RIM's iPad-competing BlackBerry PlayBook will launch for $499 on April 19 - Page 2

Weve heard about this iPad killer for so long and we still have little real world information on the device that I think those eggs have long since rotted.

7" sucks. At first it's cool and hip and fits everywhere, then you get bored because you can't do much with it, it feels just like an oversized phone. And the plasticky feel. Eww. There's a reason there aren't massive (or any!) queues for the Tab and Xoom and whatever Engadget et al says is the latest and greatest.

Good username.

Exactly

Forget Apple's advantage of tight integration of Software and Hardware - Apple's innovation of having dynamic CPU speed on the A5 is going to be tough to replicate quickly for everyone else. And without dynamic CPU speed, there is no way even Apple can boast of the 10-hour battery life - despite the vastly improved CPU specs. Remember, this is an innovation that is not even present in Intel's desktop line, despite the massive R&D effort that goes into this.

I wonder if it is actually possible for Apple to patent this particular technology of the A5. If Apple succeeds in patenting this, then they will be even stronger than they are now! This is the sort of technology that will allow Apple to build quad-core or even faster chips, but still be very energy efficient. I can't wait to see what impact the A5 will have on the Apple TV!

My guess is that if there is some way to run the iPad at a constant 1GHz CPU speed, the battery life would be down to below 5 hours. I am calculating this based on the fact that the old iPad has exact same software, and almost the same capacity battery, and a much slower CPU.

Battery life is going to be the Achilles heel of the Playbook. And this issue is going to be compounded by the fact that the Playbook will tether to the Blackberry - so you could potentially be out of battery on not just your Playbook, but also on your Blackberry. Now, wouldn't that be fun!

That's a smart move, taking preorders. They don't want to frustrate all their buyers with long lines and product shortages.

Doesn't say anything about swappable batteries, either. I thought that's what made Blackberries so "professional"! So either it doesn't have one, in which case the silence about it will show what hypocrites the whiners always were; or it does, and you get to carry around a 7" tablet and a 7" battery. Good deal!

Once again the press release touts Flash as an advantage over the iPad. At this point they either need to get a real non-beta version of Flash that works well or they need to shutup about it.

Never happen. They have the best of both worlds now. They get to tout a "feature" that the iPad doesn't have, but nobody has to actually use it, get mad, and throw their Tab or Xoom or PlayBook out the window. Win-win!

Here's what I would do if I were running RIM:

1. Switch to Android
2. Abandon the consumer market
3. Distinguish the DroidBerry as the Droid built for business. Make it more secure than all those other droid phones and provide blackberry e-mail (an important distinguisher for a lot of business clients). This is really the market that is being most underserved right now, particularly as MS continues to flounder.

There are probably at least 100,000 Apple hating BB corporate IT DHs that will buy it whether they need a tablet or not. But that won't even come close to breaking even for RIM.

They must already be losing money on each of these things. If they weren't, they'd undercut the price of the iPad.

Now, instead of touting the fact that it's cheaper than the iPad, "the same price as" won't have as much of an impact as they'd hope for.

I have a ipad2 2 wifi only and i found a way to use it outside the house without 3g.
"Instapaper" this app has been a life saver and i love how it is fully integrated into all my other devices(imac, iphone, ipad) i save all the articles i want to read and read them later offline on the ipad 2.
PRICELESS

Napkin math:

Screen area 47% of the iPad.

iPad has 28% more pixels; 28% more detail when viewing web pages in portrait mode.

Playbook volume: 15.5 cu. in.
iPad volume: 23.6 cu. in. (actually considerably less because of the taper)

Dual mics will be awesome for stereo transmission of a video call, when you have two people in the camera frame (as long as both ends are using video conferencing software that transmits and receives stereo). Because with stereo, and decent headphones, you could hear which person is talking without having to look at the screen OR remember what their voices sound like!*

* Only in landscape, I suppose?


I think battery will be fine unless they try to pretend it can run Flash

I'm sure sales of the PlayBook will be "smooth."

Your Korean is excellent

Success in the 7 inch pad market. Samsung has shown us exactly how big that market is.
"Quite small," plus or minus translation nuances and corporate spin.

Instapaper is a great hit. My daughter uses it on her iPod Touch all the time.

Too bad I will never, ever know.

Smaller screens are cheaper than big ones. If it was radically thiner than the iPad 2 you might have a point, but it is not, so you do not.

There are so many factors working against PlayBook making any money at all for RIM, but I'll only bring up three. And I'm not even going to use the words "infrastructure" or "mindshare."

First, Apple gets the best component prices due to their high purchase volume. This is because Apple uses many similar or identical components across the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Apple TV lines. Thus Apple has the best margins and therefore the best profits.

Some people say that the iPod touch is just an iPhone without the phone. I say it's a profitable way for Apple to further lower their component costs. iPod touch sales roughly equal that of iPhone, Apple benefits from economy of scale. You do the math.

Second, as Steve Jobs said, 7" tablets are tweeners. Too big to fit in a pocket, too small to allow comfortable typing, too big to use as a phone, too small to impress anyone when put next to an iPad 2. It doesn't matter what hot-rod (and I mean literally hot) CPU RIM solders onto the motherboard. 7" is a bad size.

Third, RIM will no doubt fall into the "market share above all else" trap. They will look for any way to inflate the number of units shipped, especially to high-profile clients. And that means giving PlayBooks away to said high-profile clients in large numbers.

RIM would be happy to pay for employee training and other costs incurred by their clients during the trial period. Many computer companies do this, just for bragging rights. All of which cut into any profits RIM would have made.

And don't forget that Dell is also trying to sucker corporate IT into using their Business Tablet. Appropriately running Windows 7, which is completely inappropriate for use on a pad. RIM will be competing against Dell in the "professional" market. And we all know that "professional" is a euphemism for "forced to use what the IT department tells employees to use."

Balsillie is completely giving up on the consumer market. RIM, like Microsoft, will end up milking the corporate market for all it's worth. And they'll use up any goodwill they had left in the process.

actually, competition does drive innovation... innovation, in this case, by Apple.

The FCC docs showed that RIM put in a slightly bigger battery --- it's now 5400 mah (instead of 5300 mah that was originally announced).

I think battery life is going to be fine, or else they won't have just increase the battery size by only 2%.

What's a DH?

I dont think that is a sound argument. They still have to work within comfortable size and weight for use. Maybe 2% was the maximum they were able to increase the battery without negatively affecting the feel of the physical product.

I like your post better than my own.

DaHarder? Is he buying all the Playbooks RiM can make? That guy!

The weight got 25 grams heavier. It was originally 400g, now it is 425g in the FCC docs.

You are right that there may be other factors involved --- but RIM was bashed on the battery issue so much that I think if there was a genuine battery life problem, they would have take the battery life issue priority over the depth size and weight.

I know this is OT for this thread...

I posted this to the end of a dead thread -- this one is active



.

Hey Dudes ad Dudas,

We just got 2 iPad 2s...

While the SmartCover is nice, it doesn't provide the protection that we have with Apple Cases for the iPad 1...

We've dropped the iPad 1s several times without incident -- the unattractive seam, around the edge of the Apple Case, provides an excellent cushion for falls.

What would you recommend for a 15-year-old girl (other than a Convent) and a harried mother of 3 teenagers (other than an asylum)?

Any suggestions will be appreciated!

TIA,

Dick

.


P.S. On Topic:

I haven't heard/read anything about AIR apps on the PlayBook recently -- AIR/Flash was, supposedly, one reason that the PlayBook needed 1 GB RAM.

It was supposed to provide much of the PlayBook UI and a base for installing loads of existing AIR apps.

Anyone hear anything?

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That backs up my argument. The raised over 6% and they were only able to increase the battery by 2%. I think that have made it better but I dont think it could come close to a non-Flash UI for the same HW. Then you include whatever extraction layers for running Android apps in C and Java and you get even worse performance.

QNX has put flash on 20 million cars and cars have a lot less CPU power and a lot less RAM than the tablets out there.

Web designers are web designers --- if they put in a "1 minute to load" splash page with h.264 flash video, then they are also going to put in a "1 minute to load" splash page with webm html5 video. The big problem is that webm ain't optimize much with hardware acceleration like h.264 flash video. You can see it if you have an old pc and you watch the same youtube video in both flash and webm formats --- the flash video is much smoother.

20 million cars have QNX with Flash UI --- and they usually have something like a 300-400mhz powerpc chip.

And in that context, battery life isn't remotely the concern that it is in a tablet.

Battery life is determined by CPU-usage. If the QNX CAR can have Flash UI running on a 300-400mhz powerpc cpu, then it is NOT going to suck massive CPU cycles on a dual ghz CPU.

20 million cars have 1 each very large battery and 1 each alternator/generator charging the battery while the car and Flash UI are in use.

A vehicle provides mobility -- it is not a mobile device!

Are you suggesting something like this as an auxiliary battery to allow the PlayBook to run Flash?



Mmmm....

Maybe Macromedia was prophetic in selecting the name Flash -- as in "your mobile battery power is gone in a Flash!"

You simply cant have a rational argument with that guy.

RIM had the Playbook at CES in January. The reviews were fairly positive, if I recall.

Thought they might have had the balls to post battery life and hit a lower price point seeing as its a complimentary device to a Blackberry phone. But, hey ho another player gets to market.

1) It will be interesting to watch RIMs financials to see just how profitable, even with a dramatically smaller and cheaper screen, the Playbook is with them.

2) It will be even more interesting to see how stillborn native apps are for it with their bone-headed decision to have an Android emulation layer. And I can't wait to see how emulated Android apps affect this things battery life too.

This thing has "train wreck" written all over it...

Yup, Apple invents new categories and companies try to innovate in new ways to compete.

Not that any have been particularly successful. But their innovating!