Friday, November 18, 2011

A Tablet tour. with emphasis on usefulness and application development using .NET

A couple of years ago Apple released the IPAD. I already had a IPod Touch at that time and bought the IPAD with the idea of developing applications for it. Since then I have picked up a IPhone and two other tablet devices with the idea of developing applications for them. I am primarily a .NET developer so these notes are from a consumer and a .NET developers perspective. Currently I own:

  1. An IPAD 3G.
  2. A W500 WIndows 7 tablet that I run windows 8 on.
  3. A Kindle Fire (I got yesterday).

Although I don't have as much time in with the Fire as I have with the other tablets, here are a few initial notes.

First the IPAD. For a general consumer device this is the one I use the most although the fire may change that. I like the IPAD for the bigger display. I replaced my old Kindle DX's with this because it was backlit. This allowed me to read in bed without another light source. The Fire will now allow that too. I also like the IPAD 3G capabilities. When I travel, it is nice to be able to hook into the internet from virtually anywhere. It was also the most expensive tablet at ~$850. I picked up one of the original AT&T unlimited data accounts for it, so my internet usage is pretty much pegged at $30 a month which makes it very useful. I had considered trying to develop applications for this, but in general I find I can't stand the Apple development environment or Objective C. Jobs was a brilliant man, but he and I differ on what we think makes a good development platform. Give me C# and MonoDevelop or Visual Studio any day.

The W500 I have not owned as long. I bought it specifically to work on WIndows 8 applications. So far I like the expandability of it. Much more capable then my IPAD. I have it hooked into my pico projector through the HDMI port and use it currently for watching movies from my digital libraries on ITunes and Amazon. I also us it for watch netflicks streaming video. I have just bought a Kinect, which I plan to drive using this machine. I will develop software on my Quad Core laptop and then test it on this guy. I primarily plan on using this as a device to test new WIndows 7 and 8 applications and communicate with the my .NET Gadgeteer robots and devices. On the whole I like this tablet, but it is way to heavy and not portable enough to beat out my IPAD for general consumer use. In addition Microsoft really needs to get it act together to compete against Amazon Web Services and the Fire. Azure is not enough.

Finally, we have the Kindle Fire. I picked this up because I have always liked the kindle and it is hard to beat the price. At $200 it is the cheapest tablet I own. I do wish the screen were bigger and will upgrade when the larger 10” screen comes out. I also believe that until Microsoft gets it together these are going to be the primary competitor to the IPAD because of the content available. I want to start developing for it using either C# (through MonoDroid) or Java. I think this particular device with it's size connectivity make it a good candidate for a device you can easily carry around. I can see using it as a mobile device for controlling home automation and other things through some gadgeeter devices. In addition by utilizing amazon's cloud services and the amazon appstore I think there are going to be a number of enterprise level applications made available for this tablet.

All in all from a consumer perspective I still like the IPAD. From a developer perspective I like the W500 and think the Fire will be a close second. Once I get more familiar with the Fire it may be the new winner across the board.