Nexus 7, Google’s New Tablet, Seriously Challenges the iPad
You can love Apple or you can hate Apple, but one thing’s for sure: its favorite game is Lead the Industry. And the industry’s favorite game is Follow the Leader.
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Jim Wilson/The New York Times
The Nexus 7 has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a nine-hour battery, a bright and very sharp screen, a loud mono speaker and GPS function.
Steve Jobs hated the mimicry. Google’s Android software “ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off,” he told his biographer, Walter Isaacson. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.”
But there’s a positive aspect to the imitation, too. You could argue that Apple’s copycats fill in markets where Apple dares not tread, or offer an alternative to Apple’s very pure, controlled, choice-constrained world.
In that worldview, Google’s 2012 new-product announcements must seem like a cornucopia of good news. First, Google opened a unified online store with separate tabs for apps, e-books, TV shows, movies and music, modeled on the iTunes store.
Last week, it introduced the Nexus Q, a black sphere that connects to your TV and plays those songs and videos, pretty much the way the black square Apple TV does. (You can read my review of the Q online at nytimes.com.)