Open Thread: What Features Should iPad’s Competitors Have?
Last week, we asked if you thought the iPad was a flop, and many of you told us exactly why.
In that comments thread, you joined us in collective head-scratching and fist-shaking over the price point and the lack of certain key features. It’s clear that many of us won’t be flocking to the nearest Apple store to pick up one of these gadgets. But there may be alternatives. In the event that a competitor releases a tablet device, what features would you want it to have? Give us your wish list in the comments; hopefully, manufactures are listening.
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Here’s our own wish list of features that would make us really excited to buy a tablet from an Apple competitor.
A Better Price
The iPad starts at $500, but with just 16 gigabytes of storage, it’s not the music-, video-, photo-carrying device most of us will need or want. That price point is essentially a phantom. And when we start to add up all the costs for the iPad we’d actually want to have, it makes more sense to scrape together another couple hundred dollars and spring for a top-of-the-line PC laptop - something a bit more functional, not just a big, expensive geek toy.
A Camera
For a device that promises to make picture- and video-sharing simple and fun, the lack of a camera is a great disappointment. Without a camera, it’s true that there’s no ability to snap pics and vids for Facebook or DailyBooth or talk to others via Skype video or TinyChat, but users are also missing out on one of RWW’s favorite tech trends: augmented reality! We wrote a whole post lamenting the fact that this long-awaited device can’t play nicely with some of our favorite AR toys.
A Stylus
Our awesome cartoonist, Rob Cottingham, just wrote this morning that as one who draws and doodles, he’d appreciate a way to interact with the iPad’s multitouch screen. Bridging that gap between the screen and the stylus might even be the graphics tablet-killer. For a company that’s traditionally held sway over the design and arts communities, Apple should’ve thought more about this part of its core audience.
A Slide-Out Keyboard
This is one of the reasons I’m so glad I held out for my Droid when the Apple fanboys and fangirls were mocking my iPhone-free lifestyle for years. Having a physical keyboard simply can’t be beat, particularly for content creators and enterprise users.
More Options for OSes and Carriers
No multitasking? AT&T? Those conditions are deal-breakers for me and quite a few others, I’m sure. I’d love to see a device that could run Jolicloud, Chrome OS or a lightweight Linux distro. And as a happy Verizon customer, I’d like to stick with my current carrier and perhaps even work the data charges into my current plan. Overall, we just want more openness and more options.
So, what do YOU want in a tablet? USB or other ports? A built-in WAN card for instant Internet connectivity? More storage? A faster processor? Flash? In the comments, give us your list of must-haves and what you expect to pay for them. Who knows - perhaps a manufacturer will be able to produce something for non-iPad fans sooner than we think.
Check out ReadWriteWeb’s full iPad Archives.
Ah, yup. Between the price point, the locked-down App Store approach, the spiffy design, the tech specs, the lack of camera, the lack of multitasking, the lack of phone, the cool iBook Store, the corny iBook shelves, the impending transformation of personal computing, the impending collapse of Apple stock, the green light for 3G voice-over-IP apps, the telco deals, the publisher deals, the rumor fact checks, the comparisons with Windows, the Kindle-killing, the not-Kindle-killing and the just-have-to-wait-and-see, all of the good points are taken.
This week was a busy one as Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s iPad on the same day President Obama delivered his annual State of the Union address - two events with significant impacts on startups and entrepreneurs. In this week’s ReadWriteStart Weekly Wrapup, we discuss what the iPad could mean for startups, how mobile developers are excited about HTML 5, and how to find the perfect co-founder for your startup. We also check in with our semi-weekly series, Never Mind the Valley, in which we chronicle communities outside of Silicon Valley with booming startup scenes. This week we go international - hopping across the pond to London, and across the other pond to Beijing.
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