“Back in August of 2010, it was clear that Apple’s iPad – which had gone on sale on April 3rd – was a gigantic, game-changing hit,” Harry McCracken reports Technologizer.
“The rest of the industry was scrambling to respond, and there had already been a steady stream of announcements, pre-announcements, sneak peeks, and rumors, along with a few products that had actually shipped,” McCracken reports. “I chose that month to round up as many of them as possible. I called them ‘iPadversaries,’ and published a story with brief profiles of 32 of them.”
McCracken reports, “More than thirteen months after we ran that iPadversaries story, I decided it might be instructive (or at least perversely fascinating) to follow up on all 32 machines… Spoiler: If you like happy endings, you should stop reading now.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It was a steady stream alright.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward Weber” for the heads up.]
Yeah. A steady yellow stream aimed into the wind!
MDN, great take!
“Spoiler: If you like happy endings, you should stop reading now.”
Best response to the above, in the comments:
“Because on the gamer/hater driven TECH internet, any story where Apple wins is a bad day.”
The “happy endings” bit was from the original article, not MDN.
Still funny.
The future of non-iPads is to avoid going head to head with Apple based on specs, features, and price. Any attempt to “match” iPad will fail, because iPad is difficult to match (and be profitable) and there are things like the iOS App Store that are impossible to match. Siri will be the next differentiator. And if a competitor is merely going to (incompletely) copy what Apple already has, why would most customers choose the copy?
The same thing happened with iPod. At first, there were many competing products that tried to match iPod, based on specs, features, and price. But even if they came close with the device itself, it was impossible to match the iTunes ecosystem. Eventually, the big players mostly gave up, and those that remained in the “iPod market” mostly focused on areas that Apple intentionally ignored.
And that’s what’s happening now with the “iPad market.” Kindle Fire is priced much lower than Apple is willing to go with iPad. It is also smaller. I think we will also see competing tablets that are too large and heavy to be held while being used, because Apple will not go there with iPad. Maybe a tablet some sort of built-in physical keyboard.
I think we’ll eventually see a 6″ – 7″ iPod Touch sometime next year.
iPad Mini, no.
iPod Touch Maxi, yes.
My point is that the competition will (going forward) choose to focus where Apple (currently) chooses not to go, instead of going head-to-head with iPad. That does not mean Apple will not go there later.
This strategy mirrors what happened with iPod. Initially, iPod was a high-end only product. The competition tried and failed to complete directly with iPod, then focused mostly on the low end. Apple eventually produced lower-cost products too, driving the competition to give up or go even lower.
> I think we’ll eventually see a 6″ – 7″ iPod Touch
That’s actually a terrible size. The smallest iPad I see is 8-inch. The largest iPod touch I see is 4-inch. In between, it is too large to put in pocket (and control using only one hand) and too small to show content without zooming in and out.
> iPad Mini, no. iPod Touch Maxi, yes.
I think iOS will eventually have full resolution independence. When that happens, the user can smoothly and intuitively adjust the size of GUI elements, such as icons and text, to better meet their individual preferences and needs. For example, people with sharp eyes and narrow fingers may want to make things smaller on screen (with more stuff showing on the screen). At that point, there will be no real distinction between an “iPod touch” and “iPad,” except that one is generally smaller and one is generally larger.
Hilarious article. I remember with ancillary schadenfreude how those I knew who insisted upon never getting an Apple product come hell or high water beamed and chortled about Asus and especially about the Adam- oh, how they pranced. We’re all dancing on the tablets’ graves, now.
I’m not sure what everyone is so happy about. Despite Apple’s overwhelming success in the tablet market, Wall Street is heavily backing Amazon and the lowly Kindle Fire to take down the iPad and iOS ecosystem if that even makes any sense. The Kindle Fire is just a dirt cheap, low-end, mediocre 7″ tablet and yet Wall Street believes that it is a viable competitor to the iPad and will take huge amounts of market share from the iPad.
One really needs to wonder hard about what is exactly running through the computer industry leaders’ brains. Is this whole Kindle Fire domination thing merely based on its $199 starting price? Does anyone think for a moment that Apple could have gotten away by putting such low-end piece of crap for sale and been praised for doing so as Amazon is.
There must be factions out there that are actively trying to take down and devalue Apple at all costs to keep pumping the Kindle Fire like that. I don’t for a minute believe that most consumers would prefer the Fire over the iPad if they tried the products side-by-side. I’m sure the build quality must be miles apart.
Why Wall Street continues to favor companies pushing low-quality junk to consumers is something I fail to understand. I guess I didn’t grow up during the times with the value of “just good enough” is perfectly acceptable for American consumers.
Wall street and corporate types always favor cheap shit over quality. Move units, and to hell with the customer.
That’s what set Apple apart – Jobs was one of the very few CEOs who knew that his customers were the people who buy the products, not the stockholders.
I imagine he taught that lesson to Tim Cook.
“Wall Street is heavily backing Amazon and the lowly Kindle Fire to take down the iPad and iOS ecosystem…”
Which points out the deep seated stupidity of many ‘analysts’ on Wall Street. No wonder ‘Wall Street’ has become synonymous with ‘Hell Hole’.
FACT: Anyone with legitimate tech savvy knew months ago that the Amazon Fire was NO competition with the iPad. IOW: The dolts claiming otherwise should be booted from their ‘analyst’ jobs and replaced with people who actually know what they’re talking about. TechTards abound.
That any Wall Street analysts continue to place hope in the Amazon Fire as any kind of ‘competitor’ with the iPad is simply a source of cynical laughter. Yes, Wall Street ‘analysts’ really can be THAT stupid. 😆
hey, MDN, this piece ran over a month ago!
good piece tho. and the biggest flop of 2010 by far was the first Samsung 7″ Galaxy tablet released in November. 2.2 million were “shipped”! you can still buy them today at $300 and up. still running Froyo, since they were never updated to Honeycomb as hyped. how many of those 2.2 million do you think were actually ever “sold”?
Samsung ain’t telling.
This anti-iPad line-up is as pitiful as the current offerings for next year’s Presidential election.
The lack of decent options among Apple’s competition makes me smile. The other, not so much.
“This anti-iPad line-up is as pitiful as the current offerings for next year’s Presidential election.”
Yeah. What is it with this year’s parade of idiot wannabes?
Over a year ago all We-The-Fanbois predicted that 2011 would be a year of FAILures for all Apple iPad rivals. Oh look. Our prediction came true is spades.
What’s pathetic is that there as yet is NO SIGN of any actual competitor with the iPad for 2012. That’s bad. Apple requires competition. Innovation requires competition.
I blame primarily blame Google for this situation. Android has turned out to be a total red herring, luring companies away from any actual innovation, miring them in crapware when they could have been spending time inventing something worth buying. 😛