Android Honeycomb Tablet OS is official. This does not suck! (1 Viewer)

[ManW_TheUncool]

Yes, I agree having the app store concept, especially combined w/ a good app review/certification process, is a good thing and does help as Hanson points out.


My main beef wrt this discussion is the marketing ploy being used to tout iOS over Android, et al. Meanwhile, there seems to be this laziness (or maybe even agenda) w/ reviews being so iOS-centric in covering other non-iOS devices.


Don't keep regurgitating to me about the giant see of crap in the App Store -- which might actually be turning into a rather bad thing, if you think about it, since I find myself wasting too much time looking for anything actually useful there each time I bother -- but actually apply some due diligence in one's published reviews of these rapidly advancing products. I don't fault the average (or even moderately advanced) user for not knowing better, but any cross-platform reviewer who wishes to be taken seriously *must* do better than simply drinking Apple's Kool-Aid, especially at this point in the (r)evolution curve.


Afterall, it's not like this whole smartphone/tablet platform thing has reached a high plateau and everything will clearly just be diminishing returns...


_Man_

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Originally Posted by Hanson Yoo

Dave, I'm guessing you've never used a Blackberry, because the back button in Android basically replicates the back button from the Blackberry. As you drill down further into menus, the back button takes you back up the tree. It's context specific as well, so in browsers it will take you back to the previous page or in emails it will take you back to the main screen. It's funny that it baffles you since one of things in iOS that bugs the crap out of me is that the only button available dumps you out of whatever program you're working in to go back to the app drawer, which is what the home button in Android does. I find the back and menu buttons to be very intuitive and essential to effective UI navigation. Obviously, YMMV.

That's good to know, if true. Thanks for putting that more clearly, Hanson.


It sorta sounded like that's what's happening, but I wasn't sure at all.


Not sure how good and truly intuitive that will actually be on an Android tablet (or even smartphone), but that approach generally works fine for me on my BB Tour, except when I use the music player, which seems to actually inhabit 2 different app tasks on the BB, (and use one of the customizable physical buttons rather than the task switcher to get back to it).


Not sure about Android Honeycomb, but the back button on the BB Tour running OS 4.7 -- yeah, I never did get around to updating the OS because there always seems to be some potentially showstopping issues w/ them -- only seems to track usage history to the home screen, nothing before that, ie. it only seems to remember stuff starting from the last time you were on the home screen.


Does Android Honeycomb (or previous 2.x versions of Android) actually track much more than just what happened since the last time you were on the home screen?


Maybe my slight annoyance w/ the BB music player (and how it's tracked as 2 separate app tasks) won't be a problem on an Android tablet. Can the SGT (and Xoom and others) keep some sort of minimized version of the media player readily accessible (perhaps via some user config) w/out requiring standard task switching? Since media playback is a big part of the equation, especially audio playback as a background thing, would be good to have quick-and-easy (and consistent) access to that w/out always defering to the standard task switcher.


Thanks again...


_Man_

 

[DaveF]

Originally Posted by Hanson Yoo

Dave, I'm guessing you've never used a Blackberry, because the back button in Android basically replicates the back button from the Blackberry.

Nope.

Originally Posted by ManW_TheUncool


Combine those 2 statements and tell me what you see? "Right now," you don't feel you can trust something like Google Maps for reliable turn-by-turn, driving GPS -- and are a bit concerned about wireless data usage. That's a big reason why you went w/ the TomTom option. But how do you know "right now" didn't just become "last week, but not anymore" w/ the latest version of Google Maps? You don't because you didn't try it out and none of the reviews are telling us either. Get my point now?

I use my GPS "right now". How do I know I'm not in the future? Because Google Maps only upgraded its software, not the cell networks or my data-plan pricing. Nor did it make "Canada" part of "USA".


Perhaps you don't travel to Canada with a smartphone? Data usage for AT&T in Canada is exorbitant (don't know about Verizon). Most people turn off data roaming on their iPhones in Canada. Let's briefly consider the experience of navigating in Canada with the TomTom app compared to Google Maps with no "cloud" data access... (or perhaps outside of Lake Placid, NY, where there's no cell signals, voice or data.)


I get your point; you're ignoring reality

I didn't actually run any statistics, but I'd guesstimate that 99.99% of apps in the App Store are either pure crap or just not really worth mentioning at all for this purpose. They are mostly just time wasters. And the ones that have all that much potential tend to be woefully lacking.


IMHO, there are really extremely few apps that are worth caring about, and if they're all that good, they (or some comparable facsimiles of them) will most likely end up on Android soon enough.


[...]Shareware has been around for ages. And if your smartphone has a good web browser, you would've found that piece of quality shareware at some point, if you actually needed it.


Sure, the App Store makes the whole process easier (and cleaner), especially for those who know nothing about shareware and those who want to market them. But it didn't have to be *this* App Store though. If Apple didn't do the App Store, somebody out there would eventually figure out it's a good idea to host some sort of app store on the web, perhaps one that is even platform neutral. Heck, there have already been sites that host wide selections of shareware downloads as it is (though probably nothing substantial for smartphones/tablets).


People could have just googled for something they wanted/needed and found that piece of shareware w/out needing *this* kind of app store. The App Store is really mostly about marketing, not about real substance in quality apps. Again, I'm not suggesting everything there is crap and that I would never bother to check and try some apps, but just that the whole App Store phenomenon is more gimmick than anything else.


Sure, of course, this is just my opinion, and you may disagree. But IMO, you're probably just drinking Apple's Kool-Aid, if you really buy into the App Store line, sink and hook to that extent...

Your perception is different from mine.


I used Palm PDAs for eight years, and bought software for them. The app store is a big improvement. Prices are 10x lower for equivalent software. Quality software is more common and easier to find. There are more good options for any given category. The entire model is better with Apple Home Sharing: no more having a single SD card I have to share with my wife. No more having to futz with serial #s hoping to get a single purchase to install on multiple devices. All that just works with Apple's system. And no more software that remains unchanged, unimproved, and un-upgradeable (e.g. SD cards) for years. (In one case, a developer is emailed with my wife and implemented features she requested.) I now get good software, that gets better, for cheap and that can be used by both my wife and me.

Without reservation: what the App Store has brought to the user cannot be understated. It is far better than "googling" for "shareware" five years ago or going to CompUSA and buying single-user apps on SD cards.



As for the quality and value of the software, there are two aspects. First, I've found, as with my Palm, there are a small number of "must have" apps. For me, this includes: SplashID, Car Care, TomTom, PCalc, ToDo, Notebooks, My-Cast, Facebook, Amazon, and Angry Birds. Some I bought, some free. What's curious, what you'll want to point out, is that of 60,000 apps, I only need about 10. Yep. But what that vast selection brings is that for each app I bought, I chose from a selection of high quality options that cater to different tastes and needs. (Don't like TomTom? There's Navigon or Magellan, as good or better.) That great size also brings entire other categories of apps that I don't need but others do (e.g. the photography genre).


An app store doesn't need 60,000 apps to be good: biggest count doesn't determine best store. But a device needs a certain critical "mass" so that all needs and tastes and prices are covered. Apple's App Store met that a year ago for me. Reviewers say Android's Marketplace has that critical mass of apps for phones.


As for Kool Aid: I wasn't buying an iPhone until it had thrid-party apps and certain apps were available. So I suppose I was eagerly waiting for Apple to mix the Kool-Aid and start serving it.



Perhaps your point is that the "App Store" is overblown, and people could find software without a central repository. I think that's a false distinction. I think "app store" captures the reality of 60,000 programs for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. The "app store" connotes a wealth of high quality, highly useful, even "can't live without" applications for these iOS devices. It means something for everyone, whether you've got paying work to do (Pcalc) or nothing but idle time (Angry Birds).


And the big deal is that Android tablets don't have any of that "app store" meaning. That software isn't anywhere yet: no central repository, no "shareware", nothing to be found by googling. Not yet. And that's a problem.


Undoubtedly it will come. There are probably more apps today that I saw on Saturday. But that's the Xoom's acute problem. The iPad 2 will be for sale this week (per rumors) with everything a user might want for it in the App Store, games to Netflix to Kindle to professional programs. And the Xoom has...?





So again, I don't understand your perspective. The importance of an app store as both specific thing or as shorthand for the software available on these devices, be it Apple or Android or RIM or Windows, is hard to overstate.

 

[Sam Posten]

Apparently you guys aren't familiar with Sturgeon's Law...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_Law


The difference is that in Apple's world the 'front' of the store acts as a curated mechanism to get to the good stuff quickly.


And there are obviously 3rd party sites that compliment that nicely. Appshopper and TouchArcade being infinitely valuable to me in particular, YMMV.


Dismissing 90% of the store as 'unengaging puzzle crap' is so ridiculous to me that I couldn't even categorize it as wrong.


As for games in particular, the reviews put up for any given day's worth of new releases on TouchArcade outweigh the entire oeuvre of Android games from what I can see. If you aren't a gamer I'm sure that's easy to dismiss, but quality entertainment, whatever your poison, moves systems.

 

[Hanson]

Originally Posted by DaveF (jump to the comments)


You can run the phone versions of most software on Xoom. So it's not like there's only 16 apps.


And sorry to offend your gaming sensibilities Sam, but other than Angry Birds, I just haven't found much of anything in mobile gaming that captures my attention. Most of the games fall into "puzzle games that get tired after a short time" or "would be better/playable with physical controls and buttons". I know a tons of people with iPhones and iPads, and other than Angry Birds (which isn't even as universal as I had imagined), they don't play anything (and I only know one person who actually plays Farmville). Maybe Solitare too? That's an oldie but goody. I know there is a segment of mobile consumers who really enjoy gaming, but I'm not actually seeing that many game crazy iOS owners up close and personal.

 

[DaveF]

Originally Posted by Hanson Yoo

Dave, I'm either not getting what you mean by "app store" or you're knowledge of the Android Marketplace is 2 years old. You do realize that Marketplace has search, has featured apps, and there is an online version of Marketplace that allows you to google for apps?


And Xoom can run >90% of the apps in the Marketplace including Kindle.

Yes. And there are no Xoom-specific apps.


Running phone apps on a tablet is a dandy solution...if this is 2010 and the Xoom is released a month before the first iPad. But it's 2011, the iPad has native apps and the iPad 2 is days away.


In time there will be a Marketplace full of Xoom optimized apps. But at launch, it is at a severe disadvantage.

 

[DaveF]

Originally Posted by Hanson Yoo
And sorry to offend your gaming sensibilities Sam, but other than Angry Birds, I just haven't found much of anything in mobile gaming that captures my attention. Most of the games fall into "puzzle games that get tired after a short time" or "would be better/playable with physical controls and buttons". I know a tons of people with iPhones and iPads, and other than Angry Birds (which isn't even as universal as I had imagined), they don't play anything (and I only know one person who actually plays Farmville). Maybe Solitare too? That's an oldie but goody. I know there is a segment of mobile consumers who really enjoy gaming, but I'm not actually seeing that many game crazy iOS owners up close and personal.

Plants vs Zombies. Meant for touch control. Classic "tower defense".


Words with Friends. Scrabble. Play with friends, anywhere, anytime.


Tilt to Live. Great action game. Meant for accelerometer control.


Chuzzle. Addictive time-waster from Pop-cap, in the vein of Bejeweled. Also meant for touch control.



Maybe you're not a gamer, or not an iPhone gamer. I know a hardcore gamer and professional game-art designer who can't fathom why people play iPhone games when they could buy an Nintendo DS. So tastes vary. But I still don't understand how anyone who enjoys games can honestly dismiss the iPhone as a solid gaming device.


As for me: I haven't played my Xbox 360 for nearly six months because of iPhones games. And I can't keep up. I've got nearly 10 iPhone games all clamoring for attention

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Originally Posted by DaveF

Nope.


I use my GPS "right now". How do I know I'm not in the future? Because Google Maps only upgraded its software, not the cell networks or my data-plan pricing. Nor did it make "Canada" part of "USA".


Perhaps you don't travel to Canada with a smartphone? Data usage for AT&T in Canada is exorbitant (don't know about Verizon). Most people turn off data roaming on their iPhones in Canada. Let's briefly consider the experience of navigating in Canada with the TomTom app compared to Google Maps with no "cloud" data access... (or perhaps outside of Lake Placid, NY, where there's no cell signals, voice or data.)


I get your point; you're ignoring reality

The more you say you get it, the more it actually sounds like you do not.


Ok, you drive to Canada. Yes, that's certainly a concern, especially if your carrier of choice charges crazy roaming costs. You're right. I don't drive to Canada. If I do, I would want to find out how that impacts usage of the current version of Google Maps for GPS nav. But I wouldn't simply dismiss it out of hand like you seem to.


You seem to assume no amount of software-and-backend improvements will matter toward this end, but if that's your assumption, then you probably did in fact not get it because you're neglecting/overlooking what better/smarter caching of maps data could possibly mean for those kinds of uses.


IIRC, one of the earliest pre-launch Motorola/Google demos mentioned that you can cache an entire state's worth of map data w/ this latest version. Now, I don't know exactly what that would mean for your travels across the border to Canada (or around Lake Placid) in actual practice, but that sure as heck sounds to me like going w/out actual mobile data access could be doable unless you plan to drive 2-300mi (or whatever) beyond the border *and* never get WiFi access to reload/recache maps data.


Like I said, I don't know exactly how good this latest version of Google Maps actually is, so I don't know what kind of actual latitude it affords us when mobile data access is missing. But that does not mean it definitely cannot do what's needed nor does it mean the next version cannot, even if this version is not quite there yet.


And the bottomline still remains that the reviews we are seeing still seem to be too stuck w/ preconceived notions of what's doable and what's desirable, so they seem to be largely ignoring certain aspects of the Xoom even though Motorola/Google had previously demo-ed some of such intriguing features/capabilities.

Your perception is different from mine.

RE: the App Store Kool-Aid thing, well, I think Hanson addressed that already.

As for Sam's talk about the store front approach, yeah, that definitely helps, but despite that, to me, it's still mostly just crap stuff.


Sure, I don't doubt there are perhaps a dozen apps that are truly useful/worthwhile to you. But a dozen is just a drop in the ocean. It doesn't in anyway disprove my 99.99% comment. Ok, if you want to get into the minutae of it all, *maybe* you can knock that down to 99.98% instead LOL.


And honestly, how many truly good, useful apps are homebrewed by some small-time, fly-by-night, one-person shop?


If they're not churned out by those people, then they probably don't really need *this* App Store. Apps for Facebook, YouTube, et al. don't need App Store -- certainly, not *this* particular App Store anyway. Any app store would've done the job, and I'm sure some kind of app store would've become a reality, if there was a need, and it wouldn't have needed to be run by Apple.


Point was that the constant regurgitation about the Apple App Store as some sort of huge advantage (over what can be found for Android) is just plain and simple, iOS Kool-Aid. Is the Apple App Store nicer w/ more apps (along w/ likely no better crapware-to-quality ratio -- and actually possibly worse?)? I don't doubt it's still a tad better overall, but I'm also fairly confident it's by no means a huge advantage at all and certainly not something anyone should lose sleep over in making a decision between the 2 options.


That was my point regarding that.


_Man_

 

[DaveF]

Quote: Even the notion that a 10" tablet is too big for use as a driving GPS should really be reconsidered for instance, especially if true concurrency is a reality. Try thinking a little out of the box, and maybe 10" can open up different ways to make fuller use of the device rather than assume it's too big for this or that.


There's been a 10" tablet with map software for nearly a year. No one uses it as an in-car GPS.



Originally Posted by ManW_TheUncool

The more you say you get it, the more it actually sounds like you do not.


Ok, you drive to Canada. Yes, that's certainly a concern, especially if your carrier of choice charges crazy roaming costs. You're right. I don't drive to Canada. If I do, I would want to find out how that impacts usage of the current version of Google Maps for GPS nav. But I wouldn't simply dismiss it out of hand like you seem to.


You seem to assume no amount of software-and-backend improvements will matter toward this end, but if that's your assumption, then you probably did in fact not get it because you're neglecting/overlooking what better/smarter caching of maps data could possibly mean for those kinds of uses.


For the third time: "right now". I use TomTom today.

When the software, network and pricing have all changed to create a ubiquitous, trustworthy, affordable "cloud" navigation system, I'll use that. I've not suggested otherwise. But you asked about what I use today. Google Maps didn't bring with it a massive AT&T network upgrade. It didn't make Canada part of the US.


Man, please go demo a Xoom, find the secret features, and report back what I missed. Until then, I'm done talking GPS and google maps.

 

[Hanson]

Part of the iOS users misconception is that there some huge gulf between tablet apps and phone apps because pixel doubling on the iPad results in an ugly, unsatisfying experience. But most, and I mean like 80%-90% of Android apps scale very well on larger tablet resolutions. So it's not nearly as imperative to have native tablet apps on the Xoom. All of the apps I use on the SGT are phone apps, and while I have found a couple that ran in a window, I was able to find full screen alternatives for them. So the idea that Xoom users only have access to 16 apps is simply propaganda.

 

[DaveF]

Apps for a 10" screen are designed differently than for a 4" screen. Even Google knows this. An easy example is Mail. The iPad has tablet-optimized apps. From my short demo and the reviews, the Xoom seems to have a paucity. But I can see that it may not be as far behind as I thought if phone apps scale up in a more natural way for larger screens than simply pixel-doubling as in iOS.

 

[Hanson]

It's not to say some programs can't be optimized to take advantage of the extra screen real estate, but running the phone apps on a larger screen work perfectly fine with Android. This isn't the case with iPhone apps on the iPad, and if that's your point of reference, I can understand why you would think there are a paucity of apps for the Xoom. But apps like Kindle or most games scale perfectly fine even on a 10" screen. Optimizing apps for tab is just that -- an optimization. But it is not the difference between usable and unusable.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Originally Posted by DaveF Knowing that GMN v5 will run on many currently available Android smartphones may also be a big plus now -- though it's not clear to me how well it actually runs on them...


_Man_

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Originally Posted by Hanson Yoo


_Man_

 

[DaveF]

As our discussion has meandered, I'll recapitulate my opinion of the Xoom: nice device but urgently needs (promised) upgrades to give reason for existence.


Nice hardware. Nice OS. Very capable. Feels great, runs smooth and fast. Easy to use.


But doesn't give striking reason to buy it over an iPad. Costs more. Worse battery life. Fewer apps. Higher-res screen, but lower quality. Same size.


When it gets promised 4G, micro-SD, Flash, it will have a distinctive sales pitch.


If it can get a movie store (e.g NetFlix or Amazon), its 720p widescreen will be a differentiator.

 

[DaveF]

As our discussion has meandered, I'll recapitulate my opinion of the Xoom: nice device but urgently needs (promised) upgrades to differentiate from iPad.


Nice hardware. Nice OS. Very capable. Feels great, runs smooth and fast. Easy to use.


But doesn't give striking reason to buy it over an iPad. Costs more. Worse battery life. Fewer apps. Higher-res screen, but lower quality. Same size.


Maybe that's not true. "Honeycomb", "Not Apple" and "No iTunes" are strong reasons for some.


When it gets promised 4G, micro-SD, Flash, it will have a distinctive sales pitch.


If it can get a movie store (e.g NetFlix or Amazon), its 720p widescreen will be a differentiator.

 

[Sam Posten]

To give an idea how silly a 10" tablet in a vehicle is, this is considered 'the best' stab at it yet:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/02/vws-bulli-van-concept-does-ipad-integration-right-shockingly/

 

[mattCR]

Everytime I see these kind of things I just think "Accident waiting to happen" And no one can convince me in a wreck these things wouldn't be like absolute bullets floating around your cabin. "Did your iPad survive the accident in the ice storm billy? "I don't know, it cleaved Jr's arm off in the back seat when it went flying, and now Angry Birds won't start.."

 

[Hanson]

How are you supposed to use tilt controls for driving games?


Fail.

 

[DaveF]

Originally Posted by mattCR

How are you supposed to use tilt controls for driving games?


Fail.

For that you have to wait for the after-market steering-wheel mount