

HTC Working on Android Tablet - borisk
http://anythingbutipad.com/archives/194

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nagrom
"an HTC representative let slip"

Do PR people really let things 'slip'? To let something slip is usually
indicative of an accidental giveaway. If a PR person tells a tablet-oriented
site that HTC are working on a tablet too, surely this is a regular
announcement without any useful or interesting details?

At the very least, HTC could have bought a blogger to circulate rumours or
pointed a trade magazine to 'expose' an order from a supplier's factory. It's
this attention to detail that put Apple ahead of the crowd!

I've been holding off and holding off, waiting for a decent iPad competitor to
come along and it seems that there could be a few in 6 months or so - Notion
Ink's Adam looks very nice and I am sure that HTC's tablet will be pretty too.
However, Apple have shipped, the thing works and it has a reasonable software
ecosystem. I can actually go to a shop and buy one.

Since I actually want a tablet-like device, I can't really think of any reason
not to buy an iPad right now. Why has it taken so long for competitors to
provide an alternative?

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nuclear_eclipse
I don't think manufacturers were quite prepared for just how high of a bar
Apple was going to set with the iPad. I personally refuse to buy Apple iOS
products on my own principles, but the hardware always looks amazing without
sacrificing quality. Combined with the fact that nobody was even certain that
the iPad would even exist when it was announced, I think manufacturers weren't
really taking the tablet market seriously until they realized just how much of
a hit the iPad was. I'll bet most companies weren't even investing more than a
gee-whiz in tablet technology until then, either, just due to the complexities
of development.

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cstuder
It's a funny site name: 'Anything but iPad'.

In a german newspaper interview[1], a random analyst said that the iPad
already has become the standard to which any new device will be compared.

This site confirms that theory. Or is a brilliant parody of it. I'm not quite
sure.

[1] = [http://www.derbund.ch/digital/computer/Apples-Rivalen-
muesse...](http://www.derbund.ch/digital/computer/Apples-Rivalen-muessen-mit-
guenstigen-Preisen-Druck-machen/story/18733056)

~~~
jhck
I think the site name is a reference to 'Anything But iPod'[1], which has been
around since 2005.

[1] <http://www.anythingbutipod.com/>

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shrikant
I'm as non-Apple-fan as they get, but this is honestly why I really, REALLY
admire Apple - they only announce products that are ready to ship, and steer
clear of "We're working on this, stay prepared for our awesomeness to blow you
out of the water! Coming soon to cinemas near you!"

~~~
StavrosK
To be fair, that's easier to do when there's nothing else like whatever it is
you're working on. People (me included) are waiting for Android tablets _right
now_. There was nobody working for a tablet before the iPad, so Apple didn't
have to say "we're working on this, don't buy the competitor's thing yet".

~~~
nanairo
Wow! That's a pretty bias view!

If you remember there were a lot of rumours of the iPad coming out. In part it
was because of a lot of people, including many Wall Street guys, felt Apple
HAD to compete with the netbook-mania by releasing their own netbook.

Apple sticked to its gun then. It could have used such a line just as well:
"No, netbook are crap compared to our awesome tablet that we're working right
now: stay tuned". Did they? Nope.

You even had Microsoft and others (remember the Techcrunch's tablet) being
announced long before they were ready, and even then Apple didn't change its
stance.

I'm not saying that Apple is just a genius or something: it's probably as much
arrogance as it is a passion to be different (and not just copy some other
ideas). But to say that Apple didn't have to say anything, it's partial
recollection.

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StavrosK
There was no good tablet before Apple's, mainly because there was no good OS.
PC OSes are a bad fit for tablets, so it has to be either iOS or Android. I'm
very surprised Google is going with ChromeOS on its tablet, I hope they make
it easy to install Android.

~~~
nanairo
In hindsight I agree. But back in those days: a) most people didn't believe
that, and b) the Linux community was developing distributions for tablets. And
anyway the famous (in those days) techcrunch's tablet was not going to use any
PC OS.

Anyway, the only point I was replying to was that Apple did have a lot of
pressure back in those days to come out with their netbook or with something
that covered the same niche, and some people even suggested that Apple should
have lost in the tablet market because there were already a few offers around
or soon to be.

In other words I was not discussion what made the iPad a success (if it
deserved it, or any of those more hot topics). Simply that it's not true that
Apple was not under pressure to present _something_, which is the point the OP
was saying.

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Qz
If anyone is going to get this right it will be HTC.

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gamble
It'll be interesting to see if people take up Android tablets the way they
have with Android phones. My experience with the iPad suggests that a tablet
is like a traditional computer in that the experience is dependent on the
availability of quality apps. Right now, the Android Market is easily the
weakest aspect of Android.

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sandipc
not all that surprising.

what caught my eye was the 5.1 channel smartphone audio remark - how much
storage space do they anticipate smartphones having by the time that is
released? multichannel audio is pretty huge, spacewise

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snom370
Since you can fit several full-length movies on an iPad (16-64GB storage
space), adding 5.1 channel audio won't be much of a problem.

