I’ve never heard of Andy Lark before, but his debut into my stream of consciousness couldn’t have been a bigger blunder.
I was reading an article on AppleInsider about Dell and HP execs trash talking Apple and iPad because I usually get a bit of amusement from their subjective ramblings (and HP certainly hit the status quo), but Andy Lark of Dell was another beast altogether. To quote the article:
“Apple is great if you’ve got a lot of money and live on an island. It’s not so great if you have to exist in a diverse, open, connected enterprise; simple things become quite complex,” Lark added.
According to Lark, the high cost of additional accessories for the iPad makes the tablet inaccessible. “An iPad with a keyboard, a mouse and a case [means] you’ll be at $1500 or $1600; that’s double of what you’re paying,” he said. “That’s not feasible.”
Speaking of having a lot of money and living on an island, Andy must fit that description if he blows upwards of $1000 on only a keyboard, mouse, and tablet case. Is his case diamond-encrusted or something?
And what’s this about buying a mouse for a multi-touch device? iOS is built entirely around touch technology; it wasn’t designed for point-and-click like a PC operating system. Why the hell would you use a mouse on your iPad? I can understand keyboards if you want to sit down and type out a long document on your iPad when you’re not on the go, but really Dell? Mice? How out of touch (haha get it?) with tablet computing are you?
So, we can dismiss the price of a mouse as the conjurations of an idiot. That leaves a supposed $1000 price take for a keyboard and mouse. Let’s see…
An iPad keyboard dock is $69.00 USD. An Apple wireless keyboard is also $69.00 USD. A polyurethane iPad smart cover is $39.00 USD. A leather iPad smart cover is $69.00 USD. This means you’ll be paying at most ~$140 for the iPad accessories that were listed. Sounds like Andy needs to go back and re-take grade school math, because I’ll bet the kitchen sink that “1000 = 140” is a false equation.
Maybe I should give him some slack. After all, Andy might have been referring to the most expensive iPad model (listed at $829), rather than the entry $500. Oh wait, “700 = 140” isn’t right either.
I understand the necessity for PR folks to demonstrate why consumers should go to them instead of their competitor, but going after iPad’s price tag is stupid when your company isn’t able to compete and it’s especially stupid to completely botch the data/use case when you do.
(Source: appleinsider.com)
So some fellow named Preston Gralla wrote up a Xoom vs. iPad 2 blog post over on Computer World.
To be frank, this is one of the more brutally awful hack blogs I’ve seen lately. It was so bad that I actually am doing something I pretty well never bother to do: blog a response.
“The Chrome-like browser built into Xoom trumps the Safari running on the iPad 2. Xoom’s browser sports tabs, will sync bookmarks with PC, Mac, and Linux versions of Chrome, and uses a single box for typing URLs and searching.”
Safari on iOS allows up to 8 simultaneous pages perfectly fine, with an interface that functions just as well as tabs can on a tablet device. Not sure how many simultaneous tabs Xoom can support, but if you can handle making use of more than 8 at once on a tablet without it becoming a sorry mess, I salute you and wish you the best of luck with your Xoom.
Safari for iOS also supports bookmark syncing, and having the address bar and search bar combined is generally inconsequential in terms of functionality, although admittedly a more streamlined implementation.
“Xoom, of course, will be able to play Flash relatively soon. The iPad 2 will never do it. Clearly, being able to run Flash is better than being banned from running Flash.”
Actually, what’s considered “better” will vary from person to person. As a web developer and advocate for open web standards, I believe Apple’s approach of pushing HTML5 instead of Adobe Flash is better for the growth of the web. Also, the blistering growth of HTML5-compatible H.264 is starting to render the “I can’t watch online videos without Flash!” issue moot. I won’t even get into performance, stability, security, and battery life issues associated with Adobe Flash on mobile devices.
“When you buy an iPad 2, you’ll be subject to the whims of what Apple wants you to download and doesn’t want you to download. Want to be able to get information from the WikiLeaks site using an app, for example? Don’t try doing it on your iPad 2 —- Apple has banned any app from letting you do that. It bans plenty of other apps as well. With the Xoom, you can download and use any app you want.”
I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just open Wikileaks from Safari and create a homepage shortcut. Ta-da, Wikileaks on your home screen. Apple doesn’t allow apps that present nothing other than web content specifically for this reason — they don’t want to clutter up the App Store with crap that you can just do with Safari. Speaking of crap, that’s pretty much all you’ll find in the wild west style mobile app stores like the Android Market, unless you get lucky and find a legit app instead of a malware-stuffed clone. It’s also a joke and a half to see someone try to take swipes at what is undeniably the most popular and successful mobile app store on the market based on the business model that made said market so popular in the first place.
“Finally, the Xoom’s built-in apps such as Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Calendar still trump anything built into the iPad 2. and using the Xoom’s Tegra 2 chip, you get nifty new features, such as vector graphics and 3D rendering in Google Maps.”
iOS has Apple Mail (which includes support for Gmail on top of any other email accounts you may have), Google Maps, and iCal. Preference between Google Calendar or iCal is really dependant on which ecosystem you make use of: Apple’s or Google’s. Apple Mail is far and beyond superior to only Gmail alone, and Google Maps is.. well.. Google Maps.
Will some people prefer having Adobe Flash and a more Google-centric ecosystem over the iPad 2? Of course. If you feel like the Xoom is a better fit for you, by all means snag one. However, the horribly unsubstantiated “X is better than Y because I feel like saying it is” remarks that plague Preston’s write-up do not constitute a good argument when arguing one product is “better” than the other. Especially when he ignores a lot of the drawbacks that are associated with the Xoom. Price was never mentioned, for one. Neither was there a comparison of the app stores for iOS vs. Android short of spewing some propaganda about how you’re “subjected to the whims of Apple,” although I touched on it a bit.
Blows my mind how some people are able to get jobs writing blogs like that one.
UPDATE: It’s a lot of fun reading through the comments on his blog. Glad to know I’m not the only one who thought it was a joke.
How Korea, a onetime digital trendsetter, became a laggard in an era of smartphones—and amazing apps.
