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Comment by tumult | Hacker News Reader

The tech press needs to play up the competition to the iPad as much as possible, because drama drives clicks. But the reality is that Apple's iPad is so far ahead of everything else that it's almost out of sight. Have you used one of the 'iPad killers'? That is not competition. It's a joke. You can't even buy any of them, except for Samsung's Galaxy Tab. [And the Motorola Xoom, but only at retail Best Buy in America, from what I can tell.]

I applaud Samsung [and Motorola] for giving it a real try, but I think they fall short of the iPad. Few people are buying those things. I wouldn't, myself. I have some Android phones, but I probably won't get an Android tablet, if Honeycomb indicates where the platform is heading.

The lack of competition is allowing Apple to, rightfully, do whatever it wants to with the App Store. And I don't see the situation changing anytime soon. Apple is making the rest of the consumer tech industry look incompetent.

edit: Updated with Xoom.

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Serious competition with the iPhone took time to emerge, but it did. It's a temporary advantage, not a permanent one, as are all such advantages. Just as in the iPhone arena, Apple won't stand still but eventually it will not be able to singlehandedly defeat everybody on all fronts.

But while they lead, they will rake in the bucks, and more power to them. I don't want them to be the only viable company out there and I'm not personally a fan of their products per se (don't "hate" them but they do not sing to me) but I'm glad they're out there pushing the envelope in a way few other companies are. Smartphones and tablets would still have happened eventually but I'm sure they moved the timeline up a good two or three years. (I wouldn't go much further though; the major factor driving the iPad is that the tech is finally ready. You simply couldn't build an iPad as recently as 2007 and have anything like the same experience at any price.)

In some ways it doesn't even matter if they have competition or not, since Apple effectively defines the category and the expectations of the users. Even now, smart phones are generally playing catch-up to the iPhone. Yes, there is some innovation above and beyond Apple; Windows Phone 7 is surprisingly impressive, and the Web OS notification system is arguably superior. But, the comparison always comes back to the iPhone or iPad, just as it did to the iPod. By providing the first truly mainstream offering in each category, Apple establishes its products as the benchmark. This gives it the freedom to go where it thinks makes sense, instead of being stuck following the leader.

> defines the category and the expectations of the users

It's stunning how long that has been true. The modern desktop OS is patterned after the Macintosh, modern laptops all use the form factor introduced by the Powerbook 100s, and now all the best phones are made to look like an iPhone.

Exactly. The thing that gets me is people claiming they hate Apple and Apple products while eulogising competing products that are derived from a category that Apple defined in the first place.

It's perfectly reasonable - the only similarity between Android and iPhone is the form factor, they can still hate the differences, and there are important differences.

> the only similarity between Android and iPhone is the form factor

That's a huge similarity, though. Didn't the original Android plans have a keyboard and look like a Blackberry? And what about the talk about using a stylus with a touchscreen - that talk didn't die until after the iPhone came out.

Android is a copycat, I don't deny that, but it has important differences that make it better than the iPhone in certain cases and viceversa. You can hate iPhone because you can't install apps outside the AppStore for instance and that's not even related to the hardware.

That being said, I don't think that touchscreens should win against keyboard phones, both have certain advantages. A stylus is not necessarily a bad thing either. e.g: drawing, using the phone with gloves on, etc.

There's current Android phones still being announced with keyboards that look like a Blackberry (plus other's with various kinds of slide out keyboards). And the new HTC 7" Android tablet has a stylus.

"the only similarity between Android and iPhone is the form factor"

Where form factor includes size, shape, interaction paradigm and user interface conventions, software delivery mechanism, full web browser, on screen keyboard, accelerometer as a key user input device, ... and probably many other things I am forgetting.

If you look at most "smart phones" today, they will be surprisingly similar to the original iPhone (or at least the iPhone version when the App Store appeared).

First of all, the modern desktop OS is patterned after the work of Xerox PARC. Second of all, that form factor was used before Apple introduced the Powerbook. Last but not least, best phone doesn't equal slab of touch-sensitive glass that drops calls when you hold it wrong. Touch screens in general aren't a great fit when it comes to phone use. If we're talking phones, models like the Nokia E52 beat the pants off of any touch model.

In this case I believe that crediting Apple for setting the bar on what a graphical user interface for a personal computer should look like is accurate. While they did borrow heavily from Xerox PARC and certainly didn't invent the dekstop, Apple put a compelling product in front of the masses.

Sure, they've had an important contribution, but there's a difference between recognition and adulation.

I recognize that Apple have left their fingerprint on computing. So have MS, Linux, IBM, the Osborne, etc.

Can you find an example of a pre-PowerBook laptop that has a form factor with these traits?

  * Clamshell with hinge at the back of the case, not in the middle.
  * Keyboard at the back of the case.
  * Blank area in front of the keyboard to rest your wrists.
  * Pointing device centered in this blank area, with mouse buttons below pointer.

There were earlier laptops with some of those elements, but I'm pretty sure the PowerBook was the first to bring them all together.

The items you have enumerated are not essential to the form factor in my opinion.

Depending on how deep you go into details you certanily can't find any other laptops because you're describing an exact copy of the PowerBook.

The difference from smartphones is that carriers are pushing Android. It's a free OS they have total control over, unlike the Apple-controlled iOS. Tablets aren't phones and must stand on their own as legitimate appliance computers. Apple has proven before that it can win that kind of battle--the iPod has been the dominant MP3 player for almost a decade.

Serious competition with the iPhone took time to emerge, but it did. It's a temporary advantage, not a permanent one

I'm not convinced that's true.

The more integrated the iOS platform gets, the more effort it takes another company to get from scratch to competitor.

The more effort it takes, the more money and people it needs, and the bigger the potential competitor has to be to try it.

And what are bigger companies worse at? Pivoting, innovating, making well integrated polished products that mass market consumers thrill over.

Is it possible that the further we get from "any company putting current off-the-shelf technology into a package", the less likely we are to ever see "serious competition"?

Maybe Apple is a freak one-off. Maybe Apple will put a retina screen in the iPad 3, enable wireless sync and full airplay so it doesn't need a storage space bump, and that's it. No revolutionary changes left in that niche, "Post PC" finished, no other companies in any position to do anything but copycat and Apple spends a few years polishing the software integration in their ecosystem, SJ leaves, Apple stagnates. The next decade of "computing" started, dead-ended and finished and it's iPad clones and Windows 8 notebooks until 2020.

Xoom can be bought online at Verizon or Moto websites. That nitpick aside it isn't anywhere near as bad as you are making it out to be. I am typing this post on one.

The browser is far better. The OS is far more usable than the iPad, the higher screen resolution is great - I can RDP into my work PC and use it all day. The hardware is top notch, and battery life is plenty. I haven't connected it to a PC yet - have my apps, music and video wirelessly synced! Once Flash is out and Moto ships SD Card enabling update I have everything I need from a PC replacement tablet.

People sadly have just decided to exclusively fall for whatever Apple markets them and there is no convincing them to drop their prejudices.

Yes but for most non geeks, the Xoom doesn't do much beyond the built in apps, whereas the iPad has 65,000 apps they can use today. That might be different in a year's time but the average user would be crazy to choose a Xoom over an iPad 2 now for that reason alone.

Umm no - most existing Android apps work and look good on the Xoom. Better than the iPhone apps looked on the iPad. I gave it to my wife who has an iPod touch and she has yet to complain about lack of apps - I found most of what is needed for her. So lack of apps is not really a burning problem.

You're seriously trying to claim that blown up android phone apps, many of which don't even rescale properly, are competition to the dedicated iPad designs?

Have you looked at iPad apps lately? Even if you don't include iMove and GarageBand that were just announced, how about OmniGraffle, Sketchbook, Inkpad, the Korg Apps, Reeder, Osmos, iWork, etc.

A more interesting benchmark would be "time spent in each app". Sure, there are eight trillion apps for the iPad. But I bet most people spend 95% of their time in the browser (or an ebook reader), and the other 5% of their time in the email app.

Guess what, you can do that with a 386 laptop from 1995. Apple's success comes from convincing people, through marketing, that they want to do that on an iPad and not on something else.

I think that's probably true for some parts of the user base - particularly the more tech savvy - it's effectively true for me - I'll concede twitter and reeder as not much more than an extension of the browser or an ebook reader.

However I think you're underestimating how many non-tech savvy users find appliance-like apps much easier to understand than the web. Yesterday my wife borrowed my iPad to use with her mother to look at furniture on Craigslist.

She got me to buy a $2 craigslist app that I'd never dream of buying for myself which turned the iPad into a light-table of photos of stuff for sale linked to a map. Suddenly her mother could use Craigslist. At a certain point the screen blanked and she had a moment of panic of not knowing what to do - but then she realized there was only one button to press and everything was ok again.

That 386 laptop from 1995, or for that matter an iMac from 2011 requires a vastly more developed mental model in order to do anything. Even if most people can eventually learn this, it's work, whereas the ease of the app model on the iPad makes it relaxing and fun.

The apps matter a lot.

Is there any reason this Craiglist app couldn't be a web app?

Who'd pay $2 to use a reskinned Craigslist on the web?

From a technical standpoint, probably not. But those we apps don't exist today, and people are buying tablets now based on what apps can do for them.

I wouldn't try browsing with a 386 laptop. I highly doubt you could still buy one in '95. Funny as historical comparisons are, some accuracy would be appreciated.

I agree "time spent in each app" is a better benchmark. In the event that Apple held an event in April 2010 announcing, among other things, iAds it was announced that the average user spends 30 minutes a day in apps. Again, this is the average user. I spend far more time than that, and I would also say that I probably spend, at least, 90% of my time in non-Apple apps.

Apps matter. More than any other consideration, including brand.

"Guess what, you can do that with a 386 laptop from 1995. Apple's success comes from convincing people, through marketing, that they want to do that on an iPad and not on something else."

Ah, the old meme that people are just brainwashed by marketing into being happy with their Apple products, complete with made-up "95%" statistics.

"Guess what, you can do that with a 386 laptop from 1995"

Then why do I want to do that on a 2011 Android clone tablet that costs more than the baseline Apple one (as of 3/2/11 more than $100 more)?

"Apple's success comes from convincing people, through marketing, that they want to do that on an iPad and not on something else."

They convince people that the things that they normally did on their desktop or notebook propped on their lap, they can now do on the couch curled up leaning against the arm of their favorite chair, perhaps with the TV on, as they pinch and zoom and tap and slide freely around a large, bright touchscreen instead of a tiny glidepad.

Where did I claim that? The existing apps do work so there is no lack of apps to start with and Honeycomb has been out for only few weeks - it won't be long before more tablet optimized apps appear.

Right - I said in my original comment that the situation would change over the year, but for now an average user would be silly to buy a Xoom and only have blown up phone apps and hope that stuff they like gets developed in future, when they can buy an iPad 2 and have great dedicated apps today.

for now an average user would be silly to buy a Xoom and only have blown up phone apps

"Blown up phone apps" are much better on Android than the pixel doubling that the iPad does for iPhone apps. Android apps aren't hardcoded for a specific resolution, so most of them work well on tablets even without being specifically designed to.

But that's irrelevant because people aren't using pixel doubled apps on the iPad. They are using specially designed apps.

Are you seriously claiming that apps developed for android phones are as good as the dedicated iPad apps?

That's not true. Ipad apps are usually gratuitously more expensive and if you buy them, you won't be able to use the app on your iPhone and iPod too. For most apps I stick with the standard version. Mind you, I only use my iPad rarely, usually for distraction on plane journeys; not recharged more than once a month.

So you're saying that people who buy iPads buy mostly iPhone apps to run pixel doubled in order to save money?

No, I'm saying that I personally have bought relatively few apps that are specific to the iPad, and where there was a choice between an iPad and an iPhone app, the difference was not often compelling enough to get me to both pay extra and forego access to the same app on other devices. The killer app category for the iPad in my experience is distractions and games, and they don't lose much being scaled up.

Are you seriously claiming that apps developed for android phones are as good as the dedicated iPad apps?

In many cases, yes. Especially fullscreen games; Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja and several others look as if they were designed specifically for my Nook Color, even though they weren't.

I think the Apple mind control conspiracy theory stuff is a bit outdated these days. You can 'convince' a small number of people to choose one product over another for superficial reasons through clever marketing but that's not a very good explanation when you're talking about tens of millions of people. If Apple had these secret mind control talents they would have 'convinced' people not to buy Android phones or Windows PCs. For now it just happens that they have a big head start and consumers simply don't know (or care) about the alternatives yet or just aren't sold on them.

I think Art Rage 2 is the killer app, so far

> You're seriously trying to claim that blown up android phone apps, many of which don't even rescale properly, are competition to the dedicated iPad designs?

I believe the parent is trying to claim that blown up android phone apps on Xoom are no worse than blown up iPhone apps were when the iPad first came out.

Which is irrelevant because when the iPad came out there are more than 3,000 dedicated apps, many of them from household brands, and there was no competition.

I'm not saying the Android tablets aren't competitive with how the iPad was at launch. I'm asking why a regular consumer would choose an unproven tablet with a tiny number of apps over a proven tablet with 65,000 apps today.

Well because Apps aren't everything and not everyone needs the Sketchbook app for example.

> So lack of apps is not really a burning problem.

The converse of above statement is a richer ecosystem is not really an advantage or incentive for developers!

Replace "Xoom" with "G1"/"Android" and "IPad"/"IPad 2" with "IPhone". Pretty much exactly what people said more than 2 years ago.

True, but with the phones there were lots of people who couldn't buy an iPhone to use on their carrier or wanted something cheap.

Android phones had a captive market.

iPads are more useful, cheaper and not limited by carrier. Why would a non-enthusiast buy an Android tablet based on the idea they they might get better over time, when iPads are good now?

Carrier argument doesn’t really come into it - we’re in the same situation in the UK but the iPhone’s been available on every major carrier since the 3GS.

Yes, but all those carriers have had the prices jacked up to the roof. The US gets a $49 3GS, UK prices range from £59 ($95) to £189 (some offer it free on a very expensive monthly contract over two years). For an out-of-date handset.

Compare the Android phones, where you get HTC Desires for free, on 12 or 18-month contracts with monthly charges in the £20s.

Apple has a big price problem competing in the UK in phones. It gets away with $1:£1 in computing, just, but it won't when Android is "good enough".

"Why would a non-enthusiast buy an Android tablet based on the idea they they might get better over time, when iPads are good now?"

The same way that people bought Android phones when it first came out. Not everybody wants Apple.

Some people for sure - like the 20% who buy MP3 players other than iPods, but most people bought Android in tbe beginnig because they couldn't buy apple or because apple was more expensive.

Now, Android phones are genuinely competitive with the iPhone, but they got there because they had real advantages in availability and price from day one. Android tablets don't have those advantages.

Where did you get these stats?

There are a lot of people who prefer other products over Apple's in the same way that there are still a lot of people who still prefer a feature phone over a smartphone.

http://www.businessinsider.com/through-may-apples-ipod-had-7...

Ok - so I was off by 4% - 24% of people pick non-Apple mp3 players.

24% of people will not buy an IPad.

So what's your point again?

I don't understand this argument at all.

Why did anyone buy an iPad when they came out? There were no iPad specific apps when it came out, and yet it sold well.

Clearly, Android has a good web browser and email client, and that's enough for many. Just as clearly there are a huge number of non-tablet specific apps that will run fine on the Android tablets, and Android developers are desperately releasing tablet apps as fast as they can to try and take advantage of the "gold rush" when a new platform launches.

I thought there were quite a lot of apps for the iPad at launch, thanks to an early SDK release. At least there was talk of another app-store gold rush, stories of non-US developers flying to the US for the launch day just so that they could immediately check whether their already published app worked on the real device, etc.

Even if you were to ignore the iPad apps that were available from the early SDK release, you'd still be comparing "devices with no platform-specific apps" to "devices with no apps".

There were more than 3,000 tablet specific apps on day 1, and there was no competition.

New platforms don't automatically lead to a gold rush. There hasn't been one for the palm pre.

The argument you are making is that normal consumers will pick a more expensive android tablet with very few apps over an iPad 2 with thousands of apps, some of then mind-blowing on the basis that there will surely be a developer gold-rush.

Even if there is a developer gold-rush, people will still have to wait a year for then software to be written.

I can see enthusiasts doing that by but why on earth would a regular consumer?

Maybe I'm the weird one, but in nearly a year of using my iPad every day, I've simply found that apps don't matter nearly as much (for me) as they do on a phone. There are a handful of really popular apps like Kindle and Twitter, but those are also the ones that run everywhere. Looking at my iPad usage, there are only about 10-12 apps I use regularly. Most of them have equal or better Android versions (browser, mail, kindle, zinio, etc.). The one app I use that has no good replacement is Papers.

Like I said, I use my iPad constantly. But the things I hate about the first one, I hate about the second one too (notifications, no filesystem access, low-res screen). It's smaller, lighter, and faster, but the first one was small, fast, and light enough.

Meanwhile, I have an Android phone and there's a lot of stuff I like there. Especially on a large screen like the iPad/Xoom, the iOS notification system and static grid of icons on the home screen are just criminal. I'm going to buy a Xoom and give it a shot.

Don't forget games, though. You might not use them, but many people do. Gaming is still way superior on iOS in comparison to Android.

Although, for non-gamers, I fully agree with your argument.

We got a Xoom delivered to the office yesterday and the first-time experience was terrible. It locked up 10 seconds after turning it on and displayed the keyboard and nothing else on the screen. 6 engineers played with it for a few minutes trying to get the home screen to show up but we couldn't so we forced a hard restart. That seemed to work and we got into the setup process which forces you to pick wireless connectivity. In our case, the Xoom had extreme trouble finding one of the three networks set up at the office and was unresponsive for long periods of time. Finally after it did find the network we used the browser for 2 minutes and it froze and then that managed to freeze the recent-apps sidebar listing panel as well.

This all happened in the first 15 minutes of us pulling it out of the box. If this thing is supposed to compete with the iPad and now the iPad 2, I'd say Motorola already blew it with most consumers. I'm a geek, and so are my coworkers, so we have more patience than many, but at the end of yesterday the consensus in engineering was that the Xoom is a hunk of junk compared to the iPad, and even the Apple-haters at work admitted so.

Ugh. That's a nasty experience. Did you get the Verizon plan, or did you try to activate it without configuring 3G first? Up until launch day, everybody believed you needed to activate it on Verizon before WiFi would work.

My Xoom had greasy fingerprints all over the protective plastic film, which was gross. But once I peeled the plastic off, everything worked great. It found my password-protected wifi network without any configuration at all, which means that Google must somehow have copied the access credentials from my phone. Freaky but convenient.

I've seen a couple of the built-in apps force close in about a week of very heavy use, and the OS rebooted once after I did something unkind to it.

It's definitely a 1.0-quality product, with some rough edges, but my experience has been vastly better than what you went through. If it weren't so pricey, I'd happily give one to a non-technical family member. Oh, and if it had decent video-watching options: The biggest problem right now is the lack of Flash and Netflix.

I think Motorola's problem is quality control, and perhaps releasing too early.

I had a Droid 2 that had all sorts of problems (I've been complaining about it on HN for a few months). Finally the camera stopped focusing, and I took it to Verizon. They gave me a brand new unit on warranty (which I was impressed with, it took two minutes for the Vz guy to suggest that. Or maybe they have a lot of problems with these?).

This phone is so much better than the one I had before. The problems I had with my original Droid - home screen weirdness, four different camera problems, locking up on the unlock screen, etc. are not present in this phone. I don't know if it's new firmware, or that the hardware on my old one was bad, or a combination.

So you might just have a flaky individual tablet. That wouldn't really be excusable, of course... Motorola needs to step up their game if they are going to challenge Apple.

the higher screen resolution is great - I can RDP into my work PC and use it all day. The hardware is top notch, and battery life is plenty.

I worked out a way to do this with my iPad. And you know what made me say "wow"?

The way a triple head 1920x1280(ish) 24" desktop was so usable on a 10" 1024x768 iPad because I could zoom out.

You're not going to get desktop resolution on a tablet any time soon, and not properly without it being the same size. A few hundred pixels here or there is not much of an advantage really, good software is the advantage. It Feels good. iOS has it. Has Android? Has webOS? Has Windows phone 7?

I don't know what software you use for RDP on iPad but I use Wyse Pocketcloud Pro and it is available for ipad too.

Honeycomb does have the good feel although it is different obviously from iOS feel.

The way a triple head 1920x1280(ish) 24" desktop was so usable on a 10" 1024x768 iPad because I could zoom out.

Years ago I remember playing around with a proof of concept for Archy[1], a new user-interface concept by Jef Raskin. The basic idea was that all the contents of the computer were on a great big canvas, which you could zoom in and out of. One "folder" of pictures, might be little specks up in this corner, which you could then zoom in on and browse. Then you would zoom out, pan to the side and zoom in on something else. The browser's "links" were really tiny pages, so if you wanted to follow a link you would just zoom in on it and the new page would take up the screen.

It was a very interesting concept, although it was difficult to use at the time. But with pinch and zoom multitouch, I'm sure the whole experience would be worlds different.

I unfortunately can't seem now to find the demo I played with. :-(

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy

I know that idea, does it now go by the name The Humane Interface (THE)? I haven't played with it in practice, but the way OS X does spaces+expose is similar.

THE is actually the original name and Archy the new one. I hadn't considered spaces and expose as a similar idea; interesting, thanks.

Ah, I still remember when the 1st Android phone came out (G1). A lot of people were dismissing it because the IPhone had a 2-year head start. Interface was ugly, phone is thick like a brick, only on 1 carrier, the smallest of the Big 4 at that.

Well, how did that turn out? Android is selling more than the IPhone.

A proper tablet OS didn't arrive until last month and people are already saying it's almost too late for Android to catch up with the IPad.

Alright, people will say that it's not the same. But I believe the barriers to entry to the table market is lower than that of phones since manufacturers do not really need carrier approval. Once Google refines the Android tablet OS, I can't wait to see what manufacturers can come up with.

Not selling more in Europe where Apple dominates. The only Android device cracking around here is the Galaxy Spica, not quite the same league as the iPhone.

IDC predicts Android to be the second best selling smarphone OS in Europe Q1 2011, that is, now. The first is, of course, Nokia which undermines your claim that Apple dominates on a second level. (Also, in the UK RIM is, somewhat inexplicably, the premier choice for young people and recently overtook Apple's web market share).

I was unclear: I meant iPhone (20%, +6%) vs Android (11%, +10%). Not saying Android won't pass, but I see it more like Q4-2011, 2012 even. Mostly depends on Apple's strategy notably WRT entry-level devices: phones like Spica are really appealing price-wise, especially when they're sold with small contracts (sometimes less than half the price per month of high-profile smartphones like the Galaxy S, Desire HD or the iPhone). Nokia's decline is staggering and unless they build up steam quickly with WP7 I see them in troubled waters.

Data source comScore: http://www.comscoredatamine.com/2011/02/smartphone-operating...

That said, I actually encountered more WinMo6 devices than Symbian ones (read: not much). Really don't know where they hide. Lots of "dumb" (mostly old) Nokia phones though.

Is that marketshare or sales, it's not clear? Marketshare naturally lags sales e.g. in the US Android took the sales lead in August and the marketshare lead December/January.

I see they've got an entry from yesterday about Android overtaking iPhone in January for the US market so it looks like their figures are talking about marketshare, not sales:

http://www.comscoredatamine.com/2011/03/android-takes-lead-i...

Where in Europe? Do you have a link to numbers? Apple don't dominate in Sweden at least. http://feber.se/android/art/199920/android_nu_strre_n_iphone...

You're right, it isn't the same. This analogy would make sense if Apple was exclusively selling the iPad through their retail stores alone (and maybe a partner, say Target) whereas all other stores (BestBuy, Staples, etc.) were selling Android tablets exclusively.

Google (and manufacturers) need to move with their tablets and get them at prices people feel comfortable purchasing them fast. Otherwise, iPads will become the next "iPod" where your average consumer associates tablet/slate pcs with an iPad.

Now that iPhone is available on Verizon also, let's wait a few more months to see which way US market share (Android phones vs. iPhone) goes.

Great for everyone, except those of us who were stupid enough to buy the G1...

> Android is selling more than the IPhone.

I'm pretty sure they aren't selling anything. Ask Detroit about making up for no profit on volume. Android is being propped up by Google search revenue.

Not sure you can lump all Android phones together against the iPhone. To me it seems Android is now the new baseline. All phones to come out from now on have to be at least this level or they won't sell. Google has now given each carrier the possibility to hit this baseline with relative ease compared to the past.

A fair comparison would be if Apple licensed iOS for any manufacture to put on their phones. Then it would be an apples to apples comparison.

Right now people are comparing a licensed OS with an unlicensed one.

Many of the companies in the consumer electronics spent the last decade wasting energy trying to screw each other over interoperability and standards issues - failing to agree because none of them wanted one of the others to gain an advantage.

Meanwhile Apple just ignored the silly games and built their own end-to-end ecosystem.

It's not lack of competition that's killing the rest of the industry - it's lack of cooperation.

Precisely. I don't think people understand just how huge of a deal the iPad really is. They're well on their way into a defining a huge product category in a bigger way than Microsoft defined PCs to be Windows. I don't think their competition can compete effectively; price is cheaper, software is better, hardware is better, UX is easier, even the store is a more pleasant experience, which is important, because that is when the largest transaction actually takes place. It's scary thinking how far ahead of the competition they are.

Well the Xoom has now been released as well, so in theory it's competition as well.

But you are right, in reality there is no competition. There are a lot of people out there who think competition is on specs alone - #slots, ports, ram, memory, etc. Because that's how it was in the PC era. They are wrong.

That shouldn't be so surprising. 'Sell the benefits, not the features' has always been a sales mantra. The PC market has always been kind of a weird exception to this, and I think that's in part because of the way the PC market grew out of the enthusiast/hobbyist microcomputer scene of the 70s and early 80s. Enthusiasts like to see impressive technical specifications and a long feature checklist - that's true with phones, cars, computers, cameras, espresso machines, and lots of other things that certain people are enthusiastic about - but in general that is not the way consumers view products.

Have you used one of the 'iPad killers'? That is not competition. It's a joke. You can't even buy any of them, except for Samsung's Galaxy Tab.

Have you played with them before coming to these conclusions? Jumping to conclusions without actual experience & trusting the media is a fool's errand.

I've played with them all, some being not-quite-release models. I'd have to largely agree that they are jokes.

The Xoom comes closest to being an iPad competitor, but I'd still much rather have an iPad. However, I think that there's a sizable segment of the market who would prefer a Xoom over that of an iPad, and maybe that's good enough for Motorola. Apple is still at what? single digit percentages with the Mac? They seem happy enough.

You can't even buy any of them, except for Samsung's Galaxy Tab.

The Xoom is available now.

Unfortunately I found it to be, well, shit compared to the iPad. I bought one for the lure of speed and returned it the next day when I realized that speed was very low on the list of properties that actually mattered. The total user experience is just far worse.

The Xoom feels like a PC that has better specs than a Mac. Yes, the frame rate is higher but the game sucks.

I seriously wish that webOS is going to show Apple some real competition. It's not healthy for one company to be so far ahead. Power corrupts.

Strange really because I've found the iPad to be a dull clone of an iPhone where the Xoom seems to have a UI which exploits the size of the screen.

What UI? The UI of the 65,000 full screen iPad specific apps, or the UI of the 16 Android Tablet apps?

Have you actually tried a Xoom?

Yes, I've tried a Xoom today, I also have bought an iPad a while back. Have you tried a Xoom yourself? I don't really see the relevance of the number of applications to the the UI experience.

I have tried one myself otherwise I wouldn't have asked.

The relevance is that the apps are what provide the UI.

For the iPad there are 65,000 of them customized to utilize the full screen. For the Xoom, there are 16 customized for the full screen, and the rest are literally just blown up phone apps, many of which don't even rescale properly.

There are 16 featured tablet apps in the market. Search for HD, THD or tablet, and you'll find considerably more. I'm working on one of them.

Google could stand to refine the UI for finding tablet apps, though in fairness to them, showing off 16 good ones on launch week was probably a reasonable move.

(Written on a tablet-adapted HN reader that isn't one of the 16, on a Xoom.)

Actually, I have been pretty disappointed with iPad apps. Many, many iPhone apps haven't been ported over, and the iPhone app experience on the iPad is pretty shoddy, not even using the Retina graphics.

>> I don't really see the relevance of the number of applications to the the UI experience.

This is silly, without apps what value does it offer?

How many apps do you need? Don't get me wrong, I think the iPad is very, very good. I use mine every day. But I just took it out and counted the apps I actually use really ever, and apparently 64,987 of those 65,000 apps could be deleted tomorrow with no apparent loss of functionality for me. Of the 13 remaining, at least half run everywhere (Kindle, Twitter, etc.), several others are nice-to-have ways to access web sites (Alien Blue for Reddit, Instapaper, FeeddlerPro for Google Reader), and only one by my count has no suitable replacement outside of the iPad (Papers).

Yes, everyone will have a different set of apps they use, but there's no realistic justification that "SearchEngines.ru Forum" (from the recent release page I just looked at) is adding much value to the platform. A lot of those 65,000 are apps like those. Realistically, if you have maybe 1500 of the most popular apps, you have enough to pretty well serve the market.

>>Realistically, if you have maybe 1500 of the most popular apps, you have enough to pretty well serve the market.

Yes, that's the point. It's just that iPad now has so many good quality apps compared to Android. It _may_ change in future, but for the time being iPad wins. (The total number of apps never matters, most of them are crap anyway)

Even with no apps at all, for me it'd trump Apple with this one feature: I can program my own tablet without begging anyone's permission.

That's a reason for some geeks to buy one. It's the reason I looked at buying one - not so much for Android, but for something to build a DIY dynabook on. I still probably will when someone makes something closer to Apple's industrial design, but I don't think that's going to help a whole lot with market share.

Honestly, I had a similar first impression. But as I used it more, and saw iPad-specific apps begin to appear, it really is it's own device. If anything, the iPhone is a smaller, less functional clone of the iPad.

I can grok that, though for me I found myself going back to my MacBook Pro because the iPad needs propping up and is too slow (browsing). Ignoring slowness, admittedly a problem for any tablet in my opinion.

Kind of funny that iPad 2 directly addresses both of your complaints: performance, and the new case which seems to make a pretty good stand.

I don't think it's funny, I think it's a case of Apple identifying genuine weaknesses with the product and addressing them - it's what they should be doing.

I didn't mean funny as in 'haha'. I guess 'notable' would have been a better choice.

Ah, fair enough.

Most of the Xoom is available now. I'm amazed they deemed it sensible to ship it with a non-functional SD slot, and "promised upgrade" to a 4G radio. And then there's the touting of Flash as a major selling point, even though it's not yet available either.

"And here are the keys to your new car. By the way, the windshield wipers don't work, yet…"

In the US. The Galaxy Tab took like 6 months to appear in France.

> Few people are buying those things.

That's not really true. While Apple has a huge lead, they've already begun to lose marketshare (95% down to 75% last quarter). With more and more competition coming soon, I don't think that Apple will be able to hold on. One only has to look at the success of Android phones -- which literally didn't exist at all when the original iPhone was released -- to see that such a lead is not insurmountable.

> Have you used one of the 'iPad killers'?

Have you? The Motorola Xoom gets very good reviews -- most praising the software as much as the hardware.

75%? Where does that come from?

Where are you getting your marketshare figures?

It's no surprise that Android phones have numbers. They're on multiple carriers compared to just one (now two). Tablets don't have carriers backing them like that--they must stand on their own.

Apple fought off "iPod killers" for 10 years, so they've proven they know how to keep a lead. I think there's a lot of wishful thinking from some people wanting Apple to fall. For some reason, Apple's constant success antagonizes them.

The number that wvenable mentions is shipped units and conveniently ignores Samsung's admission that sales are low.

http://venturebeat.com/2011/01/31/android-tablet-marke-share...

When you have to twist numbers to demonstrate a drop in Apple's market share, it's a good sign that Apple's market share is sitting pretty.

As an Android user, I agree with you.

Is anyone else concerned about the way Apple is changing the way we think about computers, more as appliances than what we think of as computers now?

Maybe that's actually the more natural state, and the last few decades have been the anomaly. Makes me a bit sad, though, and concerned about the future.

I was playing with a Xoom at a Verizon booth yesterday.

I am posting this from a nook color running honeycomb smoothly... it is on sale for 200 bucks.

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