

The HP TouchPad - Roritharr
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/09/the-hp-touchpad/

======
apress
Granted the software looks very cool and highlights some of the weaknesses of
iOS and the iPad. But it's worrisome that there was no talk of price or
battery life and availability was listed as "summer" for wifi and "later" for
3G. I fear the Touchpad will be lapped by the upcoming iPad refresh before it
even hits. And how much air went out of the Xoom balloon as soon as the $800
price tag leaked? The iPad definitely needs some strong competition but I am
afraid this may not be it.

~~~
m_eiman
I think that they'll announce the pricing about when the iPad 2 buzz has died
down a bit after that has been announced. That'll let them set the price low
enough, if Apple has any more surprises in that area (people expected the iPad
to be a lot more expensive).

When will they announce the new iPad, btw?

~~~
masklinn
> When will they announce the new iPad, btw?

Yearly cycle and no reason to pre-announce the iPad 2, so I'd expect announce
and immediate availability for late march to early april.

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ambirex
Anyone else notice the very "Apple" presentation style?

No mention of price yet? I kind of take that as a bad sign.

I'm very glad to see this space expand. I have a couple elderly relatives that
I have considered buying a tablet/slate to replace their computers.

~~~
TomOfTTB
Well Jon Rubinstein was an apple employee for 9 years (left in 2006) so I'd
think an Apple like presentation style is to be expected.

~~~
ambirex
Good call, I missed that. Makes sense.

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there
i was excited about webOS when it first came out, but the crappy palm pre
devices prevented me from adopting it. from everything they've shown during
their event today, i'm pretty excited about this new tablet.

i like the integration with the palm pre and being able to transfer calls,
text messages, and web pages between the two. i'm glad hp is focusing on
integration with existing web services and presenting them all together rather
than trying to reinvent the wheel and push customers towards their own
services like apple does with mobileme, itunes, ibooks, and facetime, and
google does with just about every app they make for android.

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superdude
I mentioned this in the other submission, but is "vibrant 18 bit" display just
spec jargon for a cheap TN panel? 6-bits for each R, G, and B? The IPS panel
in the iPad is a huge selling point for Apple. It is higher quality than
almost any modern laptop screen.

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teyc
This looks like a consumer device, and it's going to be a hard fight when
Apple is king and prepared to sacrifice margins to defend this territory.

The TouchPad hasn't clearly defined it's USP.

Furthermore, Apple is hiring people to get into corporate sales. This is where
HP has somewhat more experience in. It's going to be hard to develop the
ecosystem.

------
maqr
I'm not sure I understand the point of webOS. If Android is maturing quickly
and free-as-in-speech, why wouldn't HP simply adopt that?

I can understand Apple carving out their own proprietary path, because of
their legions of fans and widely accepted interface design patterns. I can
also understand Microsoft putting Windows 7 on tablets (because people want to
run MS applications that already exist). But why would I want webOS? Are they
trying to be like Apple and blaze an entirely new trail?

It seems like it would have been smarter for HP to go with Android. The cost
surely would have been cheaper and the product would have had a greater chance
at gaining acceptance.

~~~
kenjackson
The point is to control your own destiny. HP has been stuck behind MS for the
past 20 years. They couldn't innovate on hardware w/o MS.

This would just trade one devil for another devil. Even though Android is open
source, development happens in isolation. Even with HoneyComb Google only gave
Moto access. So Samsung, LG, HTC, Accer -- no Honeycomb for you yet. Moto gets
special treatment.

If you're HP do you want to get in bed with a company who may decide that
Motorola or Dell or Lenovo is the "preferred" partner? Do you want to have to
throttle your development (or develop on an old version of Android) to
introduce your latest HW innovation.

HP can finally own the full stack... ala Apple. And honestly, I think HP looks
at what Apple has done and thinks, "We can do a lot of what they do. Maybe
without the style -- but enough to put us beyond all of the Android clones".

~~~
redstripe
Good luck to them, but contrast HP with Nokia. Unless they execute extremely
well on the OS, store, dev tools, and price they will be releasing a memo like
this eventually <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2195520>

------
brisance
I hope HP has a plan for reaching out to consumers and getting them to look at
the TouchPad because the Apple Stores are doing a very good job at it. People
get to use the device and can make a purchase decision easily.

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protomyth
Just to give links to the wikipedia pages for the not so recognizable audio
codecs:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Efficiency_Advanced_Audio_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Efficiency_Advanced_Audio_Coding)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QCELP>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec>

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bvi
Since no price was mentioned, and given the tech specs, what's the _maximum_
price HN'ers would pay for the TouchPad? Any takers?

~~~
mgkimsal
$400. I _might_ pay a bit more, but I'd love to see it at a $299 price point.
Or perhaps an ability to buy in bulk for client projects at $299.

~~~
kaiwetzel
What's the point, though, at any price point? It's vapor ware, looks like a
thick and heavy Samsung Galaxy tab rip-off and it doesn't even run Android.
Maybe hospitals can make use of it if it's dish-washer proof but other than
that it's a liability, not a product.

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cal5k
Awesome! Now we only need to develop for iOS, Android, QNX/BlackBerry OS,
Windows Phone 7, and WebOS.

;-)

~~~
amock
Luckily all those platforms support HTML 5 and on WebOS you can easily deploy
your HTML 5 app as a native app and take advantage of the native functionality
as well.

~~~
foobarbazetc
Only if you don't care about user experience.

