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Google quits selling tablets

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Re: Google quits selling tablets

#121

Post by dingaling »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #41

This is somewhat strange. I thought tablets killed the PC market. My wife is a primary school teacher and it's very difficult to teach children to use a mouse because they all have tablets at home. I know Android tablets haven't been selling well, but that's because people like me have been desperately waiting for a decent device to be released. iPads are absolutely everywhere. What's the proposed alternative for med…

> I thought tablets killed the PC market.

Per IDC numbers over 250 million PCs were shipped in 2017 versus about 170 million tablets, which includes iPads but may not include the super cheap Ali Express models.

That was was decline of 3% and 8% respectively.

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#122

Post by etaioinshrdlu »

gleenn wrote: post #104
euyyn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admit that I haven't paid much attention. But the whole revamp of the UI framework into Fragments was precisely to let app developers support both phones and tablets. Why do you say older versions of Android had better support for tablets?

Fragments were way over engineered. Many people completely ignored them because you basically had to rewrite a significant portion of your app to support the type of flexibility they were supposed to give you. The lifecycle of apps is already complicated enough, and fragments added even more complexity. Like another poster mentions, completely ignoring fragments is a pretty reasonable choice.

It was around the time I started playing with fragments that I realized that the native Java android toolkit was a giant pile of crap.

Android, I think, is not even supposed to be a well-engineered system. It is not central to its purpose. Its purpose is to eat marketshare, collect data, and ensure there is an outlet for ads. It only has to work well enough to do those things :)

I get the sense that it was all slapped together as quickly as possible.

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#123

Post by hliyan »

nafizh wrote: post #118

With the new low cost Ipad, Apple will absolutely kill any and all competition. I am a graduate student, bought the new ipad with 290$ + 90$ pencil from my university book store. My life has totally changed. All my notes, and research now happens in the ipad. The writing is so smooth it feels like I have been doing it all along, and I won't ever need to go back to pen and paper. It is a mind blowing combination of ha…

$329 + $99 unless you're a student...

Question: can it do handwriting recognition?

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#124

Post by seabrookmx »

notatoad wrote: post #112
riku_iki wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also smartphone screens became larger and took usecases from tablets.

Yeah, that's a good point. The old 7" tablet market is kind of pointless when 6.5" is a normal phone size.

6.5" at what aspect ratio though?

6.5" 18:9 (2:1) aspect ratio phones have a _lot_ less area than a 7" 4:3 tablet.

For a reading surface this makes a big difference.

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#125

Post by themacguffinman »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #122
gleenn wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fragments were way over engineered. Many people completely ignored them because you basically had to rewrite a significant portion of your app to support the type of flexibility they were supposed to give you. The lifecycle of apps is already complicated enough, and fragments added even more complexity. Like another poster mentions, completely ignoring fragments is a pretty reasonable choice.

It was around the time I started playing with fragments that I realized that the native Java android toolkit was a giant pile of crap. Android, I think, is not even supposed to be a well-engineered system. It is not central to its purpose. Its purpose is to eat marketshare, collect data, and ensure there is an outlet for ads. It only has to work well enough to do those things :) I get the sense that it was all slappe…

Well, yeah, that's the goal of everything commercial. Being well-engineered is a means, not an end.

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#126

Post by qwerty456127 »

zdw wrote: post #11

The mid level tablet market died in a race to the bottom. Looking on aliexpress or taobao, you'll find dozens upon dozens of cheap tablets with CPU's from allwinner or rockchip, a few gigs of ram/flash and a not that great 8-10" screen for Completing against these are a few Samsung models that have their highly customized variant of Android, and Apple holding the premium ground with iOS/HW quality/price/performance,…

> At higher price points you can get a chromebook

What if I actually want the Android OS and/or if I actually want a tablet rather than a laptop and the price is not the reason why?

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#127

Post by Mononokay »

MBCook wrote: post #96
freehunter wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to be able to stream games from my PC onto my Switch like you could with the Shield. It's just such a convenient system to play.

I’m guessing it would absolutely never happened, but I would happily pay money for the ability to have my PS4 stream games to my Switch. Like the Vita.

See if you can install Android on one, which you should be able to, and then install the Playstation app.

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#128

Post by qwerty456127 »

Shank wrote: post #47
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #41

This is somewhat strange. I thought tablets killed the PC market. My wife is a primary school teacher and it's very difficult to teach children to use a mouse because they all have tablets at home. I know Android tablets haven't been selling well, but that's because people like me have been desperately waiting for a decent device to be released. iPads are absolutely everywhere. What's the proposed alternative for med…

> I know Android tablets haven't been selling well, but that's because people like me have been desperately waiting for a decent device to be released. Amazon sells Fire tablets pretty easily. The problem is that there's Amazon, selling tablets for next to nothing, and Apple and Microsoft, selling premium tablets. The middle market has to be either exceptionally good to exist, or it just disappears. That's what happe…

> I know Android tablets haven't been selling well, but that's because people like me have been desperately waiting for a decent device to be released.

Indeed. E.g. I want a tablet to be a as big as needed to view A4/Letter PDFs in 100% zoom without scrolling (so I'd be able to stop carrying papers with me) and have as much RAM as possible (at least 4 GiB). I'd also appreciate it to utilize the extra space available in this case by adding full-sized USB3 ports, and an external SD card reader to be used as removable media (in addition to the internal SD card reader to be used as the "hard drive" expansion).

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#129

Post by asveikau »

paulie_a wrote: post #97
freedomben wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of the benefits of Chromebooks: there isn't really any way to install the custom crapware. On Android they are obviously not limited there and (ab)use it to a great extent. It's really too bad, because I love their hardware. Can't stand the software tho, so I buy elsewhere.

I love their hardware but I will never buy it again. It's disappointing that Google won't be making tables anymore. i really liked my Nexus 7. But Samsung is junk software wise in my opinion.

I find lineage os runs pretty well on my Samsung tablet. Be sure to double check model numbers on that though.
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