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One year later, 101 iPad wannabes
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As you well know, it's just the delay in waiting for the correct tablet OS and UI which has been the stalling point for many devices.
It will be interesting to see how this all changes over the next 12 to 24 months as all the parts of the jigsaw start falling into place.
Apple hold the lead with a very strong grasp, a good solid year's advantage on any PROPER competition. All Apple have to do it to continue to improve their tablet ahead of the competition to hold their No.1 spot.
Honestly, I don't think they will, long term. They SHOULD do, but I don't know. I'm still not fully convinced, after a few years they will slip back into their nice cozy little corner of the market.
That said, in case anyone thinks, I'm wishing Apple down, that's not true. I WANT Apple to blow us and everyone away, packing the very latest cutting edge hardware into every release of a new Tablet. I just have a feeling, which may be wrong, that they will play silly games, and end up with a nice, and quality, but perhaps a technically lacking product in the long run.
I hope I'm wrong, and I am able to enjoy the very best from Apple, and not look at other devices and wish Apple was as good.
Let's see where we are by 2015.
It will be interesting to see how this all changes over the next 12 to 24 months as all the parts of the jigsaw start falling into place.
Apple hold the lead with a very strong grasp, a good solid year's advantage on any PROPER competition. All Apple have to do it to continue to improve their tablet ahead of the competition to hold their No.1 spot.
Honestly, I don't think they will, long term. They SHOULD do, but I don't know. I'm still not fully convinced, after a few years they will slip back into their nice cozy little corner of the market.
That said, in case anyone thinks, I'm wishing Apple down, that's not true. I WANT Apple to blow us and everyone away, packing the very latest cutting edge hardware into every release of a new Tablet. I just have a feeling, which may be wrong, that they will play silly games, and end up with a nice, and quality, but perhaps a technically lacking product in the long run.
I hope I'm wrong, and I am able to enjoy the very best from Apple, and not look at other devices and wish Apple was as good.
Let's see where we are by 2015.
I'm a bit anxious to see some windows tablets. I'm particularly interested in seeing how they perform. Since many (all?) of the windows tablets announced at CES were to be running on atom processors, I'd like to know how slow they'll be.
While for my needs, a full blown desktop OS would have been nice, the UI of windows and OSX would make interacting with it, a bit cumbersome on a tablet.
While for my needs, a full blown desktop OS would have been nice, the UI of windows and OSX would make interacting with it, a bit cumbersome on a tablet.
One thing Apple really needs to tout and do more with is integration between all their products. We are seeing some of that with things like the Apple remote for controlling Apple TV and the recent enhancements to airplay. Most stuff like that where you can leverage having both an iPad and an iPhone are things that could help Apple a lot.
not all have atom. this has an i5 and been available already.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220960&cm_re=ep121-_-34-220-960-_-Product
One nice thing that Apple won't have to deal with is fragmentation of the market, which could be a concern with other devices. With the iPad or iPhone, if I have an app that works well, you can be reasonably assured it will also work well for you (barring the differences between 3GS, 4, 5, etc.)
The real question will be whether the same can be said for these other devices, or if it will even be much of a problem at all.
Or will you have people saying things like "My friend has this awesome app on his Acme ABCtab, I wish an app like that existed for my XYZtab." or "I don't see why this app runs so poorly on his when it works fine on mine, they're both Windows 7 aren't they?" or, likely, "I really want to buy tablet A but I wish it had the same camera as the B and if it only was just a little bit thinner like the C..." I hate making decisions based on compromises like that.
The real question will be whether the same can be said for these other devices, or if it will even be much of a problem at all.
Or will you have people saying things like "My friend has this awesome app on his Acme ABCtab, I wish an app like that existed for my XYZtab." or "I don't see why this app runs so poorly on his when it works fine on mine, they're both Windows 7 aren't they?" or, likely, "I really want to buy tablet A but I wish it had the same camera as the B and if it only was just a little bit thinner like the C..." I hate making decisions based on compromises like that.
As I've said before. People don't seem to have any problems selecting the best iMac, MacBook, PC, or PC Laptop that suits their needs.
We don't all want to be clones of everyone else.
For example I may want a 10 megapixel rear camera, but you don't, you want a USB slot, but I don't.
If we bought a proper computer, we could select ones that did offer the strong points we wanted and were important to us.
Fragmentation has been used, almost created as a weapon of negativity to throw at other devices. Where is could be the best thing ever.
Just how fragmented is the car market, the clothing market, the entertainment market, the everything market.
Different products that generally do the same thing, all the cars can travel the same roads, but offer many many different designs and specs should be seen as a good thing as it gives us individual customers choice.
The whole fragmentation thing seems to be used by people who'd company does not give them a choice as a weapon to criticize when it fact it should be something to celebrate. being given choice.
It could happen but I doubt that'll happen anytime soon. For now Apple's grab on market is too strong and the mind share is mind boggling. More importantly, they have a critical mass lead on the number and quality of apps available, a proper ecosystem if you will.
I know some love to bring the Macs as a historical example but there's one crucial difference. The iPad is just so darned cheap compared to the original Macs. The original Macs cost upward of $2000 in 1980's dollars, which would be like $5000+ today. Even if an iPad costs more than competitors by $100, the difference is small enough that consumers will gladly spend $100 more to get what is in their mind a much better proven product from a premium company. Also Macs didn't have the kind of lead in software enjoyed by the iPad initially. In fact it was precisely the opposite as the IBM compatible PCs held many of the "killer apps," in Lotus 1-2-3, dBase, etc.
Plus it doesn't look like any of the competitors can beat Apple's pricing in a meaningful way. i.e. they cannot offer their products much cheaper unless it's made in a significantly worse fashion. For example the Archos is $200 cheaper but it's a much inferior feeling product. The Galaxy Tab uses a smaller screen and reportedly carries significantly lower material cost yet released with a similar price tag. All they could do is packing in more features and hope it draws consumers. However the same strategy has been used for almost a decade now and it hasn't killed off any of Apple's recent success in notebook, iPod or iPhone.
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I don't really disagree with anything you say here, it all sound quite reasonable, as you say they have a giant lead, not just with the device but also with the marketplace.
I guess it depends on two things.
1: For Apple not to get lazy, too cocky/smug, thinking they don't have to try very hard as they are untouchable, and or keep locking things down to the point of annoying people too much.
2: What will Android do, and the 10, 20, 30+ companies that produce tablets do. Ok, some will be cheap and nasty, but others will be very nice.
If enough Android tablets get made, by enough people, the BIG High Street Names that people know and trust, Sony, Toshiba, Philips, HP, Dell, Samsung, Asus, etc etc. At a nice enough quality, at the right prices, they will sell, given that they will without question sell, then that will of course create a fast growing userbase, it has to. Devs will naturally with to take advantage of this, and who would blame them? Which will pump up the number and quality of apps, new of which will get around, which will make more people look towards and android device...... and so the loop goes around.
This could be a VERY big loop with a world of major companies, out speccing each other over the next few years in all ways, and of course, trying to offer the best value they can also. High end and low end models.
Apple and it's apps, with it's one year lead is going to need every ounce of innovation they can to stand up against, what could..... only COULD be a barrage of devices from a mass of other companies in the next few years.
Which is why I said, they better not just think they can take it easy and not really bother, as at the moment they are a lap in front, but the race proper is just about to begin, and there are some dam good other runners at the starting line.
Just one possibility of course
That is awesome. I noticed though, is the playbook actually for sale yet? It's on your list. And do e-readers count as tablets? And should touch-screen windows computers really be in the same line-up as the iPad? Different category man. Over all, though cool list, but a little misleading.
Where have you been the past ten years? What about the HP/Compaq TC 4400 ?
Nope, not yet. Another week or so.
Sold out
Three hours battery life
2.56lbs of 3 hours of battery life. Maybe. I bet most users, (If there is anyone that buys one, but someone will. Hey 70 something people tried to buy a JooJoo remember?), will get closer to two hours.
Sure, Microsoft has been pushing the tablet pc for years and failing. What I'm hoping that win7 and hardware makers make a tablet that is actually usable.
There's a reason why tablets have failed to take off until apple produced the iPad.
They were big, slow, short battery life, needed a stylus, and the Microsoft seemed to put impediments to actually using a tablet, like office' UI making it all but impossible to use the tablet.
Now that apple has shown the way, I'm interested in seeing if Microsoft and manufacturers learned their lesson and not make a big, heavy, slow tablet pc and the OS is not making it more difficult to use.
You can reasonably assume the same with Android apps, since any particular Android version is compatible on all devices, due to required validations.
And, just as with iOS and the Apple App Store, the Android market only shows the apps that work on your device.
To me, the Android situation is actually even better, because you can also usually run any phone app on a tablet device, and it looks good, just with more lines shown, etc. (Pulse News Reader is a good example.)
Run an iPhone targeted app on the iPad, and you not only don't get to use the full screen, but zooming it results in a pretty bad visual most of the time. And you still must use the tiny phone version of the keyboard, which is just plain stupid on a tablet.
What does this mean exactly? I hear this all the time when someone knocks the android platform but from the consumer it has little meaning. I own an android device, I go to the marketplace and buy an app. It works.
From a developer perspective, they need to code the device to work on multiple resolutions. Is this a new phenomenon? Havne't developers learned to deal with varying resolutions since the green screen gave way to cga, ega, vga, etc?
From an android version issue, they (the developers) need to code for a certain OS level, just like iOS. Not all current apps will run well on older versions of android, the same can be said for iOS. Just take look at the 3G trying to run new software or not running on anything older then iOS 4
Basically what I'm saying is the idea that fragmentation is a nice little buzzword bantered around by those that criticize the platform but I'm not seeing this a valid reason.
Sold out
Three hours battery life
WTF... thats pathetic... can't even take it on a car trip without a charge. Meh.
As I see it, fragmentation is not only about resolution but also about specs. You have ton of tablets with totally different specs, you have tablets with Android with handwriting recognition (see Asus), you have tablets without it, each company releases ton of tablets without any vision or strategy (e.g. from a developer perspective, you have absolutely no idea on which tablet to focus) etc.
Like writing for the mac then?
I want to write an app or a game under osx. But the user may have a MacBook air, a MacBook, a MacBook pro, one of the iMacs or a Power mac.
They'll have different specs and the users could have different trackpads or different types of mouse controllers, even different keyboards.
It's so confusing to write for.
Yet no one seems to complain do they?
They don't complain simply because there isn't fragmentation on the OS level.
You write an application for Mac OS X and, not surprisingly if I may add, it works on all Apple computers with the required Mac OS X version.
This isn't voodoo.
Perhaps, but this is what I've been hearing about Android from the moaners. Yes it will run, but the screen res might be different or the buttons may be different or perhaps the camera may or may not be there. Or even one may run faster than another due to different CPU/GPU those type of remarks.
All Which you could also apply to the Mac and OSX really, and of course Windows. No one has really been saying apps won't run, but rather there are options that the programmer may have to allow for.
Perhaps I'm being optimistic, but I think this will all sort itself out before very long and am accepted spec won't be that far off.