This looks like it's going to be technically quite impressive versus the iPad: Pixel Qi screen[1024x600], multi-touch (plus a backside trackpad!), camera, 3 USB ports, running Android, Ubuntu, or Chromium, with a dual-core 1Ghz Tegra CPU + GPU.
Then its not an iPad competitor or alternative. It might be a tablet, but it is not in the same market as Apple is in with the iPad. None of these three OS's is a drastic change from what a computer is or how a computer is currently used, which the iPad is shaping up to be.
They are drastic changes from what most users are accustomed to, which is Windows, and I'm sure there will be some changes for the platform in the case of at least Ubuntu.
iPad is not shaping up to be a "drastic change from ... how a computer is currently used". It's shaping up to be a computer you use on your couch that's controlled via touch screen instead of keyboard and mouse. Otherwise, it's basically the same concept ... you click on the program that does what you want and use it. The web browser is basically the same, too; you click on it, type in the URL of the place you want to go, and then it's basically identical. iPad is not some revolution in computer interfaces, it's just a computer designed for couch usage instead of mobile or desktop usage.
I'm really kind of sick of this Apple worship, and these ideas that if something isn't using Apple's OS it's hopeless against Apple. I don't believe that, and I think the majority of it is senseless fanboyism and hype.
No, man, it's different. The iPhone/iPad isn't any kind of great boon or new magic thing.
Like, cars are much different than walking because while both are means of getting from one place to another place, the cars is several dozen times faster. That's a huge improvement in the "getting somewhere" field.
The same with cell phones. Cell phones are a huge boon because they allow you to call people almost anywhere. They eliminated the need for a hard telephone line, meaning you can now use your phone in thousands of places where you couldn't use a phone before, at least not without paying.
Now, what major game-changing feature does the iPad enable? Nothing, really. All of the major iPad apps could be performed on a laptop just as well. The touching might make the interface more humane, but it doesn't create such a universally, obviously superior thing. The fact that it's made for couch is nice, and nicer for couch computing than a laptop because of the design of its hardware, but it doesn't enable anything that wasn't possible before.
Some people might like or want an iPad, which is all fine, but it's not a major or revolutionary improvement like buggy -> car that made so many things possible that were impossible before. Like, before cars, it would take weeks or months to go from, say, St. Louis to Denver. With cars, you could make that trip in a few days or less. That's a huge, major, revolutionary improvement. Now, what thing does iPad provide that is similar to that?
Bingo. This is exactly it. it makes things more humane. Easier. You don't have to worry about where you saved that file to. There's no accidentally deleting a folder that had an important document among a dozens of useless files.
You don't need to use a clunky device to click on something. You use your finger and you push the screen. Which a lot of people do anyway, to point to something on their screen. Only, it doesn't do anything for them yet.
Such an interface is not a major boon, or it would have been implemented many years ago. Touch screens are not a new technology, they've been around for more than twenty years. They may be becoming more popular right now, and Apple may be exploiting that with the iPad/iPhone, but it by no means deserves a comparison with such revolutions as the cell phone or automobile.
It's possible to break Android from just within the OS itself. This also applies to Ubuntu and almost every other OS I can think of. I don't know if this will be the case with Chrome.
Android has a file browser. Plus, it seems to be designed around small, portable devices. Which the iPad (and the tablet in the video) isn't.
And are there any devices with ChromeOS available or about to be available in the next month or two? It was announced months and months ago. Can you write apps specifically targeting it yet? Do you even want to? What kind of device is Google targeting with ChromeOS? Whatever it can fit on? How is a ChromeOS app different from an HTML5 app on the iPad?
I don't even know what Google's intentions with ChromeOS are. At least with Android, theres some sort of direction, even if it does get hijacked and thrown away by other companies. With the iPad, you know what market the OS is aimed at. Not so with ChromeOS or Android, to a lesser degree.
Android does not come with a file browser, although there are third party file browsers available in the Android Market. By default, all access to files on the SD card are through the individual that manage those types of files. For example, there's a built in service that index's all media files (mp3s, AAC's, etc) and presents them, with metadata, to any app that wants them. Same goes for pictures.
I am a big fan of Chrome OS, but iPad is simply a completely different model of computing, whereas Chrome OS is a completely different foundation of computing.
At the end of the day, for Google to succeed, one of Chrome OS's achievements has to be to match a lot of what desktop computing is today. In fact, one "ideal" scenario is for Chrome OS to simply be the same as desktop computing today, except "better". For example, it would be faster (launch more quickly, open apps faster, etc.); the deployment model would be simpler (over the web, no more software updates for apps, etc.); and more secure. However, while these advancements are certainly great, these are all very much simply an evolution of the current desktop model. Most of the "revolutions" in Chrome OS exist for developers, not users.
On the other hand with iPad you have to admit that it is drastically asking you to reanalyze what it means to use a computer. This isn't a value judgment: it remains to be seen whether this new model will be good or intuitive or successful or what have you, but it is different.
Android? Chromium? These are not exactly traditional desktop OSes.
Ubuntu I'll concede, but if they're putting Android on it by default it will be a lot closer to the iPad than to your Windows/Mac desktop. I think this was something you brushed aside too quickly earlier. Android was shown in the video, and if they want to compete with the iPad it's a very good starting point (being at least in the same league, if not on par with, the iPhone OS).
As far as I know, there are no files in Android or Chrome-OS. Android also has a touch interface (and this tablet doesn't have a mouse anyway).
Ubuntu actually released a netbook remix that would handle much better on something like this than the traditional GNOME desktop. Take a look: http://www.canonical.com/projects/ubuntu/unr
The iPad (and this tablet, for that matter) is not a netbook. Throwing Gnome without the bar on the bottom on it won't magically make Ubuntu usable on the tablet in any way that makes sense.
I can go compile an X server for the iPhone and run all of those apps on it as well (or, most of them. Some apps or their dependancies might do weird things with bits that may break). That doesn't mean that I will have a good experience using them.
These tablets are essentially netbooks that use a touch screen instead of a mouse. As such, I think that UNR would be pretty much just as usable on this as it would on a netbook.
Wait.. the iPad runs the same OS as the iPhone (slightly modified) and this tablet runs the same OS as the Droid (slightly modified). So how is this not directly comparable?
The core of OS X and Springboard might be shared, but if you think that the UI of the applications on the iPad shared with the iPhone, might I suggest that you go and watch the iPad release video where Steve Jobs shows the device off?
From what I've seen in the video, this device doesn't have much custom UI and the main selling point is hardware.
Also this tablet might also run Ubuntu or ChromeOS. Which means that the OS won't be nearly as integrated with the hardware as it is on the iPad. Or that the tablet's UI won't be designed specifically for the device it is on. Or apps that it will run won't be designed specifically for the device and instead will be generic, to the lowest common denominator (which, most of the time, will be a phone, not a tablet).
> Also this tablet might also run Ubuntu or ChromeOS. Which means that the OS won't be nearly as integrated with the hardware as it is on the iPad. Or that the tablet's UI won't be designed specifically for the device it is on. Or apps that it will run won't be designed specifically for the device and instead will be generic, to the lowest common denominator (which, most of the time, will be a phone, not a tablet).
Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems this means you would prefer a device that didn't have any advanced capabilities so that way all applications won't attempt to use any? Making the iPad without any extensibility was a design choice because it would be easier to make applications uniform? You would prefer to use a hindered device by design rather then software that selects its functionality based on available hardware? By contrast a gigantic portion of applications for the iPad will be designed to be run on a phone... the iPhone. I think you underestimate or don't fully understand Android.
I don't intend to sound condescending here, I am truly curious.
Personally, I prefer a platform, where I won't potentially run into an application designed for a device with hardware that I don't have. I would prefer a device that is consistent. It doesn't have to do everything under the the sun. It just has to do what it claims to be able to do, well.
By contrast a gigantic portion of applications for the iPad will be designed to be run on a phone... the iPhone
Can't really talk about specific UIKit additions, due to the NDA. But, there are plenty of them designed specifically for the iPad. Skim through this photo set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fraserspeirs/sets/7215762322426... to see a lot of the things added in by Apple that devs can (and almost definitely will) be using in their apps.
I think you underestimate or don't fully understand Android.
So all of the stories about apps working on one phone but not another, on 1.5 but not 1.6, with a physical keyboard but not an on screen one, they're not true?
Without even getting into the multiple generations of iPhones, each with different processors and hardware capabilities, the iPod Touches that don't have cameras or the fact that applications written for the iPhone/iPod Touch will run on the iPad, I'll just point out that the 3G iPad will have GPS and the WiFi iPad won't.
So what where you saying about not wanting a platform with applications designed for a device with hardware you don't have?
When you buy an iPod touch, you buy it with the understanding that you cannot use any camera or GPS-based apps from the App Store.
When you buy a phone running a more generic OS, you can't really be sure if any given app will work on your phone, especially if you don't have a popular phone. I'd be wary of buying an Android phone outside of the G1, Droid, or Nexus One for that reason alone.
I can't agree. What's revolutionary about the iPad? Only that isn't running a desktop OS? There have been Windows CE tablets for ages. The difference is realization, which is everything, of course, it's the difference between Altavista and Google. The iPad will be successful But revolutionary?
On other side, you have the first device that it's at the same time, a tablet and a eink reader. I don't know if it will be successful, probably not at the same scale, but certainly it's much more revolutionary.
Anyway, if anything, I think this device could hurt more Kindle sales than iPad ones.
The iPad isn't about hardware, at all. The iPad is about getting away from the hardware. About having a completely new way to use a computer. Yes, to do the same tasks you do now. But to do them in a better way.
That this device is betting on hardware to beat Apple means that they've already lost. That they had to resort to comparing their device to a MacBook Pro with the brightness turned down to have a selling point looks desperate. The tablet these guys are selling doesn't offer a new way to go about your routine. It just offers a more complex device to go about your daily routine.
Huh? Isn't the iPad running iPhone OS? I've got a Nexus 1 and I've used my friends iPhone a few times. They seem pretty damn similar. Certainly more similar to each other than either are to Windows or OSX.
I agree with you to a degree. I would like the Apple Tablet to have those features except I want the Apple tablet to have the same screen that it does now. I know that a good portion of HN readers appreciate the difference between a TN Screen and the IPS screen that Apple is putting in the iPad. The epaper screen in this tablet is just not the way that apple wants to go with a tablet. It's also a direction that I don't think that apple should go because battery life and readability in direct sunlight are the only real draws to the epaper screen.
The real thing that makes an ebook readable on a computer screen is dpi and the dpi on the iPhone is good and they continued this with the iPad. This is not to say that the kindle et al are not readable but they give up a lot just to be good book readers. The iPad is not aiming to be just a ebook reader. It's aiming to be a portable media device.
This has a Pixel Qi screen not a e-ink screen. (The OLPC screen has the same technology.)
It has the same reaction speed as a LCD. I'm not sure how good the colour mode is (probably TN level). The monochrome mode has 3 times the DPI (because of each RGB sub-pixel).
About e-ink readers: it's not the DPI. They generally have 160dpi which is lower than many mobile LCDs. For example the N770 I used to read on had a 225 dpi screen but I'm still faster on e-ink. I'm not sure what it is, it might just be the lack of backlight.
Thanks for the clarification on the Qi screen. There are a few factors that make ebook screens usable in my opinion. I would say that you need a certain level of dpi to handle small font rendering well. After a certain threshold I don't know if it benefits you as much. The second factor is screen size the n770 had a 4.1" screen which leads to a lot of context switches. The kindle has 167ppi on a 6" screen. The kindle screen allows for much less context switches which are jarring to the mind. (context switch in this example would be turning the page) With the iPad's 10" screen the context switches will be much less even still. (Though the iPad has the least ppi of all the devices I mentioned I think it should be over the minimum threshold for readability)
When there is a device like this that I can walk into a store and play with before buying as well as have access to thousands of quality applications that make my life easier or more fun then I'll consider it a competitor to the iPad. Until then this is nothing more then a cool gadget that likely won't see the light of day inside any major retailer.
The iPad is currently the only "tablet" that will ever see mass consumer adoption for a few reasons: 1. Apple is releasing it (meaning it's hyped up, has that cool factor, and you can go play with one in any Apple store first), 2. The app store is unlike anything else out there, and 3. The user experience on the iPad/iPhone is superior to anything else out there right now.
This doesn't mean the Adam won't be cool, but why would any "regular" consumer (meaning not Hacker News readers or anyone like us) consider buying one, or hell, how would they even know it exists?
It's always been amazing to me that Apple has managed to convince a sizable number of otherwise intelligent people that a walled garden, tightly controlled by an overbearing schoolmarm, is preferable to the Internet and a totally free market.
The app store is a huge bug, not a feature. It's just plain bad for developers (because Apple owns yours customers and the pipeline to those customers, and can cut you off without warning if you happen to compete with them or do something they don't like), and bad for consumers (because the approval process slows updates, puts a filter in the relationship between developer and user, keeps useful applications out of users hands, and insures that Open Source applications have almost no room in the market). If consumers (and developers) were smarter, it would be a killer bug; one that prevented anyone from ever buying an iPhone or iPad or developing for it. But, people don't always act in their own best long-term interest, if the packaging is pretty enough.
What amazes me is the number of otherwise-apparently-intelligent people who appear to honestly believe that Apple users are just vapid trendoids who are fooled by all the pretty colors. Strangely, none of them seem to have figured out how to slap the same pretty colors onto their otherwise-superior products/platforms and carve out a chunk of the vapid trendoid market for themselves. How hard can it be?
It's really a matter of the size of the walled garden. You could call the entire earth a walled garden if you want. If the walled garden is big enough, people are okay with it.
For the majority of apple customers, the app store is plenty big enough. Apple customers are like those animals in the safari sized zoos where they can run around and feel free enough to not care so much about the fences keeping them in.
Apple users are just vapid trendoids who are fooled by all the pretty colors.
You said it, not me.
I never said anything about the quality of Apple products. I mentioned one very specific, but serious, bug in the Apple iPhone/iPad products. I'm not saying Apple doesn't make beautiful products, or even that their products are poor quality (with a pretty face). I said that the App Market is a bug, not a feature, and that I'm surprised that anyone would consider it a positive market trend. I also implied that I'm disappointed that many people who I otherwise respect, have fallen into the trap of being sharecroppers on Apple's land. I'm disappointed because they're enabling what I consider a power shift in the wrong direction (back towards big corporations, and away from consumers and independent developers).
Your argument is not relevant to my comment, and I don't have any opinion on vapid trendoids and their choice of computer, phone, or tablet. You can argue with someone else about that.
As much as I love downloading and building everything from source... actually, no, I hate that. Apple built that first easy app install experience, and that's the reason people love it, not because of some ideological preference.
Ergo the users of Macs would have a better install/uninstall experience if they were running Linux. Ummm, OK.
I don't understand your sarcastic tone...they would have a better install/uninstall process if they were running Linux. Mac OS X has horrible package management (effectively none), while apt-get and yum are really, really good.
The average install/uninstall process is ridiculously easier on Mac OS X. Literally, it's:
1. Drag the single icon (regardless of instruction set or sizeof(int)) into your Applications folder.
2. Double-click the icon.
Oh yeah, step 1 is optional.
Certainly if Mac OS X were primarily used for installing command line tools / daemons, a package manager would be a stark omission. But that's not what the incredibly vast majority of its users do with it. For the average Mac OS X user, application management is more pleasant than for the average Linux user.
The average install/uninstall process is ridiculously easier on Mac OS X. Literally, it's: 1. Drag the single icon (regardless of instruction set or sizeof(int)) into your Applications folder. 2. Double-click the icon.
What icon? Where do I find this icon? Does it magically appear on my desktop? Nope...you've got to go find the website, and then the download page, or you have to go out and buy the CD or DVD that contains the software.
On a Linux system, if I know what it's called or what it does, I can find it and install it easily, using either a GUI or the command line. And, of course, it works well for things beyond simple applications, including packages and systems of packages that include hundreds or thousands of files.
A weakness should not be held up as a strength. There are many strengths to Mac OS X, but package management is not one of them.
What happens when the user wants to install software that's not in one of the install's default repositories? The web page walks them through adding another repository URL to their package manager GUI [which is YA of a dozen]?
I'm attracted to the idea of just building a sufficiently sophisticated app management utility and then everything will work perfectly, but in practice it just doesn't seem to happen.
What a package manager does is build a necessarily-leaky abstraction over the set of operations needed to manage an application instance lifecycle. What if a non-experienced user wants to move an app from one system to another, though? No "mere mortal" is going to be able to accomplish that task on an average Linux box.
Mac OS X instead relies on a convention of bundling all necessary files together into an app bundle that's self-contained (and represented as such) and thus can be treated by the user as a cohesive, unitary Thing. Thus installation, deinstallation, sharing, and migration of the app are all done through an identical metaphor which also applies to the other filesystem entities that users care about: documents. So, sure, Mac OS X doesn't have "package management" (as part of the vendor install) but its users have a more pleasant and unified experience. This provides a tremendously better sense of empowerement and relaxation to most users than a wholly separate GUI full of messages about "dependency resolution" and the like. Again, I understand where you're coming from, and in certain aspects and particular vertical instances I have no doubt the Linux automatic installer over package manager model could provide a better experience, but the average computer user is far better off with a less sophisticated system.
(Yes, many Mac OS X apps use a separate install routine. I think this is unfortunate, but I don't get the sense that it's high on Apple's agenda because they're so pleased with the App Store model, which is another essay for another time.)
Mac OS X app installation is terrible. That's just a fact. It's been well known and discussed by Mac nerds for years:
"As someone who has answered tech support email for a Mac developer, I can confirm that the entire concept of a disk image is mighty confusing to many non-technical users, including many who have been using Macs for years, but don’t install new software very often.
I think the recent trend of including a background picture in the disk image window, which instructs the user to copy the application icon to /Applications (or wherever), goes a long way to removing the confusion. But I agree with Mr. Frank that compressed archives (like StuffIt) are easier for most users to understand."
The only reason people put up with it because it mostly works for geeks and it's better than Windows (and even then it's not hard to find people who will argue that download from random website and double-click is a better user experience despite all the damage it's caused)
All the improvements of note in Mac OS X install seem to have happened because 3rd parties notice the confusion and adopt conventions to overcome the difficulties. Note also the amount of work put into 3rd party update via Sparkle which is part of package management too.
What happens when the user wants to install software that's not in one of the install's default repositories? The web page walks them through adding another repository URL to their package manager GUI [which is YA of a dozen]?
Then they're in roughly the same situation as a Mac OS X user installing new software, which I agree is a pretty crappy situation to be in. But, we somehow muddle through, and if the software does have an apt or yum repository, it means keeping it up to date is automatic and handled by system-standard tools, unlike the vast majority of Mac software, which in the best case provides their own update mechanism (which is usually not quite as offensive as all the little update icons that end up on a Windows machine by the time it is fully functional, but it's still really irritating).
Mac OS X instead relies on a convention of bundling all necessary files together into an app bundle that's self-contained (and represented as such) and thus can be treated by the user as a cohesive, unitary Thing.
Yeah, I know. I've worked on a couple of very large "Things" of this sort in the past, when making packages of software I worked on for Mac OS X. I didn't call them "Things", though. I called them "Big Balls of Crap".
It's a horrible kludge that barely works, no matter how much you want to call it "empowering". Is it empowering to have the system make it trivial for a user to overwrite new versions with older, possibly insecure, versions without warning? Is it empowering to have no standard location for files of various types? Is it empowering to make it impossible to replicate an installation stack automatically across many systems using standard tools? Is it empowering to make software that cannot be managed from the command line? Is it empowering to have no standard mechanisms for knowing what is installed and what version? Is it empowering to possibly be running old and insecure versions of dozens of applications without even knowing it? Is it empowering to only have the features that the application bundler thought to include...things like checking to be sure there's enough disk space, checking to be sure the destination paths exist and are writable, keeping a record of what files ended up where, etc.? I've installed Mac OS X software that failed to do all of those things at one point or another, and ended up with a broken installation, usually without warning.
Look, if you like the pretty picture that applications display when you open up a dmg file or a CD, and you like the big shiny icons, and such, that's great. But don't hold up a gigantic gaping misfeature in Mac OS X as a positive thing. It's really not.
The average computer user is not better off with a dramatically worse implementation of package management, just because it usually won't end in tears.
If the "cliché" is so outdated, why was I building apps from source just earlier this weak? Perhaps I'm just dumb, but I've never found myself doing that on the iPhone...
It's amazing to me that people here would think that Linux has anywhere near the level of simplicity that the iPhone has. I don't even know where to start explaining...
Linux, on your desktop or server, isn't something a reasonable person would compare to an iPhone. If you'd like to talk about Android devices vs. an iPhone, there are useful comparisons to be made (and Android may not come out ahead in all such comparisons).
I'll also ask what Linux distribution you're using, that would lead you to building things from source on a regular basis? I build things from source as part of my job and I don't even do it more than a couple of times per month. Nearly everything I use on my servers and desktops is available from yum or apt-get repositories, and it would never cross my mind to build from source, except for the tiny number of packages I need either custom build of, or I'm the developer of.
When I've maintained Mac and Windows servers, on the other hand, I was building software all the time. Everything I used had to be built from source. This has improved a little bit over the years, particularly on Mac OS X, in the form of fink, but a lack of a good standard package manager in Mac OS X and Windows is a major deterrent from me using them. Keeping on top of updates on a stack of a couple dozen packages all built from source, is a security and stability nightmare.
Why don't you tell me why you were compiling from source? I don't see how playing guessing games helps.
I recently installed the latest SVN snapshots of an unreleased version of a fairly geeky media centre app including the latest support for my GPU's video acceleration capabilities all without compiling anything from source so if you've got a valid reason to do so then I'm thinking it's going to be obscure.
I'm fairly confident that whatever you where doing wouldn't even be allowed on the iPhone, so the average user limiting themselves to the many thousands of apps delivered via their default repository doesn't have to worry about missing anything in this (somewhat contrived) comparison.
Boundaries are fun for hackers, too. It's a much more interesting achievement to get a thing to do something it was never intended to do (or perhaps even designed to prevent).
Why do you think the brightness was turned down? Have you ever tried to use a macbook in bright sunlight? It's unreadable. In fact I was surprised by how clear the macbook screen was so I'd guess they had the brightness jacked right up.
Cameras don't always accurately reflect what the human eye would see but an LCD backlight simply can't compete with bright sunlight. The Pixel Qi is effectively acting as a mirror for that light.
edit: this video from last June has a good comparison with the kindle and a transflective screen right at the start and a standard LCD touchscreen at 5:20
I didn't think that the MacBook was actually in direct light. In fact from the angles it actually seemed to be shilouetted. The one time I did try to use a MacBook in direct sunlight, I found that turning the brightness off completely sort of worked ok. But then I just got up and moved somewhere else in the shadows.
This is pretty much what I was expecting the iPad was going to be instead of just an oversized ipod touch that doesn't run real applications but a bunch of jokes from the app store.
After the iPad was officially announced I thought I was going to have to get a joojoo instead but this looks way more promising.I think I will wait a few months then.
I will happily compare it favorably vs the iPad for two simple reasons. 1. Better screen for what I'll be using it for and 2. more open and thus easier to make it work the way I want a tablet to work.
Will it outsell the iPad? No. To want this device more than an iPad? Very much so.
Prima facie, the key feature of the Adam seems to be that it's much more Open than the iPad. That sounds awesome! Plain Ubuntu + touchscreen + whatever I can do == wow.
What I'd like is a device that can fold (but has a seamless screen when unfolded) so it fits more easily in small places. Also you can type and have part of the screen angled up at you (this would still be an ergonomic nightmare for as a 6'4" guy wanting to improve his posture, but less of one than a purely flat item).
I'd also like one I can set up as a small tv screen (in-built stand) and remote mouse/trackpad so I can surf you-tube without having to hold it up.
I really really like how they actually spent time thinking about how people will use the device instead of spending man years being concerned about how the bezel looks with aluminum hi-lights.
Trackpad on the back? Brilliant!
Pixel Qi display so I can read in sunlight? Awesome!
3 USB ports, why? 1 for keyboard, 1 for mouse and 1 for a thumb drive. Fantastic!
Now sell it for $250 and I'll have it in my backpack tomorrow.
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Then its not an iPad competitor or alternative. It might be a tablet, but it is not in the same market as Apple is in with the iPad. None of these three OS's is a drastic change from what a computer is or how a computer is currently used, which the iPad is shaping up to be.
iPad is not shaping up to be a "drastic change from ... how a computer is currently used". It's shaping up to be a computer you use on your couch that's controlled via touch screen instead of keyboard and mouse. Otherwise, it's basically the same concept ... you click on the program that does what you want and use it. The web browser is basically the same, too; you click on it, type in the URL of the place you want to go, and then it's basically identical. iPad is not some revolution in computer interfaces, it's just a computer designed for couch usage instead of mobile or desktop usage.
I'm really kind of sick of this Apple worship, and these ideas that if something isn't using Apple's OS it's hopeless against Apple. I don't believe that, and I think the majority of it is senseless fanboyism and hype.
In that case, cell phones aren't a new concept. Its the same as talking to my neighbor, only through this speaker...
Or maybe a car isn't a novel concept. It is, after all, the same as walking somewhere. Only slower.
Or even a book. Its just another representation of stories that have been told verbally for thousands of years, after all.
Sharing functional similarities in use with something that already exists doesn't mean it isn't a drastic change in how the function is performed.
Like, cars are much different than walking because while both are means of getting from one place to another place, the cars is several dozen times faster. That's a huge improvement in the "getting somewhere" field.
The same with cell phones. Cell phones are a huge boon because they allow you to call people almost anywhere. They eliminated the need for a hard telephone line, meaning you can now use your phone in thousands of places where you couldn't use a phone before, at least not without paying.
Now, what major game-changing feature does the iPad enable? Nothing, really. All of the major iPad apps could be performed on a laptop just as well. The touching might make the interface more humane, but it doesn't create such a universally, obviously superior thing. The fact that it's made for couch is nice, and nicer for couch computing than a laptop because of the design of its hardware, but it doesn't enable anything that wasn't possible before.
Some people might like or want an iPad, which is all fine, but it's not a major or revolutionary improvement like buggy -> car that made so many things possible that were impossible before. Like, before cars, it would take weeks or months to go from, say, St. Louis to Denver. With cars, you could make that trip in a few days or less. That's a huge, major, revolutionary improvement. Now, what thing does iPad provide that is similar to that?
Bingo. This is exactly it. it makes things more humane. Easier. You don't have to worry about where you saved that file to. There's no accidentally deleting a folder that had an important document among a dozens of useless files.
You don't need to use a clunky device to click on something. You use your finger and you push the screen. Which a lot of people do anyway, to point to something on their screen. Only, it doesn't do anything for them yet.
I think this is a case of Driving, you're doing it wrong ;)
And are there any devices with ChromeOS available or about to be available in the next month or two? It was announced months and months ago. Can you write apps specifically targeting it yet? Do you even want to? What kind of device is Google targeting with ChromeOS? Whatever it can fit on? How is a ChromeOS app different from an HTML5 app on the iPad?
I don't even know what Google's intentions with ChromeOS are. At least with Android, theres some sort of direction, even if it does get hijacked and thrown away by other companies. With the iPad, you know what market the OS is aimed at. Not so with ChromeOS or Android, to a lesser degree.
At the end of the day, for Google to succeed, one of Chrome OS's achievements has to be to match a lot of what desktop computing is today. In fact, one "ideal" scenario is for Chrome OS to simply be the same as desktop computing today, except "better". For example, it would be faster (launch more quickly, open apps faster, etc.); the deployment model would be simpler (over the web, no more software updates for apps, etc.); and more secure. However, while these advancements are certainly great, these are all very much simply an evolution of the current desktop model. Most of the "revolutions" in Chrome OS exist for developers, not users.
On the other hand with iPad you have to admit that it is drastically asking you to reanalyze what it means to use a computer. This isn't a value judgment: it remains to be seen whether this new model will be good or intuitive or successful or what have you, but it is different.
Ubuntu I'll concede, but if they're putting Android on it by default it will be a lot closer to the iPad than to your Windows/Mac desktop. I think this was something you brushed aside too quickly earlier. Android was shown in the video, and if they want to compete with the iPad it's a very good starting point (being at least in the same league, if not on par with, the iPhone OS).
As far as I know, there are no files in Android or Chrome-OS. Android also has a touch interface (and this tablet doesn't have a mouse anyway).
I can go compile an X server for the iPhone and run all of those apps on it as well (or, most of them. Some apps or their dependancies might do weird things with bits that may break). That doesn't mean that I will have a good experience using them.
From what I've seen in the video, this device doesn't have much custom UI and the main selling point is hardware.
Also this tablet might also run Ubuntu or ChromeOS. Which means that the OS won't be nearly as integrated with the hardware as it is on the iPad. Or that the tablet's UI won't be designed specifically for the device it is on. Or apps that it will run won't be designed specifically for the device and instead will be generic, to the lowest common denominator (which, most of the time, will be a phone, not a tablet).
Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems this means you would prefer a device that didn't have any advanced capabilities so that way all applications won't attempt to use any? Making the iPad without any extensibility was a design choice because it would be easier to make applications uniform? You would prefer to use a hindered device by design rather then software that selects its functionality based on available hardware? By contrast a gigantic portion of applications for the iPad will be designed to be run on a phone... the iPhone. I think you underestimate or don't fully understand Android.
I don't intend to sound condescending here, I am truly curious.
By contrast a gigantic portion of applications for the iPad will be designed to be run on a phone... the iPhone
Can't really talk about specific UIKit additions, due to the NDA. But, there are plenty of them designed specifically for the iPad. Skim through this photo set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fraserspeirs/sets/7215762322426... to see a lot of the things added in by Apple that devs can (and almost definitely will) be using in their apps.
I think you underestimate or don't fully understand Android.
So all of the stories about apps working on one phone but not another, on 1.5 but not 1.6, with a physical keyboard but not an on screen one, they're not true?
So what where you saying about not wanting a platform with applications designed for a device with hardware you don't have?
When you buy a phone running a more generic OS, you can't really be sure if any given app will work on your phone, especially if you don't have a popular phone. I'd be wary of buying an Android phone outside of the G1, Droid, or Nexus One for that reason alone.
On other side, you have the first device that it's at the same time, a tablet and a eink reader. I don't know if it will be successful, probably not at the same scale, but certainly it's much more revolutionary.
Anyway, if anything, I think this device could hurt more Kindle sales than iPad ones.
That this device is betting on hardware to beat Apple means that they've already lost. That they had to resort to comparing their device to a MacBook Pro with the brightness turned down to have a selling point looks desperate. The tablet these guys are selling doesn't offer a new way to go about your routine. It just offers a more complex device to go about your daily routine.
The real thing that makes an ebook readable on a computer screen is dpi and the dpi on the iPhone is good and they continued this with the iPad. This is not to say that the kindle et al are not readable but they give up a lot just to be good book readers. The iPad is not aiming to be just a ebook reader. It's aiming to be a portable media device.
It has the same reaction speed as a LCD. I'm not sure how good the colour mode is (probably TN level). The monochrome mode has 3 times the DPI (because of each RGB sub-pixel).
About e-ink readers: it's not the DPI. They generally have 160dpi which is lower than many mobile LCDs. For example the N770 I used to read on had a 225 dpi screen but I'm still faster on e-ink. I'm not sure what it is, it might just be the lack of backlight.
I do not understand what your point is beyond fanboyism.
The iPad is currently the only "tablet" that will ever see mass consumer adoption for a few reasons: 1. Apple is releasing it (meaning it's hyped up, has that cool factor, and you can go play with one in any Apple store first), 2. The app store is unlike anything else out there, and 3. The user experience on the iPad/iPhone is superior to anything else out there right now.
This doesn't mean the Adam won't be cool, but why would any "regular" consumer (meaning not Hacker News readers or anyone like us) consider buying one, or hell, how would they even know it exists?
If you run Ubuntu on the Adam, I'm pretty sure the internet w/o limitations > the app store.
The app store is a huge bug, not a feature. It's just plain bad for developers (because Apple owns yours customers and the pipeline to those customers, and can cut you off without warning if you happen to compete with them or do something they don't like), and bad for consumers (because the approval process slows updates, puts a filter in the relationship between developer and user, keeps useful applications out of users hands, and insures that Open Source applications have almost no room in the market). If consumers (and developers) were smarter, it would be a killer bug; one that prevented anyone from ever buying an iPhone or iPad or developing for it. But, people don't always act in their own best long-term interest, if the packaging is pretty enough.
For the majority of apple customers, the app store is plenty big enough. Apple customers are like those animals in the safari sized zoos where they can run around and feel free enough to not care so much about the fences keeping them in.
You said it, not me.
I never said anything about the quality of Apple products. I mentioned one very specific, but serious, bug in the Apple iPhone/iPad products. I'm not saying Apple doesn't make beautiful products, or even that their products are poor quality (with a pretty face). I said that the App Market is a bug, not a feature, and that I'm surprised that anyone would consider it a positive market trend. I also implied that I'm disappointed that many people who I otherwise respect, have fallen into the trap of being sharecroppers on Apple's land. I'm disappointed because they're enabling what I consider a power shift in the wrong direction (back towards big corporations, and away from consumers and independent developers).
Your argument is not relevant to my comment, and I don't have any opinion on vapid trendoids and their choice of computer, phone, or tablet. You can argue with someone else about that.
As much as I love downloading and building everything from source... actually, no, I hate that. Apple built that first easy app install experience, and that's the reason people love it, not because of some ideological preference.
Look, I'm typing this on a MacBook, but that's the most ridiculously outdated Linux cliché in the book.
The App store is just package management, which Linux has had for a while, and which Mac OS X is sadly missing.
Ergo the users of Macs would have a better install/uninstall experience if they were running Linux. Ummm, OK.
I don't understand your sarcastic tone...they would have a better install/uninstall process if they were running Linux. Mac OS X has horrible package management (effectively none), while apt-get and yum are really, really good.
Oh yeah, step 1 is optional.
Certainly if Mac OS X were primarily used for installing command line tools / daemons, a package manager would be a stark omission. But that's not what the incredibly vast majority of its users do with it. For the average Mac OS X user, application management is more pleasant than for the average Linux user.
What icon? Where do I find this icon? Does it magically appear on my desktop? Nope...you've got to go find the website, and then the download page, or you have to go out and buy the CD or DVD that contains the software.
On a Linux system, if I know what it's called or what it does, I can find it and install it easily, using either a GUI or the command line. And, of course, it works well for things beyond simple applications, including packages and systems of packages that include hundreds or thousands of files.
A weakness should not be held up as a strength. There are many strengths to Mac OS X, but package management is not one of them.
I'm attracted to the idea of just building a sufficiently sophisticated app management utility and then everything will work perfectly, but in practice it just doesn't seem to happen.
What a package manager does is build a necessarily-leaky abstraction over the set of operations needed to manage an application instance lifecycle. What if a non-experienced user wants to move an app from one system to another, though? No "mere mortal" is going to be able to accomplish that task on an average Linux box.
Mac OS X instead relies on a convention of bundling all necessary files together into an app bundle that's self-contained (and represented as such) and thus can be treated by the user as a cohesive, unitary Thing. Thus installation, deinstallation, sharing, and migration of the app are all done through an identical metaphor which also applies to the other filesystem entities that users care about: documents. So, sure, Mac OS X doesn't have "package management" (as part of the vendor install) but its users have a more pleasant and unified experience. This provides a tremendously better sense of empowerement and relaxation to most users than a wholly separate GUI full of messages about "dependency resolution" and the like. Again, I understand where you're coming from, and in certain aspects and particular vertical instances I have no doubt the Linux automatic installer over package manager model could provide a better experience, but the average computer user is far better off with a less sophisticated system.
(Yes, many Mac OS X apps use a separate install routine. I think this is unfortunate, but I don't get the sense that it's high on Apple's agenda because they're so pleased with the App Store model, which is another essay for another time.)
"As someone who has answered tech support email for a Mac developer, I can confirm that the entire concept of a disk image is mighty confusing to many non-technical users, including many who have been using Macs for years, but don’t install new software very often.
I think the recent trend of including a background picture in the disk image window, which instructs the user to copy the application icon to /Applications (or wherever), goes a long way to removing the confusion. But I agree with Mr. Frank that compressed archives (like StuffIt) are easier for most users to understand."
http://daringfireball.net/2002/11/dmg
The only reason people put up with it because it mostly works for geeks and it's better than Windows (and even then it's not hard to find people who will argue that download from random website and double-click is a better user experience despite all the damage it's caused)
All the improvements of note in Mac OS X install seem to have happened because 3rd parties notice the confusion and adopt conventions to overcome the difficulties. Note also the amount of work put into 3rd party update via Sparkle which is part of package management too.
Then they're in roughly the same situation as a Mac OS X user installing new software, which I agree is a pretty crappy situation to be in. But, we somehow muddle through, and if the software does have an apt or yum repository, it means keeping it up to date is automatic and handled by system-standard tools, unlike the vast majority of Mac software, which in the best case provides their own update mechanism (which is usually not quite as offensive as all the little update icons that end up on a Windows machine by the time it is fully functional, but it's still really irritating).
Mac OS X instead relies on a convention of bundling all necessary files together into an app bundle that's self-contained (and represented as such) and thus can be treated by the user as a cohesive, unitary Thing.
Yeah, I know. I've worked on a couple of very large "Things" of this sort in the past, when making packages of software I worked on for Mac OS X. I didn't call them "Things", though. I called them "Big Balls of Crap".
It's a horrible kludge that barely works, no matter how much you want to call it "empowering". Is it empowering to have the system make it trivial for a user to overwrite new versions with older, possibly insecure, versions without warning? Is it empowering to have no standard location for files of various types? Is it empowering to make it impossible to replicate an installation stack automatically across many systems using standard tools? Is it empowering to make software that cannot be managed from the command line? Is it empowering to have no standard mechanisms for knowing what is installed and what version? Is it empowering to possibly be running old and insecure versions of dozens of applications without even knowing it? Is it empowering to only have the features that the application bundler thought to include...things like checking to be sure there's enough disk space, checking to be sure the destination paths exist and are writable, keeping a record of what files ended up where, etc.? I've installed Mac OS X software that failed to do all of those things at one point or another, and ended up with a broken installation, usually without warning.
Look, if you like the pretty picture that applications display when you open up a dmg file or a CD, and you like the big shiny icons, and such, that's great. But don't hold up a gigantic gaping misfeature in Mac OS X as a positive thing. It's really not.
The average computer user is not better off with a dramatically worse implementation of package management, just because it usually won't end in tears.
It's amazing to me that people here would think that Linux has anywhere near the level of simplicity that the iPhone has. I don't even know where to start explaining...
I'll also ask what Linux distribution you're using, that would lead you to building things from source on a regular basis? I build things from source as part of my job and I don't even do it more than a couple of times per month. Nearly everything I use on my servers and desktops is available from yum or apt-get repositories, and it would never cross my mind to build from source, except for the tiny number of packages I need either custom build of, or I'm the developer of.
When I've maintained Mac and Windows servers, on the other hand, I was building software all the time. Everything I used had to be built from source. This has improved a little bit over the years, particularly on Mac OS X, in the form of fink, but a lack of a good standard package manager in Mac OS X and Windows is a major deterrent from me using them. Keeping on top of updates on a stack of a couple dozen packages all built from source, is a security and stability nightmare.
I recently installed the latest SVN snapshots of an unreleased version of a fairly geeky media centre app including the latest support for my GPU's video acceleration capabilities all without compiling anything from source so if you've got a valid reason to do so then I'm thinking it's going to be obscure.
I'm fairly confident that whatever you where doing wouldn't even be allowed on the iPhone, so the average user limiting themselves to the many thousands of apps delivered via their default repository doesn't have to worry about missing anything in this (somewhat contrived) comparison.
For everyone else it's just annoying. Making boundaries is exactly what makes your product a mass market consumer product.
95% of users of technology need limitations so they can't fuck things up.
It's tough to really love the thing without more information.
Oh, I love the comparison in sunlight to a macbook ... whose brightness was clearly turned down quite a bit.
Cameras don't always accurately reflect what the human eye would see but an LCD backlight simply can't compete with bright sunlight. The Pixel Qi is effectively acting as a mirror for that light.
edit: this video from last June has a good comparison with the kindle and a transflective screen right at the start and a standard LCD touchscreen at 5:20
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oawX3wenxNc
This is pretty much what I was expecting the iPad was going to be instead of just an oversized ipod touch that doesn't run real applications but a bunch of jokes from the app store.
After the iPad was officially announced I thought I was going to have to get a joojoo instead but this looks way more promising.I think I will wait a few months then.
You could always just not get a tablet thing and make do with whatever technology you already have. The stuff we have now seems to work OK.
I was kinda allergic to all the tablet hype that is surrounding the tech scene lately, but this really makes me consider one. I want one, actually.
I suppose there might prove to be a few problems there that may ultimately end up delaying its release, or worse, killing it altogether.
I can't believe anyone would compare this device favorably vs. an iPad. That's willful ignorance, I guess.
Will it outsell the iPad? No. To want this device more than an iPad? Very much so.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/08/notion-ink-adam-stripped-...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy9fPc1yGSU
The screen that works in direct sunlight is nice too. I'm looking forward to the day I can get one of those on my laptop.
I'd also like one I can set up as a small tv screen (in-built stand) and remote mouse/trackpad so I can surf you-tube without having to hold it up.
Trackpad on the back? Brilliant!
Pixel Qi display so I can read in sunlight? Awesome!
3 USB ports, why? 1 for keyboard, 1 for mouse and 1 for a thumb drive. Fantastic!
Now sell it for $250 and I'll have it in my backpack tomorrow.