[Galaxy Note 10.1 General] BarryH_GEG:
I've done this crap for a living and whether you're hawking toasters or mobile devices product marketing's pretty much the same discipline everywhere.

The limitations could be for a couple of reasons: 1) Google lives in a futuristic world where the cloud is free, runs at 100MB, and is accessible 24/7, 2) it could be a way of keeping costs down and/or limiting the trampling of their manufacturing partners, and 3) as you said, pushing people to Play.

Just like MS with Surface, Google's walking the fine line of coopetition under the guise of offering "showcase" products designed to demonstrate the pinnacle of execution. Ironically, in both cases, the partner's product offerings are better, The N4 has thermal throttling issues related to battery circuitry, phone speaker issues, signal variation when held certain ways, a washed out display, and glass (front and back) that cracks way too easily. The N10 has light bleed, average battery life, uses a bizarre phone UI, and an overly warm and dim display. The N7's got the issues you typically see in an Asus product. The Surface is at best average for the price. The lack of a distribution channel, limitations like you mentioned, and just adequate execution should keep the partners appeased. And knowing how much goes in to developing successful products and how much time it takes to master it the partners were probably thinking "sure, go for it." ;)

This one I find kind of humorous. Back in the day of single core processors and 512MB of RAM overlays killed the performance of Android devices, The overlays themselves in V1 state were also flaky and crude. So the idea of "Pure Google" made sense. Today, the CPU/GPU's along with 2GB of RAM and fast NAND are more powerful than the s/w running on them. From an interface design perspective the pinnacle is still Apple who gets a 9 out of 10. I'd rate native 4.2 a 6.5. Google knows nothing of interface design or human factors and it's obvious from their work but everyone wants the byproduct simply because it's "pure." If you ask someone why they want a "pure" device, other than perceived speed and more frequent updates, they'll say "that's the way Google intended it." Who the hell cares if it's less functional? There was an interesting article comparing Apple and Google's future. Apple sucks at anything Internet dependent. Google sucks at designing interfaces. The article gave Google the edge because (measured in years) their most likely to learn interfaces before Apple learns the Internet.

Both TW and Sense (the two most evolved overlays) provide way more features and usability than stock Android. I just got a N2 to replace my Teg3 One X. The amount of time Samsung spent developing context sensitive help, in-built video tutorials, and user guides amazed me. For someone new to Android that support would make a world of difference over looking at a blank screen on stock Android. A pointing "Andy" can only do so much. There's the occasional stutter and lag but a lot of times it's caused by a sluggish background process which has nothing to do with the overlay. People that are hell bent on having the fastest benchmarks and UI experience confound me. They spend so much time tweaking and testing the speed of their devices do they actually have any time to use them to do anything? I like TW because it makes me more productive. My only wish for it is for Samsung to focus more on the aesthetics of the menus, apps, icons, and widgets so it doesn't look like a carnival fun house. Sense is much more polished with its features better integrated but TW is far more functional. As a heavy productivity user I'd take either over "Pure Google;" at least until Google gets better at UI design and usability.

---------- Post added at 01:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:10 PM ----------

She probably doesn't even know what she's holding. In every staged pic I've seen she has gloves on which means she ain't doing much of anything with it.