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Thanks to Apple and the iPad, tablets are all the rage. Android-powered devices look to be most viable com­peti­tor to the iPad. Motorola recently released the Xoom tablet, fea­tur­ing Android’s new Hon­ey­comb oper­at­ing sys­tem, which is opti­mized for tablets. From what I’ve been able to gather, the Xoom sales have not been as robust as Motorola had expected. This is purely con­jec­ture on my part, but I think some people’s ret­i­cence about pick­ing up the Xoom is because it seems too complicated.

That may not be the case, but per­cep­tion is key — par­tic­u­larly in con­sumer elec­tron­ics. It used to rub me the wrong way when peo­ple would take shots at Apple prod­ucts being “dumbed down” for con­sumers. The more that I try to tweak my Android-powered Droid X smart­phone, the more I appre­ci­ate some­thing that doesn’t require me to learn or deci­pher code. Most peo­ple, includ­ing a lot of very smart peo­ple, don’t want to pro­gram or fid­dle with their com­put­ers or smart­phones. The vast major­ity of peo­ple want to sim­ply turn on the device and have it per­form as needed/expected. I think Google needs to bet­ter address this with Android devices, because it’s becom­ing per­ceived as a prod­uct for com­puter nerds. And that’s actu­ally prob­a­bly being unfair to nerds, which I con­sider myself. While I appre­ci­ate being able to per­son­al­ize my device, I don’t want to sac­ri­fice con­sis­tent performance.

As we move to rely­ing even more on mobile devices such as smart­phones and tablets (I absolutely refuse to say “post-PC”) a rock solid user inter­face (UI) is para­mount. It is crit­i­cal because peo­ple on the move need things to be easy to nav­i­gate and use.

Don’t take this yarn as an indict­ment of Android. I’ve been tough on Google for its han­dling of the Android OS lately, but I’m still a fan. On top of seam­less inte­gra­tion with Google ser­vices, one of the best fea­tures built into Android is the abil­ity to use cus­tomiz­able wid­gets. Aside from the turn-by-turn nav­i­ga­tion, app wid­gets are prob­a­bly what most my friends with iPhones com­ment on as an envi­able fea­ture on my Droid X.

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Irre­spec­tive of Steve Jobs com­ment about Hum­mer phones, it appears that users do like a smart­phone with a screen a lit­tle big­ger than the iPhone’s beau­ti­ful crisp, but small­ish 3.5″ dis­play. Since the release of the EVO, larger screens on smart­phones have gained trac­tion. It looks like a 4″ screen is the sweet spot between the iPhone 3.5″ screen and the EVO and Droid X 4.3″ screens. It remains to be seen whether this “more is more” car­ries over with tablets. The near 10″ of the iPad and Xoom would seem to be pre­ferred for peo­ple look­ing to dif­fer­en­ti­ate a tablet from a smart­phone or laptop/netbook. I think the addi­tional screen real estate of a tablet is par­tic­u­larly attrac­tive to devel­op­ers, now opti­miz­ing apps for the larger tablet screens. I’m left to won­der of the Flyer and orig­i­nal Galaxy Tab, with 7″ screens will be viable. I can see them being pop­u­lar from a con­ve­nience stand­point (porta­bil­ity), but they may not be the best for view­ing the new optimized-for-tablet apps. I guess time will tell. I don’t think there nec­es­sar­ily has to be a stan­dard for tablet screen sizes, but the design of the apps may dic­tate a min­i­mum, func­tional size.

Based on what I’ve seen of the Motorola Xoom — I have yet to get some hands-on time with one — the wid­gets look inter­est­ing. How­ever, the wid­gets look too small to me on that large screen. I am not sure if the wid­gets are expand­able like they are on Motorola Android smart­phones, but hav­ing a tiny cal­en­dar wid­get that I can scroll through serves no pur­pose if I can’t make out the tiny font.

To that end, I came across this video for a soon-to-be-released tablet by HTC, called the Flyer. I’ve seen pre­views and men­tions in blogs, but after watch­ing this longer walk-trhugh, I am intrigued. HTC, arguably, has the best Android user inter­face over­lay — Sense UI. This video does a good job demon­strat­ing the fea­tures that, in my esti­ma­tion, make the Flyer more appeal­ing to con­sumers than the Xoom. The wid­gets look large and usable.

From what I under­stand, the HTC Flyer will debut with Android 2.4, bet­ter known as Gin­ger­bread. There’s no word from HTC on when the Flyer will upgrade to Hon­ey­comb, but I sus­pect that it may be a while, given that the UI on Hon­ey­comb is some­what of a depar­ture from Gin­ger­bread and Froyo ver­sions of the Android OS. Given what HTC has been able to do with putting UI skins on both Win­dow and Android, I wouldn’t be sur­prised if they pull out a slick update for tablet-specific ver­sions of Android.

I guess that gets me back to the under­ly­ing point about the user expe­ri­ence. As you may have gleaned from this post, I am torn. I have come around to appre­ci­at­ing the mer­its of Apple’s so-called walled off ecosys­tem. If only from a design per­spec­tive, Apple has done a ter­rific job cre­at­ing a fam­ily of devices that all feel famil­iar. There’s some­thing to be said about being able to move from one Apple device to another will no real learn­ing curve. Things tend to be in the same place, and func­tion on the iPad, as the would on the iPhone, as they would on the Mac­Book Pro or iMac. The flip side of that, how­ever, is that it’s homoge­nous. There’s no diver­sity of look and feel. I can­not dif­fer­en­ti­ate my iPad from yours, other than the cover and wall­pa­per image. Whereas, on Android devices, users can cre­ate, essen­tially, a com­pletely unique inter­face. I can use dif­fer­ent wid­gets, or even a cus­tom ROM on my Droid X that reflects exactly who I am and how I use my smart­phone. It’s not purely cos­metic. The catch is that once you drop below the sur­face of third-party launch­ers, you have to root or loosely repro­gram your phone to take advan­tage of a lot of cool changes. I’ve done it, but have become fatigued with hav­ing to run to a forum to fig­ure out some glitch.

This sleuthing may be okay with a smart­phone I picked up for $100–200; but when I’m look­ing at drop­ping $500–700 on a tablet, my inter­est or will­ing­ness to lift the hood and tin­ker dimin­ishes almost imme­di­ately. For instance, I had a sim­i­lar feel­ing with my iMac recently. I had some prob­lems with the iMac shut­ting down. There were plenty of forum threads sug­gest­ing that I pull out screw dri­vers and install dodgy diag­nos­tic soft­ware. Con­sid­er­ing the coin that I dropped for that iMac, my sense of adven­ture was reduced to mak­ing an appoint­ment with the “Geniuses” at the Apple store. I think this resis­tance to tin­ker and cus­tomize doesn’t make peo­ple less intel­li­gent. Most peo­ple are busy and sim­ply don’t have the inter­est in spend­ing sig­nif­i­cant chunks of time soupin’ up their tablet. That’s why The Gap sells more clothes than a tai­lor shop.

I don’t know. I don’t think it’s fair to say that I’ve already gone to the Dark Side of Apple zealotry. If noth­ing else, I think that I just see things a lit­tle more clearly now. Apple is by no means per­fect. The line at the ser­vice area…ahem Genius Bar…confirms the fal­li­bil­ity of Apple prod­ucts. But, 100% uptime is not the point. It’s about under­stand­ing your user. Apple seems to get the basic needs of peo­ple buy­ing its prod­uct. The thing with Android-based prod­ucts is that we are being pitched a some­what schiz­o­phrenic expe­ri­ence. The stock Android expe­ri­ence is loaded with fea­tures, but comes across as a lit­tle too cold and techie for most peo­ple. It seems that HTC gets that, and puts a attrac­tive facade on that sturdy Android foun­da­tion. Is one nec­es­sar­ily bet­ter than the other. Instinc­tively I say no. How­ever, when think­ing about the “aver­age” user [non pejo­ra­tive], I think if Google hopes for Android to be a com­pelling alter­na­tive to Apple, it has to give con­sid­er­able atten­tion to the user inter­face. It feels like Google is enam­ored with mak­ing stock Android the Craigslist of oper­at­ing sys­tems — highly effi­cient, but ugly and/or bor­ing as hell. No frills has its place, I just don’t think it’s on a device like a tablet or smartphone.

Thanks for bear­ing with me. This post didn’t really travel the same path that I started on yes­ter­day when I began typ­ing. That’s actu­ally some­thing I love about writ­ing. Nev­er­the­less, I hope that I made a point in here somewhere.