Google quits selling tablets • Hacker News Board

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#251

Post by jrs95 » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 2:49 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #240

voltagex_ wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you run Linux on it instead? Not to excuse Google - but there's little incentive for a company to maintain devices past a certain point when there's no financial or regulatory requirement to do so. I'm not sure Windows 7 being supported for a decade was intentional, but we'll see what pans out with Windows 10's incremental model.

I'm planning to stick some kind of linux or alternative chrome OS on there, if possible. > I'm not sure Windows 7 being supported for a decade was intentional, but we'll see what pans out with Windows 10's incremental model. It definitely was. XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 10LTSB all start[ed] with 10 years of support, and you can install a newer version on your same hardware to reset that counter. Something's gone wrong with…

Microsoft doesn’t need to constantly rebuild different kernels for every supported device, which is basically a necessity for Android/ChromeOS because of their Linux base. That’s probably a big motivator for the Fuschia project.

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#252

Post by doingmything » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

__sr__ wrote: post #224

dalbasal wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a lot of cases a scaled (or just small) phone app is good enough. But... overall.. I think the tablet category is just not a very big one. I had an iPad and an old 7" nexus. When they died, I didn't replace. Phones got bigger and better. We got better at thumb typing and comfortable holding screens close. Reading on a tablet for example, is not that different to a phone these days and a (cheap) dedicated reader is…

I guess that varies from person to person. My iPad Pro, for example, is my most used personal device. I prefer it over my phone whenever possible. In fact, I like phones small - it’s a pain to pull out a brick every time I want to talk. It’s a matter of personal taste, I guess.

Do people stilll talk on phones?

Serious question. I think I do about 99% of my communication via text or other messaging

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#253

Post by bhauer » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

I am not surprised. What we think of today when we say "tablet" is a first-class computing device and I am of the opinion few people want a plurality of such devices in their life. This is due to what I call the "yet another application platform dilemma." At some saturation point, few people want the mental burden of adding the care and feeding of another device to their life. Few people want to manage numerous devices each of which requires installation and configuration of applications, processing of notifications they've seen elsewhere, and irksome routine updates.

Multi-device living is exhausting when each device is a first-class application platform that (out of necessity) assumes it may be your exclusive piece of technology.

A few years back, I argued [1] that we have forgotten an alternative definition of tablet, a device category that—were it executed well, and with today's capabilities—would be sufficiently compelling that I would buy several for my household:

> In the early 2000s, Microsoft experimented with mobile display panels in a tablet form factor called "Smart Displays." ... Smart Displays provided access to your desktop computer via Wi-Fi. With their poorly executed hardware, short-sighted licensing limitations in Windows XP, immaturity of the RDP protocol, high prices, and essentially no marketing, Smart Displays were a certain failure from the start.

> But theirs was a trajectory for tablets that has since been lost to history. They existed to bring your singular computing environment to you, wherever you were, in a convenient form factor.

That singular computing platform with multiple views model is what I have wanted essentially my whole life. I've called it "PAO" (Personal Application Omnipresence) [2] for the last several years. I believe it's a model that could be highly compelling if executed broadly by a tech titan willing to try something different.

[1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/why-tablet-sales-are-falling

[2] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#254

Post by macjohnmcc » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

EpicEng wrote: post #246

__sr__ wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that varies from person to person. My iPad Pro, for example, is my most used personal device. I prefer it over my phone whenever possible. In fact, I like phones small - it’s a pain to pull out a brick every time I want to talk. It’s a matter of personal taste, I guess.

>It’s a matter of personal taste, I guess. Of course it is, but tablet sales have been declining for years.

Is it because of the lack of interest or is it because people aren't replacing them because they are still working for them? I haven't lost interest in tablets but I also haven't bought one in four years because mine suits my needs.

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#255

Post by cabaalis » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 3:14 PM UTC

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #202

StreamBright wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 othe…

On my android phone (Nokia 3, fwiw) that example is trivial: pull down menu, settings, search "spell", "spell checker", "off".

Spell checker setting did not appear on my S8.

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#256

Post by mnem » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 3:22 PM UTC

EpicEng wrote: post #246

__sr__ wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that varies from person to person. My iPad Pro, for example, is my most used personal device. I prefer it over my phone whenever possible. In fact, I like phones small - it’s a pain to pull out a brick every time I want to talk. It’s a matter of personal taste, I guess.

>It’s a matter of personal taste, I guess. Of course it is, but tablet sales have been declining for years.

163.5M is still a significant number of sales per year though. I don't think it's a dying segment yet. Interestingly detachable tablet sales have increased for the past few years.

Source: https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS43549518

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#257

Post by ghaff » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 3:26 PM UTC

snuxoll wrote: post #84

the_snooze wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I picked up one of those iPads at ~$270 with an academic discount, and it's a solid machine. Great battery life, good screen, enough space for a couple Netflix movies on flights. It doesn't feel cheap or compromised at all.

I just bought one for my five year old, it's a pretty damned impressive device - she loves drawing on my 12.9" iPad Pro and having Apple Pencil support across the whole product line means she can do so on a less expensive device (the 12.9" Pro is already beastly enough, I cannot bear to put a case on it). With some fairly large games loaded up we've still got roughly 40% of the storage free, and with app offloading i…

The 12.9"iPad Pro is one of the few pricey electronic devices I've found myself buying and then not really using. I had a lot of ambitions for using it for instructional-type drawing but I didn't really get that going. And it's just too big and heavy to use generally. And I say this as someone who really likes its smaller sibling, especially when I'm traveling.

But the big iPad now just sits on a stand in the kitchen where I use it for recipes and the odd video. It's pretty underutilized.

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#258

Post by pier25 » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

EpicEng wrote: post #246

__sr__ wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that varies from person to person. My iPad Pro, for example, is my most used personal device. I prefer it over my phone whenever possible. In fact, I like phones small - it’s a pain to pull out a brick every time I want to talk. It’s a matter of personal taste, I guess.

>It’s a matter of personal taste, I guess. Of course it is, but tablet sales have been declining for years.

iPad sales peaked a few years ago, but they still represent a good chunk of Apple’s revenue.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/269915/global-apple-ipad...

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/05/01/2q-2018-results/

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#259

Post by pier25 » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 3:33 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #218

wlesieutre wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched from a Surface Pro 3 to an iPad Pro 9.7” and found Apple’s stylus to be much more accurate. It’s not a huge deal for roughly capturing handwriting, but the Surface’s Ntrig digitizer relies a lot on smoothing out strokes, if you try to draw a slow diagonal line you can see a ton of wobble as the stroke gets pulled around by the digitizer’s grid. You lose out on having a full desktop OS when you need it, and…

What software do you use on the iPad?

For sketching quick diagrams on meetings I love Linea.

Re: Google quits selling tablets

#260

Post by pcwalton » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 3:39 PM UTC

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…

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

It was, historically. Android was a startup that had to get to market as fast as they could. To make matters worse, once the iPhone came out they had to quickly switch from a Treo-like interface to a iOS-like one in order to stay relevant.

To Google's credit, they've been trying for years to clean it up, but there's only so much they can do…