Get a Galaxy Note and use Swype in portrait mode for getting work done in public transport if you don't want to use a tablet. Swype doesn't work by tapping, so your direct comparison with 10 fingers tactile feedback etc doesn't apply. Swype (there are other implementations called FlexT9 etc which I haven't used, they may be equally good) is an input method designed for touch screens. It is faster than physical QWERTY phone keyboards. With Swype entering long words is actually easier than entering short words because the pattern you 'draw' is less ambiguous. you can combine tapping for short words and 'drawing' for long words to optimize typing speed. The speed with which I can enter a word like 'implementation' with swype is even faster than on a full size qwerty keyboard. Even considering normal text with shorter words punctuation etc. it absolutely kills a tiny physical keyboard.
Physical QWERTY keyboards on a phone are just an awful design compromise.
Are you kidding me? Open source zealots like you give open source a bad name and by your philosophy the mobile device space would be a mirror of the desktop space where only people interested in self flagellation run Linux as their sole desktop OS due to the endless limitations and issues you have to deal with gaining nothing in return.
It is incredible that Google are willing to give away the source code for free, and it may actually kill Android in the tablet arena if Amazon's devices gain ground. The Kindle Fire is going to get a lot better and Amazon are releasing bigger Kindle tablets next year. Look at the original e-ink Kindle to see how Amazon work, it was an awful and ugly device, compare that to the Kindle Touch.
In which dream world do you live if you think Microsoft or Apple or HP or any other major IT company in the world would give away not just their operating system, but the source code as well? And Google get criticized for that??
Do you for one moment stop and think how wonderful it is that the most popular operating system in smartphones is open source, and you can endlessly modify it or use innumerable open source ROMs and software, while still retaining compatibility with a vast library of applications.
Without Google the smartphone OS space would be dominated by Microsoft and Apple with some token miniscule market share to n900 like devices for people like you.
Why are Google the only company that are always criticized from a utopian perspective?
The reason few people know about swype like input methods is the iPhone. It has so dominated the very concept of a smartphone and Apple are so much better at marketing that even their stupid ideas become entrenched. Which is why when people reviewed the Galaxy S II they used the tap keyboard instead of swype and complained how the iPhone keyboard is better. It is how iPhone's auto correct is considered an in joke rather that a design failure. It is why no one comments on how insisting on having just one button like Apple do is as stupid an idea as the one button mouse, it is a result of Steve Jobs' fundamentalist, uncompromising approach to design and choosing design over function.
You'll be better off with a proper linux tablet than a tiny phone for doing all that. They are coming soon. As for doing all that on a phone, you're an insanely miniscule proportion of smartphone users to want to do that from a phone. Maybe when the world of smartphones calms down a bit we will see niche products like that. I doubt it though, because with smartphones the more popular your device is the more custom software ROMs etc you will find for it, that's why even power users are better off going for the popular devices.
If Android manufacturers had a clue Apple wouldn't be steamrolling them. Yes I know how Android phones sell more. However, Apple's profit margins are way higher. They would still dominate the $600+ price range, and Apple doesn't give a damn about the low end of the market. You can see this in how Apple still dominated mobile browser stats despite having a much smaller share of the smartphone market. Most android buyers don't use their phones very 'smartly' whereas virtually all iPhone users seem to browse and use web apps constantly.
And don't even get me started on Android manufacturers' feeble attempts at the tablet market. At this rate despite the two year lead for Android Windows 8 will kill them.
Swype IS faster for english words and it painlessly adds words to the dictionary. Once you start hitting 4.5"+, swype in portrait mode is just about perfect. For anything you would reasonably do on phone having part of the screen obscured while typing isn't a huge deal.
No one (translated as 'not enough people to be commercially viable") wants slider phones. No one bought the n900 except a few nerds who think being able to SSH from a phone is really cool even if you spend 5 times more time to do anything than you would on a laptop. When I was moving on from my Blackberry Bold I considered the n900 before getting a Galaxy S. Thank god I did.
SSH from a phone? Why on earth would you do that except as a last resort? You want something to use on public transport etc get a tablet. Why on earth would anyone want to do serious work on a ~4" screen with or without a keyboard baffles me.
You only lose half the screen while you are typing. As I said, if you're fine with carrying bulky keyboard phones you'll be fine with carrying a 4.65" screen phone like the Galaxy Nexus or even the 5.3" Galaxy Note.
What do you mean giant screens aren't that great to talk on? That's a function of hardware, microphones have been at that distance from the mouth for a long time, ironically in tiny cheap Nokia phones which didn't reach from your ear to your mouth. If giant screens phones offer poor call quality, that's a failure of that particular device.
What do you mean 'type a lot' on a phone? It is a phone, you shouldn't be typing novels on it. I type on a phone when there is nothing better around. Buy a tablet if you want to type a lot and want screen real estate while typing, which you can afford if you can afford the prices of modern smartphones. A smartphone is ultimately going to be a tiny cramped device, that is not going to change. Having the largest screen possible is the best compromise for the vast majority. And what do you mean 'issues with on screen keyboards'? It's a matter of getting used to them - the same way people had 'issues with touchpads' when laptops became popular and gave that as a reason why laptops won't replace desktops. Eventually, almost everyone got used to touchpads.
Qwerty keyboards are useless. Swype or similar input methods are faster and more intuitive than mashing tiny hard keys that add bulk and extra mechanical components that can fail. Screens are huge these days so seeing the keyboard on screen while typing is no big issue. Instead of getting a thicker bulkier keyboard equipped phone a bigger screen phone is a better compromise. Physical Keyboards are simply inefficient on mobile devices - not that great for typing, add bulk etc. The Galaxy Nexus kind of device with no buttons at all is the future, even the soft buttons disappear for video etc, maximizing screen real estate. Ultimately you want the smallest possible device with the biggest possible screen.
Not 2007. Not that it makes a difference, you're just nitpicking. Google have completely transformed several major applications - the search engine, the browser, online maps, and hosted email. Somehow, that never gets the kind of attention that Steve Jobs 'revolutions' do. Most people are not too old to remember pre Google search engines, web based email that used to give you 5-10 MB of storage with ads plastered all over an awful interface, and single process browsers that used to crash with all your open webpages, consumed insane amount of memory and were painfully slow.
No. Apps for the B&N Nook Color/Tablet are incompatible with plain Android. They do more harm than good to Android overall due to fragmentation. Kindle Fire apps may be compatible with plain android or may not require too many changes to be available on both marketplaces, but Amazon does not mention the word Android at all. Only the geeky types know that the Kindle Fire runs Android, None of the presentations, publicity material, anything for the Kindle Fire even mentions the word Android.
So no, Google gains little from open sourcing Android. Crappy Chinese tablets damage the reputation of Android, forks take the Android code and give Google no revenue or credit.
Google are: - releasing source code to their operating system for free, under no obligation. The Nook Tablet and Color and Kindle Fire are great examples of how this can work against Google - Android devices that make no payment to Google and do not come with access to Google's Android Marketplace, or Google's proprietary apps.
- virtually the only major silicon valley company left (compared to Apple, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon etc) who haven't patent trolled anyone (except in retaliation of course), although they could have, Google still has thousands of patents even though companies like Microsoft have far more, some of them are a lot more important than Apple GUI animation patents. e.g. http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/01/googles-mapreduce-patent-what-does-it-mean-for-hadoop.ars
- been far better at sticking to privacy promises and openness compared to the likes of Facebook
- have entire divisions of their company and features that make no revenue for them (and are not R&D projects in hope of future earnings) but are retained. e.g. Free offline and IMAP/SMTP/POP access to gmail from day one, google docs for personal use (I can open and edit files with no ads anywhere), AOSP, Google chrome/ chromium, google.org
- principled stand on net neutrality
- taking a principled stand and pulling out of China
Somehow Google are still constantly attacked, way more than companies like Apple and Microsoft these days, they deserve some credit. Sure, they are far from the do no evil motto, but these days, doing a lot less evil than other megacorps is still remarkable.
Get a Nook Color. Easy to get for $150 refurbished, does browsing, pdfs everything, much less reflective than iPad, much more convenient to carry around and feels like a real book. Or the Nook Tablet.
a hardcover iPad sized book is not really 'portable', it's meant for libraries and big bookshelves.
I repeat, the iPad is not a reading device. No one who actually reads could ever be happy with an iPad the way they could with a Nook Color or an e-ink reader. No one who reads will be happy with a device that's too large for a book, is insanely reflective, virtually unusable outdoors, in bright light or around light sources, highly pixelated, a pain to hold up like a book for any length of time, and costs $500.
The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is 1280x800, which is what I am talking about, and I thought you were since you mentioned a price of $500? The original Galaxy Tab eventually sold for $300 and lower and is out of production, so no idea why you brought it up.
You claim there are no serious competitors and your point of reference is a device that is already superseded by at least three devices (GT 7 plus, 8.9, 10.1)??
And you made the generalized claim 'high prices are mostly a myth' not 'I got a plastic macbook over an year ago cheaper than a comparable Dell'.
You're making generalized comments, when you have absolutely no idea where Android tablets stand today, so yes, my attacks are justified. You have no clue what you are talking about.
Small and light device for reading = 7" book sized device. Again, I am talking about people who actually read. Have to wait at a bus stop? Read a chapter of a novel. In a bus squeezed in a narrow seat with bright sunlight coming in from the window? Red another two chapters. On a train? Do the same, the iPad is a liability for convenience here compared to a book. People who actually read, read all the time, read when they have a few minutes free, read on a couch, in bed, outdoors on a bench, on the grass, the iPad costs 500 and sucks as a reading device for people who really read. Not the Eat Pray Love or Da Vinci code types, who get one book at christmas which gets them through three months.
The minute you mention a bluetooth keyboard, you're basically carrying an overpriced crippled laptop around. Laptops are better in flights, you can put them on the table and open the screen instead of having to hold an iPad in your arms. Ever hard to read a 700 page novel in a 10 hour flight constantly holding an iPad in your arms? I would get both a 7" tablet or an e-ink Kindle (actually a Nook Touch - no ads and cheaper) and a cheap laptop for the price, instead of an expensive flashy device that does nothing well.
The Galaxy Tab is much higher resolution, what are on about?
And it performs better and is thinner than the second iPad, forget the first one.
Sure, the iPad still kills anything else for software, but if you want a tablet for actual tablet uses of games and movies and reading and browsing, the Galaxy Tab is great. If you want software that is severely crippled compared to what you could run on a cheaper laptop, sure, the iPad is great for yuppies. Why do you think Apple is so desperate to get it banned? How many people do you know who bought the iPad for the software? IF you want functionality, a $400 laptop kills the iPad any day, hell a $200 netbook kills it.
The higher prices are not a myth. You can get a quad core full HD screen laptop here in Australia for $899. Find me a comparable laptop from Apple with a price anywhere in the ballpark - a comparable laptop from Apple costs over $2000 here.
Sounds like you sold out to Apple and have stopped caring about what happens in the rest of the world, or you are desperate to justify all the money you have shelled out.
Amazon don't release final products. The Fire sounds like buggy incomplete software like the Touchpad. The difference is HP were complete morons and released the Touchpad for 600. For 200 the Fire will sell like hot cakes any way and Amazon will bring out a software patch in a month or two. The hardware inside the Fire is very potent, and 512MB of RAM is enough for Apple so it is enough for anyone. Amazon have done a poor job of 'improving' gingerbread. But at $200, they have time to fix it. Silk is a stupid idea though, tablet and phone browsers handle current websites fine, so I don't see why we need Silk and its privacy issues.
The comparisons to the iPad are ridiculous. I do expect the Nook Tablet to be a better device and The Nook Color has the least reflective LCD display I have ever seen on a mobile device and the only LCD display I consider good enough to read on.
However the iPad is a horrible reading device. Anyone who thinks an iPad is a reading device doesn't read much.
- the iPad has much lower pixel density than the Nook Color/ Tablet and Kindle Fire. You can see it. And peopel who read books aren't going to have much love for pixelated text.
- the iPad screen is horribly, unusably glossy. Basically the only situation in which you are not dealing with awful reflections is indoors when you manage to position the iPad so that no lights are reflected in it. Outdoor use? Forget it. The Nook Color as I said does a lot better.
- the iPad is big and bulky for reading. It's not about strength or being too weak to hold up something as light as the iPad, holding something iPad size at arms length for a while gets old really really fast.
- the iPad is not portable, it is nothing like a book. The Nook Color and similar sized devices like the Kindle Fire fit easily into a jacket pocket or a handbag, the iPad is a pain to carry around in comparison. The iPad is a coffee table device, not a true mobile device.
What we want from the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet is something that is easier and better to read on and carry around and is a lot cheaper than an iPad. An iPad is a luxury, \anyone who does any seirous work will also have a laptop. The iPad is osmething you pull out when a laptop is inconvenient. Well, 7" tablets are even more convenient, and a lot cheaper than an iPAd which costs more than a basic, extremely competent laptop does.
The other reason people will buy the Kindle Fire is the same reason people bought those junk $100-120 Android tablets. It's cheap enough to not have to think about. An iPad for a lot of people is a luxury, and something it's not hard to have second thoughts about. 7" tablets will give another reason to not buy an iPad. They are completely different devices, which will actually be more suitable for a lot of people.
Facebook depends on people making things as public as possible.
Otherwise does the idea of a 'wall' make any sense? Every time you post on someone's wall there should be a little button asking whether it's a private message or a public one, the private messaging system shouldn't be cumbersome and disconnected. But that would of course destroy their model - it depends on people passively stalking, eavesdropping on semi private conversations.
Windows 7 is great. It gets out of the way. Install Microsoft Security Essentials for free and you won't ever get a virus unless you do something incredibly stupid. Hardware has outpaced software, so if you have a laptop bought in the last 18 months or so, everyday tasks are going to be painlessly fast. Tried Mac OS, it looks neat but I am too much a Windows user, too set in my ways. Little things about Mac OS annoy me, just because they are different, not necessarily bad. Plus hate the lack of choice in Mac hardware.
Amazingly, Microsoft have got the simple things right for the first time since Windows XP.
Linux will never be a desktop OS. I say this as someone who uses it every day for other stuff. People using Linux as their everyday OS are just wasting their own time pointlessly out of principle. The lack of hardware support, software and usability issues just won't go away. And I will get flamed for this, but the reason is that it is open source software. It will always be too fragmented and usability and desktop software support will always suck.
You don't understand the patent system. Even if the patent is frivolous, it takes expensive litigation to invalidate one patent, forget the thousands Microsoft has registered for Pg Up/ Pg Down to double click.
The patents are frivolous, software patents, with a lot of prior art and can be said to apply to absolutely any computing device these days:
The major phone and tablet makers who signed deals with Microsoft are Samsung, HTC who are also coincidentally the only major Windows Phone manufacturers.
Also Microsoft has been in less of a hurry to go after companies with major Windows PC manufacturers like Asus, Acer, Sony etc.
Microsoft is clearly using these patents to stifle Android, and this raises serious anti trust concerns. Many of these patents would not stand up well to a challenge, and many like the FAT patent and the filename system are patents companies are forced to use to maintain compatibility with existing standards.
Also, Microsoft charges more to license these patents than it does to license its Windows Phone operating system:
"The book retailer claims also that the fees Microsoft was demanding were equal to or greater than those it demanded for an entire operating system, Windows Phone, even though the patents covered only "trivial and non-essential design elements" of the Android user interface".
Does anyone have any actual information on this apart from Florian Muller's endless speculations copied by every bloody excuse for journalism writing in the tech world? (see his blog!)
Why would Apple default on such an important judgement?
Why was Motorola's press release so cryptic and why were Apple so sure? Sounds like Apple's products are not going to get blocked based on this judgement. So what's happening? Are there any real journalists left in the tech world?
My initial views about this were similar to the popular sentiment on slashdot.
However, it is a shame that the person at the receiving end of the criticism wasn't given a chance to present his version of things, and now that he has, it has still not received the same attention that the original controversy did here on slashdot.
I am sure I will disagree with his views if and when I do read about them. And I have no idea how accurate his version of the events is, but he damned well has the right to be heard.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like you have never used swype: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ-RAefCG_c
Get a Galaxy Note and use Swype in portrait mode for getting work done in public transport if you don't want to use a tablet. Swype doesn't work by tapping, so your direct comparison with 10 fingers tactile feedback etc doesn't apply. Swype (there are other implementations called FlexT9 etc which I haven't used, they may be equally good) is an input method designed for touch screens. It is faster than physical QWERTY phone keyboards. With Swype entering long words is actually easier than entering short words because the pattern you 'draw' is less ambiguous. you can combine tapping for short words and 'drawing' for long words to optimize typing speed. The speed with which I can enter a word like 'implementation' with swype is even faster than on a full size qwerty keyboard. Even considering normal text with shorter words punctuation etc. it absolutely kills a tiny physical keyboard.
Physical QWERTY keyboards on a phone are just an awful design compromise.
Are you kidding me? Open source zealots like you give open source a bad name and by your philosophy the mobile device space would be a mirror of the desktop space where only people interested in self flagellation run Linux as their sole desktop OS due to the endless limitations and issues you have to deal with gaining nothing in return.
It is incredible that Google are willing to give away the source code for free, and it may actually kill Android in the tablet arena if Amazon's devices gain ground. The Kindle Fire is going to get a lot better and Amazon are releasing bigger Kindle tablets next year. Look at the original e-ink Kindle to see how Amazon work, it was an awful and ugly device, compare that to the Kindle Touch.
In which dream world do you live if you think Microsoft or Apple or HP or any other major IT company in the world would give away not just their operating system, but the source code as well? And Google get criticized for that??
Do you for one moment stop and think how wonderful it is that the most popular operating system in smartphones is open source, and you can endlessly modify it or use innumerable open source ROMs and software, while still retaining compatibility with a vast library of applications.
Without Google the smartphone OS space would be dominated by Microsoft and Apple with some token miniscule market share to n900 like devices for people like you.
Why are Google the only company that are always criticized from a utopian perspective?
The reason few people know about swype like input methods is the iPhone. It has so dominated the very concept of a smartphone and Apple are so much better at marketing that even their stupid ideas become entrenched. Which is why when people reviewed the Galaxy S II they used the tap keyboard instead of swype and complained how the iPhone keyboard is better. It is how iPhone's auto correct is considered an in joke rather that a design failure. It is why no one comments on how insisting on having just one button like Apple do is as stupid an idea as the one button mouse, it is a result of Steve Jobs' fundamentalist, uncompromising approach to design and choosing design over function.
You'll be better off with a proper linux tablet than a tiny phone for doing all that. They are coming soon. As for doing all that on a phone, you're an insanely miniscule proportion of smartphone users to want to do that from a phone. Maybe when the world of smartphones calms down a bit we will see niche products like that. I doubt it though, because with smartphones the more popular your device is the more custom software ROMs etc you will find for it, that's why even power users are better off going for the popular devices.
If you are in a position to attack a bloody bluetooth keyboard to your phone you are in a position to use a tablet. So buy one.
You think tablets are expensive? What about this: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/300625719205?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649
a fraction of the price of a smartphone and still a million times better than attaching a bluetooth keyboard to a pathetic 4" screen.
If Android manufacturers had a clue Apple wouldn't be steamrolling them. Yes I know how Android phones sell more. However, Apple's profit margins are way higher. They would still dominate the $600+ price range, and Apple doesn't give a damn about the low end of the market. You can see this in how Apple still dominated mobile browser stats despite having a much smaller share of the smartphone market. Most android buyers don't use their phones very 'smartly' whereas virtually all iPhone users seem to browse and use web apps constantly.
And don't even get me started on Android manufacturers' feeble attempts at the tablet market. At this rate despite the two year lead for Android Windows 8 will kill them.
Swype IS faster for english words and it painlessly adds words to the dictionary. Once you start hitting 4.5"+, swype in portrait mode is just about perfect. For anything you would reasonably do on phone having part of the screen obscured while typing isn't a huge deal.
No one (translated as 'not enough people to be commercially viable") wants slider phones. No one bought the n900 except a few nerds who think being able to SSH from a phone is really cool even if you spend 5 times more time to do anything than you would on a laptop. When I was moving on from my Blackberry Bold I considered the n900 before getting a Galaxy S. Thank god I did.
SSH from a phone? Why on earth would you do that except as a last resort? You want something to use on public transport etc get a tablet. Why on earth would anyone want to do serious work on a ~4" screen with or without a keyboard baffles me.
You only lose half the screen while you are typing. As I said, if you're fine with carrying bulky keyboard phones you'll be fine with carrying a 4.65" screen phone like the Galaxy Nexus or even the 5.3" Galaxy Note.
What do you mean giant screens aren't that great to talk on? That's a function of hardware, microphones have been at that distance from the mouth for a long time, ironically in tiny cheap Nokia phones which didn't reach from your ear to your mouth. If giant screens phones offer poor call quality, that's a failure of that particular device.
What do you mean 'type a lot' on a phone? It is a phone, you shouldn't be typing novels on it. I type on a phone when there is nothing better around. Buy a tablet if you want to type a lot and want screen real estate while typing, which you can afford if you can afford the prices of modern smartphones. A smartphone is ultimately going to be a tiny cramped device, that is not going to change. Having the largest screen possible is the best compromise for the vast majority. And what do you mean 'issues with on screen keyboards'? It's a matter of getting used to them - the same way people had 'issues with touchpads' when laptops became popular and gave that as a reason why laptops won't replace desktops. Eventually, almost everyone got used to touchpads.
Qwerty keyboards are useless. Swype or similar input methods are faster and more intuitive than mashing tiny hard keys that add bulk and extra mechanical components that can fail. Screens are huge these days so seeing the keyboard on screen while typing is no big issue. Instead of getting a thicker bulkier keyboard equipped phone a bigger screen phone is a better compromise. Physical Keyboards are simply inefficient on mobile devices - not that great for typing, add bulk etc.
The Galaxy Nexus kind of device with no buttons at all is the future, even the soft buttons disappear for video etc, maximizing screen real estate. Ultimately you want the smallest possible device with the biggest possible screen.
Ok not day one, but still in 2004: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20041110192454841
Not 2007. Not that it makes a difference, you're just nitpicking. Google have completely transformed several major applications - the search engine, the browser, online maps, and hosted email. Somehow, that never gets the kind of attention that Steve Jobs 'revolutions' do. Most people are not too old to remember pre Google search engines, web based email that used to give you 5-10 MB of storage with ads plastered all over an awful interface, and single process browsers that used to crash with all your open webpages, consumed insane amount of memory and were painfully slow.
No. Apps for the B&N Nook Color/Tablet are incompatible with plain Android. They do more harm than good to Android overall due to fragmentation. Kindle Fire apps may be compatible with plain android or may not require too many changes to be available on both marketplaces, but Amazon does not mention the word Android at all. Only the geeky types know that the Kindle Fire runs Android, None of the presentations, publicity material, anything for the Kindle Fire even mentions the word Android.
So no, Google gains little from open sourcing Android. Crappy Chinese tablets damage the reputation of Android, forks take the Android code and give Google no revenue or credit.
Google are:
- releasing source code to their operating system for free, under no obligation. The Nook Tablet and Color and Kindle Fire are great examples of how this can work against Google - Android devices that make no payment to Google and do not come with access to Google's Android Marketplace, or Google's proprietary apps.
- virtually the only major silicon valley company left (compared to Apple, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon etc) who haven't patent trolled anyone (except in retaliation of course), although they could have, Google still has thousands of patents even though companies like Microsoft have far more, some of them are a lot more important than Apple GUI animation patents. e.g. http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/01/googles-mapreduce-patent-what-does-it-mean-for-hadoop.ars
- been far better at sticking to privacy promises and openness compared to the likes of Facebook
- have entire divisions of their company and features that make no revenue for them (and are not R&D projects in hope of future earnings) but are retained. e.g. Free offline and IMAP/SMTP/POP access to gmail from day one, google docs for personal use (I can open and edit files with no ads anywhere), AOSP, Google chrome/ chromium, google.org
- principled stand on net neutrality
- taking a principled stand and pulling out of China
Somehow Google are still constantly attacked, way more than companies like Apple and Microsoft these days, they deserve some credit. Sure, they are far from the do no evil motto, but these days, doing a lot less evil than other megacorps is still remarkable.
Get a Nook Color. Easy to get for $150 refurbished, does browsing, pdfs everything, much less reflective than iPad, much more convenient to carry around and feels like a real book. Or the Nook Tablet.
a hardcover iPad sized book is not really 'portable', it's meant for libraries and big bookshelves.
I repeat, the iPad is not a reading device. No one who actually reads could ever be happy with an iPad the way they could with a Nook Color or an e-ink reader. No one who reads will be happy with a device that's too large for a book, is insanely reflective, virtually unusable outdoors, in bright light or around light sources, highly pixelated, a pain to hold up like a book for any length of time, and costs $500.
The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is 1280x800, which is what I am talking about, and I thought you were since you mentioned a price of $500? The original Galaxy Tab eventually sold for $300 and lower and is out of production, so no idea why you brought it up.
You claim there are no serious competitors and your point of reference is a device that is already superseded by at least three devices (GT 7 plus, 8.9, 10.1)??
And you made the generalized claim 'high prices are mostly a myth' not 'I got a plastic macbook over an year ago cheaper than a comparable Dell'.
You're making generalized comments, when you have absolutely no idea where Android tablets stand today, so yes, my attacks are justified. You have no clue what you are talking about.
Small and light device for reading = 7" book sized device. Again, I am talking about people who actually read. Have to wait at a bus stop? Read a chapter of a novel. In a bus squeezed in a narrow seat with bright sunlight coming in from the window? Red another two chapters. On a train? Do the same, the iPad is a liability for convenience here compared to a book. People who actually read, read all the time, read when they have a few minutes free, read on a couch, in bed, outdoors on a bench, on the grass, the iPad costs 500 and sucks as a reading device for people who really read. Not the Eat Pray Love or Da Vinci code types, who get one book at christmas which gets them through three months.
The minute you mention a bluetooth keyboard, you're basically carrying an overpriced crippled laptop around. Laptops are better in flights, you can put them on the table and open the screen instead of having to hold an iPad in your arms. Ever hard to read a 700 page novel in a 10 hour flight constantly holding an iPad in your arms? I would get both a 7" tablet or an e-ink Kindle (actually a Nook Touch - no ads and cheaper) and a cheap laptop for the price, instead of an expensive flashy device that does nothing well.
The Galaxy Tab is much higher resolution, what are on about?
And it performs better and is thinner than the second iPad, forget the first one.
Sure, the iPad still kills anything else for software, but if you want a tablet for actual tablet uses of games and movies and reading and browsing, the Galaxy Tab is great. If you want software that is severely crippled compared to what you could run on a cheaper laptop, sure, the iPad is great for yuppies. Why do you think Apple is so desperate to get it banned? How many people do you know who bought the iPad for the software? IF you want functionality, a $400 laptop kills the iPad any day, hell a $200 netbook kills it.
The higher prices are not a myth. You can get a quad core full HD screen laptop here in Australia for $899. Find me a comparable laptop from Apple with a price anywhere in the ballpark - a comparable laptop from Apple costs over $2000 here.
Sounds like you sold out to Apple and have stopped caring about what happens in the rest of the world, or you are desperate to justify all the money you have shelled out.
Amazon don't release final products. The Fire sounds like buggy incomplete software like the Touchpad. The difference is HP were complete morons and released the Touchpad for 600. For 200 the Fire will sell like hot cakes any way and Amazon will bring out a software patch in a month or two. The hardware inside the Fire is very potent, and 512MB of RAM is enough for Apple so it is enough for anyone. Amazon have done a poor job of 'improving' gingerbread. But at $200, they have time to fix it. Silk is a stupid idea though, tablet and phone browsers handle current websites fine, so I don't see why we need Silk and its privacy issues.
The comparisons to the iPad are ridiculous. I do expect the Nook Tablet to be a better device and The Nook Color has the least reflective LCD display I have ever seen on a mobile device and the only LCD display I consider good enough to read on.
However the iPad is a horrible reading device. Anyone who thinks an iPad is a reading device doesn't read much.
- the iPad has much lower pixel density than the Nook Color/ Tablet and Kindle Fire. You can see it. And peopel who read books aren't going to have much love for pixelated text.
- the iPad screen is horribly, unusably glossy. Basically the only situation in which you are not dealing with awful reflections is indoors when you manage to position the iPad so that no lights are reflected in it. Outdoor use? Forget it. The Nook Color as I said does a lot better.
- the iPad is big and bulky for reading. It's not about strength or being too weak to hold up something as light as the iPad, holding something iPad size at arms length for a while gets old really really fast.
- the iPad is not portable, it is nothing like a book. The Nook Color and similar sized devices like the Kindle Fire fit easily into a jacket pocket or a handbag, the iPad is a pain to carry around in comparison. The iPad is a coffee table device, not a true mobile device.
What we want from the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet is something that is easier and better to read on and carry around and is a lot cheaper than an iPad. An iPad is a luxury, \anyone who does any seirous work will also have a laptop. The iPad is osmething you pull out when a laptop is inconvenient. Well, 7" tablets are even more convenient, and a lot cheaper than an iPAd which costs more than a basic, extremely competent laptop does.
The other reason people will buy the Kindle Fire is the same reason people bought those junk $100-120 Android tablets. It's cheap enough to not have to think about. An iPad for a lot of people is a luxury, and something it's not hard to have second thoughts about. 7" tablets will give another reason to not buy an iPad. They are completely different devices, which will actually be more suitable for a lot of people.
Facebook depends on people making things as public as possible.
Otherwise does the idea of a 'wall' make any sense? Every time you post on someone's wall there should be a little button asking whether it's a private message or a public one, the private messaging system shouldn't be cumbersome and disconnected. But that would of course destroy their model - it depends on people passively stalking, eavesdropping on semi private conversations.
Windows 7 is great. It gets out of the way. Install Microsoft Security Essentials for free and you won't ever get a virus unless you do something incredibly stupid. Hardware has outpaced software, so if you have a laptop bought in the last 18 months or so, everyday tasks are going to be painlessly fast. Tried Mac OS, it looks neat but I am too much a Windows user, too set in my ways. Little things about Mac OS annoy me, just because they are different, not necessarily bad. Plus hate the lack of choice in Mac hardware.
Amazingly, Microsoft have got the simple things right for the first time since Windows XP.
Linux will never be a desktop OS. I say this as someone who uses it every day for other stuff. People using Linux as their everyday OS are just wasting their own time pointlessly out of principle. The lack of hardware support, software and usability issues just won't go away. And I will get flamed for this, but the reason is that it is open source software. It will always be too fragmented and usability and desktop software support will always suck.
You don't understand the patent system. Even if the patent is frivolous, it takes expensive litigation to invalidate one patent, forget the thousands Microsoft has registered for Pg Up/ Pg Down to double click.
The patents are frivolous, software patents, with a lot of prior art and can be said to apply to absolutely any computing device these days:
http://www.geekwire.com/2011/microsoft-cites-new-patents-vs-android
The major phone and tablet makers who signed deals with Microsoft are Samsung, HTC who are also coincidentally the only major Windows Phone manufacturers.
Also Microsoft has been in less of a hurry to go after companies with major Windows PC manufacturers like Asus, Acer, Sony etc.
Microsoft is clearly using these patents to stifle Android, and this raises serious anti trust concerns. Many of these patents would not stand up well to a challenge, and many like the FAT patent and the filename system are patents companies are forced to use to maintain compatibility with existing standards.
Also, Microsoft charges more to license these patents than it does to license its Windows Phone operating system:
"The book retailer claims also that the fees Microsoft was demanding were equal to or greater than those it demanded for an entire operating system, Windows Phone, even though the patents covered only "trivial and non-essential design elements" of the Android user interface".
Does anyone have any actual information on this apart from Florian Muller's endless speculations copied by every bloody excuse for journalism writing in the tech world? (see his blog!)
Why would Apple default on such an important judgement?
Why was Motorola's press release so cryptic and why were Apple so sure? Sounds like Apple's products are not going to get blocked based on this judgement. So what's happening? Are there any real journalists left in the tech world?
My initial views about this were similar to the popular sentiment on slashdot.
However, it is a shame that the person at the receiving end of the criticism wasn't given a chance to present his version of things, and now that he has, it has still not received the same attention that the original controversy did here on slashdot.
Here is John Haught's own version of the events: http://www.uky.edu/OtherOrgs/GainesCenter/Letter%20To%20Jerry%20Coyne.pdf
I am sure I will disagree with his views if and when I do read about them. And I have no idea how accurate his version of the events is, but he damned well has the right to be heard.