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Comment by theBobMcCormick | Hacker News Reader

> Why do these guys think that out of the blue, Android tablets are going to just miraculously going to start being great?

Possibly because that's exactly what happened with Android phones? Some of the early Android phones (G1, Hero, etc) were pretty buggy, slow, and kind of wonky. The original Droid was decent, then the N1 came out and was seriously competitive. And there's been basically a string of steadily improving models since then.

It seems reasonable to assume the Android tablet market will proceed similarly.

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Android, including the N1, never stopped being buggy as hell, though. Froyo made wifi flaky, 2.3.4.2 made Gmail flaky, Cisco VPN support never got implemented, etc.

Using Android requires a continuous effort to search for workarounds

That's a lode of horse shit.

My N1 and my wife's have both been rock solid.

And by Cisco VPN, do you mean IPSEC? Or Cisco's proprietary SSL VPN?

The smartphone market and the tablet market are two different beasts though. Sure, they both have iOS and Android, but that's where the similarity stops. Android has 3 significant advantages with smartphones that it doesn't have with tablets: more manufacturers making tons of Android phones, more carriers, and the fact that carriers offer Android phones for cheap (or even free) with their contracts. I just don't see the parallel. And (I'm no expert here, so forgive me if I'm wrong) I don't think any of the Android handset makers are pulling in anywhere near the profits that Apple is with the iPhone.

At any rate, when it comes time to drop $500+ on a tablet, why would anyone choose the one with lots of bugs, performance issues, and few apps?

If you're a PC or phone manufacturer and want to get in on the tablet market, it's Android or nothing. You can already see the beginnings of this market with the Xoom, Galaxy Tab and Asus Transformer, but the combined effect will be that potential customers will soon have unparalleled choice at every price point, something the iPad will never be able to offer.

Your question "When it comes time to drop 500+ on a tablet" is itself rather meaningless. A year from now you'll have Ice Cream Sandwich (or Jello or whatever) on $200 netbooks with detachable keyboards, 7" slates, 8.5" tablets with pop-under keyboards, and even iPad 3-like 10" tablets. And maybe a few other products we can't yet see.

This comment is additional to my previous one, because Android's browser's textarea input breaks once it contains as much text as my previous comment.

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