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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Android O and iOS 11 are both set to release in a matter of weeks, but I'm sorry to say that only one of these new operating systems seem to give tablet users much reason to get excited.
If you want a tablet that offers PC-like productivity and a thriving app selection that bears more native, made-for-tablet apps than it does upscaled or incompatible phone apps, you're probably going to buy an iPad equipped with iOS 11.
And while Android O in general will bring a slew of tweaks that we're excited about, including some interesting features like picture-in-picture mode and faster boot times (all underlined with a promise to make updating easier in the future), Google hasn't made enough changes to impact tablet users in a comparably meaningful way.
Of course, this isn't to say you can't still purchase a capable Android tablet that will likely serve your desired purpose. And yep, it's certainly possible that Google might have a few tablet-specific tricks up its sleeve for the software down the line. But as it stands, iOS 11 capitalizes on Android O's seeming lack of focus on tablet chops in a few key ways, all of which Google can improve on.
Source: http://www.techradar.com/news/ios-11-versus-android-o-on-a-tablet-its-not-even-close
(Score: 5, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Friday August 18 2017, @06:09AM (7 children)
They are good for consuming content, and games. These things are just not for productivity. Phones can also do a passable job at pruning email, quick responses/staying in touch with other folks. That's really it.
Why anyone would evaluate their device choices with this as the criteria makes absolutely zero sense.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 18 2017, @06:48AM (4 children)
Markedroids and slideshowmen think of them as productive.
The today's tech jornos vomit their pages using info from fed by them (if it wouldn't be so, one could never present MacBook Wheel [theonion.com] as an enough bordering-plausibility satire subject).
Not such a deep mystery, is it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday August 18 2017, @07:12AM
I worked for a Mac productivity software publishers in the early nineties. Whenever we introduced a new product or even just a new version of an old product, we issued a press release.
Quite commonly the trade rags would print our PR's verbatim, but with the name of one of their reporters as the byline.
Are you familiar with the term "Feeding the monster"? The monster is Hollywood's incessant demand for new scripts. When a script has been used just once to produce a TV show or a movie, it's no good anymore.
The trade press is just like that.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @08:11AM (2 children)
Are you saying that markedroids and slideshowmen avoid them like the plague? Like they avoid anything productive.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 18 2017, @08:22AM (1 child)
Of course not. Because markedroids and slideshowmen even think of themselves as productive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday August 18 2017, @06:51PM
For marketdroids and slideshowmen, waving shiny things around IS being productive.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Marand on Friday August 18 2017, @07:04AM (1 child)
What you really mean is "I don't have a use for this, so I don't understand why anyone else would." Whether a tablet is good for productivity depends on what "productivity" means for an individual.
The larger tablets with active pens (meaning things like Wacom or N-trig) can make excellent notepad / sketchpad devices, and there's a fair bit of decent art-oriented software made for these devices because of it. They also do pretty well, if paired with a bluetooth keyboard, as thin clients. Android's especially good at the latter, since it has things like Termux [google.com] that take advantage of the Linux kernel underpinnings to provide a decent (albeit incomplete / imperfect) GNU userland. I get a fair bit of use out of an aging Galaxy Note Pro tablet (with a 12.2" screen) between the two use cases.
Termux specifically is noteworthy, at least for the crowd here, for providing a Debian-esque repository setup, so I get things like mosh and emacs, and can copy over most of the config files from my desktop's $HOME and have everything configured just right. Also, since my tablet can show multiple applications in a split-screen view (something Google finally copied from Samsung after years of fighting it) it's easy to keep email or a browser visible while using Termux on the other side.
With one small device, I can write notes, sketch, have a small Linux environment, connect to remote machines and work from them, plus all the usual email/web stuff that tends to get mixed into any sort of productivity, like checking documentation, references, etc. Doing the same things with a laptop requires a larger device, usually with a battery life trade-off, and in most cases, an extra device (wacom tablet) carried with it because there unfortunately isn't much of a market for pen-enabled laptops. Is it perfect? Nope, but neither is lugging around a laptop, pencil, paper, and possibly a wacom tablet just to cover the same tasks. At that point I just start wishing I had my desk, and my desktop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @08:24AM
So true. I mean, look, producing data points for Facebook is clearly ... production. And with tablets you can really produce them much easier, thus in higher quantities.