Android!

[Tebonas]

So, waited for the Ipad2 presentation to decide which tablet to get in April, now I'm leaning slightly towards a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Only problem the real killer app for me would be a video player where I can get the Videos streamed directly from my Mac Mini without converting them from obscure .avi or .mkv formats beforehand, and without preloading them (I want to take my Tablet, sit down anywhere, and start watching right now.

The Ipad has that functionality with Air Video. Is there something comparable for Android Tablets?

[bhodi]

There are third party apps for android that play everything. In fact, format compatibility is something android does much better than apple.

[MahrinSkel]

In an example of how open systems kill walled gardens, BoomBustBlog author and his ten-year-old son hack a Barnes and Noble Nook Color into an iPad killer.  Cheaper, faster, better in virtually every way (the 64G iPad at 3 times the cost having more storage than the 40G max of the Nook).

iPad is enjoying a last burst of life because the Android tablets are waiting for Honeycomb to be officially released (Motorola Xoom uses beta Honeycomb code).  Once they're out along with Atrix-clone dockable phones picking up, it's effectively over.

--Dave

[Quinton]

In an example of how open systems kill walled gardens, BoomBustBlog author and his ten-year-old son hack a Barnes and Noble Nook Color into an iPad killer.  Cheaper, faster, better in virtually every way (the 64G iPad at 3 times the cost having more storage than the 40G max of the Nook).

iPad is enjoying a last burst of life because the Android tablets are waiting for Honeycomb to be officially released (Motorola Xoom uses beta Honeycomb code).  Once they're out along with Atrix-clone dockable phones picking up, it's effectively over.

--Dave

Actually Xoom ships with final Honecomb.  They were the lead device for that release, similar to G1 being lead for 1.0, etc.  Quite a few other OEMs have follow-on devices in the pipe (see various announcements).

I fully expect that we'll see hardware that is both feature and price competitive with iPad2 shortly (notice that the bulk of the iPad2 hw features shipped prior to its announcement in Xoom ^^ thus Jobs' hilarious "first multicore tablet shipping in volume" remark.  Apple on the defensive makes me smile.)

[MahrinSkel]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it will also be the end of the laptop market as we've known it (dockable smartphones and tablets with plug-in keyboards don't leave them much of a niche), and a serious hit to the PC market.  I'm trying to come up with things a non-geek needs a PC for that one of those two can't do as well, and I'm not coming up with much (PC-exclusive gaming is already nearly dead).

There's a handful of professional functions that they'll persist for, and the server market will continue, but without the mass market to dilute the development cost they'll probably stagnate.

--Dave

[eldaec]

It's not that long ago that there was almost no non-geek market for laptops in the first place, and they survived. It'll hit laptops obviously, but the death-of-a-market thing is overdone. By "a handful of professional functions" that they'll continue for, I presume you mean the hundreds of millions of laptops used by corporate drones with a need to travel. Low power tablets are as likely to replace corporate laptops as network-computers were 10 years ago, these predictions come from the wet dreams of IT managers who don't want the headache of maintaining the distributed model of the PC but who tend to ignore the simple fact that for any extended use application the user experience has always been significantly better with fatter software clients and more local hardware beef.

Death-of-ipad is also a crazy thing to suggest, especially when all the android tabs will be universally referred to by non-geeks as 'ipad style devices', and apple are perfectly capable of eating into profit a little by adding specification they've held back so far. iPads are as dead as iPhones.

And I say all this as an android fanboy.

[Quinton]

Yeah, laptops aren't going away, and neither are netbooks (which really are just inexpensive laptops after all!).  I've spent a year working on and with tablet devices, and even with a platform much less limited than iOS, there are just plenty of things that a pure tablet solution doesn't do.  As the decent hardware heads down into the $200-400 range, though, tablets as a second/third device become more and more affordable.

Apple's certainly not going anywhere either -- provided that they keep delivering on the slick industrial design and the software polish they'll easily hang onto their spot as the premium/luxury/popular brand in these markets and enjoy the heavy profitability they've maintained for quite a while now.

[Tebonas]

Bhodi, I'm not talking about playing, I'm talking about live Streaming over the WLAN. Also, there is this program that already does that with every Format in the iPad. So a nebulous "there might theoretically exist something better", while theoretically comforting, doesn't sway me enough to take the dive in faith. Same Functionity in One App would Be Fine for me. Nobody here uses their Android Devices that Way?

[caladein]

Replace Air Video on your Mac Mini with PS3 Media Server and on your mobile device with PlugPlayer and you're done from the looks of it.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were better options on either side of the DLNA streaming equation, although most of the Android apps I was finding were for downloading and not streaming from the server.

[MahrinSkel]

It's not going to happen  overnight, but I'm thinking over the next decade.  By 2020, an actual laptop will be quaint and using your smartphone as your main personal computer will be common.  Apple will be in the mix, probably, the same way they are now in the PC market: Overpriced and over-engineered status symbols.

--Dave

[Tebonas]

Except right now the iPad gives the other tablets the run for their money. Samsung just said they have to lower the price on the new 10.1 tab because the ipad2 is too cheap for their planned price.

[Engels]

It's not going to happen  overnight, but I'm thinking over the next decade.  By 2020, an actual laptop will be quaint and using your smartphone as your main personal computer will be common.  Apple will be in the mix, probably, the same way they are now in the PC market: Overpriced and over-engineered status symbols.

--Dave

Except for, you know, typing.

[MahrinSkel]

It's not going to happen  overnight, but I'm thinking over the next decade.  By 2020, an actual laptop will be quaint and using your smartphone as your main personal computer will be common.  Apple will be in the mix, probably, the same way they are now in the PC market: Overpriced and over-engineered status symbols.

--Dave

Except for, you know, typing.

--Dave

EDIT: The point is that I've been using PC's since 1983, and I've been building my own for more than 20 years.  And I see the handwriting on the wall, the advantages of an all-in-one personal computing device that is always with you and that is attached to I/O devices as needed are very great, and the comparative advantages of other PC form factors are comparatively small.  Only raw computing horsepower and storage really stand out, and they just aren't enough.  Most people don't need the computing power they've got now, and when we've got enough storage in our phones to record our entire life in HD (which will only take a few more turns of the wheel), what possible use will *individuals* have for fixed storage?

[Quinton]

Except right now the iPad gives the other tablets the run for their money. Samsung just said they have to lower the price on the new 10.1 tab because the ipad2 is too cheap for their planned price.

At $540, the wifi only Xoom is pretty damn competitive with the iPad2.   Apple is fire-saleing the previous generation iPads at $400, but unless they have an insane glut of stock in the channel (maybe?) that won't last.

Samsung may well have expected to be able to sell at a higher price for a while (not atypical for initial launch -- sell to the early adopters at a price point they will accept before sliding the price down -- hell this is a strategy Apple has employed very well with ipod across generations of the product).

I'd be shocked to find Apple leading on price, long-term -- they never have before.  I doubt they're willing to give up the high margins they command as a premium brand.

[eldaec]

A lot will depend on costings, but if you take the example of the screen and keyboard that you plug a phone into the back of, you have to ask why a corporate actually wants to remove the processor and HD from the screen/keyboard. You're just adding more components that can individually break or get lost/stolen.

A laptop is just a tablet in a larger format with a keyboard attached. Any extended use application wants the larger form, and wants the keyboard attached, why separate them? A business traveller (or any extended use application user) has no interest in hoping that wherever they are travelling to has a keyboard and screen that they find acceptable, and no interest in losing functionality in the hotel room or on a plane.

I can certainly see more docking going on (though primarily for power, the devices would presumably be paired wirelessly for data). I can also see the corporate phone providing one button VPN access point for domestic travel - but at current rates of development it'll be decades before it provides any real advantage for international travel (international data roaming will remain broken unless and until governments intervene).

I can also see more devices that sit somewhere between tablets and laptops, smaller laptops with higher quality but smaller size screens and touch functions. Larger tablets with attached keyboards etc.

And even in these circumstances the PC would remain a cheaper and safer solution for non-travelling commercial roles.

__

On the apple thing, there was a writeup in the economist a couple of weeks ago with this chart...


http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/02/daily_chart_mobile-phone_market

...given the half assed spec on the ipad I doubt that the tablet situation is much dfferent. Plenty of room to add spec and stay profitable.

[Tebonas]

Only the Wifi Xoom, the price difference of the 3g models is 70 dollars.

I compared all three tablets I try to decide among. Just waiting for the European Samsung price and shipping date to emerge, so I'm quite well informed about the prices right now.

"The Apple may be more expensive in the future" would only be an argument for the future. Right now "Apple is elitist and too expensive" is just not true at all. Soon they might, but not now. That this might be their plan to sabotage their competition is a strong possibility, though.

[Quinton]

They're definitely being pretty aggressive on pricing, but I don't really see it as sabotaging the competition -- perhaps more trying to get a larger foothold before the competition gains volume.  Apple's business model has always depending on high hardware margins (compared to their competition) and I doubt they're going to give that up entirely.

I don't see tablets playing out any differently than smartphones in the Apple vs Android space though -- Apple has early momentum, but 15-30 OEMs are entering the space with pretty compelling software and a couple of 'em will certainly figure out some decent industrial design and pricing, at which point I expect to see Android volume pick up and overtake iOS, similar to what we've seen in the smartphone space.

At the end of the day, Apple makes one or two products in each space, and will do well (plenty of profits), but just cannot dominate entire markets.  Open wins.

[Tebonas]

Sabotage was too strong a word, yes. I really suspect the Ipad2 might be the last Apple tablet dominating the market like it does. So soon after Honeycomb the Android vendors don't have all ducks in a row yet and Apple can basically score with the least innovative follow up they could think of "Smaller, faster, with camera".
So they are milking that for what its worth.

And still I waver and want to buy it because it is cheap (a first for an Apple product), here right now and it works for what I need it for. I really feel the Android tablet is the future, sadly I would need the future to arrive before the 4th of April and it looks worse and worse for that happening

[Quinton]

I haven't seen one personally, but the ID respin in iPad2 does look quite nice. 

When buying consumer electronics, the following will always be true:
- if you want something today, you should buy today
- whatever you buy today, something cheaper/smaller/faster/better will be available within weeks (or worst case months)

Apple doesn't really do follow-up that well -- they're pretty incremental.  They took five years to build iPhone and when it launched it redefined the smartphone.  Since then they've been pretty slow to add significant features and most of the features they've added have shipped first on Android.  Experience-wise iPhone->iPad is almost identical.  Honeycomb on tablets is a for more radical departure from Gingerbread on phones (though it still runs all the old software and shares a number of common android-ish design and interaction elements).

In many ways, Android started from behind with 1.0 on G1, but I don't feel like that's the case any longer.  I think we got further, faster thus far.  We shall see if that pace is sustainable.

Honestly it blows my mind that they went SMP on iPad2, given that there just is not likely to be huge benefits to them for doing so.  I feel like they're slipping a bit into playing the numbers game, which they traditionally have avoided, favoring competing on the overall experience instead of more megapixels or whatnot.

[eldaec]

That isn't the market perception though.

Android device manufacturers are doing a bad job of selling their better specification, and google is doing a mediocre job of creating demand by selling the platform to public (rather than to OEMs). Non-geeks think of Android devices as slightly cheaper iphone imitations and believe that whatever iphone iteration we're up to is hot shit (it has a compass apparently?!)

Something like Google navigation is great example of a consumer advantage that apple doesn't appear to have any plan to compete with and you'd struggle to find a non-geek who even knows about it. On the other hand I regularly get told nonsense about well iPhones sync with iTunes and similar (I've never understood syncing as a feature, dragging and dropping is not hard, but non-geeks love this shit).

[Merusk]

Dragging and dropping requires work and implies maintenance. "Syncing" implies a device which updates itself at the push of a button or a simple plug-in.   People don't want to mess with technology, they want it to be as simple as their stove, tv, DVR or cable. You turn it on and off and maybe plug some media into it.  Nothing else.

This is something geeks have a hard time understanding, much less marketing.  Wanting to fiddle is in our nature so being unable to do so (or not required to do so) seems like a step backwards not a step forwards.

[tgr]

That's because to us, it is a step backwards.

Apparently I'm going to get an ipad2 from work because I've been in it for 10 years. Initially I began wondering what the hell I was going to use this thing for, until I saw reports that it supposedly had a proper USB connector (not that idiotic propietary shit they have in the first).

I guess I'll use it as a photo preview thingy, even though I suspect the laptop'll do the job just as well, while making it even easier to move the files onto an external harddisk. And after looking at xoom's specs, I'm not really sure it would do that job much better than the ipad2 out of the box, I presume I would have to lug along an usb hub as well to connect the card reader (I use CF cards, not SD) and the external harddisk at the same time.

Actually, how is file management on both platforms? Does the ipad even do file management?

[Quinton]

Total agreement that we should be doing better marketing of the overall platform.  Stuff like Google Maps Mobile w/ Navigation, Voice Commands, etc makes for a pretty awesome experience and unfortunately many people don't even realize their phones can do this.

[MahrinSkel]

Google Maps on a phone is to a GPS what a GPS is to an old-fashioned accordion-fold map.  Being able to do a search for "mexican food" and have the little icons pop up complete with links to reviews is awesome.  So *many* "apps" on the iPhone are just reformatting google searches, it's surprising more people don't realize what Maps can do on an Android phone.

--Dave

[NowhereMan]

On a general note modern smartphones amaze me. With the right apps if I want to go diving somewhere on the weekend I can use my phone to check the weather for the day, check the tides, navigate to the site and plan the dive profile.

It is crazy that we live in the future. On a less amazing note, does anyone else use the RunKeeper app? I've found that recently it seems to be having unpleasantness with something on the phone as for the last two weeks it's frozen when I've used it running. As in I'll complete the run and hit stop activity and nothing happens and I get a force close/wait/report option. Generally if I don't force close it I can still use other stuff on the phone but it's super slow (as in 20-30 seconds to register a screen tap sometimes) until I reboot it. It also has slowed down Launcher Pro at times to the point I get a force close box for that too so I'm wondering if it's a conflict somewhere or just something not working with Android itself. This is all on a Nexus One with stock Android.

[Azaroth]

What if I'm stuck in 2004 and I *like* a Blackberry.

Am I ridiculous caveman and/or some sort of heathen? Can I be saved?

I'm trying to figure out what I'm missing out on if I go for, say, the Blackberry Torch over the HTC Desire.

[bhodi]

I still really wish there was an iphone-esque complete reflash of the OS of android phones. The whole malware scare from downloaded apps just highlights my desire for a 'flatten and reinstall' option. I hate the fact that there's no way to put it back to the base OS, no matter how much you're not supposed to "need" to.

[Quinton]

I still really wish there was an iphone-esque complete reflash of the OS of android phones. The whole malware scare from downloaded apps just highlights my desire for a 'flatten and reinstall' option. I hate the fact that there's no way to put it back to the base OS, no matter how much you're not supposed to "need" to.

For Nexus devices with unlockable bootloaders the process looks like:
% fastboot oem unlock
% fastboot flash boot boot.img
% fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
% fastboot flash system system.img
% fastboot oem lock
% fastboot reboot

We're looking at getting some easy to follow instructions for Nexus S and pointers to the factory images online soon.

[bhodi]

That would be awesome. It also lets you fix stuff if your tinkering goes horribly, horribly wrong. And, hopefully, someday be able to re-flash your device to remove all the bloatware your phone companies throw on there. It's one reason I liked the nexus.

[fuser]

What if I'm stuck in 2004 and I *like* a Blackberry.

Something that kills me about all the newer phones is the lack of a visual indicator. I mean a simple LED on the side of the device like any blackberry. I'm thankful that Android has NoLED app but its the last gripe as a former blackberry user.

[Ingmar]

Any particular recommendations for a large-ish color Android tablet? I'd love something with an 8.5x11-ish screen but somewhat smaller would still be workable.

What if I'm stuck in 2004 and I *like* a Blackberry.

Something that kills me about all the newer phones is the lack of a visual indicator. I mean a simple LED on the side of the device like any blackberry. I'm thankful that Android has NoLED app but its the last gripe as a former blackberry user.

My Droid 2 has an LED indicator. It isn't on the edge of the phone though, it is in the corner of the face.

[MahrinSkel]

Any particular recommendations for a large-ish color Android tablet? I'd love something with an 8.5x11-ish screen but somewhat smaller would still be workable.

Wait about 6 months.  Right now your choices are cheap overclocked Chinese hacks, the Samsung Tab, and the Xoom.  Over the next few months a lot more are coming out and the prices will drop a lot.  I'd expect some wifi-only 7-inchers will be around $150 or less, and 10-inch (the largest that are really comfortable to one-hand) for $200-250.

--Dave

[Quinton]

I think Dave may be a bit optimistic on pricing (at least as far as decent devices with decent build quality), but his "wait six months" is spot on.  There are a *lot* of OEMs working on honeycomb based tablet devices and there should be a good variety of them on the market the second half of this year -- some possibly sooner depending on aggressiveness of the OEMs.

[MahrinSkel]

Yeah, I should have qualified that a bit, I think we'll see those prices around the holidays, more like 9 months from now.  There's going to be a *lot* of margin compression as competition picks up, and hardware cycles will run so fast by then they'll be dumping first-gen hardware cheap.

--Dave

[bhodi]

Here's a pretty decent article explaining how intel dropped the ball on atom, letting ARM pretty much dominate the market. It's hard to refute some of the boneheaded decisions they made.

http://semiaccurate.com/2011/02/15/atom-dead-strangled-slowly-intel/