People like analogies. Sometimes they're appropriate. Sometimes they're not. Take iOS and Android as an allegory for Mac and Windows. It might be superficially similar but that's as far as it goes.
IMHO tablets are similar. Android is, without question, a stunning success in the phone world. As is iOS, which singlehandededly transformed the mobile phone industry. People expect the same pattern to repeat in the tablet world.
I disagree. There are several fundamental differences:
1. Phones have a specific purpose, which for most people is the ability to make phone calls, send and receive text messages and use maps. I would guess that these are the three biggest uses of smartphones (but it is only a guess).
What's more, I think these account for the majority of actual usage. Apps are of course important but they are an add-on. Some people will use their smartphones almost completely app free (seriously). People I think forget this too.
Tablets are a different beast. There is much less inbuilt and obvious functionality. Apple has a vision of what the use case for this. I don't think anyone else really does (yet).
The ecosystem then becomes far more important and it's Apple with the music, movies/TV and, to a lesser extent, books (mainly due to Kindle, which is cross-platform). Android simply doesn't have this ecosystem so the use case for Android tablets for most people is a much tougher and less obvious sell.
I just don't see Android tablets (or any non-iPad tablets for that matter) gaining serious mass market traction for years to come.
>1. Phones have a specific purpose, which for most people is the ability to make phone calls, send and receive text messages and use maps. I would guess that these are the three biggest uses of smartphones (but it is only a guess).
People who buy phones with a specific purpose buy dumbphones. The average iOS user has 50 apps on them nowadays. You've narrowed the use case too much.
That's also the appeal of the Apple brand to consumers: Buy it today, who knows what else you'll be using it for tomorrow?
With iMessage, a lot of people paying AT&T for unlimited texting are going to be dropping those plans. In theory, if all your friends have iPhones and will only have iPhones, you never need to pay for a text message plan on top of your data plan.
>Tablets are a different beast. There is much less inbuilt and obvious functionality. Apple has a vision of what the use case for this. I don't think anyone else really does (yet).
They really don't, and they're not marketing tablets to consumers intelligently at all. Regular consumers don't care about Flash. Heck, that holy war is pointless even among geeks. What consumers want is an easy way to view the view on the web: be it native apps or a flash plug in. They don't care about HOW. They just care that they can' Most consumers don't see the iPad as "crippled without Flash" because something like 80% of the video on the web is accessible through Apps. (Whereas I don't believe any of the Android Tablets have Netflix).
Netflix is trying hard to replace cable for consumers. For me, a device not having a netflix tie in is a dealbreaker.
In my experience, a tablet has a much more specific purpose than a phone: to view web pages. I'm willing to bet that 99% of iPad usage is for web pages, apps that are essentially just iPad optimized web pages, and games that could have been done in a properly touch-enabled Flash (which may not exist yet, but will come eventually).
2. Ultimate Mortal Combat 3 for iPad (3D Fighting)
3. Splashtop Remote Desktop for iPad (Remote Desktop)
4. Angry Bird Rio HD
5. Pages
6. Angry Bird HD
7. Words with Friends HD
8. GarageBand
9. Gangstar: Miami Vindication HD (3D ACT)
10. Real Racing 2 HD (3D Racing)
Only 4,6,7 fit your discription and for now the Chrome Store port of Angry Bird performs rather poorly on a duo core Atom system. And the facebook version of Scrabble doesn't compare to the iPad version.
My reply was more targeted at this part of his comment:"apps that are essentially just iPad optimized web pages, and games that could have been done in a properly touch-enabled Flash (which may not exist yet, but will come eventually)."
But if you want evidence for people not spending majority time using browser on iPad, here is Flurry's analytic data:
1) apps that could be web pages are generally free so don't show up on the "top ten paid apps" list. The cooking apps I used are a prime example here.
2) flashy games are often purchased but forgotten, it's the apps with good gameplay but not necessarily as flashy graphics that get replayed and replayed and replayed. canonical example: angry birds.
3) Flash can do 3D too.
4) in your top ten list, only #3 and #8 would not be possible as a web site.
Most apps could be web sites, so any stats that say most time is spent in apps is meaningless.
No they could not. There could be and in some cases already are Web based similar services out there. But they are inferior, unpopular among iPad users. Connected Application can not necessarily translate into a web application and remain the same attraction or even feature parity.
Angry Bird/Tiny Wings/Fruit Ninja etc are not as graphically demanding as say Infinite Blade, but they are still very well done games with impressive art work. As a matter of fact all the Zynga games and Gameloft titles in the top 10 are not flashy by any means, to be honest Gameloft's 3D engine is so out of date it's laughable.
I'm sure given enough motivation Adobe can make Flash do anything, it could do your dishes and make your coffee. But it doesn't mean you should let Flash take over.
IMHO your wishful thinking is as meaningless if not more, especially when you don't even have stats.
I think it's more accurate to say that the iPhone and iPad are game platforms that happen to have very good web browsers and email clients. Games utterly dominate the top 25 app lists on both sides.
If you put aside anti-virus stuff and Microsoft Adobe's flagship products (namely Office and PS), you'll see all games on paid PC software chart too, if there was a chart. * In consumer space.
I own one. I'm surprised you haven't noticed the lag when trying javascript intense sites (like games). Here are the iPad Nitro Sunspider results: 2121ms vs. Chrome 11: 248ms. That would make Mobile Safari javascript 8x slower than desktop Chrome (other desktop browsers have similar speeds).
Well, ot in my experience. Native apps still have an edge. For example: twitter web interface is nice, but twitter the iOS app is WAY better on iPad. Also, I don't see something of the quality of Flipboard coming as web app (and clipboard get content from web, after all). May be this will change, but we are still not here.
I don't get the appeal of Flipboard at all. It's pretty, but the reason that good books are pleasant to read is that someone has carefully laid out all the content on each page. Splashing a bunch of random news items with truncated headings on a virtualized book doesn't get you there.
I suspect we'll look back on this early period of tablet software design with a laugh. All these clones of real-world objects (iBooks) will seem quaint and naive and conservative.
web surfing (is that phrase even in wide use anymore?) is the sole reason I bought a NOOKcolor... which is incidentally exactly what I'm writing this on. It is of course rooted.
Just my two cents: I think the ideal functionality of tablets is relatively obvious. It's "how I use my laptop when I'm not in work mode". "Work mode" is when I'm at my desk and creating documents, spreadsheets and writing code. Non-work mode is when I'm on the couch, watching television and I want some electronic entertainment for 3-4 minutes while the television displays advertisements. I'm in non-work mode while at a coffee shop too. What I do there is email, instant messaging and web surfing. My assertion is that tablets just replace the non-work activities on your laptop. At least that's how it's played out for me. In the past I've watching flash videos and read news on my laptop. Now that I have an iPad I just do all the entertainment stuff there.
While I agree that the ecosystem for tablets is more important than for phones, I'm not so sure this will automatically lead to a Windows/Mac situation. Windows benefited a lot from lock-in and network effects. These are becoming less relevant as more services are online. Obviously this is true for web apps, but even native apps usually have a large online component, think Facebook app or Kindle. Because of this, it's much easier to switch to a different platform.
That said, Apple is of course trying to create that lock-in by creating an ecosystem with content (music, movies, etc.) that only works on Apple devices. So you might very well be right that Android tablets won't get any real traction, but I think the forces are less strong than they were for Windows and Mac in the 90s.
IMHO tablets are similar. Android is, without question, a stunning success in the phone world. As is iOS, which singlehandededly transformed the mobile phone industry. People expect the same pattern to repeat in the tablet world.
I disagree. There are several fundamental differences:
1. Phones have a specific purpose, which for most people is the ability to make phone calls, send and receive text messages and use maps. I would guess that these are the three biggest uses of smartphones (but it is only a guess).
What's more, I think these account for the majority of actual usage. Apps are of course important but they are an add-on. Some people will use their smartphones almost completely app free (seriously). People I think forget this too.
Tablets are a different beast. There is much less inbuilt and obvious functionality. Apple has a vision of what the use case for this. I don't think anyone else really does (yet).
The ecosystem then becomes far more important and it's Apple with the music, movies/TV and, to a lesser extent, books (mainly due to Kindle, which is cross-platform). Android simply doesn't have this ecosystem so the use case for Android tablets for most people is a much tougher and less obvious sell.
I just don't see Android tablets (or any non-iPad tablets for that matter) gaining serious mass market traction for years to come.