A whole new world: Ars reviews the Galaxy Tab 10.1
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
No it doesn't. If that's what they give you, that's what you review. If x is missing, you say the product lacks x. If the manufacturer is not happy with that, then maybe they shouldn't release the product until it's fully functional.
But it seems to be working well (enough) for Samsung. I agree, though, that reviews should always be based on what the reviewer has in-hand. Every review I've read for non-Apple tablets has offered some "benefit of the doubt" that the iPad never got... or needed.
We currently have no way of knowing how Samsung's software customizations will impact the Tab 10.1's performance, reliability, or battery life when TouchWiz eventually gets rolled out to consumers.
...don't ignore the possibility that things might get worse when the manufacturer's "enhancements" and "features" are added, and readers who go by a review of the product in its current state might be disappointed with the product they get next month.
While that would be satisfying for the writer, the reader wants to know what it will be like to own one. They may buy one several months from now, and keep using it for years. The author is saying they can't evaluate the dominant experience of actual users.
Here's an Engadget review of the same product:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/08/samsung-galaxy-tab-10-1-r...
- 18 internal links to their own garbage articles and tag pages which only exist for search engines
- 20 tags that cover everything they could think of that you might put into Google: android 3.1, android tablet, Android3.1, AndroidTablet, galaxy tab, Galaxy Tab 10.1, GalaxyTab, GalaxyTab10.1, google, honeycomb, review, Samsung, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, SamsungGalaxyTab10.1, slate, tab, tablet, tablet pc, TabletPc, video
- no external links that might accidentally boost someone else's SERPs
But ... but ... but what about all the advice we keep hearing about MVPs and "ship ship ship" and "iterate" and...?
Apple, despite their faults, is a great example of this: the majority of their products are carefully polished and finished, with a lot of attention to detail.
Obviously a company doesn't want to sit on a new product for too long, trying to perfect it before releasing it, and obviously a company should continue to improve its products and services continuously, preferably at a nice, steady rate. But, I'm steadfastly opposed to shipping unfinished products. I think it's bad advice every time I hear it or read it, and I think the negative parts of this review are a good example of why.
When Apple first released iPhone, there wasn't an SDK publicly available. There wasn't copy and paste. There was also only EDGE/GPRS support, no multitasking (of any form except for a few built-in apps), no third party apps, no MMS, no SMS forwarding, no group SMS. It was only available in the US and only for AT&T subscribers. In many sense of the term, it is an MVP and it worked. It's just an MVP that was very polished.
As it rolled out releases, there were both enhancements and spots where they aren't as polished which was improved in a later release. Push Notifications in 3.0 + the coming Notifications center in 5.0 comes to mind.
So, they did an MVP with iPhone, initial features were minimum, but a selected subset of them are extremely polished. In fact if you look at many successful iPhone apps, this seems to be a very successful model.
Perhaps this approach only works on Apple's "target market". But I'd like to think this is an excellent approach when working with mass market consumers.
This link where Steve Jobs commented about Segway's marketing and launch is not totally relevant, but still interesting - http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3533.html
As for the software side of things, I'd say "QA", but I find the dev/release cycles at these major phone/tablet manufacturers to be unbelievably slow. As in, I really don't understand what they're doing a lot of the time. 5 volunteers working on CM can fix and implement features in the time it takes Motorola's team to do a `git merge` on Android and push it out to their phones (yes, even non-Blur phones).
(Not that I have anything against those methods, but they would tend to slow down development in a corporate environment.)
- I never knew how much I loved hating iTunes, until suddenly everything had to be done manually
- it really sucks to buy a game, fire it up and discover it's a shitty mobile version stretched to fit your screen. I'm especially disappointed in PopCap for doing that w/ PvZ!
The Tab 10.1 is a much more credible product than the Xoom, but it's not quite competitive with the iPad. If Google wants to compete, it still needs to build a vibrant third-party application ecosystem in order to make Android tablets a good option for regular users.
I think part of the problem was the very anemic Xoom launch which simply didn't get many devices into developers hands, especially outside the US, and the quite unusable Honeycomb emulator which also turned off many devs from even trying to support Honeycomb. Google tried to fix that at Google IO but they should do much more.
It's worth noting another part of this is confusion about how Android works - there is no reason to create a "honeycomb specific app" on Android. The whole point of Android's layout and fragment infrastructure is to let you easily make an app that seamlessly caters to any number of form factors. So the idea of looking for and counting apps that are dedicated to Honeycomb is silly - it's not surprising there aren't many of those, and those that do have specific support for Honeycomb aren't necessarily labeled that way in the market like they are in iTunes (which is a problem with the market).
And besides, saying "Oh, 3g sucks but you can mail it off for a week to get LTE" is 100% completely different than saying "We expect the Android tablet ecosystem to grow".
Do you think I bought my D1 thinking that I'd be stuck with a trash Facebook app and basically no other apps to speak of? Again, I don't expect or even have a desire for reviewers to go out of their way to make such excuses... my entire post was just questioning WHY the ecosystem is so dry, even though the Honeycomb SDK has been available (albeit in a flawed state initialy) for so long.
Some use cases:
- Recipes using Epicurious - who wants a full blown computer in the kitchen? - Browsing instantwatcher.com and adding movies to your Netflix queue from the sofa. - Reading your newsfeeds while you eat breakfast. - Any browsing related task where you don't want to leave the room (checking weather forecast, google searches, booking an airline ticket, reading email).
Really, the wife and I have had an iPad for 1+ years and we still get a few good hours a day of use out of it. I've had a Sharp Zaurus and other devices before and they all ended up in a closet or drawer after a few weeks. The tablet PC is very useful because it does fill that niche in between wanting to go to the office and get on the desktop tower or trying to look something up on your smartphone.
Use cases:
-Torrent textbooks. Now you have all ten of your heavy textbooks in one thin compact device. Also, they're now free.
-Sitting in lecture and the professor says something that you'd like to wikipedia. Why haul out a clunky, sleepy laptop when you can do it quickly on your tab. Also, you can read hacker news quite conveniently when the professor is 5 minutes late.
-Write notes. Also, there's got to be some app that let's you draw on your screen so you can record diagrams as well.
-Physically convenient. You can almost completely replace a full backpack with a one-handed 7-inch slab. It also plays music so you can turn on that rain ambience mp3 while you lay on the campus lawn reading any of the millions of ebooks that are now at your whimsical disposal.
- Watching movies someplace where you don't have a TV
- Looking up something on the Internet similar to above where the smartphone is simply too small to use for the experience
- Games for the kids
- Entertainment on planes (reading, games, movies)
Had mine 6 months and can't imagine how I lived without it now.
The other big reason is as an eReader.
I just don't find the web, virtual keyboard, and other apps to be interesting enough to grab me if there is a desktop/laptop alternative. And their too large for me to take everywhere I take my phone.
With that said, I have little doubt that touch-based computers will come to dominate, although I think convertibles will actually turn out to be quite popular. Unlike cellphones, an actual keyboard on a tablet is HUGE win.
If that's their plan, it is going to have to involve a time machine because there are at least 3 other Honeycomb tablets that have been released already: Xoom, Eee Pad Transformer and the Acer Iconia.
edit: Never mind, I found out for myself. Rip from DVD to some wacky format, obtain app to play it. Perhaps I'll consider it, now I find myself flying (bleh) United with its severe lack of video.