IPad Competitors: Reality Check | Hacker News Reader

IPad Competitors: Reality Check

ipadwatcher.com

11 pointsmlongo25 comments

I agree with the article. Other manufacturers have had a decade to inspire people with tablets, and failed. People don't want a desktop pc in another form factor.

Yes they do. It's called a laptop and is (I believe) now the dominant form of personal computer.

You're right that they've rejected the TabletPC as offered. But we don't really know whether they want a big iPhone either. Time will tell if this is an iPod or an AppleTV, iPhone or Airport.

Time will tell, but I think that at least the present is hinting that people want the iPad.

Well I think it's all about touch-screens. Decades ago they sucked. Only recently they work great. So Apple jumped in at the right time.

As said (ZeroGravitas), people want a desktop in another form: laptops, smart-phones, handhelds, gaming devices (PSP, DS), MP3/MP4 players...

Others did not fail. But Apple is very good at creating wannahaves. With the iPad they created another one. People will pay lots of money for this device because it's a hype. And that is what Apple does. Creating hypes.

The iPad is nothing new. But it's got this 'look at me' factor. But try using it in the sun.... The Adam does a better job there.

Sorry, that's more narrowminded Apple fanboyism than I can take this early in the morning.

"Are there any really significant ones that are challenging the iPod’s dominance in that market? Not really."

Dude, take off your US goggles and look at market shares elsewhere.

I'm not in the US. I'm in Brazil. You cannot go into a reputable store here and find other players. Perhaps if you are really determined to buy non-Apple and are willing to spend a couple of hours looking you might find something but probably it will be no more than a memory stick that can play mp3s.

You might go to on street vendors who import a variety of cheap and mostly low quality iPod clones directly from Hong Kong.

I don't remember it being very different in Australia and a couple of European countries I've been to, but I might have been blinded by my fanboyism. :-)

Every large electronics store I've been to in Europe has mp3 players from a good half dozen companies prominently on display. So while the iPod may dominate, it's not like other players are in any way hidden or hard to find.

Thanks for the feedback. Its been a while since I was last in Europe, I probably just didn't remember that being so.

It certainly isn't so in Brazil. Those other mp3 players normally can only be found in small, not so reputable stores here. Mostly they are from unknown Chinese brands.

Other than that, I only remember seeing a model from Sony, this year, in a large electronics store, as you put it. Everyone has an abundance of iPods, however. There is also an abundance of very cheap iPod clones, in those not-so-reputable stores.

Are you kidding? There are plenty of quality mp3 players that can actually read free and quality formats such as flac and vorbis. I'd never get an ipod because it doesn't support the formats I use (and lacks an FM tuner last time I checked, may have one now) and what dagw said.

Amazon Germany's MP3 player category by brands: http://www.amazon.de/gp/search/other/ref=sr_sa_p_4?rh=n%3A56...

Apple: 140 entries Samsung: 106 Philips: 97 Sony: 79 Creative: 70 iRiver: 52 Trekstor: 50 ...

I don't know about, say, Japan but here in Europe (Denmark, Spain and the UK where I spend most of my time), it doesn't differ much from the US.

I thought i might share my blog comment here, too:

So, you are saying that every tablet that is now released is released because of the iPad? Apple is the big innovator here? That's so ridiculous. It takes more than 2 month to build a tablet. There have been tablets before. There has been multitouch before. Combining the technologies of today is not the genius innovation you think, it happens everywhere.

Second, you are living in this strange alternative world, it makes me sad. Of course there will be people not buying the iPad because it can't do flash. If you don't think so you are just ignorant to reality. About the Desktop OS: There is actually no reason to built a good Tablet with a multitouch friendly Desktop OS on top of it.

It's ridiculous. You are just repeating what Apple likes you to think. Can't people take an objective view on things? Just because Steve Jobs says that Flash is bad and that you shall not have a real OS, doesn't make it true!

People won't throw away their iPhone. But in a not so distant future every major OS for smartphones will support Flash (and Air), except for the iPhone. Adobe will have nice tools to build platform independent apps and games from one source. So, eventually developers will start to make those apps for the majority of phones, not for the rather small market share Apple has. And (hopefully) people won't buy the next iPhone but the next non-Apple phone, as Steve fucks the customers on a daily basis and every apple customer is just begging for more.

Of course Apple doesn't want Flash: - They don't let app competition on their major platform, the want the money for themselves. That the customers lose choice is well accepted by most apple customers.

Of course they don't want the real Mac OS X on the device: - The iPhone OS is so tightly integrated with the appstore that literally everything you want to do, you will have to buy from the appstore.

You could be a bit more civil in your comment and you are certainly entitled to your opinion.

I never said that Apple had pure or angelical motives for not wanting Flash, I just pointed out that many sites are stripping out Flash, because Apple doesn’t support it, which is quite true. There are several references in this blog to sites that have started or completed projects to remove the need for Flash.

I’m sorry that I’ve upset you with my opinion. I’m sure that if you wait long enough, a tablet that meets your standards, from a company that doesn’t have any kind of monopoly market position such as Microsoft or Google will come along and that it will be all that you dream of.

It's a good move if sites move away from flash. But it's another matter to disallow flash and air applications that could be a used to write platform independent applications.

There is just a lot of assumptions and unproven statements in your post. I've heard that so many times, it sickens me.

Some anecdote: A few months back, when Adobe announced Flash support on the iPhone, basically everyone in my circle of friends was like "woohoo, soon i'll be able to play those flashgames!". Now, everyone is just repeating the marketing talks, that flash is bad and whatnot. Basically i have the feeling that many people don't reflect what Steve is saying, they are just repeating the marketing talks. Basically, that's what is driving me mad.

Also, i don't see a reason why a desktop OS wouldn't work on a tablet (except for the aforementioned appstore lock in). Display too small? Nope, works on small netbooks, too. Can't hit the buttons? No, i am currently sitting in front of Windows 7 and i can't spot a button that i couldn't hit with a finger. Links in Websites are usually way smaller then the buttons in the OS and you still can hit them on the iPad, don't you?

Also, a few months back it was "oh no. Multitasking? That's sooo draining the battery, we won't allow that!". Now, that android poses a threat it's like "uhh, we miraculously implemented multitasking!". The real move behind holding back multitasking? Get people to use apples notifications, another factor that ties developers to apple and sends user data through their system. Another move to more lock in.

I didn't say Flash was bad, though I've had some bad experiences with the oddest bits of it consuming 30% of a code duo CPU.

The article just states that sits are dropping flash, because Apple doesn't support it. It also states that people are not stopping to use iPhones because of it. If you know some people that didn't get an iPhone because it doesn't run Flash, okay. Apple's sales numbers say that those people aren't all that many.

I've personally never seen anyone that avoided an iPhone because of that, though I'm sure these people exist.

Ok, so you obviously do not know a few things:

- The reason why the flash plugin hogs your cpu is because apple doesn't expose the proper hardware acceleration API: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/does_html5_really_beat_... Adobe would want to optimize the plugin but can't.

- Why is it Adobes fault when your laptop becomes noisy under cpu load? Maybe you just don't need that fat cpu if you never use more than 30% of it? I don't know, but when i buy a device that is too noisy i don't blame software that makes use of it. In Apples world, this is of course not true. It's Adobes fault that your laptop is noisy.

- Afaik, the solution for creating flash applications on the ipad would be very different from the plugin, as it would generate objective-c code that'd be compiled by the apple SDK

About sites dropping Flash:

I believe that the internet doesn't need apple to get rid of flash. The internet will eventually not use Flash for navigation or for Ads in the mid-term anyway. As soon as major browsers support everything that flash does. That's how the internet has been evolving for the last decades. First it used frames, then tables, then CSS. Why would flash hold its position if it's the inferior technology?

And another question:

If Apple thinks that flash on the web is evil: They could've said "ok, no flash plugin in the browser". But leave the rest intact. Let developers use whatever tools they want to build applications! Be it Flash, Air, Unigine and whatever programming language they want! It is, i repeat, not about what is the best experience for the user it is just about the money, no more, no less.

Also, when flash is that bad. Why is it still supported under Mac OS X? I mean.. you should just get rid of flash on your laptop too. No? Of course not, Flash doesn't expose a threat to Apple on the Macbook, you are already buying your software elsewhere.

Well, I guess it is you that don't know a few things. My notebook in question was running Windows and it is made by Dell. There was no fan noise, just my CPU being used all to much to display a one inch big Ad on screen. I love how people presume you are defending Apple when you are not.

You think people will avoid the iPad simply because it doesn't support Flash? I think that will only apply to a very insignificant number of consumers.

As for the OS, I strongly disagree; running a SPOD-free OS is not a compromise, it is a crucial feature for devides like the iPhone and iPad (see http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/mobile_multitasking).

Of course not today. There is no smartphone alternative that runs flash (today!). But let's skip forward to the end of the year and assume that by then Symbian, Meego, Blackberry, WebOS and Android will have flash support and it may work reasonably well (demovideos i have seen let me believe that). By then, the iPad may have a major marketshare. But, by then, a developer can write one application and target 5 major mobile OS and even all major Desktop OS with Adobe Air (keep in mind: Nokia and RIM sell a _lot_ of smartphones). For me, as a developer, i'd like to be able to use Adobes tools to create apps for most mobile phones. Eventually, in 2011 this will make an impact on sales. And in the end, there will be a lot of devices with a similar featureset to Apples products, with flash, without vendor lock in, probably even cheaper.

What's SPOD? daringfireball doesn't seem to work today, at least for me.

edit: Ok, google cache brought up the side. So, your single point why a Desktop OS doesn't belong on an iPad, is that it doesn't have a spinning icon indicating app startup? I wonder how that would work on a device without a mousepoint anyway. So, you are trying to tell me that _every_ iPad application starts instantly? Even bigger games don't have a loading screen? Could it be that iPad apps are rather small? Most apps i run on my Desktop start up instantly, except for bigger tools like an office suite, photoshop, video editors, eclipse, that wouldn't even run on the iPad.

Yes, perhaps when all those devices exist you will be able to write an application that runs on all of them, specially if you write an application that works on the oldest version of the OS as right now new phones are being released with widely different versions of Android. If your application does not try to match the particular look of a phone as each company is customizing the OS in a different way.

Each one of the platforms you mention are tiny in the application workspace right now. Palm is just about going under, Android is widely heterogeneous in implementation by manufacturers. If you are writing a game,the interface bit might not get in your way as games generally do not match the OS anyway.

All of this describes a very fragmented market. Now I will call your attention to a situation when many companies had their own implementation of what many considered a more powerful OS and one company had a simpler to use OS with a much larger number of applications.

Hummm... that happened in the 90s with Unix and Windows.

Well, iPhone OS looks a lot better now than Windows did then.

The writer totally ignores android, which should offer a competent alternative to the iPad within a year as long as a reputable hardware manufacturer steps up.

I was pretty excited about the iPad until I found out it would be locked down running the iPhone OS. If a more open alternative (Android with USB ports?) appeared on the market I think it would make a lot of tech savvy people who aren't locked into the Apple hype very happy.

As you say, it might offer a competent alternative within a year, but it doesn't now and there is no competing device running Android right now.

I hope Android does offer a good alternative as I wouldn't like to see a market with a single dominant player, regardless of who that player is. Diversity is good for everyone.

"Now, does anyone believe that dropping the keyboard and replacing Windows XP with Windows 7 will magically turn netbooks into a great experience?"

No, but I bet the new Windows Phone OS' zune-like interface will work really well. I would be absolutely shocked if there weren't a half-dozen companies already working on this solution. They'll have Xbox live games and a host of other applications available by the time these new tablet's running it are available.

I guess what I'm saying is that Microsoft will build the app market first through their new phone and then launch tablets from a half-dozen vendors that can leverage the apps.

There isn't any competition for the ipad because it's a pretty yet aimless media toy. Everyone else is wrapped up in making something that has a clear and productive purpose with the perceived convenience of a touch screen.

Not much that I can say to that, but I beg to differ. :-)

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