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The same thing applies for Android tablets, however I find Android tablets to be slightly more developer friendly But Android tablets are also awful. Although

The same thing applies for Android tablets, however I find Android tablets to be slightly more developer friendly But Android tablets are also awful. Although I am primarily an Apple user and my wife uses an iPad, we bought an higher-end ASUS tablet based on Atom for me and our daughter (to watch cartoons on long car trips). The tablet came bloated with all kinds of nonsense apps, of which more than half cannot be removed or disabled. Android updates stopped after a year or so. It had an SD card slot, but it could only be used for a small subset of applications. The Nexus 7 2013 that we owned was better in the lack of crapware department. But the last Android update was in 2015 (6.0.1). After some iPads and the Nexus 7/ASUS adventures, I decided to stop using tablets completely. Laptops have become so light and compact that it's easy to take them to meetings (especially the MacBook 12" is great in this regard). As a bonus, I can just store my notes, etc. in plain text (org mode) in git, rather than being locked in some cloud silo.

bostand 10y ago
Nexus 7 was updated in 2016. Asus is king of crapware, never buy Asus.
icebraining 10y ago
As a bonus, I can just store my notes, etc. in plain text (org mode) in git, rather than being locked in some cloud silo. Not a bonus: on Android, you can use MobileOrg+SyncOrg (which syncs to any git remote). Or you can use Emacs on the terminal and sync using a generic generic git client like SGit.
- danieldk 10y ago
  Or you can use Emacs on the terminal and sync using a generic generic git client like SGit. Not practical for my use case: the screen is too small, does not render LaTeX equations inline, etc.
kitsunesoba 10y ago
My experience with Android tablets has also been dismal. I've had two: a first (maybe second?) gen Kindle Fire rooted Cyanogenmod and more recently a Pixel C purchased with the dev discount. The first was kinda slow and heavy, and its display was too low DPI to use it for extended reading. All that was somewhat forgivable given that it wasn't supposed to run anything but Amazon's flavor of android, and, well, it's old. Running phone apps on it wasn't too bad since it's a 7" tablet. The Pixel though... its hardware was nice. It looked nice, felt nice, and for the most part, handled nicely (though its bezels had be accidentally tapping things on the screen frequently). The problem is that its WiFi drivers were horrible and as it turns out, the cracks in the android experience are much more visible when running on modern, powerful hardware. Lots of bits just felt janky, disjointed, or sluggish. None of the browsers I tried were as nice as mobile Safari, though Firefox came closest, which is weird to me — why isn't Google's browser the best on Google's OS and Google's hardware? Beyond that, the C's full size form factor made the lack of quality tablet apps on Android blindingly apparent. More often than not I had to settle for stretched out phone apps, which look and feel like crap on such a large screen. To be fair, the tiny handful of good tablet apps I found were very well-made, but they were far too rare. I'd also say Android's dev/hacker-friendliness is arguable. Yes, one can side load unsigned apps, which is cool. To me, though, this point is nearly moot due to the quality disparity between the Android SDK and dev ecosystem vs the same of iOS. Perhaps I'm biased, but barring projects where iOS doesn't provide the necessary hardware access or something, I'd almost always do my prototypes and v1s on iOS and port to Android later when demand drums up than vice versa, simply due to time and frustration saved.

bostand 10y ago

Nexus 7 was updated in 2016. Asus is king of crapware, never buy Asus.

icebraining 10y ago

As a bonus, I can just store my notes, etc. in plain text (org mode) in git, rather than being locked in some cloud silo. Not a bonus: on Android, you can use MobileOrg+SyncOrg (which syncs to any git remote). Or you can use Emacs on the terminal and sync using a generic generic git client like SGit.

danieldk 10y ago
Or you can use Emacs on the terminal and sync using a generic generic git client like SGit. Not practical for my use case: the screen is too small, does not render LaTeX equations inline, etc.

kitsunesoba 10y ago

My experience with Android tablets has also been dismal. I've had two: a first (maybe second?) gen Kindle Fire rooted Cyanogenmod and more recently a Pixel C purchased with the dev discount. The first was kinda slow and heavy, and its display was too low DPI to use it for extended reading. All that was somewhat forgivable given that it wasn't supposed to run anything but Amazon's flavor of android, and, well, it's old. Running phone apps on it wasn't too bad since it's a 7" tablet. The Pixel though... its hardware was nice. It looked nice, felt nice, and for the most part, handled nicely (though its bezels had be accidentally tapping things on the screen frequently). The problem is that its WiFi drivers were horrible and as it turns out, the cracks in the android experience are much more visible when running on modern, powerful hardware. Lots of bits just felt janky, disjointed, or sluggish. None of the browsers I tried were as nice as mobile Safari, though Firefox came closest, which is weird to me — why isn't Google's browser the best on Google's OS and Google's hardware? Beyond that, the C's full size form factor made the lack of quality tablet apps on Android blindingly apparent. More often than not I had to settle for stretched out phone apps, which look and feel like crap on such a large screen. To be fair, the tiny handful of good tablet apps I found were very well-made, but they were far too rare. I'd also say Android's dev/hacker-friendliness is arguable. Yes, one can side load unsigned apps, which is cool. To me, though, this point is nearly moot due to the quality disparity between the Android SDK and dev ecosystem vs the same of iOS. Perhaps I'm biased, but barring projects where iOS doesn't provide the necessary hardware access or something, I'd almost always do my prototypes and v1s on iOS and port to Android later when demand drums up than vice versa, simply due to time and frustration saved.