Tag Archives | Tablets

Maybe We Need a SanDisk Sansa of Tablets

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 24, 2011 at 6:00 am

SanDisk is introducing a new MP3 player today. It’s called the Sansa Zip Clip, sells for under $50, and has a 1.1″ color screen, 4GB of storage, a MicroSD slot, a stopwatch, and an FM radio. Until the company alerted me to the news, I’d sort of forgotten that anyone was releasing new stand-alone MP3 players. But hearing about it got me thinking about a newer market dominated by Apple–tablets.

SanDisk’s Sansa line has long been one of the few success stories in media players that doesn’t involve products with “Apple” in the name. The company managed to quietly sell enough players to become the second most successful player in the category, and it apparently continues to do well enough to make introducing new models worth its while.

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Logitech’s New Unfolding iPad Keyboard: Wider is Better

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 24, 2011 at 1:00 am

What do an iPad 2 and an IBM ThinkPad from 1995 have in common? Not a whole lot–unless the iPad is equipped with Logitech’s new Fold-Up Keyboard and the ThinkPad is the famous 701 “Butterfly” model. Like the Butterfly ThinkPad, Logitech’s new gadget, which snaps onto the bottom of the iPad, packs a keyboard that’s wider than the case. As you lift up the iPad, the keyboard swivels out in two pieces–as shown in the first image above–and then pieces together. It’s also reminiscent of the Stowaway folding keyboard, a gadget which would be a wonderful iPhone accessory but which appears to no longer be available.

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What a $99 HP TouchPad Does and Doesn’t Teach Us

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 22, 2011 at 11:50 am

Weird: By flopping so badly, HP’s TouchPad tablet has become a monstrous hit. After HP CEO Léo Apotheker decided to terminate HP’s WebOS hardware business, the company slashed the entry-level TouchPad, which sold for $499 just a couple of weeks ago, to $99. The new price is causing riots at Best Buy and has made the TouchPad the #1 electronics product on Amazon.

HP is now selling TouchPads as fast as it won’t make them. It’s a poignant end to a device that once seemed full of potential.

Are the folks snapping up TouchPads making an intelligent buying decision? It depends. HP says it’s not giving up on WebOS, and will continue to operate the WebOS app store and hold developer events. I’m not sure what the status is of any software updates for the TouchPad: it could certainly use some additional bug fixes and enhancements, but I’d be startled if HP poured energy into development of anything as ambitious as an iOS 5.0 or an Android Ice Cream Sandwich, at least while the fate of WebOS is so very uncertain.

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Mace on the WebOS Meltdown

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 19, 2011 at 7:49 pm

Michael Mace–who used to work at Palm–has some smart thoughts on this week’s WebOS drama:

If you believe that every smartphone company needs to own its own OS, we ought to see a mad bidding war between LG, HTC, Sony Ericsson, Dell, and maybe Samsung to buy Web OS.  (The loser could get RIM as a consolation prize.)  Maybe a buyout will still happen, but I think HP has probably been quietly shopping Web OS for a while, and if there were interest it would have tried to close a deal before today’s announcement.

 

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“Always…Six Months Away From Being Awesome”

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 19, 2011 at 3:20 pm

Instapaper creator Marco Arment says that WebOS’s reputation for being great is overblown, since it never ran all that well on any device that HP or Palm shipped it on:

HP definitely mismanaged Palm. The TouchPad’s software shouldn’t have shipped when it did. The hardware wasn’t very good. The marketing was insufficient. The retail channel was poorly managed.

But webOS, despite having some great ideas, never became competitive. Palm and webOS’ developers bear most of the responsibility for that, not just HP’s managers.

I can’t really argue his point. In fact, he quotes my TouchPad review as evidence of WebOS’s problems. But I can make a clarification: When I speak enthusiastically about WebOS, as I often have, it’s mostly over the user interface. Arment is right that WebOS as it existed on real devices always had issues. (For instance, it loaded programs way more slowly than other mobile OSes.) WebOS’s potential was always enormous; the actual product has always had its frustrations. And on the TouchPad, it had tons of frustrations. But boy, I’ll still be sorry if it’s all over.

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WebOS: The Trying-Really-Hard-to-Be-an-Optimist’s View

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 19, 2011 at 12:34 pm

I’m still reeling from the news that HP is getting out of the WebOS hardware business. So is the whole blogosphere. And a lot of it has written off WebOS, period. A lot of stories are talking about the OS in the past tense.

But HP hasn’t said that it’s scrapping WebOS. Its press release about its planned “transformation”–a refocusing on enterprise stuff and a move away from most consumer products, including even PCs–said only this about WebOS:

HP will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. The devices have not met internal milestones and financial targets. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.

That’s wishy-washy for sure. But it’s not saying that it’s giving up on WebOS–just that it’s giving up on its current WebOS hardware. (As far as I know, the company hasn’t said what it plans to do with the WebOS printers it’s repeatedly said that it’s working on. They might yet appear–presumably, development of the first models is far along at this point, and “Would I buy a WebOS printer?” is an utterly different question than “Would I buy a WebOS tablet?)

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Once Upon a Time, Last Month…

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 18, 2011 at 5:33 pm

Here’s a press release of the damned from slightly over a month ago. It was a different time…

HP to Drive Innovation, Scale and Growth of webOS
Stephen DeWitt to lead HP’s webOS global business unit; Jon Rubinstein named senior vice president of product innovation for PSG

PALO ALTO, Calif., July 11, 2011

Building on the successful launch of HP webOS 3.0, HP today announced it is accelerating the global expansion of webOS.

To support this next phase of growth, HP has appointed Stephen DeWitt as senior vice president and general manager of its webOS global business unit. Jon Rubinstein, the visionary behind webOS, will assume a product innovation role within the Personal Systems Group (PSG) at HP.

This announcement underscores HP’s strategy to provide a seamless, secure, context-aware experience across HP’s product portfolio, and to deliver innovation at unmatched scale.

“With the successful debut of our first wave of webOS-based products, we are drawing on our deep executive bench to position the right leaders in the right roles to accelerate the long-term growth of webOS,” said Todd Bradley, executive vice president, Personal Systems Group, and member of the Executive Board, HP. “Stephen DeWitt has a proven ability to build and scale organizations into global, multibillion dollar operations, and I am confident that he will take webOS to the next level. At the same time, we continue to leverage the core strengths of Silicon Valley icon Jon Rubinstein to apply his considerable talents across the PSG portfolio.”

DeWitt, who has been leading the PSG Americas region at HP, will be responsible for all aspects of the webOS business, including engineering, research and development, sales, marketing and go-to-market support. In his new role, DeWitt will spearhead the creation of a fully integrated, global developer and independent software vendor program to deliver new consumer and business applications. DeWitt’s team also will create a dedicated mobility practice with HP’s partner community, with the goal of delivering consumer and enterprise solutions globally.

DeWitt has dramatically improved PSG’s profitability and share position in the America’s region since his arrival to HP in 2008. He is succeeded by Stephen DiFranco, head of the Solutions Partners Organization for the Americas region at HP.

“Innovation is at the core of webOS, and I look forward to working with our talented team of engineers as we strive to develop the industry’s most compelling set of products, solutions and services in markets around the world,” said DeWitt. “As part of our investment in the future of webOS, we are working in lock step with the developer community, our channel partners and the start-up community to create an application ecosystem that delivers on HP’s mobile connectivity strategy.”

Jon Rubinstein has been named senior vice president for Product Innovation in the Personal Systems Group at HP. He will continue to report to Todd Bradley in this role, helping to propel innovation across product lines. HP will leverage Rubinstein’s passion for building exceptional consumer products and his long history of driving game changing innovation, such as webOS.

“With the launch of webOS 3.0, our team has delivered a world-class platform for HP to leverage going forward, and it is now time to take things to the next level,” said Rubinstein. “With webOS under Stephen DeWitt’s proven leadership, I’m looking forward to my new role and driving further innovation for webOS and other PSG products.”

About HP

HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure at the convergence of the cloud and connectivity, creating seamless, secure, context-aware experiences for a connected world. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

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HP: We’re Still Committed to WebOS!

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 18, 2011 at 3:53 pm

This is My Next’s Josh Topolsky says that HP still has plans for WebOS. It’s just not the least bit clear what they are.

DeWitt said that there would be staff reductions, but told the team that the company needs people “that are serious about winning” and again reiterated HP’s commitment to developing webOS as a platform. Both DeWitt and Bradley were clear that the current business model of webOS wasn’t working primarily due to lackluster hardware, arguing that HP needed to stop “trying to force non-competitive products into the market.”

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HP Kills WebOS Hardware: There’s Even Less of a Tablet Market Than There Was Yesterday

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 18, 2011 at 2:29 pm

I’ll have lots more to say about the stunning news that HP is killing the TouchPad after two months and killing WebOS phones. But for now, how about some poignant quotes?

Me, in “HP Buys Palm: The Optimist’s View” (April 2010):

HP might be able to take WebOS places that Palm couldn’t. After the Foleo fiasco, Palm quite reasonably chose to stick to its smartphone knitting. As a much larger, more prosperous company, HP might reasonably decide to put WebOS on slates or set-top boxes or other devices that Palm would likely have avoided.

A Palm without a little cloud over its head is a good thing. With the era of uncertainty over the company’s viability over, retailers may be more excited about stocking Palm products, and consumers may be more confident about buying them.

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More Evidence That There’s No “Tablet Market”

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 17, 2011 at 3:15 pm

All Things Digital’s Arik Hesseldahl reports that sales of HP’s TouchPad at Best Buy aren’t great. In fact, his source says that Best Buy has managed to sell less than ten percent of the 270,000 TouchPads that HP has shipped to the retailer so far. It’s causing Best Buy some angst, Hesseldahl says.

HP’s rapid move to cut the TouchPad’s price apparently hasn’t goosed demand, at least sufficiently: according to an analyst Hesseldahl quotes, consumers think that the price might tumble even further. And so rather than buy a cheap TouchPad now, they’re waiting for even cheaper TouchPads that could be in the works.

I like competition and I like the TouchPad’s WebOS software, so I’m rooting for some incarnation of HP’s product to be a winner that sells well. But it’s not the least bit startling to see it get off to a slow start. The first reviews of the TouchPad–here’s mine–were pretty much unanimously lukewarm at best, pointing out bugs, performance issues, and a general lack of apps. Even if you were intrigued by the TouchPad, the reviews would leave you thinking that it made sense to wait rather than rush out and buy one.

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