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iPad far ahead of other tablets?

I've come to thing that most tech journalists don't understand how products succeed or fail, nor should they really. Their job is to write interesting articles that get read. They can compare features on different machines and hopefully entertain us.

Figuring out what products will succeed in the marketplace or how to make a successful product is really hard. Look at all the once successful companies in the phone business that failed. Look at RIM and how they are struggling to make the Blackberry stay alive. They certainly have many high paid advisers who are smarter advisers than the typical magazine yet they struggle.

Success is a blend of many ingredients applied with skill. If great features were the most important part of success we'd all be driving Ferraris or BMWs or such.

You need a good product, and good marketing to explain the product so people know why they need/want it. You need distribution so people can actually find it somewhere with reasonable effort. You need good enough reliability so that you're not sunk on a bad reputation. This is just scratching the surface.

This is why the tech pundits are always surprised that Apple products sell so well or that their favorite gizmo fails to sell. It is hard and expensive to dig deep enough to figure out all the factors that go into analyzing a success in the market.

If Apple made a great product but only sold them online sales would not be so great. The Apple stores and Genius Bars help immensely. If the iPad had the same user experience but tended to fail after three or four months people would learn to stay away from them. And on and on.

The problem for a competitor entering this area is that Apple already has successfully solved the problem of sales/marketing/distribution/design for the iPad. When Apple introduced the iPad it had no competition and so had an easier time of it. New products don't have that luxury. They have to beat the iPad 2, not the first one and they have to go up against the whole Apple ecosystem for iPad that has emerged in the past year.

Anyway, I agree that the iPad will dominate tablet sales for some time to come, but the reason is not just the abundance of apps.
 
That conclusion certainly wasn't my takeaway from the linked article.

I think its safe to safe that ANY competent device manufacturer releasing a tablet these days is going to make sure it comes equipped with the latest processor, sensors, and screen. Its also going to make sure its form factor, dimensions and weight are at least on a par with the standard Apple set with the iPad (and iPad 2.) So from a purely technical standpoint, just about any Tablet is going to be labelled a "competitor" to the iPad.

But, as has been noted numerous times in these digital pages, tech specs alone are but a small fraction of the factors that go into the success of a product.

The linked article says (accurately enough):

The perfect example of this is the Need For Speed game which comes pre-installed. The game is both fun and graphically mesmerizing by tablet standards, however there are virtually no other available games in the ‘App World’ that are capable of matching the performance level of Need For Speed.
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(Emphasis mine.)

But then they go on to say:

This is just one of many examples that indicate the Blackberry Playbook has the potential to win the tablet race, just not at this very moment as it lacks the quality apps which Apple and Android readily deliver.
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Which is sort of saying I have the potential to be richer than Bill Gates - ie. All I need is another seventy billion dollars or so.

The Playbook truly does have "the potential" to be a competitor to the iPad. But the problem (for RIM, but also for Android) is that none of Apple's "competitors" have any strategy that seems even remotely likely to attract the number of quality Apps to the platform necessary to give it traction.
 
Different products will sell to different people for different reasons.

Apple are aiming direct at the middle ground mass market at the moment. That does mean their products will always be the best. It might mean they are often cut back, constrained, limited in many ways.

How good they are, as products and how well they sell are not totally linked.

I love the freedom a PC gives me over a Mac as I'm that sort of person. Other people will love the simplicity of a Mac and the way it easily allows them to just do what they want.

We're not all the same, thank god, else the world would be a very boring place to live.
 
FTWrath said:
Just read an article stating that though apple is far ahead of android/blackberry in the tablet race it is only due to the available apps...
http://www.frontsidebus.net/2011/06/04/playbook-position-in-tablet-race/
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No. The iPad is great, but I wouldn't say it is far ahead. Sales numbers bear that out. We'll see several million sold by other manufacturers in only a couple of quarters. The numbers are far less than Apple, but obviously a lot of people are finding the other tablets to be competitive.

In terms of technical specs, there are one's that are equivalent or even better. In terms of apps, for many people there are plenty for them in both the Android and OS markets. In other words, Google and other manufacturers have pretty much caught up.

By the way, that was a pretty poorly thought-out article. The stuff on the shelf is going to be surpassed by the new shiny tomorrow. That's a fact. If a manufacturer like RIM puts out a technically great product without enough apps (without even having email!?) then it is pretty unlikely to "win" anything. What was the writer thinking? By the end of the year it'll be a totally different market and RIM is totally unprepared to take advantage of it. I am disappointed.
 
Piggie said:
How good they are, as products and how well they sell are not totally linked.
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This is the worst cop-out ever. If Apple fails to sell well then 'Apple is losing marketshare because of bad decisions on their products' and if Apple products sell well then 'this doesn't say anything about how good the product is'.

If someone wants to sneer at Apple they can just return to that well again and again.

Piggie said:
I love the freedom a PC gives me over a Mac as I'm that sort of person. Other people will love the simplicity of a Mac and the way it easily allows them to just do what they want.
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I love the freedom a Mac gives me over a PC because it's a product that easily allows me to just do what I want. (actually I don't care, it's just a self-serving distinction you've made under the guise of even-handedness)
 
Carouser said:
This is the worst cop-out ever. If Apple fails to sell well then 'Apple is losing marketshare because of bad decisions on their products' and if Apple products sell well then 'this doesn't say anything about how good the product is'.

If someone wants to sneer at Apple they can just return to that well again and again.



I love the freedom a Mac gives me over a PC because it's a product that easily allows me to just do what I want. (actually I don't care, it's just a self-serving distinction you've made under the guise of even-handedness)
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1st point. There have been many brands of products that have sold well without being the best.

2nd point. I like PC's as they give you everything, and then it's up to you which parts you use.

I'd rather have a toolbox with every tool, so I can pick which tools to use for any job I may come across, rather than a predetermined selection of tools that someone else thinks I may need.

I want to be free to make my own choices, not have someone else make them for me.
 
Apple's always been far ahead of their competition, phones and tablets. They've just been around for longer, and they were kind of the first ones to get their feet wet in this entire new category of tech products. However, other companies are catching up rather quickly, especially Google. I don't know what RIM is doing, because as amazing as PlayBook may be, I don't think anyone sees a reason to get it over any other tablet.
 
Piggie said:
1st point. There have been many brands of products that have sold well without being the best.
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'The best' is not an absolute measure, it's always relative to people's needs and what they think is value-per-dollar. I get that you think product A is better than product B, but 'the best' isn't an objective characteristic.

Piggie said:
2nd point. I like PC's as they give you everything, and then it's up to you which parts you use.

I'd rather have a toolbox with every tool, so I can pick which tools to use for any job I may come across, rather than a predetermined selection of tools that someone else thinks I may need.

I want to be free to make my own choices, not have someone else make them for me.
Click to expand...

1) Every product has limitations and affordances
2) You are free to make your own choices, since nobody forces you to buy anything. When you do buy something, you are constrained by how that product has been designed. Your PC won't run Mac software, but you're not crying about that lack of freedom.

There will always be something a PC can't do and something a Mac can't do. If you got this in your head you wouldn't feel the need to talk about how limiting Apple computers are (i.e. the computers nobody is forcing you to buy anyway).
 
Piggie said:
I love the freedom a PC gives me over a Mac as I'm that sort of person.
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This "Apple = Tyranny" vs. "Everyone Else = Freedom" theme is one of most tiresome and, IMHO, absurd pieces of nonsense I read. Its also one that gets repeated, absent much in the way of actual evidence.

Lets get this straight: Buying and using a piece of digital technology isn't a political act. When I think of "Freedom", I think of Martin Luther King, Sophie Scholl, and Nelson Mandela. Not some wanker who's jailbroken his iPhone and then whines when it bricks up.

I've been using iOS devices since the first-generation iPod (does that count?) back in 2001. And I've NEVER felt as if Apple is controlling or restricting me, my life, or my music. I can play any piece of music I can get ahold of through my iPod, my iPad, my AppleTV, or one my desktop or laptop PCs. And, unless I'm much mistaken, I'll be able to do so even if I NEVER give another dollar to the good folks out in Cupertino.

Are there some restrictions on iOS devices? Sure: I can only run Apps that pass Apple's standards. Too bad I've only got two hundred thousand or so to choose from. And if, for whatever reason, I can't find what I'm looking for, then I am perfectly free to write my own. But I'm also FREE from the worry that any Apps I download from Apple a) won't work or b) will infect my machines with some horrible malware. Thats a "restriction" I'll gladly live with.

If you want to claim that Apple is somehow "restricting your freedom" - then kindly be prepared to back up your claims with some sort of evidence.
 
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vrDrew said:
This "Apple = Tyranny" vs. "Everyone = Freedom" theme is one of most tiresome and, IMHO, absurd pieces of nonsense I read. Its also one that gets repeated, absent much in the way of actual evidence.

Lets get this straight: Buying and using a piece of digital technology isn't a political act. When I think of "Freedom", I think of Martin Luther King, Sophie Scholl, and Nelson Mandela. Not some wanker who's jailbroken his iPhone and then whines when it bricks up.

I've been using iOS devices since the first-generation iPod (does that count?) back in 2001. And I've NEVER felt as if Apple is controlling or restricting me, my life, or my music. I can play any piece of music I can get ahold of through my iPod, my iPad, my AppleTV, or one my desktop or laptop PCs. And, unless I'm much mistaken, I'll be able to do so even if I NEVER give another dollar to the could folks out in Cupertino.

Are there some restrictions on iOS devices? Sure: I can only run Apps that pass Apple's standards. Too bad I've only got two hundred thousand or so to choose from. And if, for whatever reason, I can't find what I'm looking for, then I am perfectly free to write my own. But I'm also FREE from the worry that any Apps I download from Apple a) won't work or b) will infect my machines with some horrible malware. Thats a "restriction" I'll gladly live with.

If you want to claim that Apple is somehow "restricting your freedom" - then
kindly be prepared to back up your claims with some sort of evidence.
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THIS!


Might I add that Apple almost has the same domination of the Tablet App market as MS had with third party software for PC's, thus having more "tools in toolbox."

There wasn't a usable tablet for the everyday user UNTIL APPLE created it. The market exists because of Apple and it's offered people more computing "freedom" than they've ever experienced.
 
"Piggie: 1st point. There have been many brands of products that have sold well without being the best."

This is true. There have been many versions of Windows that sucked and yet it remained the market leader. Plus countless PC's that were pure garbage that sold well. In fact, almost no one has sold as much worthless **** to consumers because they had little choice except to follow the masses. Talk about lack of choices and personal computing enslavement.
 
In this industry, where a product is obsolete after merely a few years/months, being "ahead" can be very short-lived
 
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