What tablet should I get for Christmas?

Christmas 2012 is fast approaching, unless the world ends before then. It has been years and years since I've come up with a big ticket item that I wanted, so I got pretty excited when I thought that I would enjoy owning a tablet!

This would be my first new bit of technology since I bought an iPod back in 2007. Well, OK, I recently got an iPod touch for my birthday. But that's no tablet! And this is ignoring, of course, my gaming computers, which I think we're safe to do for purposes of discussing new portable technology. As a result of my lack of early adopting (or any adopting, really.. I've still never had a smart phone other than a company-issued Blackberry that I didn't customize) my friends have been known to call me a Luddite.

But after seeing plenty of friends & my mother enjoy their tablets I decided that it might be time to get one myself. Turns out that there's a lot of options on the market nowadays! At first I crowd-sourced brand names that my friends and family found to be good choices. There was an immediate consensus between three products: Amazon's Kindle, Google's Nexus, and Apple's iPad.

I figured the next step would be deciding on a size. Do I want to go with a larger model or go mini? Since I have an iPod touch, I figure that my tablet should go big... But then I began second guessing myself, debating the convenience of carrying around a smaller tablet. With nothing decided, I began attempting to narrow down my choices by other means.

I looked at the Kindle Fire HD, the Nexus 7 & 10, and the iPads (both the mini and the 4th generation.) After an exhausting amount of research, user reviews, editor's reviews, and a few interrogations, I finally decided on a favorite choice for my requested Xmas loot.

It really was a close race the whole time, and I don't think that what works best for one person will necessarily fit another person's preferences. I came to my conclusion based on a number of factors:

For myself, I plan on doing a lot of reading on my tablet. From what I read, it sounds like Amazon's e-ink gives it a clear lead in this regard, though users say that this is only really game-breaking when you're reading outside on a sunny day. Nonetheless, I feel like that's a clear win for the Kindle.

I am a bit clumsy, so durability always factors into very expensive, very droppable purchases. In this category, the size of the products didn't seem to matter and there was a clear hierarchy of the Nexus being more durable than the Kindle being more durable than the iPad. That said, if you're not particularly prone to accidents, I'm sure just buying a case and a screen protector would make even the iPad seem like a tank, as far as tablets go.

For apps? Hands down, there's no contest: Apple has the market there. Google is making a dent in their market-share, but at this point Apple still dominants handily. Amazon is still playing catch-up, although they did beat Google's selection of movies and TV shows. In almost every other respect, Amazon's content is available on both competitors through an Amazon app... almost seems unfair, eh? But truly, the selection from Apple is just superior in every measurable way. They have more apps and their apps are a lot more stable and/or customized to the iOS, whereas Google's offerings sometimes suffer from being sloppy smartphone ports.

When it comes to customization and overall control of the user interface (and the product in general), the Nexus shines. One would think the Kindle having an Android OS would make it comparable, but unfortunately Amazon has things pretty locked down which negates Android's main strength when being compared to iOS.

In the end, I decided that although all three had merits, what I was looking for in a tablet was best met by the Google Nexus. I appreciated the durability and user control, and didn't mind having less app options since Google's selection is still robust enough to meet my needs and is growing every day.

I will probably eventually still pick up a Kindle specifically for e-reading, but for my first dive into tablet computing I'm going to go with the Nexus 10. The smaller tablets seemed nice but I trust my initial instinct: given the fact that I have an iPod touch (and probably a smart phone in the near future,) I went ahead and chose the big'un.

I hope that my shared research can be helpful for your own difficult holiday choices, but please remember that this is a very amateur job of comparing the products and isn't meant to be a definitive comparison and review.

The Age of Litigation (Or: I Exercise My Noble Freedom to be an Asshole)

So instead of considering the fine art of procrastination today, I want to comment on the recent iphone fiasco and Gizmodo in particular. (I'll try to get to the other topic in early May.)

You see, some guy found a prototype of the next gen iphone and sold it to a journalist-blogger website, which started revealing a lot of juicy secrets. Apple didn't like them reporting all about it, so they had the police get involved.

Now we've got a debate over whether or not bloggers are protected under journalist laws, as well as what exactly the laws entitle journalists to do.

In my opinion, it is obvious that this is a case of private property which is still in a prototype stage and that releasing information on it is almost certainly harmful to the company. By purchasing it and then analyzing and reporting on it, Gizmodo did something definitely unethical and probably unlawful.

I agree with the people who claim that journalistic legal protection does not extend to committing illegal acts for the sake of creating a source; they exist so that journalists cannot be forced to reveal sources. There's a significant difference here.

Furthermore, I'm not a particular fan of Gizmodo in the first place. A while back they pulled a "prank" that in my opinion shows that their modus operandi is basically selfish and antisocial.

What they did wasn't a prank, in my opinion. It could have been, if they didn't take it so far, and if they had revealed what they were up to shortly after pulling it. But the worst part in my opinion is their lame justification and complete lack of regret.

They paint their actions by associating them with the noble idea of "civil disobedience", claim that the prank "pays homage to the notion of independence and independent reporting", and say that any journalists who criticize their actions are obviously just corporate lapdogs who have sold out.

Seriously? This is the worst sort of self-righteous closed-mindedness, and it pisses me off. So I'm really not that surprised to know that Gizmodo is claiming a moral high ground and suggesting that the purchase of known stolen property and then revealing trade secrets is somehow related to freedom of information.

Suppose some kid I don't know steals my neighbor's diary, then sells it to me for five bucks because he knows I'm always desperate for any old topic to blog about, and I start revealing Old Man Thompson's secret obsession with Hello Kitty... is this seriously about freedom of information?

The problem with modern day society is that we keep taking ideals of freedom far past their logical extension. The justification of selfish and antisocial behavior, wrapped up in the guise of something noble, is so pervasive that we have to debate about whether or not its wrong to steal something secret and then make it public. This type of thing used to be common sense.

The fact that its not is exactly what's wrong with our modern day society.

**Update 4/30**
Here's some info about the guy who originally found & sold the iphone. Sounds like he's full of regret now that he might get in trouble!