ipad vs kindle: CAGE MATCH!

[rmd]

OKAY YOU OVERLY OPINIONATED INTERNET PEOPLE! CONVINCE ME! OR SOMETHING.

I need to choose a $SIGNIFICANT_MILESTONE gift for someone. iPad? or Kindle?

iPad has the advantage of doing much more - apps! widgets! other stuff!
Kindle has the advantage of not requiring a separate pay-by-the-month data plan for cell access. Plus more battery life.

thoughts?

I figure either an ipad and a small itunes store gift card (and possibly a small amazon gift card for ebooks), or a kindle and a larger amazon gift card.

Comments

Re: Just to be contrarian

[drwex]

Oh bother. Is it really that bad? The stories I'd heard from developers for the droid phones were much better than the apple developer stories.

Re: Just to be contrarian

[johnromkey.livejournal.com]

This is more from the customer, not developer perspective. My impression is that it's not difficult to get into the Android store. It's just difficult for customers to use it - the phone companies are forcing people to use their own stores, or restricting what they can download. They're also preloading Android phones with crapware and their own UIs. Lots of fragmentation. Not expecting much better with tablets - one of the first tablets isn't even blessed by Google and won't have any access to the Android Marketplace.

On one hand the stories from some developers about dealing with Apple have been really terrible. On the other hand, it's a very tiny percentage of the actual apps that have had the problems. But they are ridiculous problems and they do get a lot of press. Apple just made some changes to the process - review guidelines are now public and they've loosened up some of the restrictions. Some of the high visibility apps that were having problems are now in the store.

Re: Just to be contrarian

[drwex]

Nod. I see. My droid phone (Motorola) was not loaded with crapware but I guess there's a wide variation. And there probably will be with tablets, too. I'm just more hopeful that the environment can be opened up rather than remaining the locked Disney garden that Apple has produced.

Re: Just to be contrarian

[johnromkey.livejournal.com]

The Apple situation is not as bad as some people make it out to be.

Their devices happily play unprotected video and audio and happily read non-DRMed PDFs and epub documents. Their are many competing audio and video players on them and many competing book readers.

As far as apps go, while native apps have some restrictions on them, there are a vast number of truly tremendous native apps that are awesome and extremely useful. And the built-in browser supports HTML5 and CSS3 as much as any browser does today. You can build almost whatever you want as an HTML5 app, save it to the springboard and have most users not know the difference. The situation is getting some pretty unbalanced reporting.

For that matter, Google has already reached inside people's Android phones and remotely killed apps without owners' permission. I believe Apple does have that capability as well but has not yet used it. I do not think there is really as big a difference between Apple and Google as people play up. There is a lot of hysteria about it, though.

Re: Just to be contrarian

[drwex]

(we should probably stop hijacking rmd's LJ so I'll make this my last response.)

I'll accept that the reporting has been somewhat imbalanced. I do know for a fact (having emailed with the developer) that the apps Google yanked from the store were proof-of-concept hack apps with no actual value and once the creators admitted that I didn't think it was unreasonable for Google to yank them.

Likewise, I've talked with Apple app developers who have been frustrated that in order to fix a bug in their app they have to go through the whole approval process again, making the update cycle painfully slow. They're prohibited from putting the app on their own Web sites or any other site so people are forced to continue using a buggy/broken app until Apple gets around to approving the fix.

And to my knowledge Apple still won't allow boobies or even Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore to put his political cartoon app up.

Re: Just to be contrarian

[dfjdejulio.livejournal.com]

Not completely accurate anymore, *and* it only applies to apps in the app store. There's plenty of content in plenty of formats with no DRM or anything that one can consume just fine on the iPad.

Many of the videos on mine, I ripped from DVD myself. Much of the audio on mine, I ripped from CD myself. You can set iTunes up to autoconvert from FLAC to device-supported formats transparently as part of the sync process. DRM-free EPUB files work perfectly well in iBook and at least one competing reader application. And heck, *VLC* is on the device now.

It perhaps ain't as free as the most free Android handsets, the ones that are wide-open and that support sideloading. But it *is* more free than the *least* free (in terms of carrier/manufacturer lockdown) Android handsets.

And as for tablets, we'll have to see how that shakes out once Android tablets really start to show up in consumer hands, which hasn't happened yet.

Re: Just to be contrarian

[johnromkey.livejournal.com]

Mark Fiore's app was approved last April, about a week after the flap about it. The reversals on app store problems never get the coverage that the problems do in the first place. Not that all the problems are reversed.

As I pointed out, anything that can be done as a web app can be saved to the iPhone. If you want a booby app and Apple won't approve it, make it a web app and show people how to save it.