the tablet war is heating up

[John Crichton]

Love using the iPad 2 while playing Pathfinder. Always have the Core Book at the ready via PDF as well as our GM's campaign primer. I do keep my laptop nearby and use that when someone wants to use the iPad for quick searching.

 

[NewJeffCT]

We have one guy who brings his iPad to the gaming table, and the other people in the group use their smartphones to look up things every once in a while.

I'm the DM and I don't really use anything during the game. I'd be all for a tablet, but I'd need to find the right one first.

I'm very leery of Apple products as I've had horrible luck with them (an iMac I got died weeks after the 1 year warranty expired - blown motherboard, $900 to replace... the $500 HP PC I bought to replace it is still going strong four years later. Plus, my wife went through four iPods in a year, and she was not a heavy user of her iPod. Maybe it was a bad batch shipped to the Hartford, CT area?)

 

[IronWolf]

I use my iPad at the table all the time. I had dabbled years ago with a laptop at the gaming table, but didn't have a lot of success as it felt like a barrier of sorts. So went back to computerless gaming (well computerless at the table, still used it for game prep of course).

Then I picked up an iPad and I find it very useful. It feels like a book at the table so it isn't getting in the way or acting as a barrier at the table. I have tons of books at my hand, I have a notepad app, web access makes rule lookups on d20pfsrd really easy. I still have some key physical books at my disposal though.

This year at Origins there were several tablets at the games. Not an overwhelming number, but certainly enough to be noticed. I think the interesting thing will be to see if their is an increase in the number of them this upcoming year.

 

[John Crichton]

We have one guy who brings his iPad to the gaming table, and the other people in the group use their smartphones to look up things every once in a while.

I'm the DM and I don't really use anything during the game. I'd be all for a tablet, but I'd need to find the right one first.

I'm very leery of Apple products as I've had horrible luck with them (an iMac I got died weeks after the 1 year warranty expired - blown motherboard, $900 to replace... the $500 HP PC I bought to replace it is still going strong four years later. Plus, my wife went through four iPods in a year, and she was not a heavy user of her iPod. Maybe it was a bad batch shipped to the Hartford, CT area?)

Hit an Apple store, screw around with an iPad for a while and see what you think. Money, of course, is always an issue as they aren't cheap. For my uses it was an easy call even for the 64gb version.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Plus, my wife went through four iPods in a year,

Yowtch! Do you remember when this was? They had a model that had some nasty battery problems.

Personally, the only Apple product that I had a problem with was an old IIe, which had a severe motherboard frying. Since then, the only reasons I've had for replacements has been extreme obsolescence: my si lasted 8 years, my G3 lasted 10+.

And up until I got my latest iMac, I was even running some software (mostly graphics & games stuff) from as far back as the 1980s...

But anyone can make a lemon. I had a friend whose Volvo spent more time at the dealership's service department than in his own garage...while our 4 lasted an average of 16 years each (and we had one that got totaled in a hit & run after only 5 years).

And once we bought a big-screen Sony TV for my grandparents that blew out it's CRT when I plugged it in.

 

[Janx]

Apple IIe's were tanks usually.. I've got an old Mac SE that probably still works (running os7 if I recall).

I've got a friend who has a freaky electrofrying field that wrecks electronics. Like getting a wierd screen glitch on her iPhone 4. Taking it to the Apple store, where the guy says they'd heard reports and it was a loose screw. He opens it tightens it, and all seems well. Happens again. she comes back. He gives her a NEW iPhone 4 by placing it on the counter with the screen unlocked and the screen glitches out when she touches it to pick it up.

We suspect she's also fried her umpteen prior BlackBerries and the computer in her fridge that weak. Plus, she's likely the cause of the terrible cell reception at her house. We once called and texted her that we were on our way to her house. An hour after we'd been visiting, her phone finally gets the voice mail and text.

I had an old RCA 20" color from 1988. I used that that thing until 2008 or so when i replaced it with another HDTV. It worked great.

Some stuff lasts forever, some stuff don't.

Back when I fixed computers, folks would ask me which brand was better. Truth was, when they work, they're all fine. And since I'd seen al makes, they also all break. It's just luck of the draw a lot of the time.*

*While apple has a good rep for hardware, they do stupid stuff, too. Like putting the speaker next to the harddrive, causing crashes in one model.

 

[Fast Learner]

I've got a friend who has a freaky electrofrying field that wrecks electronics.

I have a friend like that too. People always call BS when I mention it, that there's some other explanation, but hers is so strong that if you put a watch on her wrist -- digital OR battery-driven mechanical -- it will instantly freak out (digital) or stop (mechanical). Take it off her wrist and it restarts. You can use your own watch and see the effect on her wrist. It's crazy.

Probably obvious with my use of watches as the example that it's been many years since I've seen her in person and tried it. I wonder if it still happens and how she deals with cell phones and such. I'll have to drop her an email, if she can retrieve it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I have a buddy like that, too. He goes through cellphones and laptops like crazy.

And its not like they go haywire when he uses them; its nothing so obvious. They just have incredibly short lifespans in his possession.

And soon, he'll be getting his first iPad2...

 

[Banshee16]

Yowtch! Do you remember when this was? They had a model that had some nasty battery problems.

Personally, the only Apple product that I had a problem with was an old IIe, which had a severe motherboard frying. Since then, the only reasons I've had for replacements has been extreme obsolescence: my si lasted 8 years, my G3 lasted 10+.

And up until I got my latest iMac, I was even running some software (mostly graphics & games stuff) from as far back as the 1980s...

But anyone can make a lemon. I had a friend whose Volvo spent more time at the dealership's service department than in his own garage...while our 4 lasted an average of 16 years each (and we had one that got totaled in a hit & run after only 5 years).

And once we bought a big-screen Sony TV for my grandparents that blew out it's CRT when I plugged it in.

My wife has an iPhone 4. This summer, she dropped it, and it shattered into a million pieces. So, Apple was nice enough to give her a new one.

The new one is *very* glitchy, but doesn't have the warranty the first one did. I guess because she got a replacement, the warranty is supposedly expended or something, unless she buys Apple Care.

It refuses (or is very sluggish) to reorient when going from portrait or landscape orientation, text messages refuse to send or receive, e-mails reappear after being deleted. She's not too impressed with it.

Mine has generally worked fine, aside from it being the cellphone with the most consistent habit of dropping calls of any phone I've owned. Otherwise it works well.

Any company can make a lemon.

Banshee

 

[Banshee16]

They didn't, they've sold more than 25 million in the first three quarters (9 months) of this calendar year: first quarter, second quarter, third quarter (Apple's fiscal year is a quarter off the calendar year, so links are to appropriate quarters and so the total does not include the 7.33 million iPads sold in their first fiscal quarter).


There weren't. I haven't researched the total Android tablets actually sold to consumers this year, but the numbers you're likely quoting are from reports like those from Strategy Analytics, which are Android tablets shipped to retailers, not tablets actually sold. Apple's numbers are iPads actually sold to humans.


Assuming those numbers were correct -- which they weren't -- you're ignoring sales of iPads in the 4th calendar quarter. Apple sold 9.25 million last quarter, and the coming quarter is, as Christmas buying dictates, their annual best. Based on year-over-year sales increase percentages for the last two quarters (average of 174.5%), they're on track to sell more than 16 million iPads in this last quarter of the year; even working off the incorrect 6:15 starting ratio, you'd end up with 11:31.

The Fire is interesting and is likely to sell pretty well, but it -- and all Android tablets put together, even if you include those like the Nook that can't run most apps without hacking -- won't touch iPad sales this year.

Maybe next, we'll see.

Emphasis on "if", thanks.

As to Android tablets, according to Andy Rubin (http://www.androidauthority.com/there-are-over-6-million-android-tablets-out-there-andy-rubin-28891/), there are 6 million of them out there, so the guestimate I threw out there, of 6 million, seems to fall in line with those numbers currently.........and Honeycomb has only been out 7 months, so we'll see where they're at in 4 more months. Some of the best tablets for the OS, such as the Galaxy 10.1 and Transformer, as well as possibly the Sony tablets, have been out for a relatively short time. Yes, the Transformer's been out since....April? But it has very limited availability for much of this year.

We can take another look in another 4 months, and see where things are at. Maybe they'll be the same, maybe they won't. Android started slow on phone as well, from what I understand, yet Given that Samsung alone has sold more Android ased phones than Apple has sold iPhones in Q3 of this year, apparently they've been catching up

I'll *generally* predict success for the open standard with multiple manufacturers over one company trying to push their own proprietary hardware/software combo, when it comes to long term success.

I agree they won't touch Apple this year. I think that's self evident. They'd have to have one rockin' Q4 to catch up for this year. However, they might very well finish with overall respectable numbers for a 12 month period.

It's kind of useless trying to predict what will happen in any case. What'll happen will happen.

Some of the 2nd gen Android tablets are looking pretty nice...the new Toshiba one (the new one coming *after* the Thrive), as well as the Transformer 2.

Banshee