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[Makani]

My latest blog post talking about Steve Job's criticism of the Galaxy Tab and his surprisingly accurate depiction of developers like me:

Steve Jobs taking shots at Samsung

Makani

[PsySal]

That was really a worthwhile read, thanks. I think that he realizes that what powers the iPhone/iPad is the same thing that has powered console development in the past, namely consistent hardware. Developing for PC has always been rather a chore because of this reason.

[OneMoreGo]

I find it hard to read his stuff because it's always peppered with FUD, (not surprising, it's like listening to Balmer for the same reasons.)

"well we can put in a smaller screen on it and a slower processor and less memory"  Did Jobs say that, because that's not true as far as the Tab goes, is it?

I agree 7" is a little small and the iPad is the right size (if a little too heavy) however 4:3 aspect ratio? 

[Makani]

Yes he did say that but he wasn't talking about the Tab in that case.

The part about the Tab was:
"We don't think you can make a great tablet with a 7" screen; we think it's too small to express the software that people want to put on these things."
He also said that makers of such tablets should include sandpaper in the box so that users could sand down their fingers to the right size to be able to use the apps on such a small screen. (not in my article)

[Zaphos]

I don't know, seems a little strange to say developers won't adapt to a diverse range of hardware when that is what they have done for years on the PC.  I guess he's just assuming the market share won't be there to motivate people to do it ...

[Makani]

@Jimmy
Developers adapt of course, but typically upwards; i.e., as things get better, they upgrade their stuff. Even if they don't upgrade your game designed for an older computer will still (mostly) work on a newer computer. It's more difficult to downgrade developer expectation and experience. Once they make a game for a device, they want their game to work on that device and all future devices. With iOS, the guarantee is that all future devices will be fully backwards-compatible, and in fact, better than any former version. As a developer I agree with this. Even the 1st gen iPhone has floating point support. As such, I would expect my game to work on any new Android with the same resolution of iPhone right? Wrong. HTC Hero has no floating point support, even though previous Android phones did. Similarly, Droid came out, and all of a sudden, no more support for 'atitc' texture compression. This kind of stuff is VERY hard and costly to adapt to.

[OneMoreGo]

Yes he did say that but he wasn't talking about the Tab in that case.

The non Tab tablets will be cheaper, yes they will have lesser hardware but this is why they are cheap. This is like VW slagging off Skoda for using "cheap components".

On the PC comparison - you do have similar issues, e.g trying to run a 3D game on a netbook. 

He also said that makers of such tablets should include sandpaper in the box so that users could sand down their fingers to the right size to be able to use the apps on such a small screen. (not in my article)

Yet we all seem to be doing fine with our smartphones.

I think Jobs is angry at the existence of competition who can meet a range of markets he can't.

[John Nesky]

Yup. Managed platforms are so much easier to develop for than fragmented platforms.

Which is why Flash and Unity beat HTML5. Haha, take that Steve Jobs!

[Kunal]

Well there is also some degree of fragmentation on iOS, though probably to a lesser extent than android. Some examples -  Bit Trip Beat only runs on hardware that supports openGL ES 2.0. Gamecenter isn't available on the iphone 3g, something seems odd since it is there on second gen ipod touches.

[Zaratustra]

Steve Jobs likes talking shit about things and then doing them a couple of years later down the road.

[Chris Z]

What Zara said.