I’m very biased against WebOS. I got the Palm Pre Plus phone with WebOS and never imagined that it was possible to hate an OS as much as I hated that phone. I mean, it was quite literally enraging - as in to cause one want to destroy the phone. I paid a penalty to return the phone and go back to my origional phone (same carrier, just an older phone).
There has to be a compelling reason for a tablet to compete with the iPad. As a tablet is a highly mobile piece of equipment, the critical features are battery life, cost and developer support.
While the dual core is nice; the answers that are critical to the product are simply not there. What can the user expect in ‘real world’ terms of battery life? How does the display look? What applications are available?
For reference, in approximate numbers:
iOS apps ~500K
Android apps ~50K
WebOS apps ~1K
From what is available, the iPad competitors offer less application support, less memory, less features, shorter battery life, and yet somehow manage to cost more.
I’m just a silly engineer; but this doesn’t seem like a winning combination to me.
I’m a happy Android user. The SDK is free and
easy to use. There’s an app for everything I want
to do and far more than I have room to store on
the phone. iPhone was AT&T only when I wanted
a better smart phone. Droid was working on my
existing carrier. Simple choice. I won’t upgrade until
the smart phone of my choice has LTE with 3g
fallback on Verizon.
There has to be a compelling reason for a tablet to compete with the iPad.
You mean like price, because that is what it will be.
Apple is following the same pricing model as it uses for its laptops. Great little units, but they cost almost twice as much as an equivalent windows PC.
The iPad runs what...about $500-$800 depending on features? If the competing pads can come in the $300-$500 range, then they will get plenty of attention.
And yes, I know YOU would happily pay more for the “Apple quality,” but there are plenty of people for who price is a genuine concern.