Tag Archives | Tablets

HP Playfully Punches RIM's Playbook

Posted by Jared Newman on March 2, 2011 at 9:09 am

Noticing that Research in Motion’s Blackberry Playbook looks a lot like the HP TouchPad, Laptop Mag’s Mark Spoonauer has instigated a minor spat between the two companies.

A little background: HP’s 10-inch TouchPad uses WebOS, the operating system HP acquired along with Palm last year. The first device to use it, Palm’s Pre, launched in 2009. RIM’s OS is powered by QNX, a company that RIM acquired last year, and the 7-inch Playbook’s interface is built from scratch. Both platforms feature an app tray on the bottom of the screen and large panels representing open apps above. At a glance, they’re nearly identical.

With that in mind, Spoonauer asked a marketing executive from each company to comment on the similarities.

Here’s John Oakes, the HP TouchPad’s director of product marketing:

“From what we’ve seen in the market, there are some uncanny similarities. It’s a fast innovation cycle and a fast imitation cycle in this market … and we’ll keep innovating, we’ll keep honing and those guys hopefully will continue to see the value in it and keep following us by about a year.”

And here’s Jeff McDowell, RIM’s senior vice president for business and platform marketing:

“You know, cars over time end up looking a lot alike because you put them through a wind tunnel, and when you’re trying to come up with the best coefficient to drag ratio, there’s one optimized shape that gets the best wind resistance, right? Well, when you’re trying to optimize user experience … you’re going to get people landing on similar kinds of designs.”

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Your Predictions for Apple's iPad Event

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 1, 2011 at 11:38 pm

Sleep in Wednesday morning. See an early movie. Perform admirable charity work. Do whatever you want–you’ll have the time, because you won’t have to keep tabs on Apple’s iPad event, because the Technologizer community has made its traditional, traditionally uncanny predictions about what will transpire. And here they are.

Oh, okay, I jest. Actually, I hope you’ll attend our live coverage at 10am PT over at Technologizer/ipad2. I’ll be reporting from San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center and will be joined in the Technologizer newsodrome by Ed. We’ll also have a special guest star from Techland: Doug Aamoth. And much of the color commentary will come from…you guys.

Back to your predictions. More than two hundred of you made ’em, and as usual, I’ve aggregated them all into one unified set of prognostications. For questions in which you were only allowed to make one prediction, we’re going with the answer that a plurality of you chose. If you were allowed to make multiple predictions, then any one that got at least fifty percent of the votes counts. Got that?

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The Chances are 14 Percent That You're Reading This on a Portable Device

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 1, 2011 at 10:40 am

Yesterday, TechCrunch’s MG Siegler reported on the operating systems  used by visitors to that site. It currently breaks down like this:

Windows: 53.84%

Mac: 27.64%

iPhone: 6.72%

iPad: 3.47%

Linux: 3.28%

Android: 3.06%

iPod: .62%

MG also included historical data, and his main point is that if the trend continues, the majority of TechCrunch visitors will visit the site using an Apple device–Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad–within a couple of years.

As usual when I read numbers of these sorts, I rushed off and looked at equivalent stats for Technologizer. Here’s February 2011…

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Your Predictions About Wednesday's iPad Event: Make 'em Quick, Please!

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 1, 2011 at 12:59 am

On Wednesday, March 2nd at 10am PT, Apple will hold its iPad event. (I’ll provide live coverage from San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center.) That gives us very little time to speculate about the new tablet and related matters–and as usual, I’m going to ask you guys to do most of the speculating so I can avoid looking foolish.

Click here, and you’ll be able to spend a few minutes making predictions about the next-generation iPad, the next generation of iPad software, and other aspects of Wednesday’s announcements. (Please take the survey by 10pm PT tonight, March 1st.) As usual, I’ll aggregate your results into one collective set of predictions by the Technologizer community. We’ll publish those before all is revealed at Apple’s event–and then come back to them afterwards to judge just how uncannily accurate you were this time around. (At past Apple events, your track record isn’t perfect, but it’s still way better than I’d do on my own.)

Thanks in advance for participating, and I hope to see you at Wednesday’s liveblog…

 

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Coming Wednesday: Live Coverage of Apple's iPad 2 Event

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 28, 2011 at 5:36 pm

Here’s San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center as I found it this morning went I happened to wander by on my way to a meeting. The gents on the platform were putting the finishing touches on Apple’s decorations. And Wednesday morning at 10am PT, I’ll be inside as the company introduces the second-generation iPad. As usual, I’ll liveblog the proceedings as they happen–come join me at technologizer.com/ipad2, won’t you?

Tomorrow morning, I’ll make a few predictions tell you what I hope will transpire on Wednesday morning, and ask you guys to participate in a traditional last-moment Technologizer survey in which we try to collectively do a better job than the big-name pundits at figuring out the likely outcome. But if you have any thoughts that can’t wait, feel free to share them as comments on this post.

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The State of Android Market for Honeycomb: Sloppy

Posted by Jared Newman on February 25, 2011 at 12:59 pm

Earlier today, I put together a slideshow of 10 Android 3.0 Honeycomb apps for PC World. I don’t own a Motorola Xoom, so I used the Android Market website for research. It wasn’t easy finding apps that were designed with Google’s tablet OS in mind — there’s no dedicated section for them on the site — but I managed to eek out a list using a variety of search terms.

Then I noticed Kevin Tofel’s story for GigaOM on how the Android Market currently has 16 Honeycomb apps. He did it the easy way, by visiting the Market on a Xoom.

But here’s the problem: Kevin’s list doesn’t neatly overlap with mine. I found a few “3.0 and up” apps that don’t appear when you search directly on the tablet, such as TouchDown and Drawing Pad. I also missed a handful of apps that work fine on phones but are optimized for larger screens as well. Clearly, the system for finding tablet apps in the Android Market needs a lot of work.

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Xoom, Xoom, Xoom: A Q&A on the First Android 3.0 Honeycomb Tablet

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 23, 2011 at 6:11 pm

Motorola’s Xoom goes on sale at Verizon stores tomorrow. I wrote a formal review of it for TIME.com, but there’s a lot to say. So here’s a longer look. You don’t mind if I do it in FAQ form, do you?

I don’t want to read 2,000 words about the Xoom. Is there any way I can convince you to give me the bottom line right now?

For you, anything. Overall, I like it quite a bit–it’s the first iPad rival from a big company that deserves to be taken seriously, period. (Samsung’s Galaxy Tab has its charms, but tablets running a version of Android prior to 3.0 Honeycomb are pseudotablets as far as I’m concerned.)

But Motorola is shipping a product that’s not yet quite all it’s going to be: The 4G capability is coming along via a free upgrade, Flash is a few weeks away, and the MicroSD card slot doesn’t yet work. And I found Honeycomb a touch on the quirky, apparently buggy side. With Apple announcing the new iPad in a week and the BlackBerry PlayBook supposedly nearly here, I’d wait a bit longer before buying any tablet–unless you’re comfortable with the concept of buying what’s essentially a Xoom .9 when you really want a Xoom 1.1.

Isn’t the real question “Would you buy this instead of an iPad?”

I guess so, but given that a new iPad is coming along next week and numerous other tablets will arrive soon thereafter, it’s a question with a short shelf life. Like I say, the Xoom as it’s shipping is cool but slightly incomplete. But once it does 4G, that capability alone could sway some folks to buy it instead of an iPad–assuming that the next iPad doesn’t do 4G.

Here’s the real question, which is unanswerable at the moment: “Would you buy the iPad 2 we don’t know enough about yet or the Xoom once it’s more complete or the BlackBerry PlayBook or the HP TouchPad or some underdog tablet?” Unless I was in a tearing hurry, I’d keep my money in my pocket and wait until the market settles down at least a tad.

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