Google ditching another endeavor is not news, given its history.
Google quits selling tablets
181–190 of 330 posts
Re: Google quits selling tablets
#182Apparently some newer Chromebooks run Android and have a tablet mode. Maybe that means dedicated tablets aren't needed anymore?
Seems so. If you think about it, having smartphones, smaller tablets (From a holistic perspective, regarding UI frameworks and the developer experience in general, grouping by screen real estate vs. device category could make the entire organization of things much simpler, improving the developer experience by a lot.
Apple might do the same, turning their iPads into their new non pro laptop line down the road. They already ditched the "mini" versions of their tablets a while ago, and their UI framework switched from device category adaptability to adaptability based on screen real estate. (e.g. a phone app could just be a sidebar, and a tablet app the main content area on a 16:10 screen).
Re: Google quits selling tablets
#183In think 8” tablets are a good form factor for content consumption (ebooks, movies, some games) but Android tablets always fall short even then. You need a good screen, especially for text. The 2015 iPad Mini 4 is still much better than any similarly-sized Android tablet.
To be honest most of the time I used my tablet was for reading stuff online. I sold it and bought a Kobo eReader instead. I push articles I want to read later to Pocket and read them there instead. My only wish would be to see a decent eReader with an email/calendar client to read my work emails on it and see my schedule. I looked at the reMarkable but despite its impressive annotation capabilities, it doesn't have a…
> I looked at the reMarkable but despite its impressive annotation capabilities, it doesn't have anything else I would find useful at work.
Same. I want to have an ePaper device that I can use for more than just reading stuff. I don't understand why they are all so underpowered by definition.
Re: Google quits selling tablets
#184Good riddance! It’s not like they have actively been developing Android to support tablets. In fact, it is the other way around. The older versions had better support for tablets. Even Nexus 9 was a half hearted attempt at best — and the rest is history. Google’s lack of interest in nowhere more evident than their own apps — many of them were just scaled versions of phone apps. And if Google is not bothering to optim…
Maybe it is just me but Android got gradually worse over time, bloated with useless features that are the first thing that I turn off on my new devices usually. It is still impossible to find certain basic functionality in the setup, which drives my nuts every single time I have to find them. It would be worth to visualise how much effort is to turn off spell correction on different mobile devices and use change other basic parameters and compare it to iOS.
Re: Google quits selling tablets
#185Earlier 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.
Sorry just got stuck and smiled over your first sentence "Fragments were way over engineered." and couldn't restrain myself of thinking about all Googlers that passed the whiteboard tests
True I don't think I have ever had an interview question that questioned my ability to keep simple. I think this is where experience comes in valuable, the ability to "keep things as simple as possible and no simpler".
Re: Google quits selling tablets
#186Microsoft seems like the only company that understands tablets right now. They should be more like computers, not more like phones. There's also a pretty great argument that given all of our phones are absolute powerhouses nowadays, phones should also be less like phones and more like computers. I'm hopeful Microsoft can also move to spur on this change; maybe soon the market will be ready for the return of Windows P…
It's only a matter of time for the convergence of phones and Dex like docking functionality. I'm actually surprised Google isn't exploring this area more because it will really kick up the versality of phones. I guess Google doesn't want phones to cannabalize their Chromebook marketshare.
Phones aren't built for active cooling. Google maps turns my phone into a blowtorch after 30 minutes of usage.
Re: Google quits selling tablets
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
My iPad Air has slown down to be almost unusable. It is ancient, and I’m guessing it’s the battery + software throttle going on, but it is still very reminiscent of an aging iPhone.
I’m not sure the throttling stuff really happens on the iPad. That was a check they added to the phones because of the unexpected shutdown issues, I don’t think that’s ever been much of a problem on the iPads because of their giant batteries. However there is a known issue where for some reason iOS can start to get extremely slow. Restoring from backup or doing a fresh install sometimes makes a device WAY faster. Not…
Typically this happens if you run out of storage space. I don’t really know why but if you have less than about a gigabyte of free space everything becomes really slow.
Re: Google quits selling tablets
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
The iPad Mini (2012) and iPad Air (2013) and all iPads since have stereo speakers on either side of the bottom edge. They're laid out for portrait though, since Apple treats that as the standard orientation. Not ideal for watching movies. The Pro versions have four speakers in the corners and adjust which pair are left vs right depending on whether you're in portrait or landscape.
Yes how stupid to assume portrait, I (and everyone I know) have always used iPads in landscape mode! And why on earth do their crappy speakers face backwards ??
Makes you wonder why Apple doesn’t hire you as their designer! Obviously you have got all the answers!
Re: Google quits selling tablets
#189Earlier 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.
It’s only a matter of time since the device has been completely hacked now. Check for updates on the related subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/switchhaxing Might want to pick one up in the near future though. Nintendo has a hardware update in the works to remedy the unpatcheable tegra exploit in current models.
There's also the fact that if Nintendo detects that you have a hacked Switch, they will ban you from all their online services even if you log in from a different device.
Re: Google quits selling tablets
#190> Cheap Kindle tablets from Amazon have proliferated somewhat, presumably as distractions for kids who would otherwise get fingerprints all over mom’s new phone, or for ultra-compact time-wasting on airplanes. Why does everybody think of only consumer-electronics uses for a $40 tablet? I think it would be quite obvious what the real use for these is: IoT control surfaces (the “smart fridge” upgrade), POS systems, inv…
I bought a Kindle tablet, and I wouldn’t even use it as an IOT control surface.