Further to my comments last week about Steve Jobs’ attitude, it seems he’s been at it again.
And as soon as Apple’s founder and presiding genius opened his mouth, it was clear he was in fighting mood. First in the firing line, RIM, the makers of Blackberry. Their sales had been overtaken by the iPhone for the first time in the last quarter – and in Mr Jobs’ view, that was it: game over, no hope of them making a comeback in the foreseeable future.
Nice bit of hyperbole, but that’s all it is. Different machines with different markets. However, it gets interesting when he starts to wade into rival manufacturers of touch screen tablets.
Then he moved to the avalanche of new tablets about to enter the market, suggesting that only a handful of them might prove credible. Mr Jobs seemed outraged that rivals thought seven inches might be a sensible size for a tablet screen – Samsung is just one firm producing a tablet that size.
A seven-inch screen, he maintained, was just 45% as large as the 10-inch iPad. He suggested that makers of such tablets should include sandpaper in the box so that users could sand down their fingers to the right size to be able to use the apps on such a small screen.
Doubtless some of them will fail. Others will succeed. RIM insist that their users will want to be able to see Flash enabled websites and I suspect that for some, this might make a difference. But screen size seems to be an odd issue to be getting one’s knickers in a knot over. For some, a smaller screen size will make the machine more practical. If they want the 10 inch iPad with its proprietary software and inability to render Flash enabled websites, well, they will buy one. For others, the smaller screen will mean that the machine is more easily transportable.
For me, though, neither machine suits. My current laptop has a touch screen and I can use it in tablet mode. This is useful when obtaining client signatures and that’s about it. For text entry it is clumsy, despite it recognising my handwriting with remarkable accuracy. It is also significantly slower than typing on a keyboard. Which is why, should I decide to buy another tablet device, it will be of the same ilk – a laptop with a keyboard that I can, should I wish, convert to a tablet. One with an operating system that gives me the flexibility to load whatever software I choose including a browser that will render HTML5 and Flash.
RIM has responded to Jobs’ comments.
For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we know that 7 inch tablets will actually be a big portion of the market,
And:
“And we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience”.
Actually, as I’ve mentioned, Flash is a bloody nuisance and I wish web designers wouldn’t use it. I have Flashblocker installed on Firefox. This means that I can ignore it most of the time, but can enable it if I need to. But, I expect to be able to make that choice for myself on my own machine.
In response to Jobs’ comments on Android, there was equally dismissive rebuttal:
Did we at any point say it was a nightmare developing on Android? Errr nope, no we didn’t. It wasn’t.
So, I guess it’s popcorn time…
Flash is definitely a pain in the butt and forever being updated.
Indeed so. On our French satellite connection, it slows things down too much, which is why I use Flashblocker. Unfortunately, some sites insist on it and you need it to interact with them. Worse, are those that will only work with IE.
Thanks for the head’s-up on the Samsung tablet. I have a love for small-screen sub-notebooks and my best one to date is a Samsung. Seven hours’ battery life and enough oomph to run anything. Jobs will never get any money from me with his penchant for software lock-in, but Samsung just might get more dosh from me…
They do seem to make nice kit and if I was in the market, I’d look closely at it.
I used to have an iPaq a few years back and that was a nice little machine, but in reality, I didn’t make enough use of it to justify keeping that and my Toshiba.
LR,
Sorry to wade in a defend El Jobso again but, unlike many people, I actually watched the whole keynote and was able to take Jobs’ comments in context.
“But screen size seems to be an odd issue to be getting one’s knickers in a knot over. For some, a smaller screen size will make the machine more practical.”
Steve’s contention was that if you wanted a very small screen, then one would use a phone which is vastly more transportable than even a 7″ tablet.
Thus, he maintained, if you wanted to take advantage of a bigger screen, then there was a certain size that would work well (with button sizes matched to finger widths, etc.) and sizes that wouldn’t. His contention was that, in Apple’s user testing, 7″ was too small.
I tend to agree but I would, wouldn’t I?
One of his other statements was that the 7″ pads coming onto the market would be about the same price as an iPad, but smaller. And in this, he was absolutely bang on.
DK
Presumably, in addition to the size issue, if you’ve converted stuff to play on your iPhone, it will then play on the iPad (?) but may need further conversion to play on a Samsung or other tablet?
I haven’t succumbed to the iPad yet, so I don’t know. Perhaps someone will? It’s a minor issue, sure, but who wants to maintain two formats?
DK, Horses for courses. For many, a phone screen is just too small to be of any use. I have a smartphone, but use few of the facilities for that very reason. I wouldn’t dream of trying to use the web on it as web pages just aren’t designed with small screens in mind. Then, of course, those of us who need reading glasses prefer larger screens these days.
Once you go to a 10 inch screen you are getting into laptop territory, so why not go the whole hog and get a laptop? Then, at least, you get a keyboard and lid.
The 7 inch screen looks to me to be a decent compromise size. Small enough to be portable and big enough to be useful. As for Jobs’ comments about needing smaller fingers, this is risible nonsense. I have a Garmin SatNav on my bike. The screen is about 3.5 inches and I operate it while wearing motorcycle gloves.
I very much doubt that Samsung and RIM are planning to enter into this market without having done some market research.
Julia, I suspect that Samsung are pitching at the non-Apple market anyway, so conversion is probably not an issue. All of my music is either in MP3 or WMA format, so would play on such a machine if I wanted to do that, but as I don’t it doesn’t matter.
I can’t stand touch-screen, which is why I’d always go for a laptop instead of a tablet. It’s good that corporate giants are battling it out in front of us, the ones who stand to benefit will be the customers.