Category Archives: Apple

Picture the scene if you will: an impassioned nation gears up for a World Cup, armed with “the best team since ’66″; an excited tech community gets hot and frothy about a ‘new dawn of tablet computing’. That’s right folks, the year is 2006. How times change.

Four years ago Intel and Microsoft’s ‘Origami Project‘ promised – much like Sven-Göran Eriksson’s England football team – to be easy on the eye with some swish moves and quality goals, but in reality it pretty much folded in the group stages. Just like major sporting tournaments, it seems as though tablet computers come and go every four years leaving us disappointed with what could have been.

But wait: as Apple’s latest signing finally makes its entrance from a brief pre-season stint in the US, and only a matter of days before South Africa hosts its continent’s first World Soccerball Fest, will Team Jobs’ latest addition to his squad be a match-winner? Or, just like in 2006, will poor penalty performance mean an early shower?

To get some perspective on the iPad’s cup-clinching potential, we’ve taken inspiration from years of television football punditry by carting out an ex-player from a previous campaign who thinks he can still do better…

The Only Q1 ‘ere in the Village

Hands on a Samsung Q1

Much has been written about the iPad in 2010, but in 2006 the Samsung Q1 was one of the Origami Project’s fanfare tablet PCs heralding a new age of portable but powerful computing, the fêted form-factor bridging the thriving PDA and throbbing laptop markets. All well and good, except that approximately nobody seemed to want buy one. In spite of the tablets answering almost universal prayers for increased portability, what seemed like a ‘really neat idea‘ at the time never really caught the public’s imagination. Nobody’s, that is, apart from ours (as we wrote about here) and after having a good play around we bloody-well loved it.

So, having had an extensive run out with both the 2006 Q1 and the 2010 iPad here at Techspot Towers, how do we think they measure up to each other? Does the old-school Samsung still have some tricks up its sleeve to show up an Apple a mammoth 4 years – a lifetime in PC-tech terms – its junior? Well, yes, perhaps it does:

Sex Appeal

Without a doubt both tablets are pretty damn sexy in their own right: Samsung’s recent partiality for shiny black slabs of plastic is in evidence even in 2006, but the industrial sleekness and economy of the iPad’s design is certainly more pleasing to an average 2010-er’s eye.

However, pure aesthetics aside, the iPad must be laced with that same potent pheromone as the rest of the Apple stable which renders their hardware utterly irresistible to anyone within a couple of mouse clicks of an Apple Store.

Operating System

Apple’s OS is built around the touch-screen input – the fundamental essence of a tablet – whereas Microsoft Windows XP, even in its Tablet Edition incarnation, simply isn’t. What Windows gains in flexibility, customisation and general fiddleability in comparison to Apple’s prudish portable OS, it loses in ease of access and execution. Windows XP is a proven operating system, but very much more geared towards pointer and keyboard use.

Portability

Both tablets pack a surprising but pleasing heft when held aloft and in terms of physical size there’s not an enormous deal to choose between them, the Q1 being the smaller but fatter of the two. It does come supplied with a handy slip-case and cloth, and one feels relatively confident that carrying the Samsung around in a busy backpack all day won’t result in a dented, smashed or scratched screen or body. Sadly we weren’t allowed to take away and throw the iPad into a rucksack, but we’d be pretty worried about it getting it dented and bented without a sturdy case guarding it.

However, a less-obvious portability issue is that the iPad does require a full-fat ‘mothership’ PC to whose iTunes it will sync. For some this is a deal-breaker, particularly anyone who thought they’d be able to live with just their iPad and do without a desktop/laptop PC altogether.

Apple iPad Hands On

Connectivity

The Q1 is equipped with a plethora of connectivity options. The inclusion of a Compact Flash slot hints a little at the Q1′s age, but a VGA D-sub, Firewire and USB ports aplenty can’t be argued with. The iPad is a comparative closed door, with its single Apple iPod connector, however flexible, pretty much summing up its connectivity credentials. Both sport Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, but only the sportier iPads integrate a 3G modem – although, as ugly as it might look, the same could be perfectly achievable with the Q1 with the insertion of a 3G dongle into one of its USB ports.

Keyboard

In a fundamental oversight, both Apple and Samsung forgot to attach a keyboard – d’oh! Fortunately for us (and them) that they both provide on-screen virtual keyboards. The Samsung’s thumb-tastic ‘dial-keys’ was a valiant but flawed effort, the resistive touch-screen just not up to reliable finger-tapping. However the iPad’s keyboard is second to none, briskly whisking out URLs and emails with both accuracy and intelligent suggestions to spare our fat-fingered typos. Both units accept Bluetooth keyboards, only the Samsung accepting a standard USB connected device, but there is an Apple keyboard that connects via the iPad’s standard 30-pin connector.

Screen

The iPad wins hands down with a glorious capacitive XGA fingerprint-resistant touch-screen that is rich in colour and resolution. The Q1′s resistive touch-screen is dull by comparison, and really shows how far screen technology has progressed in the last few years.

Battery Life

Once again, in the battery life stakes it’s the iPad that wins outright claiming an astronomical 10 hours’ use – reinforced by real-life usage. The Q1′s battery is pretty poor by comparison, with any time over an hour and a half a bonus.

Apps

Apple introduced us to the App Store model and with its iPhone/iTouch-compatible back-catalogue of games, shopping list utilities and fart-noise-creation applications it is hard to beat. Windows itself boasts an enormous heritage of software for all tasks imaginable, but on the whole not software that has been designed for use in a touch-screen environment, and almost certainly not all marshalled, catalogued and presented neatly onto the shelves of a single super-department-store ready to take away instantly.

Accessories

Whilst the economy of several small countries is probably now based-around the continuation of Apple’s 30-pin dock connector, arguably more innovation has been possible thanks to the USB standard: USB fans, torches, battery chargers, memory sticks, robots, cameras, disk drives, remote controlled cars, rabbits – not all useful, but mostly fun.

Verdict

Clearly, the iPad is an entirely more desirable object than the Q1, as evidenced by the distinct lack of queue or Stephen Fry at the launch of the Samsung tablet. But whilst the iPad is no mere empty bragger when it comes to technical specifications, the Samsung Q1 still stands up in many ways to its junior, not least in terms of connectivity. However, as Apple’s iPhone has shown when placed against some technically superior handsets from HTC, its merit is in its smooth and friendly overall user experience – the customisation and expandability that a relatively small proportion of power-users crave could, if implemented, come at the expense of the ease of use and reliability sought by the wider user-base.

The iPad – Jobs a good’un.