phablet can actually work a lot like a much more powerful laptop or desktop but with a minuscule power consumption and extreme ease of shifting workloads brom one device subsystem to the next.
Wow what are RIM smoking?
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
I do not like to use radio-transmitters around me if I can help it. Electromagnetic radiation is not safe.
And I do not like to connect wires all the time. I would like to keep a computer with keyboard and mouse.
as the name future had become black (dark) for berry RIP . you are correct for every action there is equal and opposite reaction. for more details on mobile apps development click here 9pstudio
Sounds like sour grapes from Blackberry...
...we rule and you all suck.
Where do they get these idiot CEO's? He should be fired on the spot for making such stupid remarks.
Repalce 'tablet' with 'BlackBerry' and he might have a point.
Too late to comment on this, there are already too many comments and no one will see this, but Google, Apple, Amazon, etc have used up worldwide tablet manufacturing capacity and BB is too late, and probably can't put together a tablet supply chain to meet their demand. So they are saying tablets aren't all that.
BB needs to look a little closer to home. The market for black berry devices is moribund and likely irrecoverable because of their inability to have the right products at the right time. Time has passed them by and if they don't act fast they won't get full value for the patent suites their only somewhat valuable asset. They are in no position to make any judgements about the tablet market. Do we consult Packard for advice about 2014 cars? Chutzpah or stupidity, take your pick.
Honestly, nine times out of ten, if a nerd makes nothing but technical claims against some product
Apple prohibits distribution of iPhone and iPad apps used for troubleshooting a wireless local area network. Apple prohibits distribution of web browsers that implement HTML5 features that Apple purposely left out of Safari. Is that still a "technical claim"?
I think the all "all maximized all the time window management" is becoming less of a problem. Just look at the multi-window feature on Samsung's Galaxy Note series, it's absolutely wonderful.
Let me know when that becomes a standard feature of Android and not something limited to the applications developed by developers big enough to draw Samsung's attention. I'm told that split-screen in the Galaxy Note series is limited to applications on a whitelist maintained by Samsung.
And I said "upgrade" not "update".
Is Android 4.1 to Android 4.2 an "update" or an "upgrade"? I'm unfamiliar with accepted terminology in the Android ecosystem because where I come from (Xubuntu), "update" means check for new versions of applications and operating system components and "upgrade" means install them.
With tethering moving to the mainstream, the amount of time that people are away from a usable Wi-Fi connection is getting rarer and rarer.
I'm not very familiar with common practices in the tethering market. Do most people who tether cancel their home Internet and put up with the cellular carrier's cap, or do they somehow figure out how to afford an additional recurring expense of several hundred dollars per year?
Most content created also isn't code, so Xcode is an irrelevant niche.
There's a meme going around Slashdot lately that just because niches are irrelevant to 51 percent, they need not be served at all.
How exactly does creating spreadsheets, presentations, and music work on your favorite tablet?
See, amazingly, when you touch on a text area in a web form, a virtual keyboard pops up, and check this out - you can use it to type on.
That's web forms, not spreadsheets, presentations, or music. Spreadsheets use the mouse to select a cell and to change column widths. Presentations use the mouse to change the size of text areas and place graphics. In my experience, the precision has tended to be lower than that of even a laptop's trackpad. It seems like this loss of precision would cause the user to select the wrong cell in a spreadsheet because it has cause me to click the wrong link on a web page or select the wrong field in a web form. And I still haven't had music adequately explained to me.
How many tablets have been sold?
Argumentum ad populum. Just because one product category has become more popular in a given year doesn't mean that the competing product category should necessarily be discontinued.
How much evidence do you need to ignore before you change your position that they aren't going away?
I'd like to see videos of them in use to do what you claim.
I don't know how that works- I use a ROM on my galaxy s3 that gives it the note 2 multi-window function, and all apps work just fine on it. I'll often use it with ingress on the top widow and Google maps open in the other and it works like a champ. I often wonder why, when discussing content creation on tablets, there is never any mention of drawing apps. I have an hp touchpad running jelly bean, and have several very nice drawing apps, works great with stylus or finger. The note suits tablets are even better, they have a built in wacom style digitizer for really precise drawing, I'm pretty sure sketchbook pro (autodesk) supports it, as do a bunch of other apps.
And the Bold, a hybrid touch screen/physical keyboard machine, broken at core points.
Something as simple as scrolling is broken: Scrolling on the touch-nub or whatever is old style, as if you're moving a scrollbar... swipe up to move the page down. Scrolling on the screen itself is new style... swipe down to move the page down.
They also broke simple things like how key navigations work in the OS changed between OS6 and OS7. The letter N for Next used in mail used to mean Next chronologically. Now it means Next in list, which in a descending order sort is opposite of what it used to mean. At least on a Mac you can config these navigation issues and slowly get used to the change.
I do hope the Blackberry machines do something good. They've had execution and design issues for years, and they missed some good delivery targets (whether you want to call it Holiday 2012 or End Of Fiscal 2012, they could have sold a lot more if they had some ready in November/December). I think having some alternatives to Android/iOS is good, and Blackberry may have a better shot than Windows Phone.
I still think he doesn't get the Ecosystem thing. As iOS/Android developers make apps that make money on phones and tablets, the pool of developers gets bigger. There are more people with skills that can make enterprise apps. Then more enterprise apps.
I see in Chicago a lot of stores/restaurants that have iPads as cash registers. In the Apple store, I can pick up a dongle to make my phone take credit cards. These are pure business apps. If Blackberry feels they can give away these beachhead apps into small businesses without it affecting their long term prospects, they're in real trouble.
Just launched a puzzle on our iOS crossword game, Crickler. The “Worst Tech Predictions EVER” puzzle features Blackberry’s CEO’s Thorsten Heins’ claim that “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore” and other infamous tech predictions from the past. Notable examples include Michael Dell’s 1997 suggestion that Apple Computer shut down and return their money to shareholders, Sir. Alan Sugar’s claim that the iPod would be dead by 2005. Link: http://appmodo.com/76534/blackberry-ceos-prediction-inspires-new-puzzle-in-ios-game-crickler/
Saying crazy stuff is only useful if you are going to be right.
BAAAWWWW! Our tablet is going nowhere! Nobody is buying our tablet! Oh noes! That means the whole tablet market will die! I'm going to take my ball and go home! Whaahhh! *sniff*
Considering the Blackberry Storm died off when Apple crushed them, this revelation of his seems more like wishful thinking from a defeated person than anything else.
Since Blackberry and RIM enjoy being the Slowpokes of both the smartphone and now tablet market, I'm pretty sure their eventual extinction will be met with both no surprise and no fucks given.
I fucking love my tablet as a reading device. Battery lasts forever. Text size is awesome. Trillions of interesting PDFs to be read. Tablets are fantastic for on-the-go the consumption of highly technical material. I don't see myself not needing that in 8 years and about the only thing that will replace my need for a tablet is e-paper.
I hold a different opinion from Mr. Heins. Tablets will evolve to include cellphone data and wi-fi. And they may become voice activated.
Since Samsung with S4 has an application to follow your eyes, the tablet will evolve to have something more intelligent than mouse/keyboard input.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I believe there is a legitimate possibility that a user's smartphone will become the is single center of their personal computing and connectivity. Tablets simply become an accessory to the phone, whereby the phone docks (physically or wirelessly) onto the tablet and it is augmented with a larger screen and more battery. Similarly, the phone would dock to a larger screen and physical keyboard for computing tasks best suited to that form factor. Same for the TV screen for IPTV. The tablet, keyboard and larger screens are simply commoditized hardware and non-obsolescent. Change your phone, or upgrade your phone OS, and all your devices are automatically upgraded. This market evolution scenario is entirely conceivable. Arguably, all the major players, (Apple, Google, MS, as well as Ubuntu) are already moving toward it with their unifying/unified interfaces/OS and common cloud storage services for all their devices. Among Blackberry's many challenges is to find its roadmap into this future with what is now yet-to-be-determined shot at being a solid player in just the smartphone market.
I agree that for the average consumer, tablets are useless when you take into consideration most people need a PC and a smartphone. The average tablet using the most popular apps doesn't do anything that either of them can't do. The only real advantage is readability (think kindle, or if you use a calendar program because your schedule is actually that busy that it warrants it).
However, there is one use that I never hear people talk about, and it's one that has made a tablet absolutely worth every penny I spent on mine (a Dell Latitude ST, running Win7). MS OneNote. It is the only product MS ever made that I think is not only damn good software, but I feel like I actually got my money's worth out of it! I use it for school (currently pursuing EE degree). For math, it is simply awesome! No running out of paper space for that really long calculus equation, or needing to write microscopically small to fit it all before you run out of space. The stylus comes with two programmable buttons, so to erase, you just hold a button to make your stylus an eraser! It can record audio and video (helpful for recording lectures for later reference).
And since it's running an Intel processor, granted, it's the Atom :/ but it's still an Intel processor, meaning you can dual-boot it with your favorite distro of Linux. Honestly, if they could have just made it with a faster processor and a different graphics card (they used the same one as what's in the iPad, and Apple made sure to retain the rights to the drivers, so the one you get in your Dell is totally neutered), it would be the perfect tablet, and it would serve an actual purpose. Not just an expensive toy.
/rant
I see most TVs being gone soon, in favor of tablets. When the Internet provides more viewing choices, the chance that two members of the same family will want to watch the same show is lower. Out come the tablets, and everyone gets to watch what they want. The only reason to have a TV any more is the big family viewing event, or something that needs a big screen HDTV, like a movie, concert, or a sporting event.
After I had my Galaxy Note 2 with it's big 5+inch screen, I used my tablets less and less. I have now sold them all. The tablet computer is just a poorly formated big phone - with out a phone - and wont fit in your pocket.
He's correct, that his tablet market is dying.
You bought the wrong Netbook, dumbass. Stop blaming the hardware and take responsibility for your own purchasing stuffup. Tablets are frivolous junk. Awkward to hold. awkward to use, have no real-world usable and useful apps and are dead useless in daylight.
Blackberry was dead, long live tablets!
Blackberry was dead, long live tablets!
And how are these tablets actually helping students to learn ? Such gadgets are frivolous and are doing more to dumb students down and make them lazy. Whatever happened to real schooling where teachers actually taught and students actually thought and did real research ? You and your ilk are one of the primary reasons why students are getting more ignorant since you see technology as some kind of "holy grail" for education when the reality is very different. Good luck with indoctrinating students into the halls of mediocrity. You obviously got high honors in such a role.
Sorry but windows and microsoft are not awesome. Technology is awesome because it empowers individuals and groups of individuals. Computers are awesome because they allow us to extend the powers of our mind. While some people my find windows empowering, many technologists find it limiting, not just from a user perspective, but from an ecosystem perspective. Likewise there are some very advanced technologists who find ubuntu linux to be limiting. Given that many slashdot users are experienced technologists, it is not uncommon for people to express the view that "M$ sucks" The fact that the view "ubuntu is clearly an inferior linux distro" is a testament to the very high level of technical proficiency found in some slashdot users.
I seem to be aging right along with the screen technology--every better smartphone I upgrade to is just at the edge of "goofy-face"--that weird tilt of your head as you try to figure out the best distance and angle to see the screen clearly enough to read. Eventually, I fear my eyes will degrade faster than the screens will get better.
Tablets are handiest to "consume" content and media--look up a factoid, watch a clip, episode, or movie, comfortably read a book (up to a point), or play a little game. Thus returning the PC and laptops to their "work" status while tablets maintain the "convenience" and "entertainment" realms.
Why do I want two devices; two devices to maintain and populate with apps. I want one devices, probably a phone, that I can easily add a large touch screen or multiple touch screens)and keyboards etc. I see my self carrying around a phone, which has a docking station with two or more large screens, keyboard and mouse which I use at my desk. When I travel I take a 10 in. screen which attaches to my phone and I use of as tablet.
How can you not love netbooks?! Netbooks are exactly what laptops were twenty years ago only now they are at least a billion times more powerful and better in every imaginable way and for a tenth of the price!
Want a bigger screen? Hook up a cheap one, that's what I do (dual with the netbook screen of course, easy peasy in linux but position it wisely i.e. below so that the inbuilt graphics can handle the max resolution).
Want a full keyboard and ordinary mouse? USB baby! (I prefer the netbook keyboard but I have my wireless USB keyboard and mouse at the ready should there be any need --typing is superfast on the netbook).
Want more hard disks? SSD? Flash? Ever actually use a dvd or cd? Something as outrageous as floppies? Printing? Speakers? USB USB USB USB USB USB!!! There are dongles for everything.
And I can yank it all off and have a fully functioning ultraportable PC in a size that truly goes anywhere and gets the job done.
Netbooks, it's what laptops were supposed to be :D
(And USB is what PCMCIA was supposed to be).
What, you say?
You say that phones are smaller and tablets are bigger. But there have been 5" devices marketed as tablets (the Dell Streak 5) and 5" devices marketed as phones (Samsung Galaxy S4). There are devices popularly referred to as "phablets" because they straddle the boundary (Samsung Galaxy Note series).
So what differentiates phones and tablets? Phones can make phone calls but tablets could easily have phone capabilities added, and can make phone calls with Skype or Google Talk in any case. Phones have better cameras, for now. Tablets are bigger, except when they're not. Both phones and tablets can have 3G and 4G data, GPS, and NFC. The two leading mobile OSes (iOS and Android) run on phones and tablets.
Some people, especially those who use the smartphone frequently to make phone calls, will prefer a device small enough to put in a pocket. Some, especially those who use the tablet primarily for data, will prefer a device with a larger screen. (I'm in the latter camp; if I could have something the size of my Nexus 7 that could also make phone calls on the rare occasion that I actually talk on the phone I would buy it and give up my smartphone. Once there is a similar tablet with 4G LTE data I might buy a good Bluetooth headset and do that anyway.) Some will continue to carry both a large and a small device. And people who do a lot of writing will replace the larger device with a convertible notebook (or a tablet/notebook hybrid: ASUS Transformer, Microsoft Surface, HP Envy x2) so they can have a real keyboard.
It is possible that "tablet" as a distinct product category will die in five years. But products that we would recognize as tablets will not die. Netbooks haven't died either; they've just grown up into low-end Ultrabooks. The ASUS VivoBook x202e is an excellent example of what Netbooks wanted to be, and at the current price of under $500 it's almost cheap enough. This fall's Haswell-based Ultrabooks will be even less expensive, perhaps enough so to finally turn the Ultrabook into a hit.
There is a world market for four maybe five computers.
There's something mentally amiss with a large swath of the population here. They call others "fanbois" (with the extra-gay 'i' for good measure), but all they do is spew hatred for the things they don't like.
Exactly right!
I point out flaws in ANY product as I find them, I point out things I like about ANY product. And yet for the trouble I'm labeled some kind of Apple "fanboi", even though I pointed out plenty of negative things about Apple (like agreeing from the start the patent lawsuits were a bad idea) while pointing out good things about Windows Mobile and other devices, not to mention staunch PalmOS support...
It's really a shame that so many here are lost to hate. What kind of life is that to just going around constantly preaching hate for anything? It has to eat you from the inside.
Exactly your message is why I changed my signature to what it is now.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nerds like to tinker. So they hate things / people / circumstances / companies that try to stop / make illegal / make difficult to tinker.
That would make a lot of sense, but one of the EASIEST things to tinker with on the planet (from a software perspective) is a jailbroken iPhone!!
That's why I don't get why supposed "nerds" are so against iOS.
Why is it so hackable? Because of Objective-C being such a dynamic language, you essentially have the ability to inject code at any method calling points in EVERY APPLICATION. And because it is such a verbose language with named parameters, usually a decompiled app is really easy to figure out where the key methods are.
That is huge. It means you can easily tweak a small part of any app, rather than having your choice be simply replacing some monolithic piece of the system or doing nothing at all.
And to top it off, it's all UNIX to boot. I mean come on, there's hardly ever been anything so hacker friendly once you strip away the thin veneer of protection Apple coats the OS to keep non-technical users safe.
So basically from my standpoint, nerds that hate on Apple aren't actually nerds at all, or else just badly misinformed nerds. But I am greatly suspicious of ANYONE who is supposed to be a nerd being uninformed, because nerds are also supposed to be curious and driven to research any topic deeper...
I have nothing against Android either from a tinkering perspective, but it's simply not as flexible to hack because of these differences.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What is a Blackberry?
A horse will not mow your lawn; it will eat all the grass, down to the soil.
Do you also leave your oven on until your roast chicken turns to a blackened husk? Or do you have the sense to stop a process once the desired result has been reached?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Most people want to consume on their devices. That's why they have them.
Actually that is not at all true.
What is true, and what many here are blind as you allude to, is that most people do not want to create SOFTWARE on their devices.
They DO want to paint. They DO want to write. They DO want to tweet or take pictures or share on Facebook.
And tablets are GREAT at all those things. Better than a computer for most people because they remove the computer from the equation of what the user is trying to do, and leave only the software.
What tablets can do, but they are very poor at right now, is creating software. And that is why technical people think they "cannot create" because the only kind of creation that generally interests them is so hard.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How does one create with one of those?
Any one of tens of thousands of applications.
You forgot to specify, but for any desired form of creation there are myriad apps. There are photography apps, image editing apps, artistic drawing apps, writing apps, music creation apps.
Although it is harder, there are also programming apps for the iPad. You can as just one example learn python while on the bus, using only an iPad.
To summarize; if you hate the iPad you hate python.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
... sell anything to your daughter.
If a customer doesn't agree to a meeting and come in with a requirement list and a purchase order, they are utterly hopeless.
HP threw away Apple's pre-Macintosh market because they never got it either.
Xerox threw away Apple's Macintosh market because they never got it either.
Erie/Bucyrus threw away John Deere's and Case's market because they didn't dit it either.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Apple prohibits distribution of iPhone and iPad apps used for troubleshooting a wireless local area network.
Why go through Apple then?
Either download, compile and install - or jailbreak and install WiFi Anayser from Cydia.
I'm confused, is Slashdot a site for technical "nerds" or a site for people that need their hand held for even the simplest of requests? I thought real nerds just did what they wanted instead of doing what others said they could do. How depressing to find there appears to be some kind of aberrant mutation of "conformist nerd".
I mean, if you couldn't Google what I just found you have no business looking at WiFi networks anyway. I wouldn't be so harsh but sometimes people have to be told in no uncertain terms just how wrong they are so they can avoid similar gaffes in the future.
I don't care to read responses generally; if I see one from you I'll just assume it is thanks for pointing out a useful tool that you were looking for but could not find.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
blackberry is slowly getting pushed of the market, by iPads, iPods, iPhones and Samsung's products.
Blackberry was the most popular product in the first half of 2000s.
Heins have missed the train.
One is also easily ten times better at multi-tasking
I agree - tablet software is WAY better at real multi-tasking (making use of multiple cores), because the software can get such great gains out of using the hardware well.
Desktop apps by and large just rely on the processor to muscle through whatever and so they are coded assuming you have 64GB of RAM, all SSD access and a mega-fast CPU. Why bother to optimize ever?
Tablets are also better at making smart choices about what software it makes sense to be running RIGHT NOW, whereas any desktop OS generally just lets every app have at it 24x7, no matter if you are on an airplane trying to stretch out the battery...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He told me to get off his lawn!
Either download, compile and install
Even if we take switching to the Mac as a given, my core objection to iOS is that there's a recurring fee associated with being allowed to compile and install.
What's even more useful than a not-tablet is a netbook. The advantage? Well, a few
The disadvantage: They're no longer manufactured. I have one; I just wonder what I'll use once it breaks.
They continue to use their wired internet at home and use the phone service they already have to tether.
So then what did they have to cut off in order to afford the recurring fee of mobile phone service? Did they cut off the household's land line? It seems to me that that would severely inconvenience those household members who aren't old enough to get a job to pay for their own cell phone.
I didn't know buses had screen size limits.
They do. It's related to the distance between seats and the angle of seats.
image editing apps, artistic drawing apps
How do those work given the lower precision of a capacitive multitouch screen? Is it a matter of zooming in, making a few strokes, zooming out, and seeing where to make the next stroke?
You can as just one example learn python while on the bus
I didn't see any GUI in any of the screenshots on pythonforios.com. What happens in Python for iOS if you try to import Tkinter? If an ImportError, then which GUI toolkit is supported?
If ASUS has relaunched 10" laptops under a different name, as the story by Jared Spurbeck on Yahoo! claims, then the problem is solved. Thank you for the pointer to the ASUS 1015E "mini-notebook".
There's no filesystem on iOS. Until Apple implemented uploading for photos, there's no way to use it in any consistent way.
The word "file" in <input type="file" accept="text/*"> is a misnomer. As iOS 6 showed with photos, the data need not come from a file in a file system; it need only be a stream of bytes attached to the POST request in a MIME multipart message, as long as its Content-type matches the accept attribute of the <input> element. Apple could have implemented this with "reverse sharing": a way to ask an application to list the data streams that it can make available that fit a particular content type. For example, a note-taking application could declare that it can export data in text/plain format. Then when the user reaches a form that expects the user to upload a file of type text/plain, Safari would let the user choose from a list of applications that can export text/plain data and then query that application for the list of text/plain objects that it can export. If the share button is like Save As, such a flow would be like Open.
WebGL isn't even enabled by default in Safari on Mac OS X yet
But Apple allows other browsers to be loaded onto a Mac.
Android is still there
Thank you. Again, I must have had you confused with people who spout "Android sucks, ha ha ha boom boom".
all I ask is for you to not be such an ass about it
PROTIP: To keep people like me from being a donkey about it, try replying to the effect "Android would probably be a better choice for this sort of use case."