Motorola is really looking to break Apple’s hold on the tablet market. While iPad reigned pretty much unchallenged in 2010, this new year will really test the iPad’s Stay power. With that said, let’s take a look at the technology specification comparison of both products.

Looking strictly at the specs, the iPad is going to have some stiff competition in 2011. With a larger screen, faster display, and flash support only might sway most of the tech savvy and tech geeks, like myself, to move away from apple’s grasp.

Motorola has still not officially dropped a price point or release date for the Xoom, but it looks like BestBuy may have done that for them. A Recent leak pinpointed the Release date, February 17th, as well as the price of $799.99. Verizon also had an information leak regarding the Xoom and their price is set at $699,99. Still a hundred dollars cheaper than BestBuy’s quote it is a pretty steep price for a portable device. The iPad Starts at $629 for the 16GB and up to $829 for the 64GB.

I will give a full hands on update when the product is released and I actually get my hands on one!

3G has been in India for the past several months, but owned by MTNL and BSNL, the PSU duo. Let’s not get into a debate of performance and service they offer!

We’ve had iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS phones in India, much before we had 3G. To some, that may sound astonishing! But that’s the fact. A phone which is supposedly one of the most powerful phones in the Indian market was handicapped over 2G networks!

But does that mean 3G network is just about speed? No. Hence I gave an example of iPhone. The sheer beauty this device has and which makes it a smartphone is the OS and the ability to enhance the device using numerous applications, which range from being available for free to several thousand dollars!

3G technology is more about the experience it brings in, rather than the speed. Speed may just be an enabler. The services, applications, possibilities, emerging devices and reliability is what comes as a bundle.

A few days ago, I got a chance to visit the land of 3G – Japan and experience the 3G and the next generation technologies! Thanks to TATA Docomo for sponsoring the trip! Japan is not only the land of rising sun, but a land where the first commercial 3G was launched! Japan has experienced 3G for a few years already and are shortly moving to the next generation mobile technology called LTE (Long-Term-Evolution) which has far more capabilities and speed!

Let’s check out some of the interesting things we did using the 3G phones we had at our disposal for the entire duration of our stay!

More Videos:

• How about watching and controlling a virtual 3D museum?
• How about accessing your paid lockers at subways?
• You can buy stuff from vending machines!

Apart from these, there was a lot of exciting stuff we did using the 3G technology. For example, the wireless wifi router we had worked seamlessly on 3G and could host as many as 5 devices for over 6 hours!

To summarize, what we experienced was not just about speed, but the experience that 3G shall bring along. Staying in India, where 3G has just hit the shore, I am looking forward to some of the best use of 3G technology on the lines of what I experienced in a 3 day trip to NTT DOCOMO, in Tokyo, Japan

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I thought about getting another PC. But there were three reasons why I didn’t.

1. I wasn’t happy with the errors that I’d consistently get on my PC (including this most recent problem of it only working in “safe mode”).

2. Media Center never did a good job managing my large digital library.

3. I needed to rethink my home media strategy as I didn’t like the idea that Microsoft likes to bone you $60 for each media center extender you play netflix on ($180 a year in my case — and really short-sighted thinking on their part when everybody else lets you watch it on their devices for free).

I’ve been super happy with my other two Macs and find them much easier to use and less error prone than PCs — so I decided to replace my dying Media Center PC with a MacBook Pro and get AppleTV to work as my new Media Center strategy.

So here are the Pros and Cons of this new setup.

Pros:

1. Music worked perfectly right away. My old Media Center extenders (XBox 360s) sometimes would hang for 15 minutes or more before the music would start. Not AppleTV. I simply turned on sharing on my Mac Book Pro and AppleTV effortlessly allowed me to navigate to my 5 star smart playlist and played the music immediately. For some reason none of my album art ever seems to show up, but hey, getting the music going quickly and easily with a library of almost 105,000 mp3s is *huge*. Good job Apple.

Netflix on AppleTV

2. $99 for a media player that streams Netflix for free is a good deal. A Roku would have been cheaper, but I don’t think a Roku necessarily would have played as nicely with my Macs and I wasn’t sure about what music and photos would look like on a Roku. It’s nice also that Apple doesn’t feel the need to charge you a $60 per year tax on their device in order to watch the Netflix content that you are already paying for like Microsoft does.

3. Once you get the photos to actually work (more on this below), the Ken Burns interface is very elegant. There are a lot of interesting transitional effects that can be randomized and used for watching your photos on AppleTV. Also for whatever reason, my photos feel like they look better on AppleTV than they did on Windows Media Center. Cleaner. Crisper. Sharper. Less Noise. I’m not sure if they are being streamed at different resolutions or if this is just in my head, but the photos seem to look better on AppleTV.

4. It’s nice that I can set a default playlist to my slide shows. With my old Media Center PC I had to start up my music. And then go start up my photos. Twice the work. With my new AppleTV I can just start up my photos and have it remember the main playlist that I set up by default (my 5 star playlist).

5. Netflix is super slick. Best Netflix interface I’ve seen yet. Much better than the Netflix interface on the Xbox 360 or the wii. In addition to my queue, it has new releases, suggestions, genres and lots of other ways of elegantly looking up things to watch by the cover art.

6. The kids love YouTube. I didn’t think I’d care much about the YouTube integration, but this is the thing the kids are most excited about and so far have watched the most. My son Jackson really likes watching skateboarding and yoyo videos. There is no shortage of these on YouTube and he loves being able to watch it on the big screen. The kids are already very comfortable with YouTube on the computer, so it was an easy transition for them to the TV. Some of the YouTube videos though wouldn’t load and gave me errors.

7. Movie trailers. It’s nice being able to see all of the movie trailers currently playing in the theater in an easy one page format — this will come in handy when the family is sitting around on Thanksgiving trying to figure out what movie to go see.

8. Design. Both the remote and the unit itself are tiny! I really like that I don’t need yet another big bulky box or big bulky remote control in my living room. Exceptional design from Apple as usual — not only great design, but the device is perfectly silent — unlike the XBox 360 which, although quiet, does make some noise when it operates. I’m guessing that my tiny black AppleTV uses less power than an XBox 360 as well, but have no idea on this really and haven’t looked into the power consumption.

Cons

1. Getting my photos to play was an absolute disaster. There are two ways you can share photos for Apple TV (both go through iTunes). You can either point iTunes to a folder full of photos or you can point iTunes to an iPhoto library. Obviously I have a lot of photos. When I first tried setting it up, I tried pointing iTunes to a master photo folder (all JPGs) of mine with about 30,000 photos in it. When I’d launch photos in AppleTV it would act like it was going to load and I’d get a spinning wheel for about 1 minute and then it would just crap out. Nothing. No error message, no explanation — it just wouldn’t load my photos and would go back to the screen it was on before I’d tried to start.

I then changed my setup and pointed it to a folder with only 5,000 photos. Certainly AppleTV can handle streaming 5,000 photos no? No. I had the same problem here — same behavior — it just refused to load the images. I tried this with both a wifi connection and actually plugging in an ethernet cable into my AppleTV box. Neither one could get my photos to load.

I posted on this problem in an Apple Forum, but the post went unanswered. Apple should offer some sort of disclaimer that unless you are trying to share 20 or 30 photos that pointing directly to a folder on your hard drive might be ill advised — certainly it couldn’t handle folders with 30,000 or 5,000 photos in them.

So I gave up on trying to import my photos from a folder and instead begrudgingly decided to attempt to import some of my photos into iPhoto. There are two ways that you can set up iPhoto. By having it create a “Managed Library” or a “Reference Library.” With a managed library iPhoto actually makes a copy of every single photo of yours and includes it in the library. I started out this way but aborted as my iPhoto library was at 50GB and getting larger and larger and I didn’t want to deal with this sort of a mammoth library file, or the space it was taking up on my hard drive.

I then set up a Reference Library (not copying original files into my library) and was able to get iPhoto to import 5,000 photos (and later another 25,000 photos). Unfortunately these photos don’t appear in your iTunes right away to share. You have to wait several hours *after* the import is complete before iTunes can actually see them in iPhoto. If you want to set up a smaller “reference library” instead of a “managed library” in iPhoto, go to Preferences, Advanced and uncheck the box that says “copy items to the iPhoto library.”

All in all, I spent about 48 hours screwing around with trying to get photos to work in AppleTV before getting 30,000 or so of them accessible. It still isn’t 100% though and performance is still a bit spotty.

After getting photos working on Sunday night, when I tried to see my photo library on Monday morning it had disappeared again. I rebooted my AppleTV, rebooted my Mac, launched iTunes and iPhoto and then in a few hours it showed back up again. I’d have expected more from Apple in this regard.

2. There seems to be no way to fast forward a song while you are watching a photo slideshow. I like that the remote is so small and elegant with just a few buttons. Unfortunately skipping to the next song while watching a slideshow with music is something that I’d like to be able to do (and would seem like pretty basic functionality) and I can’t figure out a way to do this on AppleTV.

My 5 Star list has all kinds of songs in it. Black Flag’s “Rise Above” is definitely a 5 Star for me. But if your 5 Star list is playing during a dinner party, it might be nice to be able to fast forward it to something a little more mellow, like Damien Rice or Peter Gabriel or Neil Diamond or some other such thing. Same goes for that 5 Star Eminem song where he’s swearing his head off and talking about murdering his ex-wife. Sometimes not the best song to play if you’re hanging with the kids in the living room. I can’t believe that there is not a way to fast forward songs while in slide show mode on AppleTV.

3. AppleTV doesn’t have an option to show song information when songs end and start. One of the things that I loved about my Media Center PC, is that I could turn on a feature that would allow song, album, artist, album art thumbnail information to show on the screen for a few seconds when songs started and ended. Sort of like an MTV video. Unfortunately AppleTV doesn’t seem to allow this and if you want to see what song it was that was playing you have to completely abort the photo slideshow to see it.

4. No LastFM or Pandora. AppleTV does have some digital radio stations, but no LastFM or Pandora. That’s too bad as I love both of those services. I’m not sure if this is Apple locking out these two interesting music channels, or if they don’t want to develop for AppleTV. I’d suspect the former. Why is it that I can have Pandora on my Mac, Pandora on my iPhone, even Pandora on an iPad, just not Pandora on an AppleTV? At least my XBox 360s supported LastFM.

5. Some of the prices for digital content feel high. $5 for a movie download? Really Apple? No thanks. It’s cheaper at the Redbox down at the 7/11. $5 is too much to pay for a movie. $.99 is about right for a TV show — but should all TV shows be treated equally? I might pay $.99 for an hour long episode of Mad Men — but for a 22 minute episode of Zack and Luther that the kids want to watch? Children’s programming and programming less than a half hour should be discounted. Or even better, maybe Apple should offer a bulk discount package. 15 hours of TV (regardless of content) for $10 or something like that.

In fairness, maybe this rant ought to be directed more at Apple and iTunes than AppleTV, but since AppleTV locks out all other ala carte content competitors, it seems appropriate for me to mention it here.

6. You must have a TV that has HDMI inputs. A lot of older flat screen TVs don’t. This was not a problem for me in our living room where we have a newer 64″ plasma. But it will be a problem in the bedroom where the old 42″ Pioneer plasma went that doesn’t have an HDMI input. I was able to find this thread about converting component video connections to HDMI, but it feels like a daunting task.

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Apparently Google had no problem lining up A-list hardware partners. Intel is making the chips and Sony making high-def TVs with the Web-savvy software pre-installed. Logitech is even making set-top boxes for those who don’t want to pay up for a new Sony television and Best Buy has agreed to stock the enhanced TVs and Logitech’s boxes.

However, as Rick notes, these partnerships will not succeed unless Google can get the major networks to participate. Google TV aims to change the way we consume TV content.  Instead of passively going along with e broadcast schedules, the platform can search the Web to find previous episodes, clips, and related content that is available to stream right away. It’s easier than TiVo as this approach eliminates the need for any kind of prep work such as loading up a hard drive.

The networks have many reasons to not play along.  They make less money on streaming and Google TV will only take more traffic from the live shows with the ads. The Google approach gives to much power to the people and, of course, Google.  They are going to have to figure out a way to get the networks to play along if they are going to succeed where apple and Microsoft have not.

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Unless you’ve been following Antoine’s advice and been hiding with your wife, kids, and husbands since April, then you’ve probably heard of the iPad. The iPad is the king of the Tablet PCs, and its success has left other companies scrambling to take advantage of this quickly growing market. Google’s Droid platform is being utilized for a whole slew of Tablet PCs, including one that sold out almost immediately at Kmart.

All of the hype leads us to the iPad 2, which according to this article may be coming sooner than you think. Apparently, a reputable newspaper (which predicted the iPad’s initial arrival) has been digging around the various factories in China and believes it has nailed down the various companies manufacturing the iPad 2. In fact, they’ve been able to identify some of the new parts of the new iPad, including the screen which is scaled down to 7 inches from the current 9.7 inches. This move is consistent with the chief complaint of the iPad, i.e. the size, and conforms to what the competition appears to be cooking up. A majority of the announced Tablet PCs appear to be providing screens in the 5 to 7 inch size range.

The next question surrounding the iPad 2 is price. It will be interesting to see what other improvements come with the iPad 2, or if it will simply be a smaller screen iPad. Either way, it will hopefully create a lower priced iPad to compete with the lower prices being offered up by the Tablet PC competition. Run and get that Tablet PC, homeboy.

But, how could the other manufacturers fight back?

Here Toshiba shows a new prototype they are calling the Libretto W100 that has two seven-inch touch screens that could make the netbook more interesting to potential iPad users.

Now, hardware is only 1/8th the battle. The rest is software and there Apple is way ahead, especially if Toshiba is forced to use Microsoft’s Windows, which, even with Windows 7, doesn’t feel as good on touch devices as Apple’s iOS does. Note, too, that for this prototype Toshiba had to custom build a new touch keyboard. But, at least you can see that such a hardware, if matched with Android, or with HP’s touch OS that it bought from Palm, that there’s a future for Japanese manufacturers. I found the idea to be compelling when I saw it, and could see lots of uses for a two-screen touch netbook. I hope they take it further than just a prototype.

Here’s Engadget’s report on the W100 prototype and here’s Gizmodo’s report. Reported pricing is way too high to gain any mass-market share and they need to dump Windows 7 and get a fully-touch-oriented OS to get me interested.

While there I also saw a new 3D laptop, the A665 3D, which has a new kind of screen designed for 3D gaming. I played some games on this and the effect is stunning. Unfortunately it requires special glasses and won’t be for everyone, but if you are a gamer or want to see a 3D movie, this new laptop is stunning. Gizmodo has more info on this laptop from Toshiba.

A few weeks ago I visited with Toshiba, and made this video demo of both models.

Features available on the Toshiba libretto W100 include:

• Dual 7.0-inch diagonal multi-touch displays7 (1024 x 600)
• 6-mode virtual keyboard with haptic response
• Windows® 7 Home Premium operating system
• Intel® Pentium® U5400 processor1 (1.2GHz)
• 2GB DDR3 memory2
• 62GB Solid State Drive3
• 1.0 megapixel HD Webcam with Toshiba Face Recognition
• 802.11 b/g/n wireless4
• Bluetooth 2.1+EDR5
• MicroSD card slot
• One USB 2.0 port
• TOSHIBA Bulletin Board, ReelTime™ and PC Health Monitor software
• 8-cell battery
• 7.95” (W) x 4.84”(D) x 1.2”(H)
• 1.8 lbs.6

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1. Screen quality. iPhone wins, but only slightly over the EVO.

2. Multitasking. All of them do it, but Apple’s system is a LOT easier to figure out and manage. That said, AT&T’s new data plan pricing has left a very bad taste in my mouth. I’m going to have to use the iPhone 4 for a month to see how much data I actually end up using now that I can do things like use Waze for traffic at the same time as playing music on Pandora, or watching live streaming videos from Ustream, etc. The iPhone should be miles ahead here, because of its superior OS, but is only slightly ahead because AT&T is dragging down the experience for me.

3. Battery life. HUGE win for the iPhone 4, which gives up to 40% longer talk times than the 3GS, which is already giving me at least 40% better battery life than the EVO.

4. Application choice and quality. A slight win for iPhone 4. Overall I like apps on the iPhone better and there definitely are more to choose from. 225,000 according to Steve Jobs today. But there are some apps on Android that are better. Google Voice and Google Maps are two of them, which are pretty dramatic. I keep getting complaints from developers about the Apple approval process, too.

5. Feel in pocket. iPhone 4 wins here. It’s thinner and since it’s glass on both sides more pocket compatible.

6. Voice quality. The EVO is a LOT better than the iPhone 3GS, but I wasn’t able to try it out today for a phone call, so we’ll need to wait until June 24th for that.

7. Sexiness. The iPhone 4 wins here big time.

8. Carriers. The iPhone 4 LOSES here big time. AT&T has dead zones where none exist on my routes around the San Francisco Bay Area on Sprint or Verizon.

9. Video and camera. The iPhone wins here by quite a bit. The focusing on the iPhone is better. The quality seems like it is better, but I’ll need to do a head-to-head after June 24th to really know that for sure. The video features are FAR superior on the iPhone, especially the new editing features. I will buy the iPhone for these features alone, so for a video geek like me these are a huge deal. My wife, though, uses the iPhone camera a lot more than I do (I have a pro camera, she doesn’t and she takes a lot of pictures of the kids), so it’ll be interesting to see what she does with this.

10. Video games. The iPhone is already ahead here by a long shot and with its new gyroscope we should see even more apps for the iPhone that are cool and now that Zynga is bringing its games to the iPhone Apple has widened its lead. Yeah, yeah, I’m sure all the haters will remind me it doesn’t play Flash games but, sorry, that train has left the station and isn’t coming back.

11. Tethering. The EVO lets you share your phone as a wifi hotspot and lets other devices use its data plan to get on the Internet. This is wildly cool and how I get my family’s iPads on the Internet when driving in the car. Apple didn’t say a thing about tethering today and I’m hearing rumors that the iPad won’t tether with the new iPhone. So, this is a major feature in the EVO camp. Plus, AT&T’s new data plan restrictions really bug me.

12. Synch and services. Here Android kicks Apple’s ass. The iPhone has to be physically plugged into a computer and connected to iPhone to synch it. With the EVO I never have connected it physically to a computer. I just entered my Gmail address and password and all my contacts, all of my calendar items, all of my email, and all of my applications just showed up. This is a MAJOR advantage to the Android system.

So, will I start using an iPhone again? Yes, but I have the luxury of being able to afford two devices and I’m definitely keeping the EVO if just for the tethering. If I could only afford one? I’d go with iPhone 4 over the EVO. Mostly because the OS is nicer to use (hard to explain all the ways this is so in a short post, so you’ll have to wait for a longer post after I get mine), the video features, and the battery life is dramatically better. But I totally understand why many of you will ignore those advantages because AT&T sucks so much. If voice quality is more important to you than all the toys, the nicer OS, or the video chat, then definitely go for the Sprint or the Verizon.

To the second part of this question. Does Nokia, MIcrosoft, or RIM have a chance to get into the game?

Well, let’s look at the strength’s of each company.

1. Nokia has a ton of market share in low-end markets. That still gives it a powerful voice brand to build off of. Will it matter in the high end game? I don’t think it will, but I’m sure I’ll have lots of Nokia employees telling me why it does.

2. Microsoft has the Xbox and their new phone is coming from the same team. Wired also explained how Microsoft’s Kin and a bunch of services give it a leg into the game. I don’t buy that horseradish, but I can see how many of you will.

3. RIM has the best keyboards and best integration with Microsoft Exchange (still). Corporate IT folks care about both of these. Even Mark Zuckerberg carries a Blackberry to do email on. Until Android matches the keyboard quality RIM is safe. The first Motorola Droid has a dreadful keyboard. Will the next one have a good enough keyboard to let RIM’ers switch? We’ll have to see.

Anyway, Apple is still on top of the mind share mountain and that’s a powerful place, indeed, to be. Look for Apple’s sales and profits to continue to go up. I’m buying three (one for Patrick, one for Maryam, and one for myself).

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It is expected that Apple will be announcing the next gen iPhone around the end of June, and beginning of July. With the next gen iPhone, this provides a good time to make their Verizon partnership announcement. And with AT&T increasing ETF(s) one month before the speculated next-gen iPhone announcement, it appears the perfect storm is brewing.

All this speculation has left consumers very confused. With AT&T raising their ETF(s) in a full weeks time, this could lead to a mass exodus from AT&T. With the speculation of Verizon carrying the iPhone, and AT&T increasing fees even further this could be the prime time for those on the fence to finally jump ship. This of course leaves iPhone users in a pickle.

For those who have had trouble with their service using the iPhone, leaving now might be a gamble worth the trouble. Then again, it might not be. Everything being thrown around the internet is speculation at this point. There’s a good chance AT&T will continue to remain the exclusive carrier of the iPhone. So, if a user decides to leave AT&T then they’re banking on the Verizon rumors to be true. If they turn out to be false, then they’ll be left in a tricky situation.

All of this speculation, and backlash from consumers has both Google and Motorola smiling. For those looking to jump ship, but still want a good smartphone might take to the Android capable smart phones. Consumers won’t entirely be without options if they decide to leave AT&T before the ETF hike, but if they still want an iPhone they’re certainly leaving things to chance.

This situation is a prime example of massive companies not being able to keep things in order. AT&T stands by their statement that the ETF increase has nothing to do with the iPhone going to Verizon; but why time it now? They couldn’t have been oblivious to the fact that making that decision now would lead to wide speculation with the next-gen iPhone coming out soon. Unfortunately, we’ll all be in the dark for quite some time. It’s going to be a long June for some consumers, here’s hoping Apple will have some news in about a month or so.

Before going further it should be noted that this isn’t a Google hatred article. Don’t adopt the notion that Google is using your information for evil purposes. They’re a company which requires information to help keep their business running smoothly, it just so happens your information helps them do just that. Instead, decide on whether GoogleSharing is right for you based on how protective you are of your information. If you’re someone who’s uncomfortable with your information being used for unknown purposes then GoogleSharing is something to look into.

Moxie Marlinspike, an online security expert provides his insight as to what GoogleSharing is all about, “Your intent in using Google is not actually to share information with them. When you’re using Google you’re not actually trying to give them your personal information. You’re just trying to make use of the services.”

If you’ve used services like GoogleSharing before, then you know they can be a hindrance. They tend to take a bit longer to query, and many times, Google will identify it and make you use CAPTCHA before receiving results. This of course sets you back, and many times the hassle isn’t worth hiding over. With GoogleSharing, everything is a bit more streamlined and CAPTCHA isn’t an issue.

For people who put privacy as a top concern when surfing the web, GoogleSharing is an option worth looking into. If you’re someone who doesn’t care what Google does with your information, then you can disregard this article. Either way, it’s always good to be informed about where your information is going, and who’s looking at it.

But what all this means for music is far from clear. The iPad launched without any kind of music in the cloud service, though one appears to be in the planning stages for later this year. The potential for more robust and even interactive music experiences are enhanced with the iPad, but to date iTune’s LP and imitators have shown more promise than fan interest.

Eliot Van Buskirk of Wired’s Epicienter believes that the iPad could boost interactive music. …

He sites the  free Rj Voyager iPad app that “lets you modify the band’s music as if you were a sound engineer or pro DJ. The app heralds a future where users are constantly tweaking and personalizing the music they currently just listen to, and also hints at a world where music apps will adjust to a user’s surroundings through sensors on the device.”

And in a warning that should sound familiar to the heads of major labels, some reviewers are reminding consumers that Apple likes to be in charge of everything that runs on its devices. In this case since all apps require Apple’s approval, the iPad is a closed and even censored eco-system that could inhibit commerce and creativity.

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