Why Google Isn't Pushing Android For Tablets 224
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timothy
from the but-I-want-to-buy-a-nopad dept.
from the but-I-want-to-buy-a-nopad dept.
Brad Linder of Liliputing posted an interesting analysis today about Google's reluctance to endorse Android for tablets. Linder argues that while there may be legitimate concern that Android just isn't polished enough for devices without phone access (because some apps need it), it would be smart for Google to segregate the apps themselves, so users can simply know which apps will work on Wi-Fi-only tablets. But from Google's perspective, he observes, "pushing a version of Android that isn't exclusively for phones could be all it takes for Chrome OS to be dead on arrival."
Horseshit (Score:5, Informative)
I use my Android constantly with airplane mode turned on and wifi turned back on since the cdma radio is such a hog. I never run into any app that doesn't work as expected based on this setup.
Re:Makes sense. (Score:5, Informative)
Android was designed from the beginning to fight with guys like RIM and Microsoft, and to a lesser extent, Palm.
I don't know which "beginning" you are referring to, but Android was released on the market to compete against what was at the time iPhone OS.
iOS on the other hand, was inteded for a tablet style device.
No, it was iPhone OS [wikipedia.org] before it was iOS.
Also, with the advanced operating systems today, such as iOS and Android, it doesn't matter what their original release device or the intended device was. They are both equally flexible enough to be adjusted to and support multiple different resolutions, architectures, and other hardware.
What makes more sense is that Android started gaining traction at a much higher rate than Google initially anticipated. So, Android may be stepping into Chrome OS territory with tablets. However, Google still wants to give Chrome OS a legitimate shot. Maybe they think they can repeat what they did with Android. I think it's going to be hard.
ChromeOS competes with Android? (Score:1, Informative)
People who think that apparently haven't used both operating systems. Android is a mobile OS designed to run third party apps - the apps are the centerpiece of the OS. ChromeOS is for devices that want to run a web browser. And nothing else. ChromeOS is great for kiosks and a decent choice for a netbook. But tablets are a big in between. If your tablet is a big phone, get an Android model. If it's a slim netbook without a keyboard, ChromeOS should be your choice. If it's a laptop replacement, look to better specs and full Linux or (*gasp*) Windows 7.
Remember this:
Want apps? Choose Android.
Want web browsing? Choose ChromeOS.
Want flexibility? Choice Linux/Windows.
Re:Makes sense. (Score:5, Informative)
No, internally from the ground up it started as an unreleased Tablet OS
http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/01/steve-jobs-at-d-iphone-os-started-on-a-tablet/ [engadget.com]
Jobs was just never happy with battery performance and other tablet problems... Then they figured out that they could start out even smaller with a phone and do a good job...
Re:Too early to tell (Score:3, Informative)
Samsung is realeasing an android tablet within the next month. and its quite smooth. uses a built in cellular card to cover data and apps that require it.
Re:Makes sense. (Score:5, Informative)
iOS on the other hand, was inteded for a tablet style device.
No, it was iPhone OS [wikipedia.org] before it was iOS.
If you dig a little further [allthingsd.com], you will learn that the iPad came first in Apple's R&D pipeline. They had to wait for some reason, and so they made the iPhone in the interim. If you've used the iOS SDK, it becomes pretty clear that it is not something that Apple just shoved out the door in 12 or 18 months or whatever it was. It's obvious that it had already had years of effort put into it. Perhaps the SDK was indeed intended only for iPad, and they rushed it out for iPhone due to popular demand, or perhaps it was a parallel effort. But it's not something Apple just cobbled together and shoved out the door and later updated to work with iPad. iOS was built for a tablet device from the beginning, IMO.
Also, with the advanced operating systems today, such as iOS and Android, it doesn't matter what their original release device or the intended device was. They are both equally flexible enough to be adjusted to and support multiple different resolutions, architectures, and other hardware.
The wildcard here is device and OS compatibility, which Apple obviously had thought through pretty well. While Android seems to just march forward ignoring it, creating a challenge for app developers. I don't have an Android device, but it is my understanding that it needs to be a phone to use their app marketplace, e.g. I'm not an Android dev, either, but from the sidelines, it looks like they just keep making things tougher for devs as time goes on. Not as bad as Rim or others, but not nearly as nice as iOS. My money is on the fact that the next revision of iPad will work with 99.999% of the apps out there. I'm not sure you could say the same for an Android tablet. Correct me if I'm wrong...
Google TV (Score:5, Informative)
not just that, but Google TV is based on... Android. I guess all TVs will have to come with cameras and GPS too :)
Ars Technica [arstechnica.com] has a article about it, they say that Google gives out varying answers depending who you talk to.
One one hand, we have a radically new set-top form factor that will supposedly run Android applications, and on the other hand, we have a Google product director saying that Android isn't a good fit for non-smartphone devices and that those devices may pose insurmountable application compatibility challenges in some cases.
I reckon this will quickly be a non-story in the end. Someone from Google will provide the necessary foot to the bum of the marketing department and all will be well.
Re:Even Apple is struggling (Score:3, Informative)
iOS 4 updates for iPad have been delayed multiple times.
They have? In July, Jobs said the iPad would get it iOS 4 "in the Fall," [osxdaily.com] and at the beginning of this month he said November.
Doesn't look like it's been delayed to me, looks like it's right on track.
~Philly
Re:Too early to tell (Score:3, Informative)
Re:iPad was created before iPhone (Score:3, Informative)
Read this in an interview with Jobs. They basically made an iPad prototype and Jobs said, "let's make a phone out of this". So they did.
That is 100% correct. It was an All Things D interview with Mossberg and Swisher; I think it might have even been D8 this year. iOS (even before it was called that) was always designed to go on both a tablet and phone. Android, on the other hand, wasn't, at least until v3.0. Seeing as how rudimentary features like the virtual keyboard and copy/paste suck on Android, I hope they fix that before going headstrong into tablets. Sure, HTC has fixed the C&P issue in Sense, and Swype is really cool, but those sorts of things need to be good right out of the box, and not necessitate a 3rd party to come in and fix them.
Re:they all suck (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.commodoreusa.net/home.html
and now that they have Amiga, the old days are coming back again !
Re:Well... (Score:2, Informative)
Never understood this myself. Android works, and works well. Sure Chrome will be great, but can't they get the Chrome browser in Android? Then get the best of both worlds. More online apps running in a browser, and Android apps to cover everything else. To turn away people wanting to use your products, making them harder to use, seems an odd path to go down..
Chrome is targeted at devices with one to two orders of magnitude more RAM, flash storage, and network bandwidth than a typical Android device. Chrome assumes you have a mouse and keyboard, Android does not. Naturally the designs will differ. A few examples:
* Chrome renders web pages in separate processes, and sandboxes the renderers to make malware harder to write. A desktop PC is fast enough that the slight performance penalty and increase in RAM used is worth the extra security. On a cell phone with a slower processor and much less RAM, users will complain about the browser being too slow.
* Chrome's Javascript engine does some impressive work to go fast including JIT compilation and caching class layouts in memory. Nice if you have a fast CPU and lots of memory. Not so nice on a low memory device.
I once read a an article complaining about Microsoft's decision to release three different versions of Windows: NT, Windows 98, and Windows CE. Somehow the author did not grasp that the right way to implement an OS for a PDA might not be the right way for a server. Were you the author of that article?
I expect that Google will release Chrome for Android. They do tend to give users what they ask for. However, if you take Chrome and remove the RAM hungry multi-process architecture, the power hungry Javascript engine, and all the other parts that make no sense on a slow, low memory, power-constrained device, you will be left with something that is not substantially different that the Android browser they have now. So they will change the icon. And when they do, I expect 100+ comments on the slashdot article saying how lame it was that they did this.
Google went out of their way to communicate the great technical work that went in to Chrome to laymen. A normal company would have submitted an article to IEEE Spectrum or ACM Queue. They had a comic book made that a 15 year old could understand: http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/ . But even the people on slashdot don't see why you can't write one platform that makes the right tradeoffs on every piece of hardware out there. Sad.
Re:they all suck (Score:3, Informative)
50M+?
More like 5M+. They're making between 2 & 3 M a month now.
But they'll hit 17M easily by next year. And probably another 17M the year after.
Re:Makes sense. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Makes sense. SIM's for CDMA? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Well... The issue is Android on TABLETS (Score:3, Informative)
People with iPads do the same thing. Personally I like those mobile MyFi type devices like Virgin Mobile sells. This way I can just purchase 3G access when I really need it and not have a data plan stuck on my phone.
Archos says hi. (Score:1, Informative)
Although the tablet is a bit (or terribly) unstable, Archos managed to get Android 1.6 on its Archos 5 Internet Tablet.
Re:No Proxy Support (Score:0, Informative)
android has support for proxies.
The point of ChromeOS is security (Score:2, Informative)
The major design decision of ChromeOS was to make it secure even when used casually. It's unfortunately hidden in the press releases and security documents of the ChromeOS project page [chromium.org]. The idea is that you can lend or borrow a netbook and not have to worry about keyloggers getting installed or your friend later viewing your private data. To achieve this goal, Google requires a TPM chip installed on the netbook so that a user can easily tell that the OS is unmodified, and the OS is stateless (modulo careful caching). This design is what makes ChromeOS so difficult to reconcile with Android, which is a single-user OS for very personal devices.
I hope that ChromeOS becomes successful because I do care about securely sharing computers, but if not enough other people care about this use case (or even understand the security concerns), then I can see how it may fail in the market.