I'm still pretty shocked at how everyone and their grandma is trying to elbow their way into the tablet market. They don't understand that there is no tablet market. There's only an iPad market.
The iPad wins because Apple is able to pull off a truly beautiful interface (and I mean truly beautiful, not beautiful in "marketing term of the week" sense that it's being used in these days) that's consistent with the iPhone, a sexy display and overall presentation, and the very high quality of apps in the marketplace. The magical Apple brand lust doesn't hurt either.
Generic tablets won't win because nobody ever thought to themselves, "Even though I have a powerful smartphone in my pocket and a powerful laptop at my desk, I feel the indescribable urge to have a third device that's very expensive, isn't as good as either one, and that I can't fit in my pocket."
I never bought a tablet because after toying with an iPad and some random Android tablet I realized I would never use it in real life. All of my friends who have iPads or Android tablets say the same; they play with them once or twice a week, but otherwise they gather dust at the expense of smartphones and laptops.
Everyone wants to copy Apple and make billions, but they just don't get it that people don't care about tablets. They only care about iPads, and that kind of brand loyalty isn't something you can copy.
The one area where tablets beat all other devices is reading digital comics. The screen size and resolution are just right. The touch interface is just right.
For just about any activity I can think of, tablets are second-best at best (reading eBooks, watching movies, web browsing), but for digital comics it really is the best way to do it.
Apparently, people do not like walking around all day round with all those best of breed devices (a eBook reader, a full-size cinema, and a desktop PC with three 30" monitors) and/or cannot afford to.
I think smartphones are in the same situation: those sub-optimal tablets beat them for reading eBooks, watching movies, web browsing. One could even argue smartphones aren't even best of class for making phone calls. Yet, almost everybody owns one.
From tablet sales, it looks like people want to sacrifice some portability to get a 'big screen smartphone' in exchange for that bigger screen.
I use a Thinkpad Tablet. I find it absolutely perfect for studying. Switching between course text (pdf) and note taking app (I use a stylus) with the occasional browser search for more info. Oh, and a Scheme Repl for quick tests. And TED talks for time out.
I find that a tablet built for stylus use is a fantastic learning aid. So I guess I'm in the non existant market group that prefers non Apple tablets.
I don't think tablets can become primary computers until data is owned and controlled by the user, not by the apps. I don't know what the correct interface is for this, but I need the ability to create a document in any particular app and open it in another app that supports the document type. And I need to be able to share (and receive) the documents with other computers.
What you want is available now in Android. For example, I currently have 3 office suites installed on my Transformer tablet to test which one would be best as a daily driver. So, when I open Dropbox and click on some Word doc, there will be a pop-up window asking me which one of the 3 word processors should open it. I can get the same sort of thing with any image files, text files, etc: options to open the file with whatever app can handle it.
Sending/sharing files works similarly. Go to send an image file and you'll get the option to attach it to an email, send it via twitter, put it in Facebook, send it via mms (if your device is a phone), put it in Dropbox, incorporate it into a note in Evernote, etc. Third party programs will add the options to send it to network shares or ftp.
Android lets you have access to your filesystem from the tablet / phone itself, so you can have that level of control if you want it. Most tablets / phones come with a very basic file manager and more advanced ones are a quick download away. If you would prefer to do everything from a command line shell, this is also available.
Android doesn't lock down the user the way an iPad does.
That's not what I'm looking for. Your data is still owned by an app, in your case Dropbox (from the perspective of your tablet experience). Note that you must first go into an app (Dropbox) and push it to another app. You can't do the opposite, you can't pull. You can't, from Dropbox, pull in a document created in App X. If you're lucky App X has a "share" feature that you can send to Dropbox but that is not guaranteed.
A lot of people think the file system metaphor is a bad one, but I can't think of an alternative that keeps the user in control of their own data.
Did you rip that comment directly from John Gruber? When someone repeats the tired old "there is no tablet market. There is only an iPad market." gem without noting it as a quote...I truly wonder if they think that clever nugget is an original thought. It isn't. It's also hilarious given the actual break-down of the market.
people don't care about tablets. They only care about iPads
This is the same sort of boring noise we heard when the iPhone temporarily dominated.
People care about being able to browse the web, view movies and other content, access emails, etc. The iPad happens to be a very good solution to those needs, but if you miss the mark and think that the product is more important than the needs that it solves, you're really far off the mark.
It's funny that people turn into an iOS versus Android thing -- spurred on by the linkbait title -- when really the author simply doesn't have a utility for tablets. Their core argument is that the tablet doesn't have a role in their life, and almost all of their argument holds for the iPad as well. I disagree, but to each his own I suppose.
No, I don't read Gruber, and actually I strongly dislike Apple. But it's a comment that seems obvious to me. When was the last time any non-geek person said, "I can't wait to buy that new Samsung Galaxy tablet?" (Replace that brand with any non-iPad brand.) When was the last time you saw one in the wild, outside of Silicon Valley? When has anyone ever said, "Damn I really want a tablet computer" instead of "Damn I really want an iPad?"
On the other hand when was the last time you saw a regular human in a Starbucks with an iPad? I've seen iPads in the most unlikely of places, like small cafes in rural Mexico (no kidding). Likewise I've never in my life seen any other tablet computer in public, anywhere. Anecdotal sure, but Apple's sales versus other tab's sales back that anecdote up to some extent.
Tablet computers have been tried before, too, and didn't stick. Remember the MS tablet a decade ago? You can excuse it for poor hardware or poor software, but that's part my point--iPad has all that wrapped up, and everyone else is still struggling on both fronts while Apple is running circles around them. That's why there is no tablet market.
I hope you realize that's a non-sequitor. The hypothesis was people only care about the iPad - not tablets. Which is laughable because a significant proportion of the market cares about non-iPad tablet.
What does profit have to do with what people care about?
>>play with [Xpads] once or twice a week, but otherwise they gather dust at the expense of smartphones and laptops.
For the first time in my life, I happily read books on a screen -- on my iPad 3. I literally read from it for at least one hour a day. I love Instapaper. This needs the big screen for e.g. pdf formatting.
I have utility apps like e.g. sketching UIs (Adobe Proto), organisation and note taking, but those aren't game changers for me. (When the iPad ssh applications get a bit better, there might be another game changer.)
The iPad wins because Apple is able to pull off a truly beautiful interface (and I mean truly beautiful, not beautiful in "marketing term of the week" sense that it's being used in these days) that's consistent with the iPhone, a sexy display and overall presentation, and the very high quality of apps in the marketplace. The magical Apple brand lust doesn't hurt either.
Generic tablets won't win because nobody ever thought to themselves, "Even though I have a powerful smartphone in my pocket and a powerful laptop at my desk, I feel the indescribable urge to have a third device that's very expensive, isn't as good as either one, and that I can't fit in my pocket."
I never bought a tablet because after toying with an iPad and some random Android tablet I realized I would never use it in real life. All of my friends who have iPads or Android tablets say the same; they play with them once or twice a week, but otherwise they gather dust at the expense of smartphones and laptops.
Everyone wants to copy Apple and make billions, but they just don't get it that people don't care about tablets. They only care about iPads, and that kind of brand loyalty isn't something you can copy.