Posted on 02/25/2011 4:55:31 PM PST by Swordmaker
The tablet war between Apple and Google is only just getting warmed up, but it’s going to take time before it becomes a full-scale conflict. Apple’s iPad has a good 10-month head-start over Google Honeycomb tablets, the first of which became available only yesterday. Motorola’s Xoom is the initial soldier in the Android army, and other Honeycomb tablets from LG, Samsung, Acer and others will soon enlist. So we’re sure to see a regiment or two join up with Android, but you can’t win a war solely with infantrymen. You need supporting personnel as well, and in this case, that means third-party developers. We’re only in the second day of the siege, but a quick scan of the Android Market shows a scant 16 tablet apps.
It’s great that the new Android Market has a section highlighting Android apps for tablets, but the shelves are definitely a little bare. There’s a good reason for this: It was only a few weeks ago that Google released the software toolkit for developers to write Honeycomb tablet apps. Mobile app programmers simply haven’t had time to digest the new features — and the APIs to use them — in Google’s operating system for tablets. However, I suspect there are actually more than 16 apps optimized for tablets. The Earthquake app, for example, is tablet-optimized, but doesn’t appear in the list above. Perhaps developers need to mark their app as “tablet ready” for inclusion this area of the store.
The tablet apps I’ve used — CNN, Pulse, Cordy and Accu Weather, among others — all do take advantage of the larger screen and new controls that Honeycomb provides. So from an end-user perspective, these apps are on the right track to help Google tablets compete against the iPad. There just aren’t enough of them yet, and that means potential buyers will primarily judge devices based on apps designed for the smaller screen. Unfortunately, the experience is generally a turn-off for some of the top-tier titles right now. Facebook’s home screen looks silly due to tiny icons on a relatively huge display. Twitter’s text is small and hard to read. And even the popular Angry Birds game appears slightly less crisp and more blocky on the Xoom’s 1280×800 resolution display. Both the native Google Books, as well as Amazon’s Kindle app do work well, so the e-book reading experience, at least, is solid.
Will developers adjust their software to run on Google tablets? Of course they will, although Google should have worked with key development partners to have apps ready in advance of the first Honeycomb tablet launch, like Apple did. That didn’t appear to happen, so fixing the situation now is going to take time and effort. This means Android won’t win (or even be competitive in) the tablet war in the short term. For the time being, Apple and its 60,000 iPad apps (as of last month), have a huge lead in terms of developer and consumer interest. Google’s going to have to put much more effort into mustering the troops if it wants to be more competitive in the tablet wars.
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For most apps, it will take a day or two to reformat the CSS, and rescale graphics for these apps.
A few more days of lab trials to make sure it looks good, and out the door they go.
when they have a $99 ipad-clone that can display a pdf I will be quite interested.
Hey Joe, I like it... great troll!
I'm going to guess not much -- 12 of the 16 apps listed are also on iPad.
I don't know... haven't tried it. Anybody?
If anyone wants to try out the Android tablet OS, you can download it as a Java based SDK.
http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-3.0.html
Not sure if 3.0 has app market pre-installed, I’m still playing around with Froyo,
so then to try the android app market...
http://lifehacker.com/#!5588884/enable-the-android-market-when-trying-out-android-on-your-pc
It may sensitive to the implementation language.
Much of Android is coded in Java.
|:^)
Bed, Bath & Beyond recently cleared out the Sharper Image Literati for $40, and they're all over eBay for $60. It's a thoroughly mediocre e-book reader, but I think it's capable of displaying PDFs.
Thanks I’ll check it out. I am a musician and looking for an inexpensive ipad type device to attach to a mic stand and display lyrics. The screen size would need to be as large as an ipad for me to see the lyrics. Bands are doing that now with ipads but I have no intention of blowing that kind of money for that purpose.
There is a $149 clone running Android 2.1 out that can view pdfs out already.
7” screen though.
Augen Electronics
Gentouch78
Also, the Nook Color can be rooted to run Android on dual boot, which is pretty cheap.
There are only 16 special android apps, for tablets, but you can use any of the existing android apps on android tablets, even if they aren’t written specifically for tablets.
Wandered into Best Buy tonight — first thing I noticed was a display showing bundles of items. These turned out to be the Amazon Kindle (also have seen it at Target, Staples, and other places) and B&N Nook (also have seen the Nook at Bed Bath & Beyond).
Apple’s development path with the iPod has been to intro new iterations at the old price but with more capability, while migrating new models with the older capabilities down into the lower end of the market, thus owning the whole works. There’s no room at the top where there are thicker margins, because Apple owned those first.
I think I got fusion installed successfully but then it wanted something about vmware tools>install virtual machine, yucky black screen like pc dos, can't get that to work. Plus I'm not sure the registration took and I'm not a student, retired, keep putting other, I don't know.
I tried to install my CD version of Windows XP, has 3 disks, picked the one for office, has two choices for keys and hung up on me. So think that isn't going to work.
One of my favorite apps isn't going to work if I purchase and install Windows 7 which apple recommended, but cnet explains that in some ways Win XP was better.
Then it looks like it only supports McAfee whereas I have Norton, and my isp said I could install it on two machines but not until I get some version of Windows installed, can't really afford the $199 right now for Win 7 Pro.
Sometimes if I sit on it, it comes to me what to try next, looked at some youtube videos; not all are for fusion, but I'm too confused and the few I did find, the guy is way ahead of me. I can't get at any of my pc backups with my photos I need for an insurance claim, and mac won't accept my external hard drives where I've backed them up. They want them formatted for mac. If I do that, I'll lose the data on them.
Then I have lots of apps to install if I ever get it up and running. I hated this mac at first but liked the nice big screen and fine for surfing, was even able to make a youtube video using Lightroom 3 and iPhoto. Finally got used to the keypad, but still can't get my mouse the way I want. I can't get the scroll ball to double click, know it can be done, plus when I right click on a graphic, it will copy the location but won't show it to me like the properties worked on my pc. I did dl and install an exif viewer, it works, but I have to save the photo and drag it over the camera icon on the dock. All very frustrating. I don't expect anybody to walk me through all this, but I'm stuck. And I want to uninstall the partial Win XP that shows up, think it's too old and doesn't have service pack 2 anyway which I need.
>Android Tablet specific apps = 16
>iOS specific apps = 60,000
Number of times in a minute that android powered devices can give you the error:
“android.process.acore has stopped”
...rendering your device unusable and necessitating a wipe and reinstall...
...60,000.
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