MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Development Apple Calls Android Tablets 'Vapor'

sarah11918 · 01-20-2011, 12:25 PM

Thanks for sharing the article. It sounded like CES was flooded with tablet prototypes (not just from that article but from other stuff I read) and as I just wrote in another thread about the Viewsonic tablet, not a lot of them live up to public expectations and they might be stretching it a bit to say it runs Android 2.2 since it apparently runs Viewsonic's own build of Android 2.2.

But why we should hope that some really do make it is for the benefits of community. My N810 is still a fabulous bit of hardware. The screen and the speakers are excellent. I've had far less trouble with its wifi connection than an iPod Touch. It has ports and SD expansion. It has a physical keyboard and kickstand so that it's sitting on the table beside me right now as I'm on my laptop. (Touch can't do that.) It had an active linux community writing apps for it and a very helpful forum like this one for the N series tablets.

But, very quickly Nokia abandoned the operating system and the community moved on, being of course the type to want to play with the newest thing. The community for the N700/800/810 is like a ghost town and many apps I used in my first year or two of ownership are no longer supported and some are no longer even compatible. (eg all the old, original twitter apps are no good since twitter made changes to their APIs and there aren't any developers working on twitter clients for my OS)

Frankly, the only thing that I use my old, first gen iPod touch for is games. I don't even listen to music on it because I like the click wheel of the 5th gen. iPod touch (my first iPod by the way -- before I had a Creative Zen Vision M that was in many ways superior to the iPod, but it couldn't synch with mac, so I'd have to run parallels and proprietary software to upload music... it got too clunky. But in just about every other way hardware/spec-wise, it beat the iPod.) I hate the onscreen keyboard, so I might check email in a pinch, but I never respond from the Touch. it's funny how the N810 *seems* outdated in comparison just because there's no one left maintaining apps. But when I try to do anything on the N810 with the apps that still run, it's just so obvious how much more powerful a device it is. In terms of pdf annotation, it still does more than even the iPad can, let alone the iPod touch. All it's missing is a community.

As I've said, I'm not sure what the whole deal is with not releasing the edge's SDK to developers, but I've seen what a lack of a volunteer development community did to the N810. I just hope this flooding of half-baked Android tablets that aren't ready for prime time doesn't encourage people to move on to something else, leaving us without the chance for improvement.

01-20-2011, 12:25 PM	#3
sarah11918 Edge User	Thanks for sharing the article. It sounded like CES was flooded with tablet prototypes (not just from that article but from other stuff I read) and as I just wrote in another thread about the Viewsonic tablet, not a lot of them live up to public expectations and they might be stretching it a bit to say it runs Android 2.2 since it apparently runs Viewsonic's own build of Android 2.2. But why we should hope that some really do make it is for the benefits of community. My N810 is still a fabulous bit of hardware. The screen and the speakers are excellent. I've had far less trouble with its wifi connection than an iPod Touch. It has ports and SD expansion. It has a physical keyboard and kickstand so that it's sitting on the table beside me right now as I'm on my laptop. (Touch can't do that.) It had an active linux community writing apps for it and a very helpful forum like this one for the N series tablets. But, very quickly Nokia abandoned the operating system and the community moved on, being of course the type to want to play with the newest thing. The community for the N700/800/810 is like a ghost town and many apps I used in my first year or two of ownership are no longer supported and some are no longer even compatible. (eg all the old, original twitter apps are no good since twitter made changes to their APIs and there aren't any developers working on twitter clients for my OS) Frankly, the only thing that I use my old, first gen iPod touch for is games. I don't even listen to music on it because I like the click wheel of the 5th gen. iPod touch (my first iPod by the way -- before I had a Creative Zen Vision M that was in many ways superior to the iPod, but it couldn't synch with mac, so I'd have to run parallels and proprietary software to upload music... it got too clunky. But in just about every other way hardware/spec-wise, it beat the iPod.) I hate the onscreen keyboard, so I might check email in a pinch, but I never respond from the Touch. it's funny how the N810 seems outdated in comparison just because there's no one left maintaining apps. But when I try to do anything on the N810 with the apps that still run, it's just so obvious how much more powerful a device it is. In terms of pdf annotation, it still does more than even the iPad can, let alone the iPod touch. All it's missing is a community. As I've said, I'm not sure what the whole deal is with not releasing the edge's SDK to developers, but I've seen what a lack of a volunteer development community did to the N810. I just hope this flooding of half-baked Android tablets that aren't ready for prime time doesn't encourage people to move on to something else, leaving us without the chance for improvement.