The tablet challenge

A 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 seamlessly. Even when I stuck to Android's built-in apps, I felt like I needed to relearn some basic skills and familiarise myself with new quirks every time I switched tasks. At times, it seemed like Google's in-house developers weren't particularly aware that they were developing an app for a tablet instead of a notebook.

Google doesn't understand that it has a responsibility to behave like an evil megacorporation that wants to crush ail opposition. Google has many of the best and most popular Web apps. Everybody uses Google Reader to manage their daily blogs and news, and thousands of institutions have standardised on Google Docs. 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 smartphone 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.

If I see any threat to the iPad's supremacy, it's the £399 entry-level price. No other maker can touch it but it's still the price of a computer, not a consumer device. Put another way: it's the difference between A Very Nice Christmas Present and ."This has to count for your birthday present too... and you can't come with us on this year's family holiday, either."

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?

It's important to remember that the iPad's dominance of the 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 head start.

"Apple may be a tyrant, but when the company exerts control it also imposes order"