The Chair • Hacker News Board

Re: The Chair

#121

Post by marbletiles » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 1:56 PM UTC

robin_reala wrote: post #82

rbarooah wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but with the phones there were lots of people who couldn't buy an iPhone to use on their carrier or wanted something cheap. Android phones had a captive market. iPads are more useful, cheaper and not limited by carrier. Why would a non-enthusiast buy an Android tablet based on the idea they they might get better over time, when iPads are good now?

Carrier argument doesn’t really come into it - we’re in the same situation in the UK but the iPhone’s been available on every major carrier since the 3GS.

Yes, but all those carriers have had the prices jacked up to the roof. The US gets a $49 3GS, UK prices range from £59 ($95) to £189 (some offer it free on a very expensive monthly contract over two years). For an out-of-date handset.

Compare the Android phones, where you get HTC Desires for free, on 12 or 18-month contracts with monthly charges in the £20s.

Apple has a big price problem competing in the UK in phones. It gets away with $1:£1 in computing, just, but it won't when Android is "good enough".

Re: The Chair

#122

Post by stcredzero » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 1:57 PM UTC

Good iPad apps can make the iPad feel not like a device running an app, but like an object that is the app.

This sentence alone is worth reading the entire post. Subtract the parts of the sentence having to do with iPad, change good to great, and you get a universal truth.

Great apps feel not like a device running an app, but like an object that is the app.

Apply this to your user's content/data. A great X app doesn't feel like a device running a X app, it feels like you're directly manipulating X. You can substitute pictures, reports, movies, invites, events, etc...

Re: The Chair

#123

Post by Johngibb » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:01 PM UTC

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #79

Johngibb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of funny that iPad 2 directly addresses both of your complaints: performance, and the new case which seems to make a pretty good stand.

I don't think it's funny, I think it's a case of Apple identifying genuine weaknesses with the product and addressing them - it's what they should be doing.

I didn't mean funny as in 'haha'. I guess 'notable' would have been a better choice.

Re: The Chair

#124

Post by isleyaardvark » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:13 PM UTC

blub wrote: post #102

MrScruff wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The thing that gets me is people claiming they hate Apple and Apple products while eulogising competing products that are derived from a category that Apple defined in the first place.

It's perfectly reasonable - the only similarity between Android and iPhone is the form factor, they can still hate the differences, and there are important differences.

> the only similarity between Android and iPhone is the form factor

That's a huge similarity, though. Didn't the original Android plans have a keyboard and look like a Blackberry? And what about the talk about using a stylus with a touchscreen - that talk didn't die until after the iPhone came out.

Re: The Chair

#125

Post by albedoa » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:21 PM UTC

nl wrote: post #103

rbarooah wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but with the phones there were lots of people who couldn't buy an iPhone to use on their carrier or wanted something cheap. Android phones had a captive market. iPads are more useful, cheaper and not limited by carrier. Why would a non-enthusiast buy an Android tablet based on the idea they they might get better over time, when iPads are good now?

I don't understand this argument at all. Why did anyone buy an iPad when they came out? There were no iPad specific apps when it came out, and yet it sold well. Clearly, Android has a good web browser and email client, and that's enough for many. Just as clearly there are a huge number of non-tablet specific apps that will run fine on the Android tablets, and Android developers are desperately releasing tablet apps a…

Even if you were to ignore the iPad apps that were available from the early SDK release, you'd still be comparing "devices with no platform-specific apps" to "devices with no apps".

Re: The Chair

#126

Post by Tyrannosaurs » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:33 PM UTC

Johngibb wrote: post #123

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's funny, I think it's a case of Apple identifying genuine weaknesses with the product and addressing them - it's what they should be doing.

I didn't mean funny as in 'haha'. I guess 'notable' would have been a better choice.

Ah, fair enough.

Re: The Chair

#127

Post by albedoa » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:38 PM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #45

tumult wrote: post #2

The tech press needs to play up the competition to the iPad as much as possible, because drama drives clicks. But the reality is that Apple's iPad is so far ahead of everything else that it's almost out of sight. Have you used one of the 'iPad killers'? That is not competition. It's a joke. You can't even buy any of them, except for Samsung's Galaxy Tab. [And the Motorola Xoom, but only at retail Best Buy in America,…

> Few people are buying those things. That's not really true. While Apple has a huge lead, they've already begun to lose marketshare (95% down to 75% last quarter). With more and more competition coming soon, I don't think that Apple will be able to hold on. One only has to look at the success of Android phones -- which literally didn't exist at all when the original iPhone was released -- to see that such a lead is…

The number that wvenable mentions is shipped units and conveniently ignores Samsung's admission that sales are low.

http://venturebeat.com/2011/01/31/android-tablet-marke-share...

When you have to twist numbers to demonstrate a drop in Apple's market share, it's a good sign that Apple's market share is sitting pretty.

Re: The Chair

#128

Post by easyfrag » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:40 PM UTC

NickPollard wrote: post #104

brisance wrote: post #35

One thing that drives me crazy is how each competitor focuses on one or two things, usually hardware specs, and use those things to extol its superiority over Apple's offerings. That's like a car maker homing in on horsepower or number of cup-holders to sell a car. If I were to run a tech company competing in this space, I would do the following: 1) Get rid of the nonsensical names. There's a good reason why car make…

The naming thing is such a big issue and I don't see why everyone just keeps on getting it so wrong. For an example, I bought a Sony Vaio laptop a few months ago. Great piece of kit and I love it, but trying to work out what to get was bewildering - there's 7 or 8 categories with single letter names - 'S-series, Y-series, Z-series, F-series' etc. What do they mean? Which should I be looking at? I had to scour through…

I'm not sure about Sony's Vaio line but a lot of computing/electronic manufacturers will build specific models for various chain stores, not sure why they do this but I guess it's to head off comparison shopping by consumers.

Apple, of course, refuses to play by the rules of its retailing partners.

Re: The Chair

#129

Post by rbarooah » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:44 PM UTC

nl wrote: post #103

rbarooah wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but with the phones there were lots of people who couldn't buy an iPhone to use on their carrier or wanted something cheap. Android phones had a captive market. iPads are more useful, cheaper and not limited by carrier. Why would a non-enthusiast buy an Android tablet based on the idea they they might get better over time, when iPads are good now?

I don't understand this argument at all. Why did anyone buy an iPad when they came out? There were no iPad specific apps when it came out, and yet it sold well. Clearly, Android has a good web browser and email client, and that's enough for many. Just as clearly there are a huge number of non-tablet specific apps that will run fine on the Android tablets, and Android developers are desperately releasing tablet apps a…

There were more than 3,000 tablet specific apps on day 1, and there was no competition.

New platforms don't automatically lead to a gold rush. There hasn't been one for the palm pre.

The argument you are making is that normal consumers will pick a more expensive android tablet with very few apps over an iPad 2 with thousands of apps, some of then mind-blowing on the basis that there will surely be a developer gold-rush.

Even if there is a developer gold-rush, people will still have to wait a year for then software to be written.

I can see enthusiasts doing that by but why on earth would a regular consumer?

Re: The Chair

#130

Post by ekidd » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:48 PM UTC

flyosity wrote: post #111

blinkingled wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xoom can be bought online at Verizon or Moto websites. That nitpick aside it isn't anywhere near as bad as you are making it out to be. I am typing this post on one. The browser is far better. The OS is far more usable than the iPad, the higher screen resolution is great - I can RDP into my work PC and use it all day. The hardware is top notch, and battery life is plenty. I haven't connected it to a PC yet - have my…

We got a Xoom delivered to the office yesterday and the first-time experience was terrible. It locked up 10 seconds after turning it on and displayed the keyboard and nothing else on the screen. 6 engineers played with it for a few minutes trying to get the home screen to show up but we couldn't so we forced a hard restart. That seemed to work and we got into the setup process which forces you to pick wireless connec…

Ugh. That's a nasty experience. Did you get the Verizon plan, or did you try to activate it without configuring 3G first? Up until launch day, everybody believed you needed to activate it on Verizon before WiFi would work.

My Xoom had greasy fingerprints all over the protective plastic film, which was gross. But once I peeled the plastic off, everything worked great. It found my password-protected wifi network without any configuration at all, which means that Google must somehow have copied the access credentials from my phone. Freaky but convenient.

I've seen a couple of the built-in apps force close in about a week of very heavy use, and the OS rebooted once after I did something unkind to it.

It's definitely a 1.0-quality product, with some rough edges, but my experience has been vastly better than what you went through. If it weren't so pricey, I'd happily give one to a non-technical family member. Oh, and if it had decent video-watching options: The biggest problem right now is the lack of Flash and Netflix.