[Xoom General] e.mote:
>X with gnome/kde is not currently a good fit for a touch screen only device. Even if the window manager could be adapted to work well for touch screen only, interaction with most applications would still be problematic. Getting application developers to go in a common direction is hard enough as is.

It's the same with Win7. That Win8 will (reportedly) rectify this while Linux fiddles is the main weakness of open-source--getting everybody to agree on a direction. I expect that, as mobile computing diversifies, that Linux will, as before, follow Windows' lead.

>Android is not a general purpose computing platform though. It was originally written to work in a cell phone environment, with the attendant limitations and advantages. I think this core concept has not changed with the introduction of the tablet.

I agree with this.

>Where I think Android should be going for the near future is refining and improving the ability to consume information:

I disagree with this. Whereas the physical size of a smartphone is the main impediment, lack of an integral physical input device is the tablet's sole limitation in being a productivity device. This limitation is very surmountable.

On the demand side, looking at the app mix on the iPad should indicate that content creation on tablets have high demand. The clamor for Office-type apps is strong. The tablet may not yet be able to do heavy productivity, but it should be able to do light ones.

The impetus to productivity is, as I've mentioned elsewhere, the upcoming Win8. Ignoring its immense userbase for the moment, when a user has a choice between a tablet for consumption-only, and one that does both consumption and (light) creation, it's an easy choice. The smartphone killed the PDA/MP3 player/digicam/etc because it can do more than any one of these erstwhile devices.

More succinctly, Android doesn't have the luxury of a slow ramp.

>[various improvements for consumption]

I agree that these are probably what we'll see in ICS. They're incremental. I see them as insufficient in light of the upcoming competition.

>Where I want to see it going in the long run can be seen in a nascent form with the Atrix and the Lenovo U1:

This is where fragmentation rears its ugly head (as if it hasn't already). What you're referring to requires brand interoperability, which vendors are loath to do without a strong hand from the OS supplier. Google have yet to be that strong hand. To wit, both of the above examples only work within the respective vendor's product lines, and both are marketplace failures.

Fragmentation is the other issue Android needs to deal with. Other than the 18-month upgrade "pledge," I don't see much inclination from Goog to deal with this.

>- In a perfect world I would like to see a full desktop OS run when requested and be able to use external CPUs (think Lenovo U1).

>- Make the android OS an installable and user upgradeable OS just as desktop OSes are now.

Both of these are realizable with Win7 (on tablets) now, and I expect them to extend to Win8. The ideal desktop-tablet synergy I think will require better short-range connectivity, probably some flavor of UWB in the pipe.