Harry Marks on ‘good enough’ isn’t good enough:

Google’s philosophy: “How much stuff can we cram into this thing that works well enough?”

Apple’s philosophy: “We can’t do everything, but what features can we perfect so they’re easy and fun to use?”

Apple’s far from perfect, and it has some seriously questionable desktop UI ideas in the upcoming version of Mac OS X (including an absolutely hideous new ‘skin’ for iCal), but it often works hard to get the details right.

Justin Williams on trading an iPad for a Xoom:

Honeycomb as an OS supports rotating the device into both portrait and landscape, but rotation is not nearly as fluid and instantaneous as on iOS. In fact, it is so slow I often wonder if the device has registered that I changed the device’s orientation. After several days, I ended up just setting a preference to disable rotation on the device and have it stay in landscape permanently.

When Apple dropped the rotation lock from the iPad, I was annoyed, but only because I wanted the option to periodically lock it. However, to think of a device almost forcing me to lock its orientation because of poor performance is just crazy.

Mind you, it remains to be seen whether ‘good enough’ will do regarding tablets. It certainly has when it comes to PCs, but less so with smartphones—many users seemingly demand a good experience now. I hope that this will be the case in the tablet space, not so Apple can beat Google, but so Google will strive to better the experience and so challenge Apple to keep bettering its products too. The worst-case scenario is when ‘good enough’ wins the day and companies continue shovelling out third-rate crap, enabling everyone—including the field’s leaders— to become complacent and lazy.