Asus Has a 'Secret Weapon' Against iPad 2
Asustek chairman Jonney Shih said the company has a "secret weapon." Should we be scared?
In a recent interview with the IDG News Service, Asustek Computer chairman Jonney Shih talked about how the company will face the next generation Apple tablet, indicating that Asus will reveal a "secret weapon" when the time is just right. Naturally, he wouldn't divulge any extra information.
The interview started with a bang by asking Shih about the current crop of tablets-- including the four launched by Asus-- arriving before Apple releases the iPad 2. Will the new iPad make its competition look obsolete? Shih doesn't seem to think so.
"We already know some of the details of that device, such as what kind of processor they chose," he said. "We very carefully chose our tablet processor, the Nvidia Tegra 2, and to really compete it will take [Apple] some time. You know, [Nvidia] is well known for graphics."
He then revealed that the company has something in store for consumers, something that can't be revealed until shortly before its launch. "We will try to provide a "secret weapon," something we have not shown at this time but closer to the launch time we will show," he said, adding that he couldn't say whether it would be a tablet, a component, or anything else Asus is known to manufacture.
"You will have to wait until the launch," the teased.
Moving on, he admitted that 2011 would be a "booming time" for cloud-based mobile computing, bringing consumers into the next stage of the computing revolution. He pointed out that it won't be ruled by one operating system, but rather a few that should provide a proper balance between web-based applications and those installed locally on the hardware.
"You need to do a lot of work on the UI [user interface] and 2D and 3D graphics, and true typing and multitasking is important because sometimes you are doing a lot of things through the cloud," he said. "When you talk about multitasking in the cloud, you also have to think about battery power and that's where I think you have to decide what should be in personal computing and what should be in cloud computing. If Chrome tries not to rush too much to put everything on the Web, then it will be OK. Look at Apple, they put some things on the Web such as iTunes, and other things on the computer, and they are making a good mix. You have to think about the best balance between personal computing and cloud computing."
So what trends will fail in 2011? Shih said that the current state of 3D on HDTVs-- which require special glasses to view the effect-- will probably not prevail. "Maybe it's possible in smaller devices and without wearing glasses," he said.
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Well if you can play Crysis 2 on the little tegra 2, then that'll be a good secret weapon against the iPad 2.
I thought that would have been the EeeSlate, with corei5 qm processor (dualcore at 1,3Ghz,1,8Ghz turbo),2gig ram, and 32GB SSD.
Anyway, haven't seen any links from toms yet.
http://promos.asus.com/US/ASUS_EeeSlate/index.htm
Needs to be made from glass and Aluminium in order to even get noticed. Seriously.
Then make it functional - nobody trusts the cloud yet, so give us USB and SD slots and make it about 10" in size.
Match everything the iPad has, improve upon it and then undercut the price.
Shiny will draw the general consumer's attention, genuine functionality will draw everybody else, and then a respectable and honest (doesn't have to be cheap) price tag will get sales.
Asus knows how to be cool.
That's neat
ASUS gets my vote... none of this apple BS that gets replaced every five minutes because they "forgot" to iron out some of the previous bugs.
asus is good at what it does. probably he does have something secret.
Give us at least 720p resolution with Super AMOLED-2. That will definitely blow iPad2 or even iPad3... out the window.
why? why must vendors insist on implementing or even talking about 3d? 3d is nothing more than a marketing tool for the masses... it has failed and will fail again(consumer level stereoscopic 3d has been around since 98' on pc's) keep improving resolutions beyond 1080, 3d isn't something people want to see in the living room 24/7...
why? why must vendors insist on implementing or even talking about 3d? 3d is nothing more than a marketing tool for the masses... it has failed and will fail again(consumer level stereoscopic 3d has been around since 98' on pc's) keep improving resolutions beyond 1080, 3d isn't something people want to see in the living room 24/7...
3D is the latest buzzword. Everyone has to cash in on it. Yesterday it was Titanium, today it's 3d. Hell, I saw "3d whitening toothpaste" at Walmart today... wtf?
I need to run multiple OS environments on my mobility computing device. Singular device please. XPpro, Win7pro, IOS, Solaris. Such a tablet would have me squeeling with twitterpated glee
I need to run multiple OS environments on my mobility computing device. Singular device please. XPpro, Win7pro, IOS, Solaris. Such a tablet would have me squeeling with twitterpated glee
iOS on anything other than an Apple device? I'd like to see that. Let alone multi-boot lol.. Isnt that something note/netbooks are for?
Also win7pro on a tablet is asking for failure... Unless you tweak the hell out of it to optimize the power/processor usage. My 8" eeePc struggled with win7..
Hey Kevin, how many times did you want to write Shit instead of Shih? ;-)
Jooney Shit. Asus Shit. :-D
I need to run multiple OS environments on my mobility computing device. Singular device please. XPpro, Win7pro, IOS, Solaris. Such a tablet would have me squeeling with twitterpated glee
Your needs are such a niche market that nobody really cares. If you really need to run all those different OSes then a mobile device isn't the way to go. A VM with VNC is the way to go and my understanding is that you can already do that on an iPad.
Strangely, I believe this man. ASUS has a very good impression on my mind, and I believe they can live up to their promise.
I think that the Tegra 2 is a great hardware platform for the device, but I'm afraid they may be too focused on beating the iPad 2 in terms of hardware.
Hardware isn't whats making the iPad so popular, its the software. If they want to win a battle with the iPad 2, then they're going to have to do it on the software side as well.
Android is a good open OS platform, but it lacks the harmony between hardware and software that apple has created with its iOS platform. An iPad killer should have the same harmony between hardware/software and the same fluent interface and ease of use as the iPad. If they can accomplish this with a more open and desktop friendly OS, then finding better hardware will be the easy part. My suggestion is to either use windows 7 for its openess and use widgets and custom software to make it fluent or use a custom droid kernel.
Either way, if they keep trying to push more mega-pixels, more processor, more memory, the consumer market isn't going to care.