back to article LG touts 'surprisingly productive' iPad killer

LG says that its upcoming tablet, set for worldwide release before the end of this year, will compete against Apple's iPad by being, well, useful. "It's going to be surprisingly productive," LG VP for mobile-device marketing Chang Ma told the Wall Street Journal. "Our tablet will be better than the iPad." Ma told the WSJ that …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's the apps, stupid

    you can bring a tablet with pico-projection, 1TB of storage, 64GB of RAM, 6 cameras, GPS, 3G, satellite TV, full-blown Windows 7, a 12-core 6GHz processor and a flashlight to the party, but if you don't have the apps to run on it, you're going to be sitting on the couch all night failing to get any action, and that's where the iPad is well ahead of the game: Apple's leveraging an ecosystem that they've brought to maturity and has, at the moment, no real competition.

    1. JaitcH
      Unhappy

      What Apps?

      If Apple considers an App which emulates flatulence or causes a graphical representation of female breasts to move as useful they do indeed have a lot of Apps.

      Other platforms satisfy themselves with fewer Apps that actually have a functional use.

      1. Ivan Headache

        If all you can think of is fart apps,

        then I'm sorry for you.

      2. RichyS
        FAIL

        Sigh

        Yes, that's it. The App Store only contains fart apps and jub jugglers. If you tried taking your head out of your Apple hating arse for once, you might learn something.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      erm

      If it's running win7, then it already has an app eco-system that tears the ipad a new one - that being every application ever written for the windows OS.

      I'm guessing you meant "Apple has the advantage of an application market that is designed around the interface [that being touch] of the device", which is surely the major factor here, not the volume of available apps - of which, as an iphone owner of 2 years I can say has resolutely failed to inspire me. Prolly the most useful I've encountered has been the free tube map app which has gained plenty of use in my summer of living in London and what used to be known as echofon.

      Yes, I'm a dirty twitter user ;P

      The windows foray into touch interfaces has been piss poor to put it politely. Surface looked amazing, but they decided it'd be best to limit it to $10k a unit and only to corporate/rich markets.

      Such a shame, MS have come up with some really interesting devices (the aforementioned Surface and the late Courier being the most eye grabbing) but have sucked at bringing them out of vaoporware/rich-playground-ware and into the market.

      If they don't sort their shit out, MS are in for a slow dwindling death in the consumer space.

    3. hyartep
      Megaphone

      there is enough android apps

      if android tablets can use apps for android phones, just like ipad can use iphone/itouch apps, there will be enough apps.

    4. The Original Steve
      FAIL

      WTF?!

      Um, I'm pretty sure Windows has a bigger "app" catalogue than iOS.

      For a start I don't need to buy an "App" to find out what peripherals I have plugged in or to unzip a file!!!

    5. DrXym

      Android has plenty of apps

      The Android marketplace might not be as large as Apples but its still very large and growing. Any tablet which implements android and bothers to pass platform compatibility tests will be allowed to ship with the marketplace app. Then it doesn't matter much what you get out of the box since you can download more.

      It may well be that LG's tablet or Asus's tablet or Lenovo's tablet etc. doesn't exceed iPad sales but the Android ecosystem as a whole is very likely to and faster than it took for phones.

  2. famousringo

    iPad is more productive than some think

    A look at the top-grossing iPad apps in my country sees the top ten dominated by productivity apps. Apple's iWork offerings, OmniFocus, Documents To Go, and Quickoffice. It's a stark contrast to the iPhone App Store where the top ten grossing list is mostly games.

    Seems ironic that the device that's generally considered pretty useful sells mostly games while the 'useless' tablet sells mostly productivity apps.

  3. Bryce Prewitt

    The best way to differentiate yourself from Apple.

    One would think that the best way to differentiate yourself from Apple would be for your product to be exactly like one of Apple's in nearly every way but far cheaper. It would have a slick design, intuitive interface, useful applications, would "just work", "won't" crash, wouldn't be locked down and would, conceivably, be half the price or less. Again, everything an Apple product is but better and cheaper. Not sure why this is so damned hard these days, but it apparently is. Even Microsoft, who made their fortune by ripping off Apple software and letting people put it onto cheaper machines (yes yes, I know it's far more than just that, but it's also not wrong), can't seem to do it anymore.

    To use the mp3 player example, the Zune was a spectacular failure because it couldn't do anything it set out to do well. Sure, the lack of iTunes sync sucked, but the god-awful software, small storage sizes and the fact that the interface made doing just about anything on it only slightly less difficult than using a punchcard machine are what killed it.

    I hope LG manage to pull this off and at a decent price, too. You sell a (fairly precise) multitouch tablet for ~$400-500 that can either interface with DAW software (and act as a "mixer" frontend) or is useful as a DAW in its own right and you'd sell them like hotcakes. It's what Wacom is trying to do, but they forgot the whole "being cheaper than their competitors" part.

    1. The Original Steve
      FAIL

      Not what I heard

      The reports I saw including from commentators who brought one was that the Zune software was superb and "made" the device. As did syncing over wifi and the gorgeous UI (Metro - e.g. Windows Phone 7 and Windows Media Centre)

      Have you actually seen one?

      The Zune didn't break into the MP3 player in a big way (55.5+ million units according to Wikipedia) was down to poor marketing and not launching internationally.

      Less restrictions than an iPod Touch, cheaper, better interface and wifi sync I'd look at getting one.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Gates Horns

        Zune

        I'd like to congratulate MS on the Zune - only sold in USA, store doesn't sell outside USA, digitally restraint management (but won't play MS's tunes from 'Play for sure' (sic) service).

        That's what I call marketing.

    2. Robert Synnott

      Differentiating from Apple

      "You sell a (fairly precise) multitouch tablet for ~$400-500 that can either interface with DAW software (and act as a "mixer" frontend) or is useful as a DAW in its own right and you'd sell them like hotcakes." - So, erm... an iPad, then.

    3. Britt Johnston
      Thumb Up

      Tablets as DAWs

      A plug-in DAW would be my ideal for fhe next gen music machines. It doesn't have to be cheap for musicians, since it would replace much of the interface. Current keyboard screens are tablet format. Also, it probably needs built-in DSP. In fact, couldn't we get the whole works into the tablet, and add a keyboard docking station?.

      Music consumers would baulk at paying for so much, though.

  4. ratfox
    Thumb Down

    Useful... without a keyboard

    I really doubt that a pad without a proper keyboard can ever be something people want to do serious work on.

    The iPad was a SOMEWHAT logical move, after Apple noticed the way many people were using iPod Touches to surf the web or play games. Making it larger does make it better to surf, play, or watch videos.

    But claims of a productive pad runs directly against all the comments found on this very web site: a laptop or a notebook is way more useful.

    1. Tom 35

      More then just the keyboard

      Locked down data. How do you...

      Use one file between two aps on the ipad? Print (there are lots of wifi printers available)? Open an email attachment, edit it, email it back? You can use the camera kit to read some file types from an SD card (photo or video, but not MP3s for example), but you can't write to it.

      All this makes it as useful as write only memory for most productivity uses.

      1. jai

        Get your facts right before you troll

        I'll concede the camera kit issue, for the time being, but your wrong on all the other accounts

        Someone can email me a word document, I tap it to view the contents, I then choose the View In... Option to transfer it to Pages, edit it, email it back to the original author, and can also export it to the File Share area for other apps to open. Printing direct to wifi printer (no need for desktop pc) is just as easy as it was to pass the doc from email to Pages, using the Print Bureau app

        So what other excuses do you have for not being productive ??

        1. Tom 35

          Sure what ever you say...

          So when you mail back that edited word doc it's not going to have all it's formatting in tact right? Even if a Mac user sent you a Pages doc the light version on the iPad will strip stuff it doesn't support, it's not "round trip". Oh you can export to a file share? What a kluge!

          Since there is no printer support in the iPad OS, you have to pay for an app just to print something. You can only print documents from apps that are supported by the print app. Yes you can print but it's another kluge to get around Apples idea that no one is going to want to print from their iThing.

          I do have an iPod touch (jail broken - bite me apple), and might buy mini iPad if one is produced as rumoured to replace it, but I have no expectations of being able to do any real work on it.

          I looked at the iPad but bought a netbook.

  5. Wanda Lust
    Stop

    Productivity is not where it's at.

    The 'Tablet' is now a personal device. If y'all want productivity then Fujitsu been doing slatey tablety things for years for productivity. MSFT failed with theirs, it didn't rock as a productivity enhancer.

    The magical & revolutionary thing is not about user/personal productivity, it's primarily about Apple's. Sure, it gets the punters all productively consuming the Chunes, the Yapps, the Buykes, the Moovies. There's more volume in serving up Chunes, Yapps, Bukes and Moovies than there is enabling the commutering masses to get the latest polished widget report done before CoP.

  6. Shane Kent
    Thumb Up

    well put

    nice note how nobody has touched iPod. Will be interesting to see if they do the same with Pads/Slates/Tablets/etc. But sure seems they are well on their way to doing so. Going to be hard for anyone, even MS, to beat the App distribution. Vista, Utlimate Extras, lol. MS had so much behind it and now I look at people with their iPhones and think it might very well be over. Apps, Apple really seems to have it down.

    Who knows for 100% sure, but I think everyone might be late to the dinner table, except Apple, and I always thought those were for lunch. S#!t I guess it is a new world!

    1. dogged
      Thumb Down

      iPod

      Sounds like somebody's pissed in the headphone. I will never understand why it became popular.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        ipod

        Despite my loathing Apple, and believing itunes to be the amongst the worst, if not the very worst, pieces of software I'be ever had the mis-fortune to use, I own an iPod (a classic) for one very simple reason.

        It is the only MP3 player available which has a decent sized hdd. This means I can carry nearly my complete audio collection (audio books) in one easily transportable device. The nearest rival to iPod I ever found was iRiver - but they seem to have given up on the hdd MP3 market. The Zune might have been a good device, but it was let down by poor (very) marketing,

        In my limited experience Apple produce lovely hardware, but then nearly cripple it buy making you use some seriously shite software.

        1. Stoneshop
          FAIL

          It's not.

          "It is the only MP3 player available which has a decent sized hdd."

          Well, the Creative Zen series has a few: 20, 30 and even 60G. I'm sure there are others.

          Anyway, given the way it'll be used I'd rather have a smaller flash-based unit than a 40G rotating disk. And now with 32G (and even 64G) solid state media players there's no reason at all, other than aesthetics/UI, in going for an iPod, especially since most of the others appear as a mass storage device to their host, and can be easily filled without some bloaty proprietary tool. I didn't look too closely into it, but I suppose there are also players that have an SD slot. With such a player and carrying a few of those cards you could carry way more than 60G in less space, and with longer playing times too.

        2. mmiied

          my Ipod alternative

          http://uk.creative.com/products/productarchive.asp?category=213&subcategory=214&product=14331&nav=

          not sure they still make it and if not not sure why they stoped

      2. ThomH

        @dogged: It's the user interface, stupid

        (NB: a Clinton reference, rather than a personal attack)

        When the iPod came out, most of the other players were aping the CD player interface. You got a line or two of display and digital buttons to move back and forth between tracks and to proceed through playlist selection. In summary: navigation was really hard with, most of the time, you having no overview of what you're scrolling through and taking forever to get from one end to the other.

        The original iPod did two things very right: the scroll wheel (which gives you fantastic control over moving through a list) and a big screen that shows quite a lot of the list you're selecting from. The other players took years to catch up, even the original Zune had digital buttons disguised to look a bit like a scroll wheel to unsuspecting customers in a brilliant move of self sabotage. And by the time they'd caught up, Apple had become the first company to put together a compelling music shop front. And by the time everyone had caught up with that, the app revolution had come along and Apple had used the iPhone as a stealthy way to reinvent the iPod interface.

        One of the interesting things to come out of one of the Microsoft antitrust cases was a record of internal emails from somewhere around 2003 in which the guys in Redmond seem to be pulling their hair out over the very poor quality of the then latest Creative players, feeling that their efforts in PlaysForSure or whatever it was at the time were being consistently hampered by hardware partners failing abjectly to step up to the plate. Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=conewsstory&refer=conews&tkr=MSFT:US&sid=anhaQOstu83g

        If Microsoft were willing to say it then, it seems ridiculous to try to rewrite history now.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Halo

    I hope to see some healthy competition

    Why did the LG dude say that? It kind of implies the current LG phones (like the stupidly named Viewty) suck ass.

    Who else is bored-to-death of companies saying 'we have a kick-ass tablet..... it's , um, just not out yet....'. Tell us when it's freaking ready. Don't set expectations so incredibly high, that you'll set up tech journalists to mock you.

    It would be great to see smug Steve Jobs facing some actual competition. Let's hope LG's research labs have something up their sleeve. Something that compares with the A4 processor. Let's see innovation.

    btw. I do still think Apple rules the roost at the moment.

    1. Player_16
      Stop

      I too am bored-to-death.

      Look, just bring something out in 2 weeks. Don't care where. Just bring it out NOW; or it ain't happening. I'm tired of seeing prototypes; hearing about the next greatest; blah, blah, blah will be out just before...

      What was that show way back in January with Baulmer taking about these tablets and slates and dozens of prototypes that were coming out during the summer? Then the next week, Apple has its little show and SJ goes 'Check this out... It comes out in the 1st week of April…' -actually, late March- '…and this is what it can do…' and instantly made that Baulmer 'dog & pony show' into a forgotten memory.

      These companies should just keep their collective traps shut until they know... they know... they know it's ready and say here it is because I can honestly say and guaranty NO ONE will be forming a cue, waiting the night before, camping out, making a video and posting it on YouTube at the MS store (or where ever) as being the first to get the next iPad Killer.

  8. skeptical i
    Coat

    LG's Optimus "platinum edition" to be called Optimus Prime?

    Door, leaving, gone.

  9. Blain Hamon
    Paris Hilton

    Whither Joo Joo?

    Speaking of iPad killers, anyone remember the CrunchPad/JooJoo thing? What happened with those guys? Did it even ship?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      JooJoo sales figures

      It shipped, and they sold 90 (that's nine zero) units. Oh, and 15 got returned.

      Jobs is probably crapping himself (with laughter).

      http://gizmodo.com/5505724/joojoo-tablet-these-court-docs-show-only-90-preorders-with-15-returned

    2. dogged

      Yes

      It's out there. Need a firmware patch desperately. After it gets one, it might even be worthwhile.

  10. JaitcH
    Jobs Horns

    Apple ... isn't standing still.

    Apple has a tendency to rush a product to market in it's simplest form and then annually upgrade it to a point where it should have been on it's initial release.

    Other manufacturers develop a product to include as many features as possible so, when released, their products have a utility of more than one year.

    People should remember Fujitsu have been in the business for years and Apple copied their device name, iPad. How much of a 'leader' does that male Apple?

    1. Prag Fest
      FAIL

      @JaitcH

      Yeah, brilliant point, you really know your stuff.

      Look at MS with Windows Mobile, some would say it's 3 years hopelessly late and while they have been pissing about their competition have all but put them out the market, but really they were just taking the time to make it fully featured...

    2. RichyS

      Wrong

      Apple do not rush things to Market. They were apparently working on the iPad before the iPhone. Not much rushing there.

      What Apple also do is release something with a limit feature set that works seamlessly. Most other manufacturers just throw features at the hardware and hope for the best. Just poplar the HTC Evo and it's front facing camera -- completely non functional out of the box.

      And your evidence that Apple copied Fujitsu is the name? And I suppose the iPhone is simply a copy of the Cisco iPhone. Riiiiggght.

  11. George 24

    Another iPad Killer?

    "Our tablet will be better than the iPad." A brick is better than an iPad!

    But that is not the point. This type of device is not meant to be a tool, it is a toy, as such productivity and usefulness is secondary to the very nature of the object.

    iPod is is prime example. There are many better mp3 players on the market, but it does not matter, it is still the toy to have.

    So line up all you guys and try to compete against the mighty Apple, you stand no chance because you are fighting the war on the wrong front. You have to become more desirable than an Apple product, not more powerful, more useful, more efficient or more versatile.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Toys

      Videogame consoles are also, by definition, toys, but the fanboys get a bit twitchy when you point that out to them.

  12. Grifter

    Adam?

    No mention of Notion Ink's Adam? I'd take that one over any of the ones mentioned in the article.

    http://www.slashgear.com/notion-ink-adam-pricing-and-more-1297402/

  13. rahul
    Jobs Halo

    Saws...

    A few years back, my dad told me "Nothing succeeds like success". Well Apple is the best proof of this: The devices are expensive, locked-down, have draconian conditions attached, and don't really show much regard for the customer (Except for MarketSpeak "We love our users"); and yet it has customers galore and more orders than it can fulfill.

    Put it down to excellent engineering and well-thought innovation. That's what the other manufacturers need; not another *Pad.

    btw, he also told me: "The rich get richer."

  14. rahul
    Thumb Up

    Ho Hum...

    Yet another "me-too!" device.

    The only tablet more successful than Apples iPad is a small, triangular blue one.

    (Vote up if you get the reference).

    1. Robert Ramsay
      Thumb Down

      I thought...

      ...they were diamond shaped with rounded corners.

    2. Adrian Jones

      The only tablet?

      I would've thought Viagra was more successful too...

  15. Andus McCoatover
    Joke

    It's not triangular...

    It's lozenge-shaped. My missus tells me it doesn't do me any good anyway.

    She's wrong. Does wonders for me when she's at work....

    Sorry, but I'll have to upvote you with my left handed mouse. (She's out at the moment...)

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If it's apps they want...

    ...wouldn't a Microsoft Win32 based system win hands down (as long as it ran acceptably fast)? That's how Microsoft originally wrestled control of the desktop far from Apple's hands.

    Today, there are far more free apps, paid apps, productivity apps, etc. for a Windows desktop platform than iPad/ Blackpad/ Android-* pad can hope to have in the near future.

    Cheers!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Not necessarily...

      There are indeed far more Win32 apps available, with a proportional amount of pointless and irrelevant ones to boot as you point out. The critical thing here is the touch UI, where there a very few apps on the Win32 that fully support the paradigm - Windows 7 barely supports it at all (No, fanboys, Windows 7 isn't a touch based OS; it merely continues where Vista left off with its stylus based tables toolset and adds a few 'touchy' features). Another advantage that the App Store has over Android is a range of established and successful iOS developer and apps that have developed apps exclusively for the iPad. One of the benefits of 'draconian control'(TM) that Apple exert over he app store is that there were a decent range of device specific apps available at launch. While I'm in no doubt that there will be a handful of decent apps developed for Android (the quality of apps available for Android are no where near the quality that is available for iOS. I can count the amount of better apps for Android on exactly **no** digits); very few will be of are of sufficient quality to be scaled for use on a tablet, let alone specifically targeting such devices.

    2. sai2791
      Headmaster

      they wont get them on a tablet

      For the tablet your dreaming of running FULL windows apps means that you need integrated graphics, 2-4GB Memory, .5Tb - 1Tb of storage ... wait that sounds like a laptop.... Doh! wrong form factor.

      There is no current way to cram the computing power and versatility of a laptop into something the size of the current ipad.

      Hey, do you think thats why Apple didn't?

  17. Robert E A Harvey
    Pirate

    fair enough

    >...on the day after Thanksgiving — in the US only, however....

    That's only fair. They are the only people to have Thanksgiving. How would people know when to launch in other countries, on that basis?

    Don't forget September 19th

    1. Andus McCoatover
      Pirate

      September 19?!

      Thanks for the reminder, me ol' scurvy bilge-rat! Haaarrr!!!

      Cap'n Scumbucket at yer service, an' I've jus' seen a chick to whom I'd love to drop an anchor in her lagoon. She could clean me barnacles off me keel anytime she wanted!

      Harrr! (wash, rinse, repeat)

      http://www.talklikeapirate.com/ and...

      http://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Life-Citadel/dp/0806530707/ref=sr_1_3/104-9321180-9515938?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216151022&sr=8-3#reader_0806530707

    2. Blain Hamon
      Headmaster

      Not just the US

      Canada has a Thanksgiving as well, apparently on October 11th this year. I'm not sure of why the exact date, but it probably has something to do with Wayne Gretzky.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Name Idea

    RIM can take a good poke at Apple by calling their new product the "Job"

    1. Andus McCoatover
      Joke

      Sorry, mate!

      I already registered the "Jobsworth"™ name. As Stelios of Easyjet would tell ya, "Job" would be seen as an attempt to rip me off. That implies I now have the word "Job" and all it's derivatives. Don't tell me, tell my legal team. Easy, innit? (Oops!)

  19. hyartep
    Linux

    meego tablets

    with all these tablets coming, i'm wondering, if nokia will be releasing some meego tablets. after all, they had internet tablet's well before anyone and meego seems to be finally usable for mass market.

    i would welcome some 5-7 inch tablet. my n800 (4 inch) was great at the time, but now I would opt for phone with smaller touch screen (3-3.5 inch) and (5-7 inch) tablet for couch browsing.

  20. Wortel

    A Title

    I'm kinda disappointed in the potentially 'better' tablets you can find around the web. (UMPCportal.com in case you don't like to google.) The ratings of many devices are simply lame, and a lot are either 'expected' or never making it to production, let alone to Europe.

    I suppose there is an advantage to those failings; less choice means less devices to choose from come christmas when I might replace the dying Samsung NC10.

  21. Avalanche
    Coffee/keyboard

    Still wouldn't know....

    I still wouldn't know, what I would need an tablet device for...

    The only thing I can think of, was shaving my head, sipping earl-grey tea and tugging my spandex-like uniform... while walking around looking important with my tablet.

    And as I am not the trekkie I was 15 years ago, even that doesn't seem appealing.

  22. Tom 7

    Missing the point

    it doesn't matter if its 1/10th the price and 1000 times more useful. All apple users already have ten devices that provide all the functionality of an IPad. If it hasnt got that Apple 'wave it in someones face'-abilty it wont do.

  23. Uwe Dippel

    Let's just wrap up some history

    This going to take a tad longer, but there is a reason for this.

    Anyone old enough to remember the eighties, when suddenly a new device made it into the households? The 'white box'es? White, why? Because for some reason, IBM had decided to build a computer of small size and tiny performance essentially from - already then - off-the-shelf parts. Microsoft was given the task to write something that allowed a user to handle this crude family of advanced calculators. Since the assembly of the off-the-shelf parts was essentially unencumbered by patents or copyrights, any - and that was the start of computer industries in Taiwan - company had the legal right to assemble similar boxes. Suddenly the PC was born. And nobody expected to have those boxen running any of the existent operating systems, nor software (Unix, RSX, VMS), neither applications. They would not natively connect to teletypes, VT100 terminals, Token-Ring.

    Twenty years further, Asus blew a similar opportunity: The original EeePC. That was a ground-breaking, essentially new setup: all benchmarks, power, speed, mega- and gigabytes had been disregarded, and a box created that would just basically connect to a network and allow the user to do his daily browsing and e-mailing (and a bit of basic text editing) work on an astonishingly small and light and cheap box. Acer jumped in, with the famous Aspire One, here to be noted mostly: the L110, based on a flash drive, of 8 GB, no rotating platters. Both blew it together. Steve Jobs would have created the demand for that type of machines, but Asus and Acer modded their own boxen down to a low-cost PC; without full functionality. And everyone who fell for it, tried Windows, Microsoft Office, found insufficient space just for the basic install. And Crysis would not even start loading.

    No wonder, that the 'white' PCs were huge successes; while the netbooks failed.

    Back to the present. IPad is a successful product. Despite it not running actually anything. Not even OSX. All apps come from some proprietary store. But almost everyone is happy. Despite of the castrated nature of the device.

    IMHO, the success of an iPad-killer does not do much depend on the power, speed, RAM, blabla; than on the type of product as which it will be sold. An iPad imitation? A revolutionary productive tablet? A PC with touch screen (only)?

    It looks as if someone who re-creates something like the 'white' PCs has the best chances: Make it a revolutionary new hardware. A hardware doing what the user / owner wants it to do. E-book reader? Fine.Running Debian? Fine. Let the user decide what (s)he wants to do with it. Ubuntu Maverick must support it. Sell it with a profit, and allow everyone to put onto it what they like. Video-editing? Go ahead! An unconventional W7 machine? Install it! Make it open in so far as everyone can customise it to what he/she wants it to be. And not only the wallpaper.

    The success of any of those 'killers' will depend on this. NOT to be a 'second class' member of the iPad family; a pale copy of a successful product. But, a new, revolutionary, tablet without keyboard. To do with it, whatever you want to do with it. It is yours. Take possession of it. It will do what you want it to do. Not like the applish 'we-know-best-what-is-good-for-you'.

    Most of all: make it a NEW product. Invite world and dog to use it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Jobs Horns

      "No wonder, that the 'white' PCs were huge successes; while the netbooks failed."

      "No wonder, that the 'white' PCs were huge successes; while the netbooks failed."

      Mine hasn't ( but, as you point out I haven't tried to cripple it with Windows & MS Office)

      Its the the reason why I won't buy a tablet.

    2. 3si
      Pint

      History repeating

      Actually, the original IBM PC was a hasty reply to Jobs' and Wozniak's garage built computer, offering an alternative to the then mainframe-dumb terminal norm. With an original time to market of 1 year (subsequently reduced to 6 months), IBM's engineers had little choice but to use off the shelf components - bar the BOIS which was later reversed engineered by Compaq, creating the PC compatible/clone market.

      It's worth noting the position on those earlier players in the market today - Apple have a limited (and IMHO fairly niche) share of the PC market, IBM's PC wing was sold off to Lenovo (enjoying a similarly small share), while Compaq enjoyed a much larger until being taken over/merged with HP.

      The eventual winner in the tablet market will be whoever can offer the best features and value for money as the device evolves from being a niche (want one but don't know what for) purchase to being a everyday/commodity purchase like the PC of today. This winner may be Apple, Google, MS, or even the $100 7" Apad sitting on my bedside locker running Android and apps such as Amazon Kindle.

      Personally, I don't see Apple winning here long-term. Imitation cost less than innovation and the late arrivals can piggyback on the lessons learned by the early adopters. Dell ring a bell?

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Spurrious logic

    Another poster on there suggests that the top ten apps for iPads are productivity apps and suggestst some meaning in that... well here is another meaning;-

    iPad buyer spends silly amount on shiny toy, realises that it is not that useful and has an attack of guilt and must justify to himself buying a laptop costing item that still needs a laptop.

    User than scours the app store for productivity apps and buys as many possible so he can say 'but i can read a PDF on the Tube'.

    (User also sees lots of games on the app store which he downloads to his iPhone)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Heavens forbid!

      Here's a thought that might scare you 'haters'; iPads are successful because they do what they do well. Until you can get beyond the 'silly amount on shiny toy' and 'but I can do photoshop on my net book' (No, you **really** can't!) mentality, you will continue to miss the point: nobody cares what you think.

      1. George 24
        Boffin

        Do what they do well?

        Or crippled enough to do so little that they can only do it well???

    2. Chris 3

      Ummm

      "'but i can read a PDF on the Tube'."

      Of course, an iPad (and indeed a 1G iPod Touch) can do that out of the box.

  25. Captain Thyratron

    Who are these people?

    I keep hearing about all these people buying iPads, and clearly the things are worrying Apple's competitors into producing competing offerings, but who are these people? Who are these people who are buying all these iPads? I have yet to meet a single one of them in person!

    1. jai

      irl

      that's because you spend too long sat in front of your computer reading sites like this which are full of elitist geeks who can't understand how other people have a different perspective of the world than they do

      get out of the house and meet some real life people - there's a couple of iPad people on my train to work each morning. there's at least 4 of them in my office, 2 of them bring theirs with them to every meeting they have. they don't seem to be having any difficulty being productive with theirs.

    2. Ivan Headache

      So far I know 3 of them.

      A week after the iPad ws launched I was in the Apple Store in Westfield. One of the Tshirts told me they were selling an ipad approximately every 2 minutes.

      On Monday I was in the new Covent Garden store waiting for the Lovely Ivana. In the space of about 30 minutes I saw 5 being sold. One chap already had one and was buying another for the kids!

      Yesterday I was in the Regent Street store with a client who was replacing an old imac. I saw one chap buy 2 iPads from a pile of about 30-40 units. By the time my client had finished his purchase and we were ready to leave with his new iMac, the pile had gone.

      Something that I think is helping sell the iPad (apart from it being sexy and shiney) is Apple's retail stores - The atmosphere and presentation of the product makes it difficult to leave the store without buying something. A couple of weeks back, at Westfield again (with a different client) I saw three Tshirts take something like 4 grand between them in about 4 minutes (in cash! - I happened to be standing near the cash till). The other Tshirts also seemed to be constantly busy with their little hand-held POS units (are they Fujitsu iPads by any chance.?)

    3. dylan 4

      Who buys iPads? IT departments for starters...

      You probably _have_ met iPad owners, you just couldn't identify them because they're not 'branded' by carrying a bulky laptop bag + charger.

      Who is buying them? In addition to gadget-freaks, after the last 15 years of anti-Apple crusades, IT departments have ended their resistance and are now among the early adopters of iPads.

      The IT support department of the organisation I work for is one [health department with thousands of desktops, 4 acute hospitals etc etc]. Perfect tool to carry on call-outs, sure beats carrying a laptop + charger around all day. They started off with a small trial of 20 iPads and are likely to roll out another 80 in the next couple of months.

      At the higher corporate levels, they also look set to take off in a big way - plenty of people that at the moment 'get by' with a blackberry, who would like a bit more screen real estate and functionality, but who don't have time to mess around with a laptop, and have "people" to do the "content creation" thing for them.

      Tablets are never going to be a primary tool for people whose productivity is related to word processing, spreadsheets etc, but that still leaves a large and lucrative market.

  26. Andus McCoatover

    Jobsworth competition?

    IMHO, it seems Apple launched the jobsworth iPad without a clue what it was for, then tried to market it.

    Very successfully, as it turns out. Well, we know about a fool and his money...

    What I'd like to see is a simple and necessary accessory, like a foldable, pocketable USB keyboard - or, more innovatively, one of those Israeli projected-on-your-desk keyboards. Then, I'd want Flash as a basic necessity. I want to read the internet content, not a white box.

    Couple of extra USB sockets, and no call-back to the manufacturer who can 'brick' the thing at a whim.

    Much to ask?

    (Linux, natch)

    1. dylan 4
      FAIL

      troll all you like, but

      it seems to me Apple built the iPad with very clear ideas about what it was _not_ meant to be for, first among which was use at a desk with a keyboard.

      But hey, if you want to not only buy an iPad but turn it into a second-rate under-powered small-screen desktop/laptop replacement by connecting an accessory foldable keyboard, all your USB peripherals, and watching flash ads, you're obviously not wrong about the "fools and money" part.

      1. Andus McCoatover

        Ok, point taken. Pray tell....

        So, what's a Jobsworth actually FOR??

        I don't get it. A netbook replacement, seeing as ASUS has folded the Linux, and been coerced into bed with Microsoft ("It's better with windows" - which it ain't)?

        A toy?

        A gaming machine, which it isn't?

        A fuc*k-off big phone that can't make calls?

        Can't view the news on it, 'cos most sites use flash??

        USB Peripherals? Why does Apple sell an extra converter add-on to give that? Peripherals? What, like a printer? Stuff like that which'd make it a bit more useful? Maybe something I could plug my Tux Droid's fish into? Phone, even?

        The "fools and money" part? I'm no fool. I'd never buy one 'till I found a use for it. The millions of sheeple (sorry, Sarah, legit. use, I think) who bought one are riding the ship of fools.

        I can use a brick as a doorstop before Apple sends the (recently patented) "brick" command to the iPod.

        So, to reiterate, 'epic fail', what the fuc*k can it do that even my Asus 701 can't? I await with badŴ baited breath.

        1. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

          Re: Ok, point taken. Pray tell....

          I missed that. Dammit. It's a stupid irritating non-word and I don't think it has any legit use. Please stop. Thanks.

          1. Andus McCoatover

            OK, Sarah.

            I'll avoid it in future.

            "Lemmings" OK? I think the only time I'll use it is if someone says they like Cliff Richard's "Summer Holiday". Then, I'll do my Lemming impression, and jump off a Cliff. Or, onto him.

            Or, if they say the Jobsworth is useful for something. Other than looking flash (oops) on the train to Surbiton.

      2. Andus McCoatover

        Dylan 4

        "But hey, if you want to not only buy an iPad but turn it into a second-rate under-powered small-screen desktop/laptop replacement"

        Er, isn't that exactly what it is?? I don't seem to need to 'turn it' into what it already is. A second-rate under-powered small-screen desktop/laptop replacement.

        Love the admissions of "second-rate" and "underpowered".

        C'mon, Fanboys - Eat-Ya-Shorts!!! (And smell the ?coffee?).

  27. Apocalypse Later

    People are stupid

    And young people are even stupider. I can't get over the fact that every kid I see with a bicycle these days has a BMX. They are made for stunts and posing, impossible to ride any distance, with the seat so low your knees are up around your ears. And yet that is what they all buy, or inveigle out of their parents.

    TV companies don't want older viewers anymore. We aren't influenced by adverts, so programs all have to be designed for the young wastrels pissing away their first pay cheques. They will buy fashion, electric toothbrushes, the latest way to add water to coffee grounds, anything.

    Now what were we talking about? Oh yeah...

  28. Stuart Halliday
    FAIL

    Oh God I hope not...

    If LGs Arena KM900 smartphone is any example of the way their programmers think then I don't want one.

    Did no one in LG actually hand one to a Westerner and ask for their comments before it was released?

    I say Westerner because it must be something about the way Easterners think that made LG release a smartphone with so many Apps that must have been designed to irritate people in the UK.

  29. Scott 9
    WTF?

    Is that an iPad? Cool! Lemme have a look at it....

    Schwing! plink-plink-plink-PLOP!

    What are you crying about? It skipped three times before it sank!

    Seriously I don't understand the fascination at all with tablets. Touch screens only make sense on small devices where a keyboard takes up too much space or on kiosks where you only want people doing a few things at a time.

    Beyond that these are half-a-laptops that need a protective case to keep from damaging the screen, and constant cleaning to remove all the fingerprints. I haven't seen any really good appeal or point to a tablet, and the only times actually use them is for manual writing with a stylus and toting it around as a kind of digital checklist.

    However, I'm sure someone out there is convinced an arcane system of gestures will be faster and more "productive" at movie editing than using a mouse, or a machine with the proper hardware to edit in the first place.

    1. Andus McCoatover
      Coat

      iPad? Wrong name.

      Fiddle-de deee, fiddle-de-dum, Eric the half-a-laptop.

      (Sorry, Mr. Python*..)

      *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_the_Half-a-Bee

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    A concept that will not be made.

    The future is unknown.

    The true wishes of the users are unknown.

    The IBM PC was open like the Apple II but not the Macintosh.

    With these in mind the core is a good quality high resolution backlit touch screen (good enough to input handwriting if necessary) with an internal bus routing switch to deliver full bandwidth between selected sockets.

    Everything (and I mean everything, including the processor and battery) are in PCMCIA or CF format packages. An A4 format should accommodate 10 of them. The should all be lockable to prevent removal without damage.

    Need WiFi?Bluetooth?3G? GSM? GPS? Motion sensing? Choose a card.

    Want better play back? Upgrade main processor or get a video accelerator.

    Want long battery life but don't need so much storage. Stick in more battery cards, dump the HDD and Bluettoth for a preloaded SSD with your apps and favorite media.

    Want it to run in hospitals with all those dirt harboring sockets? Put it in a sealed outer casing with inductive battery charging and clear sections for bar code readers to see out of (or get a Bluetooth bar code reader driven by a Bluetooth card)

    The internal system is very limited and it's API is fully documented. If the initial processor choices are good enough to make a Windows port straightforward it can run Windows as an option. The access control architecture is critical. While a private user would expect to chop and change cards at will (although they would probably settle on set they stay with most of the time) in a corporate environment a more detailed access control would be needed.

    Modern PCs are built around only having USB sockets. This generalizes the idea to the processor and memory as well but serial ports would never have the bandwidth to host the processor. Note there should be no special treatment of any socket. If the owner wants to run 9 processors and the whole package plugged into a docking station for power, let them. 8 SSDs with 1 battery and 1 CPU. Fine by me (YMMV). BTW at least one CPU in CF format already exists.

    I have waited a decade for someone to deliver this.

    I am still waiting. I guess Eric was right. People do want something to tell them what they can have. Freedom is hard.

  31. Volker Hett

    Lots of secretaries here.

    I for one think it is very productive when I can plug my camera into an iPad, import pictures, crop and adjust and be the first to mail them to the paper.

    If I were a photographer which I'm not.

    OTOH, I earned 300 Euros this way within the first month with my iPad, another 200 and it paid for itself :)

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    anything will be better than the eye-pad from apple

    I SAY " anything will be better than the eye-pad from Apple!

  33. Wize

    I thought an iPad killer...

    ...would be a six inch nail and a hammer.

  34. digstar

    the reason for an ipad.....

    so, for years I have been using pcs, buidling them, downloading 'err found' copies of windows as I couldn't afford them, enjoying adding bits and bobs to them, new cards, new drivers.

    4 years ago I bought a mac mini, as I wanted a little computer and it seemed to be what I needed. Since then, not bothered about going back to a PC. Love my little mini, still going strong now. Couldn't see any point to an ipad though. Why would I have it over a laptop????

    4 years ago I still had a crappy basic phone, then 2 weeks ago I bought an iphone 4. Since then, I have used the internet on the mini about once or twice, rest of the time it's been on the iphone. Why? Well, my mini runs my media centre, and using it as a computer stops that happening.

    NOW I know why I would want an ipad. One of those doing everything my iphone does, but bigger, with the mini running the big stuff, and there with the monitor for when I want to use photoshop, etc, blinding. Sat on the couch, controlling my mini, watching films, while checking out IMDB and facebook updates. Brilliant.

    Can't afford one now I have an iphone. But hell if I had the money I would get one. Things don't need to do everything, they just need to do a few things bloody well.

    P.S.

    Happily editing my homebrew role-playing game (paper and dice) on documents to go. That last just to confirm my geek non-fashionable status ;)

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