The JooJoo (Crunchpad) tab came out in 2009 while the iPad came out in 2010.

(JooJoo tab - 2009)

(iPad - 2010 - 2011)

(Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1).

Once you add the Xoom to the mix, it's clear that Apple is just reaching. The tablet idea (rectangular + a touchscreen) was devised way before the iPad came out. Apple made tablets popular but they were not originators of the idea.

It's one thing to compete fairly based on features and innovations. It's another thing to claim that you originated every single idea in the world, and that everything that looks even remotely similar is copying you, and that only you have the rights to sell such a device. Apple is making record profit margins and yet they feel they can only stop others via court and lawsuits.

This article talks about Fred Wilson and his "advice" for developers to develop for Android first rather than iOS. This has led to a lot of backlash from fanboys such as Gruber who continues to attack him with one liners and one-sided arguments.

Daring Fireball John Gruber, who has described Wilson's Android posts as "terrible advice" for developers, was chortling about that stock trade on his Talk Show podcast Wednesday:

"And you should take a rabid fan like Gruber's advice just as carefully as a rabid naysayer."

Gruber got served.

1) The new Android browser is nice (since it has tabs and loads very fast) but it is extremely buggy.  I can crash it easily..like 10 times within the hour.  Additionally zooming in and out is very quirky (it keeps randomly clicking on things and it taxes the tablet and slows it down to a crawl).  I had to manually force stop it or else the entire tablet will be hiccuping all over the place.  For now, I switched to the firefox browser.  I couldn't use the default chrome browser at all or for extended period of times.

2) It is painful that a different user-agent wasn't used for the android tablet since all browser pages default to mobile versions.

3) The interface in honeycomb is nice.  I love the visual adds from the all apps and the widgets page.  It makes it a lot easier to add things in bulk instead of having to keep jumping back to add more.  I also like the quick app launcher although it's limiting that it's only the last 5 recent items.

4) I like the transition from hardware to software buttons but the bottom system bar along the bottom does waste screen real-estate especially for apps that do not require them.  They only dim out but can not be replaced.

5) Speed-wise, everything in android is definitely snappier but with the increase in hardware spec and GPU acceleration, I still expected a bit more smoothness.  It's still not as quite as smooth as an ipad for instance even though that runs on much crappier hardware.  With increase multi-tasking, you do see more slowdowns but it's definitely not bad at all.

6) Hardware-wise, the xoom is naturally positioned to be used in landscape mode.  It's designed to be long and thin so landscape is definitely a much better fit which is fine.  The only problem is a number of apps like the fb app for instance do not even support that mode.

I do like the Xoom a lot (even though I may sound more negative than positive), and I think it will compete quite well in the tablet space.  The overall interface of Honeycomb beats iOS in terms of tablet usage for sure.  I certainly do hope that an update will come soon that will address the stability and crashes.

In order to continue registering:

1) Go to https://www.google-io.com/index.cfm
2) Type in the exact information you used earlier in the day when you tried to register to get pass the first page (type, last name, and email).
3) Finish registering and pay.

Bam! No need to hunt for PK session IDS in browser history or anything.    It's all there.

It's actually a big security breach since all I have to do is guess your last name and email and bam, I can see your filled out information including your address.

Either way, see you at Google IO!

Google is working on a fix, and I am sure it will be patch up soon.

"We're currently testing a second fix to solve this issue. I'll be back with an update when I know more."

With such an intermittent bug with so many factors involved (carrier, hardware, software, radio stacks, and etc), I am not surprised it's taking this long

I have been slow to do this but I'll write a review of the Nexus S soon.

My Logitech Revue came home recently (thanks to Google for sending it to me), but to be honest, the device is still very limiting and will need another few revisions to become the product that Google wants it to be.  I guess my biggest complaint is that it's built mainly for cable users.  The ironic aspect of it is of course that cable companies are worried about it and are blocking out their websites.   Without cable integrated, googleTV is nothing but another device attached to your hdmi port.  This means relying on your TV remote to switch inputs (or you can program it directly into your googleTV remote) and using the googletv device only for viewing web content or running a few apps that they have included.    The integration of TV and web is totally missing, and this was touted as the one of main selling points.

The other complaint is due to the lack of streaming of any content to the googletv box.  The only streaming features available are online web streaming.  There is no integration between sd cards, other network computers, or hard drives streaming of any sort.  This is a feature sorely missing compared to Boxee or AppleTV.

Update:  I was totally mistaken about the streaming support on the logitech revue.   It does offer streaming from SD Cards, Networks, and from DLNA services and it actually works pretty darn well.   I use Windows Media Player for most of my Windows computers  (requires WMP 11)  and TVersity (a great free, DLNA provider) for my non-windows or older versions.   A number of media formats are supported - much more than AppleTV and less than Boxee.   From what I have seen, I haven't experienced any problems.

There are definitely good points though like the best web viewing experience (although it won't be something I will do often but occasional surfing can be nice here and there),  pretty cool integrated apps (like pandora, netflix, CNBC, and NBA time), and the potential to do more.   Once googleTV can solve navigation (the constant switching between arrow keys and mouse is annoying) and get more integrated android apps, the potential is there.

Chrome OS

I signed up for the pilot program but was unfortunately not given a CR-48 device to try.  Some of the reviews coming out already are slamming the device for hardware (which is surprising), limitations, and bugs.  I understand the bugs aspect, but I am confused why the hardware is even mentioned and mainly about the limitations.   Reviewers are basically trying to do things that ChromeOS was never designed for, blaming it for limitations normal computers can do.  ChromeOS was never designed to replace and become the main production computer in your household.  This might be the case in the future when things do fully transition to the web, but for now, it's a notebook for occasional web viewing and casual users - a market that the IPad has totally dominated in.  I am guessing that users see this as a laptop-looking device and expect the same.  The IPad has a totally different form factor with a touch interface and was given the leeway for users to expect things differently.

What ChromeOS will excel in the most in my opinion is the seamless updates.  I do not know how many times I have helped friends and families fix problems with their computers due to viruses, misconfigurations, and misuses.  This will solve all their problems since the ChromeOS can be formatted within seconds and no user data is stored locally.  This is great especially for businesses who have online applications that employees can use and will not have to worry about keeping around a full-on IT department.  Nonetheless, it will be interesting how ChromeOS will play out and when developers will embrace the platform more.  Apps filled up almost all the missing features for the Ipad so I hope the same will apply here for ChromeOS.

Android 2.3

I will getting a Nexus S myself since I love pure google-experience devices.  In using my some of my friend's phones, I hate all the modifications Samsung, Motorola, and HTC have done to customize Android.  For one, it makes the device more buggy and definitely more laggy.  For instance on the Droid X, navigating to one of the system menu items (batteryUsage) will always give a force closure.  Users are getting bad impressions of Android devices due to this.  I really hope with the market share Android has now, they can reach out to carriers and persuade them to stop with these customizations - awful for users and making it take twice as long to get any updates.

As for Android 2.3 features themselves, I love them.  I think the concurrent garbage collection will be huge but I'll write a post directly talking about Android 2.3 very soon.

Dear Developer,

As a valued Google Code web development community member & partner based in the U.S. you are eligible to receive a free Google TV device on our behalf.

As we announced on our blog last week, we’re excited to be providing 10,000 free Google TV devices to help developers start building for TV.

Most of you already know that Google TV is a new entertainment platform that combines TV, web, apps, and search all in one easy to use experience. And, because Google TV provides automatic over-the-air updates, consumers will get the latest features for free. The platform was announced in May 2010 at Google I/O and will be open-sourced in 2011. Devices from Sony and Logitech are now on sale in the U.S., and more devices will be launching globally next year. More details can be found at google.com/tv or by following us on Twitter @GoogleTV.

In order to be eligible to receive your free device (a Logitech RevueTM with Google TVTM) all you need to do is provide us with your U.S. mailing address where you would like to receive the shipment. Your address must be U.S. based for shipping and fulfillment, and it cannot be a Post Office Box (PO Box). You must submit your address by clicking on the link below, no later than 11:59 pm PST, Thursday, November 11, 2010.

Submit Your U.S. Mailing Address for Your Free Google TV device

We sincerely hope you join thousands of other web developers to help us make the Google TV experience even better. To learn more about optimizing your website for Google TV, visit http://code.google.com/tv/web/.

For any questions, please review the Terms & Conditions of this program or visit our FAQ.

If you would like to receive future updates on Google TV for developers, please visit https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googletvdev/.

- Google TV Team

Android 1.6 icons

Android 2.0 icons (flatter)

Going along with this, it wasn't surprising to see that this new look-and-feel will start to apply to more system components in Gingerbread as well.  Although this is not proof that this will be part of the default Android system yet, Android Guys was able to report this morning that the latest Google Maps application had a new icon set for Gingerbread which will be activated if the phone is on SDK version 9 (Gingerbread).

Google Maps - Gingerbread (Android Guys)

Google Maps - Android 2.2 (Froyo)

As you can see, the changes are very small.  I definitely like the new flatter look on the buttons (although I really hope they fix the alignment issue) and the new flat popup dialog box.  I do hope for the following:

1) More On-Screen controls - relying on the menu button only for additional buttons.  This approach is showing more and more via the Gallery app and their promoted UI guidelines (top toolbar as shown in the Facebook and Twitter apps).

2) Flat look applied system wide replacing all the current buttons and dialogs look-and-feel

3) Make a stand for either using the more light theme (white) vs the darker theme (black).  There are major inconsistencies on this right now.

4) Add a number of new UI widgets that users can just use right away like the dashboard, toolbar, and etc, rather then having them code it up themselves (although it's not hard).

Current OS:
iOS - 37.19%
Android - 31.41%

Future OS:
iOS - 33.56%
Android - 42.56%

Of course this poll will probably be different if regular consumers voted -- who are more easily influenced by brand and not aware of all the features -- I am glad technical users are able to recognize how nice of an OS Android is.