iPad or Android Tablets: What’s the Difference?

Which are best: iPad or Android tablets? What’s the difference between them, and which should you choose? We shall first discuss the Android and Apple software platforms in general and then discuss them in tablet computers, specifically the iPad 2 and the Android Honeycomb operating system used in the Motorola Xoom tablet.

The fundamental difference between the Apple and Android operating systems for tablet computers is that the Apple system is closed, specific only to Apple devices, while Android is open source. That means that Android is free for developers to use in designing apps to run with it and in the hardware using it as a platform.

Android now belongs to Google, which purchased it from Android Inc. developers in 2005. Google made it open-source under the Open Handset Alliance (OHA). It is available as part of the Apache free software license. In 2010, it was listed by Canalys as the best-selling software platform for smartphones worldwide.

A Common Platform

That’s the background for Android, which is now used in tablet competition with Apple’s iPad. Because the iPad uses a proprietary software platform, it is more restrictive than Android devices. It does not have the same breadth of communication between devices as Android tablets would theoretically have. However, because Android tablets are in their infancy, this degree of platform commonality has yet to be used to any advantage.

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It is highly likely that individual Android users will be protective of their own devices and that the full benefits of a common platform are unlikely to be developed. Nevertheless, because of this common platform, it is highly likely that apps and other software forms will focus on Android rather than Apple. For now, however, there is still a wider choice of apps available for Apple devices than for Android tablets – but this is expected to be only a temporary situation because the development of Android apps is now continuous.

iPad 2 Vs. Android Tablets

So, how does all this translate into hardware using each of the two operating systems? It is fundamentally now a comparison of the iPad 2 with the top Android tablets. Several tablets fail to match the iPad, let alone iPad 2. Still, there have been several good tablets developed using Android by leading firms such as Acer, Samsung, and Motorola, and it is the latter that we shall consider here.

The Motorola Zoom Tablet uses the Android Honeycomb OS and is thicker and heavier than the iPad 2 (0.34 v 0.5 inches). Both have dual-core 1GHz processors, but the Zoom has 1GB RAM, compared to the 512MB believed to be offered by the iPad 2.

One excellent feature of Xoom is that you can plug it into your PC and access your files. You can transfer files or download from one or the other. With the iPad 2, this is a ponderous process that has to be done through iTunes. No need to use iTunes to download music: you can easily download music to the Xoom tablet by drag and drop without requiring a massive ponderous iTunes file to reside on your memory.

Multitasking Comparison

Another advantage of the Android tablet is true multitasking, which the iPad does not have. The iPad is more a matter of changing between tasks, with a small amount of processing in the background, but not true multitasking. There are many other benefits that the Android tablets can offer over the iPad 2, including more flexibility in file handling and icon presentation. You are not restricted to Apple formats because you can use any that uses the Android open-source software.

However, the iPad does have some advantages in addition to being thinner and lighter, and one of these is the number of available apps, as suggested earlier. This is likely because most tablet apps are based on the iPad and are general developments of the apps developed for the iPhone. However, an increasing number are being created on the Android platform, and it will not be long before they overtake the iPad apps.

Apple Fan or Android Fan

Ultimately, the choice between the iPad and an Android tablet, exemplified here by the Motorola Xoom, will possibly come down to whether or not you are an Apple fan. Apple fans will likely stick to the Apple product, while there currently appears to be no compelling reason why PC fans should go with the iPad rather than the Xoom – though there are more excellent Android tablets on the market.

The Android software platform has slowly but gradually entered the Apple market. As more firms offer their versions of Android tablets, this competition against the iPad 2 will increase. Before long, the tablet market will be very similar to the current situation in the laptop market, where we have those that go with the Apple way of doing things and those that prefer Windows. Except it is now Apple Vs. Android. Who will win – you will decide that.

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Alcohol scholar. Bacon fan. Internetaholic. Beer geek. Thinker. Coffee advocate. Reader. Have a strong interest in consulting about teddy bears in Nigeria. Spent 2001-2004 promoting glue in Pensacola, FL. My current pet project is testing the market for salsa in Las Vegas, NV. In 2008 I was getting to know birdhouses worldwide. Spent 2002-2008 buying and selling easy-bake-ovens in Bethesda, MD. Spent 2002-2009 marketing country music in the financial sector.