How to not out-iPad the iPad
CrunchGear reports on the Axon Logic Hackintosh tablet, with the headline ‘Axon Logic Hackintosh Tablet May Just Out-iPad The iPad’. So, how’s this device planning on doing this? Well, it’s been “designed from the ground up to be compatible with any Darwin OS”, which means it’ll support (unofficially, natch) Mac OS X.
So, CrunchGear says this will beat the iPad by using Mac OS X, an operating system not designed for touch. Furthermore, the touchscreen is resistive, so wave bye to multitouch. Wow, that really sounds like it’ll out-iPad the iPad to me!
Quick tip to everyone in the journo game: the way to out-iPad the iPad is to make something better and more usable than the iPad, so stop reporting otherwise. Don’t just get all excited by a spec list, because the vast majority of users don’t care. Get excited by a system that is more intuitive, and that is better designed for touch. By all means advocate something more powerful for advanced tasks, or with USB ports, or with a card reader welded to it. But ensure the device is better from a usability and user-experience standpoint; don’t just prattle on about a desktop operating system glued to something vaguely resembling an iPad and call it an ‘iPad killer’.
For all the prospective “iPad-killers,” I’d like to know:
1. How long does the battery last?
2. Does it get hot when you use it?
3. Is there a decent ecosystem for apps?
The Axon pictured is fat, ugly, has an air vent (which implies that it will heat up like a hair dryer), and a 3 hour battery (read: 1 hour).
Like you say, running a hacked OSX is not exciting at any price since the thing isn’t optimized for touch input.