I'm not sure how many of my fellow comments on here are major tech geeks as I am (DD, you're excluded from this statement) but I'm about as tech addicted as one can get.
Case in point: when friends have house sat for me they've complained of difficulty falling asleep in my living or my master bedroom because of all the 'stand by' lights from my electronics. I personally find them quite snoozing...like stars in the night sky
but different strokes for different folks i guess. @_@
Which brings me to this post, Apple and it's endless claim to fame new product superstar, the iPad. Now, I've been an advocate of Apple having used a Power Mac all through my first undergrad degree and loved it, but have since moved back over to the land of Microsoft and PCs with no major complaints.
Yet thanks to Apple's iPad I've been very fascinated with the increased consumer interest and applicability of tablet computers to my personal and work life and have delayed purchasing one for a few reasons.
My main reason being the release of Apple' brand new game changer, the iPhone. I was one of those crazies that after the first ones release June 29th 2007 (which I paid full retail for) no less than a year later Apple announced the pending release of the iPhone 3G July 11th 2008 at half the price and twice the tech!!
I know that technology refreshes at an alarming rate these days but I've never quite gotten over this painful stab in the back by Apple although I continued to buy replacement iPhone's and use this formate before switching to Verizon Wireless and the Motorola Droid 2 recently.
Based on the above I haven't purchased Apple's iPad because I'm waiting for them to release the bigger, better, newer iPad within the year at half the price and because of increased interest in what some of Apple's competitors are ranting about such as Samsung and how other products will compare.
Namely the Samsung Galaxy Tab which runs off Android 2.2 (Froyo) which is a totally open-sourse mobile phone OS backed by the Borg quality like tech giant, Google Inc.
There's also a nifty video below highlighting what this new toy of the gods can do, check it out!
So, what's your take on the whole tablet craze?
Will this become the new mobile computing standard or is it just another passing tech fad that will die a quick but glorious death similar to netbooks?
Will Apple remain king of this genera since it's the first to make tablets popular and relevant again with consumers as it was and is via the changes to the smartphone market with the release of the iPhone?
o_O
3 comments:
Personally, my philosophy is that since I'm on the iPhone now, I'll eventually get the iPad (but not until after the Android tablets come to market and force Apple into a competitive stance) since I've already got a ton of apps for the iPhone that'll work on the iPad. Why should I need to buy them again from the Android market, or potentially go without, if I were to split technologies. Some say split technologies is "Best of both worlds" I say it's paying for things twice ;-)
Analyst Suggests 'Tablet Cannibalization' Responsible for Shrinking U.S. Notebook Retail Sales
Note that there's only one "tablet" for sale currently, and netbooks started dying about the same time the aforementioned "tablet" was announced. I always find interesting these claims the tech media makes about some supposed iDevice competitor/killer always on the horizon. They've been saying this about the iPod since 2001, and yet nine years later here we are. Android is the same thing. They want to write about some sort of epic conflict, and so they're hyping Android into the stratosphere without even mentioning that, um, Google has already said no apps will run on the Galaxy tab.
By the time Android gets is act together, Apple will have sold tens of millions of iPads on top of tens of millions of new iPhones on top of the installed base of iOS devices (not even including the Apple TV which isn't yet open to third party developers). So there will be somewhere north of 150 million iDevices on the market for which a developer can write once, run everywhere versus Android, which isn't exactly a panacea of compatibility given you have to wait on Sprint to deign you worthy of an upgrade from 1.6 to 2.1.
The pundits look at this as a Windows v. Mac OS rehash, and I look at it the same way, only from a different perspective. In the late 90s, Mac OS was fighting a holy war against an entrenched evil empire hundreds of millions of machines strong, and expecting to take off Any Day Now. You see how that turned out.
@Jack -- wouldn't hold my breath on price changes if I were you. entry-level iPad is priced to kill netbooks and the pricing structure is designed to take the wind out of competitors' sales. That Galaxy tab is supposed to cost near $1k when it finally ships, if it's not subsidized by some carrier. Same with the Dell Streak, which costs MORE than the entry-level iPad if it's not subsidized.
As with all of Apple's other products, the pricing might go down by about $50, but WYSIWYG. Unless Apple introduces a 7 inch version built around FaceTime. That'll probably be the only way the iPad gets cheaper up through the time the hardware is revved. Then I'd expect Apple to do the same thing they do with the iPhone -- prior gen model costs about $300 or so.
It's all about the margins with Apple. They're not after market share, they're sucking the air out of the room by taking the lion's share of profits. Android is all about Google's ads and what search will look like when a mobile device (hello, apps) is the primary way people get to and interact with the internet.
Post a Comment