Below is summary of all we've learnt about Adam 2 design so far!

Notion Ink Adam 2 Unboxing!! oops, er, no...

Edit: Some sentence corrections

For some reason, Rohan, CEO of NI, decided to post the Adam unboxing video.

This is the unboxing video of Adam. You know, the one designed in 2010. And the guy in the teardown video didn't even say many nice things about it but did say in the end the TI OMAP is the right platform. Aaaaah! got it! This isn't about unboxing at all - it's about why chosing OMAP was the right thing and why NVidia can be blamed for Adam I issues.  Got it.

Might have as well labeled the post "We told you NVidia was to blame, listen to this guy"

So. It's been close to a month with the new dev blog, and it's got nothing remotely useful except one decision post. Weren't you all supposed to have your notebooks out to learn about their new design?

I say this: Why the farce? If you can't keep that blog alive with meaningful stuff, then just shut it down. It's totally OK to work quietly and keep cards close to your chest than make empty promises and not deliver - and I'm talking about the blog this time. It was supposed to be a "diary" of the design, clearly this diary hasn't gotten anywhere for a while now.

Where have the Adam II fanboys gone?! This is unacceptable!

On Jan 21st Notion Ink announced Adam 2 (Adam II) and a new development blog been up-and-running 3 weeks now. But... look at the reaction to the blog.



Where are the fanboys?!! Apart from those 6-7 regular ultrafans?! Look at the # of comments in Y axis as of Feb 15 2012 (Blog's been up since Jan 22)



Look at that! Shameful! 38 is highest number of comments?! 5 for lowest?!! The 'Hello' had more comments than the real "design" posts. This is a design blog, right? Aimed at the right NI segment that's interested in this topic? Just 5 comments from Green Android planet that's an essential part of Adam 2 design? Totally unacceptable! Where hath your love gone fanboys? Why hath thee forsaken thy favorite? Why?

This is all... Google's fault! No, it's Apple's fault! No.. wait, it's all jksaur's fault, that bastard! or, how about, It's all Engadget's fault - those bastards! It's TechCrunch's fault! It's Reliance's fault! It's that...that Santorum's fault.

IT'S EVERYBODY ELSE'S FAULT. YES, THAT'S IT.

The relation between Notion Ink (NI) and Tabletroms (TR)

Today's guest post by a leading TR developer (ICS team, rather) explains the relation between NI and TR via Notion Ink's own blog. I welcome that. Long time due, but this puts to rest questions surrounding this relation.

The first time I asked a question about this was way back in July 2011. TR, for its part, has always been reasonably transparent, but NI never really gave clarity to it. Now you have it, opined on the company's own blog.

Having said that, leaving Adam I behind, one would have to be clear that NI will officially stand behind Adam 2.  Rohan made no comment of his own.

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Anyone still get the point of Green Android Planet? Is there a point of this development?

Opportunity cost of developing for Adam

(If you don't know what opportunity cost is -- Wikipedia to the rescue)

It just got me thinking - there's maybe 4 -5 devs out there in TR who are toiling / have been toiling for weeks to get ICS, for free (well, pretty much, donations don't amount to much), on behalf of TR and NI. And all for what - maybe 30-40 people who actually have the skills, patience to keep trying every version until it gets to a release? Maybe another 150 once it's released?

All the effort for so little reach. And NI has potentially quite conveniently moved on - after all infographics are pretty important these days.

Adam 2 ... and infographics, sometimes we should ask "why?"

This post isn't meant to be snarky, I genuinely do not understand why Notion Ink is spending time on infographics.

First, the post that's part of the Adam II development blog. Infographs are nice, I get that. There's plenty of infographics these days, and any information can be presented in the form of visually compelling infographics. I even like the e-mail distribution infographic on that post - it's actually quite nice.

But then I step back and ask myself - "What does this have to do with Adam 2?"

At the end of the post Rohan says "This is a continuous activity which we are doing now to come to a point where we can define drawing primitives and rules based on which these info-graphs can be auto-generated. This is going to be a long but fun project at Notion Ink"

Why is this project being run? Are there not other priorities for this company, more pressing issues to deal with? What is the value in doing a long research project to figure out how to create infographics from "rules?" Is this another Eden style UI experiment? Do they expect to create a infographic app on top of ICS that does... infographics? Is that truly adding value to creating a top class tablet? Why is there some random design team doing a long fun project on infographics when Adam I users are reliant on TR for a deserved update?

I just don't see it. This is one more of "we're doing a research project" story and we've heard plenty before - remember BLISS, remember the DIY kit, remember Genesis? remember that supposed long summer project in Bangalore - all that came to nothing.

A telling demonstration of why all these distractions are wearing off is the tepid response to the new development blog. Apart from the few faithful, there is hardly any enthusiastic response to the posts. To this specific infographic post, not one person asked for a new concept. Most comments are about "please do a better job on Adam 2 and here are my 95 suggestions" and I cannot blame them.

This is so reminiscent of Adam I. First, an opening to Adam II that sets impossible expectations (the whole world's first drag-and-drop whatever), and then, posts that make you wonder where their focus is.

This will be another fun watch. But for sure Adam 2 has a few buyers, and perhaps we'll see another article of how 20 Adams sold will "kill Apple" ;)