Posts tagged as:

Google

My, how Google’s attitude has changed

January 26, 2012

Google, five months ago: “A smartphone might involve as many as 250,000 (largely questionable) patent claims, and our competitors want to impose a “tax” for these dubious patents that makes Android devices more expensive for consumers. They want to make it harder for manufacturers to sell Android devices. Instead of competing by building new features or devices, [...]

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Why the “customer” for Android is advertisers (and why it doesn’t matter)

January 4, 2012

Gruber: It is that the consumer is Google’s product. Android is a delivery system to serve the consumer to Google’s target market — the advertisers. So Google’s customer for Android is not the consumer (with the arguable exception of the Nexus phones), but rather the carriers. He’s right, and he’s wrong. It’s a bit like [...]

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A 7in tablet is not just a smaller 10.1in tablet

December 26, 2011

I’ve recently been using a Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9, one of the newest generation of Android tablets running Honeycomb (an Ice Cream Sandwich update is in the pipeline. Even though it’s not significantly cheaper than the 10.1in Tab, I got it because of the different form factor: it’s significantly lighter and easier to carry around [...]

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The Chromebook challenge – Update

November 25, 2011

I’ve been promising that I’d give an update on the Chromebook challenge that I undertook a while ago, but one thing and another have meant that I haven’t really had enough time to do it. But, finally, here it is.

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The real problem with Google TV

November 11, 2011

It looks like Logitech is out of the Google TV market: The mistake, plus “operational miscues in EMEA” cost the company “well over $100M in operating profits.” De Luca did throw Google a bone by saying that he believes Google TV will have a chance sometime in the future, but it would be a “grandchild [...]

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Heaven help me, I’m taking the Chromebook challenge

October 30, 2011
Thumbnail image for Heaven help me, I’m taking the Chromebook challenge

A while ago, I wrote a column for Tap on the differences between Apple and Google’s vision of “the cloud”, and (perhaps unsurprisingly) came down hard on the side of Apple’s. iCloud, as I saw it, was very much the more user-centred version. The iPad and Chromebook represent two different views of the future of [...]

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Roboto and the open source red herring

October 20, 2011

I largely agree with John Gruber and many others than Roboto is a bit of an ungainly beast of a font, although it’s much better than the hideous thing it replaces. But I think that John is missing the mark in this statement: This idea that designers who favor iOS criticize Android for being poorly [...]

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The unbearable impoliteness of being, online

September 2, 2011

Why do people feel the need to be abusive online? Why do they believe that behaviour which they would never consider to be acceptable face-to-face is perfectly fine when using the Internet? A case in point: these two tweets directed at Doctor Who writer Steven Moffat: Calling someone a “cunt”? Declaring that you’d like to perpetrate [...]

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“Why have a Chromebook if Android runs Chrome?”

August 31, 2011

Jason Perlow asks a pertinent question: It’s important to note that if we had the Chrome browser on an Android tablet, why would we want a Chromebook? For the price of a Chromebook you could pick up an Android tablet with a keyboard that connects via dock or bluetooth. You would have the same functionality, [...]

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Why can’t anyone match the iPad?

August 28, 2011

To put it simply no one can match the iPad because no one can match Apple’s prices with a tablet that matches its features: When better equipped (though bulkier) netbooks can be had for $250, tablet-makers need to set their sights below $200. There is just one problem: the cost of the components currently used [...]

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