Not Playing the Same Game

John Gruber responds to a post by Tim Bray about the viability of 16:9 tablets. John writes:

"One of the things I find curious about Android tablets and the BlackBerry PlayBook is that they’ve all chosen to go 16:9. To me, 16:9 tablets only look right when held in landscape — they look too skinny when held in portrait. Considering all the things they copy from Apple, it seems weird not to copy the iPad’s 4:3 aspect ratio. 16:9 is ideal for video, but 4:3 is a good trade-off for a device is meant to be used in portrait much of the time."

I think the answer is fairly simple. Remember when the iPad came out, one of the complaints was that it wasn't 16:9, so you had these "awful" black bars when watching video, which I think many have an instinctual aversion to because they think they're missing out by not using every available pixel. In reality I don't think most people REALLY get bothered by them while they're actually watching a movie (and also they're not actually missing anything).

And so tablet makers eager to capitalize on the iPad's mistakes (and who, let's be honest, think that a feature checklist is all that matters), made all their tablets in 16:9, which is one area they could tout as being better than the iPad. And if all you do is watch movies, then it's tough to argue against that logic. Ironically, the best tablet for watching video is the iPad, and it's not even a fair fight. Which just goes to show how utterly out of touch tablet makers are when it comes to this stuff. While it's true that people did complain (and loudly) about the iPad's 4:3 aspect ratio, they failed to fully assess whether there might not be other benefits, and now have products that feel awkward if not held in one orientation.

They think that in order to succeed they have to outdo the iPad (which is not necessarily true), however what they fail to realize is that the iPad didn't become a success by trying to "outdo" another product. The iPad became a success because Apple understood the market, understood what sort of things people would want to use a tablet for, and built something that did all of those things, and looked sexy too, for a pretty incredible price.

Perhaps it's because most of these companies are used to the commodity PC hardware game, where they win by outselling and out-featuring their competitors. Feature lists are a much more appropriate measure of quality here since the boxes all run Windows anyway. That strategy works when you compare a Dell to a Toshiba, but not when comparing either of those to a Macintosh. And the same goes with the iPad—you can't compete with the iPad if you ignore the software because you're not playing the same game.