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There Are Many Great Smartphones. There is Only One iPad

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iPads and Android tablets

All the iPads… and some trash.

Sure, you can go online and pick from a wide array of smartphones. You could grab an iPhone, perhaps the iPhone 8 Plus or iPhone X. You could choose to get an Android phone instead, maybe an HTC U11 or Samsung Galaxy S8. No matter what you choose, if you pick one of the latest flagship smartphones, you’ll probably end up with a decent device. However, when you go to pick out a tablet, your options get a little bit slimmer. The first option is light, portable, powerful, inexpensive, and has a vast ecosystem of apps. The second option is so lousy that not even the makers of the operating system it runs on want to mention it. The third option is an expensive Windows computer that happens to have a touch screen.

You picked option 1, right? Of course you did, it was the only decent option. Light, powerful, and inexpensive? Why wouldn’t you choose that one? Besides, all the other options sound horrible. That’s the state of tablets today. You’ve got the iPad on one side, and garbage on the other.

What Happened to Android Tablets?

Android tablets in a trash can

Android tablets where they belong (in an electronics recycling bin, because you should never throw away electronics).

Many have ruminated over the short life and slow death of Android tablets. While Apple could introduce the iPad to great fanfare, Android tablets languished in misery before being abandoned by their creators. It seems everyone has a few theories on this, but here are mine.

Android Was Never Supposed to be for Tablets

Android Prototype

A Google Android Prototype

Android wasn’t even initially conceived for a touchscreen device. It was initially an operating system loosely based off of Linux to compete with Blackberry. That’s why the original Android phones had a track ball or directional pad and didn’t have multitouch for years. Android devices, even with better specs than their iPhone counterparts, felt slower to respond to touch than iOS devices. The OS simply wasn’t designed for it.

Before the iPhone was released and made popular, Android was a shameless Blackberry clone. After the iPhone, for many years, it was a shameless iPhone clone. Android was always behind the curve, and, when it comes to tablets, may have fallen too far behind. Android’s third OS, Honeycomb, was made for tablets, but it never made Android tablets good, it just enabled developers to make tablet apps. They didn’t.

The iPad is the OG iOS Device

iPad Prototype 2002

An iPad prototype from 2002

Did you know that the iPad was the first modern touchscreen device Apple was working on? Yes, Apple made touchscreen devices in the past, like the Newton, but the first one they made with an OS X-like appearance, functionality, and the tablet form factor we’ve come to know and love was the iPad, in the early 2000’s.

Apple released the iPhone first, in 2007, releasing the iPad 3 years later. Apple was developing the iPad long before the iPhone, but released them out of order. The iPhone was the answer to customers’ desire, a need that wasn’t being met. They wanted to be able to have their phones and their iPods in one package. Apple delivered.They did so with a phone built on Mac OS X, an operating system that was, at that point, 6 years old, but was in development long before that. In fact, it was based on the NeXTStep operating system, from Steve Jobs’ second company. NeXTStep was first created in 1989. Nearly 21 years of software development went into the iPad. Basically put, the iPad had a huge head start over Android.

Fragmentation and Developers

Most apps are comprised of wide, wasted expanses of open space that are technically designed for any screen size but actually aren’t utilizing all this screen real estate.

– Dieter Bohn

So many screen sizes. Which do you optimize for?

When it comes to making an iOS app, you have a few devices to choose from. However, the screen size ratio is similar across the devices. There’s the iPhone, iPhone X, and iPad form factors. That’s it. There are different sizes, but they all have the same ratio. Apple did an excellent job keeping the pixel density in check and controlling their devices so developers could easily make apps for both the iPhone and iPad.

Google did not do this. Because Google couldn’t. Every manufacturer made their own devices, with their own screen sizes, densities, and shapes. Google did give us the tools to make apps that could easily adapt to any screen size, but those apps end up with a lot of dead space. Basically, tablet apps are nothing more than enlarged Android smartphone apps. The only option is to release a separate app or make additional layouts for larger devices.

Google tried to release their own tablets, perhaps to pull the other manufactures in line. If they could curb fragmentation, perhaps app developers would make tablet apps? Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, even within Google. Creating Android apps is already less profitable than creating iOS apps. Why increase your costs for small or non-existent margins? There are so few Android tablet owners, why bother developing special apps for them? Google killed developer interest in Android tablets by allow the platform to become overly fragmented, offering little benefit over large phones, and with high development costs. Without third party app developers, a platform cannot survive.

What About Windows Tablets?

Microsoft tried again and again to both scale up a mobile operating system and scale down a desktop operating system, but somehow ended up with something that took the compromises of both operating systems without all of the benefits. They abandoned their phone operating system, in favor of tablet and PC operating systems. Actually, that’s an inaccurate statement. In the end, Microsoft was trying to offer the same OS on the phone, tablet, and PC platform. It wasn’t working.

No, Patrick, the Surface Book isn’t an instrument, erm, tablet

If you want a small and light Windows tablet, you end up with something that’s trying to run a desktop operating system and never quite feeling right. If you get a larger tablet, you end up with a decent laptop that’s trying too hard to be touch friendly. Also, if you wanted a laptop, why’d you go for a tablet? On top of everything, no matter how you go, you sacrifice battery life. Windows tablets feel like confused kids in high school, all trying to be something they’re not.

The Windows App Store is kind of like the Mac App Store. Mostly empty, and you don’t want most of what’s there. This wouldn’t be a huge problem if some Windows tablets could run any app, like Macs can, but the lower-end ones (the ones trying to be tablets) can’t. They can only run the apps from the Windows app store, which is, frankly, barren. Imagine if iOS didn’t have the App Store. That’s what Windows tablets are like.

Is the iPad That Good?

In short, yes. The iPad knows exactly what it should be, and it does that well. It’s not trying to be a MacBook, it’s not trying to be an oversized iPhone. The iPad has carved out a product category all of its own, and in that category it is exceptional. App developers find the iPad easy to develop for, and they find iPad users are happy to download and buy apps. iOS is still a goldmine for app developers, and the iPad is no different from the iPhone in that sense.

Can the iPad replace a laptop? In most cases, yes. Sure, I can’t use it to write code because Apple—frustratingly—has not made writing any code on the iPad efficient or easy, but I use it for nearly everything else. I even have made graphics for iOS and Android apps on my iPad (although I’m still disappointed in Affinity Photo for the iPad).

The iPad is also completely separate from an iPhone. You never feel like you could use one OR the other, you need both. They work together beautifully though, through Air Drop, iCloud, and Handoff, it’s obvious that Apple made them for one another. The iPad is at home in Apple’s ecosystem. Despite the fact that I still need a computer for development and prefer Affinity Photo on my Mac to the iPad version, I’m still happy with an iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro.

… And the rest?

You can’t say that of any other tablet. The Surface wants to be a laptop and the SurfaceBook is a laptop. Android tablets are just large smartphones and often introduce new bugs not found in their smaller counterparts. No other tablet manufacturer has come close to Apple.

So, no matter what OS you use on your phone, Android or iOS, if you ask me what tablet you should buy, I’m going to tell you to pick an iPad. Likely an iPad Pro, if you can afford it.

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