On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 4:33 PM, Brad Midgley <bmidgley@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Mark > >> The Apple iPad: Yawn... a huge iPod Touch/iPhone that can't possibly >> fit in anyone's pocket. Really? > > It should set a decent baseline for a good looking tablet with nice > battery life. We know android and maemo could move into this space and > deliver a great experience with something that is more generally > useful than iPad (multitasking apps, background processes, no need to > jailbreak, usb host, etc.) > > -- > Brad Midgley > Nobody has yet been able to successfully market anything with that form factor. They've been trying for many years now. The problem is that it's _far_ too much of a compromise; they don't have the power of a laptop (or even a netbook), and they don't have the portability of a smartphone. Battery life is far from the most crucial issue. It's just never going to happen. Sure, just because it's an Apple there are a lot of fanboys who will buy it initially, but it will never have the compelling attraction of the iPhone in the overall market. So _let_ apple dominate a market that nobody wants, and let Maemo and Android concentrate on what they do well, not a market that will never be very profitable. ...Although there was one similar product at CES that shows a little promise: stuff a full netbook into a keyboardless tablet form factor, then give it a clamshell housing with keyboard that turns it into an actual netbook. Then if you _really_ only need the tablet form factor for a given situation that's all you would have to take, but if you need to actually type and/or have a full netbook you can have that too. I guess someone could come up with an aftermarket product that would do the same thing for the iPad, except it would still be crippled by its smartphone-equivalent innards and couldn't compete with the real thing. I can't imagine that there will be a huge market for that either, but it seems more realistic than the iPad alone to me. (I realize that the Apple bluetooth keyboards are very svelte and usable, but transporting separate pieces is always a hassle, not to mention having to replace or recharge a second set of batteries.) IMO the upcoming crop of slim netbooks with convertible touchscreens have a much better chance of success. They aren't giving up anything while actually adding functionality/usability. Whatever.... feel free to pursue the cumbersome tablet market, but I think it's better to master the current project before striking out in a new direction. Mark _______________________________________________ maemo-users mailing list maemo-users@xxxxxxxxx https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users
