Tablet Wars 2011

Splashtop supposedly works well for streaming video, including Flash video, from a PC.

 

I guess I'm "lucky" in that the vast majority of my iPad use is on torturously long flights with no wifi so the absence of flash support is hardly noticeable

I stream from mediatomb, ps3ms and PlayTV to my PS3s and have tested them with my iPad with no issues...haven't fired up a version of Plex in probably two years so I'll have to go check it out.

 

I just tried it, it's pretty amazing for a remote desktop application. Got SplashtopHD app for Android ($4.99). For HD videos, the framerate might just be a touch off, but it's a lot better than what I expect from remote desktop. The best part is that it gets around all the mobile restrictions that sites like Hulu puts on tablets and phones.

 

Okay for around the house, but probably not to great if you're in a foreign country RD-ing to your home computer

 

It's still cool thing to do around the house. I was watching live TV on my tablet today through Splashtop. SageTV (the company was bought by Google last month so Sage is no longer available) runs very well on remote desktop. Non-HD shows runs very smoothly, HD shows has a few hickups here and there but is watchable and looks fantastic. Here are a couple of pics, both HD and non-HD on VS channel watching the TDF:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/546/img014y.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/69/img013a.jpg/

Other live tv program on the server should work also, as long as they don't use overlay.

 

Google canned SageTV? Lovely.

 

I agree that there a lot of good solid apps available for the iPad already. I can't even admittedly tell you which appz i'm specifically looking for. However my disappointment stems wholey from the sheer amount of times i've searched for an app or game that i've heard about or seen advertised that's only available for the iPod/iPhone with no iPad version. There are lots of services i use on a regular basis, and online stores that have iOS apps available which have no iPad equivalent.

To most people who are fine just using the web browser, they'll likely be able to manage. But for me the idea that there is an iOS app available but just not for my device because it's merely the bastard child of the iPod/iPhone and thus isn't worthy of support is frustrating.

There are quite a few engineering apps that i had on my old windows mobile PDA (yes i was one of those that had one) that would be great on my iPad with the finger touch screen interface. Alas, none such things exist for that and thus i'm forced to carry around a little work laptop/netbook with me on business trips.

For work i use a lot of VBA on MS Excel. If MS were to build a version of Office on a Win8 tablet with VBA support (i have no issues using the virtual keyboard) then i'd switch in the drop of a hat.

 

Sadly there's a cost involved with supporting the iPad because of its resolution and screen size, so creating an iPad version of an application often isn't trivial and requires a reasonable amount of effort on behalf of the developer. The developer might choose to make the effort (many do, including Universal apps with bundled UIs for each device class) or it might not.

The same problem exists on Android, and presumably webOS as well now there's a tablet available with increased resolution over the phone.

Looks like Microsoft will be first to provide you with a tablet that fits your requirements, and in not too distant a future either really

 

I'm surprised iPad optimization still hasn't made it into the Skype and Facebook apps.

It's all just a matter of time, though.

 

Just to be absolutely certain, you're aware that non-universal iPhone/iPod touch apps will run unmodified on your iPad in a pinch, right?

 

FYI, the Ipad2 now has a super sweet, tetherless jailbreak courtesy of jailbreakme:
http://www.jailbreakme.com/#

very nice upgrade

 

...and just to top things off I went and bought an HP TouchPad in spite of the negative reviews. The OS is great and much more fun to use than iOS. Multitasking is a breeze and intuitive. The OS does get laggy at times and it feels overall slower than my iPad2 in spite of the 1.2 GHz processor and double the RAM. Whether I'll use it over the iPad while on travel is still up in the air since the iPad has so many apps and better battery life, but WebOS is great...

Jailbroken iPad2 and a webOS tablet with homebrew starting to come out...my inner geek is happy.

 

WebOS is intriguing for sure. I'm going to give it another look when the "Opal" 7 inch tablet launches, supposedly around Sept.

 

Maybe they'll be valuable some day as collector's items.

Problem is, there is no colorful personality associated with webOS. Will people remember the public face of Palm or HP a decade from now?

About the only colorful thing about webOS was that a venture capitalist was cocky about how the first Pre would just eat iPhone's lunch.

Obviously expressed before the Pre launched.

 

android has no such personality...
I don't see webOS being more than niche and the TouchPad lacks the polish of the ipad for sure. Like I said, I just hope one of the big boys steals or copies their better ideas at some point.

 

You don't have to hope for that. Just ask anybody's patent lawyer.

 

Yet another market share/unit shipment forecast:

http://www.bgr.com/2011/07/11/andro...+TheBoyGeniusReport+(BGR+|+Boy+Genius+Report)


Interesting bit that so far, Android phone owners have bought iPads over Android tablets. Since there's no price difference, maybe the way the smart phone market has shaken out is more about price than philosophy ("freedom" vs. walled garden).

Price may trump everything else in tablets, which would bode well for iPad.

 

The whole Android "ecosystem" is broken IMO...

 

Heres the first review i've seen of an oaktrail tablet thats done some testing of battery life. Its a 1.5Ghz atom, 2G mem, on a 1366x768 screen. He's indicating he got over 8 hrs on light to medimum use.

Graphics good, but not great, and this is clearly in terms of usablilty of general apps, and not in any way talking about game playing.

Also some windows experience index scores in there, 2.9 for graphics, but I've got no frame of reference to those so I don't know where that places it.

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/07/09/part-1-5-motion-computing-cl900-–-the-performance/

for the 1st part of the review, look here:-
http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/06/27/part-1-motion-computing-cl900-the-hardware/

 

One survey shows iPad popular as ever.

http://allthingsd.com/20110620/consumers-dont-want-tablets-they-want-ipads/#disqus_thread

More interestingly, a 50 to 15% preference for 10-inch tablets over 7-inch ones.

Is that coincident with the preference for iPad over competing models?

Or has the market started to consolidate around the 10-inch screen? Especially if they introduce high-res displays, which is more likely to be on 10-inch form factors?

Looks like RIMM may have made the wrong bet and to compound matters, they canceled a 10-inch model.

Other factor is 4.5 and 5-inch phones may also make it tougher for 7-inch tablets to find the niche.

In other tablet news, iPad and iOS devices dominate activations in enterprise, at least as tracked by Good Technology:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31747_7-20081894-243/ipad-ios-adoption-heating-up-the-business-world/