Okay, Are there really any iPad alternatives?

[dorino]

On that note, I'm a huge fan of tangerines, and I think I'm going to have some with dinner tonight. To the grocery store!

[Trubu]

Originally Posted by dorino

I also disagree that the iPhone innovated phones. Palm pilots, sony clie', those did that. The iPhone just made it sleek, modern.

Are you kidding? Multitouch, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, accelerometer, loads (for the time) of onboard memory, a great web browser, no carrier crapware preinstalled...no other phone had ever packaged all of that in one device, not even close. It was absolutely revolutionary in 2007, as evidenced by the fact that every other smartphone platform has adopted all of those features since. I've been using smartphones for years, and the iPhone was an enormous gamechanger. Can't believe that's even up for debate.

... And the fact is, it could be more open. It could let me go into a command prompt. It doesn't, though. That upsets me.

So jailbreak and get your CLI on. If you're the kind of person who wants a command line on your phone, you're the kind of person who knows how to work around restrictions on how manufacturers want you to use their device.

[dorino]

Good points, Trubu. Multitouch is something I never even thought of... I guess it did do a lot to change the market, more as a culimination than anything else. Great points.


The jailbreak point, well, yes, I did that with my iPod Touch. It's more the principle of the thing. (God, is that cliche)

[Fotoman]

Originally Posted by Trubu

I've been using smartphones for years, and the iPhone was an enormous gamechanger. Can't believe that's even up for debate.

Totally agree. I've had a variety of Palm and Windows CE (mobile, etc.) for years and all of them were clunky and limiting. I still remember selecting my last pre-iPhone HTC/windows mobile phone on the basis of having wifi. It was the only PDA phone my carrier had at the time with wifi.

What the iPhone also did better than it had ever been done was to provide many specialized front ends (aka apps) for accessing specific bits of data from the internet and displaying them in formats that were attractive and useable on a small screen. Prior to that the norm was a fairly good looking email client and calendar (that were often a royal pita to sync with their enterprise desktop counterparts) and a mini version of a desktop browser tacked on.

Maybe it's a reflection of how quickly this new iPhone/Android app world has been integrated and adopted that people have a hard time remembering life before the iPhone.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by scottjl

if you really need to access a command line interface, chances are you have the technical knowledge to jailbreak your ipad in the first place. ...

yes the iOS is a closed system, but don't regard a closed system as limited either. ....

But that's exactly the point. You can work around virtually anything, but you shouldn't have to, with other alternatives you don't have to.

[volwrath]

Originally Posted by Trubu

Are you kidding? Multitouch, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, accelerometer, loads (for the time) of onboard memory, a great web browser, no carrier crapware preinstalled...no other phone had ever packaged all of that in one device, not even close. It was absolutely revolutionary in 2007, as evidenced by the fact that every other smartphone platform has adopted all of those features since. I've been using smartphones for years, and the iPhone was an enormous gamechanger. Can't believe that's even up for debate..

Yet it took forever to get a) multitasking b) a2dp c) high res screens d) tethering e) expandable storage f) wireless sync:things winmo and android did out of the box, although msft in its infinite wisdom did away with wireless sync. capacitive touch screen was the revolutionary thing that Apple did.

I love my WinMo HTC TP2. It runs android, tethers both wifi and usb (and bt if you want), and basically is a great phone. Too bad msft abandoned WinMo. It should have been what Android has become.

[Trubu]

Originally Posted by volwrath

Yet it took forever to get a) multitasking b) a2dp c) high res screens d) tethering e) expandable storage f) wireless sync:things winmo and android did out of the box, although msft in its infinite wisdom did away with wireless sync. capacitive touch screen was the revolutionary thing that Apple did.

Notice I didn't claim the iPhone matched every feature of every smartphone ever right out of the gate...doesn't mean it wasn't revolutionary. It totally upended expectations for smartphone UIs and standard features, and the market has never been the same.

As far as WinMo goes, I have to emphatically disagree. I went through an 8125, 8525, and Tilt before switching to iPhone, and I've never looked back. Don't get me wrong - WinMo was the best thing available at the time, and I had fun hacking around on those phones, installing custom ROMs, writing little scripts and utilities, etc. But eventually I got tired of having to replace most of the stock apps with useable third-party solutions and installing a bunch of utilities just to keep the damn thing running in a semi-acceptable fashion when I saw how user-friendly and polished the iPhone was. Microsoft was absolutely right to flush WinMo and start from scratch (not that I think they have much of a chance with Windows Phone 7 now that iPhone and Android are so entrenched, but it's a better chance than they would have with the old WinMo).

[scottjl]

Originally Posted by kennyc

But that's exactly the point. You can work around virtually anything, but you shouldn't have to, with other alternatives you don't have to.

ahem. you still have to "jailbreak" most android devices to get to a prompt. same for WebOS devices. expect the same for Windows 7 Mobile. and those manufacturers move pretty quickly to close those holes too.

Windows Mobile? The management committee who thought it would be a good idea to port windows down to a hand-held platform, including the "Start Menu" should be gathered up and disappear forever. I had a single WinMo phone and I swear navigating the menus caused brain damage, let's see, some scrolled using the joystick, some took letters for shortcuts, some took numbers. There was a reason so many manufacturers skinned the stock OS, because it was an abomination that should have never seen the light of day. I know several companies that tried to implement Windows Mobile in embedded systems and it was even more painful than the phone OS, if you can believe such a thing is possible. Even with Microsoft footing development costs most of those products fortunately never saw the light of day.

Trubu is right, Microsoft had no choice but to start over from scratch if they even wanted to be taken seriously in the Mobile market. Only a very small amount of the population wants to spend hours hacking and tweaking their phone's OS to make it usable to make as simple thing as a phone call.

[Trubu]

Originally Posted by scottjl

ahem. you still have to "jailbreak" most android devices to get to a prompt. same for WebOS devices. expect the same for Windows 7 Mobile. and those manufacturers move pretty quickly to close those holes too.

Exactly what I was going to say. Android is obviously a lot more open than iOS, but you still have to root your device if you want to do some of the really fun stuff.

[Trubu]

Originally Posted by Fotoman

Maybe it's a reflection of how quickly this new iPhone/Android app world has been integrated and adopted that people have a hard time remembering life before the iPhone.

Personally I'm in geek heaven. It's great to have two heavyweights like Apple and Google waging an all-out cagematch to see who can deliver the coolest features and the hottest hardware, after years and years of stagnation in the mobile space. As a consumer, it doesn't get much better than this.

[scottjl]

Originally Posted by Trubu

Personally I'm in geek heaven. It's great to have two heavyweights like Apple and Google waging an all-out cagematch to see who can deliver the coolest features and the hottest hardware, after years and years of stagnation in the mobile space. As a consumer, it doesn't get much better than this.

I agree, now if we could only get some honest open competition in the cellular market we'd have a major win for consumers. Do away with all these stupid carrier locks and allow people to purchase any handset they want to use on any carrier they want. Competition can be a good thing for the consumer, with Apple and Google going for each other's throats consumers stand to gain.

[dmaul1114]

Originally Posted by scottjl

what capabilities are missing? because you don't have access to the shell prompt out of the box? can you tell me that 90% of the buyers even care about that? how many of them use the command line in windows?

The big thing missing from the iPhone OS is a user accessible file system so I can just manage my files and folders just like I've been doing on PCs since my family got their first one in the early to mid 90s. And that doesn't require any software to drag and drop files on to.

I don't need a full OS, but I won't buy a tablet that doesn't have a traditional file system, nor one that doesn't show up as an external drive to drag and drop files onto with no software needed.

I now some like all the syncing and other new methods of file management etc. But not me. I'm a traditionalist and I'll stick with devices with traditional folder systems until I have absolutely no options to keep using devices with such systems.

But as you said, Apple didn't make this as a lite tablet PC--it's designed as a media consumption tablet and web browser, nothing more nothing less (well random apps too!).

So my problem is more just wanting a lite Tablet PC--don't need a full OS, but needs to be more than a consumption device as I need stylus mark up options etc. etc.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by dmaul1114

The big thing missing from the iPhone OS is a user accessible file system so I can just manage my files and folders just like I've been doing on PCs since my family got their first one in the early to mid 90s. And that doesn't require any software to drag and drop files on to.

The closest you can get at the moment (on an un-jailbroken iPad) is to install GoodReader. Forget about it being a PDF reader, it can download files from a wide variety of sources, store them in whatever folder structure you want, and then transfer them (Open In) to other applications to actually use them.