Google Preparing iPad Rival? 397
dazedNconfuzed noted an update in the ongoing rumor train about the Google iPad Competitor. It would be based on Android (not ChromeOS) and supposedly Eric Schmidt was telling people about it at a party in LA recently. If any Googlers want to leak me s3cr3t information, I promise anonymity, though without an actual product, price or date it's tough to get really excited. But the iPad clearly has significant limitations that someone else can capitalize on.
wrong spin (Score:4, Insightful)
a device with those specs and 3G would be receiving much more noise than, well... none
Well, clearly it's the wrong story. "Company releases new multi-touch tablet device with accelerometers and 3g capabilities." That thing fizzles at the gate.
"Apple releases magical and revolutionary device with mindblowing features. It will change the future of media and the planet, and it's glory will echo throughout eternity!" Send out the skin tight girl jeans, put on some popular music and a novel graphic overlay. Hey, you just made a billion dollars!
That's why you need marketing departments. They are depraved human beings, but someone has to polish the turds.
Re:Apple, Google, Microsoft... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if "Microsoft maintains its 30-year tradition of not entering the consumer PC market" really counts as "newsworthy."
Android tablets have been here for a while (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you miss CES when a dozen Android tablets were announced? Did you not notice the multiple android tablets that were released this month and last month?
How come when Apple does something people take notice. But when a hundred others go through more traditional channels such as trade shows people who think they are industry insiders don't have a clue?
Zekret knoliz (Score:3, Insightful)
I can tell you all there is to know. It will have 4 cameras, 2 on both side, for 3D video conferencing. Obviously the display is 3D as well. It will have a number of sniffers to detect chemicals. It has more than one so that you can easily detect who it was that farted in the elevator. A 3D holographic arrow will pop up to tell you! The sniffed data is used to automatically update your twitter and facebook accounts. It will have 4g, WiMax, WiFi, and Token Ring networking support. The touchscreen display can give tactile feedback, making an onscreen display feel like real. Obviously it has uses in internet porn as well.
Most importantly, the product is not only free, Google will pay you to use it. In return you will give Google the rights to all data the device collects or sends. In order to unlock the device though you have to brand the google logo on your buttocks.
Re:Teh suXX0rs (Score:5, Insightful)
Use this to promote Android (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Teh suXX0rs (Score:5, Insightful)
It also butchered it's own people by the 10's of millions.
Russia also wasn't quite as backwards as you're trying to make it out to be.
Their big problem was being a corrupt inbred aristocracy rather than being primitive.
Also, Russia put their first man in space the same way the US did: captured German rocket scientists.
don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
But the iPad clearly has significant limitations that someone else can capitalize on.
Yeah, less memory than a Nomad.
When was the last time that a /. opinion on anything counted for something? The track record of this community on what the greatest thing ever is and what will fail is not exactly stellar.
Re:Android tablets have been here for a while (Score:3, Insightful)
Because those devices largely suck with no real thought put into optimising the experience of using what is essentially a giant PDA.
Re:Quite the opposite (Score:1, Insightful)
By the way, I own nexus one, and with the right firmware (latest cyanogenmod with UV kernel), it's a great phone.
And this sentence illustrates perfectly the biggest issue with the android platform.
Re:Fantastic! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple revives a ten year old niche that no one really liked for reasons that are still entirely relevant, and now it is speculated that Google will compete with a Google-style "open" alternative. It was interesting when their battle was over smartphones, but when it is over shoveling out pointless generic consumer electronics, it is not.
Just because a 'niche' is old, it doesn't mean it is pointless. Sometimes old technology can be reshaped and innovated upon, providing a solution that finds a market today when it didn't in the past. There are reasons that technologies fail, including lack of maturity, market not being ready or lack of supporting technologies. The Wii Remote was laughed at for being a modern light pointer, now Microsoft and Sony are doing their best to emulate it. You can't simply right off technology as being old and thus irrelevant.
Microsoft didn't succeed with tablet PCs, partly because like Windows CE, they were trying to shoe-horn a desktop UI into something that would benefit from an adapted UI. To use the automobile analogy: you don't design a car by starting with boat that uses an outboard motor. Computers are the same.
Re:Archos 7 inch internet tablet (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm, no we can't.
You compare devices that keep trying to make a desktop OS on tablet HW work. A method which has previously failed several times. To a device that uses an OS from a popular cell phone that was designed from the ground up to be touch enabled.
While Android was designed for cell phone use. The interface was intentionally left wide open to make it usable on a wide range of HW. There's nothing wrong with that. I think it's great. Problem is that it allows different manufacturers to put their own UI on it which when combined with the variety of HW, makes it harder on developers to ensure that their software works as they intended on every device.
Usability will trump capability with consumers. No matter how "superior" the capabilities are. i.e. It's the interface stupid.
Re:Fantastic! (Score:3, Insightful)
What kind of vague assertion is that? "Form factor" and "design concept"? The "form factor" is an obvious, logical concept that was carried over from.. PDAs and tablets! Apple didn't invent the concept of a touch input device. As for design concept, that's such a non-argument that I don't even know where to start.
It's an evolution. It's not a revolution.
Re:Archos 7 inch internet tablet (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about any of your anti ranting. It's not about you, me, or "people that will buy whatever Steve tells them they need and hype it for him endlessly?".
It's about a pretty good product people want. Not your dreams or anyone elses particularly. There is no need to attempt to brand purchasers of a _thing_ a fanboy, a hero, or a sheep. It just is and this convo is a waste of energy.
It's (the iPad) a great little device, it doesn't blow smoke up my ass and it doesn't do everything but damn it has been nice to have.
Re:Fantastic! (Score:1, Insightful)
I think you're right that iPhone's success wasn't widely predicted (obviously there will always be exceptions, where people said, "I knew this would be popular") but I really do think that nearly everyone foresaw that smart phones in general were going to be a big thing, with millions and millions of people waiting for the first one that wouldn't suck.
I just have to totally disagree with that. The failure of the PDA market was that the products were all fairly lame and just didn't measure up to people's expectations coming from desktop personal computers, but the demand for it and the cry of "when will somebody get this right?!" was always strong. People wanted good pocket-sized computers but there were never any good ones on the market until $PRODUCT. (I don't wanna fight over what that product is, but many passionately inter-flaming factions, agree that it's now on the market.)
It's the demand for "keyboardless but still too big to conveniently carry" that I think a lot of people are questioning; that is: if anyone ever makes a decent device and gives it a good software stack, even then, will it be useful? It's an awkward form factor, no matter how high-tech the guts or good the software. Gimme the tech from a thousand years from now, put it in an iPad form factor, and I think most people still won't want it, unless it's able to fold up or something. It's too big and too small at the same time. Lame.
Re:Android tablets have been here for a while (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly! Slapping Android on a tablet is an easy answer and easy answers to hard problems never sold well.
Re:Quite the opposite (Score:4, Insightful)
By the way, I own nexus one, and with the right firmware (latest cyanogenmod with UV kernel), it's a great phone.
That, to a large extent, is the problem. It's a perfectly reasonable thing for you to say, don't get me wrong, but 9/10 of the population would look at you and say, "Firmware? Is that some kind of new exercise plan? What do kernels have to do with it? Is their a corn diet too?"
I exaggerate only very slightly. iPhone continues to dominate the consumer smartphone space because people buy an iPhone and use it. Every so often iTunes pops up and tells you there's an OS update. It downloads and installs in a few minutes automatically like every other sync. Yeah, the major releases are sometimes a bit messy, but mostly it all just does what people expect it to, automatically.
If you get an app from the App Store it just work on your phone. No need to worry about which version of the OS is on it, whether your carrier has installed their own UI mods, or whether your phone supports the features. Even if your phone has some obvious missing feature, like a location based app on a first gen iPhone, the app works with the existing feature set and simply provides what information it can.
I'm not saying that the iPhone paradigm is better or worse. Certainly there is something to be said for flexibility and portability. When it comes to computers and electronics though, most people seem to prefer predictable and intuitive to flexible and portable. Ideally people want both, but we both know how easy that is to accomplish.
Re:Quite the opposite (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple is selling a phone with outdated hardware (screen size and type, low screen resolution, bad camera etc), while Android vendors continuously improve the hardware - look at Samsung Galaxy S specs, for example.
Yet iPhone dominates Android in the market. Why do you suppose that is? It's because people don't care about spec sheets as much as you might think. They care about the only thing that truly matters, and that's the experiences having the device brings. No Android device can compete with the iPhone in that aspect, outside of a geek niche, regardless of specs.
And your specific list is fairly suspect:
1. Screen size: Some Android phones have larger screens. But this also means larger phones. It's a trade-off and not a simple matter of one is superior to the other.
2. Screen type: I assume you mean OLED, which is, presently, inferior to LCD is most respects. And just like #1, this is only on some phones.
3. Low screen resolution: Again, like #1 and #2, only some Android sets are higher resolution. Do you see a trend here? Do you see a problem? But anyway, most people really don't care. Sure, they'll prefer the higher resolution, but it's rarely going to be a deciding factor.
4. Bad camera: All cell phones have bad cameras. Megapixels are already almost meaningless on compact P&S cameras, and are more so on the minute CCDs on cell phones. And, surprise, surprise, not all Android phones have superior cameras.
In other words, pretty much nobody cares. It's the experience that matters, and the experience with an Android, any Android, is inferior to that of the iPhone, excepting the case where a person places higher value on some of Android's strengths, none of which you actually listed. The only inherent strength that Android has over iPhone is tinkerability. The fact that this resonates so well with many here on Slashdot is no surprise, and I'm glad such a phone exists for them, but to mistake niche appeal for something more than it is is a big mistake.
The same will hopefully be true for android MIDs
You are more correct than you realize.
Re:Hopefully true - Closed vs. Open platforms (Score:3, Insightful)
So Apple targets people who aren't really interested in doing anything that Apple doesn't allow. They're not interested in the people who bought the original Apple or Macintosh computers.
That's fine. They're a successful company that now makes a fortune from limiting peoples' options.
But do you understand that the Internet and personal computing were made by people who reject that approach? The people who made Apple a success in the first place are people who probably formatted the hard drive on their new Macs within at most a day or so. The first place we looked was extensions or control panel or settings. If people like that wanted somebody to hand us a sealed black box and be grateful that it just "works" (as long as "works" means "things that Apple thinks you should be doing").
We should be very careful of applauding a company for marginalizing creativity and exploration. The worst case is that the rest of the companies making technology will decide to emulate Apple's success. We're just enabling a future that's a lot less interesting.
Re:Archos 7 inch internet tablet (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm so can we all just agree there is a certain group of people that will buy whatever Steve tells them they need and hype it for him endlessly?
I think there is some truth to this, but it's more like "there is a certain group of people who have been so pleased with past/present Apple products that they'll be excited to try any new Apple products which are released."
That doesn't mean they're morons or sheep. I'm going to buy Portal 2 as soon as it comes out, but it's not because I'm mindlessly buying whatever Valve releases because I've been brainwashed. It's because I've loved all the Half Life games and think that Portal was one of the best things since sliced bread. I'm also going to try out Ubuntu 10.04 as soon as its released, but it's not because I have a cult mentality towards all of Canonical's products.
As far as tablets in general, I think that people have always been excited about the idea of tablets, but they just haven't proved themselves to be very useful. Part of the problem has been that the GUIs on tablets generally haven't been designed for the size of the device nor for the interaction of a touchscreen. Beyond that, the real world use-case of tablets has been unclear. Microsoft, for example, tried to position tablets as normal computers, with muddled results. They were big and heavy like laptops, and when you were doing normal desktop work, laptops and desktops still make more sense.
It's possible that Apple has found a sweet spot for tablets where they actually begin to make sense. I don't really know how using one works out in real life since I haven't even seen an iPad IRL yet.
Re:Hopefully true - Closed vs. Open platforms (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course not. That would be as absurd as shipping a Unix shell with a consumer operating system
Re:Quite the opposite (Score:4, Insightful)
It's worth noting, that Android having only been pushed for a few months (it's been out longer, but the big push was last Christmas season) it's catching up to iPhone in terms of market share very very quickly. People's preferences are often trumped by other factors - most notably - price. Android will come to dominate despite the chaos that surrounds it. This is a repeat of the Windows vs. Mac competition of the 80s, only this time it's Apple vs. Google (MS is playing the role of UNIX this round - perpetually behind/slow).
Re:Quite the opposite (Score:3, Insightful)
Yet iPhone dominates Android in the market. Why do you suppose that is?
Marketing mostly.... your average consumer has NO IDEA what android is.
Re:Teh suXX0rs (Score:1, Insightful)
Others have pointed out some details in your account that they felt obligated to contest. However, the part I wish to critique is this:
What? Did you just come back from a tea party rally or something?
It strikes me that you are writing about a country that is not your own from an extremely American perspective. Ordinarily that's not a bad -- it's only fair that you write from the perspective of the place where you are from. But I think your writing should be more open to the fact that others don't see it in your terms.
Precisely in this thing about "socialists and communists". You are drawing a false dichotomy between "socalists/communists" and those who oppose them, when really this is irrelevant to the discussion. I've known enough Russians to know that it's perfectly possible to say good things about the USSR's accomplishments and still not be a "socialist" or a "communist". Most Russian people in the 21st century have moved on from these terms, if they ever supported these ideas to begin with (many of them did not). There is also widespread acknowledgement of the USSR's flaws. In my mind, though, this should not prohibit them from recognizing their country's successes where they do exist. It doesn't make them a "socialist" to do so.
Re:Hopefully true - Closed vs. Open platforms (Score:5, Insightful)
So Apple targets people who aren't really interested in doing anything that Apple doesn't allow. ... They're a successful company that now makes a fortune from limiting peoples' options.
What's amazing to me is how persistent this meme is on Slashdot, of all places.
I bought *my* mac because it came with gcc, perl, apache, CUPS, and X-windows pre-installed on an open source Unix kernel. As a result, I could install just about anything on it.
You'd think that would count for something around here.
For those of you who haven't beaten yourself with a cluestick recently, the closed platform is not Apple; it is iTunes. This is Apple's variant of Xbox Live or Playstation Network, nothing more. You want onto an online media service that is integrated with your hardware, pick one of these, buy the appropriate gadget, and quit your whining. Want an online media service that doesn't integrate with your hardware, then get a multi-purpose computer, roll up your sleeves, and roll your own.
Re:Quite the opposite (Score:3, Insightful)
The one thing that Android has, at its core, that the iPhone does not, is tinkerability. One of the fundamental design goals behind Android (after Google's acquisition of it) is that it be open (mostly) and hacker/tinker friendly. Cameras, folders, screens, multitasking, etc. None of these things are inherent to Android, but not to iPhone.
I'd broaden this to 'choice'. You can choose what software you run on the Android AND you get a choice in who manufactures the device it runs on as well. There are multiple price/feature/network options to mix and match.
You spent considerable time pointing out how the platforms differ from device to device a few posts back, and somehow this fact eluded you? How so?
Re:wrong spin (Score:4, Insightful)
However, I would feel happy if I had it, and people are willing to pay for happiness.
THAT is why the iPad will be a success.
People just don't understand what happiness is. They'll trade twenty or thirty hours of work for an iPad, but not take that time off to spend with family. And don't think the marketing departments aren't aware of this fact - that's why their job is to make you believe in their narrative and fantasies, by cramming your whole world full of lies and pretty pictures.
The iPad will be a huge success, though. Just like cigarettes, cheeseburgers, and reality television.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. -Mark Twain
Re:Hopefully true - Closed vs. Open platforms (Score:4, Insightful)
Ya, that's what marketing people say to keep them with an income.
Please explain why then, when xbox and ps3 advertise equally, some would pick one over the other. Why is that that display a lot of Long John Silvers commercials, I never go to eat there?
Marketing works in that it lets people know of a products existence.. beyond that I'm not sure.
Re:Quite the opposite (Score:3, Insightful)
Since Apple never intended their OS for use on non-Apple hardware, and since Google never intended Android to be exclusive, these are indeed inherent traits, by the definition of the word.
This is part of tinkerability. You can put Android on whatever you want, including a PC.
If I buy a PC preloaded with Ubuntu, am I now tinkering?
Choice in hardware manufacturers is. If you want to break that out from tinkerability, I have no problem with that, but it doesn't really change anything.
Buying a shrink-wrapped product and using it without modification is never tinkering, period. This isn't being broken out to placate me personally. It is simply the proper uses of the words.
I think you're abusing the tinkering label to make your point, and I think you've gone so far with it as to strain logic.
As far as the bulk of your post discussing CDMA, that's not inherent to the iPhone, it's simply an implementation decision. There's nothing about the iPhone design or philosophy that precludes building a CDMA handset. In fact, the iPhone was originally offered to Verizon, to run on their CDMA network. But they turned it down.
The inherent philosophy behind the iPhone is, and has always been, 'the iPhone user experience'. Aka 'my way or the highway'. This specifically precludes using anything other than the stuff shipping out of Cupertino. If the new iPhone switches to TCP over Carrier Pigeon, you have no choice but to accept it, should you wish to stay on that platform. With Android, this cannot be - and this is intrinsic in the very concept.
This changes everything.
Re:Quite the opposite (Score:2, Insightful)
"Yet iPhone dominates Android in the market."
Danger! I detect starry eyes! Well, it's that or out of date information.
Except for the fact that it happens to be true.
The truth is that Android phone sales are on a rocketship headed straight up. If they stay on pace Android handsets are expected to surpass the iPhone in 2011 or so.
If bacteria continued their growth at the same rate during their early growth phase, the entire universe would be made of bacteria in no time.
"Starry Eyes" indeed.
So Apple's iPhone is ahead yes
In other words, I'm correct.
Is it technically accurate to say that iPhone is "dominating"? Arguably yes, but to use that to justfy everything else you wrote is laughable in light of the competitions performance. It's also funny to hear about iPhone "dominating" when it's getting it's ass thorougly kicked by Symbian and RIM.
The iPhone is dominating them as well. Units shipped is a poor metric. Apple is by far the most popular smart phone in terms of usage, in terms of apps, in terms of customer satisfaction, in terms of profitability. You name it.
The iPhone is sexy and mostly functional but it is not the final word in smartphone development, it's not even close.
You're right. Year after year Apple finds a way to improve upon the smart phone, surpassing their last product.
However, it's pretty undeniable that Apple is the market leader. The only metric they don't have covered is most units sold.
Or put differently, do you not think there's a single handset make who wouldn't jump at the chance to trade places with Apple? There isn't.
The only real competition that Apple has right now is Google, and Google isn't competing on quality, but quantity, and they're presently even losing *that* battle. When they're not, that'll be an interesting milestone, but also largely irrelevant as Apple will still be the premier handset maker.
This is because Google doesn't care about quality or handset profitability. What they care about is ad revenue, and to get that, they need the *broadest* customer base they can get, not the *best* customer base, or the most directly *profitable* customer base, just numbers. A game which they are still losing at, btw.
Re:Teh suXX0rs (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Quite the opposite (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly: You have ONE vendor which has ONE telephone. As opposed to MULTIPLE vendors competing for a slice of the Android pie, eventually leading to divergence in the platform because each one wants to stand out from the rest. Then you end up with J2ME all over again.
Combined with manufacturers with MULTIPLE devices each targeted at a small-ish segment. But these devices cost money to research, design, manufacture, and this base cost needs to be split across the few-ish that sell of each model. For an added bonus some of these manufacturers (looks at Nokia) cannot decide and push a multitude of operating systems and application frameworks, including support for developers and users both. Which drives costs.
So to recap:
ONE phone for everyone with ONE OS = win.
MANY phones (because they think they have different target markets) with DIFFERENT OSes (because they think developers are fickle) = lose.
Eventually.
Re:Quite the opposite (Score:3, Insightful)
So to recap:
ONE phone for everyone with ONE OS = win.
MANY phones (because they think they have different target markets) with DIFFERENT OSes (because they think developers are fickle) = lose.
Eventually.
Welcome to 1981 [wikipedia.org]. Your name is IBM. Enjoy the next few decades. You'll do well for yourself in certain fields, but you're completely, totally wrong about what the consumer market wants.
Google Preparing Archos Rival? (Score:4, Insightful)
My thoughts exactly - there are other tablets around, and there's no need to give free hype to Apple even when we're covering other products (for once) by calling them "iWhatever Rival/Killer/etc". It was bad enough with the Iphone (who cares about rivalling Apple, when there are loads of bigger companies in that market?) It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - these products aren't compared to Apple because of anything to do with Apple, it simply results from the media always comparing to Apple in the first place.
Or maybe we could just quit with the astroturfing and say "Google Preparing Tablet Computer". This is supposed to be a place for geeks - we know what products like mp3 players, phones and tablets are, without needing to be told in terms of brand names. (Was the news of Google releasing ChromeOS announced with "Google Preparing Windows Rival (or worse, OS X Rival)"? Was Firefox announced as being an "Internet Explorer Rival?" Was the first Iphone announced as being a "Windows Mobile Rival"?)