[Discuss] Google's Nexus 7

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On 07/11/2012 12:54 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:
> On 7/11/2012 9:52 AM, Stephen Ronan wrote:
>> One reason I asked... my impression (pls correct me if I'm wrong) is
>> that you think that iPad's dominant position in 10" tablets is quite
>> secure.
>
> I do.  I don't think that Jellybean is going to unseat iPad in that
> space for one simple reason: iOS has never been technically superior to
> Android.  It doesn't matter how much better Jellybean is to either iOS
> or prior versions of Android because the technical superiority of the OS
> has never been a factor in the public's eye.  Consumers don't care about
> technical superiority.  They care about convenience first and maybe
> affordability second.  Cases in point:
>
> VHS vs. Betamax:  VHS won for the simple reason that you could get 2-4
> times as much recording time per cassette than you got with Betamax.
>
> Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD: Streaming beat them both because of the
> convenience and instant gratification of click and watch within a few
> seconds.
>
> Consoles vs. PCs: Consoles keep beating PCs for gaming because of the
> convenience that the gaming appliances offer: no need to worry about
> hardware compatibility or viruses or anything.  Just push a button and
> play.
>
> Silly Ungainly Vehicles vs. everything else on the roads: 'nuff said.
>
> iOS is doing the same thing in the mobile spaces.  Sure, Google
> activates twice as many Android devices a day as Apple activates iOS
> devices.  That makes for a nice press release but it's not the whole
> story.  The most recent figures I can find (Feb 2012) place HTC at
> about 16% of all Android activations daily, Samsung at about 11% and
> Motorola at about 10.5%.  Apple is beating the top three Android OEMs
> combined in terms of activations per day.
>
>
>> If you've still got your crystal ball handy, Richard (or anyone
>> else), how long do you think it'll be before we see a sub-$200 tablet
>> able to do voice to voice language translation, including at least
>> one pair of languages offline. As a monolingual guy living and
>> working in multicultural neighborhoods, that'd be a very appealing
>> app for me.
>
> Twenty years?  Conversational voice recognition is hard.  Really,
> really hard.  It's one of the most challenging problems in computer
> programming.  Machine translation isn't much easier.  Run this message
> through Google's translator to the language of your choice and then
> back to English and you'll see how the best in the world fails.
>
Richard,
This is where I have to agree with you. It is perception. I bought my
mother an iPad, not because it was better, but because she has never
owned anything other than a Kindle, and she lives across the street from
the Mall at Chestnut Hill where there is an Apple Store, and she can
either attend their classes or get personalized tutoring. Her building
superintendent's 12-year old daughter is her current tutor. The Android
stores, such as AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile usually employ human droids that
don't know much about anything, in general although I have been
surprised on occasion.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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