For a lot of people, the cheaper devices are perfectly adequate.
Reality does not agree with you here, unless one is very generous with interpreting "a lot of people". How many thousand of these "perfectly adequate" devices do you think people buy in a year? Probably less than buy an iPad in a single day.
Apple have pretty much never had superior hardware when it comes to iPods, iPhones, and the iPad. No expandable storage being one of the main issues I have with them. What set these Apple devices apart was the improved interfaces (which yes for the iPhone/iPad involved hardware, but now everyone has capacitive touch).
Actually, Apple almost always has "superior hardware", just not always in tech specs.
It's a silly argument anyway. It's extremely rare for anyone to *ever* buy anything of sufficient complexity based purely on numbers. Rarely is any specific number a critical value. For example, people aren't going to buy an Android tablet because it has a 1.2GHz CPU instead of a (presumed to be) 1.0GHz iPad. Who gives a shit? Even most geeks know this isn't very important.
One of the biggest, and most classic mistakes many nerds make is to think that design and materials aren't hardware. Glass and metal, thickness, aesthetics, these are *ALL* hardware features. Long gone are the days where internal specification values are terribly important. Nobody cares if their pictures are 14MP or 18MP as much as they care if it fits in their pocket, or has a flip out screen, etc.
After a certain point, these differences in specs become less and less important, while differences in design and user experience become more and more. This is a long term trend that favors Apple considerably.
Exactly, somehow *your* choice had nothing to do with marketing, because you're so superior, but anyone who chooses something you don't like? Why, that can only be due to marketing!
At least, that's what your one-liner response of "marketing?" conveys. The iPad dominates the market because people buy it. People buy it because they like it. You bought a Xoom because you like it. Just because someone likes something you don't like is no reason to lash out at them.
False dichotomy. iPad owners have consumer freedom.
What Apply fanbois tend to forget is that you shouldn't have to jail break your devices in order to install what you want.
What "fandriods" (i.e., jackasses who use words like "fanboi") tend to forget is that iOS users *do* get to install what they want. Have you seen the App Store? Many hundreds of thousands of apps.
Unfortunately the consequence of that is that you have to be mindful of what you install.
Exactly, and on iOS, you don't have to be careful at all. On Android, you even have to be wary on Google's very own Android Market. This is *HUGE* to 99+% of the people out there. Calling people for whom this matters "fanbois" shows just how out of touch with reality you are.
For every button, the user asks "what does this do?", and remembering what each button does becomes a burden. Each additional button is a button that, for some users, becomes the "button that I accidentally press which does something I have no clue about, making me have to start all over".
How many users? Very few. How many potential buyers? A lot.
Users of the thinner tablet, however, almost all of them.
I can't see many iPad 2 owners who wouldn't be bothered to some extent by a thicker tablet (including an iPad 1).
If you go into a shop and pick up two tablets, you're a lot more likely to buy one that's 20% thinner. If you only pick up the thicker one, you probably won't think it's too thick.
Well, the context here is comparing various Android tablets with the iPad, not just looking at the Android tablets alone.
you don't get what makes the iPad the dominant device in its segment.
Marketing?
No, delivering a product people want. Marketing tells people about your product, but you can't keep something as popular as the iPad (and the iPhone and the iPod) popular for as long as it has been primarily on marketing.
That's what you guys have been saying about the iPod for a decade now. When the truth is much simpler: most people don't like what you like.
What is it if not a tablet?
Not a netbook, which was his point.
(posted from my Xoom:)
Funny, I recall a rather strong marketing campaign for the Xoom. As I understand it, Motorola has sold many thousand of them. But since it's what you like, these sales had nothing to do with marketing. Only the "mindless drones" who like things you don't like are that stupid!
No, the reason they don't keep producing older models is that older models will eventually cost *more* to make, not less, and newer, *FASTER*, models will cost much less than the older model.
There's no way to continue producing older models at a profit. It's not about preserving margin (hell, in the PC world, margin is a fairly elusive thing as it is), it's about having a *positive* margin. If they could make even $10 per old PC, they would. Just take a look at the $300 shit models from Acer, Gateway, and Lenovo at your local computer store.
Guys, you can't, get over it and compete the only way anyone has ever competed with Apple, sell at price points they refuse to compete with and drive the bastards back into their single digit boutique niche.
That hasn't worked well in any market of than the PC market.
The premise of your question is flawed: the reason these tablets cost so much is because it actually costs them a lot to make them.
What? The Newton wasn't a failure at all, let alone a "massive" one. Jobs axed it, along with a lot of other things at Apple, to streamline their focus. Apple was working on the iPad for years (and in fact, the iPhone came out of this project).
The only thing it failed was Jobs' return to Apple. What it wasn't was a massive success, like almost everything Apple has done for the past decade.
If you were to read the article (or even the summary), it'd be very clear that that's not what she's suggesting.
However, she does seem to be making a mistake that a lot of people with good ideas make. It's along the lines of thinking "hey, we have this good idea. We should work on it and everyone will see how great it is and universally adopt it!" Sure, sometimes this does work out, but not very often, and pretty much never in the way the person with the idea imagines it will work out.
And I don't really trust an organization like Mozilla to be able to create something that meets the needs of most people. Their staunch opposition to H.264 is a prime example of this. H.264 is an non-negotiable requirement for me. If you won't support it, I can't use your product. Period. I don't give a shit what your reasons are, if you won't make a product that meets my needs, I won't use it.
On the other hand, sanity does exist in Mozilla. Making Firefox for Windows is a counter-example to not support H.264. However, as she points out, this decision was highly controversial within Mozilla.
The idealism implied here makes me think more along the lines of things like the FSF's social network initiatives. A lot of idealism doomed to failure for lack of practicality.
If Mozilla tries to be too heavy handed, no one will use their "standards". If instead, they work on disparate formats and protocols, for example, a "social network file format" that services like Facebook and Google+ can use to export and import a user's profile, but without any moral or idealistic baggage that will make this sort of thing a non-starter with these companies, and also including full support for any proprietary standards the users and companies wish to use, then it could actually work.
But if they try to force companies and users into their moral boxes, they will fail. Firefox *never* succeeded due to the morals of free software. It succeeded because it was a great browser that did what people wanted.
And one could argue that thanks to CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) that the only real competition android has is iOS and how long can Apple compete with free?
Pretty much forever. What reason do you have to think otherwise?
Google can never match the iPhone experience with Android. The way it's currently developed pretty much guarantees this, and even if Google were to take the types of steps necessary to do it (design their own phones from the ground up themselves, proper curate their App Store, remove all user-facing geek-friendly aspects of Android, build a proper media content library for sale and rental, etc.), they simply have neither the expertise nor the drive to match Apple.
Apple will *always* be able to compete with Android. Always.
And your premise is flawed anyway. No one pays for iOS anymore than they pay for Android. Sure, some of the profits from Apple's revenue has to go to iOS R&D, but the exact same is true for Android. The handset makers have to pay *someone* to customize, test, and support Android on their hardware, and some companies pay Google directly for access to Android.
So, not only can Apple compete with free (and do so extremely successfully), with Android, they don't even have to!
Except he didn't just say, "based on those three metrics", but also claimed that those three metrics are the only ones that are important
And clearly they are for him, since we all know they aren't for everyone, that's already blindingly obvious given ipad sales figures.
Please re-read my reply to you. It's not clear *at all* that the person I was replying to understood this. In fact, it's fairly clear the exact opposite is the case. I'm not disagreeing with what you are saying other than that it applies to the person in question.
I never heard that claim, but it makes a lot of sense. Apple doesn't do things, like so many Slashdotters seem to think, to control or limit people. The lack of HDMI mirroring makes sense from the point of view that on the iPad, you directly interact with the screen, and you don't directly interact with a TV screen.
So having a separate HDMI-out stream makes a lot of sense. Video can play without all the fluff, Keynote presentations can be played with all the cards visible only on the iPad, etc. But teachers especially will want to be able to show exactly what they are seeing (like with overhead projectors and notebook computers), so that plea would have a strong impact on Apple and Jobs.
You are 100% incorrect about HDMI mirroring on the iPad 2.
As for any existing Android tablet as being a "strong contender", that flies in the face of reality. You are making a theoretical claim (for example, that the Tab feels better, or that icon spacing on the iPad is a problem, etc.). This is all well and good, but the fact is that the iPad is outselling all Android tablets by a very wide margin, so clearly these aspects which you claim make the Android tablets "strong contenders", in reality, don't.
How adorable. You have found a "clear winner". Too bad for your theory that the iPad 2 sells more units in 2 weeks than the Tab sells in an entire year.
That doesn't refute his theory at all, he categorically said his conclusion is based on those three metrics. Now its quite obvious that those 3 metrics are not the most important to most people given that the ipad sells far more than the galaxy tab yet doesn't satisfy those criteria, we can all see that already so at best you could be captain obvious and point that out.
Except he didn't just say, "based on those three metrics", but also claimed that those three metrics are the only ones that are important, and that made the Galaxy Tab the "clear winner", "hands down".
If all he said was that those are his criteria, and that his criteria aren't all that common, I'd not have replied as I did.
You are somewhat correct that my reply is something of a "Captain Obvious" post, but only if this were pretty much anywhere other than Slashdot. Captain Obvious implies the active membership has a firm grasp on reality.
And, according to my theory, I'd drive whatever the fuck I'd want. My post wasn't about what *I* prefer, but what the "clear winner is". And the clear winner as the market stands now is the Kia.
As for the tablet market, the clear winner is the iPad. Is your grasp on reality that weak that you can't understand this?
Unlike comparing a Kia to a Lamborghini, price isn't a factor. Although Android devices do tend to cost more, they aren't too much more expensive. If a Lamborghini was only 5% more expensive than a Kia (including maintenance, etc.), I doubt Kia would do all that well either.
Yeah, you don't really get it. The only reason Apple sells any significant quantity of tablets is because Apple fanbois have a pathological need to buy anything with a fruit logo on it.
The rest of us aren't buying Android tablets because there is no practical use for them to justify the price. So Apple sells more overpriced limited-use devices than anyone else. Whoopee. All it means is that the sheeple will literally buy anything that Jobs tells them to, whether they need it or not or even if it's useful or not. I don't think that's something to be proud of, but keep on crowing...
Why would that not obviously be defined by who is making the most profit? Since after all the point of any company making said devices s to make money...
Then of course, the "clear winner" is Apple.
Ah, but this is Slashdot. The "clear winner" is a wholly theoretical construct that is determined by a nerd value matrix. Whenever this assessment disagrees with reality (as it *ALWAYS* does), reality is blamed, because the nerd model is defined as beyond reproach.
Thus we get stupid arguments about how Apple is evil, and Steve Jobs wants to control everyone. It's all a necessary part of defending the nerd gospel. Well, the slashdot nerd gospel at least.
Because accepting reality as it is? Why, that would require accepting the fact that the iPad has completely owned the tablet market for over a year now, and that the iPhone is the most successful phone on the planet.
Slashdot Mirror
For a lot of people, the cheaper devices are perfectly adequate.
Reality does not agree with you here, unless one is very generous with interpreting "a lot of people". How many thousand of these "perfectly adequate" devices do you think people buy in a year? Probably less than buy an iPad in a single day.
Apple have pretty much never had superior hardware when it comes to iPods, iPhones, and the iPad. No expandable storage being one of the main issues I have with them. What set these Apple devices apart was the improved interfaces (which yes for the iPhone/iPad involved hardware, but now everyone has capacitive touch).
Actually, Apple almost always has "superior hardware", just not always in tech specs.
It's a silly argument anyway. It's extremely rare for anyone to *ever* buy anything of sufficient complexity based purely on numbers. Rarely is any specific number a critical value. For example, people aren't going to buy an Android tablet because it has a 1.2GHz CPU instead of a (presumed to be) 1.0GHz iPad. Who gives a shit? Even most geeks know this isn't very important.
One of the biggest, and most classic mistakes many nerds make is to think that design and materials aren't hardware. Glass and metal, thickness, aesthetics, these are *ALL* hardware features. Long gone are the days where internal specification values are terribly important. Nobody cares if their pictures are 14MP or 18MP as much as they care if it fits in their pocket, or has a flip out screen, etc.
After a certain point, these differences in specs become less and less important, while differences in design and user experience become more and more. This is a long term trend that favors Apple considerably.
Exactly, somehow *your* choice had nothing to do with marketing, because you're so superior, but anyone who chooses something you don't like? Why, that can only be due to marketing!
At least, that's what your one-liner response of "marketing?" conveys. The iPad dominates the market because people buy it. People buy it because they like it. You bought a Xoom because you like it. Just because someone likes something you don't like is no reason to lash out at them.
So, walled garden good, consumer freedom bad?
False dichotomy. iPad owners have consumer freedom.
What Apply fanbois tend to forget is that you shouldn't have to jail break your devices in order to install what you want.
What "fandriods" (i.e., jackasses who use words like "fanboi") tend to forget is that iOS users *do* get to install what they want. Have you seen the App Store? Many hundreds of thousands of apps.
Unfortunately the consequence of that is that you have to be mindful of what you install.
Exactly, and on iOS, you don't have to be careful at all . On Android, you even have to be wary on Google's very own Android Market. This is *HUGE* to 99+% of the people out there. Calling people for whom this matters "fanbois" shows just how out of touch with reality you are.
For every button, the user asks "what does this do?", and remembering what each button does becomes a burden. Each additional button is a button that, for some users, becomes the "button that I accidentally press which does something I have no clue about, making me have to start all over".
How many users? Very few. How many potential buyers? A lot.
Users of the thinner tablet, however, almost all of them.
I can't see many iPad 2 owners who wouldn't be bothered to some extent by a thicker tablet (including an iPad 1).
If you go into a shop and pick up two tablets, you're a lot more likely to buy one that's 20% thinner. If you only pick up the thicker one, you probably won't think it's too thick.
Well, the context here is comparing various Android tablets with the iPad, not just looking at the Android tablets alone.
you don't get what makes the iPad the dominant device in its segment.
Marketing?
No, delivering a product people want. Marketing tells people about your product, but you can't keep something as popular as the iPad (and the iPhone and the iPod) popular for as long as it has been primarily on marketing.
That's what you guys have been saying about the iPod for a decade now. When the truth is much simpler: most people don't like what you like.
What is it if not a tablet?
Not a netbook, which was his point.
(posted from my Xoom :)
Funny, I recall a rather strong marketing campaign for the Xoom. As I understand it, Motorola has sold many thousand of them. But since it's what you like, these sales had nothing to do with marketing. Only the "mindless drones" who like things you don't like are that stupid!
No, the reason they don't keep producing older models is that older models will eventually cost *more* to make, not less, and newer, *FASTER*, models will cost much less than the older model.
There's no way to continue producing older models at a profit. It's not about preserving margin (hell, in the PC world, margin is a fairly elusive thing as it is), it's about having a *positive* margin. If they could make even $10 per old PC, they would. Just take a look at the $300 shit models from Acer, Gateway, and Lenovo at your local computer store.
Ugh: "any market other than".
Guys, you can't, get over it and compete the only way anyone has ever competed with Apple, sell at price points they refuse to compete with and drive the bastards back into their single digit boutique niche.
That hasn't worked well in any market of than the PC market.
The premise of your question is flawed: the reason these tablets cost so much is because it actually costs them a lot to make them.
What? The Newton wasn't a failure at all, let alone a "massive" one. Jobs axed it, along with a lot of other things at Apple, to streamline their focus. Apple was working on the iPad for years (and in fact, the iPhone came out of this project).
The only thing it failed was Jobs' return to Apple. What it wasn't was a massive success, like almost everything Apple has done for the past decade.
If you were to read the article (or even the summary), it'd be very clear that that's not what she's suggesting.
However, she does seem to be making a mistake that a lot of people with good ideas make. It's along the lines of thinking "hey, we have this good idea. We should work on it and everyone will see how great it is and universally adopt it!" Sure, sometimes this does work out, but not very often, and pretty much never in the way the person with the idea imagines it will work out.
And I don't really trust an organization like Mozilla to be able to create something that meets the needs of most people. Their staunch opposition to H.264 is a prime example of this. H.264 is an non-negotiable requirement for me. If you won't support it, I can't use your product. Period. I don't give a shit what your reasons are, if you won't make a product that meets my needs, I won't use it.
On the other hand, sanity does exist in Mozilla. Making Firefox for Windows is a counter-example to not support H.264. However, as she points out, this decision was highly controversial within Mozilla.
The idealism implied here makes me think more along the lines of things like the FSF's social network initiatives. A lot of idealism doomed to failure for lack of practicality.
If Mozilla tries to be too heavy handed, no one will use their "standards". If instead, they work on disparate formats and protocols, for example, a "social network file format" that services like Facebook and Google+ can use to export and import a user's profile, but without any moral or idealistic baggage that will make this sort of thing a non-starter with these companies, and also including full support for any proprietary standards the users and companies wish to use, then it could actually work.
But if they try to force companies and users into their moral boxes, they will fail. Firefox *never* succeeded due to the morals of free software. It succeeded because it was a great browser that did what people wanted.
Apple will be able to compete with "free" forever. See my reply one level down (was supposed to be in response to you).
Well, that's odd, my post was meant to be in reply to hairyfeet, sorry for the confusion.
And one could argue that thanks to CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) that the only real competition android has is iOS and how long can Apple compete with free?
Pretty much forever. What reason do you have to think otherwise?
Google can never match the iPhone experience with Android. The way it's currently developed pretty much guarantees this, and even if Google were to take the types of steps necessary to do it (design their own phones from the ground up themselves, proper curate their App Store, remove all user-facing geek-friendly aspects of Android, build a proper media content library for sale and rental, etc.), they simply have neither the expertise nor the drive to match Apple.
Apple will *always* be able to compete with Android. Always.
And your premise is flawed anyway. No one pays for iOS anymore than they pay for Android. Sure, some of the profits from Apple's revenue has to go to iOS R&D, but the exact same is true for Android. The handset makers have to pay *someone* to customize, test, and support Android on their hardware, and some companies pay Google directly for access to Android.
So, not only can Apple compete with free (and do so extremely successfully), with Android, they don't even have to!
If you can't do better then sue better.
"Can't do better"? That's what Samsung is accused with, not Apple.
Samsung copies Apple, Apple brings on litigation, and Slashdot cries, "hey Apple, why can't you do better?" WTF?
The Kia wins on price (for the consumer) and wins on total sales (to Kia, as opposed to Lamborghini).
And the comparison doesn't apply here, as the iPad is not more expensive than the Android competitors, unlike Lamborghinis in comparison to Kias.
Except he didn't just say, "based on those three metrics", but also claimed that those three metrics are the only ones that are important
And clearly they are for him, since we all know they aren't for everyone, that's already blindingly obvious given ipad sales figures.
Please re-read my reply to you. It's not clear *at all* that the person I was replying to understood this. In fact, it's fairly clear the exact opposite is the case. I'm not disagreeing with what you are saying other than that it applies to the person in question.
I never heard that claim, but it makes a lot of sense. Apple doesn't do things, like so many Slashdotters seem to think, to control or limit people. The lack of HDMI mirroring makes sense from the point of view that on the iPad, you directly interact with the screen, and you don't directly interact with a TV screen.
So having a separate HDMI-out stream makes a lot of sense. Video can play without all the fluff, Keynote presentations can be played with all the cards visible only on the iPad, etc. But teachers especially will want to be able to show exactly what they are seeing (like with overhead projectors and notebook computers), so that plea would have a strong impact on Apple and Jobs.
You are 100% incorrect about HDMI mirroring on the iPad 2.
As for any existing Android tablet as being a "strong contender", that flies in the face of reality. You are making a theoretical claim (for example, that the Tab feels better, or that icon spacing on the iPad is a problem, etc.). This is all well and good, but the fact is that the iPad is outselling all Android tablets by a very wide margin, so clearly these aspects which you claim make the Android tablets "strong contenders", in reality, don't.
How adorable. You have found a "clear winner". Too bad for your theory that the iPad 2 sells more units in 2 weeks than the Tab sells in an entire year.
That doesn't refute his theory at all, he categorically said his conclusion is based on those three metrics. Now its quite obvious that those 3 metrics are not the most important to most people given that the ipad sells far more than the galaxy tab yet doesn't satisfy those criteria, we can all see that already so at best you could be captain obvious and point that out.
Except he didn't just say, "based on those three metrics", but also claimed that those three metrics are the only ones that are important, and that made the Galaxy Tab the "clear winner", "hands down".
If all he said was that those are his criteria, and that his criteria aren't all that common, I'd not have replied as I did.
You are somewhat correct that my reply is something of a "Captain Obvious" post, but only if this were pretty much anywhere other than Slashdot. Captain Obvious implies the active membership has a firm grasp on reality.
See my other reply to you.
And, according to my theory, I'd drive whatever the fuck I'd want. My post wasn't about what *I* prefer, but what the "clear winner is". And the clear winner as the market stands now is the Kia.
As for the tablet market, the clear winner is the iPad. Is your grasp on reality that weak that you can't understand this?
Unlike comparing a Kia to a Lamborghini, price isn't a factor. Although Android devices do tend to cost more, they aren't too much more expensive. If a Lamborghini was only 5% more expensive than a Kia (including maintenance, etc.), I doubt Kia would do all that well either.
Yeah, you don't really get it. The only reason Apple sells any significant quantity of tablets is because Apple fanbois have a pathological need to buy anything with a fruit logo on it.
The rest of us aren't buying Android tablets because there is no practical use for them to justify the price. So Apple sells more overpriced limited-use devices than anyone else. Whoopee. All it means is that the sheeple will literally buy anything that Jobs tells them to, whether they need it or not or even if it's useful or not. I don't think that's something to be proud of, but keep on crowing...
tl;dr: reality, who needs it?
The claim was "clear winner"
Why would that not obviously be defined by who is making the most profit? Since after all the point of any company making said devices s to make money...
Then of course, the "clear winner" is Apple.
Ah, but this is Slashdot. The "clear winner" is a wholly theoretical construct that is determined by a nerd value matrix. Whenever this assessment disagrees with reality (as it *ALWAYS* does), reality is blamed, because the nerd model is defined as beyond reproach.
Thus we get stupid arguments about how Apple is evil, and Steve Jobs wants to control everyone. It's all a necessary part of defending the nerd gospel. Well, the slashdot nerd gospel at least.
Because accepting reality as it is? Why, that would require accepting the fact that the iPad has completely owned the tablet market for over a year now, and that the iPhone is the most successful phone on the planet.