It’s really hard to imagine the level of delusion that would allow Motorola to charge $800 for their first tablet and to saddle that device with a mandatory Verizon plan, even if you only want to use WiFi.
In terms of technology, Motorola is in the same position as Apple was when it launched the iPad. This is their first tablet device, it’s running a brand-new, unproven version of a successful operating system (Android), and there will be very few tablet-specific apps available at launch.
Of course, the big difference between Motorola now and Apple a year ago is that Motorola’s device is competing with the biggest technology success of the past few years, the iPad. Judging from Motorola’s pricing, they’ve decided to pretend that the last year of iPad adoption just didn’t happen.
Apple’s competitors seem to think they’re competing with the Apple of 2001, a company that counted on a dedicated core of loyal users to buy computers that were more expensive and slower than the competition. The Apple of 2010 2011 is not that company. They’ve cut a set of deals that allow them to produce massive volumes of devices at market-leading prices. In addition to price, their devices set the standard for quality, usability and innovation. The dozens of tablet devices that have entered the market in the past few months are mostly overpriced junk, and Apple will own this segment of the market until its competition wakes up.
Jack
This is not new for Motorola. I was hired to work for Motorola back in 1996, and I worked for them until 2004 when they spun off their semiconductor products sector. They’ve been committing this kind of idiocy ever since they came out with the StarTAC phone. They missed the opening of the digital cell phone market, and the only reason they’re still in business is they make radios used by fire departments and police.
I still recall when the grandson of the founder was appointed CEO we were told he got the job “purely on merit”.
Yeah, right. He drove the company into the ground so fast that they are still in the bottom of the crater.
Rennie
> The Apple of 2010 is not that company.
Not to mention the Apple of 2011 …
MoZeu
I’m still thinking of taking a chance on the Adam and ordering during the next pre-order period.
Morbo
Not to mention the ridiculousness of the ad they ran. “Break away from being a mindless drone loyal to their product by buying our version instead.”
Jason Bylinowski
I cannot believe what is happening with the tablet market. 799 for a crippled computer and monthly 3G service is mandatory? And I assume the 799 is supposedly subsidized, since it comes with a contract? I was at first really impressed by the Xoom (it has great specs) but I’ll be damned if I keep encouraging Motorola to keep making these stupid decisions. I regret getting my Droid X because of the locked bootloader, which is sad, because otherwise it’s a great phone. The Xoom, though, is at best a modest contender, more than likely an also-ran against the iPad, and they are going to have to do better than those prices and conditions. It’s like they think they already won the war.
sy2d
Slower than the competition? I’ve been a Mac convert since 2001. Never had one slower than a PC. Never.
Happy to pay more money for the convenience. Great support support, no crashes.
Comrade Javamanphil
@sy2d:
It’s a zombie lie from the 90s born of the mistaken belief that only Mhz mattered.
Jack
I forgot to mention, Motorola was the company that when they wanted to launch an ad campaign aimed at the “young and hip” in the late 90s they chose music from The Rolling Stones.
WTF?
You know what song they chose? “You can’t always get what you want”
Seriously, WTF?? They were trying to sell stuff, and they thought THAT was a good message?
dmsilev
@sy2d: I’m a Mac user as well, but by about 2002 or 2003, it was pretty clear that the PPC chips were losing ground to Intel’s CPUs. Especially in the increasingly-important laptop space. IBM never did manage to produce a G5 chip that could run for more than a few minutes on a battery.
I went from a G4 powerbook to a Core 2 Duo MBP, and even running most of the software using Rosetta, the new machine was so much faster it wasn’t even funny.
dms
dmsilev
Re: the Xoom (and people thought iPad was a silly name?) and the data plan, I’ve heard some speculation that when the Best Buy ad said “to activate WiFi functionality on the device, a minimum of 1 month data subscription required”, what they meant was “WiFi hotspot functionality”. One hopes that they’re not sufficiently evil/stupid to require a cell data contract just so that the device can connect to your home network or the network at the local coffee shop.
dms
JasonF
The iPad is extremely unsuited to a business environment, and there is a great opening for someone to make a tablet that appeals to people managing a corporate IT environment. I have no idea, though, whether the Motorola tablet is that tablet.
TheMightyTrowel
OT: Here’s my random question – I’m looking at e-readers (not Kindle for amazon-hatred reasons), but I happen to have a lot of pdfs and txt files of books that i did not purchase (in my field academic books tend to circulate digitally). Many of the newer ones (BeBook – an EU brand) are saying they can ‘spot’ pirated files. I don’t see how pdf/txt files can be identified as pirated or genuine, but should I be worried?
mistermix
@dmsilev: This. To Apple’s credit, they managed to make the difficult transition to a new processor architecture pretty painlessly, and now their desktop and laptop models are more-or-less competitive.
Fwiffo
I am not in the market for a tablet (which would replace none of my other devices), and wouldn’t pay $800 for one if I was, but the Xoom should cost more than the iPad – it has a lot more in terms of hardware (larger screen, four times as much ram, faster processor, two cameras vs. none…)
Jack
@dmsilev: Going from a PPC G4 to a Core 2 Duo is a huge jump in generations of both processor design and manufacturing capability. (I have some insight into this, I worked to develop the manufacturing process for the PPC G2, G3, and G4)
You’re going from single core to dual core, you’re skipping at least two MPU design generations, and you’re skipping maybe three or four transistor size generations.
To be blunt, at Motorola we never really focused on the G5 because Apple was a huge pain in the patootie for being such a small customer. It made no sense for us to spend $500M developing an MPU for a customer that would only buy $200M of parts, when no one else was using them.
Marmot
@JasonF:
Really? How come? It seems to me to be pretty much like all the other tablets in lots of ways.
mistermix
@Fwiffo: Apple will refresh iPad soon, and that’s the hardware Xoom is competing with, not today’s iPad hardware. And, if Apple’s refresh is true to form, the price points won’t change, they’ll just give you more hardware for the same price. So Xoom’s pricing is still nutz.
Bruuuuce
@Jason Bylinowski: Ultimately, of course, the Droid X was (has been) rooted successfully, in a way that KEEPS it rooted. That, of course, is the advantage of crowdsourcing innovation vs the advantages of consistency enjoyed by a single-creator ecosystem.
In general, the tablet market, and especially the Android side, is still shaking out, with Apple having a huge headstart because they got to market first. I suspect their share will be cut deeply, especially once the field winnows itself out to a few really good competitors. (I’m hoping that the Notion Ink Adam remains one of them. Not only is it David vs. Goliath, but they were the first to commit to Pixel Qi screen technology, which, ISTM, is one major possibility for dominant screen technology in the next few years.)
Either way, I still won’t pay Apple one red cent until they lose the corporate attitude that what they sell you is still under their control forever.
ericblair
@Marmot:
I don’t have specific experience with iPad rollout, but it’s not the product itself. It’s the ability to do mass configuration and activation, as well as locking the product down to the IT shop’s policies (like disallowing downloads, forcing HIPAA compliance, or forcing smart card login). Personally, I’d like to know how the iPad fares in a corporate IT shop.
scarshapedstar
I think $800 is pretty reasonable for a device that supports Swype. How come Apple isn’t innovative enough to admit that tapping on a flat pane of glass and pretending it’s a keyboard is retarded?
Draylon Hogg
Buy an iPad or iPhone and you may as well get your wages paid straight to Apple.
Robert Sneddon
@Marmot:
Apple Inc generally isn’t business-friendly and the iPad doesn’t fit into the office or factory floor market for assorted reasons.
Business-friendliness requires suppliers like MS, Dell, Intel etc. to talk to their big corporate customers and provide them with roadmaps so they can plan major infrastructure acquisitions and rollouts years in advance. Apple gets Steve Jobs to get up on stage and spring surprises instead. Not business-friendly.
iPad in the office. Why? An office environment IT device (laptop, desktop, thin client, PDA etc.) does’nt need a GPS chip, a camera or two or 3G to work. It does require a large screen to put as much relevant data as possible in front of the user’s eyeballs and although the 10″ diagonal display of the iPad is better than a phone or PDA it’s smaller than most business laptops and lower resolution too.
Factory floor. No way. The iPad is cheaper than most mobile devices used in industrial applications but that’s due to the fact it’s not ruggedised the way a factory-floor device is. Simple test — throw it out your fifth-floor office window and then go down and recover it from the car park. If it still works then it’s a candidate for further testing otherwise forget it. It is also missing things like a bar-code reader (no the camera doesn’t work anywhere near good enough to substitute) or an RFID reader. Adding plug-ins and dongles to make up for the missing parts is not good enough — see the car park test mentioned above.
john b
huh?
Patrick
Hello,
I’m locked into RIM’s Blackberry platform because they are the only ones my work will allow calendar / e-mail sync on the device. So I can see my calender entries and e-mail even if disconnected. To get e-mail / calendar on android / apple requires a live connection. They all have VPN now but RIM has device encryption.
Blackberry just released a 7inch playbook. If they had a 10inch, I’d look at it. Pair it with the BB and take it rather than my laptop. But I’d have to poke around with it first.
txbubba
It would be good to start with a comparison of the facts: http://www.examiner.com/technology-in-national/comparative-chart-photo
http://skattertech.com/2011/02/infographic-blackberry-playbook-vs-dell-streak-7-vs-apple-ipad-vs-motorola-xoom/
You can’t criticize based on price alone, which you’ve essentially done. The iPad (an overgrown iPod Touch) lacks so many basic features (USB, Flash support, real multitasking) that I think any price is too much. I wouldn’t buy the Xoom either, but when you compare the two, the Xoom offers a lot more features for the difference of $70.
As we saw with smartphones and even game consoles, being first to market does not guarantee long-term success.
txbubba
@Robert Sneddon:
I work at a large hi-tech company, and the only department wanting to use iPads is sales. And I’m convinced it has less to do with a legitimate use-case and more because it’s eye-candy that they can pull out in front of customers.
Also, because many web apps use Adobe’s Flex, a browser that supports Flash is required.
Lee
@sy2d:
You don’t game do you?
For most everyday applications you won’t notice a difference between an Apple product and a WinTel product.
As soon as you have an application that actually starts taxing the processor, you will notice a huge difference.
I just loaded Win7 64bit on my old PC. It loads standard application noticeably faster than my wife’s newer iMac
MattF
Oh boy, a whole new layer of pro/anti Apple trolls are de-lurking. Here’s a couple of inflammatory posts from Jamie Zawinski, just to get you all excited:
jwz gives up on desktop Linux:
http://www.jwz.org/blog/2005/06/that-was-in-fact-the-final-straw/
jwz gives up on Palm:
http://www.jwz.org/blog/2009/10/dear-palm-its-just-not-working-out/
mistermix
@txbubba: For $70 more I get immature software with hardly any tablet-optimized apps. Figure that in, too.
Lee
@txbubba:
I agree the Xoom has great specs and is priced competitively comparing th specs. The problem is that I do not want it tethered to Verizon. I want one that ONLY connects via wireless internet.
daveNYC
You’re comparing the Xoom to the year old iPad. Everyone and their brother knows that the iPad2 is coming out in April, that’s what the Xoom’s real competition is. Of course the iPad2 will still be lacking Flash support.
burnspbesq
@JasonF:
If you believe that, you haven’t walked down the hall of a professional services firm lately. Where partners can trump Mordac, iPads are all over the enterprise. Cisco and Citrix be praised.
ETA: All you Mordacs out there can go straight to hell. The only thing that matters is what makes users more able to do their jobs.
Judas Escargot
@mistermix:
To Apple’s credit, they managed to make the difficult transition to a new processor architecture pretty painlessly
Twice, actually (the switch from 680×0 to PPC back in 1994 was an even bigger deal).
Draylon Hogg
@23
Dunno how they are in the US but here in the UK Apple’s attitude is analogous to Ray Liotta’s speech on Mob protection in Goodfellas.
Wanna ringtone for your iPhone?
Fuck you, pay me.
Wanna decent app for your iPad?
Fuck you, pay me.
txbubba
@mistermix:
First, “optimized” is less important than you’re making it out to be. Most Android apps will run well on Android 3.0, so there is no lack of applications for Xoom.
Second, with more than 100 Android tablets shown at CES 2011, do you really think tablet-optimization is going to be much of an issue for long?
txbubba
@daveNYC:
That is the market today. There is no iPad2 now, and no one knows its price or features. The fact remains that the Xoom is not that far removed from the iPad in price, which is selling well.
Plus, given the smartphone market, the Xoom price will probably drop if the iPad 2 has more features for less money.
Bruuuuce
Let’s give credit where credit is due. Apple’s very good at design and innovation from a central-control POV. They have a good feel for what consumers want, and they’ve got a devoted fan base (a large segment of which has cultlike qualities). They’ve done well in catching up in market share in areas where they’ve traditionally lagged (the desktop) while creating markets that made them a household name.
They’re also good at intentionally crippling their devices, withholding functionality so that it can be built in for the next upgrade and hence squeeze more money out of their customers. They’re terrific at locking people into proprietary data formats and required software that supports their products. They’re good at writing agreements that define them as the primary market for data intended for their devices, and taking a cut of the price. And they’re tops at maintaining control over what they sell long after the consumer plunks down the money that theoretically gives them complete ownership of their product.
Whichever paragraph is more important to you, and whether you can cope with the other, will decide whether you’re Apple’s target market or not. Me, I’m (pretty clearly) a second-graf kind of guy, and though Apple’s products are pretty, I’ll stick with Android, Linux, and Windows, TYVM.
@MattF: I note that of your two links, “giving up on Linus” was in 2005; “giving up on Palm” was in 2009 (and referred to the Pre, which while ahead of its time in many ways, also had horrid hardware). I’d be interested to know how Mr. Z feels about Linux, Palm, and Android (which he speaks about in the second link) now, with all three having gone major changes in the time since he’s posted.
The Tim Channel
I didn’t want to change O/S’s. I really didn’t. Microsoft forced me, against my will, to abandon their bug-infested, virus prone, Blue Window of Death laden bloatware. So please don’t blame me for switching. Blame Microsoft ME instead.
I went Apple about the time they switched to Intel chips, though that was merely coincidental to my purchase. I started out with the cheapest Mac (Mini Solo 1.5ghz) just to see if I’d like it. To be sure, it was a bit slower than the PC it replaced, but it never crashed and I never had to spend half a week rebuilding the O/S because of virus or other instability issues. I’m several years down the road with Apple now (Imac Dual 2.2ghz) and you honestly couldn’t pay me to switch back.
I was underwhelmed by the initial Ipad (mostly the broken/no Flash browser), though I do like the form factor. This new Motorola offering (price aside) looks good on paper, but as others have pointed out, the new Ipad will likely close that gap significantly. One thing I’m sure of is that for the next couple years or so, we’re going to be going through a never ending replay of the ‘ipod killer’ type stories the media is so fond of. They will give equal time to what will undoubtedly be a vast trove of also-ran’s (ala Ipod clones again).
I really shouldn’t go there…..but….how’s that Ipod killing Zune working out for everybody?
Enjoy.
dmsilev
@txbubba:
The Xoom costs roughly as much as the absolute top-end iPad. It costs 60% more than the entry-level iPad. Apple said during one of their earnings calls that the average selling price for the iPad is around $600 or so, suggesting that a large chunk of the sales are (unsurprisingly) going to the lower-end models. If the Xoom starts at $800 and the iPad starts at $500, that’s a hell of a big upsell for the generic “consumer looking to buy tablet” market.
dms
Bruuuuce
@The Tim Channel: I own a Zune HD 16GB (since last July), and it’s awesome. Go read the reviews of the current generation of Zunes; they’re considered to be on par with, or beyond, the iPod in quality now.
My only complaint about it is is the same as I’d have about an iPod — it requires proprietary software to sync with a computer and manage the player. (I got it as part of a package deal from Dell with a laptop.) I love the HD radio (in NY, it means that I can listen to several AM stations that I can’t get reception for inside my Faraday cage of an office building at work. Play-by-play for the Yanks, Mets, and Knicks. Huzzah!) If I could drag and drop to it, it’d be ideal. (Well, okay, If it had 64GB — or better yet, 512 GB — it’d be as ideal as a media player gets.)
MattF
@Bruuuuce
Zawinski reports minor problems or incompatibilities now and then with his Apple hardware, but shows no sign, as far as I can tell, of thinking about switching back to desktop Linux or Palm. He’s extremely knowledgeable, but not particularly interested in tech stuff per se, having given that up, long ago, in favor of selling beer.
daveNYC
The current situation will only exist for about two month of the Xoom’s release. There’s not going to be many people so hard core on Android that they won’t be willing to wait a little to see what Apple is bringing to the table.
And as far as the iPad2’s spec and pricing goes, front and rear cameras are a given, and there will most likely be a processor upgrade too. I’d also be shocked if Apple changed its pricing, their standard procedure is to keep the prices the same, but upgrade the hardware.
I don’t know if the Xoom’s build cost is such that Motorala couldn’t make it any cheaper, but they are going up against an entrenched competitor in a category that Apple basically created. Coming in at the high end of the price range is not the best way to do that.
txbubba
@Lee:
You can, but you have to have at least 1 month on a Verizon data plan. After that, you can use only wifi. Yeah, it’s stupid, but it is possible.
I confess that no tablet appeals to me right now. I have a smartphone, so I can’t see the need for a “tweener” device. I used to use my netbook a bit, but since I’ve had the smartphone, I hardly use it now.
Catsy
@The Tim Channel:
I hate to be a wet blanket, but you do realize there have been a few nontrivial iterations of Windows since ME?
@Bruuuuce:
Ugh, the Zune. My experiences with them and their unforgivably shitty software left me scarred. It’s really hard to make software that’s more bloated and less usable than iTunes, but they managed it.
The proprietary sync software is a big complaint of mine with the iPod, too–as you might guess, I despise everything about iTunes–but you can at least get around it with the iPod using excellent free software like SharePod. The nice thing about SharePod is that it’s a single self-contained executable that lives in the root folder of your iPod that you can launch from any Windows computer, whether it’s yours or your friend’s.
Lee
@txbubba:
Excellent. I did not know that.
I am already on Verizon (corporate discount) so I can purchase one month of the data plan and then discontinue only that feature.
THANKS!
Sarcastro
Wanna ringtone for your iPhone?
Fuck you, pay me.
If you can’t figure out how to make your own ringtone for an iPhone step the hell away from the computer, find an abacus, two tin cans and a string, and see if that’s more your speed.
Mr Furious
The current iPad’s resolution of 1024 x 768 is pretty damn slick at under 10 inches. Nobody I know has looked at an iPad and thought it looked anything but amazing. Much like processor speeds, Apple has a knack for making the specs secondary to the users actual experience.
The iPad2 was rumored to be getting a Retina display (a 10-inch iPhone 4 screen), but apparently even though neither cost or technology is a problem, it will have to wait for the iPad3 because no one can manufacture such a display at the quantity Apple would require.
Sentient Puddle
Show of hands: who ever thought Apple would win on pricing?
RareSanity
@Jack:
Ah, brother! Former Motorolan here, too. We started around the same time as well.
Yep. They keep letting people that rose up through the ranks in their two-way radio business, in which they are almost a monopoly, run the other businesses. I can’t remember the VP’s name that famously said that digital cellular wouldn’t survive…buncha dinosaurs.
Man, are you right. Chris Galvin was his name. I still remember getting one of those “Message from the CEO” emails when the company was getting hammered, in like 2001. He started of the email by expressing how much time he had to think, “while on our yacht, vacationing with my family, in the South of France”. He then goes on to talk about how the company will need to be restructured to “remain competitive”. Which really meant, “Let the layoffs begin!”.
What an incompetent, douche.
fasteddie9318
Wake me up when somebody develops a tablet that does what the Xoom does, but WiFi only, for around $500. I love new technology, but I’m almost never an early adopter.
RareSanity
@dmsilev:
The general scuttlebutt, around teh interwebs, is that the WiFi only model will be available in April.
Doesn’t matter to me, there is no way in hell, that tablet is worth that amount of money. Apple is in a position to charge a premium for their hardware, Motorola is not. There is no way that the manufacturing costs for an iPad or a Xoom, is higher than a mid-level netbook, yet they retail for twice the price.
Apple can do that. They have worked very hard at positioning themselves as a luxury brand. Motorola consistently deludes itself to thinking that, they too, are a luxury brand. When the fact of the matter is that, as Jack said, they haven’t been viewed as a luxury brand, since the analog version of the StarTac. Well, maybe when they kinda caught lighting in a bottle with the PageWriter, but that only lasted about 2 years.
If there is anyone considering a tablet purchase, be patient. If you can wait until fall or winter, the same thing that is going on with Android smartphones, will start happening with the tablets. It’ll be device after device, each manufacturer trying to out do the other. This will go on for the next couple of years until some of the manufacturers cry “Uncle!”, and stop trying to compete at the high tier and focus more on mid to low.
Gromit
@Bruuuuce:
Care to give some concrete examples? Yes, Apple does have a habit of withholding features. Third party apps, copy/paste and third party background processes come to mind. But these were all added in free software updates (iPod Touch users had to pay a token fee for accounting reasons). Anyone who follows tech knows that components tend to get cheaper over time, so the yearly addition of things like GPS, front-facing cameras and gyroscopes at last year’sl price point shouldn’t inspire this kind of barstool conspiracy theory. So what does?
Ecks
@sy2d: Macs? “no crashes”? Seriously?
I would have believed you, except my wife has a macbook, and I’ve used a few other mac laptops, and they crash every bit as much as the modern era PC’s in my life do.
(now back in the days of Win 95, sure, THEN PC’s crashed all too regularly).
Gromit
@RareSanity:
Why are you only considering the manufacturing costs? Programmers, engineers, accountants, marketers, etc. don’t typically work for free. I’ll spot you some of the programmers if we are talking about an Android device like the Xoom, since Google covers most of the OS development (though the cost there isn’t really zero, it’s just externalized). But still, there’s a lot more to getting something like this to market than just calling up a factory and placing an order.
beergoggles
I would have been willing to pay extra for an ipad clone that wasn’t as crippled as Apple likes to make their products.
However, I ended up paying less for it. 300 dollars for an Archos 101 that I was able to install the regular android market and apps on within a week of release.
Motorola is outta their f’in minds.
fasteddie9318
@Ecks:
So did Macs back then. Those little fucking crash bombs were the bane of my college existence.
Ecks
@fasteddie9318: To be fair, I think Windows ME might have been a bit crashy. Bit Windows 2000, Win XP, Win 7, all pretty solid. And Macs might not BSOD, but they sure will give you the “eternal little rainbow spinny wheel of the soul”.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Jack: Third generation? Like W. and McCain? I’m shocked, SHOCKED I tell you that he was not successful. The utter lack of need to develop any talent, skill or accomplishments is the hallmark of our 3rd gen Galtian overlords.
lol
Can someone tell me what I’m missing about Android? Roommate has a Droid with keypad. It’s buggy, unintuitive and routinely freezes up.
My favourite is trying to add a custom ring tone for a contact – Bring up the contact, click the side menu button, click the onscreen edit button, use the keypad (b/c touchscreen won’t select it) to navigate down to the vaguely named “additional info”, use the touchscreen (b/c keypad skips the ring tone option) to navigate down to add a ring tone. Then do about 3-4 save/ok/confirms to finally implement the ring tone.
Reminds me of the Linux zealots who think a usable user interface is optional and then act mystified when the mythical “Year of the Linux Desktop” never materializes.
RareSanity
@Gromit:
You assume that I am only considering manufacturing costs. I am a software engineer for wireless devices, and spent five years of my career, at Motorola. It is no small point that basically, all Motorola has to do, is develop their UI overlay and hardware for the device. They are using the Tegra 2 chipset, which handles encoding and decoding video and audio, imaging (camera), and display output. Drivers already written jointly by Google and Nvidia. It will use some flavor of combined baseband/Bluetooth/WiFi/GPS, which it is possible that they may have have to write a driver for, not likely.
So when you really get down to it, Motorola’s “development costs” boil down to, the hardware design and if they choose to implement their custom UI overlay. Which, if I understand correctly, is not being implemented on the Xoom.
So, how exactly is what Motorola doing any different than, say Acer? Design and manufacture the hardware then put an externally developed, operating system on top of it.
srv
@JasonF: Everywhere I go for business meetings, I see iPads. Every first class and business class is filled with iPads. Even major Silicon Valley tech firms have let the iPad into the corporate datasphere and the revolution is from the ground up. The IT and in-house app folks are irrelevant.
Like Jobs’ says, the geeks will covet multitasking, the other 95% of the population could care less.
Apple will win the client hw war and pricing war. iOS and MacOS will ultimately merge, and you’ll have a tablet that runs your Office apps. And it’ll run on ARM if Intel doesn’t provide their best prices. In the meantime, Google will fap around with Chrome, Android and those other operating systems of theirs.
Calouste
@Mr Furious:
I have, but that was next to an as yet unreleased piece of hardware where you could still read the screen at an angle of 80 degrees or so.
2liberal
@JasonF:
I am a PC, used to work for M$ tech support (NT Server support for Macs, Apps and Printing). I now do presales tech support for a large reseller of IT gear and we sell HP, Cisco, IBM, Apple, and a lot of software also. We had a meeting recently and our boss told us that a lot of executives are bringing IPADS to their IT depts and telling them to put them on the network.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@Bruuuuce:
.
.
Right. There are no cultists like MS cultists. After all, who coined the term “wimp interface” (windows, icons, mouse, pointing)? Oh, and then adopted it when Chairman Bill (convicted monopolist) decreed it.
Right. That’s why it’s always been easier to add peripherals such as RAM, multiple hard drives, multiple monitors, etc., on Macintosh. Have you checked out the built-in, performance-zapping DRM in Windows lately?
Right. This is a false and fairly ridiculous statement, especially when compared to Windows. Video = mp4, H.264. Audio = mp3, aac. None of those are owned, controlled, and licensed solely by Apple, as wmv is in Windows or webM is with Google. WTF = Outlook. Then there is the whole unix basis of OS X…
The moral of this story is, three rights make you wrong.
.
.
Robert Sneddon
@2liberal:
Those sorts of requests are not unexpected or untypical. I ran into it myself a few years back when I was doing high-end corporate operation support. Now try to explain to them that the iPad won’t run Outlook and give them access to their business emails even after it’s been put on the corporate net.
Sarbanes-Oxley is the usual answer (at least for Monks of a .usian nature) to such requests, explaining that the officer in question will be held criminally and personally liable if any secure corporate data leaks from their iPad. You could try waving the press clippings of assorted disasters involving thumb-drives left in inappropriate places and explain that you have corporate policy to secure such data on officially-issued laptops and cellphones but Apple is not business-oriented and their kit can’t be similarly secured.
NoTabletForYou!
dang – $800?
dang….
Gromit
@RareSanity:
I hope you can see how your original comment might lead me in that direction, but your other points are well-taken.
I don’t want to in any way come off as defending Motorola here. This looks like a boneheaded move. And Acer has a line of tablets coming out, too, so we might be able to make more direct comparisons soon(ish).