

Why yes, that is a Galaxy Tab 10.1 in my pocket - ddagradi
http://www.sethclifford.me/stream/2011/7/25/why-yes-that-is-a-galaxy-tab-101-in-my-pocket.html

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Pewpewarrows
Decent article, but I guess I'll weigh in on the counter-points:

1\. Uninformed consumers returning devices isn't unique to Android Tablets. It
happens in basically every corner of the market. People buy Macs and wonder
why their Windows apps don't work on them. There's really not much you can
change about that, aside from trying to educate them slightly in whatever form
of advertisement you have. I do think all the commercials for Android Tablets
are terrible though. The iPad's wins by a landslide.

2\. 16:9 vs 4:3 is really just personal preference. There are some apps that I
really enjoy the 16:9 ratio for (like movies, books, and general internet
browsing). For others, yes it does feel a bit wide or tall at times. This
becomes a non-issue if you decide to go for a 7-inch tablet though, which I
believe 3.2 just introduced support for.

3\. There's a "Featured Tablet" application section on the market blatantly
visible the first time you start the application. Unfortunately that's about
where it ends, as there's no way to tell if an application is tablet-ready
from its details page, and no way to filter for tablet-ready apps when doing a
search. It's been said before, but the Market really needs an overhaul. I have
noticed apps start to name themselves "HD" if they're tablet-ready, but that's
not really consistent or a standard at this point.

4\. Honeycomb's 3.2 version that released this past month now has the "app
zooming" feature the author described missing.

5\. It's been said before, but I'll repeat it here: the lack of tablet-ready
apps is really just a matter of time. People tend to forget that it took iPad
several months to get a decent selection of apps optimized for that screen
size. This summer a good number started cropping up on the Market for Android,
and now that more tablets are landing in the hands of developers (like the
Transformer and Galaxy Tab), we'll no doubt see a ton of apps begin to flood
us come Winter.

~~~
Xuzz
The iPad had 2,000 apps on launch day: <http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/02/best-
ipad-apps-launch/>

Hell, even the HP TouchPad had 300 at launch a month ago (which may even be
more than Honeycomb had then, there's no way to tell due to that Market
issue).

I don't know why there's so few apps for Android tablets, but I haven't seen
any signs of the numbers getting much higher. And it's not like developers
haven't had both 6 months to work _and_ (for some) free Google I/O tablets to
develop on.

~~~
nitrogen
Part of the reason for the paucity of tablet-specific apps may be that Android
does a better job of scaling phone-sized apps to the tablet screen. My
friend's Xoom, for example, appeared to run fantastically with the same
ConnectBot SSH client as my phone right after the Xoom's release.

Edit: refute, please, instead of/in addition to downvoting. Seriously. Android
does this.

~~~
Xuzz
Android does do this, but it only _very_ rarely has worked for me. Like, take
the Dropbox app, which is even listed under "featured tablet apps": you have
file listings that are 8" wide, with no more content shown on a tablet than on
a phone (which is just file name and icon).

A few, rare apps are usable scaled (ConnectBot is a good example), but almost
nothing is ideal — or even usable — OOTB. At least with the ones I've tried.

~~~
nitrogen
Would you say the Android situation is better or worse than the pixel doubling
seen on the iPad for iPhone apps?

~~~
Xuzz
Not really relevant, since there's enough iPad apps that it doesn't matter: I
use one pixel-doubled app on the iPad (Facebook) and they're coming out with a
native app very soon anyway.

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wallflower
> However, for the amount of marketing and push that these tablets are
> getting, there should absolutely be not only a wide range of options, but a
> clearly delineated path with which to reach them. Android Market has
> neither. You can search for "tablet", and you hit quite a few things, and
> you can search for "Honeycomb", and reach some others, but you have things
> like themes and wallpapers for phones in the Honeycomb style that make their
> way into your search. Apple has two sides of the App Store - iPhone and iPad
> - and it's completely obvious where the tablet apps are. I'm an experienced
> user, so I'm figuring things out, but I can't imagine someone who isn't
> comfortable with this stuff having much fun doing the same

Yet another example of how Google's Market app is slowly catching up to
iTunes. The new market app is a big improvement.

It seems like writing tablet apps for Honeycomb are more an exercise for
developers and their teams (I see distinct rivalries between iOS and Android
dev teams at the same company) at companies that have Android apps to pad
their resume and "feel cool" (look at me, we have a tablet app) than a
practical economic market. I know four people who own Honeycombs, all of them
were purchased by their employers so their company could get the "Tablet"
achievement. As for iPads, I was shocked the other day to see not just one but
two iPads being used (the glow is mega massive from the screen) from my
nosebleed level cheap seat before an orchestral concert started.

~~~
wccrawford
Weird. My Asus Transformer has a section in the Market that's specifically for
tablets.

And the market will only show apps that work on your device... So non-tablets
will never see that section.

Unless people specify the devices wrong, of course.

------
cageface
I set up some new PC laptops recently for a few non-technical friends. It's
been a while since I've touched a new PC laptop so it was a bit of shock to be
reminded of how much clunky, ugly, slow, proprietary junkware was larded on
top of Windows. It's a bad soup cooked by too many chefs.

From what I've seen of recent Android UI's, vendors seem to be following the
same MO, with the same poor, inconsistent results. If Google doesn't start
pushing hard for stock Android on tablets they're going to lose this race.

~~~
Daniel14
The problem with Android being open source is that Google hasn't really got
much control over what happens with it. Everyone can tweak it for the better
or worse, and lately its mostly been for the worse.

However, if you don't want to root or get a nexus, I've found that simply
installing one of the many launchers available for free mostly does the trick
of cleaning up your phone (touchwiz, blur etc get removed and you can hide
apps completely if you like). Also, this seems worst in the US, where the
carrier situation is -forgive me- completely fucked up. I haven't had issues
anywhere similar with bloatware here in europe.

I can only hope, but if capitalism works and people don't like scins and
crapware on their phone, the cunts in charge right now will eventually realize
it's smarter to leave Android as it is because more people will buy it. I'm
still waiting though.

~~~
cageface
Contrary to much received wisdom on the subject, I don't think that stock
Android is significantly less user-friendly than iOS. But requiring users to
be savvy enough to strip off carrier crapware is asking too much.

Consensus is powerful. Consistency is powerful. Google has to walk a fine line
here but if they don't rein in the carriers soon I worry that Apple's
discipline in design & execution is going to overwhelm them. I'm a little
suspicious of recent claims that Android return rates are as high as 40% but I
don't doubt that they're too high.

------
someperson
Google need to take a page out of the video-game emulation world and introduce
filters and anti-aliasing at higher magnifications.

For example you can play a Gameboy Advance game at native resolution (ie
tiny!) on the emulator Visualboy Advance or scale the video output 2 or 3
times and after enabling all the above settings, the output is _much_ nicer
than the originals.

It doesn't take all that much processing power to do either (the difference in
power between phones and tablets more than makes up for it - many times over I
suspect)

Anyone care to chime in? (and possibly destroy my argument)

~~~
jarin
2xSaI would be amazing on both Android and iPad. If it can breathe new life
into SNES games, it would probably work nicely on apps.

~~~
eropple
If you've got a jailbroken iPad, there's a better option than 2xSaI. The iPad
loads the low-resolution iPhone application nibs, presumably to make iPhone
apps look worse on the iPad, but with RetinaPad off of Cydia you get the
iPhone 4, high-resolution display of those applications.

------
Yhippa
I have played with my friends iPad 2's and just got the Samsung Galaxy Tab
10.1. I think it's fine and now I prefer it over the iPad.

It's so much lighter which means I can be "that guy" who takes movies and
pictures with it. It uploads to Google+ automatically and then I can choose to
share or not. One of the big barriers to me sharing meda with friends is my
laziness in taking the time to upload each file. This takes one step out of
that process: I just leave a note and choose to share it or not.

The 16:9 form factor can be awkward for reading eBooks. I actually prefer that
form factor overall because when I type in portrait mode I don't have to move
my thumbs as far to type letters.

As for the apps one thing that I found is that due to the way Android apps
manage layout instead of doing a simple pixel multiplication the applications
scale fairly well. While there aren't a lot of pretty tablet-specific apps in
the Android Marketplace at leas the apps are usable on the full-screen. I
really appreciate the information density as opposed to running in an a small
emulator.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
I have no issue with people's personal preferences on screen ratio or social
networking functionality but "so much lighter"?

It's 601g vs. 565g? That's 36g (the weight of 6 quarters), about 5%. Are you
serious that that's a big deal?

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axiomotion
I'm not sure why everyone keeps saying that Honeycomb tablets aren't there
yet. Where are they supposed to be? I've owned a Xoom WiFi for a while now and
it has quickly replaced my laptop as my "just surfing the net" tool. I still
switch to type out e-mails, but my Xoom is always what I reach for when I'm
sitting on the sofa and want to google something real quick.

~~~
untog
I think that when they say they "aren't there" they mean in relation to the
iPad. Having played around with both, I agree- the iPad is just a more put-
together product. However, like like it did on phones, I fully expect Android
to make quick strides to catch up.

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Tichy
Are apps really that important? I figure main use would be web browsing. I
hardly ever use apps on my Android phone, except for the built in ones (maps,
contacts).

I even consider to go web only on my future tablet to avoid privacy issues
with apps.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
Depends on the user. DHH wrote an interesting piece on it saying that almost
everything he did on iOS using the 10 basic apps and that everything else was
pretty irrelevant.

For me that's not true. Of the dozen or so apps I use most often about half
are standard, about half downloaded/purchased, so for me it would be a big
deal but if what you want to do is surf the web, read e-mail and use a basic
media player for photos and video then apps probably aren't a selling point
and there's a big enough market of people like that out there.

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drivebyacct2
The stretch scale is fixed in the next version of Honeycomb.

