Motorola Xoom a huge disappointment

I agree 100% on the power button placement. I stopped by the Verizon store today to try it out and it literally took me several minutes to figure out how to turn it on. Of course, once you know where it is isn't not an issue, but it's not the best first impression. I imagine most people will fumble around the sides for a few seconds before they just give up and move on to the iPad.

How are you supposed to know to search for "HD", etc? What makes the iOS store easy is that there are completely separate tabs for iPhone and iPad apps. And when you do search, it displays results for both in separate boxes on the results screen. These things make it incredibly easy to find iPad specific apps.

If the android market does these things, that's awesome, I legitimately don't know.

I feel like Netflix is being strangely unproductive on the Android platform. They have clients for both iOS and Windows Mobile 7, but nothing for Android. Honeycomb has built-in support for DRM, yet no Honeycomb announcements.

Now seems like an excellent time for Amazon/Redbox/Blockbuster to throw the doors open on a Netflix competitor (and not just the streaming part) and scoop up the Android market.

I seriously think that Android is the best thing to happen to iOS. Despite the design flaws, fragmentation, issues and every other bug, Android is the nearest thing to a competitor that iOS has. Yes, I am aware there is something called Windows Mobile 7. The very fragmentation and ubiquity of Android is its strength. While for US, I do not know how the economics work, but for a country like India, not everyone can or would afford to buy a phone for Rs. 30,000 (~USD 666.7). What Android is great at is tapping THAT market who are looking for a better than average experience with mobile. I mean if every one was going for the premium buyer who would make good experiences for the not so affluent. I have an iPhone, an MBP and will now be spending on the iPad 2. But then I look around and feel so happy that my friends, my juniors from college can afford a decent enough phone without sacrificing on the joys of modern technology and design in mobile OS.

You might have said the same thing about the Altair or, ironically, the Apple II a few decades ago.

This is still early days in the market, nobody has a lock on it. How old was the mobile MP3 player industry when Apple introduced the iPod?

the iPad is a good device, for now. But it's not the end-all-be-all of tablets, it's just generation 1.5. In 5 years the iPad2 will look as limited and outdated as a flip-phone does today. Apple will need to continue innovating in order to maintain the advantage they have right now. They may very well do so, but it's silly to imagine that this horse race is won, it's only just started.

The only attack is to disrupt it. i.e.:

1. A crappier product (in terms of what iPad customers value); which targets non-iPad consumers; and that is better in other ways (that iPad customers don't value). e.g. kindle; or can run any apps; or any language is allowed; or is open; or is completely customizable; etc etc etc.

2. Over time, it gets better (read: slightly less crappy).

3. If it becomes good enough for iPad customers and also retains those other features which the iPad lacks, they will switch.

The big questions are: "Is there a limit to how good this crappy product can become?"; "Will it ever become good enough for the iPad customers?"; and "Is it somehow difficult/impossible for the iPad to suddenly acquire those other features?"

NB: it doesn't need to become better than, or even as good as the future iPad - just good enough. Microprocessors, screens, memory etc usually become faster, cheaper, use less energy. So, competitors will get better in these respects. In terms of user experience, they will also get better (even Windows improved). It might take a while.

People think of the iPad itself as a disruptor (which it is); but it can be disrupted in turn. Unfortunately, the competitors are presently confronting it head-on... and they will lose, because the iPad is an incredibly great product in every respect that matters to its customers.

"That means cutting the hardware price to the point where you're not making a profit but where your prices are at least competitive with Apple."

Microsoft has the funds to take a loss for a while (like the 360) and push Windows/Xbox Live Marketplace in place of the App Store. Since I doubt they'll release hardware on their own, I could see them subsidizing hardware partners when they try to enter the market.

Is the iPad 1 price cut ongoing, or just until March 11th?

I think these companies are looking at this from a long term perspective. This and the smartphones are the only growth markets post-PC. Almost everyone will own a smartphone and/or tablet sooner than you think, and just a small portion of that market justifies the current slaughtering they will incur to gain entrance to the market and establish a beachhead. At this point it's a battle to the death for the #2 spot.

Apple has a massive lead by both defining the market and being almost 100% vertically integrated. Where they weren't vertically integrated, they guessed right on the opportunity factor and cut deals for components while the rest of the market was asleep.

Production will eventually level out, and competitive software will get better, and other tablet will eventually be able to turn 90s era PC-like margins on their products. Depending on how smart Apple plays the game (and I am betting on very smart), this may take a few years to over a decade.

For all the criticism he gets, I think much of this can be laid at Steve Jobs' feet. He has a clear sense of what he wants, he doesn't tolerate not getting it, and while it pisses people off, it shows in the final product. At Sun it became an in house joke after the launch of the "portable" lunch box that Sun can make any type of computer as long as it starts with a workstation. There is weird sort of entrenched notional design and diverging from it is hit by internal anti-bodies. I saw it at Google with some of the strange (and silly) Android vs ChromeOS battles. You can see Dell 'streak' as a similar example.

Apple learned a lot from doing the iPod touch which made the iPad possible, Google never did an Android Touch, so take what you have, hack it to some new requirements and then try to make it work.

I think your comments are a bit too strong for being based on this one review. For example, his battery complaints are not inline with what the rest of the world is seeing.

While Apple certainly has a big lead, I wouldn't conclude from this review that Motorola can't "play in this game". Many of his concerns are things that will be addressed with time (lack of Apps, lack of flash, micro-sd support).

The price is definitely too high, but Motorola needed to start somewhere and a tablet isn't a loss-leader type device.

I think they know that a lot of people will buy something based on specs alone. Many people will look at the numbers and believe they're getting something great, without realizing that the experience will be pretty lousy.

I'm certain the Android tablets will get better quickly, as the phones seem to be, but it obviously just isn't there yet. At this point it seems like Motorola wanted to capitalize on all the uninformed consumers, and those who don't want to buy an Apple product.

Shoddy at best? iPad 2 ships on the 11th, with an enormous portfolio of apps. Do you think that's worth nothing?

I'm betting the average consumer cares about four things:

- How the product feels in the store. (Is it solid and how responsive is it?)

- What they can do with it. (What apps can I run?)

- Who's recommending the product. (What does the NYT say? What do my friends say?)

- Price. (Can I afford this?)

On which of those things does Xoom beat iPad or iPad 2? Who will walk into a store and see the Xoom next to an iPad or iPad 2 and say: I'm gonna buy the Xoom, even though it costs more, doesn't run the apps my friends are talking about, and isn't recommended by anyone I know! Hell, I'll go out on a limb and just guess, since I've held neither a Xoom or iPad 2, that the iPad 2 feels better in my hands. Past performance being a future predictor, I bet Apple nailed that experience.

So, given that, is the argument that there's only 16 apps shoddy? By your post, it's an argument that there's no unique content for Honeycomb for the next 6 months – that there's no unique content vs. iPad or iPad 2 for the next 6 months. And don't forget that those 6 months are not a vacuum of development for either Apple or 3rd party devs. Apple's likely to announce a new iOS release, and there will be tens of thousands of new, unique apps posted to the iOS App Store.

I think that's a pretty solid argument against Xoom, especially since Xoom loses on every other factor (I think consumers care about) right off the bat.

There were way more than 16 iPad apps available at launch, and the ones that were available were also top-notch quality (especially the Apple Pages/Numbers/Keynote suite).

3 months is an eternity in this industry. No one's going to pass on an iPad or iPad 2 in favour of a Xoom on the vague promise of more apps coming in 3 months.

You sound like you are lamenting what ought to be, instead of what actually is, today.

"the few lucky companies that got pre-release access to its SDK?" The iPad SDK was available to anybody willing to pay the 100 bucks to get into the iPhone dev program. I myself had an iPad app available on the same day the public was allowed to buy the hardware.

Agreed, and even today plenty of apps that weren't specifically designed for tablets scale just fine. Of the several apps I've downloaded for my rooted Nook, at least half have perfect functionality and appearance (including "major" apps like Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja), and almost all the others are fully functional and could just use minor tweaks to improve the interface. It's a much better experience than running iPhone apps on an iPad with pixel doubling.

I imagine your feelings run deep enough re: vendor lock-in that you certainly don't own a PS3, Xbox 360 or Wii, right? If you really don't want to be tied to one vendor and you're not also thinking about the biggest "locked-in" platforms on the planet then you're being hypocritical.