WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.440 Looks like an iPad, right? 00:00:03.440 --> 00:00:07.640 Got the flat edge, the rounded liquid retina corners, 00:00:07.640 --> 00:00:11.100 smart connector, four sets of speaker grills, 00:00:11.100 --> 00:00:16.680 but it's not an iPad. It's a Samsung Galaxy Tab S8. 00:00:16.680 --> 00:00:21.760 On a Mac channel? Yes, because I've often long wondered 00:00:21.760 --> 00:00:25.440 why people buy Android tablets. Sure, there are many options available, 00:00:25.440 --> 00:00:29.880 especially at lower prices, but from what I've read in tech publications 00:00:29.880 --> 00:00:34.960 and reviews, Android is just nowhere near iPadOS in the tablet space. 00:00:36.120 --> 00:00:40.880 And yet, one of my best friends has been an Android tablet faithful for years. 00:00:40.880 --> 00:00:45.560 And real recently, my dad made me help him find a suitable Android tablet, 00:00:45.560 --> 00:00:49.080 despite my mother and I insisting on an iPad. 00:00:49.080 --> 00:00:53.000 They may not be many, but people are buying Android tablets. 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:57.960 And I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. Maybe Android is worth some attention. 00:00:57.960 --> 00:01:01.720 So, I used this one for 10 days to find out. 00:01:08.880 --> 00:01:11.040 Can I get a white mocha? 00:01:13.320 --> 00:01:17.680 At Google's latest I.O., they announced an upcoming Pixel tablet. 00:01:17.680 --> 00:01:22.160 And that might actually bode well for this guy, because it means that Google's putting effort 00:01:22.160 --> 00:01:25.360 into making Android work for tablets. 00:01:28.960 --> 00:01:34.160 The thing is, they've tried this before, many times in fact. 00:01:34.160 --> 00:01:39.120 Let me rewind. A year after the launch of the iPad, Google released Android version three, 00:01:39.120 --> 00:01:45.680 Honeycomb, made exclusively for tablets. It featured a two-pane UI for email and contacts, 00:01:45.680 --> 00:01:49.880 browser Windows with tabs, and a larger keyboard for larger screens. 00:01:49.880 --> 00:01:54.960 The hope was that developers would write tablet apps like they were doing for iOS, but they didn't. 00:01:54.960 --> 00:01:58.520 So, what we ended up getting is just very wide phone apps. 00:02:05.160 --> 00:02:08.560 The Nexus 7 released a year later was more reasonable. 00:02:08.560 --> 00:02:11.720 Basically, a big phone before phones got really big. 00:02:11.720 --> 00:02:15.240 The extra real estate made it nicer for watching and reading, 00:02:15.240 --> 00:02:18.560 but didn't push the capability. And because it was only $200, 00:02:18.560 --> 00:02:21.560 people didn't have huge expectations for it either. 00:02:21.560 --> 00:02:26.200 Apple dutifully and incrementally worked away at their iPad in that time, 00:02:26.200 --> 00:02:30.640 making it more useful through some multitasking, new features, and accessories. 00:02:30.640 --> 00:02:35.640 This evolution was a test of patience, but it's quite staggering how much more capable 00:02:35.640 --> 00:02:39.280 the iPad is than its predecessor or its competitors. 00:02:40.440 --> 00:02:41.640 Oh, right, the Samsung. 00:02:46.600 --> 00:02:51.240 Sales-wise, Samsung is the only game around in the Android tablet space. 00:02:51.240 --> 00:02:55.320 And this, their brand new Galaxy Tab S8 is the flagship model. 00:02:55.320 --> 00:03:00.720 It's available in three sizes and many prices. This is the smallest and provides the closest competitor 00:03:00.720 --> 00:03:05.960 to the recently updated iPad Air. I'll happily admit that it's a decent tablet. 00:03:05.960 --> 00:03:10.040 Performance is snappy and the high refresh rate screen looks nice. 00:03:10.040 --> 00:03:15.000 It's a pleasant departure from the experience I had with the Samsung Galaxy A53. 00:03:15.000 --> 00:03:19.120 And it even has many compelling features that the iPad doesn't even offer. 00:03:19.120 --> 00:03:22.200 The webcam is in the correct place on the long side. 00:03:22.200 --> 00:03:26.760 There's a fingerprint reader and face recognition. And perhaps the feature I'm most envious of 00:03:26.760 --> 00:03:31.720 is the micro SD card slot for expansion. Handy if you wanna back up photos taken 00:03:31.720 --> 00:03:37.080 with a non-mobile phone camera, or just expand storage without shelling out hundreds of dollars. 00:03:37.080 --> 00:03:40.680 This is what made the iPad a non-starter for my dad. 00:03:40.680 --> 00:03:44.040 So yes, it has an SD card slot, but look at it. 00:03:44.040 --> 00:03:48.240 It's not centered. Neither is the USB-C port either. 00:03:49.240 --> 00:03:52.240 Okay, so this is pedantic hardware niggles. 00:03:52.240 --> 00:03:57.400 But take a look at this. If I have to continue to type on this on-screen keyboard, 00:03:57.400 --> 00:04:02.000 I'm going to pull a phalange. These wide buttons are just ridiculous. 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:05.240 Apple and their wisdom kept their on-screen keyboard proportional. 00:04:05.240 --> 00:04:10.120 Samsung isn't even that bad. Look at Google's. I swear their Honeycomb keyboard was better. 00:04:10.120 --> 00:04:15.920 Unfortunately, there are some great tablet apps that I use regularly that aren't even available on Android. 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:20.880 Craigslist and Procreate to name a few. And most of the ones that are available 00:04:20.880 --> 00:04:24.360 are just so much worse on Android. It's not even close. 00:04:24.360 --> 00:04:29.240 Here, take a look at this. On iPad, Twitter takes thoughtful advantage 00:04:29.240 --> 00:04:33.320 of portrait and landscape orientations. Whereas on Android, it doesn't. 00:04:33.320 --> 00:04:37.760 Look at my tweets. They span the whole width. This is too big. 00:04:37.760 --> 00:04:41.640 Some apps like Auto Trader or Kijiji won't even rotate to landscape. 00:04:41.640 --> 00:04:45.600 Same with Instagram. Wait, what? You can get Instagram on a tablet? 00:04:45.600 --> 00:04:48.920 That's it, I'm buying Android. Figuring out multitasking 00:04:48.920 --> 00:04:56.120 has been a pain point on the iPad for a while now. But on the Galaxy, whoa, is it ever an intuitive? 00:04:56.120 --> 00:05:00.440 You wanna go into split screen? You have to tap on an app icon in the app switcher. 00:05:00.440 --> 00:05:03.840 But instead of that going next to the app you already have open, 00:05:03.840 --> 00:05:07.960 it asks what you wanna fill the other space with. The app I had open. 00:05:07.960 --> 00:05:11.080 Another option is to drag over this little nub, 00:05:11.080 --> 00:05:14.520 which conceals a dock from where you can drag apps out. 00:05:14.560 --> 00:05:17.920 And there's more. You can make apps free-floating, 00:05:17.920 --> 00:05:22.080 a bit like slide over with some more flexibility at the cost of usability. 00:05:22.080 --> 00:05:25.320 And if you go back home, they become a little bobble that groups together 00:05:25.320 --> 00:05:30.280 if you have multiple floating Windows. Which reminds me of Samsung's DeX feature, 00:05:30.280 --> 00:05:34.640 which turns your Android tablet into a desktop computer ready for a mouse and keyboard. 00:05:35.920 --> 00:05:40.200 It looks like a big Samsung phone. Some people got mad at Riley for ignoring DeX 00:05:40.200 --> 00:05:43.440 in his ShortCircuit Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra unboxing. 00:05:43.440 --> 00:05:46.840 But there's really nothing to see here. On a small screen like this, 00:05:46.840 --> 00:05:53.080 it's really more of a hassle to be managing and moving around all these Windows that are even smaller. 00:05:53.080 --> 00:05:57.920 If you think that this is going to be a suitable computer replacement, well, good luck to you. 00:06:01.720 --> 00:06:04.000 This is the opposite of how the iPad works. 00:06:05.280 --> 00:06:10.080 Since Apple assumes you probably have multiples of their devices, they've given us universal control. 00:06:10.080 --> 00:06:15.360 So instead of extending your tablet into a computer, the iPad becomes an extension of your Mac. 00:06:15.360 --> 00:06:20.200 But with iPad OS 16, Apple appears to be going in Samsung's direction 00:06:20.200 --> 00:06:23.960 with stage manager. It allows for the sort of app windowing 00:06:23.960 --> 00:06:28.320 people have been pining for. This, however, is not a desktop. 00:06:28.320 --> 00:06:33.280 Windows can be grouped, resized and moved, but not to anywhere on the screen. 00:06:33.280 --> 00:06:38.680 And we're still in beta, so we'll have to find out how it works later on. 00:06:38.680 --> 00:06:42.520 Though this seems like the iPad is getting closer to DeX, 00:06:42.880 --> 00:06:49.000 Apple is taking the approach of trickling concepts from the desktop to the tablet in an intentional way, 00:06:49.000 --> 00:06:55.840 instead of just dragging the platform, picking and screaming with existing desktop paradigms. 00:06:55.840 --> 00:06:59.920 So this year, we've been working hard to make Android tablets amazing. 00:06:59.920 --> 00:07:03.040 With their tablet announcement, Google showed the progress they made 00:07:03.040 --> 00:07:07.520 on their tablet interface for Android 13, and they updated apps to take advantage 00:07:07.520 --> 00:07:10.000 of the larger screen. Sound familiar? 00:07:13.280 --> 00:07:18.480 I have the beta installed on this Lenovo, and yeah, there are some good ideas in here. 00:07:18.480 --> 00:07:21.520 They're so good, I swear I've used them before. 00:07:21.520 --> 00:07:25.240 Hmm. It's neat to see Android make sense in this form factor. 00:07:25.240 --> 00:07:29.600 It's taken long enough. Though we might actually see some progress this time around. 00:07:29.600 --> 00:07:34.560 Though they're gonna have to act fast. Because as folding phones become more viable, 00:07:34.560 --> 00:07:38.160 developers are going to want to make sure their apps work well on them, 00:07:38.160 --> 00:07:42.120 and folding them is a good way to do it. Apps work well on them, 00:07:42.120 --> 00:07:44.880 and folding phones are just small tablets. 00:07:50.480 --> 00:07:55.920 That's a long ways off, but what about now? Well, if you have an iPhone, then you should get an iPad. 00:07:55.920 --> 00:08:00.040 And if you have an Android phone, well, you should probably still get an iPad. 00:08:00.040 --> 00:08:04.240 And if you want even a decent Android tablet, you're not even gonna save all that much. 00:08:04.240 --> 00:08:09.360 This starts at $700. This iPad Air is $100 less. 00:08:09.360 --> 00:08:14.880 Sure, it's missing half the Samsung storage, but the Samsung is missing so much more. 00:08:14.880 --> 00:08:19.680 I missed GarageBand. I missed Universal Control. I missed the snappy app switching. 00:08:19.680 --> 00:08:23.760 I missed the square more flexible aspect ratio. I missed Slideover. 00:08:23.760 --> 00:08:27.960 I missed all the tablet optimized apps. I missed iMessage. 00:08:35.760 --> 00:08:40.040 I always debate people from our sister channel LTT about the iPad. 00:08:40.040 --> 00:08:45.160 They don't really understand how a focused tablet-like device can be useful. 00:08:45.160 --> 00:08:49.920 Why am I paying for two devices when I can get one foldable laptop that does it all? 00:08:49.920 --> 00:08:54.920 Well, maybe this mindset is present at Google too. 00:08:55.080 --> 00:08:58.920 I mean, they still do sell Chrome OS tablets for some reason, 00:08:58.920 --> 00:09:02.640 but it's the form factor, stupid. And if you don't get it, you won't commit to it, 00:09:02.640 --> 00:09:07.520 which is why after 11 years, Google is starting all over again with Android. 00:09:07.520 --> 00:09:10.920 I wish them luck. And maybe in a decade, I'll give it another go. 00:09:12.080 --> 00:09:15.400 Thanks for tapping into this Mac Address. If you like the iPad more than Android, 00:09:15.400 --> 00:09:19.880 give this video a like. And if you have an Android tablet, looking enviously at us with iPads, 00:09:19.880 --> 00:09:23.680 then you must subscribe. Now, when I wrote this script, 00:09:23.680 --> 00:09:29.360 I didn't know about Apple unveiling state manager and the windowing mode in the iPad OS. 00:09:29.360 --> 00:09:33.480 So it sort of changes the perspective just a little bit from what I initially thought. 00:09:33.480 --> 00:09:36.480 But I'm curious how you feel about the iPad 00:09:36.480 --> 00:09:41.080 becoming a little bit more desktop-like. Does it make it even better than an Android tablet? 00:09:41.080 --> 00:09:43.280 Or a little bit more like an Android tablet?