“We’ve obtained exclusive footage this morning of a new Motorola tablet that looks to be a lot sleeker and thinner than the 10-inch Xoom that launched earlier this year; the slightly angled corners are reminiscent of the Photon 4G, so this looks to be a new design language the company is continuing to pursue,” Chris Ziegler reports for This is my next. “You can just barely make out that it’s running Honeycomb’s camera app, so it’s running Android — we just don’t know what version.”
MacDailyNews Take: Nor does anyone care.
Ziegler reports, “Our tipster points out that the Motorola logo appears to be at the upper left in a portrait orientation, and we think we’re looking at micro-USB and micro-HDMI ports on the other end. The screen also seems to be 16:9, and we’re willing to bet this is the “fun” and “portable” 7-inch model that Moto CEO Sanjay Jha promised we’d see before the end of the year.”
Full article with photos of Moto’s next flop (if it ever even gets released) here.
MacDailyNews Take: Smart people listen to the man who invented the category:
One naturally thinks that a 7-inch screen would offer 70% of the benefits of a 10-inch screen. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. The screen measurements are diagonal, so that a 7-inch screen is only 45% as large as iPad’s 10-inch screen. You heard me right: Just 45% as large.
If you take an iPad an hold it upright in portrait view and draw an imaginary horizontal line halfway down the screen, the screens on these 7-inch tablets are a bit smaller than the bottom half of the ipad’s display. This size isn’t sufficient to create great tablet apps in our opinion. While one could increase the resolution of the display to make up for some of the difference, it is meaningless unless your tablet also includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one quarter of their present size.
Apple has done extensive user testing on tough interfaces over many years and we really understand this stuff. There are clear limits of how close you can physically place elements on a touchscreen before users cannot reliably tap, flick, or pinch them. This is one of the key reasons we think the 10-inch screen size is the minimum size required to create great tablet apps… The 7-inch tablets are tweeners. Too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with an iPad.
These are among the reasons we think the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA. Dead On Arrival. Their manufacturers will learn the painful lesson that their tablets are too small and increase the size next year, thereby abandoning both customers and developers who jumped on the 7-inch bandwagon with an orphaned product.
Sounds like lots of fun ahead. – Steve Jobs, October 18, 2010
Stupid people don’t.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Judge Bork” and “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Beleaguered RIM slashes price of anemic-selling 7-inch BlackBerry PlayBook in half for Rogers employees – September 16, 2011
More blood on Apple iPad’s touchscreen: Sharp pulls plug on main ‘Galapagos’ tablets – September 15, 2011
More blood on Apple iPad’s touchscreen: Dell’s Streak 5 tablet is dead – August 12, 2011
More blood on Apple iPad’s touchscreen: Plastic Logic abandons e-reader – August 11, 2010
Apple’s iPad has blood on its touchscreen: eReader-maker iRex files for bankruptcy – June 11, 2010
Poof! RIM’s vaporous Android-powered tablet evaporates – May 05, 2010
Poof! Microsoft’s vaporous ‘Courier’ slate PC evaporates – April 29, 2010
Poof! HP’s vaporous slate PC evaporates – April 28, 2010
Do these companies have a death wish?
No moto just thinks momma google will buy them out of any hole they dig.
Steve Jobs is right. He is ALWAYS right.
Idk about that. Don’t just listen to one man and believe he is all knowing. I love the man, no homo. But if you were to post your comment on YouTube, everybody would believe that Apple fans just absolutely worship S J. It’s bad enough people don’t like Apple cause they believe it’s a cult. Just my 2 cents…
Exactly… Steve Jobs is right because of many other smart people. The advise has been passes on to Steve. And as for iDevices Flash needed to be left behind. Power consumption and other factors have come from engineering. Steve is right to have listen and to have strongly positioned why Apple chose to run I’m this direction.
iPad Killed
iPad Road Kill
iPad Slaughtered
Another Tablet in the Toilet
Wannabe R.I.P.
Take yer pick.
Interestingly, this table design doesn’t look like an iPad. Samsung could learn a thing or two.
They figure that there will always be suckers that will buy this POS. I swear I just saw three suckers last week using it. Well for reading and that’s about it. Poor suckers bought a DOA product with no future. Suckers for Motorola/Android junk!
Tablets are not about the ‘tablet’.
Tablets are about what you can use them for; how easy; how seamless.
My prediction is there will be nearly 100% of the knockoffs in the recycle bins as opposed to iPads that keep crunching for 5 years or more.
If the current 10-inch iPad was reduced to about 8 inches while keeping the current 1024×768 resolution, AND at the same time reducing the weight to half of the original iPad’s weight, I would be in favor.
At that size and resolution, the pixel density would mirror the original iPhone at about 160 pixels per inch. Things on the screen would look a bit sharper, while not changing the functionality or causing platform fragmentation because the screen “real estate” stays the same as current.
Apple should do this at the same time it introduces a NEW larger iPad. A 12-inch iPad at 1600×1200 resolution is also about 160 pixels per inch. Yes, it does cause platform fragmentation, but who doesn’t believe Apple will eventually introduce a new screen size option for iPad? Is iPad going to be stay “10-inch only” forever?
3.5-inch (for iPhone and iPod touch), 8-inch, and 12-inch would be good distinct choices. I think that’s what Apple should do, instead of giving iPad the ultra-expensive “retina display” at 10 inches.
Nah, just needs to be foldable.
That’s when they will really crush the competition.
I hope to see this Android OS dead.
It’s getting away with murder.
Release all code have a serious investigation specially on the provider of Android and it’s origins. Kill it.
WebOS was the right thing to start.
Windows 8 also is a good start.
But hello you can see functionality and thinking behind even Windows 8 tablet looking too close also.
If Apple has patents and own FingerWorks research and gestures then no tablet today should function anywhere close to an Apple product.
Windows 8 should be entirely based on Voice Input and prove real innovation.
However, copy they will… Fallow the coarse layed out by Apple. Flash to HTML5 move… Chip sets etc. And Android come on.
Bill Gates you laughed at iPhone you have avoided the iPad as a useful device claiming it has no input. No pen no browsing not good to carry to the office no way to make notes. Bill you believe you invented the pen based computing system…. Newton was before you.
Android must die.
Go download the source and tear into it.
Essentially if you remove google’s additions you have a very stripped down linux kernel.
Honey comb never gained any real traction but at least they tried to take the UI in some new directions
SO – at the core of ANDROID we find LINUX – from where?
At the core of IOS is Mach – Unix – developed at Carnegie Mellon University.
HOW IS this microkernal of LINUX – coded – freely available in this structor? Entwined is COPIED code form ORACLEs JAVA and CONCEPTUALIZED from early APPLE development.
SOUNDS like it was entirely STOLEN and FRANKENSTIENED.
IT should be killed off – do you not agree? Okay you play with – but ILLEGAL for the consumer market.
Wrong – the logo – when i digitally enhance is clearly Microsoft.
Motorola Mobility – now owned by Google — is simply testing the MS-Tablet to run Android.
One year ago:
It’s amusing now to think back to a year ago when we were predicting what 2011 and 2012 were going to be like for the tablet market. We figured (or at least I did) that in 2011 the iPad would hold dominance over the market. But we (I) figured that the wannabes would get a clue and come up with something competitive in 2012.
Now, a year later, I see not-a-hope on the horizon for any serious competition with Apple’s iPad. And that is INTENSELY sad. Apple requires competition. But even more important, world technology businesses have proven that they are NOT up to the task of out-innovating Apple. No other company knows how to compete with Apple any longer. This means we’re not only in an economic depression but a creativity depression as well. WTF happened to creativity in technology?
What’s left are Follow-The-Leader companies and Rape-The-Customer con job companies. Both strategies are self-destructive, boding poorly for many technology businesses in the near future.
Maybe a few knot heads on Wall Street have figured this out. Maybe that’s why Apple’s stock is, at long frickin’ last, climbing to something closer to its actual value.
How can pampered concubines of Google and Microsoft be innovative and competitive? They just rely on handouts from their masters and do not know how to fish on their own. Copying and dumping products onto the market is the most laziest and unimaginative way to compete. Microsoft and Google are the fifth columnists within the American system.
Damn I shouldn’t have sold that Options contract for $500 Dec 2011. AAPL will probably be $550 by December.