iPad vs "the rest"

My feeling is this: Practically every consumer product sold today is lowest quality/lowest price. It's always cheap, cheap, cheap, and a lot of us notice.

There have always been people who sought quality, in food, cars, watches, whatever. And there's no mistaking that Apple is fanatical about quality. I mean, Steve Jobs once called a Google exec at church to get permission to correct the shade of green used on the Google icon in an iPhone app! That is being fanatical about quality. There are people who notice this kind of Swiss precision, and those who don't.

For those of us who bemoan poor or merely acceptable quality, Apple is the kind of product for us. Sometimes, the differences are very subtle or hard to notice, but they're there.

 

DailyTech - Quick Note: Apple Sells 3 Million iPads During Launch Weekend - was all over AAPL financial news

 

iPad drop test. Ever wanted to drop your iPad onto a cement floor but just couldn't bring yourself to flush $500 down the drain? Watch the video HERE.

 

Why in the world would Square Trade pay for advertising on that video? Are they begging for some claims?

 

They're warranty company that offers no questions asked replacement. Of course they're going to pay for the ad. It's not just 1 ipad that got destroyed. It's 4.

 

Oh, I know who they are but I sure know that almost encourages folks to drop these things when they want to get a new one.

 

I stumbled across this on cnbc.com. Weird.
News Headlines (Watch the New iPad Get Riddled With Bullets)

 

Bubba's winning shot. Taken with my iPad while live streaming on The Masters app.

 

LOL! Nokia Is Struggling To Stay In Business Selling Phones, But It's Already Thinking About Attacking The Tablet Market - Yahoo! Finance

Given their apparent lack of success so far w/WP Lumia phones which aren't selling in numbers anywhere close enough to make up for their steep Symbian declines, it seems rather unlikely they can see much success given how crowded the tablet market already is....

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57427749-37/the-$399-ipad-2-boasts-better-battery-life-says-report/ - It's interesting that some 16 gig iPad 2 units (model iPad 2,4) have better battery life than the original iPad 2...

 

I'm thinking about installing a tablet in my Prius to supplement the OEM Entuneless head unit since the headunit can't be replace due to IPA. A tablet will blow Entune out of the water 100X over.
I've spent the last month researching tablets. The first tablet to get ruled out was the iPads due to not not being wide screen and no expandable storage. 64GB is just too expensive and still not enough storage for SD shows and movies let alone HD. I know there are WiFi HDD such as the seagate GoFlex Satellite that can connect to the iPads. However, it uses WiFi so the iPads won't be able to tether to my phone for internet connection. Also the iPads don't support widgets so the home screen just look like bunch of icons, not a pretty sight.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2W92Kh8la4"]Seagate GoFlex Satellite Streaming Hard Drive and iPad app review - YouTube[/ame]

Tablet PC that runs full Windows OS need a mouse to operate properly. Hard to use while driving. I used to have a carputer so I know.
Android seems to be the only choice. It is Wide screen. It has an USB OTG port that supports thumb drives and portable HDD. This frees up the WiF so I can tether it to my phone via WiFi. FTP server apps allow easy wireless file transfers from my home PC. Offline media file management is file explore based and online media files and app managements are web based so no proprietary program like itune is required.
I'm looking at the TF700T that's due to be released in June. It has FHD screen, quadcore processor, MicroSDXC slot and a MiniUSB OTG port. If that doesn't work, I'll look at Galaxy Tab 2 or the Acer Iconia A700.

 

I've owned several Android tablets. I started with a Nook Color (which is now the front panel display of my new desktop PC), then I got a Kindle Fire, and now I have an Asus Transformer. I have considered the iPad but decided against it since Apple is not very friendly to developers.

 

And they can't run flash. If they could, I would consider one. But I think I am going with the Asus.

 

Flash ?

Do you mean that horribly buggy, energy sucking format Adobe recently killed, and the industry is running away from as quick as they can ?

 

Why does it matter so much on a mobile device?

Jobs Was Right: Adobe Abandons Mobile Flash, Backs HTML5 | Gadget Lab | Wired.com
Flash to Focus on PC Browsing and Mobile Apps; Adobe to More Aggressively Contribute to HTML5 (Adobe Featured Blogs)

 

If you use that mobile device for internet surfing, then it could matter. HTML 5 will supplant some instances of Flash and Javascript...but I've noticed there are still quite a few sites that have embedded Flash. Good designers have different versions of sites (including a non Flash mobile version), but there's always going to be some sites that don't get updated often or will only have a Flash version. There is enough demand for Flash that people have developed iPhone/iPad apps for viewing Flash content. The main thing that I've found with computer software is that there will always be competing formats. I remember when MPEG-4 was being developed that many were saying it would be a unified codec with multiplatform support. Apple and Microsoft couldn't reach an agreement, so Quicktime MPEG-4 codecs are not the same as WMV MPEG-4 codecs.

 

I do. I use an iPhone 4 and iPad 2 for surfing. The fact that they don't support Flash hasn't affected me much.

 

There are websites I need to use for work that still, and probably will always run flash. Thats why I don't have an iphone, and won't have an ipad. And then there is the cost, Asus tab is cheaper than ipad3. Asus TF201 is 499, ipad is 599. And then I can get the keyboard dock and have a machine comparable to macbook air for almost half the price.

 

And... those Flash sites work well on Android tablets and phones?

Re: your iPad prices, you're off. "The new iPad" aka iPad 3 is $499 to start (which is the same as the original starting price of the iPad 2 and original iPad). The 16 gig iPad 2 is still being sold and is $399. Go to http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipad/family/ipad.

 

The 32gig ipad3 with wifi is 599 on apple website. 32gig asus is 499.