It is a stretch to call Adobe Air (the UI for the Playbook) superior to UIKit (the UI for the iPad). Adobe Air is a platform aimed at web designers, I'm not sure that is the right target to get real software on the platform. If it were a good platform for apps, Adobe would write their own software with it. Personally, I think Adobe Air is a bad investment for Adobe and probably contributing to their massive debt and high product prices.
Maybe by "superior", it will have superior blackberry phone integration? Hard to see much else superior. The OS (QNX) is ok, but I wouldn't call it superior to Darwin (the iPad OS)... maybe equal at many things. I'm not sure what the mobile performance of QNX is like compared to Darwin, but Apple has been creating technology the last few years to improve the battery performance in their OS. For instance, Grand Central Dispatch will allow for background scheduling that uses less power then traditional methods. Essentially it merges operations that happen in close time-slices (each operation gives Darwin a time range that it should run in) so that it only needs to wake the processor once to perform a batch of operations instead of the traditional method of waking it separately for every operation (like QNX and Android would do) and threads are always kept to the optimal number automatically to eliminate contention of resources like the processor cache. This is one reason Apple has a strict framework that background processes for apps must adhere to so that battery life doesn't suffer. Although this particular technology was open sourced by Apple for any platform to use (FreeBSD already supports it), it is difficult to get developers to rewrite their apps for a significantly different framework later, so this is a battery life advantage that Apple will always have over Android and QNX. The technique is much more effective if all applications use it instead of a mix.
Although nobody has figured out exactly what is different, I'm sure there are some power management tricks that are built in to Apple's custom designed microprocessor. The team putting the chip together are power management experts. Although they would not have had a lot of time this iteration, I'm sure they would have put a few operating system specific power management optimizations in this time around. As soon as the A4 processor came out, standby time (when the display isn't powered) on the iPhone and iPad shot through the roof.
In all fairness Jobs said the iPhone was 5 years ahead of the competition, and that was 6 months before it was even released to the world. Of course, history proved once again that he was right.
RiM is focusing on raw specs to say it?s superior, but I can?t recall Jobs or anyone at Apple touting the original iPhone as having some crazy fast CPU or copious amounts of RAM. I seem to recall demos that specifically show the smoothness and speed from the end user?s PoV. RiM seem to have very different ideas of what is impressive.
Well, to be fair, having a tablet that can't run apps other than a web-browser would be a redefinition of what a tablet can do -- kind of like having a car that can only drive in reverse would be a redefinition of what a car can do.
This is the master in action -- showing chapter and verse how a product announcement is done!
Its worth a view!
Interesting how Apple has produced at least two world-changing products from a technological perspective. I'm thinking the original Apple computers and the iPhone. It could be argued that the iPod and iPad changed the world, too. But the first two caused bunch of tech companies to become imitators to get in on the action. Not that the original Apple was making them millions, but it really did change the way we think of computing. I'll let others argue how monumental the iPod and iPad are or will be viewed one day. Blah, blah, blah.
I expect to see Chrome tablets that are exactly what you describe.
If they are cheap enough, I'd buy several. One for the couch, one for the bedside table, and one for the throne. Another to keep in the car.
If they were a couple of hundred dollars each, such a device would be perfect for many uses. There is no need to drive a dumptruck like the iPad when a motorcycle will get you there much more efficiently.
iPad users will be scrolling through page after page of icons, looking for the app that gives them access to the publisher's stuff, while Chrome users will be already accessing their content. Hmmmm.....where did I put that WiReD app again? Page 5? No, wait, maybe I put it in a folder. Damn, all these folders look alike. Which one? Content apps? Magazine apps? Did I put it in with the eBook reader apps?
The iPad is a dumptruck compared to what a tablet could be.
One swipe to the search screen in the iPad, type 'wi' and there is your App, took all of 1 swipe, 2 typed letters one App selected. Next time try to at least understand the product before you spout off rubbish!
And what exactly do you do with your Chrome tablet when you have no internet access? Use it as a door stop?
"RIM is on track with its schedule to optimize the BlackBerry PlayBook?s battery life and looks forward to providing customers with a professional grade tablet that offers superior performance with comparable battery life.?
I think that this statement alone says they HAVE had issues with battery life. "Rim in on track with its schedule to optimize the BBPB battery life" - they would have been better simply saying that right now all units both inside and out of the company are beta units. You don't need to address specific issues that beta units are experiencing because these are not released products.
I would venture to guess that battery optimization is only one of a handful of things that they are going to need to fix before, during and after the release.
RIM's cockiness is going to get them in trouble with the investment community - especially as Apple makes more of a concerted effort to go after (and get wins in) the enterprise market.
By WEB, do you mean HTML ? or HTTP ? or even TCP/IP ?
Cause 99.99% of apps are using TCP/IP and most of them are using HTTP to exchange data.
So apps are the web.
Hey, do you know iTunes is using HTML for its display layer ? So does that make it part of "the web" ?
The "Web" implies accessibility through a general purpose web browser and HTML as the base development platform. So iOS apps wouldn't qualify nor would iTunes. He's obviously talking web apps which were such a resounding success on the original iPhone that Apple almost decided to not open the App Store.
Since the innards of an iPad are basically a rather large battery flanked by a pretty tiny electronics package, the reduced space inside a 7" display tablet is presumably going to present a challenge to using a high capacity battery. They could make the case thicker instead, but then you end up with good battery life but still a small screen device that's now disproportionately heavy.
On the other hand, while I don't know what percentage of a tablet device's total power requirement is accounted for by the display, a 7" display has only half the area of a 10" version, so that's got to help RIM with battery life.
At least as interesting is whether consumers will embrace the 7" form factor. To me that seems too big to slip in your pocket like a smartphone or iPod touch, but too small for the reading or multimedia experience that an iPad provides in spades.
I expect to see Chrome tablets that are exactly what you describe.
If they are cheap enough, I'd buy several. One for the couch, one for the bedside table, and one for the throne. Another to keep in the car.
If they were a couple of hundred dollars each, such a device would be perfect for many uses. There is no need to drive a dumptruck like the iPad when a motorcycle will get you there much more efficiently.
iPad users will be scrolling through page after page of icons, looking for the app that gives them access to the publisher's stuff, while Chrome users will be already accessing their content. Hmmmm.....where did I put that WiReD app again? Page 5? No, wait, maybe I put it in a folder. Damn, all these folders look alike. Which one? Content apps? Magazine apps? Did I put it in with the eBook reader apps?
The iPad is a dumptruck compared to what a tablet could be.
As with anything there are things I like and don't like about the current iPad, as well as Android phones (which will translate into 'real' Droid tablets in 2011.)
But to say things like you did above, shows a profound lack of knowledge for any iOS based product, much less the iPad.
So, if ONE analyst asserts something about a competing product, it's taken by AI and the Apple community as pure fact. But if an analyst says something negative about an Apple product, AI will go all out to disparage that analyst and just gloss over what that analyst might have said...I'm pretty sure at this point, AI runs it's original stories through Apple's PR department for approval before posting them...
Not sure what you're reacting to here. AI ran a story about a report that the Playbook was delayed, and now has run a story on RIMs denial. I don't see any particular reaction to anything negative about Apple, or any particular effort to disparage any analysis or gloss over anything.
In response to one Wall Street's analyst assertion that the upcoming PlayBook tablet was experiencing battery issues, Research In Motion responded with a statement denying the claim and promising "superior performance with comparable battery life."
I wonder how they define "comparable battery life"?
I expect to see Chrome tablets that are exactly what you describe.
If they are cheap enough, I'd buy several. One for the couch, one for the bedside table, and one for the throne. Another to keep in the car.
If they were a couple of hundred dollars each, such a device would be perfect for many uses. There is no need to drive a dumptruck like the iPad when a motorcycle will get you there much more efficiently.
iPad users will be scrolling through page after page of icons, looking for the app that gives them access to the publisher's stuff, while Chrome users will be already accessing their content. Hmmmm.....where did I put that WiReD app again? Page 5? No, wait, maybe I put it in a folder. Damn, all these folders look alike. Which one? Content apps? Magazine apps? Did I put it in with the eBook reader apps?
The iPad is a dumptruck compared to what a tablet could be.
Strange, on my iPad there is a great Browser right there in front of my eyes that I can use any time I want as well as lots of apps.
Comments
"I think the PlayBook redefines what a tablet should do," said Balsillie, asserting that the tablet's redefinition involves the web, not apps.
[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
Then why does the BB PlayBook pre-launch promo video promote " APP-ROCKIN' " in it????
Maybe by "superior", it will have superior blackberry phone integration? Hard to see much else superior. The OS (QNX) is ok, but I wouldn't call it superior to Darwin (the iPad OS)... maybe equal at many things. I'm not sure what the mobile performance of QNX is like compared to Darwin, but Apple has been creating technology the last few years to improve the battery performance in their OS. For instance, Grand Central Dispatch will allow for background scheduling that uses less power then traditional methods. Essentially it merges operations that happen in close time-slices (each operation gives Darwin a time range that it should run in) so that it only needs to wake the processor once to perform a batch of operations instead of the traditional method of waking it separately for every operation (like QNX and Android would do) and threads are always kept to the optimal number automatically to eliminate contention of resources like the processor cache. This is one reason Apple has a strict framework that background processes for apps must adhere to so that battery life doesn't suffer. Although this particular technology was open sourced by Apple for any platform to use (FreeBSD already supports it), it is difficult to get developers to rewrite their apps for a significantly different framework later, so this is a battery life advantage that Apple will always have over Android and QNX. The technique is much more effective if all applications use it instead of a mix.
Although nobody has figured out exactly what is different, I'm sure there are some power management tricks that are built in to Apple's custom designed microprocessor. The team putting the chip together are power management experts. Although they would not have had a lot of time this iteration, I'm sure they would have put a few operating system specific power management optimizations in this time around. As soon as the A4 processor came out, standby time (when the display isn't powered) on the iPhone and iPad shot through the roof.
In all fairness Jobs said the iPhone was 5 years ahead of the competition, and that was 6 months before it was even released to the world. Of course, history proved once again that he was right.
RiM is focusing on raw specs to say it?s superior, but I can?t recall Jobs or anyone at Apple touting the original iPhone as having some crazy fast CPU or copious amounts of RAM. I seem to recall demos that specifically show the smoothness and speed from the end user?s PoV. RiM seem to have very different ideas of what is impressive.
You can see the Jan 2007 iPhone Announcement at:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/mwsf07/
Notable:
-- live demo of working product
-- comments Eric Schmidt: 0:55
-- announce battery life: 1:02:58
-- announce price and availability: 1:04
-- They had fun
Best Quote: "You had me at scrolling!"
This is the master in action -- showing chapter and verse how a product announcement is done!
Its worth a view!
He smokes too much.
Well, to be fair, having a tablet that can't run apps other than a web-browser would be a redefinition of what a tablet can do -- kind of like having a car that can only drive in reverse would be a redefinition of what a car can do.
You can see the Jan 2007 iPhone Announcement at:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/mwsf07/
Notable:
-- live demo of working product
-- comments Eric Schmidt: 0:55
-- announce battery life: 1:02:58
-- announce price and availability: 1:04
-- They had fun
Best Quote: "You had me at scrolling!"
This is the master in action -- showing chapter and verse how a product announcement is done!
Its worth a view!
Interesting how Apple has produced at least two world-changing products from a technological perspective. I'm thinking the original Apple computers and the iPhone. It could be argued that the iPod and iPad changed the world, too. But the first two caused bunch of tech companies to become imitators to get in on the action. Not that the original Apple was making them millions, but it really did change the way we think of computing. I'll let others argue how monumental the iPod and iPad are or will be viewed one day. Blah, blah, blah.
Touting specs alone against Apple's device is usually recipe for failure.
One day I will make the greatest album ever recorded. Beatles? Morons.
One day I will make the greatest album ever recorded. Beatles? Morons.
One day I will create an album with more beats per minute then anyone! It will be superior in every way! Mwahahahahaha!
Touting specs alone against Apple's device is usually recipe for failure.
Only because it is never about specs.
I expect to see Chrome tablets that are exactly what you describe.
If they are cheap enough, I'd buy several. One for the couch, one for the bedside table, and one for the throne. Another to keep in the car.
If they were a couple of hundred dollars each, such a device would be perfect for many uses. There is no need to drive a dumptruck like the iPad when a motorcycle will get you there much more efficiently.
iPad users will be scrolling through page after page of icons, looking for the app that gives them access to the publisher's stuff, while Chrome users will be already accessing their content. Hmmmm.....where did I put that WiReD app again? Page 5? No, wait, maybe I put it in a folder. Damn, all these folders look alike. Which one? Content apps? Magazine apps? Did I put it in with the eBook reader apps?
The iPad is a dumptruck compared to what a tablet could be.
One swipe to the search screen in the iPad, type 'wi' and there is your App, took all of 1 swipe, 2 typed letters one App selected. Next time try to at least understand the product before you spout off rubbish!
And what exactly do you do with your Chrome tablet when you have no internet access? Use it as a door stop?
I think that this statement alone says they HAVE had issues with battery life. "Rim in on track with its schedule to optimize the BBPB battery life" - they would have been better simply saying that right now all units both inside and out of the company are beta units. You don't need to address specific issues that beta units are experiencing because these are not released products.
I would venture to guess that battery optimization is only one of a handful of things that they are going to need to fix before, during and after the release.
RIM's cockiness is going to get them in trouble with the investment community - especially as Apple makes more of a concerted effort to go after (and get wins in) the enterprise market.
By WEB, do you mean HTML ? or HTTP ? or even TCP/IP ?
Cause 99.99% of apps are using TCP/IP and most of them are using HTTP to exchange data.
So apps are the web.
Hey, do you know iTunes is using HTML for its display layer ? So does that make it part of "the web" ?
The "Web" implies accessibility through a general purpose web browser and HTML as the base development platform. So iOS apps wouldn't qualify nor would iTunes. He's obviously talking web apps which were such a resounding success on the original iPhone that Apple almost decided to not open the App Store.
On the other hand, while I don't know what percentage of a tablet device's total power requirement is accounted for by the display, a 7" display has only half the area of a 10" version, so that's got to help RIM with battery life.
At least as interesting is whether consumers will embrace the 7" form factor. To me that seems too big to slip in your pocket like a smartphone or iPod touch, but too small for the reading or multimedia experience that an iPad provides in spades.
I expect to see Chrome tablets that are exactly what you describe.
If they are cheap enough, I'd buy several. One for the couch, one for the bedside table, and one for the throne. Another to keep in the car.
If they were a couple of hundred dollars each, such a device would be perfect for many uses. There is no need to drive a dumptruck like the iPad when a motorcycle will get you there much more efficiently.
iPad users will be scrolling through page after page of icons, looking for the app that gives them access to the publisher's stuff, while Chrome users will be already accessing their content. Hmmmm.....where did I put that WiReD app again? Page 5? No, wait, maybe I put it in a folder. Damn, all these folders look alike. Which one? Content apps? Magazine apps? Did I put it in with the eBook reader apps?
The iPad is a dumptruck compared to what a tablet could be.
As with anything there are things I like and don't like about the current iPad, as well as Android phones (which will translate into 'real' Droid tablets in 2011.)
But to say things like you did above, shows a profound lack of knowledge for any iOS based product, much less the iPad.
So, if ONE analyst asserts something about a competing product, it's taken by AI and the Apple community as pure fact. But if an analyst says something negative about an Apple product, AI will go all out to disparage that analyst and just gloss over what that analyst might have said...I'm pretty sure at this point, AI runs it's original stories through Apple's PR department for approval before posting them...
Not sure what you're reacting to here. AI ran a story about a report that the Playbook was delayed, and now has run a story on RIMs denial. I don't see any particular reaction to anything negative about Apple, or any particular effort to disparage any analysis or gloss over anything.
In response to one Wall Street's analyst assertion that the upcoming PlayBook tablet was experiencing battery issues, Research In Motion responded with a statement denying the claim and promising "superior performance with comparable battery life."
I wonder how they define "comparable battery life"?
Hope they are not digging their own grave!
I expect to see Chrome tablets that are exactly what you describe.
If they are cheap enough, I'd buy several. One for the couch, one for the bedside table, and one for the throne. Another to keep in the car.
If they were a couple of hundred dollars each, such a device would be perfect for many uses. There is no need to drive a dumptruck like the iPad when a motorcycle will get you there much more efficiently.
iPad users will be scrolling through page after page of icons, looking for the app that gives them access to the publisher's stuff, while Chrome users will be already accessing their content. Hmmmm.....where did I put that WiReD app again? Page 5? No, wait, maybe I put it in a folder. Damn, all these folders look alike. Which one? Content apps? Magazine apps? Did I put it in with the eBook reader apps?
The iPad is a dumptruck compared to what a tablet could be.
Strange, on my iPad there is a great Browser right there in front of my eyes that I can use any time I want as well as lots of apps.