Tag Archives | Tablets

Rebuttal by Invite

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 18, 2011 at 4:03 pm

Earlier today, Engadget posted images and details relating to HP’s upcoming WebOS tablets, including the suggestion that the devices won’t go on sale until September. Then I got an invite to HP’s February 9th WebOS event–which I thought was a tad odd given that I’d already been invited and RSVPd. But this new invite has a purpose: It says that anyone who thinks that Engadget let the cat out of the bag is wrong. Of course, it doesn’t say whether Engadget’s scoop is completely spurious, or partially so…or even largely correct but incomplete. We’ll presumably need to wait until the 9th to figure that out. I’ll liveblog the event, so you’ll learn what’s going on as soon as I do…

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HP's WebOS Tablet: Think September, Not February?

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 18, 2011 at 11:15 am

Engadget’s Nilay Patel has an apparent scoop: pictures and details on HP’s plans for tablets based on its WebOS operating system. The images aren’t as exciting as the factoids–all tablets look pretty snazzy in product shots–but the most striking factoid is the apparent possibility that the tablets won’t ship until September. That seems eons away given how many other tablets are set to ship in the next few months. It’s also not the “early 2011” that HP was promising a few months ago. And if HP talks about the tablets at its Feburary 9th WebOS event, it would be preannouncing them by seven months or so. Here’s hoping we don’t have the whole story just yet–and that the whole story involves WebOS tablets showing up before the fall.

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TiVo's iPad App Now Available

Posted by Dave Z on January 18, 2011 at 8:17 am

TiVo’s iPad app, announced in November, is now available via the the App Store.

I’ve had app on hand for several weeks now, and I quite like it. Whereas TiVo has been lagging the competition in providing this sort of functionality, they may have just leap frogged nearly all contenders in producing both a beautiful and functional television companion. Of course, it’s only a companion for TiVo Premiere owners. But perhaps there are a few more this week given that amazing $65 Woot deal.

The app itself is quite comprehensive. Who needs picture-in-guide when you can manage just about every meaningful element of your TiVo from an iPad without interrupting the television viewing experience. Remote control? Check. Guide? Check. Season Passes, To Do List, Now Playing? Check, check, check. Plus, you know no app is complete these days without the ability to share on Twitter and Facebook. So they’ve checked that off, too. Bonus — portrait and landscape views for any/every screen.

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Eight Things I Liked at CES

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 13, 2011 at 3:16 pm

I liked CES 2011. I found it useful and fun. I’m glad I went. None of those reactions were a given–I understand why some folks question the show’s very reasons for existing, and I’ve been known to accentuate the negative myself.  This year, however, there was a critical mass of interesting stuff, in multiple categories.

From Tuesday afternoon of last week through Saturday, I spent so much time learning about new products that I didn’t cover all that many of them here while the show was going on. So here’s a catch-up post with a few of the ones that made this CES one of the best ones in my memory–despite the insane crowds, the aisles and aisles of lookalike phone covers, and the jingling case of  slot-machine tinnitus that I still can’t quite shake.

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Honeycomb Better Be Good

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 13, 2011 at 10:21 am

For this week’s TIME.com column–the first, incidentally, to appear on Thursday, our new publication date–I took a look at the tablet-fest that was this year’s CES. There was so much news about entrants new and old that it was impossible to be comprehensive–I understand one commenter’s frustration that I didn’t mention the Notion Ink Adam–but I still think the big development was the profusion of would-be iPad rivals running Android. In a remarkably short amount of time, we’ve gone from one major Android tablet (Samsung’s Galaxy Tab) to so many that it’s tough to keep track of them all. If all these models show up and aren’t flops, Android is going to be the dominant tablet operating system, at least for a while.

As I say in the TIME column, I think that tablet software is more important than tablet hardware: Most of the devices at CES were remarkably similar in every way except for screen size. Android 3.0 Honeycomb, the first truly tablet-friendly version of the OS, is going to play an enormous role in defining all these new tablets. And we still don’t know that much about it.

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E FUN Readies Android 2.2 Tablet for Young Geeks, Old Newbies

Posted by Jacqueline Emigh on January 10, 2011 at 5:31 pm

A start-up named E FUN is planning a new Android 2.2 tablet for its already established, unusual hybrid market, which combines twentysomething (and younger) tech geeks with senior citizen tech neophytes.

When E FUN introduced an initial 10-inch Android tablet last year, the device sold out within three days on the Home Shopping Channel, an EFUN employee said, speaking with me during the ShowStoppers press event at CES.

“Interestingly, the tablet turned out to be especially popular with people of Baby Boomer age and older, who’d wanted to start using computers but were afraid,” she noted.

The oldsters liked the 10-inch Next tablet due to its easy-to-use touchscreen, according to the booth rep.

Among the younger tech set, Android was the big draw, along with the unit’s slick engineering. “They wanted to see how far they could push things,” I was told

The follow-on 10.1-inch edition, called the Next4, will feature Android 2.2 with Flash support, a capacitive touch screen with 1024-by-768 resolution, 8 GB of internal memory (as opposed to 4 GB on the earlier 10-incher), Wi-Fi, and built-in access to the Borders eBook Store. Availability is set for Q2 or Q3. MSRP is $349.

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The Blackberry PlayBook is Not Confusing

Posted by Jared Newman on January 7, 2011 at 6:09 pm

In starting from scratch, the Blackberry PlayBook faces a challenge not shared by iOS, Android or WebOS tablets: It will be completely foreign to all users.

Fortunately, navigating the PlayBook is dead-simple, provided you memorize a handful of little gestures. That was my big takeaway after a few minutes of hands-on time today — along with multitasking that blows the iPad out of the water.

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ViewSonic's 4-inch Android Device: Is It a Phone or a Tablet?

Posted by Jacqueline Emigh on January 6, 2011 at 11:18 am

At CES today, ViewSonic will launch a four-inch, Android 2.2-based tablet/phone dubbed the ViewPad 4, a ViewSonic exec said on Wednesday night, confirming earlier rumors around an until now nameless gadget in the same general category as Dell’s five-inch Streak.

The ViewPad 4 will have phone calling features, and it will sell for $549 unlocked upon its eventual release, said Josephine Chiu, a ViewSonic product manager, speakng with me at a pre-show Pepcom press event in Las Vegas.

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