Jason Perlow, running a modded Ice Cream Sandwich on a Motorola Xoom: "And the notifications? Let’s just say that on a tablet, they work damn awkward when compared to the smartphone implementation on the Nexus. Frankly, I think even iOS 5 on the iPad has ICS on the tablet beat.

"I was really hoping we’d get pull down notifications instead of that weird “stack” on the lower right hand corner which in my opinion is an exercise in pure frustration, especially if you have a lot of notification events from apps piling up. And jumping into the Settings dialog is still a royal pain unless you make a dedicated shortcut to it on your home screen.

"Ultimately, this all boils down to ICS being a less intuitive tablet OS which is harder for the average user to understand than Apple’s iOS. On a subsidized smartphone device with 4G LTE technology, an end-user is likely to tolerate these kind of geeky issues, but on a $400-$600 tablet, I’m not so certain.

"ICS has done absolutely nothing to make Android less geeky or more user friendly. That alone is worth consideration."

He also dislikes the 16:9 screen size, something which is rarely mentioned but seems quite an important point.

This is a chip shop fight of a review: short and brutal.

"Tablet makers must make sure that, like the iPad, their product has a simple hardware design. They must put an interface on it that is totally intuitive and inviting to be touched, and most importantly invites the user to do things. No intimidation is allowed, just the invitation for exploration with the tablet. Make that the focus of all marketing for the tablet. Not whiz-bang features, not sophisticated functionality; get the message out that you can just do things with this tablet. That’s all mainstream consumers want to hear."<br />
<br />
Really insightful piece about the gulf in usability between the iPad and other tablets so far. Perhaps webOS will do better.

"the XOOM is an excellent piece of hardware. The build quality is fantastic, and it has a powerful dual-core nVidia Tegra 2 chipset with 1GB of onboard RAM, a brilliant 10.1″ 1280×800 LED display and high-resolution cameras in front and rear that exceed that of the iPad in terms of raw capability, at least on paper.<br />
"There’s only one problem. The software on the device as shipped is complete and utter beta-level crap."<br />
<br />
Harsh, really.