the tablet war is heating up

[Relique du Madde]

I should think a product war consists of products actually competing for market share. At prsent, there are like 2 viable alternatives to ipad on the market.

[ Links Redacted ]

He was on topic, but I reported the spammer.

Just for the sake of the thread continualty, I quoted him.

I'm thinking "Asus Transformer" and "Galaxy Tab 10.1"

 

[John Crichton]

Ignore spammers. Don't quote them.

 

[Relique du Madde]

I quoted him because I also find myself wondering which of the current tablets could be considered a viable option to the iPad (any version). That is if you ignore the who issue of app numbers.

The touchpad sold well only because everyone wanted a cheap tablet and many are hoping it will could have android honeycomb or icecream sandwhich ported onto it in thefuture... but it's dead in the water otherwise.

The galexy tab 10.1 (and other sizes) seems to be good... but it's being blocked by apple EVERYWHERE. This gives an impression that it is an alternative to the iPad.... but it's hard to tell since they are virtually non existent in some regions of the world.

The Xoom family is alright but everyone is annoyed at motorola's bad roll out, and the early adopters like myself are wondering what is missing from the new model that is coming out (since it's way cheaper then the original models).

The transformer seems to be going strong just by the fact that it does well in sales, but it's ugly as sin.

 

[John Crichton]

I quoted him because I also find myself wondering which of the current tablets could be considered a viable option to the iPad (any version).

No need to quote to wonder.

That is if you ignore the who issue of app numbers.

But one can't ignore the apps available on each device. The apps are the meat and the potatoes of tablets. Even if a tablet has killer hardware it's squat without the library to support it.

That's the main reason why I'm looking forward to amazon's offering so much. They'll make sure there are apps that work on it and that they are tablet optimized.

 

[Fast Learner]

The galexy tab 10.1 (and other sizes) seems to be good... but it's being blocked by apple EVERYWHERE. This gives an impression that it is an alternative to the iPad....

I'm not sure that's a good indicator: nearly all of the patents that are the basis of the blocking are all design patents where Samsung has visually cloned a bunch of iPad and iOS design elements, with the lawsuits being about confusing buyers due to similarity.

Almost all of them are easily avoided if Samsung uses original graphic design for the interface. Frankly, some of them are absolutely shocking, so close they're ridiculous when there are a dozen equally good ways to represent the same thing. Kind of weird, really; there's just no way it wasn't intentional.

 

[Villano]

Keep in mind that there are many people who underutilize their iPhones as an example. I know tonnes who have them, and use them for e-mail, maybe playing some music, and acting as a phone, but they don't get apps etc.

For those kinds of people, a $299 Kindle Fire, with limited abilities may be good enough.

It won't work for the power users. But those are a minority.

Banshee

The Kindle Fire is actually only $199.

And I'm one of those people. I have a PC and a laptop. I don't need to spend $500 on a tablet. I just wanted to get something cheap to read books and comics on.

 

[falcarrion]

If anyone is intrested Adobe now has an app in the app store. An Adobe reader app... wasn't sure if we would ever see one.

 

[Alan Shutko]

If anyone is intrested Adobe now has an app in the app store. An Adobe reader app... wasn't sure if we would ever see one.

I'm not sure I see a need for Adobe Reader... I don't know if it offers much more that the other readers don't offer. The natural thoughts would be support for PDF Portfolios and Javascript (action script) within PDFs, but I don't know if those are supported.

But just to be fair, Adobe has a number of other apps in the App store. They've got a trio of apps that tie into Photoshop (Eazel, Color Lava, and Nav) and a decent free app called Ideas that lets you do some freehand drawing.

 

[Agamon]

Kobo announced the Vox today. Android Gingerbread, 8 GB, upgradable to 32 GB, 7" screen, 7 hours batlife, $200. Available next week. Which, more importantly for myself, is an indefinite period minus one week sooner than I can buy a Kindle Fire.

I lurve my Kobo Touch and my Galaxy S, and it's like they had a baby!

 

[falcarrion]

I'm not sure I see a need for Adobe Reader... I don't know if it offers much more that the other readers don't offer. The natural thoughts would be support for PDF Portfolios and Javascript (action script) within PDFs, but I don't know if those are supported.

But just to be fair, Adobe has a number of other apps in the App store. They've got a trio of apps that tie into Photoshop (Eazel, Color Lava, and Nav) and a decent free app called Ideas that lets you do some freehand drawing.

Goodreader does have more to offer, but the adobe reader is free. I tried it out and it works quite smoothly. As far as gaming goes, I will most likely being using them both at the same time. for a simple character sheet pdf the adobe will work great. But for game books I just like how Goodreader handles them. It never hurts to have two pdf readers for quick referencing.