iPad can do anything that C, C++, and Objective-C can do, which is everything. The Cocoa frameworks enable you to do Mac-like things very easily. For example, audio, video, wireless MIDI. The developer tools are free, and so easy to use that there are kids with apps, and a physicist used these tools to create the World Wide Web. Organizations can deploy their own apps wirelessly outside of App Store, and trust App Store to safely deliver additional apps without malware, and there are like 400,000 mini apps and 75,000 full-size apps.
Basically, whatever you need it to do, it can be made to do, even just by one programmer in a fairly short time.
That is ridiculous. Lots of hardware doesn't matter. We're talking about a screen and a bezel you hold, with a generic ARM and flash storage and Wi-Fi/3G. Why would you need to switch from IPad for hardware reasons? They are the acknowledged design leader and also the price leader, just as in iPods, and they have the most hardware accessories and custom cases.
Everything happens in the software on a tablet. Having native C apps, desktop class PC apps, is a billion times more important than a variety of hardware that all runs the same small set of Java applets that only do Web-class functionality. Nobody but Apple has native C apps on ARM, and nobody has full-size apps except Apple.
We are talking about corporate here. iOS has deployment and security features that Android lacks. It has Xcode rapid development tools that Android lacks. Corporations can deploy their own apps wirelessly. Their users already know the iOS interface. Even if the users know Android 2, the tablet version 3 is different.
What you have to do is resist saying "Android" and tell me why I'm supposed to pay $799 for a Motorola iPad clone with 32GB and mini Java applets and no installed base and not even available yet when iPad 3G 32GB is $729 and has a full-range of native C apps and 17 million installed base and an upgraded version likely to ship before Motorola?
If you look at music players, it is 75% Apple, 10% Samsung, 15% everybody else. How does that relate to your theory that more hardware choices leads to dominating market share? The non-Apple 25% has hundreds of devices. Apple sells more iPod nano than that whole 25%. iPad is the "iPod PC" the components are very similar and you buy native C apps instead of music. So what has changed from the music player market that users are going to prefer Motorola this time?
If they merge you get a complete company. They could put Windows on top of Unix on top of HP hardware and make something that can compete with the Mac. They could do real mobile versions of Office and have something that can compete with iPad. Put all their phone stuff together, you might get to something that matches the 2007 iPhone.
The kit era is over. The build whatever PC you want as long as it runs Windows era is over. Most users today are not nerds, most buyers are not I-T. You need to make complete, functioning solutions, you need to ship software on silicon, not floppy/optical disks.
For Microsoft to merge with Compaq was always the way it was going. Compaq put Microsoft in the IBM PC driver's seat. Now, they can make honest vendors out of each other, they can ship solutions instead of kits.
The HTML5 API is the open iOS API. That is where all the nudity is. It's unmediated. It's perfect for Playboy. The iPad features are touch events and WebKit enhancements.
The Cocoa API on iOS is managed so that it is an alternative to anything-goes HTML5. Yes, you can shop at App Store with freedom from porn, because you can't get away from it on the Web. Yin and yang. Balance. Choice. I know it is unfamiliar totalitarian nerd like the original poster, but luckily there is at least one company giving users what they want instead of what nerd dogma says they are allowed to have.
I keep the master copy in iPhoto, with the library stored on a high-quality LaCie Starck drive. A backup copy is made automatically by Time Machine (Mac OS built-in backup) onto a Drobo, which automatically makes 2 copies to guard against disk failure. An offsite backup is made automatically by BackBlaze, which is $5 per month.
So I only have to work with the photos themselves in iPhoto, I don't even have to touch the files, and there are always 3 backup copies made automatically by the Mac. I can even step back to previous versions with Time Machine. Very convenient.
If you think an Android phone is any more FOSS than an iPhone, I have a FOSS bridge I would like to sell you.
Android uses the iPhone browser core. iOS is BSD-based and built with LLVM. Android phones are riddled with crapware and carrier restrictions, and in the US are often proprietary CDMA with no SIM. It is a wash.
At least with iOS it is sold directly to you by a vendor whose only interest is blowing your mind so much that you come back for another iPhone in 2 years. At least with iOS you get updates delivered automatically the day they are out of testing.
Apple is way bigger and richer than Google, and has over 30 years of making operating systems. Google is the new guy with a plagiarism problem and less money.
The problem with Android is it is not original. It's not meant to be original. Never mind the patents, just consider that we are taught in Kindergarten not to copy someone else's work and put our own name on it. Copying someone else's work so you can sell ads on it may be innovative advertising, but it's not innovative operating system design.
So yeah, Google is heading for legal disaster with Android, and with WebM also. They come in to a field they don't know, buy something cheap, and clone the hell out of whatever is the most successful, Microsoft-style. First it was BlackBerry in pre-release Android, then iPhone, and with WebM/VP8 it is a clone of h.264. Doesn't matter what noble intentions you fill your PR with.
Another problem for Android is it is not even popular amongst many old school Google people. Many see it as being more trouble than it is worth. Andy Rubin is hated by people who have done much more for Google, some of whom have left just to get away from him. The opportunity cost for Google with Android is outrageous. Same way Microsoft is missing out by not making 100 iPhone apps by now.
The Google brand uses to be first-class. They were seen as invulnerable and omnipotent. Android has severely damaged that.
And for what? To provide the core of Chinese and Indian feature phones? To sell 100,000 boutique Nexus phones every year?
If you teach the browser first and the shell last then students will be much more interested. If you understand about HTML, CSS, JavaScript, the DOM, HTTP, httpd, FTP, and TCP/IP then you have the context to learn bash.
You're trying to teach auto mechanics to students who likely can't drive because they've been using DOS and their brains are like putty. Get them driving a Unix first through showing them the Web they already know is actually a Unix app (well, technically a NeXT app, but close enough) and then drill down through the layers.
In other words, start from close to the user, not close to the kernel.
Google has already said that the first tablet-ready Android will require a Cortex A9 ARM chip, which is dual-core. Android doesn't use the GPU well, and has a baby display system and baby Java applets they compensate somewhat by throwing CPU at every problem. So yes, they want a dual-core on a tablet.
Android pretends to be more hackable than iPad, bit is not. iPad runs 50,000 native C apps plus 300,000 native C iPhone apps, plus you can write your own apps in C/C++/Objective-C and Open GL ES, or in HTML5 for iPad's 100/100 Acid browser, which provides the only full-size Web view on a mobile. Galaxy Tab has Java, no full-size apps, no C, and its browser is a pixel-doubled phone view of the Web that only gets 90/100 on Acid.
Lie to yourself all you want, but one reason iPad is popular is how easy it is to install and create apps. In other words: it is hackable.
iOS devices all have hardware H.264 video decoders and iTunes. There is absolutely no need to play nonstandard video formats on one of these devices. Even if you have nonstandard video, there are hundreds of easy and free ways to transcode that video into H.264 for iTunes and your iOS device. In fact, VLC for Mac or PC is one of those ways.
Running VLC on an iOS device would be like hacking VLC to run on a DVD Player, so you could burn nonstandard video onto DVD and play them in the DVD Player. Who needs that?
MPEG has been working for 20 years, and it brought you the DVD, MP3, iPod+iTunes, Blu-Ray, mobile YouTube, and online HD video. So cry me a fucking river.
I have documents from 1999 and earlier that in 1999 were stored on a 6 gigabyte HFS+ FireWire disk which would plug on to my 2010 MacBook Pro and be completely accessible if the disk mechanism would spin up. But every few years I just copied all the files to a fresh disk mechanism in a newer HFS+ FireWire/USB2 disk, which was pretty painless: a few minutes to format the new disk with HFS+, and a few minutes to copy over the 5-6 gigabytes of files. Since 2006 or so the files have also been backed up by Time Machine to a bigger USB2 disk, and since 2008 or so there is another backup on a Drobo and since 2009 another backup on an online backup service. All of these are always accessible.
As far as formats:
Adobe Photoshop documents just open in the latest Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator documents just open in the latest Illustrator
Adobe Flash documents just open in the latest Flash
TrueType and Type 1 fonts still work with Mac OS X
HTML or plain text documents just open in Safari for viewing or BBEdit for editing
JPEG photos and PNG graphics just open in Safari or Quick Look or pretty much anywhere for viewing or Photoshop for editing
Logic documents open in the latest Logic Pro, and the 24-bit 44.1kHz AIFF audio tracks play in iTunes or open for playing or editing in all of my pro audio apps
DV and MPEG-2 movies open in Compressor for viewing or converting
Keeping this data live is very valuable but it has been really, really easy.
iPad has a built-in, low-power hardware ISO MPEG-4 player, same as all other modern devices. So why are you even trying to play MPEG-2 and DivX? Are you saving your movie collection for someone to invent a time machine? Transcode them to the modern ISO format so they play on portable devices in a small fraction of the battery power.
EVERYTHING sacrifices performance for power usage. Intel ran P4 at 4GHz but then introduced Core at 2GHz. Why? Power usage.
The key thing is that most computers spend most of their time doing nothing. They are waiting for another keystroke, or another Web page, or sitting mostly idle while the GPU presents a video, or they are sleeping. Most users will not benefit from more computation as much as they will benefit from lower power. A key example of this is 1GHz ARM iPad with 10-12 hour battery and 30 day sleep which has outsold all other tablets, including dozens or hundreds of Intel-based tablets with 3-5 hour battery.
With multiple core ARM even more computation will be available when needed, but cores can sleep, you can still get down to almost no power being used.
Also, ARM is so cheap. You can buy more them than you can Intel for the same money.
Advanced operating systems are maintained in such a way that they don't run malware, for example, they are updated automatically so regularly that there is a disincentive to create malware, same as you get rid of graffiti with a regimen of immediately painting it over. Mac OS and iOS, for example. It's the not-advanced operating systems which are easy targets, graffiti magnets.
They think they are computers that don't require you to have a desk. That is all. They have already replaced many PC's with iPod touch, because they look at it as a mobile PC, and they value mobility. That is why the US military is really interested in iPads.
iOS devices do not attach as USB mass storage. You have to add an app like Air Sharing (which is easily prohibited by a device policy) just to see a file system.
The use is to run apps. Same thing you do with a computer. Instead of a PC notebook, they want to use iPod touch and iPhones because that makes more sense if you are MOBILE. The US military has many of its own iOS apps already. The first use was sniper calculators.
They treat iPhones and iPod touch as disposable, because they are very cheap by military standards. So instead of having one $10,000 "military-grade" device they buy 50 iPod touch, and the 50 iPod touch are actually more rugged because you can break them and easily get a replacement.
An iPhone can survive whatever you need it to you just choose the right case from the 10,000 or more available options. There are only 3 iPhone form factors no matter what kind of case you want, it already exists.
The US military has the world's largest collection of iPod touch, for which they did indeed get a deal from Apple. Right after the iPad launched, the US military showed up at Apple headquarters and got a hands-on, because they have had such good success with iPod touch and Xcode apps, they wanted to replace PC's with iPads ASAP.
Remember that the Department of Defense and NSA were absolutely huge NeXT customers. The tools you use to make an iOS app or Mac app are the same ones that were used to make NeXT apps and the World Wide Web.
There are many, many, many iPhone cases of every possible description, all built to fit any model exactly, because there are only 3 different form factors after 3.5 years. And iPhones and iPod touch are cheap enough by military standards they just treat them as disposable. They have bullets that cost more.
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iPad can do anything that C, C++, and Objective-C can do, which is everything. The Cocoa frameworks enable you to do Mac-like things very easily. For example, audio, video, wireless MIDI. The developer tools are free, and so easy to use that there are kids with apps, and a physicist used these tools to create the World Wide Web. Organizations can deploy their own apps wirelessly outside of App Store, and trust App Store to safely deliver additional apps without malware, and there are like 400,000 mini apps and 75,000 full-size apps.
Basically, whatever you need it to do, it can be made to do, even just by one programmer in a fairly short time.
This is the 10th year of Linux on the tablet!
That is ridiculous. Lots of hardware doesn't matter. We're talking about a screen and a bezel you hold, with a generic ARM and flash storage and Wi-Fi/3G. Why would you need to switch from IPad for hardware reasons? They are the acknowledged design leader and also the price leader, just as in iPods, and they have the most hardware accessories and custom cases.
Everything happens in the software on a tablet. Having native C apps, desktop class PC apps, is a billion times more important than a variety of hardware that all runs the same small set of Java applets that only do Web-class functionality. Nobody but Apple has native C apps on ARM, and nobody has full-size apps except Apple.
We are talking about corporate here. iOS has deployment and security features that Android lacks. It has Xcode rapid development tools that Android lacks. Corporations can deploy their own apps wirelessly. Their users already know the iOS interface. Even if the users know Android 2, the tablet version 3 is different.
What you have to do is resist saying "Android" and tell me why I'm supposed to pay $799 for a Motorola iPad clone with 32GB and mini Java applets and no installed base and not even available yet when iPad 3G 32GB is $729 and has a full-range of native C apps and 17 million installed base and an upgraded version likely to ship before Motorola?
If you look at music players, it is 75% Apple, 10% Samsung, 15% everybody else. How does that relate to your theory that more hardware choices leads to dominating market share? The non-Apple 25% has hundreds of devices. Apple sells more iPod nano than that whole 25%. iPad is the "iPod PC" the components are very similar and you buy native C apps instead of music. So what has changed from the music player market that users are going to prefer Motorola this time?
Windows Mobile 6.5 is outselling Windows Phone 7. That is all you need to know. Total failure.
The first movie is awesome, and the second movie is awesome, but the third? Fix it.
If they merge you get a complete company. They could put Windows on top of Unix on top of HP hardware and make something that can compete with the Mac. They could do real mobile versions of Office and have something that can compete with iPad. Put all their phone stuff together, you might get to something that matches the 2007 iPhone.
The kit era is over. The build whatever PC you want as long as it runs Windows era is over. Most users today are not nerds, most buyers are not I-T. You need to make complete, functioning solutions, you need to ship software on silicon, not floppy/optical disks.
For Microsoft to merge with Compaq was always the way it was going. Compaq put Microsoft in the IBM PC driver's seat. Now, they can make honest vendors out of each other, they can ship solutions instead of kits.
The HTML5 API is the open iOS API. That is where all the nudity is. It's unmediated. It's perfect for Playboy. The iPad features are touch events and WebKit enhancements.
The Cocoa API on iOS is managed so that it is an alternative to anything-goes HTML5. Yes, you can shop at App Store with freedom from porn, because you can't get away from it on the Web. Yin and yang. Balance. Choice. I know it is unfamiliar totalitarian nerd like the original poster, but luckily there is at least one company giving users what they want instead of what nerd dogma says they are allowed to have.
Not only did he specifically ask us not to offer him that response, your idea makes no sense when a 2 TB bare disk can be had for $69 at CompUSA.
I keep the master copy in iPhoto, with the library stored on a high-quality LaCie Starck drive. A backup copy is made automatically by Time Machine (Mac OS built-in backup) onto a Drobo, which automatically makes 2 copies to guard against disk failure. An offsite backup is made automatically by BackBlaze, which is $5 per month.
So I only have to work with the photos themselves in iPhoto, I don't even have to touch the files, and there are always 3 backup copies made automatically by the Mac. I can even step back to previous versions with Time Machine. Very convenient.
If you think an Android phone is any more FOSS than an iPhone, I have a FOSS bridge I would like to sell you.
Android uses the iPhone browser core. iOS is BSD-based and built with LLVM. Android phones are riddled with crapware and carrier restrictions, and in the US are often proprietary CDMA with no SIM. It is a wash.
At least with iOS it is sold directly to you by a vendor whose only interest is blowing your mind so much that you come back for another iPhone in 2 years. At least with iOS you get updates delivered automatically the day they are out of testing.
Apple is way bigger and richer than Google, and has over 30 years of making operating systems. Google is the new guy with a plagiarism problem and less money.
The problem with Android is it is not original. It's not meant to be original. Never mind the patents, just consider that we are taught in Kindergarten not to copy someone else's work and put our own name on it. Copying someone else's work so you can sell ads on it may be innovative advertising, but it's not innovative operating system design.
So yeah, Google is heading for legal disaster with Android, and with WebM also. They come in to a field they don't know, buy something cheap, and clone the hell out of whatever is the most successful, Microsoft-style. First it was BlackBerry in pre-release Android, then iPhone, and with WebM/VP8 it is a clone of h.264. Doesn't matter what noble intentions you fill your PR with.
Another problem for Android is it is not even popular amongst many old school Google people. Many see it as being more trouble than it is worth. Andy Rubin is hated by people who have done much more for Google, some of whom have left just to get away from him. The opportunity cost for Google with Android is outrageous. Same way Microsoft is missing out by not making 100 iPhone apps by now.
The Google brand uses to be first-class. They were seen as invulnerable and omnipotent. Android has severely damaged that.
And for what? To provide the core of Chinese and Indian feature phones? To sell 100,000 boutique Nexus phones every year?
If you teach the browser first and the shell last then students will be much more interested. If you understand about HTML, CSS, JavaScript, the DOM, HTTP, httpd, FTP, and TCP/IP then you have the context to learn bash.
You're trying to teach auto mechanics to students who likely can't drive because they've been using DOS and their brains are like putty. Get them driving a Unix first through showing them the Web they already know is actually a Unix app (well, technically a NeXT app, but close enough) and then drill down through the layers.
In other words, start from close to the user, not close to the kernel.
Google has already said that the first tablet-ready Android will require a Cortex A9 ARM chip, which is dual-core. Android doesn't use the GPU well, and has a baby display system and baby Java applets they compensate somewhat by throwing CPU at every problem. So yes, they want a dual-core on a tablet.
Android pretends to be more hackable than iPad, bit is not. iPad runs 50,000 native C apps plus 300,000 native C iPhone apps, plus you can write your own apps in C/C++/Objective-C and Open GL ES, or in HTML5 for iPad's 100/100 Acid browser, which provides the only full-size Web view on a mobile. Galaxy Tab has Java, no full-size apps, no C, and its browser is a pixel-doubled phone view of the Web that only gets 90/100 on Acid.
Lie to yourself all you want, but one reason iPad is popular is how easy it is to install and create apps. In other words: it is hackable.
iOS devices all have hardware H.264 video decoders and iTunes. There is absolutely no need to play nonstandard video formats on one of these devices. Even if you have nonstandard video, there are hundreds of easy and free ways to transcode that video into H.264 for iTunes and your iOS device. In fact, VLC for Mac or PC is one of those ways.
Running VLC on an iOS device would be like hacking VLC to run on a DVD Player, so you could burn nonstandard video onto DVD and play them in the DVD Player. Who needs that?
MPEG has been working for 20 years, and it brought you the DVD, MP3, iPod+iTunes, Blu-Ray, mobile YouTube, and online HD video. So cry me a fucking river.
I have documents from 1999 and earlier that in 1999 were stored on a 6 gigabyte HFS+ FireWire disk which would plug on to my 2010 MacBook Pro and be completely accessible if the disk mechanism would spin up. But every few years I just copied all the files to a fresh disk mechanism in a newer HFS+ FireWire/USB2 disk, which was pretty painless: a few minutes to format the new disk with HFS+, and a few minutes to copy over the 5-6 gigabytes of files. Since 2006 or so the files have also been backed up by Time Machine to a bigger USB2 disk, and since 2008 or so there is another backup on a Drobo and since 2009 another backup on an online backup service. All of these are always accessible.
As far as formats:
Adobe Photoshop documents just open in the latest Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator documents just open in the latest Illustrator
Adobe Flash documents just open in the latest Flash
TrueType and Type 1 fonts still work with Mac OS X
HTML or plain text documents just open in Safari for viewing or BBEdit for editing
JPEG photos and PNG graphics just open in Safari or Quick Look or pretty much anywhere for viewing or Photoshop for editing
Logic documents open in the latest Logic Pro, and the 24-bit 44.1kHz AIFF audio tracks play in iTunes or open for playing or editing in all of my pro audio apps
DV and MPEG-2 movies open in Compressor for viewing or converting
Keeping this data live is very valuable but it has been really, really easy.
iPad has a built-in, low-power hardware ISO MPEG-4 player, same as all other modern devices. So why are you even trying to play MPEG-2 and DivX? Are you saving your movie collection for someone to invent a time machine? Transcode them to the modern ISO format so they play on portable devices in a small fraction of the battery power.
EVERYTHING sacrifices performance for power usage. Intel ran P4 at 4GHz but then introduced Core at 2GHz. Why? Power usage.
The key thing is that most computers spend most of their time doing nothing. They are waiting for another keystroke, or another Web page, or sitting mostly idle while the GPU presents a video, or they are sleeping. Most users will not benefit from more computation as much as they will benefit from lower power. A key example of this is 1GHz ARM iPad with 10-12 hour battery and 30 day sleep which has outsold all other tablets, including dozens or hundreds of Intel-based tablets with 3-5 hour battery.
With multiple core ARM even more computation will be available when needed, but cores can sleep, you can still get down to almost no power being used.
Also, ARM is so cheap. You can buy more them than you can Intel for the same money.
Advanced operating systems are maintained in such a way that they don't run malware, for example, they are updated automatically so regularly that there is a disincentive to create malware, same as you get rid of graffiti with a regimen of immediately painting it over. Mac OS and iOS, for example. It's the not-advanced operating systems which are easy targets, graffiti magnets.
> what do they think these smart phones are?
They think they are computers that don't require you to have a desk. That is all. They have already replaced many PC's with iPod touch, because they look at it as a mobile PC, and they value mobility. That is why the US military is really interested in iPads.
iOS devices do not attach as USB mass storage. You have to add an app like Air Sharing (which is easily prohibited by a device policy) just to see a file system.
The use is to run apps. Same thing you do with a computer. Instead of a PC notebook, they want to use iPod touch and iPhones because that makes more sense if you are MOBILE. The US military has many of its own iOS apps already. The first use was sniper calculators.
They treat iPhones and iPod touch as disposable, because they are very cheap by military standards. So instead of having one $10,000 "military-grade" device they buy 50 iPod touch, and the 50 iPod touch are actually more rugged because you can break them and easily get a replacement.
An iPhone can survive whatever you need it to you just choose the right case from the 10,000 or more available options. There are only 3 iPhone form factors no matter what kind of case you want, it already exists.
The US military has the world's largest collection of iPod touch, for which they did indeed get a deal from Apple. Right after the iPad launched, the US military showed up at Apple headquarters and got a hands-on, because they have had such good success with iPod touch and Xcode apps, they wanted to replace PC's with iPads ASAP.
Remember that the Department of Defense and NSA were absolutely huge NeXT customers. The tools you use to make an iOS app or Mac app are the same ones that were used to make NeXT apps and the World Wide Web.
There are many, many, many iPhone cases of every possible description, all built to fit any model exactly, because there are only 3 different form factors after 3.5 years. And iPhones and iPod touch are cheap enough by military standards they just treat them as disposable. They have bullets that cost more.