[Discuss] Google's Nexus 7

[sronan at panix.com (Stephen Ronan)]

>> And Siri is losing badly to Google Now in most head to head
>> comparisons. People such as Wozniak seem to think that Apple
>> compromised quality by over-accentuating commercial aspects of Siri.
>
> A fundamentally flawed comparison.  Google Now is a search 
> application, and search is the thing that Google does best. 
> Apple's version of Siri is a personal assistant.  It stopped 
> being a search application when Apple cut it away from Wolfram 
> Alpha.  They're two very different things despite having 
> similar appearances and sharing some functions.

Interesting. I hadn't realized that Apple cut Siri away from 
Wolfram Alpha... FWIW, I just went to W.A. and asked: "How many 
iPads have been sold" and got this:

----------------------
Wolfram|Alpha doesn't understand your query
Showing instead result for query: how many

Input Interpretation
How many?

Response:
Enough.

----------------------

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 don't have a good sense of what percentage of 
computer owners own an iPad, but I'd guess it's still very 
small... and Jellybean with better mapping, and better voice 
search, with features including info about public 
transportation... impending arrivals of buses & trains, etc... 
would be in good position to compete successfully.

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.

  - S