Why Google's Nexus 7 Tablet Is Hotter Than Apple's iPad | Hacker News Reader

Why Google's Nexus 7 Tablet Is Hotter Than Apple's iPad

forbes.com

84 pointsmtgx65 comments

I bought one and it's finally a worthy Android device to my iOS devices. However, there is one tragic flaw with it--the tablet apps are of a terribly varying quality. Only a tiny tiny handful are tightly programmed with the device's screen size and other considerations in mind. No apps are as tightly polished as the good ones deliberately targeted for iPad. Most tablet apps on Android were automatically resized with no thought and it shows--they're ugly as hell.

There's yet to be a real standard-bearer for Android tablets (the Transformer was close, but Asus alone didn't have the name recognition to push it) before the N7; so I'd expect the quality of tablet apps to start shaping up finally. ICS being on a respectable number of devices should help as well (since 3.0 was a "breaking" release).

IMHO, with the exception of games[0] and such, Android handles phone-tablet scaling much better than iOS does: the UI properly fills the screen, text isn't pixelated, and you aren't forced into a phone-size keyboard that doesn't even reach the screen edge.

[0] games are typically very specific wrt resolution, this isn't a tablet problem as much as an Android problem thanks to the wide variance in screen aspects.

“Android handles phone-tablet scaling much better than iOS does: the UI properly fills the screen, text isn't pixelated, and you aren't forced into a phone-size keyboard that doesn't even reach the screen edge.”

iOS has none of the problems you mentioned, so what exactly makes Android better than iOS in that regard?

Only on tablet-built apps. Foursquare (for example) only has a phone app.

on a N7: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vhy3ucrsmvtui76/Screenshot_2012-07...

and on an iPad 3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gao416zu3ltikra/Photo%20Jul%2021%2...

Except the difference is: there are tens of thousands of iPad apps. How many Android apps are optimized for tablets?

(Silly example btw, who would use Foursquare on a 10" tablet?)

The point is that there's less of a need for a separate tablet version of many Android apps than there is for iPhone/iPad since Android's scaling is much more sophisticated.

iPad versions of apps aren't simply about scaling the UI. Take Twitter on Android tablets[0] for example, it's clear that merely enlarging the UI elements doesn't automatically result in an awesome UI on tablets.

Similarly, an UI design that works great on a phone (like with gestures from the side) might feel awkward on tablets.

[0]: http://www4.pcmag.com/media/images/285099-twitter-for-androi...

I write ipad apps for a living. I understand how scaling works.

The point is that a scaled up android app will usually look a lot better than a scaled up iphone app.

iPhone apps render at 3:2 rather than reformat to fit the iPad's 4:3 screen.

Even with games, if you use vector graphics and the aspect ratio is close-ish it can work pretty damn well. I tried out the phone version of Angry Birds on a Transformer at some point and if it weren't for the extra button on the bar allowing me to choose scaling modes I couldn't have known this wasn't targeted for tablets.

Uglier than an iPhone app on the iPad? That's impressive.

iPhone apps on iPad are obviously that. People may complain about being entitled to a single version that works versus buying two but even the Universal iOS apps have an entirely separate iPad UI/version usually. This is just being lazy just to say that your app "works on tablets."

Ah, so the baseline is in fact better than iPhone apps on iOS, but a further separate purchase that provides a further increase in tablet-ness isn't always available (yet), I guess that's more in line with what I would have expected.

I highly recommend reading thru the user reviews, a good selection also, as rating is not everything. But it's half the fun finding that gem of an application that has the same mindset as yourself and you like. Just be mindful what permisions some applicaiton require, but enjoy.

Both iOS and Android have a bell curve in terms of quality of application, but Android's apps, like Windows, tend to be on average much lower quality.

Part of this is the laisez-faire attitude of developers towards design and completeness, and part of this is making applications that work properly on the myriad of Android devices is very hard.

While I love the Nexus 7 tablet's pricing, ultimately I think it's going to hurt the Android tablet ecosystem. With wafer-thin (non-existent?) profit margins on the hardware, only companies like Amazon and Google, which have content to sell at a profit, will be able to compete in the market.

I don't think any company that is not subsidized by Google (i.e. Asus in this case), is going to get out of the tablet business.

So yes, the Nexus is a fantastic device at a fantastic price, but my hopes of a vibrant ecosystem for Android tablet -though previously low- seems further diminished.

Selling the N7 at $200 could be a bulwark against Apple and Amazon's domination of the tablet market. At $250 it looks unfavorable vs the Kindle Fire. At $300 you start to think you should buy an iPad. But at $200 it's the same price as the Fire, but clearly nicer.

Hardware production prices will eventually fall and there could be a profit margin there for manufacturers if they stick to the $200 mark and don't lower it.

Agreed. Companies that were previously making Android tablets could probably make more money now building high margin accessories like cases and docks for the N7. To have done so much damage to the potential third party Android tablet market Google must have realized this was the make/break moment for Android tablets and really didn't have any other choice. It's still going to be a massive uphill battle against the 8" iPad over the holiday season.

Lack of mind share among developers and consumers is a much bigger problem than margins when you are bootstrapping a network. Look at Sun while they were going and BlackBerry/Nokia now - on the products that they manage to sell their margins are not bad, but do they have critical mass? If Google does this right - then they have a shot at doing with Nexus to Apple what Microsoft did to Sony with the Xbox.

Well seeing as how there are only two decent Android tablets on the market (Transformer and Galaxy), I personally don't mind this one bit. Google gave the manufacturers a chance to create competitive tablets, and it just hasn't been happening (same could be said for the Android phones). The Android ecosystem is polluted with bad hardware combined with modified versions of Android that make Google look bad. Now Google has taken control and is releasing it's own hardware. Microsoft is doing the same. It seems like this is the only way to stay competitive with Apple.

The problem is with the pricing. As someone else mentioned, they wanted to take the fight to the Kindle Fire and hence started at $200. I get that.

However, I still think that Google could have taken control, and released it's own hardware (although the Nexus 7 is an Asus tablet first shown at CES ... mostly) with some profit($249 as the starting price) built into the equation, and still sold boatloads.

Can you really hurt a market when it is in as bad of shape as the android tablet market is? Prior to the nexus seven, nobody was buying android tablets because android tablets were pretty shitty. Maybe all the people making those shitty tablets deserved to be squeezed out of the market.

Google doesn't stand to lose much of anything. The other tablet manufacturers have released very few solid tablet products, and mostly at prices that put them at a disadvantage to the iPad. If Google can put out their own tablet with good build quality, decent specs, and reliable software updates for more than a month (I'm looking at you, every other Android device), then they're improving the image of the OS itself as well as giving consumers a better tablet to buy.

What do the other manufacturers have to offer to the ecosystem? A few things, like the Transformer Prime, have been genuinely innovative devices, but it seems like they mostly just dump their own UIs on top of old versions of Android and act like that differentiates their products.

This is what bothers me the most: why don't hardware manufacturers focus on what they are good at- making beautiful hardware? They put one leg in hardware and another leg in software and then wonder why they're stumbling

I think the halo effect of Google's devices (and Jelly Bean) strengthens the market and opens it up for tablets with more features. I'd pay $150 more for a 7" with DLNA, sd card, and a rear camera (for scanning, goggles, and AR).

Where you say "vibrant ecosystem" I read "full of race-to-the-bottom crappy products diluting the Android brand value and driving developers iElsewhere."

They are raising the minimum quality/price ratio, and that's a good thing.

I guess you mean the likes of Motorola and Samsung but there are dozens of Android tablets at or below the $100 mark. Many people call them "chinese tablets" as they are not status symbols but they sure do the job (or at least some of them do). So there is some leeway pricewise.

Somehow brings to mind the PC market before the white boxes took off.

"And who besides us Google watchers know that “Google Play” is an app store anyway?"

I have a feeling that if you are buying the Nexus online, you know this.

If you are buying it in a store, the sales person's pitch includes showing you that Google Play is where you get movies, music and apps. (Similar to how you can on an Apple device with the App Store)

What store are people buying it in?

I'm referring to his remarks about Google Play on Android. It's Google Play on all new devices now, so if you are getting the Nexus, you are probably buying it from the Google Play store already and therefore know about it and what it is. If you are not getting the Nexus, and buying in a store, that's where you are typically told about Google Play as it's an important feature.

I believe (can't find a screencap) if you don't have a card set up for Play yet, it'll show a prompt asking you to add one (and explains Play) when you add your account. You also get this mail[0] explaining the same.

[0] https://www.dropbox.com/s/ysgrfp2bah95kfh/Screenshot_2012-07...

Apple may as well let Samsung sell the Galaxy Tab. They can thank Google for effectively killing the Android tablet market with this subsidized device that will always be a step ahead on software releases. I can't think of a single reason why I would buy any other android tablet.

There are only two android based companies that can afford to do this: Google and Amazon. How are the other hardware players supposed to compete now? This seems far worse than what Microsoft is doing with the surface (unless they sell that for $99).

$175, and Microsoft could still do as much damage.

Even if the 8GB version is sold exactly at cost, that still gives the 16GB version (the one that's actually sold out) a decent margin.

How are the other hardware players supposed to compete now?

For starters, provide capabilities that the N7 lacks like an SD slot and rear camera. Of course, they'd also have to stop screwing up the OS with their skins and commit to a reasonable upgrade policy.

Nexus 7 is exciting to me because it means that Apple-which already sets itself very high standards, for which I am thankful-will not be allowed to slack off. Hooray for competition.

I own one and it's a beautiful piece of engineering and art, at a great price. I have fallen in love with it.

The online inventory seems to be fine, or was last week. I ordered mine on the evening of the 15th and had it on my doorstep on the 19th. I'm always suspicious of retail "sell out" news. Even the linked article points out that it's subject to PR abuse.

Right now the 16GB version is sold out on Google Play, while the 8GB ships in 3-5 days.

https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=nexus_7_16g...

And most retailers are careful about having a large stock of anything that is not made by Apple, as they have a tendency to be stuck with them. I worked in retail and we rarely dared to order more than two of any new tablet that hit the market, if it was from someone but Apple.

So when a good product finally comes by, there is a natural shortage, even though the item is not really that popular.

I walked into PCWorld (UK) last week and bought one over the counter. Looking online, though, some of the larger retailers were out of stock at the time.

It's a shame that there are some serious quality issues with the Nexus 7 though. I pre-ordered two from the play store in the UK. Both arrived a few days ago, both had the loose screen and one doesn't have a working touch screen. Still waiting on an RMA email 3 days after calling support.

The one that does work ended up being a present to my partner, and it does look very nice. I have a Galaxy S2, which is still running Gingerbread, by way of comparison.

tl;dr - it's no iPad but it's pretty good.

I would say that's a fair assessment. And for a lot of couple balking at the $499 entry fee for the iPad, it may just well be what they've been looking for.

Spot on I'm my opinion. I have both, and the nexus is great but I prefer the iPad in so many ways. The price point for the nexus is the thing that initially made me buy, and if it wasn't for the price I would never have gotten an android device at all.

I feel the exact opposite. I've had an iPad for a couple of years, and the Nexus 7 for a few days now. I always loved my iPad, but after just a few days with the Nexus 7, I vastly prefer it. The 7in form factor feels much more comfortable to use, while still being big enough to be practical (vs. the smaller form factor of a phone). I'm also loving how customizable Android is. Even just being able to set up a home screen that provides some useful information via a couple of widgets, instead of just a collection of icons is a bonus.

I used the nexus 7 for a few hours and I found the transitions and ease of use difficult. Not as intuitive as the iPad. Playing around and sending content to the TV and it's not as smooth as airplay. I found the actual screen size awkward. I didn't know how to navigate or read pages. Do I place both hands behind the device and use my thumbs to navigate? Or do I place one hand behind the device and use the other hand to drive? Guessing I would quickly get over that with more use, but it was refreshing to try something different...

I'm guessing I have smaller hands (female) which I suppose could make a real difference in how it feels to hold/use the device and is probably at least part of why I find it more comfortable to use than the iPad.

The entry level iPad costs $399, not $499. That makes it twice as expensive as the N7, but it also has twice the screen area.

http://store.apple.com/us/buy/home/shop_ipad/family/ipad/ipa...

> twice the screen area

I have never understood this way of thinking. (Nor, likewise, the idea that the right way to compare laptop screens or monitors is by how big they are across the diagonal.)

The Nexus 7 has a smaller screen area than the iPad 2, but it has more pixels. If for some purpose the physical size is the limiting factor for you, you can hold it closer to your head.

Of course this stops being true at the point where you can't easily focus on it any closer (which gets further and further out as your eyes age), or where having it closer makes touch interactions uncomfortable somehow. But is either of these really the limiting factor for a lot of tablet users?

(I'm in my 40s -- some way above the median of the market for these things, according to the stats I've seen -- and for me a 7" screen at the closest point where I can easily focus occupies about the same amount of my visual field as my (home) desktop monitor at normal operating distance.)

Devices with capacitive touchscreens are made to be operated with your fingers. Once a target is smaller than 44x44 points, it becomes very hard to hit accurately. That's why screen size is important for tablets. A 10" tablet can simply accommodate more UI elements than a 3,5" or 7" screen, and thus you can use more complicated programs on them.

That's a fair point. But in practice the target sizes on typical iPad apps aren't close to the lower limit of practicality, and the UIs of such apps are constrained more by not being ugly and confusing than by how many touch targets can fit on the screen.

Hence, e.g., all the speculation that Apple will produce an 8" tablet that's basically an iPad 2 scaled down somewhat, to have the same pixel size as the (old) iPhone -- whose target sizes don't seem to be too small.

I agree and Gruber wrote a good post about that [1]. However, if Apple releases a smaller 7.85" iPad, it will still have a 40% larger screen area than 7" tablets do [2].

[1] http://daringfireball.net/2012/07/this_ipad_mini_thing

[2] http://a.yfrog.com/img615/4234/6j2n.png

The screen is no Retina like the latest iPad, but it still looks sharp and bright.

This makes no sense: the Nexus 7 has 216 PPI. True, this is lower than the (lates generation) iPad's 264 PPI, but similar to the MBP Retina at 220 PPI.

How is this "hotter than Apple's iPad?". Every spec listed is described as worse than an iPad (except for price).

If you're asking by what definition of "hotter", the answer is "by sales demand". But that's the entirety of the article. If you're asking "how", I think you answered it in the last three words of your post ("except for price"). "Under the hood" doesn't matter as much with these items for now.

Did you read the article?

It very clearly explains what it means.

The author "almost forgot" the real main reason why it's "so hot"...

Let me guess, because Forbes needed some click-bait?

Writer must be new; Apple seldom sells out, and when they do, it's for a day or two at the most.

You're kidding, right? All major new Apple products sell out when they're launched, and it takes weeks or months for them to catch up to demand.

Example: retina MacBook Pro was launched on June 11. If you order one at the Apple Store online now, it still takes 1-2 weeks.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macboo...

Funny thing is the rMBP's shipping estimates has actually dropped to 1-2 weeks only today! It was 3-4 weeks before: http://www.macrumors.com/2012/07/21/retina-macbook-pro-shipp...

True though don't didn't they initiate the trend in Just In Time manufacturing. Not sure to what scale they do these days having previous read about them buying up mountins of flash memory few years back. I dare suspect that customised models like the macbook pro which are built to your spec from the choices you get a more accomodating item for building to order. Few standard configs will be in the shops and if you want something different they can get it for you. Items ike iPads they can bulk build as little variance/permutations as its just how much memory in them for storage. But yet there has been many a time they have sold out. No supplier realy wants that, but also at the same time it does help with free news and in a way help promote your product as it does have your advantage as long as those who miss out initialy can wait and not purchase a alternative in frustration.

A Dell takes 1-2 weeks to ship too, possibly more...

It's not a matter of demand. It's a matter of acquiring the components, building the product to spec, testing it, and preparing it for shipment.

Apple products are shipped the same day, unless they are Build-To-Order or in high demand.

Apple is a completely different business than DELL. Apple sells in its own retail stores, through big box retailers, through Apple Service Providers, and via its own web site.

http://store.apple.com/us

Apple's commodity systems ship overnight.

The high-demand products must be experiencing some kind of limit in manufacturing. It could be the factory producing the screens can only make so many. Acquiring the components is not a trivial thing with products that aren't cookie cutter.

A warm tablet is nice in the winter. Also in the UK there was an official judgement about the iPad being cool. So I'll not argue with a Judge - XXXX tablet compared to a iPad is always hotter :), its the law; Least in the UK!

[EDIT ADD]`Judge Birss ruled that Samsung's designs did not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design: "They are not as cool."`

So in the UK iPad's are cool. Also electrical devices have 2 years warranty in the UK, so I'm not too worried about it getting warm as long as the battery life is not adversly shortened. I'm not put off getting one, when I can afford to do so.

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