iPad, Eee Slate and PlayBook Comparison

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The iPad 2 is a great entertainment device but it’s too big to carry around with a laptop and isn’t powerful enough to replace a laptop. This is were the Eee Slate comes in handy. It’s light enough to use on the sofa and powerful enough to completely replace a laptop. The biggest downside to the device is it’s less than average battery life. I don’t mind plugging it in but if you’re planning to be on the device all day without power, that would definitely be a deal breaker.

Last but not least, the PlayBook (or any 7″ tablet really). Tablets at this size are much better for portability compared to the 10″ & 12″ tablets. Reading books on the go, playing games and general web browsing are the best uses. When I’m on the go and don’t need a laptop, the 7″ inch tablet in my device of choice.

In the future, it would be great to see a device that is the best of both worlds. If I could dock my iPad and switch it over to OS X, that would dramatically increase the usefulness of the device. The same goes for my Eee Slate, it would be great to have a more battery conscious OS while on the go and run full Windows 7 when docked. So far, Windows 8 is the only thing on the horizon that looks promising in this respect. Lets hope they don’t mess that up!

Without further delay, let’s take a look at the feature rundown of these three devices:

iPad 2 Harley Davidson Nightster Harley Davidson Forty-Eight

iPad 2

Asus Eee Slate

PlayBook
Cost $499* $1049 $299
RAM 1GB 4GB 1GB
Memory 16GB 64GB 16GB
Included Accessories Charging Cable BT Keyboard, Leather Case, Charging Cable Charging Cable, Glove Case
Operating System iOS 5 Windows 7 QNX
Input Touch Pen + Touch Touch
Touch Friendly OS Yes Mediocre
(Taps mimic mouse.)		 Yes
Pen Friendly OS No Yes No
Battery Life 8 hours 4 hours 8 hours
Amazon Rating 4.2 stars 4.2 stars 4.0 stars
Open Market No Yes No
Screen Size 10 inch 12 inch 7 inch
Ports Audio Mini HDMI, 2x USB, Audio, SD Audio, Micro HDMI
Mouse Enabled No Yes Select Bluetooth Mice

 

*Keep in mind the 64GB iPad with keyboard, DVI adapter, leather case and warranty ends up being $886.

What do I use the Eee Slate for?

> Primary computing device for work
> Adobe Creative Suite, word processing, Amazon onDemand, web applications…
> Complete laptop replacement

Eee Slate complaints?

> The OS could be much more touch intuitive (hopefully Widows 8 will help with this)
> No docking station

What do I use the iPad for?

> Testing apps
> Listening to Pandora via Bluetooth on my stereo
> Multi-player games like marbles
> Writing down quick notes

iPad complaints:

> Lack of iPad specific apps – most are for iPhone
> Bluetooth is hidden too deep in the menu

What do I use the PlayBook for?

> Testing apps
> Reading books on Kobo
> Playing single player games
> Taking pictures / video on the go

PlayBook complaints:

> Lack of killer apps like Pandora and Kindle. The browser almost makes up for this but falls a bit short.
> Can’t connect to most bluetooth devices

What do you use your tablet for? Does your device collect dust in the corner or does it get regular use?

Installing Your Signed App onto the PlayBook

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You can send your signed app to the BlackBerry PlayBook using blackberry-dploy. This makes it easy to test final builds without having to setup debugging certificates. We’ll talk about debug certificates in a later post, let’s get our app onto the device!

Problem:
You want to test your signed application on the device before submitting it to the app world or setting up the debug certificate. The PlayBook browser doesn’t currently support the BAR extension (hopefully this will change).

Solution:
Use the blackberry-deploy command to send your signed BAR file directly to the device. Before doing this you’ll need to put your device in developer mode.

To put your PlayBook in developer mode go into the device settings (top right corner) and select Security. Click on the Development Mode button and select to enable it. Here’s the tricky part, to actually get this working I needed to reboot the device and go back into the settings and re-enable development mode. This might have just been a fluke but worth mentioning. After doing this the developer icon showed up on the home screen along with my device ip address (see image).

Connect the device up to your machine using the usb cable, open a command prompt in the SDK bin folder and run the following command:

>blackberry-deploy -installApp -device DEVICE_IP -password DEV_PASSWORD yourappname.bar

You will have to put the full path to your BAR if it’s not in the bin directory.

After running that command my signed application was on the device and ready to go.

AIR Mobile User Group

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Are you interested in cross platform mobile development with AIR? Join us next Tuesday, September 13 at 7:00pm to get the inside scoop on AIR mobile development from community members in the Twin Cities. Speakers will include Danny Patterson, Andrew Charon and Chris Black with more to be announced. We’ll be running through our real world applications talking about the challenges of mobile development. There will be plenty of Q/A and open discussion.

What? AIR Mobile User Group
When? Tuesday, September 13th from 7-9pm
Where? Zeus Jones in Uptown, Minneapolis

We’ll have free pizza at the meeting and a social hour after the meeting at the Bulldog in Uptown. Please RSVP by posting a comment to this thread or on the Facebook MN.swf group. If all goes well, we’ll be meeting up every month to discuss a new mobile topic. Future topics include:

>Mobile Arduino integration
>Performance optimizations
>AIR 3.0 features
>Marketing and monetization of apps
>Building mobile games with AIR
>Multi-screen developmen
>And more…

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn about mobile development with AIR. With version 3.0 around the corner, cross platform development is going to continue to grow!

Flash is Alive and Kicking, FITC Toronto Highlights

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Interested in what devices support mobile AIR? Want to know how to keep your PlayBook app running in the background? Are you in the market for a $2,750 Tron watch? In this post I’ll share the highlights from FITC Toronto 2011. Being the first conference since AIR 2.6 and the launch of the PlayBook there was plenty of great information to go around.

The Venue
Before we jump into the tech tips, I wanted to mention that this was the coolest venue I’ve ever been to for a conference. They rented out a huge night club and transformed dance floors and lounges into speaker rooms. Cotton candy and popcorn were available at all times. A few shots from the event:

Guvernment Club
Click the image to enlarge.

The PlayBook
Both Julian Dolce and Rajeev Messand uncovered some great tips and tricks for PlayBook development. First, Julian discussed how to use the Throttle mode to keep your application running in the background. This is key for anyone playing music, tracking GPS or that need background services running. He also talked about how to tap into the system media to ensure sound stops when another application (like a YouTube video) starts playing audio.

Rajeev talked about creating applications using Flash / HTML5 with Webworks. Did you know the BAR extension is really just a ZIP file? You can extract the contents to ensure your application has been signed correctly and to adjust meta data if needed. Another great he mentioned is to navigate the file structure by typing file:/// in the web browser. It’s an interesting little trick to find out whats on your machine.

Adobe AIR
I skipped out on the keynote but caught the tail end of Lee Brimelow’s talk and attended a full session on devices with Renaun Erickson. Adobe was really pushing both Molehill and multi-platform development. They had a 3D demo running on the first generation Galaxy Tab showing that Flash truly rocks on mobile devices without taxing the battery or processor. Renaun outlined the full road map for Flash / AIR on all platforms. His presentation is definitely worth embedding here:

Digital Fun for the Digital Home

Brass Monkey
Chris Allen showed off some really cool games including a Star Wars 3D shooter and Smuggle Truck err… Snuggle Truck for mobile devices. The best part? When connected up to a computer, the games turned into controllers that could be used to play the desktop version! This is some seriously cool shit. The mobile applications are built natively in iOS and Android with the desktop receiver is built using Unity 3D. Both the Unity plugin and an ActionScript version are coming soon. Check out the demos on the Brass Monkey website and download Snuggle Truck for your iPhone today!

Flash Video and Lazy Programming
Robert Reinhardt did a great job comparing HTML5 and Flash video. As he mentioned many times throughout his presentation, HTML5 has a ways to go. Lack of captioning, full screen, DRM and codec support leave much to be desired of the new video tag. Luckily there is still plenty of time for the specs to be finalized. For now, only use HTML5 for simple video and use Flash when you need more.

Lazy programming was about how to be efficient so that you’re working less and enjoying it more. Key tips were to use tools to assist in programming, don’t fix every bug and always have a scope doc. Phillip Kerman concluded with comedy show on his handbill delivery system. Make sure to ask him for one the next time you see him.

Missed Sessions
A notable mention to the session that I wanted to see was Trainyard: a Flash Dev’s Journey to App Store Success with Matt Rix. I hope that Matt presents at a future conference so I can check that session out!

Conclusion
This was one of the best conferences I’ve been to in a while. Sessions were top notch with lots of new material, the event was great for networking and overall it was a blast.

Until next year!