Re: How times change

Indeed. And I love how the arguments aren't even applied consistently. I mean, an Iphone has only just over half the screen space of a Galaxy S3. Even the latest 4SS only has less than 70%. Even more a difference if we took the Note. Of course, he'd probably claim that it was somehow different for different devices, but the point still stands. I mean, I would say that 7-8" devices are a different category to 10" devices due to their added portability - 10" devices are in the same category as netbooks and ultra-portable laptops. There's a continual tradeoff between portability and screen size.

I mean, I might as well mock Ipad users, as they have less than 35% screen space that my 17" Clevo has...

Re: Android tablet

What's a "tablet app"? The Nexus is a standard Google device, running standard Android, so it runs all the Android apps. And standard Android also has camera software with it.

Re: Gawd almighty...

It's also worth noting the Ainol Novo Android 4 tablets - e.g., the Novo 7 Flame has just as good specs as a Nexus 7, for less money (~£115) *and* that's for the 16GB model, with microSD as well. There's even a good range of tablets they have for under £100, that whilst not quite as good spec, are still good enough for many people. The only downside seems to be the unfortunate name of the company!

It's astonishing the way that there's so little awareness of these, mainly only on Android-specific forums, but the reviews so far seem to be good, and I'm tempted to get one. It's sad the way that media coverage influences the market so much - it's not that the Ipad is any better, but it got vast amounts of media coverage even before it was announced, let alone released. Most people aren't even aware of alternatives. The only Android tablets to get some coverage have been Amazon and now the Nexus 7. You can also buy Ipads in about every shop - Android tablets are harder to get hold of, and these Ainol tablets seem to basically involve ordering from China... (Though there are a few UK distributors selling via Amazon.)

(Aren't journalists supposed to, you know, do some journalism? It would be nice if tech journalists could research what's available and do some actual reporting, instead of hyping the next possible release from Apple...)

Re: Business plan

Nah, just ship it without the toilet paper. If it's not there, they'll happily believe that no one really *needs* it. That can come in the next model, and you can be sure they'll be queuing up to get it.

Re: @Ralph5

Works fine with my LG TV, but then I bought a TV that wasn't garbage. If you're saying "Apple are better than garbage" then sure, but that's not a higher standard, there's plenty of choice that works fine.

And how well does AppleThing work to share between Windows/Android and my LG TV? Oh wait, not at all.

Re: @Ralph5

You're probably one of those people thinking at "Apple TV" is some kind of special device where there's nothing else quite like it.

In fact, there are loads of boxes that stream media, as well as download content from the Internet. These kind of things are standard in many TVs too, but if you just want a add-on box, there are loads, starting from around £50, of which Apple are just one of many manufacturers. Even Tesco have them - http://www.tesco.com/direct/gifts-jewellery/digital-tv-boxes-media-streamers/cat10680007.cat .

Re: The iPhone hasn't got what?

And I can already share and transmit media between all my devices and my LG TV. Because it uses an open standard (DLNA) rather than AppleBuzzword, it Just Works with all my devices no matter who makes them - Windows and Android working fine with a completely different OS on the TV; Samsung and Clevo hardware happily talking to an LG TV. If the thing talked about in the article is an open standard, then that's good too.

On that note, I found it sad that the entire audio industry seems to be obsessed with only catering to the minority of Apple users - speakers that plug into Iphones and Ipads (now incompatible!), and support for AppleSpeak that I have no idea what it is, but is presumably some Apple wireless thingy. The upshot is, because the TV industry hasn't go themselves obsessed with Apple, my LG TV works much better as a central hub even for just music - I can play music from any device in the house through the TV (either pulling it from the TV, or pushing it from the device), and it works fine.

Re: Samsung should give them all a free phone

Even plain vanilla on my Samsung Galaxy Nexus has accessibility features as standard, easy to find there. Oh, and nice bit of nationalism there.

Re: More of the same .......

Oh, it's only the other way round - when Apple are losing, they sued the leader for a billion dollars...

Re: Logic fail?

Windows applications could install just as easily as on phones, it's just that the writers of installers insist on asking you all sorts of mostly pointless questions.

(Although it's a matter of debate which is better - is it better to ask you to put a shortcut on the desktop like Windows does, or is it better to do so anyway like Android does, leaving you then having to delete it? And some geeks may prefer control over things like the installation location.)

Not sure what in particular you mean by sandboxing(?) but the security model for applications vastly improved since Vista - applications no longer have write access to wherever they like.

Re: Balmer plays the sceptic

By "appliance", you mean an oversized phone, or indeed Internet tablet or media player (which is what ARM handheld computing devices were called before 2010 - there were plenty of tablets in 2009, they were just categorised as media players).

However, you'll have a hard time explaining the crucial difference between "appliance" and computer, since people evidently want to run software on these "appliances". Is it somehow better because it's locked down? Well no, because Android is far more popular a platform on handheld "appliances".

Today's phones and tablets are just as theoretically vulnerable from security issues and viruses. I've not seen evidence that tablets are easier to use by computer ignorant people - the people buying these things are computer literate, and in my experience, people who aren't computer literate are still more comfortable with a keyboard than a touchscreen. And tablet OSes get updates all the time, how is that any different to service packs?

Plenty of us still want general purpose computers, but it's not clear to me how locking something down makes things *better*. An appliance is just a word people use, as a justification for why Ipads can't do hardly anything useful.

Re: Slightly OT

Not quite:

NT started out as 3.1 (to match with the DOS Windows versioning), before going onto later versions such as 4.

Windows 2000 was version 5, with XP being 5.1.

And here's the fun thing - although "7" might obviously follow on from Vista being 6, the actual version of Windows 7 is 6.1!

I'm not sure if Windows 8 is Windows 7 or Windows 6.2 though...

Re: Sarcasm?

It's obviously the Apple benchmark of success, where selling less than the other platforms counts as an amazing runaway success that makes you market leader...

Whilst what you say is true, I'm not sure I would say they were "blistered". And whilst the Wii sold more, it's still a hefty advantage have, especially when you factor in PC gaming too, and something that Apple or Google don't have.

Re: No

Based on current trends, Samsung will have a phone with 32GB RAM in 4 years' time... (x86 netbooks meanwhile will still have 1GB, maybe 2GB if we're lucky.)

(Seriously though, not sure what point you are making? Most PCs don't have those specs; x86 Windows tablets will have comparable specs to ultra-portable laptops though).

Megahertz myth, and core myth :)

I'm not saying you're wrong - given the latest generation of consoles is quote old now, and phones are perhaps less than 10 years old, it's not that unfeasible. But it would be interesting to see benchmarks (indeed in general, I'm curious to see how well ARM does against x86, or how well the phone GPUs do against desktop/laptop or console GPUs - anyone have a reference to benchmarks? All we hear is talk of how many cores things have, which is even worse than the megahertz myths of 10 years ago).

Re: If it's an advantage it's one they're squandering

"Why MS isn't going full steam ahead with that platform I don't know."

Well they are - but why they aren't going ahead only with x86 is presumably cost. The x86 Surface (and i5 tablets in general) will be more expensive, and ARM allows them a way into the ultra-low end of tablets.

Re: XP isn't the latest, but maybe the best

I prefer 7 to XP - faster to launch programs (just type the name at the start bar, rather than having to navigate through menus, or have dozens of shortcuts); faster to boot; better 64 bit support; seems more resistent to graphics driver crashes (a graphics driver crash on XP would crash the OS, where as 7 seems to be able to recover); better security model (programs no longer have permissions to do what they like), an additional side-benefit of which is that user data is now stored in user space rather than program folders, making it easier to back up.

I don't see what's wrong with Windows 8? Even if you aren't interested in the benefits (which aren't all to do with tablets, incidentally) and there's no point in upgrading, I don't see why it's worse? Honest question. I've tried the previews, and they work fine still with keyboard/mouse (you don't have to use the Metro stuff, and the start screen works just like the start menu in Windows 7, just giving you more space).

What about Windows 2000? I remember when XP came out, the geeks saying 2000 was much better than XP, which just had stuff that you had to turn off (and I myself ran 2000 for years, rather than XP). I find it funny that XP is now hailed as being the best MS OS...

Indeed, on that note I could say the same about the XP start menu, I find it odd the way this is now hailed as being some wonderful thing. I remember all the fuss from MS with Windows 95, and I couldn't see what was so good about it - just an awkward menuing system. I'm glad to see it replaced in Windows 7 with something that actually works well.

For comparison, Android is now at about one million smartphones per day. All Year Round.

At first you might say, wow, now Iphone will gain at twice that rate - but this is not all year round. Firstly you've got included in that figure loads of people who have been waiting for months to order one - indeed, let's remember that rumours of the Iphone 4SS, sorry, 5, have been going in the media for a staggering 18 months now. Secondly, the evidence is that the Iphone sales are very seasonal, being high shortly after a new release, but tailing off for the rest of the year.

Interesting how years ago, we'd hear about "Android vs Iphone" in the media, so they could say Iphone was most popular (conveniently forgetting that it was actually Symbian number one, and Blackberry number two for much of that time) - but now, you hardly ever hear about it. That wouldn't be so bad it if was because everyone knew that Android was miles ahead - but with so many websites and companies still only catering for Iphone, and every other TV advert seemingly saying "Works with Iphone" "Get this on the App Store" etc, some people don't seem to have got the memo.

No, instead today, we hear irrelevant comparisons of how Apple's sales compare well to just one single phone out of thousands of Android devices.

Re: Why is someone clearly wrong?

Indeed, and IIRC Samsung Galaxy S3 pre-orders were near 10 million. Plus that is just one of many Samsung models. Even if there is truth, it just biases things towards Apple, where people seem more likely to buy the latest one the moment it appears, but also, the fact that there's only one phone released a year means everyone on that platform is more likely to buy all at once. With Android, phones are released all year round, so you don't have to wait ages, then rush out and buy it.

The flip side is that whilst Apple may do better in the "X sold in Y days", their sales do far more poorly later in the year, whilst Android phones are solid all the year round. Where's the publicity for "Apple's sales drop by a massive 10 million, whilst Samsung's rise to 50 million, now twice that of Apple's", as happened in Q2 2012?

All the pre-order and first week stats are pretty meaningless, and it's all spin and marketing how they are used. If we care about sales, just look at the quarterly sales figures that are published (e.g., look up on Gartner). And make sure we do it every quarter, rather than just publicising it only the quarter after Apple release a new phone.

Also consider how the media will spin Apple's sales as being great, independent of any measure of how good it really is. E.g., remember the "one million sold in 76 days" for the original Iphone? That's nothing - it's nothing now (Nokia's first WP phone managed the same sales figures, but was viewed as poor by the media!) and it was nothing back then (Nokia were selling 10-20 million Symbian smartphones a quarter). In general, it's nothing - Samsung and Nokia sell a million phones *a day*, all year round, so Apple doing it in 76 days is poor, especially when it was after a product launch that was massively hyped for months by the media. But no, despite this, "one million in 76 days" was for years hailed as some kind of almighty benchmark.

The whole thing about "ecosystem" is just odd anyway - I've seen this a few places, talking as if MS are struggling to build up an "ecosystem". Er, last time I looked, the wealth of software is an area where MS lead. It's why backwards compatibility is so important to them (of course this won't be an advantage they have for Windows RT, but Windows 8 x86 will be available too, including for tablets). It's just we didn't use buzzwords like "ecosystem", which as far as I can tell is marketing speak for "I'm going to claim this new platform has an advantage, but I can't explain what it is".

Re: Presumably this analyst is unaware that Google owns Quick Office

The issue is presumably more compatibility, and what businesses are used to. Otherwise they'd already all be using free Google docs.

Also put your argument the other way. Android (and Windows come to that) is just as well placed to compete with IOS tablets. So by that logic, Android (and Windows 8 when it's out) should have just as much share, right? (I wish that was true.)

Indeed, a key part is: "they simply need to publicise the availability of their respective Office-software more than they do now."

Well that seems to be the problem sadly right now that Android has - a complete lack of advertising or awareness. There's no "simply" about this when it comes to marketing to billions of potential customers. Apple will do okay, as the mainstream media will as usual just cover their products for free, explaining how they can be used for office work, as if there was no alternative. Plus who do you mean by "they"? The companies currently making Android tablets are also the ones planning to make Windows tablets. And Google still seem hung up on advertising Chrome for business use...

I'm not defending Windows here - I'm just saying it's a sad state of affairs that results in the market place are to do with a lot more than simply the product itself. (I'm sure not everyone here thinks Windows is best on the desktop...)

"You really think that all companies will scrap their desktops, keyboards and mice and kit everyone out with tablets?"

Presumably the idea is to replace laptops. And since many if not most the x86 tablets are actually laptop hybrids with touchscreens, this argument seems to work in their favour - and work against Apple, who *do* want people to scrap their desktops, keyboards and mice (unless it's an Apple PC. For some reason their own argument doesn't apply to them).

And as I say above, I hardly think this is a pro-MS piece, even if it isn't favourable to Android. If anything, it's a pro-Apple piece - "Look how we'll be untouched by Windows and maintain our lead, the decline we've had isn't going to continue at all, honest! Only Android is going to suffer!"

Just pointing out - there will be x86 tablets (and hybrids) with the full Windows 8. Windows RT seems to be more aimed at consumers, with x86 tablets/hybrids targetted at businesses (which also ties into the greater need for keyboards, as others have pointed out are useful).

Re: Wishful thinking.

If this really was biased towards MS, one would wonder why they would be keen to paint Apple in such a positive light, and suggest that MS is only capable of taking market share from Android. If I was going to make up a pro-MS prediction, surely you'd show (a) a further decline for Apple, and (b) with MS taking share from both platforms.

Well, I love my Samsung netbook too, but remember that many of the Windows tablets, including the Surface, will have keyboards, and are really hybrids (indeed, the whole debate of "PC vs tablet" will be a bit moot, and all these predictions about market share are meaningless without clearly defined categories).

I've been disappointed at the way that netbooks seem to have stagnated, so I'm hopeful that things will improve - even though I'm not so fussed about a pure tablet (I already have a smartphone for that), I think a hybrid device will be great as an upgrade from my current netbook - still having a keyboard, but even more portable, and with the next generation of Atom (which will have the GPU integrated onto the CPU). The advantages that are being made for tablets (such as improving battery life, or still being able to poll the network whilst asleep) will be beneficial for those of us who like keyboards too. A touchscreen is a useful addition, to complement the keyboard and touchpad. And maybe we'll also at last see netbooks with more than 1GB RAM and 1024x600 :) (As well as perhaps a return to using fast SSDs.)

Re: A bit OT, but...

Whilst at first I was a bit surprised that my Galaxy Nexus didn't come with any PC software, the point is that it supports the open standard of MTP. So you can drag and drop, but if you prefer software that syncs, you can do that - using any software you like.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol has some details. So you can use Windows Media Player to sync for example, and I'm sure there's plenty of other software if you don't like what MS offer.

As far your last question, I don't see why one should have to buy everything from one single company. Unless you like locking yourself in. Why wouldn't one move to Android like most other people, rather than an Apple phone?

Re: But are they all 4G / LTE capable?

There are loads of phones (Android included) that are 4G / LTE capable, including the S3 and Galaxy Nexus. The main catch is that so far the 4G versions haven't been sold in the UK, and this won't happen here until the 4G networks start up. But this certainly isn't something Apple have any lead on, on the contrary, once again they're late to the party.

Re: Shouldn't the title for this be...

I agree. I mean, the idea of the article is okay - given how much hype Apple unfairly get, it's good to give some to the other platforms. And anything targetted at trying to convert sheep waiting for the next Apple feature phone is fine by me.

But "challenger"? It implies that Apple's is the best, which is pure opinion, and not really supported when you look at the evidence, as you say. And if they mean in terms of market, then the Iphone has never been the number one platform; nor has Apple ever been the number one phone company. The mainstream media have been spinning that myth for years - but I'd hoped better from the Reg!

Re: No Galaxy Note II?

My main issue with the term is that all phones these days have tablet capabilities - indeed for years, phones have just been handheld computers with additional phone. "Phablet" is perhaps therefore a better term, but we should be using it for all phones, not just the Galaxy Note. (And there were older smaller phones with styluses too - the main difference now is that we're seeing the rise of capacitive screens that also support styluses, rather than them being resistive.)

Re: Yet another fart app.

I don't think he's arguing against download sites, just that it's stupid to rate a platform by things like raw numbers of applications. Since who cares how many fart apps or website wrappers there are - it tells you nothing about quality. And if you can find what you want, why does it matter if there are 100 more irrelevant apps? Isn't that what Apple Mac users have been saying for years - why does raw software counts only matter when all of a sudden it's something that Apple are winning at?

Re: The Android and IOS myth

Oh, and just to add - it's also ludicrous to see this talk of "Is there room for more that 2 platforms", given that for years, we've had 3, 4, 5 or more major platforms. And for most of that time, Iphone was 3rd, 4th or even 5th.

Personally I use Android now, but I don't understand the arguments against WP - did we have years of people saying about Iphone: "Is there room for more than Symbian and Blackberry", or "more than Symbian and Android"?

Perhaps there is some hypothesis that long term stability is only possibly when we have one major platform, one smaller platform, and everything else is much smaller (similar to the Windows vs OS X vs Linux etc ratios). But I think we're still a few years from seeing what the final long term state of the phone market is.

Re: Assuming of course...

Iphone 5 is shipping? News to me.

Re: Product? What Product?

If you say the same of the Iphone 5, sure - let's wait until release.

And yeah, obviously Nokia have no track record of releasing phones, it's not like they were the number one phone and smartphone company until this year.

And Apple go from strength to strength, now they're so good, they're 3rd place behind Samsung and Nokia.

PS - plus the only reason someone might not have done this before is it's pointless - just put the voice recognition on the computer, which will typically be more powerful (if Macs don't have it, that's their loss, but Windows has had it for years). It also seems odd in that this won't work automatically with a computer - the computer still has to have remote control software added to be controlled by a phone!

The remote control phone applications are useful, because you might want to control something whilst sitting on the sofa - but with voice, the computer could hear you anyway.

"Such a voice control gateway would be very handy for someone unable to use a computer at present due to visual or physical impairment."

What problem would it solve, that isn't already solvable by existing voice recognition systems on computers?

But controlling another computer via a phone is something that's been done for years too, and is obvious (e.g., all the "remote control" applications you get for Android and Symbian). And since voice recognition is old hat too, it's not clear to me why doing the controlling of a phone via voice recognition is suddenly patent-worthy.

"and for something I carry with me every day and use for several hours a day the cost is reasonable."

I wish I had a phone I could carry with me every day, and use for several hours a day. I wondered what amazing features the Iphone had to justify the highest price - well, that's amazing.

Sorry, wrong - you can use an Android phone for as long as you want. Yes after 5 years you might not get the latest OS, but when it would run awful anyway, I'm not sure that's high up my list of concerns.

I don't speak Apple so don't know what this "Applecare" is (why do they have to give names to completely ordinary things - can't you speak in English rather than Apple trademarks?), but if you mean they offer some kind of insurance, then you can get that for any phone. If you haven't even tried it, you're in no position to make assumptions about how it compares. Plus there are bad stories about Apple's insurance too - e.g., a case where we had to pay them to repair something, even though we'd already also paid the insurance.

Re: Why not buy a much better Samsug Galaxy S3 today?

Iphone has the same problem - whilst you might get the latest OS, the older hardware then has trouble supporting it, or they just cut out features. I'd rather that manufacturers take the time to decide if a phone is capable of running it. Plus even if the OS still runs, the applications get more advanced - e.g., apparently something as simple as a Facebook app now struggles on an original Iphone.

I'm on a 24 month contract, and have no intention of upgrading before then. Indeed the idea is laughable. With Android software and hardware so far ahead, there is no need to keep upgrading so often, anyway. Compare with Iphone, where you have to wait a year or so to upgrade to get features like copy/paste or multitasking.

Not sure what you mean by fragmented. The hardware on my Samsung is just fine, as is the software.

Re: Why not buy a much better Samsug Galaxy S3 today?

No, the Iphone has never been the number one platform. It was Symbian until 2011, then Android. Latest figures show Android approaching 70%, Iphone at 16% and falling. Even on Samsung Android alone, they're outselling Apple 2 to 1. (And please don't tell me you're using the fallacy of comparing individual models, which is completely arbitrary depending on how you categorise each phone, and biases Apple who call all their phones "Iphone" - it tells us nothing about what people are buying in general. Although yes, the fact that we're at the stage now where even just one single model of thousands of Android devices is now selling on par with Apple's entire phone range, is quite amusing.) Sorry, those are the facts.

The idea that the Iphone is for the masses and only geeks buy other platforms is a myth - if anything, it's the reverse: the masses have bought platforms like Symbian and Android, whilst the Iphone gets more support from the kind of geek who only owned a 10 year old dumb phone before (and so is amazed that they can, say, send an email on a phone, or access a website).

Re: Why not buy a much better Samsug Galaxy S3 today?

Never had a problem with Android, applications just work fine for me. Plus I don't have to deal with the UI-disaster that is Itunes, which doesn't "just work" in my experience. And I'm running the latest Jelly Bean. I also get loads of things as standard, rather than having to wait years whilst the platform plays catchup (Finally get copy/paste? Where's the free sat-nav?)

Iplayer also works fine, though if it didn't, the fault would lie with the BBC for catering for the minority of Apple users over the far more popular Android platform.

And Flash - since when did Apple get that support?

Re: Why not buy a much better Samsug Galaxy S3 today?

An S3 still fits in a pocket though, which is really the limiting factor for portability. I've got the Galaxy Nexus (only 4.65", but actually pretty much physically the same size as an S3), and I never go "Oh dear, I don't have room to take my phone". It's portable, and goes with me everywhere.

An Ipad is just too big. It isn't at all portable like a phone. If I've got room for a 10" device, I'll take my far more functional Samsung netbook.

Also by your logic, if I want to watch something on a big screen, I'll view it on my 17" Clevo or 42" LG TV. But just as there's a place for 10" devices, there's a place for devices bigger than 3.5", but smaller than 10".

Re: Why not buy a much better Samsug Galaxy S3 today?

If someone doesn't need one that big, they don't need a new phone at all, by the same logic. If you're not upgrading, then you're also a lost customer for Apple, so that still doesn't help them.

(There are also plenty of smaller non-Apple smartphones already available if one doesn't want one that's so big. Though I do have to recommend giving it a go - I quickly got used to the large size, and now anything smaller than 4.3" looks like an aging feature phone.)

Re: Why does anyone care? Serious question.

But then we should criticise the media, who for years have perpetuated this myth that people are obsessively waiting for the next Apple product release, or queuing up for hours, etc. I'd gladly see an end to all the hysteria whipped up by the mainstream press, which just gives free advertising to Apple, when most people - including the customers themselves, as you say - don't actually care.

Increased resolution is not "revolutionary" - and it only looked a big step, because earlier models had appallingly low resolutions (e.g., Nokia had higher 640x360 much earlier). The main advantage of the Iphone 4 is that they had finally added in all of the basic features that other platforms had had for years, so finally it was a viable choice for mainstream use (and indeed, it was with the Iphone 4 that sales finally rose, and became comparable to some other platforms). But that's not a revolution, rather just finally catching up.

Re: As a non phone gadged freek...

Probably because Apple get by far the biggest amount of hype and coverage from the media.

I agree, they're just doing what other companies do. I'd be happy if everyone realised it, and reported about them just like any other company. (Also I'd add that most of the "hate" in the comments seems to be coming from existing Iphone users who are now annoyed by the announcement - which is certainly interesting if this is an indication of consumer reaction in general.)