I’ll say one thing for Android, they sure picked a seller of a name. “Droid”. Just saying it grows hair on my chest. 
Otherwise, I know nothing about it.
I’ll go do a comparison.
The iPhone, by a nose (tiebreaker).
There are 18 Android platforms and one iPhone OS platform. If the iPhone beats the (ugly-as-fuck) Droid on a technicality, how do you think it fares against the other 17? Anyway, Android is open-source (Linux-based) and has about twice as many developers working on it (hundreds more software and hardware companies, too) despite not having been out for as long.
Isn’t Motorola Android’s poster kid? I assume that any other platform would fare even worse against the iPhone. A large part of Motorola’s score was due to it’s carrier, AT&T.
I would say Android is already a superior platform compared to the iPhone. It’s much more open and it’s got multitasking. And most importantly a much better choice of hardware and new models every few months instead of once a year. iPhone hardware is already looking very dated compared to the latest Android phones when it comes to processor and RAM, screen resolution and camera.
Perhaps the next iPhone will catch up but I doubt it. I suspect the iPhone will always be behind the curve when it comes to hardware. Momentum and marketing will carry it on for a while but eventually Android will dominate.
If this type of tablet becomes popular, you can bet that Google and the East Asian hardware makers will jump in with something better running Android. Really the combination of Google’s software and online services and hardware by companies like Samsung, Acer and HTC is going to be very hard to beat.
Could be, Lantern. But I suspect that a big part of other makers popularity over Apple is simply price. People go on and on about things, ignoring inherent Windows problems, but what I hear is ‘sour grapes’. Macs and iPhones are simply nicer than the others. And they work without constant fixes.
I’m on my 2nd iMac in 12 years. I bought my 2nd iPhone after more than 3 years because the new one is faster. And because Steve told me to. 
Well obviously not everyone agrees that Macs and iPhone are “simply nicer”. Personally I find Apple products in general have some neat ideas and usually great physical design but also weird idiosyncrasies and a relatively walled-off architecture. Personally I like my tech products flexible, customizable and open and obviously that’s not the Apple way. Price is a part of it too and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in the one product category which Apple has dominated: MP3 players, several of their models are competitively priced. But price isn’t the only issue.
I’ve been watching Leo Laporte using his iPad all day on live.twit.tv. The more I see the thing, the more I want one.
It’s just not the same as a laptop. It’s not even close. Laporte can’t stop playing with the thing. And everything he shows on it looks just awesome.
The Popular Science digital magazine looks awesome. It’s very interactive, with all kinds of animated features in it, and it can be read like a magazine. It looks just awesome. And when you think that this is just the first generation - the apps that were rushed out the door at launch - it’s even more amazing.
Watch Leo’s live stream for a while. Right now he’s doing “The tech Guy”, but he switches back to playing with the iPad at every commercial break. The thing looks just awesome.
In my real job, I’m a usability engineer. I think I have some insight into why this thing is going to be so amazing. It’s the little things. For example, the scrolling happens with no delay whatsoever. What people don’t appreciate until they try it is that there’s a huge difference between ‘instant’ and even a couple of hundred milliseconds of delay. When response is instant, your brain connects right to the content and stops thinking about manipulating an interface. Sliding a picture around feels like moving a real thing - you forget that you’re using a touch screen to command software. But add in even a slight delay, and the illusion breaks down.
The iPad seems to break through in a number of these usability areas. Watching Laporte use it, it doesn’t seem like a computer at all - it just seems like this cool window that you can interact with to do many cool things. It all seems very fluid and natural. And very addictive.
I think you’re all going to want one once you see them in action enough. Or perhaps some competitors will appear, like Microsoft’s Courier, and you’ll want one of those instead. But this form factor just seems perfect to me for so many things. it’s the first device I’ve seen that will actually do some things better than my desktop, when factoring in the user experience and not just performance and features.
Are those Laporte iPad videos stored anywhere? I am a big fan of his TWIT netcast so I look forward to hearing what he has to say about it.
I think interactive content is clearly going to be the biggest strength of this device. All sorts of possibilities with interactive maps for example. Perhaps maps of historical battles where you can zoom in and out and click on individual units for more information. Or interactive 3D models of great works of architecture.
All this is genuinely exciting and the iPad is going to mean much more content of this kind. The issue is whether I want yet another device to carry round for this content when it is so limited in other respects. I have been following tablets for a few years and what I really want is to be able is a great touch device which also functions as a full-fledged laptop and has stylus support for writing.
Convertible tablets are actually quite close to achieving this. They would of course be heavier than the iPad I don't see why you couldn't get a touch experience quite close to the iPad along with normal laptop features. Right now convertibles are a little too heavy and the resistive screen technology isn't very responsive. But I believe capacitive screens with stylus support are being developed and SSD drives could help keep the weight down.Yeah, most of Leo’s videos are at the web site, but the ones from today haven’t been posted yet.
But here’s a link to Macbreak weekly, which is basically a one-hour demo of the iPad. Leo’s not on the show - he’s got a guest host. But you’ll see a lot of the stuff it can do.
I would venture that most people don’t really perceive nor care very much about some of these little things. Perhaps the iPad is a neat toy or technology connoisseur’s device. I can’t speculate whether this device will sell or not, but even after watching someone use it extensively, I am pretty certain that I have no use for it at all save as a novelty. For me and possibly others, fluidity and interactivity are not ends in and of themselves. They are sizzle. I am not an engineer nor designer, so perhaps I am just not so sensitive to these details and do not place a very high value on them. Be that as it may.
But I have no desire to purchase a device that might make reading a magazine more fun. I also find e-readers useless for me in general; I know my preferences cannot exactly be generalized. All the same, I don’t think I am a complete outlier here. The iPad does not exactly thrill me.
Does anyone know if the choices available for the iBooks app are available to browse? Do you need the iPad to get to the iBooks store?
The thing about usability is that you don’t have to ‘care’ or even understand what’s going on to have it affect you. Great user interfaces affect you at a visceral level. You don’t know why you like or hate them, but you do. That applies to rank beginners as well as experts.
Perhaps. Great user interface definitely affects you at a visceral level, just like great wine affects some people at a visceral level, too.
But if you don’t care very much about wine and haven’t acquired the palette for it, well, you might as well drink two buck chuck. Or more likely, you can probably tell the difference between Yellow Tail and cooking wine, but anything past that is nice but more or less lost on you.
You talk about the importance of not having the “illusion” broken. This isn’t the theatre; I don’t care very much about the illusion, quite frankly. This must reflect some sort of basic divide: I use a piece of technology as a tool to accomplish something. If I have a neat experience while doing so, great. But I don’t care much for the experience without the product. I’d rather be doing something else. Perhaps I am just crazy.
Hubby and I both have an iPod Touch. He uses his mainly for music: mine is used as a portable netbook of sorts. We absolutely adore them. The only drawback - and the reason why I’m holding off on an iPad - is that it can’t use Flash.
I want my computer to do stuff. I don’t want it to look nice while it does nothing. I shall not be purchasing an iPad.
I don’t mean illusion in that way, like artificial reality. It’s more like the absence of cognitive friction. It’s an intangible thing, but it’s not at all like wine tasting - it’s not something you have to understand or be studied in to benefit from.
Think of the difference between a knife that just fits perfectly in your hand and one that doesn’t. You don’t have to know anything about knife design to know which one you like. Great products are like that - they affect you at a visceral level.
Do you like popping bubble-wrap bubbles? If you do, ask yourself why. It’s the tactile feedback you get - the slight stretching, then a satisfactory ripping/popping sensation. You don’t have to know anything about bubble wrap to enjoy it.
That’s no computer.
That’s a computer!
How many times do we have to say it?
The iPad is not a computer!
It’s a mobile device that does exactly as advertised.
Now take your Acer and your Windows whatever and go to your room.
I don’t see why what it’s advertised as has anything to do with this. If something’s marketed as a piece of shit, that doesn’t mean it’s a great product if it simply fulfills what it set out to be.
(Note: I’m not saying the iPod is a piece of shit–I’m actually intrigued by it, even if I likely won’t be grabbing one anytime soon).
Like watching an old school movie. You think there’s movement, but there are really 24 still pictures per second. But you don’t know or care, you just enjoy the show.
Like that and like that, eh Sam?