“At CTIA Wireless earlier this week, Samsung announced a new 10.1″ Galaxy Tab tablet–one which it said was thinner and lighter than the iPad 2,” Harry McCracken reports for Technologizer. “I scurried over to the Samsung booth in hopes of getting some hands-on time with the new Tab.”
“When I got there, I found that the 10.1″ Tabs out on tables were the older, relatively portly version announced last month at Mobile World Congress. The new 10.1-incher (and its 8.9″ sibling) were inside glass cases, and they weren’t powered on,” McCracken reports. “My friend Fritz Nelson of InformationWeek [has since] published a CTIA tablet roundup that includes a couple of comparison shots of the iPad 2 and a prototype of the new 10.1″ Galaxy Tab–ones which he says show that the Tab–supposedly 8.6mm to the iPad 2′s 8.8mm–is very slightly thicker than the iPad 2.”
MacDailyNews Take: When you can’t even produce vaporous mockups with specs that match your claims, you’ve got issues.
McCracken reports, “I was confused about a different aspect of Samsung’s event. Much of it was devoted to video clips from the “Samsung Galaxy Tab Interview Project,” which the opening titles said took place on March 3rd in New York, and which was shown to involve inviting busy, successful New Yorkers to try the Galaxy Tab of their choice and share their opinions. The New Yorkers in question were identified as freelance travel writer Joan Hess, independent filmmaker Karl Shefelman, and leading real estate CEO Joseph Kolinksi.”
“I was curious to learn more about them,” McCracken reports. “So I Googled around and couldn’t find any references to a travel-writing Joan Hess (one with, as she said, a following on Twitter) or a real-estate CEO Joseph Kolinski. I did notice, however, that freelance travel writer Joan Hess bears a striking resemblance to New York actress Joan Hess. And that real estate CEO Joseph Kolinski could be New York actor Joseph Kolinksi‘s twin brother. Filmmaker Karl Shefelman, on the other hand, looks a lot like…filmmaker Karl Shefelman. Who works for a New York production company. One that’s done work for Samsung.”
MacDailyNews Take: Samsung. So flummoxed by Apple that they feel the need to lie? Now that’s desperate.
Read more in the full article, which includes a link to Samsung’s video and photos of the actors that Samsung is trying to pass off as “fans,” here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bloodbath.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Samsung: ‘We will not be outdone’ by iPad 2 thinness – March 24, 2011
Apple’s iPad 2 freaks out Samsung; says Galaxy Tab specs, pricing ‘inadequate’ – March 4, 2011
That’s too funny! You know it’s bad when you have to hire actors to give fake reviews of your non-existent product.
deja vu all over again. Remember the MS debacle when they posted ads with “real users” who were actors or stock photo images?
Well..Bizlaw …
That’s why they call it ….. “acting” !!
You also know it’s bad when you forget to even try to cover your tracks while you lie… If they did concoct the whole thing why in God’s name wouldn’t they come up with some fake names for the characters instead of using the actors’ real names? How hard could that be? Is Filmmaker-producer Karl Shefelman’s skull as thick as a Galaxy Tab?
They are real users of the Galaxy Tab. They are not actors, or my name isn’t Sam Sung!
So your kid is Son of Sam Sung…?
And if he were gay, would they say ‘Son of Sam Sung blew’…?
And would his kid be son of a son of a Sam Sung?
And if your wife’s name were Delilah, would y’all be known as Sam Sung and Delilah?
OK, I’ll quit
I don’t even understand what that gay joke is supposed to be saying…
Sam Sung blew is a play on Neil Diamonds ‘Song Sung Blue’, which has been used here through the years to describe Samsung.
No surprise, next week they will be apologizing and saying their marketing is “inadequate”
Really funny stuff!!! Suits looking at the ground reading tele-prompters, actors acting like they are real users, non-functioning vaporware prototype. Precious!!!!
Samsung reminds me of companies like Micro$oft.
Apple’s keynotes are also rehearsed, but are not blatantly reading off of a script.
Lame!!!!
Samsung is run by old farts who don’t realize that the average Internet user today can fact check, do searches, read blogs and comparisons.
Consumers today spot fakes and talk about it and make note of it online. Time for new CEOs who won’t fake it .
You mean, Time for new farts!??
I tried to watch that video, but it was so SLOW and incredibly embarrassing, I couldn’t take much more after 10 minutes. I actually felt sorry for the poor sods. Don’t these corporate dinosaurs even LOOK at the stuff Apple does?
I suppose they can count on sales from the irrational anti-Apple people, but when you realise that a company like Samsung has many thousands of well-paid admin staff, why is the end result go ghastly and tragic?
It was awkward was it? Maybe It was all just a pilot episode for the Korean version of The Office.
android manufactures and google think (know!) that their customers are morons.
they have lied over and over again to their customers: carrier updates will come promptly, the xoom will launch with Flash, SD card slot (non functioning), Xoom has 10 hr battery life like iPad (except WSJ found the iPad 4 hrs longer on the same test), we are open source (except they withdrew honeycomb, we are immune from malware etc etc and their cheerleading fans lapped it up without complaint.
so why stop b.s-ing now?
It sort of reminds you of so many Microsoft ads for so many poorly received non-products.
The saddest thing here is that Samsung seems to believe that “thinness” is the sole reason for choosing a tablet.
Even if this new Galaxy Tab is thinner than iPad 2, I would never choose it over even the original “thick” iPad. There’s this important thing called “software”…
So Samsung… Instead of obsessing over how thin your product is (will be), why don’t you focus on the software? Oh, that’s right; you have NO control over the software.
I have watched may keynotes by Steve Jobs. In my work, I occasionally do presentations. To make them better, I carefully analyzed Steve’s performances and tried to apply some of those tricks to my work. The consensus around my colleagues is apparently that I’m the best presenter among the bunch. I wasn’t before, but after incorporating Steve’s concepts (and replacing Powerpoint with Keynote), the difference is significant, and everybody notices.
It is actually quite easy to emulate the effectiveness of Stevenotes. For the life of me, I simply cannot figure out how these people, who have significantly higher paycheques than me, and who are supposed to do this as their primary job, come across in such a dry, unmotivated, flummoxed dorks.
Because they (the ones who with “significantly higher paycheques”) usually “wing it,” instead of carefully preparing AND rehearsing the presentation, like Steve Jobs (and probably you). 😉
It’s because they either do a real good job of talking themselves up and fooling their gullible bosses into thinking they do excellent work, get ahead by playing office politics like a fiddle, or know someone high up.
They succeed by any means except for being competent at their actual job. And they can get away with it, too, because things like bravado, brown nosing, and connections seem to be valued a lot more than competence at most large organizations. That’s why debacles flow tend to flow from them like water from a broken firehydrant.
And… Oh hell, just read Dilbert. Think it’s just a comic strip? It’s a documentary on corporations like Samsung, Microsoft, etc.
Care to share a bullet list of Steve’s concepts and presentation tricks you discovered? Thanks.
Wallowing in their own kimchee.
Earlier today, MDN posted that Samsung hits 100M downloads story. In the comments, someone linked the Samsung video from CTIA. They had those three faux humans in the opening clip. Given the beautiful smiles, it’s clear they were actors, or at least two of them were. I think I posted it reminded me of the 90s.
Even Stalin would have struggled to drum up that much fraudulent support.
Samsung make great laser printers; they should concentrate on that.
That is pathetic, Samsung totally lieing like that. Even that web page you linked to with the photos posted. Those definitely are the actors, not twin look alikes.
And the iPad still is thinner, despite the lies by Samsung.
You’re falling for it… 🙂 Samsung is trying to focus attention on “thinness” because it can’t do anything about the buggy (not ready for primetime) OS or lack of third-party developer support.
NO ONE is going to buy a Galaxy Tab because it is one-tenth of a millimeter thinner than iPad 2 (even if it was true). Software is the MOST important consideration. Apple knows it (and has nothing to fear from the competition). Samsung knows it (and wants you to think about something else).
What is my ‘Tab’ life, they ask?
I’m a Fresca dude. With a twist of Apple….
The unibody construction is key, It is machined from a solid block of Aluminium so has a very high torsional rigidity. Other manufacturers may be able to make a thinner tablet but it will warp and twist and could lead to the glass touch screen cracking.
Great point. I hadn’t thought of that. The unibody construction of many Apple products has always been interesting to me but I didn’t consider how important it can be (and how much of a competitive advantage it is) for products such as this which are extremely thin.
Do any of Apple’s competitors use unibody techniques in their products ?
You should post the iPad Year One video in rebuttal. That shows how to do a video for your product. It has a real feeling to it compared to Samsung’s astroturf feeling.
Join charitable efforts today! Help clean up the bloodbath:
All donations welcome.
I love how they walked around the stage holding their precious POS as if it’s real. It was never turned on. Never hooked up to screen to show anything. All we saw was some high end production commercials. Yet techwriters were creaming all over the net as if Samdung did a show and tell like Apple does. Hilarious!!!