A Deep-Dive Look At Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 264
MojoKid writes "Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 was announced way back in February this year just prior to Apple's iPad 2 launch. Shortly after, a Samsung VP noted the company was re-evaluating their Galaxy Tab line in the wake of Apple's strong iPad 2 showing in early March. Since then, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has begun shipping and early reports show the Android 3.1 driven device to be slightly thinner than the iPad 2, lighter and with NVIDIA's 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor under the hood, every bit as capable. With recent Honeycomb entrants in the 10-inch Android tablet market, like the Asus Transformer, Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, the iPad 2 finally has solid competition in terms of both hardware and OS performance."
Well (Score:3)
Re:Well (Score:5, Interesting)
Does it really mean that? This is Apple after all. People are going to buy the iPad2 over the other devices for any number of reasons--mainly the OS and the applications available for it.
Personally I would much prefer an iOS device if I were to get a tablet simply because I already own an iPhone and I prefer the UI. While I don't enjoy using my Mac Mini (1st gen which really needs to be retired) simply because I prefer the application support available for Windows, nothing beats the iPhone IMO.
Now, if the Tab had come $100 cheaper and offered me something MORE than what the iPad2 does, I would be all over it. But for the same price it's just not worth it to lose the ease of use, interoperability, and application support.
YMMV.
Re:Well (Score:4, Interesting)
If the samsung came with something like Meego or one of the touchscreen linux distros I'd be more interested. I'm underwhelmed by Android. The more I see it the less I like it. It's okay for phones but on larger devices it's not so good.
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The people I know with Android devices are (1) "anything but Apple" geeks, (2) buy only on initial price, (3) can't tell the difference between iOS, Android or anything else they're looking at or (4) don't really care (a rarity). I've helped these people set up their Androids for various things (mail accounts, ringtones, Wi-Fi access) and I get the "what were they thinking" feeling about how Android behaves. It's relatively clunky, vague, inconsistent, rigid and confusing compared to iOS across all the devi
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It's not about "not choosing an Apple product", it's about the veneer of Android looking impressive enough to make people think it's just like an iOS product. There's no visible unified ecosystem for Android like there is for iOS and you, my friend, are in the tiny minority of people who will sudo apt-get install git-core.
Anyone who has asked me about what to buy has had a few concerns, none of which had anything to do with whether it went with their shoes. The days of "cool factor" and "impressing their fr
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Re:Well (Score:4, Informative)
It's okay for phones but on larger devices it's not so good.
As a matter of interest have you used Honeycomb? I tried it for the first time yesterday in an electronics store. It is so incredibly far removed from the Android on my phone that about the only thing I recognized on it was the Market App. It provided a very different experience entirely. So much as to say I wouldn't ever want Honeycomb running on a device the size of a phone.
Re:Well (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, if the Tab had come $100 cheaper and offered me something MORE than what the iPad2 does, I would be all over it. But for the same price it's just not worth it to lose the ease of use, interoperability, and application support.
Exactly. It's not enough to match the ipad, it has to be CHEAPER than the ipad to be worthwhile for normal people.
Not meant as flamebait, but I believe Android would never have gotten as popular as now if the iphone hadn't been limited to one carrier and priced higher than the android phones in the USA.
Re:Well (Score:5, Interesting)
Why can't they be much cheaper? These vendors got the OS for free. Most won't do huge ad campaigns. The CPUs cost far less than x86 Intel chips. It's not like the displays are made of anything extraordinary. With competition and SOCs, these could likely be in the price range of netbooks. Of course the margins would be fairly thin, but when they're Windows-netbook-like commodities without the price of Windows, that's how anything that isn't the hottest stuff should be priced.
Hopefully seeing that the losers don't make any money will motivate companies to put out better products. Maybe someone will actually be smart enough to leverage the power of the user community, and release the full source so others can help polish/innovate to the next level.
The lack of support for old Android products is shameful. Even if there is too little RAM to use the latest version of Android, all vendors should still have provided updates for things like security issues. Some units are being treated like they're disposable. They should be priced to match.
And with some vendors putting out models that are a bit quirky or are otherwise duds, the previous generation models being cleared out ought to be dumped at really low ($100 - $200) prices.
If Google is making ad money off of the OS, perhaps some hardware vendors should consider asking Google to pay them to use it? Maybe Microsoft shouldn't be the only one to pay to see its OS and search product installed?
Re:Well (Score:4, Interesting)
Why can't they be much cheaper?
While some here on /. will refuse to admit, it actually is costly to make a tablet and get a decent margin on them. Most here would like a tablet to cost $150 and be able to run Crysis II while mixing 5.1 audio at the same time; there are limits to what tablets can do for a price. Some components like 10" screens are not plentiful as they have not been mass produced by many suppliers and are still limited to a few companies.
The CPUs cost far less than x86 Intel chips. It's not like the displays are made of anything extraordinary. With competition and SOCs, these could likely be in the price range of netbooks. Of course the margins would be fairly thin, but when they're Windows-netbook-like commodities without the price of Windows, that's how anything that isn't the hottest stuff should be priced.
Just because the CPUs may cost less does not mean the whole device is going to cost less. The touchscreen probably makes up for the difference in prices. Also form factor has a cost. Generally the smaller form factor costs more to manufacture. A manufacture could probably make a cheaper 1" thick tablet but no one is going to buy it next to thinner one.
And with some vendors putting out models that are a bit quirky or are otherwise duds, the previous generation models being cleared out ought to be dumped at really low ($100 - $200) prices.
One advantage that Apple has over their competitors is the vertical integration. They can sell the iPad at lower prices and still get a decent margin since they sell enough of them at retail to keep those margins.
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A company like Samsung actually has an advantage over Apple since they make both screens and semiconductors. So they really do have lower costs than Apple, and should be able to settle for lower margins as well. The prices should come down.
Thats not actually the case. Synergy doesnt necessarily come easy for corporations that have a hand in everything. Samsung may make both led screens and soc, but if its more profitable for another company to purchase those soc you can bet thats what Samsung will do.
This was discussed a few months back when Samsung was producing chips for Apple. Ya, Samsung makes their own tablets and phones. Apple can afford to pay for more units, so they get the contract....not Samsung's own division. Its what keeps cor
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The other vendors have distributors in place. The vertical integration helps Apple make a better product since they were heavily into the design. But as far as cost goes, the main vertical-piece the (want-to-be) competitors get from others is the OS which they get for free. If they've made products they're confident in, they can build in volume too.
In terms of cost and pricing, Apple's retail stores provide a huge advantage in that their competitors sell mostly at wholesale. So their competitors don't get the retail price; their competitor's distributors do. Apple sells at both retail and wholesale.
Take for example the $500 iPad 2 model. For Apple to get 30% margin on that model their costs cannot exceed $350 for manufacturing and retail costs with $150 in margin. A competing product has cost far less because the distributor has to take a cut as w
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The reason they cannot be much cheaper is *because* they get the OS for free.
None of the other vendors can match Apple on purchasing power alone, so they will have a hard time competing on cost for comparable hardware. And since Apple owns the software and the store that comes with it, they can sell the hardware below cost, and make it all back in the App Store, iTunes, etc.
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samsung can, not only because they're HUGE, but also because they can make their own chips if they decide to ditch tegra2. remember that samsung is the current manufacturer of apple's Ax chips.
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Not meant as flamebait, but I believe Android would never have gotten as popular as now if the iphone hadn't been limited to one carrier and priced higher than the android phones in the USA.
The US isn't the only country in the world you know. Where I come from androids are still more popular, even though there are no carrier locks or anything like that (in fact, most mobiles are bought from a shop and then you put in the sim card, not bought as part of a contract)
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Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)
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If that's the case then why did iPad 2 come out only ONE YEAR after iPad 1?
The iPad 2 was probably being developed even before the original launched, because after 1 year, it was inevitable that serious competitors would start to appear, and the iPad would need a "bump" to maintain interest. It helps that the semiconductor industry is quite predictable (Moore's law and all that) so they can guess what components are going to be available and affordable 18 months down the line.
Making the 2 a bit thinner, a bit lighter (dont diss the apparently small changes in size and weight unti
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Interoperability? With what? iOS is tightly locked down and it primarily "interoperates" with iTunes and (eventually) iCloud.
Ease of use? That's rather dubious. iOS is a bit simpler because it's more limited. But ease of use ultimately needs to be measured in functionality per unit of UI complexity, not just UI complexity.
Application support? There are more tablet apps for iOS to be sure, b
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Does iOS have real widgets (that you can change out for whatever you want... like wifi/3g/etc. buttons)?
Does iOS have voice-recognition throughout?
Does iOS currently have a split keyboard, or let you replace the stock?
Do iOS devices support SD cards?
Does iOS support a mouse?
Disclaimer: I own both an iPhone and a Xoom, and the wife has an Android phone (HTC Aria). I don't see any reason to replace my iPhone anytime soon. But I cannot and would not try to claim that it has Android beat in all categories.
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Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do ppl always claim IPad has more apps for it ? Knowing the filtering with respect to installing software on the ipad as well as the almost mandatory use of objective C and the limitations in the available API sets to access hardware ... why whould it carry or have the capability to carry more software than an andoid device ?
Because more people write iOS apps than Android apps? Because the iTunes App Store has more apps in it than the Android Market? This is a strange question. Sure, people could theoretically write more apps for Android than iOS... but they don't.
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That's not completely reasonable -- Android is free to be used on any carrier network and by any handset manufacturer, so I'm told this spurs competition and improves consumer choice.*
If there are six people writing mortgage interest calculator apps instead of two, it's pretty clear which market has better competition and consumer choice. The fact that 3rd party developer revenues on the Android store are significantly less than on Apple's store, leading to less developer interest, less choice and competit
Re:Well (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay I pulled those numbers out of my ass. On the App Store we got 174 "mortgage interest" , and on the Android Market we have 234. OTOH, on the Android Market about 50 or so of these apps are just branded "$reatlor Mortgage Calculator" apps like this one [android.com] and another 50 that are just RSS feed readers of some guy's blog on the financial crisis [android.com]. All of the Apple store apps were legit, destinguishable calculators from a variety of vendors.
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My LG P-999 (aka T-Mobile G2x) would beg to differ with you. So would my phone before that (an HTC Hero) and my phone before that (an HTC Dream).
Also -- missed the announcement from HTC they would be unlocking their future bootloaders?
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Why is this phone $420 and only available with T-mobile [google.com]? Is this really a competitive handset? The freedom premium here is a little extraordinary, particularly if it's only T-Mobile bands.
I have seen it, but let's see what happens to HTCs sales through it's carrier channels, huh? Maybe Verizon will decide they want to start pushing the Samsungs harder all of the sudden, or maybe they aren'
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Dual-core CPU, 4G radio, latest-generation 3D acceleration, DVI output (and the hardware is more than adequate for streaming a great-quality picture off Netflix over that DVI output). I bought it as future-proofing, but the consumer justification for the markup is that it's gamer equipment... nothing about a "freedom premium".
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(* Set aside for a moment the fact that any Android phone without "Nexus" in its name is more locked-down than an iPhone.)
In the US, maybe. In most other parts of the world, Android phones tend not to be locked down.
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Thank you for writing **** instead of shit, because I would have been really offended otherwise.
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Um, the ipad can connect to both HDMI and VGA monitors now. Sure, you do have to buy adapters but you have to do so for many android devices too.
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I know the HTC Evo has a crippled firmware driver that will only play "approved" content (Sprint and YouTube video, native slideshow viewers, etc). Luckily the dev community (Sam Bero with his FullHDMI app in particular) has stepped up and built a driver that allows for full output, but I felt pretty betrayed when I found that the implied functionality was not th
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Objective C isn't a requirement.
you can use c and c++ too. [apple.com]
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Why do ppl always claim IPad has more apps for it ?
Maybe because Apple got at least a year start than Android when it comes to tablets. That and all iPhone/iPod Touch apps work on the iPad without having to recompile. They are not optimized for an iPad screen but they will work. Android did not have that advantage as Honeycomb is different enough from previous phone Android releases where they are not guaranteed to work. They may work but it is not guaranteed.
Knowing the filtering with respect to installing software on the ipad as well as the almost mandatory use of objective C and the limitations in the available API sets to access hardware
And why would any consumer really care about which languages their apps are programmed in? Dev
Re:Well (Score:5, Informative)
The $429 16GB Galaxy Tab you're looking at [bestbuy.com] is not the 10.1, but the small-screen kind. The price of a 16GB Galaxy Tab 10.1 with no 3/4G is $499, identical to the iPad 2 [apple.com].
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+1. Love my Transformer.
However, I wish that Honeycomb tablet manufacturers would gang up on Google and force them to fix all the software glitches in OS. I had Xoom before Transformer, and a lot of that crap is clearly in stock Honeycomb. Like, browser being essentially unusable on Slashdot (it lags a fair bit when scrolling through comments in the stories, but if you want to see how bad it can get, try posting a comment here... typing is like 1 cps).
Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny that these formerly PC performance sites decided to jump into the fray and began applying the gamer rig logic to tablets with pointless specs that don't explain anything of value to the average consumer.
The correct question should be "does it have awesome native apps and games, support, and enough differentiation from the leading tablet to stand on its own?"
So far, Android-based tablets don't. It's kind of a clusterfuck on that front. When carrier subsidy model is taken out of the equation you're left with bunch of spec-driven touch panels with goofy names.
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I have one of these (Score:5, Informative)
I have a Galaxy Tab 10.1 and I've also used a Xoom. Both are pretty comparable in terms of performance, which means not flawless (video occasionally appears to stutter a little bit) but acceptable. I like the thinness and light weight of the Galaxy Tab. My main beefs with it are:
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licking the globe on the Galaxy Tab is a chore and a half. It wants to select the speech bubble, every time.
Capacitive touch screens are inherently inaccurate, so selecting small items is always a problem. I think that iPad does better at guessing where you actually wanted to click by looking at the "shape" of the fingerprint.
On Android, I like the way Opera Mobile handles this - if they can't figure out which of the two interactive elements you were trying to tap, they give you a list so that you can pick the one you want.
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I think that iPad does better at guessing where you actually wanted to click by looking at the "shape" of the fingerprint.
I think that's also why I like the iPhone keyboard much better than any keyboard on any Android phone I've tried. Whatever it is, Apple is doing something right.
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Keyboard: Get SwiftKey. It's much better, and you can long press for most punctuation and numbers.
To clarify, I was using the stock Samsung Keyboard that's the default when you start the machine. You can revert to the Android keyboard, which at least solves the apostrophe problem, but isn't a whole lot better. I'll look at SwiftKey. On my Android phone I use Swype.
Touchscreen: I found this for almost all touchscreen devices. Luckily, now you can just pinch-zoom in, click, pinch unzoom.
If only it was that easy. Seriously, trying to click that control is hell. Enough to frustrate a sensible person to the point that they wouldn't use that device anymore.
I also recommend Battery Snap. It keeps data and displays a graph of all battery usage, so you can easily see what, where and when your battery was draining.
One thing that does seem really good about the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the batt
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I have a Xoom, and I recommend Thumb Keyboard. It lets you have a split layout for landscape mode on a tablet... very nice, Apple took the same idea and put it in iOS 5 for iPad. You can find it on the Android Market.
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Considering it just came out on Wednesday, how have you had enough time to leave it around unused for a week?
I got mine at Google I/O in early May. The only thing I can't really speak to yet is Android 3.1 "Honeycomb." Mine came with 3.0 and only got the upgrade to 3.1 on Thursday, so it's possible things like battery life may have changed, but overall for day-to-day use the 3.1 changes seem minimal.
Not a fan boy, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
I've yet to see anything on Android that gives a user-experience anywhere close to the iPad. I bought the original Galaxy Pad at about the same time I bought the iPad ; I've had it around 4 months, and can count on 1 hand the number of times I've used it. The interface just doesn't seem as though it can quite keep up with the user, slow to launch apps, just didn't take to it. The iPad (and now the iPad2) I use every day.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of things I don't like about Apple - I hate iTunes wit
Re:Not a fan boy, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
The original Galaxy Tab runs Gingerbread. The Xoom, Transformer, and Galaxy 10.1 run Honeycomb. It is night and day different.
Not to mention these tablets all have high performance Tegra 2 chips while the original Tab was running only a Hummingbird.
You are basically saying you tried Windows 98 and hated it therefore Windows 7 has to be just as bad.
I have an Asus Transformer and LOVE IT. It's an amazing machine, and I don't have the handcuffs on that my iPad-owning friends have.
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Don't blame customers for their bad first impressions if you don't care enough about your brand to do right by them the first time.
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Try using a netbook to type a message while standing up on a train/subway.
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A cheap device you don't use is better how?
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You can go on /. and feel special telling people about it and hope someone mods you interesting.
What about the Eee Pad? (Score:3)
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You can get a 16GB EEPad for $399.
I think part of the thing these reviewers all miss is that every Android tablet has a MicroSD slot. There is no point paying $100 for 16 Gb of storage. It's highway robbery. I don't know why anyone in their right mind would get the 32GB version over the 16Gb version.
This of course is very different from the iPad which has no such slot.
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Well, that's only partially true - why do people bother RAIDing discs together instead of just burning their music and movies out to DVD or BR discs? It's more convenient.
Up until a year and a half ago (actually, closer to two now), my phone had a uSD card slot. You know how often the memory got upgraded/swapped? Each time I bought a new phone. And, at that point, I was in for $100 for whatever the largest card was at the time (which, interestingly, was always half of what I could have gotten in an iPhone a
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the tablet-centric apps just aren't there yet for the Android Market whereas there are a ton of useful iPad apps
In truth, iPad-aware apps are more important for iPad, because iPhone-only apps run like crap on it (as it doesn't do proper scaling). Whereas on Android, 90% of all phone apps look acceptable on a tablet, and many actually look perfect (e.g. for a file manager I use Ghost Commander - a 2-pane classic FM - and it's a 2.x non-tablet-aware app, but it looks great on Transformer).
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VLC for the media
I thought VLC had been pulled from the App Store for GPL violation.
jailbreak for the emulators
Until Apple fixes the vulnerability that allows a jailbreak. The advantage of Android, which I admit may in practice be only philosophical, is that the owner of a device doesn't need to exploit a security hole just to use a device as he intends.
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Re:What about the Eee Pad? (Score:4, Informative)
None of the movies I've ripped with Handbrake work on my iPad? Shit I guess the HDMI adapter I just bought doesn't work either! Why didn't you tell me I couldn't do those things before I bought it?
Wait, you're full of shit and I can do all that with my iPad. Does the iPad also take 20 minutes to copy a 17MB file?
Re:What about the Eee Pad? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps his point is you don't have to use special software like Handbrake or buy special cables to use HDMI. All this stuff works out of the box on any Android tablet, including playing any format under the sun. I like Moboplayer for this.
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Perhaps his point is you don't have to use special software like Handbrake or buy special cables to use HDMI. All this stuff works out of the box on any Android tablet, including playing any format under the sun.
Since TFA is about the Galaxy Tab 10.1, I have to disabuse you of this notion. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 does not have an HDMI port. According to Samsung, [samsung.com] "You can even share Tab content on your HDTV through the Tablet Extender feature—or stream it wirelessly with Allshare" ... but I have no idea what the Tablet Extender feature is, or what Allshare is. Neither is mentioned in the product manual. [samsung.com]
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His point was clearly stated, he made the claim the iPad can't play movies with Handbrake or connect to a TV via HDMI. Both of these are simply ridiculous things to say. Shit, Handbrake has an output preset named iPad.
As for the buying accessories, there's definitely a valid use case for a built-in HDMI port. However with the adapter I bought for my iPad I got a free HDMI output upgrade for my iPhone. There's downsides to adapters but there's also iodized to device ecosystems. The single adapter I bought in
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HDMI... cables, how quaint. I stream video wirelessly to the TV via the $99 Apple TV (which also has the best Netflix UI of any device out there) from the iPad2. If you don't want to stream wirelessly, though, I suppose you COULD buy the HDMI cable for the iPad2. I also have a ton of stuff downloaded off the TiVo as well as movies ripped from Handbrake. I'm not sure why you think the iPad can't do this stuff... it does it better than anything else around.
Re:What about the Eee Pad? (Score:5, Informative)
Er.. so? I can stream from my Asus TF-101 to any DLNA device under the sun, not simply an Apple TV. I can stream DIRECT TO MY TV, which is a Samsung flatscreen that has DLNA support.
But really this has nothing at all to do with the parent since you can't compare plugging in an HDMI cable to streaming to some external device? It is not even remotely the same thing. (Also, the iPad does not even have an HDMI port, you have to BUY an ugly and cumbersome external dongle).
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I can haz one with a keyboard? (Score:2)
Where are the ARM based netbooks that run Ubuntu? And no, I don't mean the Asus Transformer at twice the price of an Atom based netbook.
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Transformer doesn't (yet) run Ubuntu other than in chroot, which is fairly limited.
Dear Companies making tablets, (Score:2)
I don't want to buy a "product" that I can't tinker with.
I want to put my own version of Linux on it. I want to be able to open it up and put in more RAM, a bigger hard drive, replace the WIFI card, etc...
I hate having to search the internet for custom ROMs. I hate not knowing which dodgy weirdo put together what ROM. I hate having the OS loaded in firmware...
Give me a tablet form factor with an SSD drive and Ubuntu on it. I can actually USE this to do my homework. No, a text app doesn't replace OpenO
Re:Dear Companies making tablets, (Score:4, Informative)
Dear technogeek,
We want products that work first. Unfortunately this means locking down. We also outnumber you by a wide margin.
Sorry
-everyone else
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I guess all the PCs out there just don't work?
Re:Dear Companies making tablets, (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess all the PCs out there just don't work?
They don't for a lot of people. You know, the ones that bought a random Windows laptop a few years ago to do email / browsing / Farmbook and now have them so infested with shovelware / spyware / viruses that it's "broken". These are the people slurping up iPads - they need an appliance, not a general purpose computing device.
"We" are different and comprise a very small fraction of the consumer market. The market that powers the US economy for better or worse. THIS is Apple's claim to fame and fortune - the realization that everybody else was 'doing it wrong' in terms of the consumer computing experience. Now, Apple could have made it easier on "us" by having an expert mode in iOS and allowing sideloading. But they didn't (so the jailbreak community did). Sucks to be us but Steve don't care....
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Re:Dear Companies making tablets, (Score:5, Funny)
Dear whistlingtony
We, the Companies Making Tables, primarily care about selling 100,000 units at a time to Verizon and Best Buy. We do whatever they need in order to make those tablets disappear off their shelves, causing them to order more tablets. Also if Verizon says that a Blockbuster app and VZ navigator will help them sell tablets, we always take their word for it and make sure the gear does exactly as they say, because they're our customer (a much bigger customer than you I might add), and much better at turning 100,000 tablets into retail sales than we are.
We do know these folks called "Apple," and they make tablets and are really good at turning them into money on a retail basis, but they basically agree with us on several of the lockdown issues for support and market positioning reasons. They hate carriers and channel resellers, though, so they never do what they tell them to do with their tablets, elitists!
Thank you for your concerns, we'll refer them to our marketing department.
Signed, Companies Making Tables
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What you want is a slate computer, not a tablet. Tablets are designed to be light weight devices for somewhat dedicated use (web surfing, email, books, video, etc..), and specialized software. You go throwing in a hard drive (even ssd) and a full blown OS, you're going to need more power (both processor and battery) for it to work.
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I don't want to buy a "product" that I can't tinker with.
Unfortunately the vast majority of consumers don't. Why should companies spend R&D and expend effort to serve a small minority of the population instead of a larger one?
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Give me a tablet form factor with an SSD drive and Ubuntu on it ... Give me HDMI out and a real USB port... I'll plug in a seperate monitor, mouse, and keyboard when I need to do my homework.
For the most part, what you've described is Asus Transformer [asus.com]. The only exception is that you can't easily install Ubuntu in dual-boot on it today. You can install Ubuntu in chroot under Android and VNC into it, but it's not particularly fast (though it does let you run OpenOffice when you really need it).
That said, as soon as we get nvflash, we should be able to do full dual-boot [xda-developers.com] on that thing.
Price Performance (Score:2)
*cough*advert!*cough* (Score:3)
Another Slashvertisement! Ready pitchforks!!!!
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Another Slashvertisement! Ready pitchforks!!!!
You seem like an angry young man. Perhaps this article has touched an unmet need that you are unconsciously rebelling against.
Would you like some Kool-Aid?
Not Apples to apples he he (Score:2)
the fly in the ointment (Score:2)
stupid lack of USB and HDMI connectors.
Lack of HDMI stops me properly showing off at a friends house in plugging it into his TV cos I left my magic Samsung cable at home.
So that's not going to help my friend want to buy one.
And as I read through the review I thought "yes! at last! One I can buy! Yahoo!" until I saw that stupid cable business. I went through magic vendor proprietary cables with HTC and it's a pain and I'm not doing it again.
Bad luck Samsung, maybe one of your competitors won't be so dumb, I'
I have it all (Score:2)
I have both device type, as for competition, that doesn't rely on just hardware, the average person is buying iOS for the total package, because they are lazy, the same reason people buy windows. Android is cheap, but with may flavours, and only few devices getting upgrades, it will only ever compete on price.
itunes it's the deal breaker (Score:2)
most of the people i know who owns android devices bought them for 2 reasons:
- price
- don't need itunes
thing is, itunes on windows doesn't HAVE bugs. IT IS a bug. my friends and coworkers that own iphones dislikes it and would ditch it at the first oportunity. up until now, since itunes was necessary so you could just use the damn phones as phones was a deal breaker for most people.
but even now that apple partially caught up with times and made it possible to activate the phones without using that POS appli
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So therefore why didn't Apple say "Thanks anyway but we don't need your money, Microsoft".
Did you actually read what I wrote? Apple needed MS to promise to keep making software for them like Office. They didn't need the money. An agreement is a contract especially when money changes hands. They didn't need the money. At the time, Apple was sitting on $1.163 B in cash [apple.com]. Cash not accounting for other assets. The wired article didn't seem to take that into account that while Apple was not profitable that year, they were still solvent.
Incidentally, as a Linux person who has never, in 30 years of computing never come across one Apple product that I've considered buying, would you not welcome the pragmatic views of an outsider to both the Microsoft and Apple camps? You fanbois have a very blinkered view of reality - i.e. being anti-Apple means pro-Microsoft.
In a thread that has nothing to do with the 1997 agreement