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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, 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.