the tablet war is heating up

[catsclaw227]

Jeez... been readin'.

Seems like we're all on just another magic carpet ride.

 

[Banshee16]

That's a biproduct of multitasking. Essentially the android is saving each process it's running into memory and it might not actually be getting rid of all that data when you close apps unless you kill the process or do a clean reboot.

Hmmm....that explains it. The Android multitasking is actually a little weird, IMO. Thankfully, in 3.1, they added the ability for the multitasking windows to be able to scroll, and to be able to multitask between more than 5 applications.

Those are good changes.

However......I'm not quite sure why, but Google hasn't given the user the ability to close applications via that panel. Do you even get that ability deeper in the menu system (this I don't know).

Even Apple, whose multitasking I don't like, lets users close things down.

The best multitasking on a tablet that I've seen so far is with the Blackberry Playbook. Scrolling panels, much easier to access than in iOS, and true ability for apps to be running in the background, with the ability for the user to easily close them down.

But your explanation at least explains why the slowdown occurs. Hopefully in an upcoming update, Google gives the ability to close applications via the multitasking panel.

I've heard, however, that Honeycomb 3.3, which is coming out shortly, will be the last major update until Ice Cream Sandwich comes out this fall. And I wonder.....will the existing Android tablets continue to be updated at that point? Or will support for them be dropped once the next gen Android tablets start hitting the street.

This is one thing I really want to see out of the tablet market, before making a decision on which to buy. Confirmation that devices will be supported for their lifespan...not just for a few updates after I bought them. With Windows, I know patches and updates will come out for *years*..usually for at least the length of time that it takes me to go through one or two product purchase cycles (usually 2-3 years for a desktop machine).

Banshee

 

[Banshee16]

This is all the continuation of a topic that's been around a long time. Windows is often criticized as the ultimate resource hog, and the response to that is that it hogs resources because it is primed for the user to be doing tons of stuff at once. There is certainly always a trade-off to be made between flexibility and performance. And with portable devices, there's the additional factor of power consumption. There's no perfect beast, so it's up to each consumer to prioritize for themselves.

Of course, this is contrary to the facade that Apple wishes to project. When a company declares their devices to be "magical", one should be skeptical, not enthralled. Bad consumers.

This is a good point, and an example of how *I* am as a user. When I'm working, I have two monitors....sometimes two monitors connected to my desktop, and then a laptop beside me. I might have Firefox (with 10-15 tabs open), IE (with a few tabs open), a sandbox program for emulating different programs, MS Office (with 5-6 documents open), MS Excel (with 3 spreadsheets open), and a few other things, all running simultaneously. It's just how I work, I guess.

Something that couldn't support that just wouldn't really meet my needs.

Banshee

 

[Banshee16]

I disagree there is a tablet market. You only have to type in tablet market in google to see that there is one. When your selling millions of untis a quarter thats a market. when the manufacturers state the are jumping into the tablet market. thats a market. The tablet market has been around for years. but it was the ipad that has brought this market to the fore front.

As for the screen size you even state that reading on a small screen can be very difficult. the bigger the screen the better. But being to big then the portability becomes a problem. But this could change once samsungs flexable amoled comes to market. Then it will be quite possable we will see bigger screens that fold. check out the demo for it from the ces2011.

There already is.......Canadian researchers designed a wearable, bendable screen. You'll be able to have a screen on something almost as thing as a piece of paper, with all the processor components being contained in the "spine". I don't think we're very far from seeing this type of thing start to appear.

Banshee

 

[falcarrion]

I respect your desire for civlity, but you are directing your finger-waggling in the wrong direction.

My minor musing about "magical" technology triggered a rather testy barb from Fast Learner, as if he had been personally provoked. Which he wasn't. The response was totally disproportionate and is certainly where the "loyalist embargo" was violated, not my use of the word "loyalist" which came later. Moreover, his most-recent follow-up has been as unabashedly partisan as it gets, full of gushing about the wonderfulness of Apple and some MS-bashing thrown in at the end for good mearsure. All of which I note you have chosen to let go unchided, which strikes me as peculiar.

If you're going to act as arbiter in a discussion, allow me to offer some advice as I have to engage in this kind of social engineering frequently. A pretty basic rule of the game is to avoid singling out one side of a disagreement for rebuke, because it creates the appearance that you're vindicating the other side. Just tell all sides to chill out and make them feel a little silly for getting all worked up. It takes two to tango.

As I said, I actually do avail myself of both Apple and MS products and judge each product on its own merits rather than sweeping generalizations that evidence an overall bias. If it makes you feel better, I've nary an intention of rebutting FL's last point. If he wants to drop it, I'm fine with that. The entire gist of my posts have been that everything is a trade-off, there is no magical perfection, everybody has weaknesses, and we'd all be better off if everyone could accept that rather than attempt to impose topic embargos.

My finger- wagging comes from my mothers side.

 

[Alan Shutko]

This is one thing I really want to see out of the tablet market, before making a decision on which to buy. Confirmation that devices will be supported for their lifespan...not just for a few updates after I bought them.

The best gauge of that right now is the frequency of updates by manufacturer. The updates they issue for tablets is likely to be similar to what they currently release for phones. As of that article, HTC was the clear winner, but things may have changed since then. I didn't look hard enough to find a new article.

Apple's currently doing the best at supporting older devices, but they have fewer models to support, and still only release updates two generations back. That's ok for phones where many people upgrade every two years, but tablets seem to have a longer lifespan.

 

[Relique du Madde]

I would like to see the gingerbread comparison cause that one should be abysmal across the board. Atleast everyone is doing well in the pre-Icecream honeycomb catagories.

 

[falcarrion]

I have read today that Samsung has dropped their countersuit against Apple.
I wonder how that will effect the galaxy 10.1.

 

[Banshee16]

I have read today that Samsung has dropped their countersuit against Apple.
I wonder how that will effect the galaxy 10.1.

I read a little different....that Samsung dropped two of the patents it was complaining about and added another four.

Samsung to Apple: We’re not copying, we’re competing - SlashGear

Banshee

 

[Plane Sailing]

I've been around that mulberry bush. Any massive upgrade has a certain margin of failure. You can just backup your device in iTunes before running the upgrade, and restore if anything goes awry.

Apparently this won't be the case with iOS 5, unfortunately.