Tablet Makers Try To Beat iPad's $500 Pricetag 338
The iPad has sold extremely well at a starting price of $500 but "that kind of pricing doesn't work for many tablet vendors," says a story at CNET. And recent price drops reflect this. It's been a rough year for tablet makers, and it's not even Black Friday yet.
That's because the "tablet market" doesn't exist (Score:3, Interesting)
There has never been an "tablet market". There is an "ipad market" now. It didn't exist when Apple initially launched the iPad, but they managed to "open the market" (clearly that legion of loyal fans had a role on that).
The rest of the vendors don't have that critical mass of early adopters, and/or their product isn't as good (or perceived as good) as the iPad.
The people who can afford them, pick iPads, or nothing at all. The rest of us have higher priorities than buying second-class tablets.
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This is changing. Tablets are finding a place in business especially in places where portability has value and you don't want or need the power of a full laptop implementation.
We've tried business-market tablets before (Score:2)
Sure, they've been around a while, and we had various attempts at getting the pen-based computing market going since at least the early 90s. But they're typically tied up into an integrated vertical business model of applications, and never get the economies of scale it takes to be a mass-market product, and typically cost significantly more than a notebook computer. That's ok if you're Fedex making your drivers more efficient, but it's still really a niche market.
On the other hand, taking an iPad or co
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I've got a pen-based tablet. Not really worth the trouble UNLESS you have an app that takes full advantage. The pen is just not as easy to use as the finger, and having something in both your hands doesn't enhance portability.
Now the tablets out now are clever, but the apps they show off are largely intended for tasks that don't rely on a keyboard. Lots of them, but data entry isn't one, and business apps that don't need data entry are limited.
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Considered it? He probably can't even imagine it.
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Wrong definition (Score:3)
Are you going to talk about `post pc` now, or how the iPad will make PCs redundant?
"Post PC" was never about the PC being redundant. Only that other platforms were equal to it, that the PC was no longer necessarily a primary device.
For some people, yes an iPad does replace a PC. For some uses (like travel) an iPad can replace a PC for quite a lot of people.
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You misunderstand how much more portable a tablet is compared to any traditional laptop, regardless of the format. The iPad goes from off to on in a few seconds. You can run presentations off of it for hours without a power source. For pure consumption of media or as a fancy drive that plugs into the projector, nothing beats the iPad. Nothing. And that's why businesses are adopting the iPad far faster than any iPhone.
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My laptop goes from sleep mode to on in a few seconds, and it uses only ~3% of its power in an hour of sleep.
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I can support my laptop with my right arm from the front right to left back corners and type with my left hand. It is somewhat awkward, but doable.
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Awkward to write a book on a tablet too. 'Real work' vs 'consuming content'. If you're a 'content maker' then you use a laptop or (hard-core) a desktop. If you just watch tv shows or read a book, then certainly a tablet is less awkward. I like to type fast on a real keyboard and not have to prop up my monitor/lcd screen.
Why is it that there are only TWO general use-cases that tablet-haters seem to recognize?
1. Writing War and Peace or the Linux Kernel from scratch.
2. Watching a movie or playing Angry Birds.
Nothing else seems to count. Why?
You DO realize, of course, that there are a whole bevy of use-cases for an information appliance like the iPad that don't fall into those two categories, e.g., Review and approval of documents, form-completion, correspondence review and creation, process monitoring/control, media
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I'm never sure what to make of a statement like this. Are there people outside of insane asylums who think that Apple has some sort of a lock on any market?
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Well, I wouldn't know, it's been so long since we've been outside the asylum, hasn't it, Bats? WAHOOOHOOOHAHAHAH!
Re:That's because the "tablet market" doesn't exis (Score:5, Informative)
Some of the Android tablets are quite nice. Particularly the Asus Transformer, the Acer Iconia Tab, the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Any day now the Tegra 3 models will be out and they promise to be astounding. For myself I prefer the widescreen layout.
Yes, the iPad is doing very well. That doesn't mean there's no hope for others. Agree about HP, RIM, Cisco and some of the others looking to put their own proprietary spin on things.
There's also huge demand for the lower-end Android tablet in places where money is harder to get. There are places in this world where the $500 entry price for an iPad is just too much money. It's easy enough to say that if you can't get the good one, do without - but the lesser things can still be darned useful. It's nice that there are hundreds of alternatives for those folks to use.
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The Transformer did 400,000 total, and this isn't sales, it's shipments to retail channels.
Yes, the iPad is doing more in a week than the others are doing in a year, because the Transformer is still sitting at 400K units, total production.
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No, it's really 400,000 a month and the goal is for over 2 million units this year. The Transformer 2 will be out for Christmas with 5 cores for only $500 and promises to move really well. And the Kindle Fire presold, sight unseen, over 250,000 units [bgr.com] in the first five days of presales - on its way to an estimated 2.5 million units its first month.
The iPad is nice gear. But this race isn't over yet.
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Other vendors are pushing products that are feature complete, but not design complete. You can't sell high end stuff in the same way as you sell low end stuff. For end stuff you need attention to detail and a presentation that reassures people it is not some random cheap product sold at a higher margin.
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That can't hurt. There is a reason marketers make big bucks. Still, if you want to maintain sales you have to deliver value.
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Okay, so you(and [some of] your antecedents in this thread) admit that people want to be like other people. So I fail to see how an Apple product being popular is a bad thing in this scenario. What I see as the problem is a corporate mentality that thinks building a better widget is going to sell more than building a popular widget.
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Some words I have to look up over and over again, like tautology. You are correct though. my statements where circular on the face. Companies seem to me to be saying(advertising), "Ours is the best!" Then they seem to build the worst experience instead.
I will assume your use of, "lock-in," in your response is a allusion to any of, iTunes, iTunes Music Store, iOS App store, or any number of other products created by Apple(maybe you aren't even being that specific, maybe you really meant in general). This is
Or they could just release a good product (Score:2)
Or they could just release a good product so that cool people would use it on screen on their own. Apple has never done "product placement".
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I specifically LOVE Starbuck coffee. I prefer a French roast, or cappuchino/espresso roast.
There are people who think Dunkin Donuts' coffee is great. I haven't been one of them for about 16 years. Maybe you prefer DD, eh?
ps - you're a coffee snob. How big is a standard cup of coffee?
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There is no universe in which Starbucks, the coffee of choice for soccer moms and middle-aged former yuppies, makes anyone look cool, or in which anyone actually imagines that starbucks makes them look cool.
The reason sbux succeeds despite having mediocre coffee is roughly the same as the reason mcdonalds succeeds: they're "good enough," "quick enough," "convenient enough" and "consistent enough."
Maybe when sbux first began showing up there was some small amount of cachet, but they're just another brand rig
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True enough. The Apple's market has a large chunk of people who will buy anything that Apple makes, no matter what it is. The other tablet makers don't have this sort of customer base shouting "let us give you more money!" instead they tend to want to analyze the product first before buying.
Apple's tablet market monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny how you often see Apple fans saying this. But then when someone suggests that Apple should be regulated as a monopoly for its abusive practices surrounding its walled-garden, the fans' tunes immediately change (and I'm not addressing you in particular), and they say nooo there's a thriving ecosystem full of competition.
Though frankly, I think that the latter might be true. A year ago, people were saying that there is no tablet market, only an iPad market, and Apple's market share was hovering around 95% in tablets. At the last keynote, Apple was trumpeting that they control 75% of the market share in tablets. Losing 20% market share in a single year is actually pretty startling.
Now of course they had nowhere to go but down from 95%, but at 75% I think there actually is a tablet market, and not an iPad market, and any heavy-handed government regulation is probably uncalled for.
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Sorry, not quite. I can afford it and chose differently. My Asus T101 Transformer is a better device. I have an iPad2 at work, but I chose the Transformer when spending my own money and am happier with it than the iPad.
The ability to drop it into the keyboard and have the USB ports, full SDHC slot and extra battery is fantastic. I can actually type when I want to type. Then I can just pull it out and take the tablet with me when I head out. That is a major plus that a BlueTooth keyboard just doesn't match.
Here we go with the apple bashers (Score:2)
I don't care if you like apple or not, is it too much to ask to keep it from becoming a personal slug-fest wit a bunch of derogatory remarks?
How about we stick to technology, or is that too difficult for you people now?
What the hell has happened to Slashdot?
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So have i, and i honestly have seen a sharp decline in the last year or so.
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To some extent, internet comment systems have always been like this. There've always been those random trollers just looking for the way to disagree over anything. If you post a comment on how blue the sky is, you'll get flamed from someone who swears it's just a whig conspiracy designed to make us ignore the lead they put in our water. "They want you to think the sky's blue so that you wont pay attention to how much like lead the water tastes." No matter how poor their reasoning, someone always finds a wa
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What the hell has happened to Slashdot?
S^2D^2
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Well, if you want a better UI than Apple, look no further than the Playbook -- it makes the iPad look like a pocket calculator. I could also point you to the now defunct HP Touchpad, which also had an amazing UI.
On the User experience between the Transformer and the iPad2, I'm not sure where you think the iPad provides a better user experience. You can make vague statements like "it's more polished" but that's not exactly helpful, is it? If you want to make that claim, you'll need to provide more details
my problem with tablets (Score:2)
I got a blackberry playbook a couple weeks back (a present, or I wouldn't have it). I have to say, I'm underwhelmed with the 3rd party applications. It could just be the playbook and maybe an Android tablet would have programs that are more mature, but I doubt it. The stuff I see on my playbook feels like throw backs to the old applications you could get for PDAs (remember those?) Yes, there's a way to do whatever you want to do on it, but you've got to 'manage expectations'...
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I got a blackberry playbook a couple weeks back (a present, or I wouldn't have it). I have to say, I'm underwhelmed with the 3rd party applications. It could just be the playbook and maybe an Android tablet would have programs that are more mature, but I doubt it. The stuff I see on my playbook feels like throw backs to the old applications you could get for PDAs (remember those?) Yes, there's a way to do whatever you want to do on it, but you've got to 'manage expectations'...
You mean there're no such apps like GhostGuitar [arstechnica.com] for the PlayBook? Who would have thought that.
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Forgive me for asking this, but why would you buy something like the Playbook when the iPad is a known good system? Are you just anti-Apple or what?
Re: Amazon did it (Score:3)
Less than half the screen size, half the memory, and a subsidized price tag makes that easier for them.
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That is 7". The competition there is Dell Streak, not iPad.
10" Tablets are Market-transforming; 7" are Niche (Score:3)
Kindle-like devices are market-transforming for the eBook market, but from the standpoint of the computer market, they're basically a niche player. 10" tablets are big enough to replace many uses of a laptop or desktop computer and handle the equivalent of a full sheet of paper, so they're not just supporting niche applications like Angry Birds or phone-sized mini-browsers, they're enough to do full-sized web browsing. Maybe a 7" tablet can steal part of that market at half the price, but I'm skeptical.
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Conversely, I'm skeptical on 10" tablets (actually, I'm skeptical about the whole market, but 10" in particular). After using an iPad2, that thing is monstrously heavy, and I could find no comfortable way to hold it. Sure, you can put it up on a stand, but once it's that awkward, a laptop would serve just as well. I could imagine 7" being a bit more manageable.
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You know, you really could do some curls and work out with those little 1 pound, pink plastic weights that you see little girls using.
I have this gigantic, heavy, clunky iPad (1st gen) and if you can't smell my sarcasm and yes, disdain for your puny weak arms and hands from here you need to get your nose checked, as well as have your muscles looked at for signs of atrophy.
If you are severely handicapped, please forgive my rudeness. If not, you really, REALLY need to go outside and do some exercise.
Seriously? It weighs less than Novels kids read. (Score:2)
After using an iPad2, that thing is monstrously heavy, and I could find no comfortable way to hold it.
What? It weighs much less than Hardcover Harry Potter books that I saw ten year old girls lugging around, when they just came out.
Are you weaker than a 10 year old girl?
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Except that an ereader had better use eink and if you want to view movies an ereader is the wrong device.
7" Tablets are going to be huge (Score:2)
If you actually talk to people that have owned 7" tablets, you might have a different feeling.
10" tablets are like netbooks. They're inconvenient to carry around, and they're inconvenient to pull out on the go.
7" tablets slip easily into and out of a bag, or even a coat pocket.
Tellingly, review sites like Engadget that have access to every tablet under the sun are huge proponents of the 7" form factor. Engadget is always talking about what a great compromise it is beyond size and portability.
I think Amazon
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The Fire is not direct competition to the iPad. Nor did Amazon intend it to be.
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The thing isn't even shipping yet.
Do we *know* that? (Score:2)
All we have to go on is one analyst's guess at component cost, and that guess is 5% more than price. I've been involved with projects of significant scale and without being a party to the whole situation, you cannot accurately assess the negotiated prices of all the components. The figure I saw quoted was 209.63, and I would not be surprised to find that Amazon had shaved 5% to sell at cost and make profit off the advertising (199 is the ad-subsidized price).
Re:Amazon did it (Score:5, Insightful)
Except iOS devices aren't loss leaders for Apple. Apple makes a negligible amount of profit off of its App Store. The bulk of Apple's profit comes from every device that goes out the door—whether it's paid for by you or by a combination of you and your mobile carrier.
Re:Amazon did it (Score:5, Informative)
The bulk of Apple's profit comes from every device that goes out the door—whether it's paid for by you or by a combination of you and your mobile carrier.
Don't worry, you pay 100% the cost of your iPhone. Your mobile carrier is nice enough to loan you the bulk of the purchase price and then extract it from you over the course of a 2-year contract, at an unspecified interest rate. It's similar to loan sharking, except there's no disclosure. :)
Re:Amazon did it (Score:4, Interesting)
How is that different from any other phone that the carrier sells? In fact, the carrier pays a larger subsidy for $200 iPhone than a $200 Android device and the customer still pays the same monthly amount for the same service.
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THANK YOU
I will never, ever understand why so many tech geeks will devote hours and hours to understanding the most trivial or obscure points of technical detail, but fail to do the most basic research when pronouncing opinions on business matters.
As a geek who is also addicted to gambling on stocks, I applaud you sir
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Hey, can you compute how much 30% of the $0 price of a free app is? Yet they allow free apps there.
Oh, and let us totally forget that Google charges the same 30% in the Android Marketplace. (nothing of which goes to the phone makers). Amazon lets you off with a 10% cut, but then they get to set the price.
Re:Amazon did it (Score:5, Informative)
1) iPad most definitely *not* sold at a loss - nowhere close.
2) iTunes Store/App Store run at very minimal profit. It is over break even, but not by much.
*sources, Apple's officially filed financial statements, every year since the launch of the iTunes Store.
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Yep, this agrees with their emphasis on being a "hardware company". They don't sell their software separately from their hardware, because it's the hardware they want you to buy. (Though they also do media. But, as you point out, to a lesser extent.) So, you had better expect them to sell hardware at a profit.
In a sense, they're kind of doing what the tech giants of old used to do (IBM, Cray, Sun, SGI, etc). It makes sense because they've been around since then. It also makes sense that all these internet u
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If you believe the iPad isn't sold at a loss, then I have a bridge to sell you.
If you believe it is sold at a lost you would be an idiot. Here are some facts.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/07/19Apple-Reports-Third-Quarter-Results.html
From q2 2011 to q3 2011 Apples revenue decreased in the App Store, iTunes Stores. Yet their profit increased from q2 to q3. Now how can it be that they had decreased revenue and increased profit if they according to you make the bulk of their profit off these ventures and not the hardware which had increases in revenue?
are you mentally retarded? (Score:2)
They are required by law to not misrepresent facts in quarterly disclosures.
I don't understand why you so desperately need to believe that Apple loses money on hardware and makes it back on iTunes; just look at the total number of Apps/music sold on iTunes, multiply that by their percentage and if even they had absolutely no overhead costs at all to run the store (like, say, their gigantic data centers) then it still wouldn't come anywhere close to justifying why they have $70 Billion in cash *right now*.
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I'll buy that bridge, since you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
Go and have a look at Apple's published financial statements. I'll wait.
(oh, and if you think they're falsifying them, report them)
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Of course, but tell me, given that they made 16 billion in profit in 2010, there or thereabouts, and that over the 3 year life of the iOS App Store Apple have paid 2.5 billion dollars to developers (their 70% cut), how does that magically translate to such a nice profit for Apple, *especially* if (as claimed by the OP) that the iPad is sold at a loss so that Apple can make hay on the App Store.
Let me guess, you're one of those people who automatically assume the opposite of anything a company says? It's hip
Re:Amazon did it (Score:5, Informative)
Apple made 7 billion in profit in the second quarter of 2011 alone - 500 million over the course of a year (or over the course of 3 ish years, give or take a bit up or down - the app store has been open for three years and has paid 2.5 billion to developers [that's the 70%]). It's certainly not coming from the App Store if they do a 30/70 split (as famously derided on here often) and the 70% side of that split adds up to 2.5 billion.
Like I said, the store does turn a profit, but it is *enormously* dwarfed by the profits from hardware sales - ie, my point was to refute the GP's argument that not only are Apple making their 16 billion in annual profit mainly from "iTunes/app store content sales by skimming off the top", but that they're also selling the iPad at a loss which is why no one else can make a cheaper tablet.
In other words, his arguments are total nonsense. The iTunes Store and the App Store exist to drive hardware sales, not the other way around.
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Please don't believe that anything is "sold at a loss".
Amazon has a revenue stream that has made them an exceptionally sexy stock. They're not doing a goddamn thing "at a loss". Why would you call it "at a loss" when people end up spending several times the cost of a Kindle buying ebooks, which cost nothing to manufacture?
When you pay AT&T $0 for a 3gs iPhone, do you think that's "at a loss"?
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Because when you buy a $0 3GS, you're agreeing to two years of service at a specific price.
When you buy a Kindle, there's no guarantee that you'll buy books from Amazon. There's a large number of free books available in the Kindle store, you can now borrow books from your local library, and you can generate (or convert) your own books if you like.
If the Kindle is being sold at a price below its manufacture cost, Amazon is making a bet that you'll go and buy books and games for your Kindle. Thus they reall
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Not the same people (Score:3)
And so what ? Selling to same people (that are already apple users) over and over again is easy
They aren't, statistically around 50% of iPhone buyers of any vintage have been new to the platform.
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Now they just seriously fumbled the iPhone ball by ...
... selling out the complete stock of the new device in only a couple days?
Nothing says failure like profit. Nothing says fumble like tripping over piles of gold.
I don't have a dog in the fight; I have no desire to own a smart phone. But I do like laughing at the android folks, those guys are hilarious. I hope they win, they have a cool idea, ethic, and philosophy, but that doesn't mean the rest of us aren't laughing at them.
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Android has already won. It's pretty much got the *rest* of the smartphone market, which is nontrivial.
I met the owner of a toothpaste company (there aren't many, so go and guess who) a ling time ago, and he shared with me that getting 2% of the toothpaste market in the U.S made for a good living. He didn't really need 5% to do well. Android doesn't really need 90% of the market, the Android device makers seem to be pretty happy with what they have. And remember, Android has generated a viable competitor
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http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/29/apple-captured-two-thirds-of-available-mobile-phone-profits-in-q2/ [asymco.com]
"Winning" in business is making a profit. Apple + RIM makes 77% of all mobile profit.
Motorola -- loss money
LG - loss money
Sony Ericson -- loss money
HTC -- made about $565 million (not great)
Samsung -- who knows but some of their profit is coming from bada and dumb phones,,
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I agree the reality is the 4S *shouldn't* be doing well, but rabid fans have already bought them all out. The iPhone user at work openly mocks the rest of us for buying non-apple, even though my device has better * everything* than his iPhone4 which cost him more. Higher resolution, ,higher bandwidth, faster processors, more ram, more storage, microSD slot, all the apps I could ever want, but somehow I'm stupid for having a phone that doesn't 'just work' somehow. He assures me one day my phone won't work
Counterpoint (Score:2)
How can anyone not do well when their product has pretty much been the only one around so far?
Why not ask Microsoft and the UMPC vendors?
Seems as though they have the answer down cold.
The iPad has already seen a LOT of competition. And it has seen a lot of competition die off...
Re:thrive (Score:5, Insightful)
The list goes on and on, but all the people who ask the question don't care at all about any of that. Pity, they should.
Why should they? That's a serious question, I'm not trying to troll here or be flamebait.
The demographic for the iPad is completely divorced from the features you have listed as the main reasons you went for a non-iPad tablet, and given that you can get those other types of tablets, and the users getting iPads are also getting what they want, why should they care?
If they want to program on it, or run Python apps, or install custom firmwares and so on, then there's a market that already caters to that. If they want what the iPad does, then they have the iPad.
Just because the iPad doesn't fit your use case doesn't mean that anyone who doesn't want to do the things you do with computing equipment is somehow wrong, or that they should care about what you care about.
Re:Why should they? (Score:4, Insightful)
But if your argument is "I won't buy Apple because they outsource their manufacturing to the third world" then using an Android tablet is hardly taking the high ground.
Your arguments were not based on moral issues though - you were purely talking about the function of the device (unless we go down the road that Free Software is a moral issue, but assuming it's one of a couple of choices for a moment), so conflating this with the issues of globalisation and worker and environmental exploitation seems disingenuous, since in that respect there's not much to choose between any electronics manufacturer (that's not to say it's ok, or that we shouldn't continue to push for a better situation).
Your initial argument essentially boiled down to "people who bought iPads should care that the iPad is not like the Thrive", but I have to wonder why, given that both products are available, serving very different demographics.
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Not everyone is an enthusiast. Some people just want to play. I like open source but really how open is the Thrive? Can I install debian or even Meego on it? If I can't then it's a semi-open system at best. If I can wipe windows off my laptop and install linux on it then I should be able to on my tablet shouldn't I?
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It can be open without being able to install some random OS on it. Existing operating systems need to be ported first, they don't just magically work on every new architecture that shows up.
Re:thrive (Score:5, Insightful)
I can program it without paying a fee.
You can program the iPad without paying a fee. There's a fee if you want to publish to the store, however.
To get the best tools for developing for iOS, it's true that you want a Mac with Xcode, but it's not your only option anymore.
It's open source.
Could you point me to the Honeycomb source? Last I heard, it's never going to be available. [geek.com]
It's Linux.
Why is this valuable? The kernel that runs the Thrive is Linux, but that's almost completely irrelevant. For underlying OS code, I'm going to prefer that which does the job best. That might be Linux, or it might be something else. "It's Linux," smacks of the same kind of kool-aid drinking of which Apple users are so often accused.
I can run Python apps.
Certainly a nifty feature. However why should "all the people who ask the question" care about that? How many of them are going to care? Almost every one of them will just use apps from the Market.
I'm not hating on the Thrive, which looks like a very decent tablet. I'm just sick of the FUD, and I'm really tired of hearing about how open Android is, when it really doesn't follow FOSS principles at all. Most Android phones have to be hacked just like iPhones in order to replace the ROM. On those which don't, you lose all claim to a warranty (absent consumer protections to the contrary, which you'd have to fight in court in order to keep.)
Android is open in the same way that TiVo is open. You might be able to see the source (not so on 3.1, apparently) but you likely won't be able to modify it and run it on your device.
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I agree with your points but add that you can't run your own apps on the iPad without paying the $99 a year developer fee.
XCode and the simulator are free though.
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Thanks for the correction. I wasn't aware that you had to pay that just to get an app on your own device.
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To be fair, I think the $99 entitles you to two developer tech support 'incidents' over the year. In other words, if you have trouble writing your app, or the frameworks are acting weird, you can get help from developers at Apple, which otherwise would cost additional money.
That's probably most useful if you're pushing the envelope and hitting edge cases, but it's nice to have.
Not true, you can skip the fee if you REALLY want. (Score:2)
I agree with your points but add that you can't run your own apps on the iPad without paying the $99 a year developer fee.
You can if you jailbreak. And you can still use the Apple tools for development.
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Well, one, Honeycomb is not open source, so there's that. For another, believe it or not, Apple fans consider Apple's lock-in and outright *inability* to do a lot of things a feature. They feel that Apple has decided the most appropriate experience and to consider anything else would just make their lives too complicated. They don't buy the "you can ignore capability if you want" argument, they think if it is possible to do something, you *must* do it. So "you can write python apps" somehow transforms i
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What's a Thrive? I haven't ever heard of it before you mentioned it.
I did look it up, and it's not even in the Wikipedia. Finally found it on Toshiba's web site, though. Looks like it's an extra-thick iPad clone with a pathetic 4 hour battery life (looks like you're going to need to get a few battery packs!).
Why oh why, didn't you just get a proper iPad, jailbreak it, and then run your Python apps on there? And don't give me any hokum about Android being "open source" - just try to get that source from
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There was one point where I was going to give a laptop to my mother, so that she could check and write e-mails from home. But even the basics of walking her through setting up a wireless network from across the country was basically insurmountable.
Comparatively, an iPad with a 3G connection would just work. No Antivirus. Simple configuration. Easy to work with. I'd have a hard time explaining to my mother how to even send an e-mail with Outlook. With the iPad it's just tap and type.
Most of the android
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Don't get carried away. Desktops are not dead and aren't going away. Pads, Laptops and Desktops all serve different purposes. When you need the cpu power, massive ram and expansion capabilities of a tower a pad isn't going to cut it.
Re:not a "rough year for tablet makers" (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly, I went to a hipster cafe and I saw ZERO desktops being carried around. Oh, wait...
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I think you''re saying something important here: It's *NOT* the price, it's a combination of the quality of the hardware design/execution, and the available apps.
For tablets to develop as a viable "market", hardware manufacturers will need to foster a more healthy app market.
Snake-bit? (Score:2)
Many readers have submitted stories about a new $35 tablet computer released today in India. The Aakash (meaning sky) has been handed out to 500 students for an initial trial run
India has been trying to make this idea work for the past decade at least --- and nothing much ever seems to come of it. Simputer [wikipedia.org]
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AC, if they can save money on education in the form of books, they can spend that on toilets.
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I've found that many of the ones who claim to be power users don't even know what duel booting is
I don't consider myself a "power user", but I'm developing software for a living for many years, and _I_ don't know what "duel booting" is.
Re:Because people don't need them (Score:4, Funny)
It's when two operating systems fight to the death for the privilege of running on a piece of hardware.
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Odd, because most technical people have switched.. (Score:3)
I do like asking them questions about their computer, because the answers they give are awesome. I've found that many of the ones who claim to be power users don't even know what duel booting is, or even how to access their command line.
While I'm sure you can find such users on any platform, At this point it would seem the majority of technical users have switched to using Apple gear. Just look around ANY technical conference at the mix of laptops there... I personally come from many years of using UNIX an
I know more about computers than you. (Score:2)
and I own an iPad.
Your move, Einstein.
or maybe everyone on the Earth is not you (Score:2)
kinda like how everyone else has a girlfriend or doesn't live in their Mom's basement--people are different.
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Maybe, you're wrong?
Do you really think that if anyone could sell an iPad equivalent for $399 and still make a profit, they wouldn't?
Also, Apple's costs aren't other manufacturers costs....
1. Between iPhones, iPods, iPads, MacBook Airs, AppleTV's etc. Apple is the largest NAND buyer in the world. They get significant