Engagdet Crushes The Joojoo Tablet

[rabidpoobear]

Personally I've never owned an Apple product, but in their defense I have very little interest in gadgets.

Are you getting a Pandora? I can't remember. I remember there was some debate about it a while ago.

Speaking of which, what do you do with your free time exactly? I know you're big in the emulation scene, I'm actually trying to start out in it as well (doing the obligatory Chip-8 / Gameboy / NES route right now). Do you mostly focus on your work other than that?

The main reason I ask is because I know you graduated a few years ago and you're workin' now, and I'm about to graduate (master's in CS) in about 4 weeks, and I'd be interested to know how you balance your time between work / gadgets / emulation / whatever else it is you do. Since I'll be in a similar situation shortly.

 

[torpor]

I'll be getting an iPad. Its a brand new realm of fresh users for interesting software development. From that perspective, it pretty much rocks.

But to be fair, all the Joojoo guys need to do is set up a repository and work out how to get developers streaming their apps into it. This is a good problem to have, in my opinion, but its not a problem worth solving until there is actually hardware shipping and users out there. Imagine what its going to be like when someone figures out they can add multi-touch support to Inkscape and Blender, and then these apps make their way into a repo .. its an opportunity, actually, for the F/OSS community to kick the iPads/Macbooks ass.

The same situation occurs for us Pandora'ites, btw. And we can see that there is at least an effort on the horizon to make sure our repo is working. The same is true for the Touchbook fans, by the way .. and none of these devices are going to do well unless they catch up and offer a really vibrant developer->user ecosphere.

 

[rsuryase]

I think that this should be qualified with "... of the US handheld market". Apple's not that viable in other arenas, is it?

I remember reading in Gizmodo that the iphone smartphone is big/dominant in developed countries but nonexistant in developing countries. I think there's still a lot of pie to go around from developing countries. Hopefully Apple won't be king.

 

[1magus]

I'll be getting an iPad. Its a brand new realm of fresh users for interesting software development. From that perspective, it pretty much rocks.

But to be fair, all the Joojoo guys need to do is set up a repository and work out how to get developers streaming their apps into it. This is a good problem to have, in my opinion, but its not a problem worth solving until there is actually hardware shipping and users out there. Imagine what its going to be like when someone figures out they can add multi-touch support to Inkscape and Blender, and then these apps make their way into a repo .. its an opportunity, actually, for the F/OSS community to kick the iPads/Macbooks ass.

The same situation occurs for us Pandora'ites, btw. And we can see that there is at least an effort on the horizon to make sure our repo is working. The same is true for the Touchbook fans, by the way .. and none of these devices are going to do well unless they catch up and offer a really vibrant developer->user ecosphere.

Apple is quite controlling I kind of doubt they well let something like Blender run on their hardware. First off they restrict programs running on iPhone OS to 32MB each. I have no idea about the iPad but I'm willing to bet nothing above 50-100 since the launch units only have 256MB of RAM. Now maybe that 32MB limit has been lifted but honestly who cares if you're app dose not smell just right to Apple they will not accept it.

 

[quadomatic]

Application size does not have to match the amount of RAM. By that logic, I would need 17GB of RAM to run GTA IV on my PC, and people who play RAGE (once it finally comes out...step on it Carmack!) will need 1 TB of RAM.

I'm not a fan of Apple products because Apple has never really supported open development on their platforms. It's generally the Apple way or the highway. When you're an avid Linux user, that sort of deal just doesn't fly.

 

[laurencevde]

The tablet-form-factor is an ideal form-factor for having floating around in your living-room. But the iPad is too locked-down to be of full use in that situation, and the joojoo's battery-life makes it (apart from its software-issues) completely worthless for that use...

Things I think a good tablet should be able to do well:

loooong battery-life (weeks while idling, days while using, so that I don't have to hook it up after use, and can forget about it)
domotica (remote-control everything)
everything you want to do in your living-room: multimedia, reading, notes-taking, webbrowsing, gaming, etc.
function as a client to the rest of your devices (store stuff on your nas, rdp, etc.)