Wired offers useless guide on how to design a tablet

Apparently Wired has a Dr. Jeckyll / Mr Hyde on staff. They both are writing under the pen name of Charlie Sorrel. At first I thought today’s article “How to Make and iPad beating Tablet” shouldn’t have made it past the editors for how useless it is, but when I discovered that Charlie also wrote a piece from January “10 Things Missing from the iPad” it became clear that he’s basically phoning in for his paychecks at this point just to fulfill his part of the Wired initiative to tell everyone about how great the iPad 5 times a day.  Today his was a real gem.  Here’s my least favorite part of the article, which I can’t wait to pick apart.

“Hardware is almost irrelevant, on the outside at least. The iPad is a slab of aluminum and glass with an absolute minimum of ports and buttons. Rivals counter this by promising USB ports, SD card slots and the like. The problem? Compatibility. If you include just one standard USB port, people expect it to behave like one, and they’ll plug in printers, mice and everything else. This requires drivers, which in turn adds complexity and eats into precious flash-memory space (a recent Epson printer driver update for the Mac was almost 1 GB in size).”

Under the Software area, Charlie doesn’t do much better unfortunately. “Design an OS that makes it easy to do what people actually want to do with a tablet.”

Oh do tell us, what do most people want to do with a tablet? No real information for us? No actual research, just commentary? Thanks. Because people want to do everything. Sure they want to touch the screen.  And?? Charlie might have mentioned that unlike Apple’s iPad, tablets are where people want to take written notes, and possibly even get them transcribed to text. They want to use them for business, they want to hack and to load their own applications without agreeing to some ridiculous terms.  They also might want something open. Sure HP has the Palm OS, but we also have Android out there, with a ton of apps in a store, and a lot of developers to tap into. In fact, you might even say Android is probably the best choice given the work that’s been done up to this point and the open nature.

Apps.  Here’s where Charlie REALLY reveals the inner Hyde (ahem, d*****bag).  Starting out with the truth: “The success of Apple’s App Store isn’t about the sheer numbers. Most of the apps out there are junk”

This I fully agree with Charlie on. We know the iPad and iPhone apps install well and you want them to come with protections so you don’t get hosed. He goes on to say… “The App Store is so successful because it is closed. Don’t agree? How’s the Android Marketplace doing?“

Ok Charlie Sorrel, we want either Jekyll or Hyde on this one. You’re not helping us or yourself here.  So the sheer numbers of the App Store don’t matter AND there’s mostly junk in the Apple App store, despite it being closed.  BUT hey, numbers matter when you want to sucker punch the Android Marketplace?  If you really want to know how the Android Marketplace is doing, why not actually look at it?  Because it’s doing quite well. They just got a decent app for Dropbox yesterday. I’ve been able to get apps for UStream, File browsing, translations, conversions, a plethora of great Google add-ons. Pandora has been a real gem.  Barcode scanners, porn, etc. And I’ll tell you, if I liked to play games on my Nexus One, I’d be buried by all the games listed, from the traditional to the brand new.  I wouldn’t say it has everything, because I haven’t found an ideal daily Buddha quotes app I’ve been dreaming about, but to answer you, the Android Marketplace is thriving.  I run a dozen apps or more and they’ve all had software updates for improvements in stability and customer feedback, as you’d expect. And every new Android phone and other devices could take advantage of these. AND if I wanted to access more dangerous apps that aren’t subject to their approval, I can turn off that security feature and look at using those, whether I was taking a risk, or testing for a programmer friend.

By the way, all the apps I install inform me of what portions of my Phone the app can gain access to, so I can choose to say no if I don’t want app X to access the internet. I dig that. And maybe the iPhone does that too, I’m not sure. But I like to know what’s going on underneath.

Even if the iPad included ports and a camera, there’s still the issue of choice. Some of us want a screen a little smaller or a little bigger. Some of us want to draw, and some of us want to smudge. Some of us just want a stripped down device so they can implement their own system around it.  You’d think that a company selling the most tablets would be the one to get behind, because the developers and the support would all be on that side. But when you wall off choice such as Flash, keep people from tooling with their own programs and doing their own network push to the device, you’re killing that aspect of computing that makes it fun and interesting.  The iPad is the device meant for the ultra-CONSUMER. Consume this and that, pay twice and only buy from us.

Some of us are a little tired of Apple’s revolutionary technologies, such as when they started selling music for $1 a song. Wow, that revolution brought the cost CDs all the way down to exactly where they’ve always been.  And how with your new iPod, you could do everything with your music, except of course delete tracks without your computer.  And laptops.  How awesome were those Macbooks that came without SD slots of their own for years, until the pro-only version finally got them years later. And when Apple took a perfectly good usable HDMI slot and made it more costly and proprietary.

So forgive many of us for liking part of Apple and complete despising much of it too. We think 100 other companies creating tablets, even if they only sell a few thousand each is just fine if it’s a viable business model for them, even if it makes it harder for us consumers to choose. That’s what good reviews on shopping sites and in magazines like Wired are for.

Alex E-Reader from Spring Design Ships Today

People have been pre-ordering the Alex Reader for months now and they will start to get them soon. If you haven’t seen the Alex Reader, it’s just sightly taller than the Amazon Kindle, it has a small LCD screen on the bottom to let you browse the web and navigate your library of books, which will display on the larger E-Ink screen on the top.  This makes the device useful for more than just a reader. It will display videos and websites.

Notable features of the Alex Reader

$399

The Web at Your Fingertips

Browse the entire Web on the full color LCD screen to support what you’re reading on the paper-like EPD screen. Type your search on the virtual keyboard or tap to select and open a web site for more information, pictures, sound and video.

Build Your Own Library

Start building your library right away. Download from a wealth of online Adobe ePUB format digital books from Google Books and Alex partner bookstores and store them in the Alex Library on the removable SD card. Store your own images, videos, music and documents in many formats on the SD card for review at any time.

See-Hear-Read

On the Alex tech specs and comparisons pages, they have a couple charts in poor quality. Mine below are better. Same info though.

And they compare the Alex with the Nook and Kindle DX.

I thought the Kindles played music, but I guess I was wrong.   Hmm, an idea just came to me. You know how every mobile phone comes with a cache of a few ringtones?  I believe all Tablets and Ebook readers should come with a set of ambient reading songs and tones and ability to play them to add to the reading experience (and isolate you from distractions a little bit if it can.)