The Coming Onslaught of iPad Competitors 497
harrymcc writes "The iPad is selling as well as it is in part because no large manufacturer has had a direct rival out yet. But boy, is that going to change in the next few months. Over at Technologizer, I rounded up known information on 32 current and future tablet computing devices, from potentially worthy iPad competitors to wannabees to interesting specialty devices. By early 2011 these things are going to be everywhere, and it'll be fascinating to see how they fare." Related: the tablet-type device I've been watching most eagerly, Notion Ink's Adam, seems to finally have a realistic manufacturing prediction and price range (by November; up to $498 for the version with 3G and Pixel Qi screen).
It's not called "iTunes Music Store" anymore (Score:3, Informative)
DRM? Like how they took all the DRM off all the iTMS downloads?
It's not called "iTunes Music Store" anymore. Just about everything in the iTunes Store except music is still DRM-laden.
Re:History repeats (Score:4, Informative)
Very few Mac programs 'close' when you click the 'X'. If you want to 'quit' a program, you either use the keyboard shortcut (Command-Q for every app on the Mac), or you click the app menu and select quit. It is consistent to such a degree that you will find the same options on every Mac program out there. In additional, there are almost no apps that 'quit' when you click the 'X'. The ones that do actually quit are limited to a few system utilities. The rest just stay resident in the background as needed. It makes launching them again much faster, and has no negative impact on performance since the memory management is so well done (Wired, Active, Inactive, and Free). The same is true for iOS4. It's all to common I will find 20 to 30 apps just sitting there in the background on my iPhone. They have no impact on performance, even when working with 512 MB.
The UI probably doesn't make sense to you, because your were raised on Windows or Linux. The OS X UI however, makes sense to someone who's never sat in front of a computer. They click the plus symbol to maximize the window to fit the doc. Why would it instead fill the entire screen when the doc only takes a portion of that? Just as uninstalling a program is more intuitive to just drop it in the trash. I can't say how many times I would try to stop family members from deleting folders on a Windows box to try to uninstall an app.
As to your comment about 'trashing' drives to eject them, they could just right click and select Eject, or click the 'eject' button in finder which shows up next to any media that can be ejected, or they could click Eject in Disk Utility. Additionally, they still support throwing it in the trash as well, although it's hardly the only way to eject a drive.
Just because you've always done something a particular way doesn't make that way particularly good. If we always did things the same way, we'd probably all still be using command lines, mice would be eating your cheese, and icons would only be for music.
Re:Do not want. (Score:2, Informative)
But in that case, the writers totally missed the mark : In NYC, the Soup Nazi store has queues every lunch-hour - the writers made it into an attraction...
Re:so... (Score:3, Informative)
I'll translate: "I've made my bed with Apple. I've looked at an Andriod phone, once on the internet and whilst I pay some random tribute to make me seem like I'm not a fanboy but I'll praise Apple immediately after because my ego will never permit me to conceive that anything could ever be better".
I think the shoe is in the other foot. Both my brothers happen to have android phones (because neither can tolerate ATT, younger one almost cried when he had to give up his iPhone.) Truth is that Android feels more like a Windows Mobile killer than an iPhone competitor.
See my above statement. Apple is a non-competitor to Sony, MS and Nintendo. So much of a non competitor it's not even worth mentioning.
Really, I think you definitively are very biased... http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2010/08/09/daily32.html [bizjournals.com]
Mobile gaming is nothing in the west. It's something in Asia (Japan and China specifically)
That's funny. I guess then that the fact that the combined software sales of DS and PSP software sales in America outselling Japan's by 62.5% is just an optical illusion or result of some one's random number generators... http://www.vgchartz.com/hardware_totals.php?type=Software&sort=Total [vgchartz.com]
The iGaming fad will be over in a year or so.
I said that 2 years ago (who on earth would play with just on-screen controls, I said.) I lost a lot of money [due to not pursuing opportunity] for thinking that way.
As soon as enough Andorid, Symbian and Meego phones support Flash 10 a copy of a flash game will no longer sell for US$5.99.
You would be shocked what people pay money for. And it's not only iPhone owners, people buy games for Android, XBox Live Arcade, PSN, WiiWare and DSWare that make Facebook games look like next gen killers.
Oh and not sure why you say 5.99, the average iPhone game is between $0.99 to $2.99, only big studios like EA or SquareEnix seem to try to sell titles for higher amounts (and their games are FAR from "flash games".)
You don't like the iPhone? Well, there are alternatives out there for you (provided you are in an actual position to afford any) but I hope you are not the economical advisory for any kind of software company. You may loose your job soon if anyone realizes how much money you made your company loose by convincing them iOS is a fad (either that or they will send you to sell refrigerators to Eskimos.)
Whether you like it or not, the iOS devices are a huge phenomena, and most of the reason behind it is precisely the "restrictive" app store that happens to do most of it's movement in the games and entertainment categories. If you ignore them as a developer, you are a fool.
PS: pardon my English, not my first language.
Re:Useless review (Score:2, Informative)
I've been considering an Archos for months but they seem to rough for my needs still. I code for both iOS and Android but have yet to find an Android device I really like. I keep looking. My iPad is awesome.
Re:Do not want. (Score:1, Informative)
Spoken like someone who has never tried to open an 800MB Photoshop file with forty or fifty layers on an iPad.....
Re:Do not want. (Score:3, Informative)
If Apple could add an optional "bottom half" cover to the iPad, which would consist of a keyboard, memory card reader on the side, and perhaps connect only having swing out arms that attach magnetically to the bezel of the iPad (itself having built in hidden magnets) so that it would look like a netbook, I imagine such a thing would be really popular. Especially if priced at $149 or so.
Of course, this idea is from Always Innovating Netbook, Touchpad, and only the attachment is changed to make it more in line with Apple's current style and offerings:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10185351-1.html [cnet.com]
I consider the current dock connector keyboard a real klutzy solution.
Re:The one thing I want... (Score:3, Informative)
The iPad does PDF of course but it's little known that iOS also natively supports Office documents [tuaw.com] though you might have to download a (free) file viewer app. As to the comic formats CBR/CBZ there are already iPhone apps out there which you can install on the iPad that let you read them while waiting for Panelfly's upcoming iPad version [panelfly.com] of its excellent comic book reader.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I don't worry about audio or video on Linux (Score:3, Informative)
Michael Sweet, who owns Easy Software Products, started developing CUPS in 1997. The first public betas appeared in 1999.[2] The original design of CUPS used the LPD protocol, but due to limitations in LPD and vendor incompatibilities, the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) was chosen instead. CUPS was quickly adopted as the default printing system for several Linux distributions, including Red Hat Linux.[citation needed] In March 2002, Apple Inc. adopted CUPS as the printing system for Mac OS X 10.2.[3] In February 2007, Apple Inc. hired chief developer Michael Sweet and purchased the CUPS source code.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS#History [wikipedia.org]
Apple has not in fact "wrote and open sourced cups". Apple hired the guy that wrote it, and bought the code and are now claiming the whole history of cups. GNU/Linux distributions has been using cups much longer than Apple.