WebOS HP Tablet Rumors Continue...

creative
Pat Horne

My reptilian friend, yes it did. But, it was creative and to that I say "good hire" by HPalm. I'm glad to see them going after someone with think outside the box vision, rather than another HP corporate type.

To me, if Palm creativity is absorbed into HPs corporate America paradigm, then I could really care less about the future of WebOS. I loved Palm in the late 90s, b/c it did things that the stuffed shirts could not hope to do. I still like Palm even after WebOS, b/c a lot of creativity was woven into it. Yeah, corporately they have been a train wreck.

So, I have contended that if the HP buy lets HP do what it does best (synergy, econs of scale, marketing, engineering), and Palm do what it does best (software & creativity) then it can be a great marriage. If he HP powers absorb then who cares, we might well go M$. If Palm is not reigned in (which I have no fear of), then we lose and HP will have wasted $1.4B+, and the shareholders are gonna get hosed a bit.

So, good hire IMHO.
Pat Horne

Eh. HP doesn't have to embrace the UI at top-level. It can be tested in some apps and see how people like it.

Apple changed iPhoto UI in iPad and rolled it back to Mac OS X too. (I wish iBooks had the damn iPhoto UI instead of that eejitastic "bookcase.")

Playbook is DOA due to having any association with the archaic BlackBerry OS/handsets. It needs to be a COMPLETELY autonomous platform/device in all regards to have any kind of a chance. Doesn't it still have to maintain some kind of Fooleo-esque connectivity to a BB handset for email & PIM duties?

WebOS tablet is DOA due to having last year's specs and (likely) higher-than-iPad prices...in addition to all the reasons outlined by JCA below. I do, however, give HP somewhat better odds than RIM just because of their tremendous retail footprint and entrenchment in the education market. There's still a chance for a series of WebOS tablets (not the Topaz specs we've seen leaked already) to be a very distant 2nd place in tablets behind iPad. Also, I doubt the battery life will be that good---remember, they had to cut down on the battery capacity to shave a few oz of weight off of th device to match the first-gen iPad.

Android Honeycomb is DOA due to numerous factors:
-Greed by hardware manufacturers & Google and only wanting to release high-margi, 3G/4G tablets thru carrier channels
-No compelling <$500 wi-fi only devices (see above)
-The stigma caused by a flood of "me too" lame Android 1.x & 2.x Chinese knockoff tablets
-Lack of enough improvements from Android 2.x. Android is still buggy as hell. Uninstalling apps leaves empty, cryptic directories all over your SD card, for example. I'd like to have seen Google jettison backwards compatibility with 1.x and 2.x apps entirely and start with a clean codebase or at least run only signed apps etc.
-Still not enough of a focus on UI & PIM capabilities. Is it too much to ask for the stock Android calendar & contacts apps to match a 15 year old Palm Pilot?

To me, Android Honeycomb was the best chance to rival iPad and Moto & Google have blown it completely before selling a single Xoom by pinning their hopes to a single overpriced device on a single carrier. Is it so hard to have a variety of storage capacities in ALL retail outlets in both wi-fi and WWAN form?

I never took RIM seriously in the tablet game so no disappointment here.

HP could have still sold gazillions of PalmPads had they hit the market 2-3 months ago with a polished product with the specs we saw leaked over the past few weeks. The former Palm and Ruby also deserve criticism for doing nearly NOTHING between CES '09 and the HP acquisition in 2010. The Pre 2 should have been released instead of the Pre Plus a year ago and some kind of WebOS tablet should have been ready to roll before the end of CY 2010. Now it's too little FAR too late.
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->Verizon Moto Droid + Verizon Palm Centro-> Verizon Moto Droid X + Palm TX

I'm afraid the Android invasion is about to come to a screeching halt:

1. VZW is going to push the iPhone like crazy. Why? High-margins, mandatory 2yr contracts, Apple around to take the lion's share of the support/advertising/support headaches and costs. All of those Apple stores selling VZW iPhone is only to help Big Red out more and give them fewer and fewer reasons to push Android.

2. VZW is dumping the new every 2 promo & making people wait 20 months into a 2yr contract to do an early upgrade. With all of the uncertainty around Android devices and which ones will get updated and which ones won't, the unwashed masses will simply figure that a $200 iPhone is "more worth it" than a $200 Android device. Also, those in the know who are rather paranoid will know that Apple will offer guaranteed OS updates for 2+ years (the duration of their contract and then some).

3. Gingerbread seems to be a VERY underwhelming OS update. Nevertheless, Froyo still has a LOT of bugs and quirks and needs to improved upon ASAP. ALL of the uber-phones shown at CES will launch with the stale 2.2.

4. All of the innovation and ground-up rewrites/rethinks of Android UI & functionality appears to be going into Honeycomb. And that is an OS which looks set to be launching on a single hideously overpriced device on a single domestic carrier (and looks to be dangerously close to launching in a beta state)

5. Google is becoming increasingly close to the two big carriers (AT&T + VZW) and that is a bad sign for everyone. Google is bitching about purchase rates on the Market yet they narrow the return window and let developers like EA & Gameloft get away with all of these shitty little tricks like putting a game on sale then changing the official title of it so existing users are denied updates or even the possibility of redownloading it to a new device or after a hard reset. This makes people like ME who have spent big $ in the market want to resort to piracy just to spite these crooks. To date Valve is the ONLY company that has done digital delivery properly with Steam. Not Apple, not Google, not Amazon. Little ol' Valve.

Hardware-wise, the pricing of the Moto Xoom and the Moto Atrix are the epitome of corporate greed and not understanding a company's target audience. Sanjay needs to be removed from power immediately. Colligan or Yankowski could run a better ship than he has recently. The newly-split Motorola is going to be teetering on bankruptcy within a year with ridiculous pricing like this, no matter how Super Bowl promos they do.

6. NO ONE has announced a single wi-fi Honeycomb tablet or even an "uncertified" Gingerbread one nor will they comment on plans to release Honeycomb updates for devices outside of the carriers' control. Google & their hardware partners are going to essentially cede the entire <$700 retail wi-fi tablet market to Apple, with HP/Palm & RIM picking up the tablescraps. Pathetic.

The one bright spot in the "Android tablet market", the Nook Color, is now AWOL for 2 weeks (I guarantee it will be longer) to stimy the rooting/hacking efforts. The entire industry appears to simply be quite content with rolling over and letting Apple sodomize them.

To be blunt, unles the Xoom is the greatest thing since the original iPhone, Google has just exposed a Goatse-sized hole that HP can exploit IF their hardware is solid, IF their pricing is competitive (or slightly undercuts Apple), and IF they hit the market in a timely fashion and can court both developers and the media to produce the post-CES 2009 fervor all over again. That's a lot of IFs but I'll wager it still puts HP in a better position than they looked to be 2-3 months ago.
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->Verizon Moto Droid + Verizon Palm Centro-> Verizon Moto Droid X + Palm TX

Don't count out the iPad competitors
By Adam Ostrow, Special to CNN
February 4, 2011 -- Updated 0356 GMT (1156 HKT) | Filed under: Gaming & Gadgets

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/02/03/tablet.battles.ostrow/index.html?hpt=C2