iPad 2 - what's the latest buzz - heard anything?

[The Doctor]

Extrapolating out from a single, rushed release to all the upcoming competitors isn't going to tell you much.

Why not? All the various competitors have had a year of more to counter the iPad. So far we have one rushed release and a hot air balloon's worth of vapor.

Because to do so is to ignore the specifics.

Flash was missing from the Xoom at launch, Adobe will be putting out Flash for Honeycomb in 2 days (a beta already leaked out). The 4G upgrade will be in less then 90 days. Honeycomb was obviously not complete due to a few missing features (SD card support for instance), I wouldn't expect more then a month or two for those to be resolved. Same with general bug fixes, etc.

Most of the Android tablets will be coming out in June... at which point all of these issues will already be dealt with. Maybe there will be other issues, we don't know, but there's no reason to expect other tablets to be as rough as the Xoom which was obviously pushed out before it was ready to beat the iPad2 to market. So considering the specific issues and their reasons with the Xoom, why do you think it is representative of all non-Apple tablets?

I see plenty of 'will be' and 'in the future' when anyone talks about how Android on the tablet isn't a huge failure. The various vendors have been promising an iPad-caliber experience for more than a year now and have, so far, failed to deliver. Even if the Xoom had actually shipped with the features promised, the biggest failure of Android is the developer and application support that the iPad has garnered. iTunes and the App Store are un-matched in the Android world and I'm really not convinced of the utility of an Android-based tablet that can't provide the same app and media experience as iPad.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I agree that Android tablets still have a lot of catching up to do if they want to even match the iPad, much less surpass it. Other vendors just can't seem to match Apple's efforts, which is a bit silly considering Android has so much support. There is really no excuse, I think the major players entering this market are just fucking clueless and not committed.

 

[Arrqh]

There certainly is a lot of catching up to do, not just from Android but all the other competitors in this space. However, this is still a very young market and we have a long way to go before things really solidify. There's a lot of "will be" and "in the future" because Android hasn't failed in the tablet space yet; it hasn't even really begun.

Google, HP and RIM are all a year behind Apple when it comes to applications and they all have an uphill battle... but it's a battle that they are all going to fight. Declaring Apple's complete and intransigent dominance in the tablet space is premature and short sighted. We're at the start of the tablet wars, not the end.

 

[The Doctor]

It's certainly not over by any stretch. However, it's also true that the various Android vendors have failed to provide a compelling alternative to the iPad. Adobe contributed to that fail with the release of Flash 10.2, along with some very interesting caveats:

- 480p video is smooth, but only on dual-core phones and tablets
- The browser is unresponsive when Flash is being used
- 720p video is a no-show and will be enabled 'in the future.'

What a joke. Wasn't Flash supposed to provide a 'desktop' experience for phones and tablets?

http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/18/flash-10-2-hits-android-today-adobe-hopes-for-viewable-720p-pla/

It's been over a year since Flash was released for Android, and all we've heard from Adobe is that the features that people want will be enabled 'in the future.' No wonder Apple passed on a Flash implementation for iOS. It doesn't work and it appears like it never will.

 

[Tom Hendricks]

I'm not a flash hater but I don't miss it at all on my iPhone and iPad. Once in a while I will hit a website that needs it, but other then that I never notice it missing.