Sadly, I’m starting to get agitated with all the press releases yet still no way to order one and none even out the door and in the hands of the people that already fell for the “pre-order” debaucle.

I honestly believe that by the time these used car salesmen actually get the thing to their customers there will already be much better alternatives.

So NI (Rohan) responded directly to them. I’m sure it annoyed some people, but evidently they felt they had to respond to their most direct critical threat. Plus, it looks like part of the deal was that they would give Rohan a heads-up if they thought it looked fishy in any way.

I think part of the problem with NI is that they are running very lean in certain areas — particulary in marketing and product management. Larger companies have whole organizations to deal with that stuff — at NI, I think that’s mostly just Rohan. Big lesson for them is that they’re going to have to make that transition from everyone-does-everything to a managed company.

Rohan clearly has a very minimalist design aesthetic — VERY minimalist — and he’s the design director. I think he’d probably think Danish Modern is too elaborate. And I think that’s some of what you’re reacting to. It’s an “anti-iOS” design aesthetic, to some extent. My sense of the standard Android design aesthetic is that it’s a compromise between “anything but Apple” and “yes but it must look good or people won’t be seen in public with it.” Rohan has made statements to the effect that Android is too decorated for his taste.

So, it’s just not going to be to everyone’s taste. One would hope they’ll allow for redecoration, or account for the fact that functionality is trumped by appearance for a lot of people (why Jags had more cachet than BMWs in the 80s, even as BMW was kicking their ass on the road).

Also, there are some very ultra-minimalist touches that I think are going to bite them on the ass. E.g., the way notifications are rendered — it’s the sort of design choice that would appeal to an old-school Unix workstation guy, at least from what I can see here and what I’ve seen in earlier mockups.

They should have simply use the stock Android launcher (I hope the user can configure using that instead of that horrible red thing.

Also, it’s not much saying anyone can use iOS..it doesn’t do much to start off with.

1.e-mail client
2.browser (with few pages open in various tab)
3.navigation app
4.canvas application
5.calender
6.calculator
7.office suite
8.6.5 mb pdf file
9. sniffer file browser with inter memory
10.pendrive (reading data from it)
11.sd card indexed
12.e-book reader
13. a weather app
14. 3G data connection

only these many.. so what!.. my uncle steve told me that when i will grow up he will gift me similar device..till then i should play with my ipad….

Rohan, if you read the comments over here, do make sure that going forward you deal only with sites like Slashgear.