Kindle Fire HD 8.9 vs. iPad 3: Is the Apple Experience really worth $200?

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/135646-kindle-fire-hd-8-9-vs-ipad-3-is-the-apple-experience-really-worth-200

by evo_9 • 14 years ago

45 66 14 years ago

mtgx• 14 years ago

Amazon is going to commoditize the entire tablet market, simply because they don't care about making profits on hardware, while everyone else, including Apple, does.

Microsoft is going to feel this as well, as manufacturers won't be very happy selling $200-$300 tablets with $100 ($200 for enterprise versions) Windows licenses. The tablet market is going to be commoditezed so much faster than the PC market. Hopefully, Amazon launches a smartphone with a similar strategy as well.

Intel will invariably be hurt by this, too, as people move to much cheaper, yet capable devices. Even if they succeed entering the tablet market with their Atom chips, they'll be be forced to have very competitive prices with ARM chips. So instead of selling $200 chips for ultrabooks and PC's, they'll be selling $20 chips. There's no way they can make it up in volume to keep or increase their current revenues and profits.

enraged_camel• 14 years ago

I've always been of the opinion that while cheaper prices are good for consumers, commoditization is not. When products in a field become commoditized, profit margins fall drastically, and so do companies' incentives to innovate in that space. Think about it: when was the last time we saw a totally innovative toothpaste or a laundry detergent? The answer is never.

takluyver2• 14 years ago

To play devil's advocate, how much innovation is needed for toothpaste? It works, it's safe, and it's not unpleasant to use. Maybe consumers benefit more from having cheap commoditised toothpaste than they would from paying extra to stimulate innovation.

Too• 14 years ago

Interesting that you bring up toothbrushes. Actually some company spent tons of money and time to come up with THE ULTIMATE shape for a toothbrush. They tried all different shapes, twists, angles and grips. The result? Simple straight toothbrushes are the most ergonomic and effective shapes.

cooldeal2• 14 years ago

>Microsoft is going to feel this as well, as manufacturers won't be very happy selling $200-$300 tablets with $100 ($200 for enterprise versions) Windows licenses.

That does not make any sense. If you think Windows 8 Pro x86 tablets like the Surface Pro(running an Intel Core i5) are competing with the Kindles on features and price, think again. They will be expensive, but far more capable and powerful(heavier and less battery life too). For example, they can run the full Visual Studio or Eclipse.

You can take a Surface Pro and a Kindle Fire with you, run Eclipse with the Android SDK loaded, connect the Kindle Fire to the Surface and take the program you just wrote on the Surface and run it on the Kindle! Or write your code while on a roadtrip or on the subway and debug it on your Android or Windows phone(don't know how Hackintosh it can get for running apps on the iPhone).

Can you do that with a Kindle, iPad or any other tablet on the market right now, which are used by most people as consumption devices?

Where Microsoft is competing with the Kindle, Android tablets and the iPad is with Windows RT, which is a different beast(and costs less than $100 for OEMs + they are rumored to get kickbacks on ecosystem sales). The only big advantage Microsoft has right now in this space is Office RT.

randallu• 14 years ago

You can't do it on a tablet right now, but it's a software problem, not a hardware one.

The Galaxy Note 10.1 ships with 2GB RAM and a good SoC. It's more powerful in every way than the PC I was using 5 years ago to write media player UIs.

I don't know when we'll start seeing things like Eclipse running on Android tablets, or if instead app development will trend to HTML and we'll see web-based tooling around that, but I do think that it is on the cards.

I also can't imagine that the Surface tablets (ARM or x86) are going to sell well at all. Not as good as an iPad for tablet things, not as good as a laptop for Office things.

larsberg• 14 years ago

> but far more capable and powerful

Also, since they're full versions of Windows, they should just be able to access Hulu, Evernote, and all the other services that expect you to pay extra if you choose to use them on an anemic mobile device.

greedo7• 14 years ago

And Amazon will always trail in terms of innovation, because selling things at a loss doesn't give you much room to spend on R&D.

And your view of history is skewed; IBM released the PC (5150) in 1981. Compaq shipped the first compatible in 1982, and by 1985 the PC market was thoroughly commoditized.

Jump to the iPad's release in 2010. It's been 2 1/2 years, and still no signs of the tablet market being commoditized. It's still an iPad market, and not a tablet market.

jerf3• 14 years ago

Innovation doesn't run forever. What's left to innovate on a tablet's hardware? Non-zero, but it's not like next year Apple's going to equip them with little robotic arms and legs or anything. There's more room for innovation in the laptop market, and that's a market that hasn't been driven by very much "innovation" for a long time.

Innovation isn't a magic word you can just wave around like a mantra, it has to concretize into something real if it's going to have any effect. There is, quite literally, not much room left for tablet innovation.

ido• 14 years ago

It did take it quite a while to get really cheap tho - I remember reading a PC magazine article in the late 90s declaring the arrival of the till-then mythical "$1000 PC" era - computers used to cost $2-3k, and these are USDs of 2-3 decades ago (probably worth double in today's dollars). if you spend $1k on a pc desktop today you'll get absolute top of the line hardware, even $500 will get you a solid mid-range desktop.

only in the last ~5 years with the arrival of netbooks did we start seeing PCs get really, really cheap.

Steko3• 14 years ago

"they don't care about making profits on hardware, while everyone else, including Apple, does."

(1) Amazon has turned a profit on all of their hardware afaik. They may change their mind as they go for a landgrab but to say they don't care is not exactly true.

(2) You can make the same argument that Google and Microsoft don't care about making money on hardware. You can say "but Google and Microsoft rely on third parties" which is historically the case but less so today.

(3) Amazon cuts corners to get to a shock price. If the tablet is "not good enough" as they say then you can't commoditize it yet because the latest specs are worthy of chasing.

(3a) Amazon's high end machine in two and a half months has a SoC that's graphically comparable to what Apple started shipping in March 2011 [1].

(3b) The original Kindle Fire advertised 8 hours of btty life and delivered 6 hours [2]. KF HD doesn't even advertise one that I've seen. If it's 6 hours that's basically unusable for most people. The iPad doesn't last 10 hours because it's a convenient amount of batteries to put in a case of predetermined size. It lasts 10 hours because that's the minimum use case they determined for much of the market (students, professionals, readers, travelers) and things like the thickness of the ipad were driven by the amount of batteries you needed to get to 10 hours.

[1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/6158/the-archos-101-xs-review/...

[2] http://www.anandtech.com/show/5128/amazon-kindle-fire-review...

binarycrusader• 14 years ago

No, that's why I bought a Google Nexus 7.

And unlike the Nexus or the iPad, Amazon's devices (well, at least the Kindle Fire) now comes with ads on the home screen and lock screen by default:

  http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/09/all-kindle-fires-sold-to-us-customers-will-have-home-screen-ads/

It's unclear yet how consumers will be able to opt out of those (that is, whether it's a simple setting or fee-based).

Nerdfest• 14 years ago

For me, I'd rather be forced to have ads on a lock-screen than be locked into the Apple 'eco-system', where I have no say on what I'm allowed to install.

dbecker3• 14 years ago

I think reviewers overemphasize trivial differences in product dimensions just because those things are easy to measure.

They talk about the Fire being thinner, as if a 0.6mm difference in thickness is going to make one tablet easier to hold.

I also doubt many users care much about a 2.5 ounce weight difference.

Price matters a lot to potential buyers. After that, it's just a question of whether using the tablet feels pleasant or frustrating.

The dimensions fetish seems to cut across reviews of all sorts of consumer electronics.

mrsebastian• 14 years ago

For me, the iPad is uncomfortably heavy at times -- especially if I try to hold it in one hand.

I mean, yes, it seems like splitting hairs -- but at some point, a device goes from being 'heavy' to 'light'. Same with thickness -- at some point a device stops feeling 'chunky' and becomes 'lithe'. I just don't know where those thresholds are :) (but I'm sure that industrial designers put a lot of thought into it).

dbecker3• 14 years ago

I think it's a spectrum rather than a threshold. If one device was half as thick as another, you'd clearly notice that.

But it's hard to believe there's going to be a major change in user experience with a half millimeter decrease in thickness.

r00fus• 14 years ago

This is no fetish.

At some point, a threshold is crossed where a device becomes uncomfortable to hold and interface with. This threshold is different for every situation, but there is a sweet spot where most people think it's easy to interface with (which is why desktop mice are only so small and so big). Many folks think an iPad is fine for reading books, while others require a Kindle, and yet others eschew anything but paperback books.

Weight, dimensions and feel are part of the usability. If you think UX is a fetish, you're ignoring how Apple got to be the biggest market cap company in the world.

dbecker3• 14 years ago

I think you are missing my point. Apple got the biggest market cap in the world by making products that are a joy to USE. A reviewers who writes about measurements from his caliper isn't describing UX at all. In fact, those measurements seem to distract the reviewer from describing the whole experience of using the product.

Look at the problems discussed at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/kindle-fire-usability.html

They mention dimensions in the context of how it feels to use the product... rather than the more common review which places dimensions ahead of the experience.

jpxxx• 14 years ago

Mass does matter with this type of product - they're engineered at the gram level. Ounces are relatively immense.

illumin8• 14 years ago

This comparison fails to acknowledge that part of the cost of the new Kindle Fire HD is mandatory ads on the unlock screen and the home screen, which can't be disabled. You can also safely assume that Amazon is closely tracking your usage and selling your demographics to advertisers.

In this case, Amazon is taking a risk by selling the Kindle Fire HD at or close to cost, and hoping to make it up in advertising revenue. This is the Google model in action.

Personally, my privacy is worth a little more than $200 to me, so no thanks. Not to mention that the iPad 3 still has a larger screen and several hundred thousand more apps, which is really difficult to put a price on.

sciwiz• 14 years ago

"which can't be disabled"

Looks like they can be opted out of.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/07/amazon-confirms-yes-you-c...

kfir• 14 years ago

From the URL you posted - "Amazon's support has since confirmed to an Engadget reader that the option to remove the ads will be "announced soon." Although full details aren't forthcoming"

In other words until the feature is announced you can NOT disable the ads.

rogerchucker2• 14 years ago

Is your privacy risk through these particular ads really worth $200? In other words, do you think your information would add $200 to the bottomline of Amazon (or whoever is placing those ads)?

awakeasleep• 14 years ago

You can't relate the privacy risk to 'those particular ads'.

The advertisement you see doesn't mean anything- the risk comes through complete usage gathered by the advertising networks who bought the ad, and then resold to partners and affiliates.

The risk some of us worry about is that a data tsunami will eventually push total awareness of device users to a hostile government or facet of organized crime.

And while you would have worse things to worry about if the NSA or Google are compromised, there are millions of advertising affiliates and companies that share information and go bankrupt, which makes this concern a plausible fear in my mind

Steko3• 14 years ago

Amazon charges about $40-$50 for the no ad versions of some gear so let's say ads are worth that much to them. Ads that show up on lockscreen of a low battery tablet might be more of a nuisance then those on a kindle where the battery lasts weeks however.

Let's also not pretend price and ads are the only difference:

iPad "3": better screen, bigger screen, better SoC, better apps, better battery life, actually on sale at the moment.

yajoe2• 14 years ago

The KSO-enabled LCD tablets are following the same playbook as KSO-enabled e-Ink devices. Just as you can opt-out of e-Ink, you will be able to opt-out of LCD. The difference is we've found the vast majority of customers don't value opt-out, and so the option will be less prominent than before (in MYK or by calling CS).

Remember, the principle is to be the best tablet at any price -- so you will be able to protect your "privacy" for less than $200.

I put "privacy" in quotes because the ads don't actually track you or your usage. Doing so is the wrong thing and would jeopardize people using the tablets. The ads simply show up on the lockscreen and we record impressions. It's a pretty interesting ad product, and Amazon has put a lot of steps in place to protect customers.

greenmountin2• 14 years ago

I'm glad the zines are enjoying writing about this $200 difference. I'm sure they won't mind writing about how it disappeared when the mini is finally launched. Apple can charge whatever it wants for the new ipad until the HD ships, and then $(PriceHD) + $50 indefinitely.

Not to mention, there are already hands-on reviews rolling in about how laggy the new kindles are.

css771• 14 years ago

Link to some of these reviews?

greenmountin2• 14 years ago

http://gizmodo.com/5941095/kindle-fire-hd-hands-on-pretty-im...

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/06/tech/gaming-gadgets/kindle-dem...

http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/06/hands-on-and-initial...

jjtheblunt• 14 years ago

Yes, it is.

jksmith• 14 years ago

Sure as hell isn't worth it for Ipad2, IMO. I have both, and actually like the Fire much better. Love my old Macbook Pro, but I didn't drink the coolaid on for the ipad. Now when I fly, the ipad stays home, and my Fire goes with me, neatly tucked inside one of the cargo pockets on my shorts.

The larger issue is though, if Apple is first to market, then they charge typical Apple premium prices. So it doesn't make any difference whether you're buying an Ipad2, 3, or whatever. Just be patient and wait for some other pad to come out which is generally just as functional, but will usually always be cheaper.

gothy• 14 years ago

I guess it is. Not for everybody though.

I've played a bit with the initial Fire tablet and I was really surprised with overall UX. Some Chinese "noname" tablets felt like a better option than "this".

Apple has really high standards in producing their products and user experience from store to watching a movie on iPad. Amazon is good at providing services, but they fail at the overall UX. Maybe that's going to change, maybe HD 8.9 is a huge step forward(i just don't know yet). But for me, the overall experience really matter much more than a price badge on a box. IMHO.

Alcedes• 14 years ago

When did 8.9 = 9.7? Is the writer using republican arithmatic? And the answer is yes, it's worth 200 more for the apps alone. The nexus 7 hardware is nice, android tablet apps are horrible. But then again, if all you knew was android then it would be OK.

gjm11• 14 years ago

Downvoted for "republican arithmetic". (I very strongly dislike the Republican Party and what it has come to stand for over the last few decades, but the world has enough political arguments already without injecting them into technical discussions like this one.)

rogerchucker2• 14 years ago

If I am able to produce much more content on iPad compared to the Kindle Fire HD, then I would answer "yes".

cek• 14 years ago

This is really about asymmetric competition. @asymco does a great job analyzing this; that Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, while competitors have fundamentally different business models.

Even if these companies had similar business models to Apple, they would be insane to try to complete with Apple on Apple's terms. This is why Microsoft is not really becoming a hardware company[1] and why Amazon is focusing on 'services' (what I call 'experiences')[2].

[1] http://ceklog.kindel.com/2012/07/25/a-mouse-and-keyboard-don...

[2] http://ceklog.kindel.com/2012/06/07/wanna-compete-with-apple...

cloudwalking• 14 years ago

This has always bothered me: What use are stereo speakers, when the speakers are closer together than your ears?

The same feature is advertised on a lot of phones too, and I just don't get it. Who cares if two speakers half an inch apart are stereo, they're so close together they're always going to sound mono anyways.

berdon• 14 years ago

I'm pretty sure our mind is capable of, subconsciously, differentiating between two noises a few inches apart.

MattRogish• 14 years ago

Perhaps. I haven't been able to find any articles on stereo separation / minimum distances but the generally accepted criteria (and you can test this at home with a hi-fi) is that you and the L/R speakers should form an equilateral triangle for "best sound". (see http://www.linkwitzlab.com/accurate%20stereo%20performance.h...)

Anyway, I agree with the OP that stereo speakers in a device so small, situated so far away from you, is likely not to produce much of the intended effect, unless the intention is featuritis.

officemonkey2• 14 years ago

I enjoy how the author takes the iPad (which has been out since March) and the Kindle Fire (which hasn't been released yet) and manages to equate them completely devoid of context.

Here are some things to consider:

1. One of the form factors touted around for the iPad mini is the 8.9 inch form factor. No one expects the iPad mini to be the same price as the iPad 3. So that $200 difference may be a temporary advantage.

2. The iPad/iPhone app store has been around since 2008. Folks who have purchased an iPhone and an iPad may have sunk substantial money into buying apps. That "sunk cost" is just another hurdle any other tablet maker is going to have to beat.

3. People talk about how Amazon and Google are "giving away the razor and selling razor blades" and Apple is in the hardware business. That's quite simply BS. Apple gets 30% of the gross from the App store, including in-app purchases. Those 99 cent Angry Birds downloads add up. The app store may not have been a big profit center in 2009, but we're not in 2009 anymore.

4. Frankly, I'm excited that Google and Amazon are bringing competition to the iPad-dominated tablet market. Competition means better prices and better services. However, I'm not calling a winner to this round until we see what Apple has up its sleeve.

lelandbatey• 14 years ago

Hey, I see you mention the iPad mini. I've heard nothing about this, and I thought it was a rumor. Brief internet searches are very unclear, and a lot of the info seems circular. Could you post the main source for the iPad mini information?

officemonkey2• 14 years ago

I'm surprised you've heard nothing about this. Apparently you don't read "Daring Fireball." These two articles are vague but well-sourced:

* http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-03/here-comes-nexus-7-... * http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230414120457750...

Apple is rumored to be revealing a smaller iPad tablet during an event this October. Most people are calling it the iPad mini. I'm calling it the reason I haven't bought a Google Nexus 7.

k-mcgrady• 14 years ago

>> "3. People talk about how Amazon and Google are "giving away the razor and selling razor blades" and Apple is in the hardware business. That's quite simply BS. Apple gets 30% of the gross from the App store, including in-app purchases. Those 99 cent Angry Birds downloads add up. The app store may not have been a big profit center in 2009, but we're not in 2009 anymore."

Apple has paid developers a total over $4bn as of June this year. That's nothing for them compared to what they make on hardware.

danilocampos• 14 years ago

Agreed on the bulk of your points, however:

As a percentage of revenue, Apple makes less from the iTunes Store today than they did six years ago. They operate it close to break-even as a means of selling more hardware.

http://i-cdn.phonearena.com/images/articles/63878-image/Appl...

Running the store means:

- Employing god knows how many app reviewers

- Employing dev relations, marketing, design and other support roles

- Paying for credit card transaction fees

- Maintaining server infrastructure at extraordinary scale with ridiculous uptime requirements

None of this is cheap. And none of the resulting revenue, in the hundreds of millions, comes anywhere close to the juice of hardware revenue, in the tens of billions.

adaml_623• 14 years ago

With a device lifetime of say 1.5 years you could turn that $200 into $0.50 per day.

I'd definitely pay that for technology that didn't annoy me.

(Disclaimer: most technology annoys me but that's because of the lack of flying cars, etc and me being generally cantankerous)

droob• 14 years ago

Any review that includes a spec comparison matrix loses a lot of its credibility, in my book.

Legion• 14 years ago

What this tells me - and it's what I expected even as I put down the money for the iPad 3 - is that in a couple of years, hi-dpi screens will be a stock feature even on the cheapest commodity tablet.

That's an amazing thing, if you ask me. Hi-dpi screens are a benchmark feature that made me a heavy mobile device user. Web browsing on a phone was not very appealing, and then comes the "Retina" display on the iPhone 4, and bam, I'm an Apple customer.

I got an iPad 1 as a gift, and I ended up using it for reading a lot more than I expected, which just had me itching for the day a "Retina" display landed in an iPad. Got the iPad 3 recently and love it to bits, much more for that screen quality than anything in the iOS ecosystem.

Hi-dpi is what finally killed print media fully for me. I have no use for print books or magazines. I have an old-ish Kindle e-ink reader and the iPad 3, and the two of them combined weigh less than a single hearty book in my book bag. I look forward to the day when people unwilling or unable to pay the Apple premium for devices can enjoy the same screen quality. Ubiquitous hi-dpi tablets is the coolest next high watermark in consumer computing IMO.

Steko3• 14 years ago

"with the iPad 3 possibly having a slight edge on graphics performance"

Here's how the OMAP 4470 actually compares to the A5X in the iPad "3":

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6158/the-archos-101-xs-review/...

tl;dc: beaten by iPad 2 on many benchmarks. A5X >> A5 >= OMAP 4470 > Tegra 3

achompas• 14 years ago

This article wears its bias on its sleeve:

Really, when we boil it all down, the main thing the iPad has going for it is the Apple Experience — and is that worth $200?

For existing tablet owners (most of which are iPad owners), it’s hard to say; they’ve already bought into the app ecosystem, filled up their iCloud, and sipped the Jobsian Kool-Aid.

I have no horse in this tablet race (waiting for an iPad mini announcement to choose a 7-8" tablet, and switching from an iPhone to a Nexus phone), but we know nothing about the Fire HD 8.9. The comparison table in this article says "Unknown" for battery life and the screen comparison includes the words "early reports suggest." Whoa, giving Consumer Reports a run for their money!!

I won't compare the app stores (Android is rapidly catching up, with release for Instagram, Instapaper, and more and more games, while iOS still wins on volume), but this is a crazy comparison. Comparing a tablet that hasn't released yet to one that is 7 months old? Aren't there better things to write about?

greedo7• 14 years ago

Let's wait until the hardware is shipped before we compare this to much with stuff you can purchase today. It's easy to "Surface" with a new product and tout it as the best thing since sliced bread.

But all the sites that depend on linkbaiting will have a field day for a few weeks.

Kindle Fire HD 8.9 vs. iPad 3: Is the Apple Experience really worth $200?

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