
A whole new world: Ars reviews the Galaxy Tab 10.1 - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/reviews/2011/06/ars-reviews-the-galaxy-tab-101.ars
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dr_
"This makes it extremely difficult to evaluate products shipped in such
incomplete form. "

No it doesn't. If that's what they give you, that's what you review. If x is
missing, you say the product lacks x. If the manufacturer is not happy with
that, then maybe they shouldn't release the product until it's fully
functional.

~~~
thaumaturgy
> _...then maybe they shouldn't release the product until it's fully
> functional._

But ... but ... but what about all the advice we keep hearing about MVPs and
"ship ship ship" and "iterate" and...?

~~~
olivercameron
For software that the developer can update instantly (an OS update doesn't
count), then yes, this is a great methodology to live by. Hardware is a
completely different beast, and costs significantly more for the purchaser and
should be tested to extreme levels before launching.

~~~
thaumaturgy
I've yet to be won over to the fast-iteration model of software (or product)
development, mostly because I think that presenting an unfinished, or
unpolished, product to a customer is usually a bad idea. Even if you get it
right later, the customer is still going to be left with a poor first
impression.

Apple, despite their faults, is a great example of this: the majority of their
products are carefully polished and finished, with a lot of attention to
detail.

Obviously a company doesn't want to sit on a new product for too long, trying
to perfect it before releasing it, and obviously a company should continue to
improve its products and services continuously, preferably at a nice, steady
rate. But, I'm steadfastly opposed to shipping unfinished products. I think
it's bad advice every time I hear it or read it, and I think the negative
parts of this review are a good example of why.

~~~
hboon
I know you mentioned fast-iteration, but you also mentioned MVP in your
earlier comment, so I thought I refer to that.

When Apple first released iPhone, there wasn't an SDK publicly available.
There wasn't copy and paste. There was also only EDGE/GPRS support, no
multitasking (of any form except for a few built-in apps), no third party
apps, no MMS, no SMS forwarding, no group SMS. It was only available in the US
and only for AT&T subscribers. In many sense of the term, it is an MVP and it
worked. It's just an MVP that was very polished.

As it rolled out releases, there were both enhancements and spots where they
aren't as polished which was improved in a later release. Push Notifications
in 3.0 + the coming Notifications center in 5.0 comes to mind.

So, they did an MVP with iPhone, initial features were minimum, but a selected
subset of them are extremely polished. In fact if you look at many successful
iPhone apps, this seems to be a very successful model.

Perhaps this approach only works on Apple's "target market". But I'd like to
think this is an excellent approach when working with mass market consumers.

This link where Steve Jobs commented about Segway's marketing and launch is
not totally relevant, but still interesting -
<http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3533.html>

------
benologist
I got a Galaxy Tab (the old one) over the weekend, overall I find the
experience pretty disappointing:

\- I never knew how much I loved hating iTunes, until suddenly everything had
to be done manually

\- it really sucks to buy a game, fire it up and discover it's a shitty mobile
version stretched to fit your screen. I'm especially disappointed in PopCap
for doing that w/ PvZ!

------
martincmartin
Bottom line (according to TFA):

 _The Tab 10.1 is a much more credible product than the Xoom, but it's not
quite competitive with the iPad. If Google wants to compete, it still needs to
build a vibrant third-party application ecosystem in order to make Android
tablets a good option for regular users._

~~~
drivebyacct2
Hm, I'm curious... what do people want to see Google do in order to convince
them? People are developing for Android in droves on mobile phones because
they finally (and I do mean finally, the writing on the walls was clear before
any major Android app explosion)... do they not assume that a similar effect
will happen for Android tablets?

~~~
ugh
It hasn't happened yet and reviewers don't have a time machine. What should
they write? "Well, the app ecosystem sucks but might well improve in the
future, maybe"?

~~~
drivebyacct2
Uh, I was asking what will motivate developers. I agree with the consensus
here. If it's not shipping with apps, and it's shipping with features
missing... it should be reviewed that way.

And besides, saying "Oh, 3g sucks but you can mail it off for a week to get
LTE" is 100% completely different than saying "We expect the Android tablet
ecosystem to grow".

Do you think I bought my D1 thinking that I'd be stuck with a trash Facebook
app and basically no other apps to speak of? Again, I don't expect or even
have a desire for reviewers to go out of their way to make such excuses... my
entire post was just questioning WHY the ecosystem is so dry, even though the
Honeycomb SDK has been available (albeit in a flawed state initialy) for so
long.

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floppydisk
Samsung looks like they are just trying to be the first and grab market share
with the first Honeycomb tablet. Looking at this and the iPad, my question
still is: what do I use this for? On the go my smartphone handles all my
computing tasks and at home I have several boxes for at home computation.
Where is this supposed to fit in?

~~~
illumin8
Tablets seem to be the perfect kitchen table computing device for when you
just want to look up something really quick, but don't want to walk down the
hall to the office and wake up the computer from sleep.

Some use cases:

\- Recipes using Epicurious - who wants a full blown computer in the kitchen?
\- Browsing instantwatcher.com and adding movies to your Netflix queue from
the sofa. \- Reading your newsfeeds while you eat breakfast. \- Any browsing
related task where you don't want to leave the room (checking weather
forecast, google searches, booking an airline ticket, reading email).

Really, the wife and I have had an iPad for 1+ years and we still get a few
good hours a day of use out of it. I've had a Sharp Zaurus and other devices
before and they all ended up in a closet or drawer after a few weeks. The
tablet PC is very useful because it does fill that niche in between wanting to
go to the office and get on the desktop tower or trying to look something up
on your smartphone.

~~~
tkl
I've always thought that companies should have emphasized how perfect it is
for college students.

Use cases:

-Torrent textbooks. Now you have all ten of your heavy textbooks in one thin compact device. Also, they're now free.

-Sitting in lecture and the professor says something that you'd like to wikipedia. Why haul out a clunky, sleepy laptop when you can do it quickly on your tab. Also, you can read hacker news quite conveniently when the professor is 5 minutes late.

-Write notes. Also, there's got to be some app that let's you draw on your screen so you can record diagrams as well.

-Physically convenient. You can almost completely replace a full backpack with a one-handed 7-inch slab. It also plays music so you can turn on that rain ambience mp3 while you lay on the campus lawn reading any of the millions of ebooks that are now at your whimsical disposal.

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hugh3
Excuse my ignorant question: if I buy one of these is there any (vaguely
legal) way I can use it to watch movies on long flights?

edit: Never mind, I found out for myself. Rip from DVD to some wacky format,
obtain app to play it. Perhaps I'll consider it, now I find myself flying
(bleh) United with its severe lack of video.

~~~
richcollins
Yes!

<http://dekorte.com/projects/shareware/MovieDownloader/>

