The iPad CHALLENGE

With the first credible alternatives to the iPad starting to appear, Apple should be taking notes 


couple of weeks ago, the first credible alternative to the iPad finally arrived in my office. The Motorola Xoom, like the iPad, is a 10in tablet running a mobile OS (Android 3.0). It's a nice piece of gear. It's no threat to the iPad but using it helped me to understand what makes the iPad work.

A tablet has to seem like one device, not like a computer that runs dozens of different apps. Using the Xoom, the one thing I missed about my iPad above all others was the sense that the hardware, the OS, and each of the two dozen or so apps I rely on were designed to work together.

Google doesn't understand that it has a responsibility to behave like an evil megacorporation that wants to crush all opposition. Google has many of the best and most popular web apps. So when I pick up a tablet that runs a Google OS and launch a Google-created web browser and navigate to a Google web app, I'm expecting a spectacular experience.

Instead, Google Reader identifies the Xoom as a mobile device and serves up the stripped-down edition. You don't even get the standard full web edition. Seriously.

Apple may be a tyrant, but when the company exerts control, it also imposes order and improves the overall experience. Google can't even be bothered to make its own web apps work well with its own OS. With an attitude like that, they'll never grind the huddled masses under their iron-studded boot heel.
 

 It's important to remember that the iPad's dominance of the tablet market isn't the result of Divine Ordinance

If I see any threat to the iPad's supremacy, it's the £399 entry-level price. What'll happen if the market is flooded with perfectly decent £150 Android 3.0 tablets, and a lot of new money and users enter the Android Marketplace? I wonder.

It's important to remember that the iPad's dominance ofthe tablet market isn't the result of Divine Ordinance. There are reasons why the iPad works as well as it does and there are reasons why other devices could one day do just as well. If Apple overlooks either one of those things, it'll quickly become apparent that Apple never had a lock on the tablet market... just a two-year headstart.