Analyst: Apple can 'relax,' as Google Nexus 7 is 'just another' Android tablet - Page 2

No one knows. Apple surely wouldn't officially admit to a single one, and Google doesn't report numbers either. Additionally what qualifies an app as malware-infested? Is it when it does something that's not made transparent to the user such as harvesting contacts, calendars or other personal data without clear permission? 

 

I'm not impressed by big numbers. The only thing that matters to me when speaking about apps: does it have all the apps I need or want to use? I expect it to have excellent web browser, e-book reader, media player and map application. That's about it. I have much more broader requirements on my smart phone, which should have universal capabilities. But in case of tablet I don't need that much. And I think the same holds true for most people.

 

iPad is a great device, but for me it is not enough portable.

 

The Tegra 3 has 4 CPU cores (actually 5), the A5 has only 2 cores, so of course the Tegra will blow away the A5 in benchmark tests. Unfortunately, users don't pull out the CPUs and race them. They use the device and expect it to work smoothly. The iPad does.

 

Furthermore, the GPU in the A5 handily beats the Tegra 3. This is extremely important for iOS as a lot of processing is offloaded to the GPU to free up CPU cycles. This is the direction Apple is taking iOS, towards efficiency; GPUs offer more bang for the buck.

 

Don't get me wrong, having more CPUs can be better, but it doesn't automatically mean it WILL be be better. I think Apple believes this as well and they'll spend more time beefing up GPUs and other specialized processing units and only using marginally better CPUs as they're needed.

One of the goals of Jelly Bean was to make it more fluid, so they increased the FPS to 120.  I've been watching side-by-side comparisons with Ice Cream Sandwich and the difference is pronounced.

 

a hand full of good apps would be great for you, but you are a pretty small market, so the more great apps available the better the chances or helping more people out.

i own the new ipad & a 7 inch android tablet, i can tell you now, yeah, no great 7 inch optimized apps well no 10 inch optimized apps for that matter on android (if someone can tell me one, if like to know, get it & have a go), even things like fb are a joke, they are phone apps stretched out not taking advantage of anything, i like the small size for watching old standard def shows, the ipad is honestly the king of tablets i know that's obvious, but I'm trying not to be so bias, its very one sided with tablets, with phones, each to their own really, i like reliability smooth functionality, the echo system & no malware. but others don't care about such things & they can have it.

 

Maybe. But let's stipulate that this is the case. Almost no one has ever said "I wish my operating system was more advanced." People buy these devices to use the applications, not to use the devices themselves.

 

a hand full of good apps would be great for you, but you are a pretty small market, so the more great apps available the better the chances or helping more people out.

i own the new ipad & a 7 inch android tablet, i can tell you now, yeah, no great 7 inch optimized apps well no 10 inch optimized apps for that matter on android (if someone can tell me one, if like to know, get it & have a go), even things like fb are a joke, they are phone apps stretched out not taking advantage of anything, i like the small size for watching old standard def shows, the ipad is honestly the king of tablets i know that's obvious, but I'm trying not to be so bias, its very one sided with tablets, with phones, each to their own really, i like reliability smooth functionality, the echo system & no malware. but others don't care about such things & they can have it.

 

Agreed. This will appeal to Google enthusiasts who want the latest and greatest OS when it comes out. Most consumers in the market for a 7" tablet will be more tempted by the Kindle Fire, which has the content, customer loyalty and brand recognition. Honestly who buys or even knows that Google sells content other than people who follow Google?

 

People search, they go to Google.

People shop, they go to Amazon.

 

It's about using maximizing your brand.

 

 

More advanced?  If we are going to argue about specs, why is android choppy on supposedly "better" hardware than the iphone?  The responsiveness of android will never be up to par to the iphone, no matter how much they try to brute force it with "better" or "faster" hardware.  The only way to fix it is to rewrite the code so the ui and related actions are first class citizens.  Id argue the new ipad's A5X processor in combination of ios wins hands down in terms of ui responsiveness, which is important to the end user because it will "feel" faster (not to mention it has to render double the pixels for a ~10" retina display which android doesn't have).

 

http://www.redmondpie.com/heres-why-androids-ui-will-never-be-as-smooth-as-ios-or-windows-phone-7/

https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/2FXDCz8x93s

https://plus.google.com/100838276097451809262/posts/VDkV9XaJRGS

 

So until a software rewrite is in order... android will need supposedly "faster" hardware in order to achieve results (ui responsiveness) anywhere close to ios on idevices.  So to look at just the specs or just the os is kind of fallacious because both have to be considered for overall performance and responsiveness. 

Having a zillions cores, ram, ports, hacks, malware, doesnt nesisarlity make things better, its like having a muscle car & no roads to drive it on, get all the cpus & no apps of a incomplete OS to put on it, makes it silly

Edited by Zozman - 6/28/12 at 6:21am

Responsiveness (low latency) and intuitiveness (skeumorphism with strict design principles and attention to detail) aren't just features they are the hallmarks of quality for a modern user interface and are far more important than poorly implemented features on a marketing checklist.

Secondary only to the user interface are use cases with intuitive workflow. Can I listen to music? Can I listen to music while performing other tasks? How are the controls accessed? Are the controls sufficient for any non-professsional user but intuitive? How is new music purchased? Are link capabilities provided for apps and websites to send users to the music store? Is music accessible on all my devices on demand?
Edited by MacBook Pro - 6/28/12 at 6:39am

 

Which features? Sorry, but "features" are only of value to those that need them. So while one feature may be important to you, it might be meaningless to someone else. For instance, Apple's accessibility features are miles ahead of any other platform's, yet that feature is only useful to someone who's blind or otherwise handicapped. Furthermore, features are only meaningful when they're done right. Bolting and tacking on features just to say they're there isn't worth much if they're done half-assed. Microsoft products have always had more features than Apple's, but it was a mess and unintuitive to use them. Apple has always started products out simple and added things to them when they thought it could be done properly and be beneficial.

 

I would argue that iOS is much, much more advanced as a mobile platform than Android will ever be and it has nothing to do with "features." It has everything to do with architecture and ecosystem. Apple's vertical model offers them an unparalleled opportunity to create extremely efficient devices and offer 3rd parties a consistent platform to build products and services around.

 

There is nothing Android can offer me that would make my life any easier than I can already get from my iOS devices.

 

What does the price point have to do with it? At $199 I think it is priced attractively to compete with the iPad. If it fails to compete it will be for reasons like people wanting the Apple ecosystem or iOS, poor performance, a 7" (tabphonish) screen, poor hardware quality, etc. If Google is able to pull off a reasonable level of quality within those parameters it could be attractive to a variety of buyers. I just doubt it will be enough to do serious damage because it is competing on a different level—largely due to the screen size.

 

It might help quite a bit with some markets, such as parents looking for a cheaper tablet for their children.

 

 

Just wanted to point out—like others, I'm sure—that anyone shopping for products with a 'feature checklist' in their mind is going to be badly burned. At this point iOS and Android both have pretty rounded out feature collections so it comes down to ease of use, dependability, etc. And a feature checklist is completely blind to that consideration. At this point shopping on the feature checklist is as bad as shopping on blind hardware specifications (e.g. "Oooh! More cores! Must be faster!").

Ads dear boy, ads. Google wants to fire ads at you - like Facebook, it's the only way they make money.

 

Get the Microsoft Surface 7 for the kickstand (which I'm sure they patented cause it's such an awesome feature). 

 

Of course they weren't. Apple never worries about the other boys unless they are copying. They design as they design and they strive to make the best they can make. Period. 

 

And they add to that with very creative forms of 'advertising' like getting the textbook companies to join them in a massive initiative to make iPads way more desirable for schools. And it's working. 26k more units just this week from one school. Who knows how many more will pop up over the next few weeks or how many stores we'll discover are making the kids BYOD for this next year. 

Same margins as Amazon's for the Fire tablet.  

 

In fact this whole attempt is the exact same play as Amazon made with the Fire.  Loss-leading hardware to support media sales and advertisements. 

 

What people keep forgetting is that there is no evidence at all really that the Fire did well in the market place.  I see stories all the time that talk about how successful the Fire was, but there isn't any actual evidence of that fact.  All indications are that it did quite poorly.  

The big question is, we see iPads being integrated into schools, airlines, armed forces, hospitals etc.

The reason for this is the iPad is a secure device, you can't side load a load of crap onto it etc.

This is a top reason why the iPad is so popular in business, can anyone imagine using one of these in critical situation?

BTW I think the surface will also suffer from this untrusted status due the dire security history of MS and again the openness of the system.

 

That's what Google wants you to think. But we saw how well that tactic worked for Amazon with the Kindle Fire. this will likely be a repeat. At best they might take top marks for the Android tablets. 

 

As for your 'feature list' you aren't totally correct. A feature list can be just the way to buy a tablet, it all depends on what features you put on your list. If you are specs focused you could prove to be wrong about what is best. But 'easy to use UI' and such are features and very good ones to judge something over the specs or even the price. Which is possibly why so many folks are still buying iPads hand over while Samsung etc report 'shipped' but not 'sold' to make their numbers look close to the same while ignoring all the units collecting dust or being returned by unhappy customers. 

 

Same with cute tricks in an OS. I have a friend that jail broke his iPhone just so he could have icons that spin when he taps to open them. Really? That's the vital feature that made it worth the time to jailbreak your phone. Not doing FaceTime on 3g or something with some utility but spinning icons. 

Probably the same thing as Google's "in-house" Nexus phone. It runs stock Android. No big deal, really. 

 

it also helps that Apple has added features and services to make them more appealing, including the ability for a company to make internal apps and their own mini store that is 100% authorized by Apple etc. Apple themselves are a prime example. Those repair service, POS etc apps that they have were made internally, you can't buy those anywhere. That kind of support is huge for companies. And look at the whole textbook thing. What other company went out and convinced the publishers to not only go digital but to revamp their stuff with interaction and gave them the tools to do it (for free) AND convinced them to lower the prices plus offer them to the general public to buy for homeschooling or just interest reading. That whole "Life on Earth" book I think I bought for $4.99 and the additional chapters will be free (there's like 10 in it at the moment with another 10-15 planned). And I just got it for the kicks. 

Great, so now Apple can dribble out new features at their own leisurely pace as they release new generations, rather than have to go full in on improvements they have ready to go.  Hopefully Windows will like a fire under this market, but I have some doubts...
 

First, I wouldn't rely too much on public demos. There is a long history of someone demonstrating something that looks great, but that stinks when the final release product is out. Besides, we've been hearing that Android has no lag for years now - why should we believe someone who says that the new version has no lag? Why would it be any more true than the last 4 years that the claim was made?

Second, no doubt the demo was done on recent hardware. It's not that hard to make a demonstration quad core A15 with 2 GB of RAM look impressive. Let's try that on existing hardware.

Third, even if JB does look good, if history is any guide, only a few percent of users will be using it even 2 years down the road.

why do you care as a consumer what their margin is

Can you elaborate? More advanced how?

Ummm IOS 6 will have face time over Cellular.

Take a little while and think about why that's a silly question.

An Android App can do unseemly things with your personal information without jumping through any significantly more difficult hoops than an iOS app.

 

Say you buy a social networking App that includes a feature that allows you to send SMS updates to your buddies.  Of course, that App must report its ability to scan your contact list so that it can identify which buddies you want to receive those notifications.  That is a legitimate use of the information, and it will be reported by the current Android permission notification system at install time.  You know that is a legitimate feature, so you will permit the app to be installed.  Now, the App has free reign to do anything with your contact information, regardless of whether or not it is actually related to the originally desired functionality.

 

In the background, the App may also include hidden code that clones your whole contact list, and uploads it to the developer, who can then sell it to the highest bidder without your consent.

 

Both operations would be automatically approved without any distinction under the current Android permission system.  This doesn't really give Android's permission system any tangible benefit over the purely trust-based privacy policy that is currently implemented in iOS 5.x.

 

At least there is the potential for Apple to discover the hidden functionality through its code review process and deny permission to list the App until the developer agrees to remove the infringing functionality.  Can you count on Apple to actually perform a sufficiently thorough examination to discover such infringements?  Maybe not, based on previous experience.

 

So at the end of the day, confidentiality of information is just a crapshoot with any smartphone App you may care to evaluate, no matter which OS you're using.

Edited by lfmorrison - 6/28/12 at 8:23am

guess you did not read about "Invincea" or the 787 Dreamliner?

take a little time and focus on the name on the device and realize why it is not.

Took some time. Still don't get it. Enlighten me both on what the name has to do with anything and on why that's not a silly question to ask.

No, $199, speaking strictly in terms of price, is competitive with the iPad. That's a simple fact. It is half the price of the cheapest iPad 2.

 

You say this will be a repeat but we don't yet know that this is a fact. If reviews come out and it turns out to be as large a piece of trash as the Kindle Fire is I'll wholly agree with you, but at this stage people (and you) are making matter-of-fact conclusions about it before people have actually had a chance to truly test it out. To approach it from another angle, it's slow, clunky, and horrible to work with like the Fire it will just be another joke, but if it runs smoothly (and it probably will at least run a little more smoothly because it will be using the stock Android OS) it will be a new consideration. It also won't share the Fire's OS limitations.

 

I'm not sure we're disagreeing about a feature list. I was speaking more in terms of the type of 'feature list' shopping people tend to do. Sort of along the lines of, "Voice control? Check." where traditional voice control might be considered equal to Siri, or "Maps? Check." where Google's integrated maps solution would be considered equal to the outdated [but soon to be updated in iOS 6] maps solution in iOS. People frequently dismiss iOS on this count without really realizing that the vast majority of features in iOS have been very carefully realized and are highly polished. In some areas Google, for example, has just jumped in, hacked a feature together, and tossed it out. They cannot be considered equally with a simple checklist mindset. Using the previous maps example, with iOS 5, if someone wanted fantastic map integration with good navigation assistance they'd have that stock with Android but would need to buy an app with iOS.

 

On an unrelated note, this forum now has me quoting people in HTML. I don't know which usability-inept person though that would be a good idea, but I'd really love to turn that off (what's wrong with good old fashioned BBCode?). Is anyone aware of a setting I need to toggle? I don't even see the options bar for the WYSIWYG view.

I agree with this. I would buy an Apple 7" iPad just for the portability.

Google probably isn't out for profits here, they are attempting to build out the android tablet base and address the Kindle Fire issue (heavily modified, locked out of the play store).  If they can get a decent tablet out there (early benchmarks say that it performs pretty well) at a low price point they build out the base and create incentive for developers to write tablet specific apps.  Remember, Google is late to the party here, Apple has an enormous head start.  Also coming to mind is that Google has been rumored to eventually offer a full stable of Android tablets which will most likely be higher spec'd.  Is this tablet better than the iPad? Hell no.  Is it the best $200 tablet out there? Probably.  Will people think about buying one given the price point and features? I think so.

Because the viability of the company is not dependent on the sale of the item or its margin - it is being sold at cost due to that reality, it is a means to an end - That is to your benefit. The Nexus line can not be seen in a vacuum, it is only part of a larger business model... as the consumer, the margin on a Nexus 7 is irrelevant - just as it is irrelevant to Google. 

 

You can also see reflected on the partner Google picked - ASUS is a top tier PC component maker - they entered the consumer business but their main income is from manufacturing services - everything from MB to GPU cards - They have no margin on the sale of the device but we have no clue if they had a margin on the construction of the device, one that Google is covering. 

 

Having their Logo associated with Google as a partner will do wonders for their manufacturing business - I'm sure The nexus promo shots will be part of one of the easiest Business to Business marketing campaign ASUS Marketing department will ever have to make. Not to mention Nvidia and ASUS just got a great deal of free press.

 

As a consumer, your attention has a value to a business - why so much money is spent on marketing... at times you get something because of it - for free or at cost.

 

Companies with lousy margins that struggle to make a profit have a tendency to enter markets (especially news ones) with a lot of me-too promises and high-talk, only to churn out (accordingly) a lot of me-too products that end up turning into abandonware in short order. 

 

Example: Dell's efforts in the mobile space. 

 

Apple's profits are a signifier of the the health of the company. It means the money I pump into their ecosystem today won't be wasted because they won't be around tomorrow or because they'll have to do a "reset" of their entire strategy. I feel sorry for folks that got hosed by HP's Touchpad. And RIM's Playbook. The list goes on. 

I certainly hope Google designed the Nexus 7 to be highly recyclable.

Looks like it will be yet another failed iPad clone tossed into the giant dumpster fire of failed iPad clones.

 

But plastic makes toxic smoke when it's burned.  Much better to recycle.

 

This is such a vague assertion, that it's effectively meaningless, which also makes it impossible to argue against... or for, for that matter.

 

However, even if we assume, for the sake of discussion, that Android 4.1 is "more advanced" (whatever that is supposed to mean) than iOS 5,  iOS 5 is, and has been, for the better part of a year, a shipping product, installed not only all of Apple's current iOS devices, but also a very large percentage of older devices already deployed. Whereas Android 4.1 doesn't actually exist "in the wild" at this point. iOS 6 will definitely be shipping on Apple devices this Fall, and, again, a very large percentage of the installed base will upgrade shortly after its release. At that point, Android 4.1 will, discounting a smattering of geek owned devices, maybe, be on a handful of devices shipping, and almost none of the installed base will upgrade, or even be able to. By the time any significant number of Android devices are running Android 4.1, Apple will have released iOS 7, or maybe even 8, ...

 

So, even if we grant that Android 4.1 is "more advanced" (whatever that is supposed to mean) than iOS 5, or even iOS 6, that "advantage" is entirely theoretical, and, depending on what is actually meant by "more advanced", may not even be significant or relevant.

As a shareholder of Google, I'd want them to be making money on the products they sell, and I'd like to know a ballpark of how much money is made on each. That's only natural, completely reasonable, and common sense.

As a shareholder of Apple, I'd know that every single unit sold makes money. Why would it be unreasonable to expect the same from someone else, particularly since Apple's model seems to be the only one that actually works?

You want to talk about consumers, we'll talk about consumers. People with no shares. Why shouldn't they want to know how much they're giving to the company as overhead?

I love Tesla, so I'll use them as an example. The Tesla Roadster is, what, $100,000? The company has actually come out and said that the price is that high to subsidize the cost of later models. Do you think their consumers wouldn't want to know that? REALLY? That's a great thing to know. It's more information for potential Roadster buyers and it gives a greater incentive to potential buyers of the S and X, knowing their prices are far cheaper than they could/"should" have been.

 

"Google are"? My OCD is tingling. Google is grouped into a single entity of various business units. We're not talking about the collection of units, but of Google as a whole. You know this because in the next sentence you didn't say, "…so Google have another medium…"

 

Logical extreme: America are a great country, where one of their largest companies, Apple, make magical products. Doesn't that sound insane? I'm not trying to obnoxiousI–just don't get it.