Comment by 51Cards | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 51Cards | Hacker News Reader

"Motorola has the Xoom, but so far the reviews haven’t been the best."

What reviews has he been reading? I have read several and most have said in short "While there are still a few kinks to work out, this is better than the iPad right now."

"Go where the puck is going to be"

You mean like putting 2 cameras, HD aspect ratio and resolution, dual core processors, 4G upgrade-ability, true multi-tasking, a UI that relies on no hardware buttons other than power and volume (orientation free), Wi-fi hot-spotting, workstation style docks, etc. into a tablet ahead of the current market line? Kind of like the Xoom perhaps? Yes I know iPad 2 is coming but I don't expect it's specs to exceed that by much feature wise.

From the very first line: "Jim Dalrymple has been writing about Apple for more than 15 years." I had a strong expectation this was going to be an "Apple's Best' article and that's exactly what it was. I would like to give it more weight than that as I have occasionally respected his views in the past but this time I just can't. There are "fan-boys" in every camp and this article is to me another example.

This would be a rather weird claim unless you are only looking at the hardware specs, which obviously would be pretty stupid.

You cannot exclude things like ecosystem from the equation.

Edit: Mea culpa on the Honeycomb mention, scratching my head on that... did a find on Android and Honeycomb just to be sure before I hit post.

  > The entire article, comparing the tablet market,
  > never _once_ uses the word Android or Honeycomb.

Read again, please.

He actually does mention Honeycomb: "No matter how good Google makes Honeycomb, the fact is, almost every company out there will be using it."

It's kind of a shitty argument, though, if you ask me. I don't follow the Android market all that closely, but it seems competitors are, in fact, doing things to differentiate themselves, even if they share the same core OS.

The big difference between Android ecosystem and Apple ecosystem is that Android want's to make their ecosystem big so they can make money on ads. Apple want's to make their app market great so they can make it big.

That is a rather fundamental difference and explains why the android marketplace is one big sorry mess with no direction. I wish it would be different but it's not.

The difference between the chaos on the internet and the Android ecosystem is almost non-excisting.

So I think it is fair to not spend much time if any on Androids ecosystem. What is there really to say about it other than it's big?

Android has a large ecosystem that is getting bigger and bigger, and will continue to get bigger, and is destined to overshadow Apple in the not-so-distant future. Can you tell me what makes the iOS ecosystem so much better?

The question is more whether you can tell me what besides it's size is great about the Android ecosystem? Yes it allows you to do anything and do not curate but that is not in my world a benefit in this context.

What is great about the iOS ecosystem is that the quality is much higher, people actually pay for their apps apple constantly and consciously help evolve.

It might be a walled garden, but it is a very well kept garden.

I hate to see this getting so many points. You just arbitrarily indicated that all apps are better on iOS and that people pay for apps on iOS but not Android. Well, people pay for apps on Android devices (see http://eddiekim.posterous.com/an-android-success-story-13000... from almost one year ago; Android has only grown since then) and there are plenty of high-quality apps there too. I've used both the iOS and Android apps and found them roughly equivalent -- I certainly haven't noticed a huge quality decline on the Android side. Do you have any evidence or reason to believe that there is a big problem with crappy Android apps?

How is Apple "helping evolve" (apps? iOS?) in a way that Google and its various partners aren't? The Android Market has features and categories, Android gets lots of new features on each cycle, and it's totally open-source. So what's the problem here? What is the big secret special thing Apple does that makes everything magically better on iOS?

The big difference is that Apple starts with design & Google starts with engineering.

Also I am not talking about the quality of the apps only, I am also talking about he quality of the app-store, the payment process, access to music so easily and so on.

All these things are what matters at the end of the day much more than crazy tech specs or complete freedom.

And of course you can make money on Android but there is a reason why Angry Birds is free there and not on the iPhone.

Good point, then the Android ecosystem is both more favorable for developers and consumers (sadly).

The iPad won't be dethroned on specs alone, even when it's feasible, which it currently isn't. It defined a product category and it can't be cloned. The usurper will need a killer feature that everyone wants and Apple can't match. I have trouble imagining what that would be.

My best guess is that some day tablets will be "essential", in the way that phones are, and there will be cheapo Android tablets for those who can't afford iPads or don't have enough taste to care. Both of those things are a long way off though, if they ever happen.

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