Originally Posted by
nkedel
...or not. The beauty of a convertible as that you get both. Even Apple, while their own design of a keyboard dock stunk, recognized that. Third party keyboard docks and cases have been much better.
a convertible has tradeoffs. everything has tradeoffs.
Such as?
I've yet to see anything that works better with touch than with a mouse, keyboard, or both (or a graphics tablet) -- not saying they don't exist, but I've yet to see them.
apps that can't exist on a laptop include ones that use the built in gps, gyroscope, accelerometer, compass, always-on internet, rear-facing camera (laptops are front facing). also, tablet apps are more immersive, making for a better user experience.
some examples include astronomy apps where you just hold the tablet (or smartphone) up to the sky and it shows you what stars are there, and as you turn, the display moves with you, always showing you what stars are in your view. find something interesting? tap it and it details what it is. try that with a laptop.
because this is flyertalk, point the device at a plane in the sky and it tells you what flight it is. another example is flying a quad-copter just by tilting the device.
can you do those on a laptop? somewhat, but nowhere near as easily and with not as good of a user experience. you'll also need to add on a gps, joystick, another camera or other accessory, depending on the app.
Now mobility is another issue, although in general phones and the smaller 7" tablets do much better for that than the 10"-12" tablets which are not that much better than the smallest notebooks (whether one calls them ultrabooks/netbooks.)
that's another benefit.
And if you jailbreak, it can do anything you want with the cards, just like an Android device.
true but i'm not talking about jailbreaking.
android also has restrictions, such as backup apps that require rooting to be able to access user data.
Can't use it on an airplane, or at least aren't supposed to.
so? most of the time i'm on the ground. when i'm on a plane i usually watch a movie.
"It doesn't need a file browser" is a matter of taste, not fact; some people like Apple's app-centric model hiding file management from the user. It's very limiting for some power users, and even some non-power-users who are used to the standard way of handling files.
file system access is going away and it's not just apple. nobody wants to fuss with files and folders. that's something the computer is much better at.
with apps such as adobe lightroom (which predates the ipad and runs on both mac & windows), you query for photos based on
content and the computer figures out where the acutal file is.
Fortunately, this is readily fixed if you jailbreak.
there's nothing to fix. the computer does a better job of managing files than people do.
Not that similar; the keyboards for the Surface (either one) or the Asus Transformer series (and a few other models) are solid, conforming, and in many cases have an extended battery.
The ones available for iPad and Samsung tablets add more bulk, as they require a backing to the tablet to hold it, and require either bluetooth or a loose cable. Beats no keyboard, but in the end they're not as good.
they look and function the same. the fact that one is bluetooth and the other is direct doesn't matter.
as for the extended battery, they need it. surface pro battery life is not particularly good.
Also, in the case of the Surface Pro (and Dell Latitude 10, and some other models) they really do convert between what is in essence an ultrabook and a tablet.
and don't do a very good job of either one. just look at sales.