Asus Joins Tablet PC Race 235
WrongSizeGlass writes "Reuters is reporting that netbook pioneer Asustek Computer Inc. has become the latest technology company to jump on the tablet PC bandwagon. The device will be called the Eee Pad, will run on Intel or ARM chips, and use Microsoft's Windows operating system. 'The Eee Pad can display Adobe Flash for the full web experience, has a USB port and a camera,' Asus Chairman Jonney Shih said. Asus did not release pricing details or a potential release date, and did not provide further details on the format or a launch date for the new app store."
And they thought "iPad" was bad (Score:5, Funny)
Compare to Overclocked GameCube (Score:2)
I'm sure no one will stoop to the level of calling it a Pee Pad. Nope.
Most of the Wii jokes died down after the first six months.
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No, but in Canada they can call it the "eh pad", eh?
Hoser!
"Flash" (Score:5, Insightful)
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However, as a marketing bullet point, it makes perfect sense. Adobe already supports Windows, and is desperate to support android, so if you are running one of those, the engineering is done for you, more or less. Plus, it makes for an easy, instant, product differentiation vs. the iDevices. Completely logical that yo
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What seems more ridiculous is that devices like the iPad don't support flash.
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There is a lot of content on the web that requires flash. For some people, they will not purchase an iPad because it does not have flash, and will not allow them to view all fo the content they normally view. For those people, having flash certainly is a selling point.
I suspect the number of people who will not buy an iPad due to its lack of Flash are already outnumbered by the people who have already bought an iPad.
Lack of Flash is used as a jab against the iPad disproportionate with the actual impact the lack of Flash has on the consumer. It's a cry of desperation from the underdog. Flash is already being replaced all across the web, driven by the demand from iPhone OS users.
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> What seems more ridiculous is that devices like the iPad don't support flash.
The iPad represents ancient technology in some respects. One key thing that makes this
less obvious is how Apple controls the experience. If end users are able to run things
willy-nilly or try to play any random video file, the out-dated-ness of the iPad becomes
readily apparent.
If the iPad ran Flash, then all of the review sites would be in the same position to
eviscerate it for it's poor Flash performance for the same exact reas
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Flash is more than video.
The Flash 10.1 RC for Windows supports hardware acceleration.
The installed base for Flash on Windows is as close to 100% as makes no difference.
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yes but the only hardware acceleration for flash is running windows.
Even flash 10.1 will only hardware accelerate flash video on some devices but not all. Flash will still drain down mobile devices at a massively increased rate for little gain. carefully read adobe's words. they can only do part of it and the beta's prove it.
Not to mention flash is way to hardware specific for a PLUGIN. Flash wants direct hardware access for a limited access plugin. it is why adobe has such a hard time porting to to var
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Is it just me or does it seem ridiculous that "our device X supports flash" is becoming a major selling point??
If the rest of the internet has been babbling about Apple and Flash the same way Slashdot has been babbling about it, it's easy to believe why they'd see it that way.
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I'm not disappointed. I want to see Flash die a horrible, flaming death.
The fanboys will scream (Score:4, Insightful)
And then whimper when they find out Asus has been making Apple products for years.
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1042363/asus-apple-building-tablet-pc [theinquirer.net]
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Interesting article. Asus leaked that they will be building Apple's tablet, based on the Intel Core processors, and it will run Leopard. In 2007.
As for the relationship between Asus (and other Taiwanese companies) and Apple, they have been manufacturing Apple products for years, but they have not been making them. That's how the entire industry works. And anyone who pays any attention to the tech world already knows this. Foxconn specifically has been prominent in the news in this regard, but this dynamic i
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Wow! I didn't know Asus wrote the iPad's operating system!
Re:The fanboys will scream (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not a fanboy, but that's not exactly true. Yes, most of their devices do have a lot of stock components, however apple does do a lot of custom ASIC's in their products and supposed the new CPU is an apple modified version of teh ARM Cortex... so they do do their own hardware as well.
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Re:The fanboys will scream (Score:4, Informative)
And all of these are being built in the same factories overseas, contracted out from a few people. The actual LCD in your HDTV is made by either LG, Sony, or Samsung, no matter what the branding on the outside is. These are mixed with different technologies under the hood, circuit boards, etc, and sold by different brands. Sometimes a TV will come off the line and be slapped with stickers from multiple brands, or will be custom built to a particular brand's specifications.
Apple is no different. They contract out manufacturing to different factories overseas, with parts from some and other parts from others. They always invest a lot of time and effort into unique software interfaces. Sometimes, as with Firewire, they help develop and push hardware standards. They also create custom casings, motherboards, and hardware configurations. In the case of the iPad they helped develop the custom processor underlying the entire thing.
Apple participates in the realities of world manufacturing, just like everyone else. They can actually do this a lot more since they abandoned the rarer PowerPC platform and moved to X86, which specifically saved on the custom manufacturing. That's how it is done. To deride them for manufacturing this way would be like singling them out for making products with plastic, or shipping hardware in large cardboard boxes.
Android (Score:5, Insightful)
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...or rather, at this early point, Asus won't dare to openly challenge The Bully and talk about anything but Windows.
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Because Android still has lots of issues on tablets. Until Google "blesses" it for use on a tablet PC, it's going to have a lot of limitations. For instance, Google will not allow tablet versions of Android to use the Android Marketplace... so you now have to provide a way to get apps to your tablet, and that is a headache a lot of manufactuers don't want. Either that or tell your customers to fend for themselves in finding apps.
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So, Intel or ARM is still not decided, but that it will run Windows is? Guess that must be WinCE? But why not put Android on it?
Because Asus sold access to their soul to MS, probably in exchange for preferential pricing or safety from a patent or few, would be my guess. Hence "its better with Windows" being plastered on the promo sites for certain eee models last year.
Re:Android (Score:5, Insightful)
Hence "its better with Windows" being plastered on the promo sites for certain eee models last year.
The funny part is that my EeePC works so much better with Linux than it does with Windows... I don't even remember the last time I booted it into the Windows partition.
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I've noticed that hardware that's good enough that significant effort goes into getting it to work in Linux (eg. anything Intel makes, it seems; Realtek hardware - if only due to quantity/commonality, etc.) will work better in Linux than in Windows. This seems to be the case with anything that is supported well in Linux, in fact: it'll run better there than in Windows. (I think NTFS on slow disks is largely the cause of poor performance on Windows, at that.)
I wonder if Asus has enough market sway to say "ma
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I'd be more interested to see a MeeGo slate come around. It already works great on the N900, which is obviously a rival of the iPhone, and has a scaled up version for full laptops/netbooks.
If iPhone OS can make the successful jump from phone to larger tablet, MeeGo seems like a natural enough rival to follow its lead.
Day Late... (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither model is expected to hit the market until Q1 2011, with prices tipped at between $399 and $499.
At which point the iPad will have been out for an entire year. Every one else that can will have jumped on the bandwagon. If I *wanted* a *Pad, I'd go and get an iPad. I'm not waiting until Q1 of next year for something.
Reminds me of what PCWorld said about the Windows 7 Phone:
"If this were two years ago, Windows Phone 7 might even be a cutting edge innovation that could set the smartphone world on fire."
Re:Day Late... (Score:4, Insightful)
iPad, iShmad. I am willing to wait until a tablet comes out that does what I want. Or (more unlikely) until Apple decide that it will allow the things I want to do with a tablet to be done.
Re:Day Late... (Score:4, Insightful)
Plays EyeTV HD recordings without the need for a realtime transcoding server.
Plays HD HomeRun recordings without the need for a realtime transcoding server.
Plays Handicam home movies without the need for a realtime transcoding server.
Comes with 250G+ internal storage or allows me to connect external storage.
Connects to upnp servers and samba servers and netatalk.
Allows for management of the device in the complete absence of iTunes.
Silly transcoding requirements (Score:2, Troll)
Plays EyeTV HD recordings without the need for a realtime transcoding server.
*other transcoding whining deleted*
I hate to call people silly outright, but that wishlist is silly.
Why would you want a TABLET, which inherently needs to be as light as possible with as long a battery life as possible, that plays video that far outstrips the ability of the device to display? It takes far more storage, far more processing to decide, and in the end you get the same video that someone who did take a small amount of
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Something that can run an IRC client in background would be a good start.
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Sweet. The SPLAT Pad. I want one!
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And semen proof.
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The solution is here (Score:2)
What about those of us who *might* want a tablet if it had a maximum price of $500 and could run what we want to on it?
Jailbroken iPad.
It's here today. You can buy one right now.
No it doesn't run Linux but it does run a variant of UNIX you can compile just about anything for you might want - or of course write your own stuff (and that's even easily done without jailbreaking).
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Well, I don't know about the guy you're replying to, but I do want a tablet--I just recognize that freedom isn't free, and I won't buy a jailed tablet because I refuse to support lockdown.
I think of that as a perfectly valid reason to not buy an iPad or an iPhone. I think a lot of times this is really what people mean, but instead they make up invalid technical excuses why they will not buy the product. They should just state the real reason but people seem reluctant to divulge core motives. Stating a d
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If I *wanted* an *Pad, I'd have gotten one already. Oh, wait, I did, in early 2008.
I bought a tablet from Motion Computing in early 2008, and I've been very happy with it. It lets me use a stylus to take notes. I use peer-to-peer interactive whiteboard software, so that I can work on maths with my colleagues; this software is in Python so it runs happily on Windows, Mac, and Linux (including the Nokia N900 and the ARM tablet from Always Innovating).
When Apple or anyone else makes a *Pad that works with a st
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Not only that, but by 2011 the next revision of the iPad should be coming out. Like the iPod and iPhone, I imagine it'll really be the second and third revision of the iPad that become popular.
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Even then the market will be far from saturated, especially considering that Apple targets only premium people living in premium places.
Did you know that, for a few years, you can easily find, say, a manufacturer which sells more media players than the total number of iPods produced up to that point? Not so visible in favorite markets of analysts/etc., but...
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The browser is Opera (Score:5, Interesting)
Best of both worlds? (Score:2)
However if I wanted a tablet I'd get an Asus T91, virtually the same size as my Eee 900's, with multitouch capabilities on the higher model and the screen rotates round to hide the keyboard, allowing you to use it as a notebook and a tablet.
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T91 multitouch demonstrated almost a year ago - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdcpo3-XxI0 [youtube.com] It has 32GB SSD not 16GB, and an Atom Z520, at 1.3GHz which is perfectly fine for webbrowsing, web video etc.
What, do you want a core i7 or something in a tablet ?
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At least an Atom can decode an SD MPEG2 video without stuttering.
It can even handle the lower res Flash videos (contrary to all of the whining of the talking heads).
Atoms mainly fall down with the stuff that the iPad doesn't even support playing.
Joins? (Score:5, Insightful)
By announce a simi-vapor product with no concrete release date or price..
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Adobe flash for the full web experience! (Score:3, Interesting)
By the time this comes out, with how things are going Flash may be just a distant memory.
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Just the big players so far. Smaller ones will follow so as not to be left out.
Sure it takes time to change, but in the IT world a year is a LONG way away.
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What big players? (Score:2)
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By the time this comes out, with how things are going Flash may be just a distant memory.
Apple has sold two million iPads.
That translates to 0.03% of web users. 0.12% in the states. Headlines [netmarketshare.com]
Windows has a global share of 91%. Win 7, 12% and closing in fast on 20%. Operating System Market Share [netmarketshare.com] [May 31]
Pad. How Original (Score:3, Insightful)
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You make it sound like no one ever made any other software for PCs that have utilized other inputs.
A lot of what the iPad does with touch isn't even terribly magical.
It's not the tech, it's the approach. It's just that all the fanboys want to whine about
is the spiffy new gadgets. They certainly are prone to grab you're attention but they
really aren't the most important part. Although it certainly benefits Apple for their
users to fixate on the wrong details.
They have not (Score:3, Insightful)
You make it sound like no one ever made any other software for PCs that have utilized other inputs.
For the most part, they have not. You can count meaningful PC tablet software on both hands, probably while eating a hotdog.
The iPad can run around 200k applications written specifically for touch input. Around 5k or so I believe, that target the iPad specifically.
To claim any tablet PC has even a reasonable collection of touch based software you can use out of the gate, is absurd.
horrible (Score:4, Insightful)
A Windows 7 tablet and a Windows CE tablet, both lousy software platforms for tablets. They should be shipping Android, ChromeOS, and MeeGo.
Yawn (Score:3, Insightful)
They just don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
These rubbish Windows OS based tablets have been around for years, they've sold poorly (even Bill Gates's predictions were completely wrong) and just have rubbish usability. Why will they sell now?
Why do you think Apple put iPhone OS on the iPad? simple, there is masses of touch screen compatible software for iPhone OS, the UI is great for a touch screen (it was built for one). Apple even redesigned and rebuilt their office tools for the touchscreen.
Microsoft couldn't do any of the above, there's just too many internal squabbles and underhanded tactics at Microsoft. The head of the Office software team refused to support tablets, so Office is painful to use. Windows itself only has a hack of a tablet layer on top of it to support tablets.
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Captain Picard uses one, and so will you. (Score:2, Interesting)
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It's PADD damn it! (Score:3)
If Google is working on one, I hope they'll get it right and call it the GPadd (Personal Access Display Device [memory-alpha.org]
NT with a CE compatibility layer (Score:2, Insightful)
Pretty sure if this thing will run Windows, it is not going to be an ARM chip.
There's no reason why a Windows brand operating system can't run on ARM. Just as Windows XP has "wowexec" to run Windows 3.1 apps, and 64-bit builds of Windows 7 have "wow32" to run Win32 apps, perhaps an ARM build of Windows 7 would have "wowce" to run apps designed for Windows Mobile [wikipedia.org].
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Yes except then every existing windows application in the world would not run.
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Finally, Linux achieves parity with Windows!
Re:NT with a CE compatibility layer (Score:4, Insightful)
You got it wrong. This time Linux runs circles around Windows. Though Windows losses it's selling point, as existing x86 binary applications don't run on this thing (if it is ARM), existing Linux apps can just be recompiled and run just fine on ARM.
You basically have the inverse situation here.
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Actually, thanks to .Net a lot of windows applications won't even need a recompile.
Sticking Windows and then .Net onto an ARM and telling people that it will run their Windows applications sounds like a recipe for disaster; half of them will discover that most of the Windows apps they own won't run, and the other half will discover that they run so slow they weren't worth bothering with in the first place.
I can only assume that Asus are announcing this now to win some goodies from Microsoft but won't be dumb enough to actually release it.
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an ARM build of Windows 7 would have "wowce" to run apps designed for Windows Mobile
Yes except then every existing windows application in the world would not run.
Windows 7 for ARM wouldn't run Windows x86 apps. But it would run Silverlight apps, XNA games, and (as I mentioned) Windows CE apps, and it would run a version of Microsoft Office re-engineered for touch to compete with iWork.
Re:NT with a CE compatibility layer (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a tablet, not a desktop.
But I suspect people will still want to run applications on it.
The only reason to run Windows is to run Windows applications, so if Windows applications don't run, why would anyone choose it over Linux or iWhatever?
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If ARM netbooks/tablets with Windows come out, you can be sure that many Windows applications will be quickly ported to ARM. For most, it would be just a recompile away, anyway. For .NET stuff, not even that.
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If ARM netbooks/tablets with Windows come out, you can be sure that many Windows applications will be quickly ported to ARM. For most, it would be just a recompile away, anyway.
But if I have to buy my applications again, why would I bother with Windows? And if all I get is a recompiled mouse-and-keyboard application, why would I want to run it on a tablet?
And why will Foobarsoft recompile its Windows applications for ARM until there's a market big enough to worry about?
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But if I have to buy my applications again, why would I bother with Windows?
Because there may be applications that are available there that are not available elsewhere (and no sufficiently good analogs exist)?
And if all I get is a recompiled mouse-and-keyboard application, why would I want to run it on a tablet?
Again, depends on whether there is a touch-enabled analog in the first place. If there isn't, I'd rather have a mouse-driven app, which is clumsy but usable with touch, than no app at all.
And why will Foobarsoft recompile its Windows applications for ARM until there's a market big enough to worry about?
Why wouldn't it, if all it takes to reach a new audience (even if small) is a simple recompile?
Also, if Foobarsoft is a large corporation, they could assess the market perspective, or even ha
Ignores reality of commercial software (Score:3, Informative)
Because there may be applications that are available there that are not available elsewhere (and no sufficiently good analogs exist)?
Then the consumer would probably be buying a device that already has said applications, not buying a device in the hopes some MIGHT be made. And software makers will be hesitant to make such software given that Windows tablets now have a strong decade long track record of utter failure, in the face of instance success from Apple. If Windows tablets were some new fresh thing
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It's a slate, not a tablet.
Tablet PCs have keyboards, slates don't.
Tablet != Tablet PC.
I hate it when marketing tries to redefine a word.
You mean like MS using the word "slate" like crazy during CES when everyone thought Apple was going to call their tablet the iSlate?
It isn't an ARM chip. (Score:2)
Pretty sure if this thing will run Windows, it is not going to be an ARM chip.
It runs on a Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage [wikipedia.org] CULV Intel Core 2 Duo processor.
The OS is Windows 7 Compact Embedded. [wmpoweruser.com] [May 29]
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Then again, WinCE does run on ARM (indeed, it's what it's usually runs on), so they may well have an ARM edition - it wouldn't be news.
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will run on Intel or ARM chips, and use Microsoft's Windows operating system.
Some manufacturers just don't get it and some do. [afterdawn.com]
Expect epic fail, Asus. You've been warned.
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God I hope you're wrong. The iPad is in desperate need of a decent competitor - otherwise people are going to start thinking that a giant iPod Touch is the only way to go when it comes to tablets.
I for one would welcome a 10-12" Windows 7 tablet with 10 hours of battery life... oh, and no capacitive screen - Wacom stylus please!
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God I hope you're wrong. The iPad is in desperate need of a decent competitor - otherwise people are going to start thinking that a giant iPod Touch is the only way to go when it comes to tablets.
Yeah, people might confuse success for something that people actually want!
I for one would welcome a 10-12" Windows 7 tablet with 10 hours of battery life... oh, and no capacitive screen - Wacom stylus please!
I'm sure there's a small, but very real, market for tablets of the type you are describing, that market is completely dwarfed by the market for the iPad.
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> Yeah, people might confuse success for something that people actually want!
You mean like MS-DOS vs. Macintosh?
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> Yeah, people might confuse success for something that people actually want!
You mean like MS-DOS vs. Macintosh?
MS-DOS is an OS, Macintosh is a computer.
But yes, businesses (who were the primary purchasers of computers back then) wanted PCs running MS-DOS more than they wanted Macintoshes running Mac OS, at least at the prices offered.
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Re:Half baked (Score:4, Insightful)
All these companies seem to be saying to themselves "Wow, Apple sold 2M units and their product doesn't even have a camera or a USB port, and can't play Flash. If we make sure our product has those, we'll be rich!"
Meanwhile, these vendors seem totally oblivious to the all the things Apple got exactly right with the iPad (form factor, battery life, consistent touch-optimized UI, integration with the existing iTunes ecosystem, revenue generation features for third-party developers built into the system, ability to draw on existing iPhone/Mac developer pool obsessed with user experience, etc.). The companies doing this are going to end up with buggy, slow, awkward devices that consumers won't touch, and they'll be scratching their head saying "But we have more features! It makes no sense!"
HP is pretty much the only company that seems to have a coherent response to the iPad. It's rather obvious what happened to their Windows 7 based Slate device. They were planning to ship that as their response to Apple, but then someone at HP actually used an iPad, and said, basically "Holy $h!t, we're not going to match this by taking a Windows 7 netbook and ripping the keyboard off". And fortunately for them, WebOS -- which has the potential to be a very credible tablet platform with a bit of reworking -- happened to be for sale.
Disregard any tablet running a desktop OS; they've been on the market for years and nobody wants them. And disregard attempts by companies that know nothing about platform-building to adapt current smartphone versions of Android (or desktop Linux distros) to tablet use. They'll do it badly, and hardly anyone will write apps with such monstrosities in mind.
Watch HP with WebOS. Watch Google, when they get around to doing a real tablet version of Android. Watch Apple (obviously). And watch Microsoft, when it eventually occurs to them that they need to do a tablet version of Windows Phone 7 rather than pushing desktop Windows 7 on tablets.
Everything else will prove to be an irrelevant sideshow.
Agreed (Score:5, Interesting)
WebOS beats the pants off Windows Mobile. I'll hold out for Intel shipping a MeeGo tablet however. N900s are fucking awesome.
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> Meanwhile, these vendors seem totally oblivious to the all the things Apple got exactly right with the iPad
Making it an warmed over rehash of an already successful product tied to other already successful products
Your iTunes fixation is a great reflection of this.
If it is an open system and supports the likes of Amazon and Netflix then it will make iTunes moot.
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I've figured it out. (Score:2, Interesting)
You know, I've been watching this story unwind for over a year now. Every time somebody comes out with a new Windows tablet the press comes out with accolades and then in all the comments hundreds of people rant about how they want a tablet - any tablet - as long as it doesn't have Windows. "We have MONEY! Take our MONEY!" Some want the iPad, some want the Tegra2 Android tablet. But manufacturers keep announcing Windows tablet designs that are already in the market that nobody is buying.
It's obvious w
Re:Half baked (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile, these vendors seem totally oblivious to the all the things Apple got exactly right with the iPad (form factor, battery life, consistent touch-optimized UI, integration with the existing iTunes ecosystem, revenue generation features for third-party developers built into the system, ability to draw on existing iPhone/Mac developer pool obsessed with user experience, etc.). The companies doing this are going to end up with buggy, slow, awkward devices that consumers won't touch, and they'll be scratching their head saying "But we have more features! It makes no sense!"
You mean like it happened with Android?
To paraphrase the words of the Apple loyalists... maybe it's just you're not in the target market for these tablets.
Disregard any tablet running a desktop OS; they've been on the market for years and nobody wants them.
Nobody wants them for $1500, this one is gonna be $500. If you ask people around on whether they'd like a Tablet PC or not, the most common response you'd have gotten was "no, they're too expensive", not "no, they're running the same OS as my computer". This one addresses that issue, it remains to be seen whether it'll be enough or not, but I don't think you're justified in dismissing it outright.
Now, I'm not in the market for this product either as I find the idea of Windows on a tablet to be dumb as bricks, but I hate this idea circulating around, that unless you don't copy Apple's designs 100% you can't succeed in today's market when reality has proven that wrong again and again for the last quarter of a century.
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Really? Is this the best you can do? Do you have anything to say that might sound as though it came from an adult?
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