

Apple iPad rival HP Slate sees demand fizzle at 9,000 units - evo_9
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/11/14/apple_ipad_rival_hp_slate_sees_demand_fizzle_at_9000_units.html

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megaman821
I know these devices have a similar form factor but I think most comparisons
should stop there. The HP slate is something that could be moderately
successful being sold to businesses with few consumer purchases. The iPad is
wildly successful being sold to consumers with few business purchases.

It will be more interesting to see if there will be consumer demand for HP's
real iPad rival, the Palmpad.

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scrrr
Fun-fact: 1/3rd of german parliament members use the ipad every day. The
number is increasing, since they found out its paid for by taxpayers because
its a device useful for work. They also changed a law that previously forbid
using electronic devices in the assembly hall. Im not making this up. Steve
Jobs is a genius and the ipad has business users alright.

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daskrachen
Do you have a source for this? I am German myself and I would love to spread
this among my friends! This is awesome!

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newgame
<http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6095867,00.html>

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rbanffy
It's hard to imagine something that runs Windows 7 as an iPad rival. The iPad
combines the tablet format with iPhone simplicity. Hint: you just can't rip
the keyboard out of a Windows notebook and expect people love it.

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mattmaroon
It's pretty clear HP tried to distance themselves from the Slate starting the
day they bought Palm. They showed it at CES and then sat on it for months,
then released apparently the same thing they had shown at CES.

I think that's a big mistake. While I love WebOS, I have even less desire to
buy it on a Slate than I do iOS. I don't want my phone but bigger, I want my
computer but smaller. My guess is the first real competitor to the iPad will
be the one that lets you run actual Windows and somehow programmatically makes
everything touch-friendly.

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glhaynes
_lets you run actual Windows and somehow programmatically makes everything
touch-friendly_

That sounds... difficult. :)

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sudont
More like cognitive dissonance. Windows is built for a mouse, same with Mac.

If it coulda worked, Steve would have done an OEM and slapped Axiotron with a
lawsuit.

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kenjackson
Would it be that hard? Here's what I would do:

1) Rewrite explorer.exe to work on a slate. A big effort, but probably just on
the scale of WP7 or iOS. This gives you a good high-level shell experience for
doing things like finding files, launching apps, etc....

2) Make a great touch screen keyboard. Probably make a handful of them, so the
user can try various kinds and make the default the one they like the most.
Note, Windows handwriting recognition is already quite good.

3) Add a touch-friendly shell on IE9. The shell is already minimalist -- this
is pretty incremental work.

4) Make touch-friendly versions of all the built-in Windows apps (notepad,
wmp, control panel, etc...). This maybe a large work item, so use telemetry
data to hit the 20 most popular apps first.

5) Make Office touch friendly. It's actually surprisingly touch friendly now.

6) Get the top 100 apps and work with vendors on making them finger-friendly.
Entice with money where necessary. Targets here would be Chrome, Firefox,
Photoshop, iTunes, Zune, VLC, WinZip, Quicktime, TurboTax, Adobe Reader,
Mathematica, etc... I suspect the conversion ratio won't be super high, but
you'll move what you can.

7) Create a touch app store.

Now this won't be perfect, but I suspect it will be a pretty tremendous start,
coupled with OakTrail. This probably would seriously cannibalize the netbook
market. I'd probably even get one.

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sudont
That's a good plan. I doubt Microsoft would ever implement it.

And most of what you wrote is what Apple did with iOS, it's actually just Mac
OS X with the GUI torn off completely.

Really, a touch API for .NET would go a long way for promoting it in tech
circles. The problem is that the bosses are in love with iPads.

Mono for Android, maybe.

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kenjackson
_Really, a touch API for .NET would go a long way for promoting it in tech
circles._

WPF 4.0 has touch support, and seems pretty full-featured as far as I can
tell. The problem I have building .NET apps is that I don't know anyone with a
Windows touch device. It's hard for me to want to add touch support, given I
have no customers for it. Although if MS paid me for my time... :-)

Which reminds me of one more thing for the list... Win8Touch needs to be able
to run WP7 Silverlight apps. The market needs to be seeded with touch apps in
order for the tablet to take off. This was THE most important thing Apple did
for the iPad (followed very closely by incredible battery life).

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sudont
It's possible with the iPad. I'm thinking it's partially the right form-
factor. I initially dismissed the iPad as junk, but after picking one up I was
a little more convinced that it had a lot of value.

And heh, looks like Microsoft took a little bit of direction from cocoa touch
in naming their classes "UIElement"

.NET apps would be a lot more valuable for in-house applications, although,
Apple's 299/yr enterprise license takes a bit of air out of that.

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ericz
I didn't expected such biased news would be upvoted on HN

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mattmaroon
Then you must be new here.

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mattmaroon
Predictable.

