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1 comment on Apr 25th, 2010 |: count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements Countable inon line

With all the talk about tablets that so many manufacturers are supposedly just about to release to challenge the iPad, the question of just how do we compare these devices becomes an interesting one. Not long ago I wrote a post where I made clear my belief that some of the tablets being discussed don’t stand a chance against the iPad, but I am sure that eventually some companies are going to make decent competitors. When those competitors become available, how will we compare devices? While I’m sure that a lot of people are still going to be screaming about the heresy of not having USB ports in the iPad, most everyday users won’t really care about that. How many gigabytes of storage the device has becomes almost irrelevant if most of them have more space than most regular people make use of. When you have multiple companies producing tablets based on widely varying architectures we won’t be able to objectively compare them based on technical specifications because we can’t really know that an Atom processor running Windows 7 derivative will have comparable performance as when running an Android derivative. We won’t be able to say if similar Android derivatives will perform better on Intel’s Atom architecture or on an Arm processor. How does a Windows CE based system running on a Cortex A8 compare to an Android system running on a slightly tweaked A8 or to iPhone OS running on Apple’s A4 (another Cortex A8 variant)? In fact it might happen that a smaller footprint system will outperform one with a larger footprint running on a more powerful processor. It might be that a combination of a tweaked processor, a fast graphics engine and optimized software might produce a better result for the end user than what we might generally consider a superior system based on technical specifications. Apple at least seems to be betting on this, and doing pretty well so far. When Steve Jobs introduced an iPod model saying that it would allow you to carry 1,000 songs in your pocket, he might just have been setting the tone for the future. For most regular people it isn’t about the clock speed of the processor in a computer that matters, its what you can do with it and how well you can do with it. Today, an iPad allows me to browse, email, read a book, read a newspaper, play some games and is sufficiently light that I can carry it with me all day without almost noticing it. Perhaps in a couple of month’s time we will have one or more competing devices that can do the same, but they will still need to match the iPad’s speed. I haven’t yet seen a Windows 7 equipped computer that would wake up as fast and an iPad, a Windows CE device certainly could as most Android based devices. In the post-iPad tablet age that we are starting to enter the really relevant things will be what I can do, how easily and fast I can do it and for how long. Right now the standard is being set by the iPad as it’s iPhone OS brings to it all the expertise that Apple has been developing from its experiences with the iPhone and iPod Touch, for the past three years. In future, I don’t really think that it is going to be things like the number of USB ports that are going to make a difference on what most people decide to buy. If a competing company, say Asus, could bring out a tablet running a Linux variation which did all that the iPad does and then some, it would stand a good chance to enter the game. If the same device ran a variation of Android and could tap into the applications already being developed for that platform it would have a much better chance of staking out some market share. That leads us to another item for comparison: available applications. Right now Apple is way ahead in this game with an incredible number of applications available for the iPhone and iPod Touch and thousands of applications already available specifically for the iPad, a device that hasn’t been in the market for a full month yet. Google made the right move in creating a market for Android applications, and anyone else that hopes to compete in this arena will inevitably have to do the same as the availability of a good number of applications will certainly be another item of comparison in the future, with a much heavier weight than a specific technical aspect. There are signs that this time of comparison might find its way to other types of computers as well. While the first reports from Macworld say that Apple’s claim to a 10-hour battery life for the new 13-inch MacBook Pro’s doesn’t stand the test of real life, it would seem that Apple has taken the first moves in taking this kind of comparison I’m talking about to the world of notebooks. Apple’s tests are different from those that Macworld ran so we don’t really know how distant the claim and reality are, but I think it is highly significant that Apple decided to retain the Core2Duo processors for the 13-inch Macbooks instead of going for an i3 processor. Using the i3 processor would have forced them to use an Intel integrated graphics engine instead of the specially designed NVIDIA 320M. The combination of CPU and graphics engine for the 13-inch MacBook Pros offer a significant increase in performance for the end user, possibly besting competing systems that use a newer Intel processor but a slower Intel graphics engine as well. This might signal that Apple is comfortable enough with its brand strength and dominant position in the high-end notebook market to move away from a competition of processor models and speeds. However you look at it seems that tech specs will have less and less meaning when regular users are considering which device to buy, giving more and more space to user perceived performance, capability, portability and possibly aesthetics. * Image: Apple Inc.

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