Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27

Re:Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27 by jrockway on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @01:33PM (#2332960)

What I've learned from the whole Xoom debacle is that the Flash codebase must be a massive stinking pile of shit. They can't give Linux security updates and they can't get it to work on one of the most important non-Apple tablets in existence.

This is why you write tests instead of adding features. Because while meeting your deadline today is good, not ever being able to meet a deadline again is pretty bad.

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Re:Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27 by allwein on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @02:06PM (#2333126)

What I've learned from the whole Xoom debacle is that I don't need a feature to actually "work" in order to use it as a main selling point. An inactive SD slot; No Flash at launch even though that's its biggest selling point. 4G networking, but only after you send it back in for refurbishing later this year.

Knowing this, I'm going to start a car company and start advertising that my cars get 1000 miles per gallon. The small print will have something about the installation of frictionless parts at an unknown availability date.

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Re:Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27 by cryptoz on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @02:47PM (#2333328)

> No Flash at launch even though that's its biggest selling point

I don't think that Flash is the biggest selling point... I think the biggest selling point is that it's the most powerful tablet out there. And it sounds like the WiFi Xoom will have Flash at launch anyway. Not really a big deal.

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Re:Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27 by codedivine on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @03:15PM (#2333443)

It is no longer the most powerful tablet. A5 chip in the iPad 2 offers similar CPU performance and much better graphics performance than Tegra 2 according to Anandtech's tests.

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Re:Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27 by jokermatt999 on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @03:28PM (#2333491)

And half the RAM of the Xoom (at least according to Gruber), so it's not as clear cut as you make it sound.

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Re:Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27 by YooLi on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @06:43PM (#2334297)

And yet not one review has mentioned that having 512 MB hampered performance.

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Re:Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27 by cryptoz on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @03:34PM (#2333517)

There's a lot more to "power" than just clock speed and graphics. For example, nobody has to ask permission to write and run apps on the Xoom whereas iPad can only (under normal circumstances) run apps that have the approval of a small team of people in California.

Being able to run whatever computer programs you want - on your computer - definitely factors into what it means to be powerful.

Also, it has more sensors and a newer operating system and UI. There are many ways Android 3.0 is more powerful that iOS, such as having real multitasking, more user-configurable settings, etc.

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Re:Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27 by xcvd on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @08:34PM (#2334585)

What would you prefer? Thousands of apps approved by "a small team in California", which are generally spyware free.

OR a handful of apps specifically designed for your platform.

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Re:Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27 by ZeroGravitas on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @02:47PM (#2333325)

I'm guessing you mean this was the straw that broke the camel's back for you, because there's been a continual stream of indications that the Flash codebase is a mess for the last few years.

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Re:Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27 by blinkingled on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @01:56PM (#2333068)

>they can't get it to work on one of the most important non-Apple tablets in existence

Actually I am running the 10.2 beta on my Xoom (w/3.0.1) and for a beta it is looking quite good. May be crashes the browser once a day but the work they did for tighter integration with the 3.0.1 browser is clearly showing - it scrolls smooth even with lots of Flash content on page, the videos all work without much stuttering.

I think they still aren't accelerating the HD videos in the beta or are doing it sub optimally but I am very hopeful it will work at least as well as it does on a desktop!

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Re:Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27 by cube13 on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @04:39PM (#2333786)

>I think they still aren't accelerating the HD videos in the beta or are doing it sub optimally but I am very hopeful it will work at least as well as it does on a desktop!

That's a very low bar. If I wanted an improvement, I'd be looking at something like Netflix's Silverlight implementation, which doesn't consume full CPU to render HD video.

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Re:Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27 by an0n on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @03:40PM (#2333543)

massive stinking pile ... shit

Observation +1. You've got 4 out of 4 correct there. I claim that any person who has not only smelled but also tasted, not to mention mucked, the abovequoted part could feed The Daily WTF for years. Hopefully Adobe's HTML5 conversion tool could turn out to be a decent face-saving way out for Flash.

(Posting anonymously for a reason, feel free to draw your conclusions.)

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Re:Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27 by nuclear_eclipse on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @02:34PM (#2333272)

> They can't give Linux security updates

Google Chrome on Linux has already received updates for the latest flash vulnerability....

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Re:Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27 by jrockway on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @04:06PM (#2333638)

x86_64 Linux?

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Re:Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27 by nuclear_eclipse on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @05:05PM (#2333920)

My 64 bit install of Chrome is working perfectly fine, although I have no idea if the flash plugin it uses is 64 bit or not.

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Re:Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27 by jrockway on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @07:00PM (#2334342)

What's the point of using Linux if you're going to use Chrome instead of Chromium?

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Re:Wi-Fi-Only Motorola Xoom To Hit Stores March 27 by nuclear_eclipse on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @07:28PM (#2334421)

for one thing, I disagree with my distro's update schedule for chromium, and Google has a package repository for chrome that allows me to stay on the dev channel while still using the package manager to handle updates. not to mention that I get flash, PDF, and other proprietary features that you don't get with chromium. oh, and flashplugin-installer doesn't work properly behind a proxy without docking around with system files I don't have permissions to change.

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