Assessing the PlayBook's threat to the iPad
And part and parcel of having two cores is multitasking.Will the PlayBook surpass the iPad?This is how RIM puts it: "Watch a movie in one window, surf a Web site in another.Laptop? What Laptop?"More specifically, Dan Dodge, co-founder and CEO of QNX Software Systems (which RIM acquired in April) put it this way in a post to the Inside BlackBerry Developer's Blog. "The QNX Neutrino architecture can also support true multitasking on multicore hardware--in fact, its multicore prowess has been performance-proven in the world's highest-capacity routers. As a result, it can run multiple applications simultaneously, while delivering very high performance." It would be interesting if this moved multitasking up a notch and forced Apple to respond in kind.(I own an iPad 3G and understand that there is multitasking of sorts already on the iPad and that this will improve with iOS 4.x) And that brings up another potential advantage--though still very theoretical at this point.RIM does not have to position its tablet below higher-performance laptops (MacBooks) like Apple does.The more functionality, the more laptop-like, the better for RIM.In fact, there's nothing stopping RIM from eventually bringing out a tablet that's roughly analogous to a slider phone. Now, that would be perilously close to a laptop. And let's not forget support for Adobe Flash and Air.It's easy to say "who cares" until you actually need a Flash-based app. The point is, RIM has got my attention. And if they execute, the iPad will truly have some stiff competition.
