People didn't buy the air, either.

Quite so. As I say, just going for 'better numbers than the other guy' won't sell your gadget. It's that simple. If the best selling point you can come up with for your tablet as is that it is a hair's breadth thinner and six whole grammes lighter than the iPad, then I would suggest you start looking for a new job now. You're going to need one in a couple of months.

Generally, proper ad makers know that selling on numbers doesn't work in the mainstream. Look at car ads. Look at TV ads (as in ads for TVs, not ads on TV). Are they plastered with stats? Do BMW put the 0-60 of the Z4 in their ads in massive 3D rendered letters? Most TV ads don't mention the size of the screen they're showing you, they just get one that looks really, really cool. They don't sell you the spec of the device; they sell you an image, a lifestyle, a vision of how your life will be better if you buy our car/tv/gadget.

Only gadget geeks care about gadget numbers. Like only car geeks care about car numbers. The reason Top Gear stopped doing numbers - other than the 'how fast will it go round this known course' number, which is about as simple a number as you can get - is because they realised hardly anybody actually gave a damn. In fact most people hated the numbers. Most people just wanted to see fast cars do the things only fast cars can do, so they can imagine themselves being in the car doing it. Can you visualise how much faster a car with a 0-60 of 5.3 seconds is than a car with a 0-60 of 5.5 seconds? Of course you can't. So they stopped doing the numbers, started doing 'stories' people could empathise with and found suddenly there were millions and millions of people who don't give a toss about numbers and much preferred the show without them. And that's why all the real ale drinking beard growing sandal wearing idiots who complain that Top Gear should be about numbers and about cars we could actually all afford will never get their way. Because the Top Gear producers know there are many, many more people out there interested in the spirit, in the story, in the aspiration of cars than there are who care how many torques a particular engine will generate at 6000rpm.

And that's why trying to sell your gadget on numbers will never beat selling your gadget on lifestyle, on aspiration, on the notion that having our gadget will make your life better. Apple's ads - as in their TV & print ads, as oppose to press releases to the tech press - generally speaking have few numbers in them at all. The iPad tv ads tell you next to nothing at all about the iPad. You never get told about the device in any concrete sense. There's barely a fact in them. All they tell you - well, show you actually - is what you can do with an iPad and, have you noticed, they're entirely from a first person perspective? They're all about showing you how your life will be better with an iPad. Because at the end of the day that's what most people care about, not the numbers.

So, try to sell your device with numbers if you like. You will fail. 100 years of advertising history is littered with people who tried that line and failed. You're no more likely to succeed than any of them were.

OK, thanks for whoever has read this far . I appreciate this has nothing to so with the iPad, but it's a pet subject of mine. As some of you know, I have a history in 'human sciences' and I have an interest in this stuff.

Jon

No [LIFTED] shirlock

There was an interesting read here - http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-manager/how-microsoft-lost-the-tablet-war/5587 discussing how, even though MS has ventured down the tablet alleyway before, they've never taken off in a mass market sort of way.

This bit sort of follows on from jonbwfc's point ^ :

For those people there is the Haynes manual.

They did.

CC

Well it all looks pretty tasty.

I wonder how it will sell.

Two questions come to mind. Is Android 3.0 prime time ready, stable and secure?

Also has the slimmed down GT lost any of it's battery life in order to shed those grams? I notice that it can run Flash, a mixed blessing if the battery is a slimmed down version.

We are looking for tablets for 4 different projects at the moment.

Unfortunately the iPad doesn't come into the equation for any of them, as it doesn't fulfill any of the criteria we have.

Project 1: Conferencing system, where the people in the meeting share a view of documents and pass them off to each other, project is Java based, so no iPad

Project 2: Meat processing plant, SAP recipe booking: IP-65 water resistent, robust, can be operated with a chain mail glove and has Internet Explorer for web access (SAP doesn't work properly with Firefox, Safari, Chrome or Opera). It also needs a 1D and 2D long range laser barcode scanner

Project 3: Pigstye management : the tablet needs to be operated with thick gloves, needs to be water resistent (and stink resistent!) and it need to be drop safe (1,5M onto concrete)-

Project 4: Freezer management : organisizing and viewing stored pigs in the freezer room (managing the location and quality of up to 20,000 pig halves), needs to be usable with a glove, drop safe, usable in cold.

The biggest problems we have are that most new tablets are coming with capactive screens, which won't work with rubber or chain mail gloves, most aren't ruggadised and can't be dropped from 1,5M and aren't at least IP-65 (some customers want full IP-69) certified.

Many projects also require a built in 1D and 2D barcode scanner.

Dave, I can't think there's many tablets out there that would fulfil your requirements, short of a specialised military spec manufacturer.
Dare I say it, but I suspect you're almost into the realms of something pretty bespoke, with the requirements of a built in barcode scanner, chain-mail glove friendly and ruggedised.

I would have thought that tough cases might also have helped. Also barcode scanners might be problematic as well, though couldn't you use Red Laser on the iPad to scan the codes in?

I'd agree. In fact regardless of the screen technology I'd say none of the current tablet OS's are glove friendly. Even if you could get screens that work the majority of GUI components are designed for 'normal' fingers, so you're going to find it very hard to select or drag items while wearing gloves, the chances of registering the click on the wrong item seem very high. You'd have to design a pretty much entirely bespoke interface for them.

Jon

We had a choice of about half a dozen different models, when we selected last time.


Red Laser wouldn't really be a solution, because it scans and searches the internet. The scanner needs to put the read barcode into text fields on the forms. That means we would have to write our own bar code scanning module to plug into the app. The tablets and "intelligent" scanners, like the Motorola Symbol series, treat the scanner as a keyboard device and stick the text into whatever field currently has focus.

You don't drag items, when you are wearing chain mail gloves! That scratches the surface!

Usually, they just have buttons for things like "pustule", "calm, can be slaughtered", "male", "female", "class a", "class b" etc.

Use your nose instead. I doubt that will have chain mail or gloves.

Dave's customers earlier today....