Samsung’s decided the best way to get one over the iPad is to go all sci-fi. “Create a clone,” said the directors. “The iPad will be caught unawares. Then, when it least expects, we can kick it repeatedly in the knackers until it begs for mercy—but we don’t have any of that. MWAHAHAHAHA!”

OK, so that’s perhaps a bit far-fetched. It’s probably more likely that some higher-up at Samsung got an iPad, went “oooh, shiny”, shoved it in front of the company’s design team and said: “One of those please, but in Android flavour”.

And if you think I’m exaggerating, take a look at Matt Gemmell’s Samsung Galaxy Tab comparison with iOS. Mid-1990s Microsoft has nothing on these guys.

The Wall Street Journal reports on LG’s vice president of marketing saying LG is readying an iPad ‘killer’. Again, the claims are pretty much copied and pasted from the How To Get Tech Journos Excited About Your iPad Killer That Doesn’t Actually Exist fact sheet: Android device; better than iPad for [SUB: INSERT REASONS HERE]; “our device will totally rock”.

What’s most surprising, though, is Chang Ma’s slightly odd decision to smack the iPad with the same kind of bullshit that lazy tech journos use. Ma is quoted as saying the iPad is a great device, but that he doesn’t do much work on it, inferring that Apple’s device is for displaying content, not creating it:

[LG’s] tablet will include content focused on creation such as writing documents, editing video and creating programs. It will also have “high-end features and new benefits,” many of which will focus on productivity, Mr. Ma said. “It’s going to be surprisingly productive,” he said.

Man, if only the iPad had some kind of App Store, with hundreds of great apps for boosting productivity and creating work, such as SketchBook Pro, OmniFocus for iPad, Pages and Numbers, Bento for iPad, iMockups for iPad, OmniGraffle, Markup for iPad, and ReelDirector, we wouldn’t be stuck waiting for LG to magic a ‘productive’ tablet into existence, along with the dozens of unicorn-dust-sprinkled apps that will also suddenly be available to make said tablet productive.

If you’ve not read it yet, go and check out Marco Arment’s A smartphone retrospective. His post from last week shows a bunch of 2007 smartphones, noting that they were cool but flawed, then says the iPhone happened. Despite all the protests about the iPhone’s lack of hardware keyboard, removable battery and expansion, pretty much all rival kit now apes Apple’s. Arment ends by showcasing a number of early 2010 netbooks, then says the iPad happened, and asks where the inexpensive computer space will be in a year.

Well, we’ve already seen various rumours and renders, and now, if Notebookitalia is to be believed, Toshiba’s about to enter the fray. There is, however, another aspect to the hardware shifts that Arment didn’t mention: the specs pissing contest. Most of Apple’s rivals aim to beat it in terms of specs rather than usability. They generally don’t aim for something that’s better for the general user, instead churning out hardware that offers more ‘stuff’.

If this really is to be Toshiba’s iPad ‘killer’, it’s certainly true to form. It’ll supposedly run Android (tick), look a bit like it was designed by Apple on an off day (tick), have more hardware buttons than really necessary (tick), and include a ton of ports, including USB and HDMI (tick). Judging by the images on Notebookitalia, this comes at a big price: form factor. It’s clear if this device makes it to market that it’ll be thicker than the iPad, but the edge with the ports also appears much thicker than its opposite side. This means Toshiba’s pad will have a natural landscape-only orientation, and will be horribly awkward in portrait mode. By contrast, the iPad generally doesn’t care which way up it is and apps encourage the user to turn the device to find a set-up that best suits them.

Still, if Toshiba’s model is released, I’m sure tech journos will claim it’s an iPad killer, because, once again, they’ll read the spec sheet, get terribly excited about things most users don’t care about, and forget that people—normal people—just want to get on and do stuff. Apple’s industrial design and usability will again be dismissed as gloss, right up until the moment its rivals catch up, whereupon those things will somehow become both exciting and essential.

I read ZDNet’s article on RearType a couple of days ago, but it’s remained in my mind, right next to a 500-metre-tall neon sign that says, in all-caps, WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING?

I’m all for innovation, and I fully understand that some people hate software-based keyboards on tablets, but Microsoft Research’s answer is to split the keyboard and put it on the back of the device. Never mind that this will require a ton more retraining and muscle memory shifts than using a virtual keyboard; never mind the fact that it will cause RSI sufferers to scream and non-RSI sufferers to become RSI sufferers and then scream; never mind that this makes the device itself unwieldy, ugly, and also forces it to be used in a specific orientation (unlike, say, the iPad, which doesn’t care which way up it is).

I was half expecting the white paper to be dated April 1, and the introductory text to be “fooled you, idiot-face”, but, no, it’s dated September 2010, which is presumably the same date every single person involved in the project took leave of their senses.

On Every time someone buys a Mac, Steve Jobs drowns a kitten, ‘blair’ commented: “It is amusing that they refer to it as PC vs Mac, rather than Windows vs Mac, as if they own the PC world. I own a PC, but it runs Linux, not rubbish Windows.”

This nicely highlights one of the problems Microsoft has when trying to fight Apple. Apple owns everything, so it can advertise a complete solution. Because Microsoft is peddling software, it can’t. That’s presumably the main reason why Apple’s website has loads of pictures of shiny computers running its software, and Microsoft’s equivalent has a strange woman who looks like she wants to leap out of the screen and bite off your nose.

That said, it’s curious that Microsoft offers this many screen grabs of Windows 7 on its anti-Mac page: none at all. Words are all very well, but showing why you think your stuff is best makes more sense, unless, of course, your arguments stop holding up when you try to do so.