If Apple is killing with a 10" iPad why are other PC manufacturers bringing out a bunch of 7" pads?

[Chimera]

The HP Slate is an $800, Windows 7 running entirely questionable “me too” piece of hardware.

A very lightweight (processing wise) 1.86ghz processor and all the stuff to say “Wow! It’s a TABLET that runs WINDOWS and can do everything my computer can do!” machine stuffed into something the size of the iPad. It won’t be instant-on, it will be slower than your desktop PC. It will have interesting problems with attempting to run Win 7 on a touch-screen. A stylus to write on the screen, but oddly, nowhere to store the bloody thing, so everyone will be losing them.

I dunno. I know I come off as negative, but that’s partly from watching and laughing my ass off as, on one side, all the alleged tech gurus puzzle over who could possibly want an iPad, and on the other side, the fact that Apple sold 4.2 million of them in about six months.

Given that I’m a tech person and even I barely do more than 1> Surf the Net, and 2> Check my Mail on my computer at home, there really isn’t any reason for the multitudes to have the latest, most complex game/tech machine, and very little reason for most people to have more than an iPad or iPad like device. Hell, my mother has a netbook and she has never used it for more than those two functions. Ever.

[Martin_Hyde]

@Absolute

This is often repeated without any citation. Apple does not make any inexpensive computers, but that does not mean that the computers they do make are overpriced. Feature-for-feature (and you have to include battery life, weight and size as features when talking about laptops), they are rarely more than 10% more expensive than the competition. And as with the iPad, there is rarely any genuine competition with Apple in the notebook market. The screen quality and build quality of my MacBook Pro beat any other laptop on the market right now. You can find other laptops with faster processors, faster graphics cards, or other geegaws, but they are usually huge plasticky bricks with noisy fans that dump out heat like an oven and creak when you open the screen.

I specifically said “Mac” because I thought it was understood Mac referred to their desktop offering, and MacBook referred to their laptop offering. All laptops are more expensive than equivalent desktops, and I’d wager the markup on laptops is probably higher across the board than it is for desktops (100% guess, though.) If “Mac” is commonly used to refer to the MacBook line (not being a Mac guy I don’t know) then I apologize for the confusion.

The cheapest Apple desktop is a small form factor PC that has laptop parts (mobile graphics card etc) in the form of the Mac Mini. This is a relatively cheap system but only when compared to the laptops made with the same parts as it, when you compare it to other small form factor PCs, it’s pretty expensive and it actually is much weaker since it uses mobile hardware such as GeForce M graphics cards and the like while other small form factor PCs use real desktop GPUs.

After that you have the iMac, which at the top end is about $2,000 for a system you could assemble for roughly $1000 elsewhere (so it is 2x as expensive.) Now, the iMac is a strange form factor and has a large display that is built in, so some of that $1000 discrepancy gets eliminated when you factor in the large monitor (the $1000 to assemble the system is w/o monitor included.) But even a large 27" monitor isn’t anywhere close to $1000 these days.

The Mac Pro is a beast of a system but it’s about $3000 and you can get an equivalent desktop for $1900-2200 depending on options.

Edit: I’ll also add that very top end laptops from Asus or Sager aren’t creaky and have higher specs than any notebook Apple builds and you can get them for cheaper than the top priced MacBooks.

[Martin_Hyde]

@Chimera

The HP Slate is an $800, Windows 7 running entirely questionable “me too” piece of hardware.

A very lightweight (processing wise) 1.86ghz processor and all the stuff to say “Wow! It’s a TABLET that runs WINDOWS and can do everything my computer can do!” machine stuffed into something the size of the iPad. It won’t be instant-on, it will be slower than your desktop PC. It will have interesting problems with attempting to run Win 7 on a touch-screen. A stylus to write on the screen, but oddly, nowhere to store the bloody thing, so everyone will be losing them.

I dunno. I know I come off as negative, but that’s partly from watching and laughing my ass off as, on one side, all the alleged tech gurus puzzle over who could possibly want an iPad, and on the other side, the fact that Apple sold 4.2 million of them in about six months.

Given that I’m a tech person and even I barely do more than 1> Surf the Net, and 2> Check my Mail on my computer at home, there really isn’t any reason for the multitudes to have the latest, most complex game/tech machine, and very little reason for most people to have more than an iPad or iPad like device. Hell, my mother has a netbook and she has never used it for more than those two functions. Ever.

I would agree about the Slate in its original positioning as a consumer device, but HP has basically said they aren’t releasing it for the consumer market now, it’s a business device that will be intended to run like one application at a time and totally obscure the operating system. For example think of a tablet that runs a medical records program, and nothing else, for use in a hospital. Or similar things, or something that runs an inventory management program or things of that nature for use in a warehouse. I have no idea how it will compete, because I have some familiarity with “embedded” systems and there’s already a pretty rich ecosystem of handheld “single use” devices for industrial purposes like that. Most of the ones I’m familiar with are technically Windows CE machines but the operating system is totally non-present/visible to the user since they are single use devices, I’d bet most people using them have no idea it is running WinCE “underneath.” That’s really the only success I’ve seen of Windows mobile/small OS, in embedded systems where it just exists as a framework to run something. Once you start having to interact with the “real” operating system and its gui WindowsCE and Windows Mobile have always been pretty terrible.

[Absolute]

Ah, okay. I have to admit, the Mac Mini and iMac are needlessly compact for desktops, and the Mac Pro is needlessly overpowered for most users. Apple does not make a desktop for people who don’t want to pay extra to save space, and don’t need a high-end workstation. But the market for desktops is declining - personally, I just hook my laptop to an external monitor and close the lid.

[jz78817]

@Absolute

Feature-for-feature (and you have to include battery life, weight and size as features when talking about laptops),

Fuck “feature-for-feature.” If I don’t need a feature, then it’s of no consequence to me that an Apple PC has it where a Windows PC does not. But this is part and parcel of these discussions, if an Apple notebook has 1394, then any Windows notebook must have 1394 or else the comparison is “unfaaaaiiiir.” Look, if I’m comparing a $1000 MacBook vs. a $600 VAIO, and the only difference is that the VAIO doesn’t have FW800, and I don’t have a single 1394 peripheral, then the Sony wins “feature-for-feature.”

they are rarely more than 10% more expensive than the competition.

yes, and here we see the brilliance of Apple’s market segmentation. They deliberately configure their product lineup so that it is difficult to get a one-to-one comparison to any product offered by Windows PC vendors. Steve loves the iMac for two reasons; #1 it’s a closed, minimally upgradeable box, and #2 nobody else bothers with that form factor. So Steve and his ass-kissers can crow about how the iMac is “competitive” with other all-in-one desktops, while the reality is that nobody in general gives a shit about all-in-one desktops.

The screen quality and build quality of my MacBook Pro beat any other laptop on the market right now.

and the screen quality of my MacBook is utter shit. a 6-bit panel with default calibration so horrible that everything has a taupe cast? What the fuck am I paying for?

You can find other laptops with faster processors, faster graphics cards, or other geegaws, but they are usually huge plasticky bricks with noisy fans that dump out heat like an oven and creak when you open the screen.

or they’re smaller and lighter, but don’t have 1394, or are the same size but aren’t made of white plastic, or don’t meet some other totally arbitrary criteria that are conveniently constructed such that only Apple products meet them.

[astro]

@Absolute

Even the MacBook Air - name one competitive product that is as thin, as light, and with such long battery life. If you don’t care about thin and light and battery life, perhaps the MacBook Air isn’t worth the money to you - but there is really nothing else out there that beats it if portability is a priority.

I ran across this Sony unit the other day. It’s quite interesting, I didn’t even know it existed until a client brought one into the office. It was introduced over a year ago. Not sure what current retail pricing is.

Viao x10

[Absolute]

@astro

I ran across this Sony unit the other day. It’s quite interesting. It was introduced over a year ago. Not sure what current retail pricing is.

Viao x10

It has an Atom processor and 3.5 hours of battery life. Nowhere near close to the Air’s specs.

[Absolute]

@jz78817

Fuck “feature-for-feature.” If I don’t need a feature, then it’s of no consequence to me that an Apple PC has it where a Windows PC does not. But this is part and parcel of these discussions, if an Apple notebook has 1394, then any Windows notebook must have 1394 or else the comparison is “unfaaaaiiiir.” Look, if I’m comparing a $1000 MacBook vs. a $600 VAIO, and the only difference is that the VAIO doesn’t have FW800, and I don’t have a single 1394 peripheral, then the Sony wins “feature-for-feature.”

And if I have numerous FW800 peripherals, then the VAIO loses.

yes, and here we see the brilliance of Apple’s market segmentation. They deliberately configure their product lineup so that it is difficult to get a one-to-one comparison to any product offered by Windows PC vendors. Steve loves the iMac for two reasons; #1 it’s a closed, minimally upgradeable box, and #2 nobody else bothers with that form factor. So Steve and his ass-kissers can crow about how the iMac is “competitive” with other all-in-one desktops, while the reality is that nobody in general gives a shit about all-in-one desktops.

No one gives a shit, except the people who are buying iMacs in record numbers. If Dell and HP don’t compete with the iMac simply because they don’t give a shit, they’re run by idiots. But we sort of knew that already, didn’t we?

and the screen quality of my MacBook is utter shit. a 6-bit panel with default calibration so horrible that everything has a taupe cast? What the fuck am I paying for?

I don’t know, why did you buy one? What $999 laptop has an 8-bit panel? Should’ve paid the extra $200 if you wanted a nicer screen, the MacBook is the cheapest Apple laptop for a reason. It is still competitive in that segment (though it is due for an update any day now).

or they’re smaller and lighter, but don’t have 1394, or are the same size but aren’t made of white plastic, or don’t meet some other totally arbitrary criteria that are conveniently constructed such that only Apple products meet them.

You are exaggerating. For people who need it, Firewire is not an arbitrary criteria. You’re seriously saying that other manufacturers could compete with Apple feature-for-feature, but simply choose not to sell anything with the same configuration? Huh? Sounds like they don’t know how to run a business, since Apple is kicking their ass.

Or maybe you’re just wrong.

[Todderbob]

First: Let me dispel any rumors that there about competition in the iMac Market. I mean, there are other manufacturers. Numerous ones. They’re just not competition.

Second: Microsoft sticks software designers in a room and says “make cool shit,” and then HP, Dell and a lot of other manufacturers (Sony excluded – I’ll expound if necessary) stick engineers in a room and say “make cool shit,” and then someone at the end of the line says “Marketing guys!!! Sell this cool shit!”

Apple is successful because they say “What do people want? Or, better yet, what will they want?” Then, they fucking make it!

Seriously, is it really that hard to figure out this out? As time goes on, Computers are going to become more ubiquitous – not just workstations, but genuine personal computers. And people don’t want to walk around like they’re in a campy 1980’s sci fi rerun. They want nice looking devices (and portable, if called for) that are unobtrusive and that work with relative ease. Really, when was the last time you walked into a room and said “OH MY GOD, I must ask who your wiring guy was – I love the way he splayed them all out across your desk!”

I can go model for model with you, and point out perfectly valid reasons for that ones success (or lack thereof, I’m looking at you previous gen AppleTV) if you’d like. Reasons that individual computer is tailor made to fill a niche, albeit a wide and ridiculously untapped niche, the silent majority in the tech industry… people who don’t wanna futz.

Yeah, you have to jailbreak an iPhone (which “may*” void warranty) if you want to do some things (like tethering, or Wifi hotspoting), but if your iPhone breaks, you take it to an Apple Store and get it replaced, or fixed, by people who know what they’re doing. And they’ll show you what you’re doing if you don’t know how to use it – don’t underestimate the value of that.

People are busy, and they simply don’t want to root or jailbreak their phone for extended functionality, and they’re willing to exchange limited, oddball functionality for stability and reliability.

*“Apple’s goal has always been to insure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone and we know that jailbreaking can severely degrade the experience. As we’ve said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones as this can violate the warranty and can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably.” http://www.tuaw.com/2010/07/27/will-jailbreaking-your-iphone-void-your-warranty/

[Martin_Hyde]

Apple’s a very successful company but you guys probably shouldn’t start adopting some sort of view that Dell, HP, Microsoft et cetera are “on the ropes” and are falling apart.

I’m invested in Apple and am glad that I am, but HP, Dell, and Microsoft all make a lot of money.

Dell especially can’t be said to be ran by idiots, Dell came out of nowhere, ran by a guy who basically put it together in his garage in the late 80s. I have a lot of respect for Dell because they aren’t Apple, HP or IBM. By the time Dell started to really get big, they didn’t have the “advantages” of those three companies (namely that those three companies were pioneers of sorts, in their respective fields.) Dell came into a very saturated market and made itself a household name, that isn’t easy to do.

That’s akin to me starting a car company in my garage tomorrow and 20 years from now having it mentioned along with GM and Ford.

[Martin_Hyde]

I should also mention that in almost every market it is in, Apple is not first in market share, meaning that obviously people compete with Apple very competitively in terms of competition for number of customers.

The iPhone has never and probably will never command #1 market share, not because it isn’t a great smartphone but simply because of the technology involved. iPhones are essentially “embedded” devices, they are Apple hardware running Apple software, they only come out with a new version every year or so and they come as is. For a lot of people it’s great, it’s a pioneer in its field. However Android can be ran on tons of different phones, that’s why it has become so popular so quickly.

Mac’s small market share is so well known it isn’t much worth expanding on.

However, the thing to keep in mind is Apple mostly operates on the model of trying to maximize margin on units sold. Much of their competition tries to maximize units sold. This means in both the computer and the smartphone market Apple probably never will have the largest market share. Their business model is all about being able to get a high margin. Compare it to Android, well, Google doesn’t even sell the hardware so they are right away making way less money than Apple does. Google gets a cut of software sold through their version of the app store, but unlike Apple they aren’t making a profit off of the phone hardware being sold.

If you look over to China, where Android is becoming king, you see the problems with Google’s strategy. Since the Android operating system is open source, developers in China have basically created a version of Android totally separate from the Google controlled ecosystem, meaning it will be firmly controlled by Chinese business and Google will see little to no profit even if its phone OS has the largest market share in China.

That’s not the kind of thing Apple would ever do, Steve Jobs wouldn’t care if the iPhone was the best selling phone in China if it meant Apple didn’t make any money from it.

[Todderbob]

@Martin_Hyde

Apple’s a very successful company but you guys probably shouldn’t start adopting some sort of view that Dell, HP, Microsoft et cetera are “on the ropes” and are falling apart.

I’m invested in Apple and am glad that I am, but HP, Dell, and Microsoft all make a lot of money.

Dell especially can’t be said to be ran by idiots, Dell came out of nowhere, ran by a guy who basically put it together in his garage in the late 80s. I have a lot of respect for Dell because they aren’t Apple, HP or IBM. By the time Dell started to really get big, they didn’t have the “advantages” of those three companies (namely that those three companies were pioneers of sorts, in their respective fields.) Dell came into a very saturated market and made itself a household name, that isn’t easy to do.

That’s akin to me starting a car company in my garage tomorrow and 20 years from now having it mentioned along with GM and Ford.

See, I think Dell was pretty sweet, is okay (on par, maybe a bit better than HP)… But Sony is other major player on my list (with google and Microsoft), because Sony is really trying to vertically integrate in the same way that Apple is. There’s a “Sony store” much like the Apple store.

[jz78817]

And if I have numerous FW800 peripherals, then the VAIO loses.

in terms of the market as a whole, you don’t matter.

No one gives a shit, except the people who are buying iMacs in record numbers.

record numbers for iMacs. record numbers for desktop PCs? hardly.

If Dell and HP don’t compete with the iMac simply because they don’t give a shit, they’re run by idiots. But we sort of knew that already, didn’t we?

desktop PCs outsell desktop Macs by a factor of 9 to 1. I think they know what they’re doing.

I don’t know, why did you buy one? What $999 laptop has an 8-bit panel? Should’ve paid the extra $200 if you wanted a nicer screen, the MacBook is the cheapest Apple laptop for a reason.

a piece of shit is worth more money because it has an Apple logo?

You are exaggerating. For people who need it, Firewire is not an arbitrary criteria.

and for people who don’t need it, it’s worthless. but Mac advocates will insist that any non-Mac PC must have some form of 1394 in order for the comparison to be “faaaaaiiiiiir.”

You’re seriously saying that other manufacturers could compete with Apple feature-for-feature, but simply choose not to sell anything with the same configuration?

I guess so. but I’m not convinced that “What Apple offers” is the gold standard that everyone else must measure up against.

Or maybe you’re just wrong.

possibly. but since I’m not the one pledging allegiance to a multi-billion-dollar corporation that doesn’t even know that I exist, I’ll gladly take being wrong over being a feeble-minded, middle-school trendwhore.

[Martin_Hyde]

Getting off topic but I should mention I loathe HP, even though I think (at least until they fired their CEO) they were doing great business wise the last few years.

I’ve had nothing but horrifying problems out of HP laptops and desktops (I had several through a small business program they offered), their support was also terrible.

Based on studies I’ve seen on laptop three year failure rates, it was about what I expected. Asus ranked highest (best), HP was horrible and so was Acer (I had no preconceptions about Acer and have never owned their products.) Apple and Toshiba were right around the same and Dell was slightly behind them.

[Chimera]

Geez, this would be a useful discussion without all the pointless and really fucking annoying detours into Apple boosting and Apple bashing. I honestly don’t give a flying fuck if any of you love or hate Apple or why.

Back to talking about tablets, please.

Anything else is useless threadshitting.

[Gary_Robson]

It appears to me that when people say, “iPads just aren’t useful and/or don’t solve any preexisting problems,” what they’re really saying is, “iPads don’t address my specific particular personal needs well.”

There are things that the iPad does very well that I use mine for constantly. There are other things (like using the SDMB) that it does, but awkwardly. A few things (like playing Flash games or running a full-powered word processor) it doesn’t do at all. For me, it blows Kindle out of the water as an e-reader because I tend to read indoors where the backlight is wonderful and there isn’t noticeable glare. If I read on the beach, I might feel differently.

The sales numbers alone demonstrate that it found a niche and filled it.

@astro

Apple is “designing” it’s own hard drives and CPUs vs buying them from OEMs? Really?

Apple has been designing things like disk controllers and drive electronics for decades. This is nothing new. I was part of a design team making custom drive chips and flex circuits for Apple in the early 1980s.

These days, semicustom chip design tools make it easy to drop a processor core on a piece of silicon and surround it with only the components you need (to keep power consumption down). You need to have some pretty serious quantities to make the unit price reasonable, but Apple certainly does.

As for the disk mechanics, they have the clout now to go to drive manufacturers and say, “make something to this spec.”

@Martin_Hyde

It doesn’t really seem to hold water to me that Apple is inventing new hardware. Apple’s creativity is in how it links that hardware together into a coherent whole, they aren’t an Intel or a Samsung.

The entire company was built on invention of new hardware. Sure, when they were new, it was a lot more cost effective to buy 6502s than try to design a CPU, but look at how much of one of their current devices is designed at Apple and manufactured custom for them.

@Martin_Hyde

In regards to the “Apple Tax” I think that is undeniable for Macintosh computers.

This is often stated as an absolute, but it isn’t always true. A nonprofit I work with recently quoted out a network for their offices (a half-dozen or so workstations and a server). Apple came in cheaper than Dell. Sure, you can get no-name, marginally-supported, or build-it-yourself Windows systems for much less than a Mac, but you can’t simply dismiss Macs out of hand as always being more expensive.

[Martin_Hyde]

@Chimera

Geez, this would be a useful discussion without all the pointless and really fucking annoying detours into Apple boosting and Apple bashing. I honestly don’t give a flying fuck if any of you love or hate Apple or why.

Back to talking about tablets, please.

Anything else is useless threadshitting.

I’d agree we’re off topic but I think a reasonable person would say this topic has run its course. The answer to the OPs question came a long time ago: because the company’s involved think the 7" form factor is one in which they can make a lot of money and be competitive.

There’s a list of reasons, most of which have already been listed:

1. 7" is more portable so it has the potential to be a true replacement for devices like the 6" Kindle, or even smartphones which are pushing 5" in some cases now.

2. The operating system most of them are running doesn’t scale up well to 10" at the moment, and they wanted to ship a product fast because they don’t want to wait for however long it will be before an OS exists that will work for a larger form factor. In reality Android was never designed to be a tablet OS, Google Chrome OS was actually supposed to be the OS for that form factor (and still is, whenever it is released) so the use of Android in that form factor is a stop gap measure.

3. These things are all using very high quality, fancy screens, a 10" device is totally doable by Samsung or Sony but they’ll be almost as expensive as the iPad, it seems like most of these guys think they’ll be able to move units by being able to compete with the iPad on price. 7" screen is cheaper and these people might be banking that users will be happy with that.

4. This article (first page of Googling “why so many 7” tablets btw) explains it all pretty well.

Just because Steve Jobs says 7" tablet is a bad form factor doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of money to be made there. Jobs also said netbooks suck and the companies making those have made billions of dollars since he said that.

[Martin_Hyde]

@Gary "Wombat" Robson

As for the disk mechanics, they have the clout now to go to drive manufacturers and say, “make something to this spec.”

You don’t need clout to do that, you just need to be willing to pay for it. Clout doesn’t mean Apple is getting their boutique orders shipped to them for less per unit than the competition, doesn’t matter how many units you’re buying if you’re buying a custom ordered product and everyone else is buying a mass produced product yours is going to cost more.

[Fenris]

I’d love an iPad–I’d run out and buy one in a heartbeat–if it had slightly more features. I don’t get how they could be so stupid as to not allow a simple USB port. I honestly don’t get it. My freakin’ DVD player has a USB port for flash-drives…how could the iPad not?

[Martin_Hyde]

@Gary "Wombat" Robson

The entire company was built on invention of new hardware. Sure, when they were new, it was a lot more cost effective to buy 6502s than try to design a CPU, but look at how much of one of their current devices is designed at Apple and manufactured custom for them.

Sorta, but I think what people are saying is Apple isn’t doing anything revolutionary with CPUs. Sure, they may order a slightly modded version of a mass produced CPU, but they don’t have electrical engineers designing whole new architectures from the ground up. Maybe I’m being too specific, but I don’t think different iterations of the same thing is the same as what Intel or AMD does.

What is it in your standard iPhone that is truly revolutionary? The screen? Well, no, anyone can order a capacitive touch screen of that size. The processor? Well, no, we’ve already covered that. Sure Apple’s A4 is a little bit different, but you can get the same performance out of a mass produced CPU. The operating system? Well, actually yes. iOS was revolutionary, but that’s software, not hardware.