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More rumours regarding Apple's new tablet as new sources claim 4G support.
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More rumours regarding Apple's new tablet as new sources claim 4G support.
I think I will only consider spending serious money on ANY tablet once you can actually upgrade the memory. With RAM prices so cheap,it is shocking how artificially limited in RAM quantity ARM based tablets are TBH.
It might be not so much of an issue now,but give a few OS updates and newer apps,they will start to slow down after a while. Of course with laptops you either have loads of RAM anyway,or can easily upgrade so the systems last longer. However,with tablets this is not the case and the device will essentially be very limited after a few years.
Quite a cunning ploy on the part by many companies, as it means people are hooked into shorter upgrade cycles,unlike with modern laptops and desktops.
I seen something like this with some of the Samsung TVs on one of the CES coverage programs, where you can upgrade the CPU + RAM of the TV with new add in cards, because the panels are capable of much much more than the CPUs at the moment.Quote:
Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH
I see no reason why this couldn't be carried over to other technologies..
They are trying to hook people into the shorter upgrade cycles you see with phones. Upgradeability is not what they want. Modern desktops and laptops - even the cheap ones - will last you years. They have much longer upgrade cycles.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hoonigan
Hence,the new cash cow is tablets.They could easily have modern tablets shipping with 2GB of system RAM, and that would mean with OS and application updates you will be fine for yonks. I can understand low end tablets,but many of these devices are well over £300 at launch and are using relatively low cost SOCs too. The whole point of the ARM architecture was for low cost and low power consumption.
Hate to sound like I'm pouring scorn on iPad3 (as I'm sure it'll be a wonderful product ... with a price tag to match), but surely Apple is more or less forced to go for quad-core and high res screen because other people are doing this already?
Witness last weeks CES where Asus had to launch an upgraded version of a model they just launched - the sole difference being a high-res screen.
I'm not in the market anyway - I got a perfectly usable dual-core (Android) tablet last year, and I'm not intending to "trade up" until next year at the earliest. I don't want any truck with this "you need to upgrade every year" idea that the manufacturers seem to be on at the moment. That said, I'd dearly love an upgradable tablet - upgradable in the same way that most laptops are (Acer excepted).
Haven't we done the new iPad rumour mill to death. It isn't going to be anything ground breaking just a slight tech spruce up. Porsche haven't changed their car design for moons, Apple follow this simple design principle, if it ain't broke don't fix it, just a nip and tuck here and there. How much can you visually change on a tablet, it is just a screen at the end of the day anyway.
The tablet wars is purely down to two things, buttery smooth UI, quantity and quality of the tablet Apps and finally cloud support.
As an Android fan, I have to congratulate Google on the ground they have made up on Apple, but unfortunately they are still lagging behind.
I love my Asus Transformer, but the average Joe Bloggs who goes into a high street shop will prefer the hands-on experience on using the Apple device and that is where Google needs to focus its attention, in sorting out the UI. Sales are won and lost in just a few minutes of swiping fingers around the screen on the demo stands, hardware accelerated Apple vs CPU lagging Android has lost them a lot of sales. IMHO first impressions on using a tablet is more important than cosmetic looks, which differs greatly from that of a netbook or laptop purchase.
A tablet is just a screen, therefore how you feel when interacting with it is the most important thing.
My only hope is that Apple don't introduce multi-user support into the iOS for this forthcoming iPad as this is something we want google to be first to market on!
Don't forget to vote up the android enhancement here:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=15030
Honeycomb was okay for a first stab at a tablet-aware OS (says yet another Transformer owner) but there were a couple of very visible rough edges that I hope that ICS removes - most prominent of which is (to me at least) poor performance in the browser. Trying to post stuff to Hexus is a lesson in frustration - and it's not the tablet because Opera/Firefox/Dolphin are all markedly better.Quote:
Originally Posted by saltyzip
Check out Hexus today, I suspect that the design guidelines established for ICS (Hexus article today) are going to greatly assist that "fast and easy" user experience. I also would need a lot of convincing that iOS has better "cloud" support than Android - personally I'd argue the other way around.
The other problem is that the margins on Apple gear must be larger. Looking at my local PC World and there's a large Apple stand (it dominates the store) whereas the Xoom, Galaxy Tab, Transformer, et al are stuffed away in a corner with the Sony eReader's and Kindles. So you end up with a self-perpetuating loop - Joe Public sees iPads; thinks they're the only game in town; buys them; and other (perhaps better) products are ignored as "unpopular"; stockists downgrade or delete these non-iPads from their stock lists because they're not selling.
:thumbsup: didn't know about that. While they're at it how about fixing it so I can have separate identities for each device I've got. At the moment if I had to rebuild phone or tablet then I'd have to know what apps were installed, because Market Place just says I've installed an app, not where it's installed. Actually in one case I managed to inadvertently install a paid-for app on both phone and tablet. Oops! :embarrassed:Quote:
Originally Posted by saltyzip
ICS seems *much* better at supporting hardware acceleration than previous builds, but we shall see. Regarding memory upgraes, it's only really Apple that don't, many support micro sdhc cards, and at about a tenner for 8 gig you can move around, don't you feel that's a better idea than fixed storage?
*cough* difference between memory (RAM) and storage.. :pQuote:
Originally Posted by 3dcandy
yeah..I understand fully....but...I still feel that having an nice shiny sdhc card that your pictures etc. are saved to is a pretty good solution....don't you?
Not really :undecided a shiny new SD card doesn't really speed things up when you've got lots of things running?
well you have no chance of that happening if it's an Apple product....and next to no chance even if it's by someone else! Also, I can't see why anyone would really want more than 64 gb to run and multitask programs, and on android at least, I see next to no slow down until you are running a crazy amount of apps
64GB on Android/iPad is your storage, not your RAM. As far as I understand the comments, folks are wanting to be able to slam in 2GB/4GB/+ into their tablets so they can run bigger apps and/or more of them. Coincidentally, with Android's memory management more memory = more chance that a particular app will already be memory resident, which means a more responsive system. So if someone (Asus most likely) wanted to offer that feature then I'd be very interested in the resulting device.Quote:
Originally Posted by 3dcandy
I'm kind of hoping that ICS will start to blur the line between the on-board storage and that added via uSD card. Currently it feels very clunky to me to have an app installed and then manually have to "App2SD" it - far better to have some preference where 3rd party apps could default to uSD for installation (if the app itself was App2SD compatible).
Actually that's one of the big pluses for the Transformer's design - you have on-board storage, uSD storage and the full sized SD card. While I continue to be impressed with the iPad's UI, now I regard the tablet itself as too hardware-limited to be worth considering - the dock connector as the sole means of expansion is unnecessarily restricted.
Retina display and quad core is actually more than I would have expected. Actually I guessing that it would be either one. Anyways this would once again be a pretty huge step in front of the competition.
I don't see much point in a tablet with 2GB of more of RAM. You are still ultimately limited by the performance of the CPU and GPU. This is an area in which performance is increasing exponentially between generations (e.g. GPU in iPad 2 seven times faster than in iPad 1), so you'd still need to upgrade to stay near the top of the performance curve and run the latest apps.
How would it "once again be a pretty huge step in front of the competition"? Given that quad core tablets are already out, and high-res displays in the pipeline, it's more like this would once again be a pretty huge step to catch up with the competition.*Quote:
Originally Posted by dustin87
*granted, there's been more innovation in tablets from Apple than phones over the last year or so.. however I strongly suspect we're entering the phase (as happened with phones some time ago) where Apple are playing catch up instead of innovating.
And this was bound to happen. Apple have two product lines, with two release schedules. With a historical 12-15 month gap between generations it wouldn't take long for the competition to jump ahead of them with the latest technology.Quote:
Originally Posted by miniyazz
With phones you have 3 or 4 main players with perhaps 3 or 4 release dates throughout the year, all trying to usurp the other with their flagship handsets. Handsets tend to be updated ever 9-12 months. Although it seems that flagship handsets are closer to Apples 12-15 months these days.
The tablet market is even wilder, as you have both phone manufacturers and PC/laptop manufacturers in the game. Lenovo, Toshiba, ASUS and Samsung all have interesting things out or in the pipeline at the moment. Apple will have to work hard to keep up with this, although I actually think thats about all they need to do these days. They have a truely massive user base that is incredibly loyal and tied in far more deeply to the iTunes ecosystem than they probably realise.
Erm, no it's certainly not a "huge step in front of the competition" - the Asus Transformer Prime (quad core - or is it actually penta-core?) is due on the shelves at my local Curry's in under two weeks. Asus and others showed "HD" versions of their tablets at CES last week (see http://hexus.net/mobile/news/tablets...-prime-tablet/). On the other hand - the article is covering rumours of what the iPad3 will be like when it goes on sale in March. So yes, Apple is ahead in as much as they're planning to ship quad+HD tablet at the end of March, but the only thing they're ahead of is with that combination. I've no doubts however that iPad3 will be quad-core+retina-display in which case it'll undoubtedly get the commercial success that it deserves.Quote:
Originally Posted by dustin87
Check the comments above and you'll see that folks are wanting the ability to upgrade - so their expensive tablet isn't rendered useless by - for example - a bloated future OS release. In addition, as I've pointed out above, if you've got an Android tablet with these kind of "desktop" sized memories then the OS will load apps into it, which in turn makes the tablet feel more responsive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mattus
Isn't that still a truism of computer resources - that what you've got now is okay, but more would be better? :)