iPad vs. Xoom

[bc ct]

Folks - Like many others, I had been holding out from buying a tablet because I wanted to see what Android could do versus the ipad. I previously had an iphone 3gs and moved to an Evo, which I love. The ability to root, change the look and interaction, widgets, etc. is attractive to me on a phone.

I purchased the Motorola Xoom one week ago and am debating whether to return it and pick up an ipad2. In my case, I'm not sure rooting, widgets, etc. are as necessary on a tablet. I keep hearing about how "locked down" the Apple environment is compared to Android. My question is this: are there things or functions that you cannot do on an ipad that you wish you could? I understand that there will not be flash, sd card, etc., but are there ways to overcome these issues? Are things like transferring files relatively simple? I expect that my primary use of the device will be for web browsing, ereader, occasional movies or tv shows when traveling and some work functions (review and editing documents, project plans notes, etc.) Thanks for your help!

 

[sjleworthy]

horses for courses. i suspect a tablet is a tablet. each does things in its own way. you can over come most issues. Flash - get a Flash enabled browser. SD - just transfer wirelessly. music and video is easy and quick via itunes, office things can be transfered over the interweb or simply emails to yourself in attachments.

personally, the Apple has an app store with literally 1 zillion and 1 things instantly ready to entertain me that the xoom hasn't.

 

[Rlarson_mn]

I had the same issues you did even though I already own a IPad. I wanted to see what the android tablets had to offer. My plan is to upgrade to the iPad 2 for it's CPU speed increase and 9x screen rendering. When the next IPad is ready for release the android tablets would be more mature, have a better application numbers to choose from and be more price competitive. When ever that point is reached that is the time I will do my comparison of apple vs android in the tablet world.

 

[jhood2323]

Ipad 2>flyer,xoom,playbook, galaxy 10.1,g-slate, my arm & leg. The apps,dedication to their products and the price are mainly what puts the apple so far ahead of other company s.think about it if you went and bought a xoom for $800 in feb. Then motorola said hey we got a 7" tab running 3.0 coming out in june for 300 less that does the thing and we might give you xoom guys a 1,1 1/2 updates and we're done with you. Wouldn't you be pissed

 

[Hasty]

Frankly the tablet is a tool and it's really the software thats important.
Consider what you intend to do with the device and check out the available apps before you buy. Though I should caution you that you'll find things to do you never thought off initially.

Personally I've enjoyed every minute of the iPad and have already pre-ordered the iPad2. After watching the demo's of Garage Band and iMovie I knew developers would be writing apps to take full advantage of the improved speed, graphics and ram.
It can only get better.

 

[jhood2323]

Thats the mainly reason i am getting one right there. Imovies could pretty make you a director of short films.once you get the hang of it. My youtube videos are going to be dropping almost daily with tech reviews because of this app alone .not to mention other apps in the future from major companys .hopefully photoshop drops an app on us. Then garageband could really become a major part of you work flow for recording songs or just a simple riff or drum roll. Like i could hear an old 70's hit and be like "man that bass line is crazy let me repeat it real quick on my ipad 2 before i forget the title of the song " stuff like comes in handy in my everyday life. Plus if fl studios, logic, reason, and ab live drop apps ohh wee.

 

[Nugga]

I was thinking about a xoom myself, but there are several reason why i will buy an Ipad instead.

1. The price on the xoom is simply to high for me, i know rumors say that the price will fall as soon as the competitors get their honeycomb's on the market, but i don't really believe in huge drops in the price yet.

2. The Xoom uses honeycomb which is still a new OS for tablets and therefor not yet fully completed. That would be okay on a phone, but on a tablet having no crashes and everything working correct is far more important for me.

3. The number of apps on honeycomb is still very low. Again it will be better as soon as more tablets enter the market, but my guess is that it will take atleast a year for honeycomb to clear the same milestones as App store already did. And at that time people will start replaceing the tablets they bought with the upcomming ones.

4. In my personal opinion the apps for the Ipad is in average better quailty than on android(They crash less "if ever", The run faster, they look better, they run smoother and so on)

5. The Ipad browser is way more smooth than the Android browser, just think about scrolling, zooming and moving around on the page. I know it lags flash support, but in my personal opinion the cpu in mobile devices "even dual core CPU's" is just not strong enough to handle flash. And most of the time flash is just used for ads. I even disabled flash on both my macbook air, and my HTC desire just because the pages load fast and i move around quicker.

 

[Anon_Guy]

Hi,

This is my first post and I thought I would comment because I am in a very similar dilemma. I have had a quick 5 minute testing session with the Xoom @ Best Buy, and I have used the iPad 1 (32GB Wi-Fi) on many occasions, as my friend's owned one.

Now that iPad 2 is coming out, I want to get into the tablet market myself and I am in the same predicament: iPad 2 or Xoom. I actually have a friend who has the Xoom and bought it on day 1. He already has over clocked it to 1.5 Ghz and rooted the OS. So it seems the high speed potential / control of the tablet is there. He has ran benchmark testing with the OC'ed processor and it is very impressive. I have not used an OC'ed Xoom tablet for the record.

However, with that being said, I personally believe he is taking a major risk over clocking / rooting new technology. I kept getting told: "Oh, you can't download files on the iPad, it doesn't support flash, etc."

Honestly, I don't want my tablet to save the world like my buddy does with his Xoom. I find the "inability to download files" more than likely judgement without evidence. I just want rock solid reliable tech, and honestly Honeycomb / Xoom hasn't proven themselves yet. The iPad has. Now if Xoom 2 is a beast I'll buy a Xoom, but until then, I'm getting an iPad 2 this Friday.

 

[bc ct]

Thanks for responses - good points by all. I think part of my problem is that I don't like spending $800 for a beta product. I expect that if I return the Xoom and pick up and ipad2, I'll end up with the 32 or 64gig 3g model, so really no cost savings. Just a more polished and useable (at least for today) product. It's a hard decision because I believe that the Evo competes so effectively in its current form with the iphone 4. I guess that I expected the Xoom would do the same with the ipad. That may have been a bit naive given the significant differences between Honeycomb and Froyo, as well as the maturity of iOS on a tablet.

 

[qnet]

I have a Ipad and purchased the Xoom on launch day. I was very excited about it because, I like Android and the customization.

There were really a lot of things I liked and, still do like about the Xoom but, for how much it cost; it still didn't run as smooth as my Ipad. The auto-rotation of the screen lags and, a lot of my apps I had to force close. I think they rushed it out. I didn't have a problem with the lack of apps because, I know they will start showing up eventually. The calendar didn't work correctly and, I had to keep restarted it, to make some things work.

The customization on the Xoom is really nice and, I really like the Youtube app. The scrollable widgets are cool also, along with picture frame and, other widgets I like on my Android phone.

I hardly ever have any issues with my Ipad. It's smooth and, for a device with less specs, it outperforms the Xoom. The Amazon Kindle app works better and, is not as choppy as the Xoom. The screen color looks better and brighter on the Ipad.

I also like the size and shape of the Ipad. It seems just right for reading books in picture orientation, much better than the Xoom; which is too narrow and awkward IMO.

With some updates, the Xoom will probably be better but, for right now, it's not for me. When the Ipad 2 was announced, I couldn't resist and took back the Xoom (based on my experiences with the original Ipad). If I had more storage space i might not even have got a Ipad 2.

Edit: other than customization, you can do pretty much everything on the Ipad 2 that you can on a Xoom.

 

[Demandarin]

Thats the mainly reason i am getting one right there. Imovies could pretty make you a director of short films.once you get the hang of it. My youtube videos are going to be dropping almost daily with tech reviews because of this app alone .not to mention other apps in the future from major companys .hopefully photoshop drops an app on us. Then garageband could really become a major part of you work flow for recording songs or just a simple riff or drum roll. Like i could hear an old 70's hit and be like "man that bass line is crazy let me repeat it real quick on my ipad 2 before i forget the title of the song " stuff like comes in handy in my everyday life. Plus if fl studios, logic, reason, and ab live drop apps ohh wee.

If Fruity loops studio drops on ipad, ill $&@? My pants..lmfao. I love that app. I already have 2 Korg beat making and studio apps, GrooveMaker and ElectroBeats which is a hot a$$ drum/beat machine. I be on the same stuff bro ;-). My ipad does EVERYTHING!

 

[dmaul1114]

Main reasons I decided to go iPad 2 rather than Xoom were:

1. App store selection. Android isn't going to catch up as long as it remains so fragmented with multiple OS versions out simultaneously, different UIs on different hardware even on the same OS version etc.

2. I don't like that it's wide screen and designed more for landscape use. A big use of a tablet for me will be reading PDFs and other portrait documents. The iPads 4:3 screen ratio and portrait focused design are thus better for my needs.

3. Size. I found the original iPad (my girlfriend has one) a tad too bulky, so I love that the iPad 2 is so much thinner than the iPad 1 or Xoom.

 

[Mtnmedic]

Hi,

This is my first post and I thought I would comment because I am in a very similar dilemma. I have had a quick 5 minute testing session with the Xoom @ Best Buy, and I have used the iPad 1 (32GB Wi-Fi) on many occasions, as my friend's owned one.

Now that iPad 2 is coming out, I want to get into the tablet market myself and I am in the same predicament: iPad 2 or Xoom. I actually have a friend who has the Xoom and bought it on day 1. He already has over clocked it to 1.5 Ghz and rooted the OS. So it seems the high speed potential / control of the tablet is there. He has ran benchmark testing with the OC'ed processor and it is very impressive. I have not used an OC'ed Xoom tablet for the record.

However, with that being said, I personally believe he is taking a major risk over clocking / rooting new technology. I kept getting told: "Oh, you can't download files on the iPad, it doesn't support flash, etc."

Honestly, I don't want my tablet to save the world like my buddy does with his Xoom. I find the "inability to download files" more than likely judgement without evidence. I just want rock solid reliable tech, and honestly Honeycomb / Xoom hasn't proven themselves yet. The iPad has. Now if Xoom 2 is a beast I'll buy a Xoom, but until then, I'm getting an iPad 2 this Friday.

Yep. The point is iPad is now a MATURE product. All of those others out there are just now getting started out the gate after Apple has been around the track at least once with the iPad.

Michael "Spam, spam, bacon, eggs and spam. Hold the bacon and eggs." Sent from my iPad using iPF

 

[Rambler358]

Personally I've enjoyed every minute of the iPad and have already pre-ordered the iPad2.

I'd be curious to know how you already pre-ordered the iPad 2? From everything I've seen, there's no pre-ordering available.

 

[Mtnmedic]

I'd be curious to know how you already pre-ordered the iPad 2? From everything I've seen, there's no pre-ordering available.

Yeah, I'm curious too. Apple controls device releases with an iron fist, no matter WHO sells it.

Michael "Spam, spam, bacon, eggs and spam. Hold the bacon and eggs." Sent from my iPad using iPF