How the iPad 2 could cost you more than the Xoom

MarketWatch ^ | March 8, 2011, 12:00 a.m. EST | Brett Arends, MarketWatch

[WayneS]

The "iPad 2" isn't going to cost me a damned thing.

[PanzerKardinal]

Like people are rational when buying stuff?

If that were true, I’d be driven a Kia and only wear denim overalls.

It’s not about rational. It’s about desire.

And that’s why Apple iWhatevers sells...people desire them.

[steve86]

mere 16 Gigabytes of memory

My kick-around laptop has a mere 192k and does Flash (Linux, of course). What, 1/90 of that?

My how bloated we've become.

[AFreeBird]

I hate some of these authors. It’s 16GB of STORAGE, not memory. I believe memory will be in the half gig range.

[Dr. Sivana]

My kick-around laptop has a mere 192k and does Flash (Linux, of course). What, 1/90 of that?

I think you mean 192 MB. Your tablet also has a hard drive with 20 GB or more.

Tablet people typically expect more battery life than a laptop can muster. The iPad 2 blows away the Xoom in that department.

[battousai]

Motorola, for reasons best known to itself, has managed to bobble the new product launch. Folks buying a Xoom today will have to wait for updates from Motorola before they can use micro-SD cards or watch web videos using Flash. It’s errors like this that keep Apple on a roll.

This has been part of the problem, competitors being their own worst enemies, hopefully these are ironed out by the time the quad core Xooms are out in August or so. I intend to skip the iPad2 and go strait to the quad Xoom, my current iPad 3G is just fine no need for the iPad 2 in between.

[battousai]

Motorola, for reasons best known to itself, has managed to bobble the new product launch. Folks buying a Xoom today will have to wait for updates from Motorola before they can use micro-SD cards or watch web videos using Flash. It’s errors like this that keep Apple on a roll.

This has been part of the problem, competitors being their own worst enemies, hopefully these are ironed out by the time the quad core Xooms are out in August or so. I intend to skip the iPad2 and go strait to the quad Xoom, my current iPad 3G is just fine no need for the iPad 2 in between.

[steve86]

Yeah, that occurred to me after. But same deal, I have 4 Gb and get the job done.

[steve86]

Yes, I am asleep today.

[battousai]

Doh sorry for the repost, it got stuck so wasn’t sure I had hit post the first time ><

[antiRepublicrat]

Would be nice to be able to get a subsidized iPad. But I do have a couple of comments:

why isn't this tablet 4G?

Because 4G exists nowhere in this country, and the 3.5G they're passing off as 4G only exists in limited areas. Apple generally doesn't go with something until it's widely available, as they did with 3G in the first place.

the Xoom is heavier, but it has a better screen

No, it has a higher-resolution, but lower-quality screen.

It will run Flash, which means you can pretty much watch Web video as you do on your laptop or PC.

You can do that on an iPad too, since YouTube and others have been transcoding away from Flash to H.264 for a while.

If you have serious competition, that’s going to compress profit margins.

That's what I'm hoping for. I thought Xoom would come out better than it did. Here's to hoping Xoom 2 will be serious iPad competition.

[Dr. Sivana]

Apple generally doesn't go with something until it's widely available,

Unless they can single-handedly MAKE it widely available. The iMac forced the peripheral makers to support USB. The Mac Plus made SCSI kinda mainstream. Thunderbolt will bypass USB3 before it is even out. Firewire is preferred by those who needed heavier use and low-latency.

What's the difference? Apple has serious control over Firewire and Thunderbolt. Apple cannot make the phone company perform. Apple also stays away from established standards that it just doesn't like. They made SCSI laser printers, but never made a Mac with a (Centronics or 1EEE-1284)parallel port.

[antiRepublicrat]

Unless they can single-handedly MAKE it widely available. The iMac forced the peripheral makers to support USB.

I should have explained more. I meant it from a customer satisfaction perspective. Apple doesn't want half its customers screaming "I can't get 4G reception" (even the pseudo 4G we get) because the telcos haven't built it out. Apple knows that any shortcomings will be blamed on Apple, so Apple simply avoids the source altogether. My example was that Apple waited until 3G was almost everywhere before rolling out a 3G phone. Others had 3G phones before Apple, but reception was spotty at best. Apple is willing to be a bit late to the party in order to give the customers the most consistent user experience possible and eliminate a reason for complaints.

As far as the connectors, yes, Apple does a "build it and they will come." It worked great for USB and SCSI, and DisplayPort is taking off, but Firewire stayed a bit niche. I'm hoping Thunderbolt takes off. The possibilities are amazing, essentially having PCIe on a cable.

[dinodino]

You aren’t doing much Flash in 192kB...Flash itself is very heavy...

[steve86]

Not aware of any constraints that have affected me. Suse Linux 11.3/ Kde 4.6; generally 80 of that 192 MB is FREE and only 10 or 20 megabytes are in use in the swap partition. I'll leave it at that; apparently spending 4 hours last night cleaning a clogged bubblejet print head intellectually depleted me! lol

[dinodino]

Doh. You typed 192K, not 192M, in your original post. Sorry about that—I should have known it was a typo! I was wondering if your “laptop” was a Kaypro!

[dragnet2]

The iPad 2 blows away the Xoom in that department.

It blows away the xoom in many departments....

[dangerdoc]

“Yeah, that occurred to me after. But same deal, I have 4 Gb and get the job done.”

I have home videos that come in over 4 Gb. Surfing the web at home is one thing, selling a media consumption device is something else and make no mistake, that is one of the markets they are trying to hit.

Even a 64 Gb tablet is significantly limited without access to SD cards or external storage.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Ping.