Android Honeycomb Born Too Early 192
adeelarshad82 writes "This year's Mobile World Congress was the stage for dozens of new tablets. Unfortunately, Android Honeycomb tablets lacked presence; amongst the top Android tablets demonstrated at the show, only the Motorola Xoom was running Honeycomb, whereas others were running either Android 2.3 or older versions. Moreover, most of the top apps announced for the OS were not new, just reworked. Gigaom may believe that Honeycomb tablets will be iPad's true competition, but progress has been slow, in my opinion. Honeycomb was born too early, primarily out pressure from the iPad getting a one year headstart in the tablet market."
just like windows 3 (Score:3, Insightful)
Widows 3 was half baked too. Imagine for a moment there was no iphone (or mac) to compare andorid (win 3) to. both would seem amazing. But the are kind of a joke compared to the seamlessness of the apple garden. Win3 more so. andorid is pretty polished.
The difference this time is that there's no substantial price differential. even the cheapest android is only a couple hundred less than the apple model. not so in the days of win 3. Also the Apple SDK has made it more not less enterprise ready.
So it's hard to make comparisons.
If so then Apple will be selling out of iPad 2s (Score:4, Insightful)
Thesis? (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously, Honeycomb is later than Google would want it to be. All software, even stuff that ships as predicted, is later than its creators would want(because who wouldn't want software to be done in zero time?) However, that seems to have no logical connection to how many devices are being displayed with it. As with essentially any OS that isn't tied directly to one specific product, early development likely occurs on dev boards that will never be made into products, or on last-gen stuff that is deemed adequately representative for testing purposes. Eventually, it matures enough to appear in public facing tech demos, and then it ships. In this case, Motorola seems to have been the BFF launch buddy. Other than the trivial sense in which it is "too early" for Honeycomb to have broad distribution(which is true of every software package at some point in its life) how is this relevant?
Clearly, Google is working on catching up to the incumbent(and busy stealing share from the other players, especially no networks that Apple doesn't care to deal with); but, unless there is a cogent argument that Apple will do something in the near future that will be so groundbreaking that Google will just have to run away and abandon their efforts, the notion that they are "too late" seems dubious. Later than they would like, obviously; but (unless public reports are being fudged pretty seriously) moving more than enough Android devices to make their improvement efforts strategically viable, possibly even self-sustaining, for the forseeable future.
Two problems.... (Score:5, Insightful)
iPad has 2 years head start. Honestly Apple had been working on it for more than 30 seconds. Google has a LOT of catch-up to do.
Most of the manufacturers of android tablets are making low grade junk in hardware quality and choice. Yes the new ones are far better but have a price point that is the same as a iPad, so now they have to compete in direct comparison. If you were able to undershoot by even as little as $100.00 you make sales a whole lot easier. Hit the $200.00 price point and suddenly you will get even ipad diehards buying them.
But, what was released at the $200.00 pricepoint were junk. Processors and ram to slow and small to even run android 1.x decently. All of them came with a bastardized version of android and not a pure android that would have ran faster. AND all of them had severe battery problems that make them useless as a tablet.... sorry but 10 hours on and playing a video is needed. I do not want to have to charge my tablet nightly. WEEKLY is the most you will get on the charger.
Android will get there, but the current offerings do not entice me. more expensive than an ipad and still not big enough screens. Dammit I need a 8.5" by 11" screen with the resolution to match. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, and students all would want this size.
Re:Not too early. (Score:4, Insightful)
Android is pretty much "open source when Google decides"
Not like Meego for example, which is more in thee spirit of the open source development (and most other open source projects)
Re:Not too early. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yea I know. I noticed this behavior when the Droid was coming out. Evidently the only way Google is able to get hardware vendors on board is to offer some exclusivity to them prior to release. I always wondered how HTC felt being "shafted" by the exclusive deal with Motorola after they were the ones that put Android phones in the hands of the consumer.
It's as if Google is using "open source development" as a facade to sell Android to us geeks. It's not really fully open sourced if we are only allowed to fix bugs or add features after the initial version release. Then again we are only fixing bugs and adding features to OUR phones, since the average non-rooting consumer will most likely be stuck with the initial version of the OS that came with their phone for the life of the contract.
Still it is the more open than iOS, but less open than Meego.
Re:just like windows 3 (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless you have an enterprise licence, when you can do anything you like.
On the consumer side, it's more accurate to describe it as a gated community - in general no one really cares what you do inside there, unless you start making waves. The number of "high profile" "banned" apps is very small compared to the whole ecosystem. For the vast majority of developers and users they are simply not affected by it at all and are doing just fine within the walls.
It's not for everyone of course, and I think Android was an inevitable result of the iOS ecosystem, and they will certainly make each other better. Everyone wins.
The worst possible thing you can do is underestimate or belittle the competition as you have done in your flamebait post. The iOS ecosystem has some well-documented controls, but the sort of hyperbole demonstrated here really oversells it and just puts you out of touch with exactly what it is like, which leads to complacency. How many people on here, for example, still harp on about how iOS is not ready for enterprise because of the "good luck getting your secret/NDA covered app through the app store lolz!" without realising that there's a whole separate in-house deployment system for iOS in enterprise. I saw it a lot in the NFL article about iPads replacing paper for coaches, for instance. It's comments like yours that fosters this sort of ignorance. You don;t actually stop to look at exactly what it is you're rallying against. It really is just "oh, it's made by Apple/Microsoft/Sony/OtherBigBusiness, therefore I don't actually need to do any research on it, I just know it's bad and will now spout off opinion as if it were fact". It's tiresome.