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Review roundup: HP TouchPad billed as 'mediocre tablet' - Page 2

post #41 of 112
6/30/11 at 5:37am
Quote:
Originally Posted by NinjaBladeMastery View Post

Yip, like Mac.World said. It's not stupid if the device it's competing against, the device that is the measuring stick, is the iPad2, with 80,000 apps. That figure cannot be ignored. Sure we can't expect the platform to have 80,000 apps at launch, but that just shows how behind the competition is. That too, is not a good sign for them. How many apps? How many quality apps? How fast are apps showing up on the store? How many developers? If I'm in the market, I'm going to look at all these stats and facts.

I don't think most buyers are as overly concerned with the pure number of apps as you personally may be. In fact I'd make a semi-educated guess that most buyers of any tablet or smartphone assume there's apps available for it without researching how many or the quality of them. It's not at the top of their priority list. Really, do you need 100,000 apps to be happy with your purchase?

Related to that, how would 100 thousand+ apps even benefit most users? The majority are largely copies of others already available, and how do you even discover most of them? You'll never look at more than a tiny percentage of those. IMO, 300 top-quality apps will benefit a user more than 100,000 of varying quality where you can't easily separate gems from trash. Sheer numbers don't tell you much of anything.

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post #42 of 112
6/30/11 at 5:44am
Everybody's gotta start somewhere.
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post #43 of 112
6/30/11 at 5:45am
Quote:
Originally Posted by RichL View Post

Criticising a new platform for a lack of apps at launch is beyond stupid.

It's not stupid if customers are deciding what product to buy and want to use apps. It is what it is... iPad has them and the rest don't. Maybe you can add "yet" to the end of that sentence, maybe not. That's a gamble you're taking if you buy anything other than an iPad, and that's what the other tablet makers are competing against.
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post #44 of 112
6/30/11 at 6:00am
Leave it to some generic box-maker to **** up WebOS.

Next!

Quote:
Originally Posted by RichL View Post

Criticising a new platform for a lack of apps at launch is beyond stupid.

At this point in the game, no robust ecosystem *already* in place means no sales.
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post #45 of 112
6/30/11 at 6:02am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jacksons View Post

I think you know what I mean. If you want an unbiased opinion when an iSomething is envolved, Walt is not the tree to climb. I don't know if this HP thing is any good, but you will not find out by asking Walt :-)

Unfortunately, you weren't clever enough to read the other many reviews also listed in this article.

Maybe there were too many words for you to get past the Mossberg summary.
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post #46 of 112
6/30/11 at 6:02am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Damn_Its_Hot View Post

I'm sure we all agree 100%?

Might try english - it is a bit more universal. I did get the gist of what you were saying and no disrespect intended - it is simply easier to communicate using english than your native tongue (Portuguese, Spanish?)

Welcome aboard.

Google Translate detected it as... Wait for it... Esperanto ...Which Google Translate can't translate yet.
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post #47 of 112
6/30/11 at 6:11am
A year and a half on, the carnage is getting ridiculous. And still no proper functioning Flash. What has Adobe been doing? Who the f**k is in charge of that department at Adobe?

PlayBook DOA. HP DOA. Here in Asia iPad 2 is still sold out the wazoo. Acer Iconia? Samsung Tab? Those buyers are the real "rebels" now, but their martyrdom is tragic.

The Tech press is getting desperate, their stories are getting stale... "Look w00t new tablet... Oh wait, it sucks."

Madness.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Apple ][ View Post

Can you believe that there exists delusional fools and mentally ill people out there who have been calling this an iPad killer? And if these people are not mentally ill, then they are surely smoking much better weed than I am, and I'd like to know where I can get me some of that.

I read a few of those HP tablet reviews and this tablet is a complete joke. It's fat and grotesquely obese. It weighs too much. It's made from cheap materials. It takes more than a minute to turn on! It has shoddy battery life. It fares terrible in performance tests, such as javascript. It suffers from many bugs. The video camera, of which it only has one, seems like complete crap, not even good enough for Skype. Flash is horrible, buggy and laggy on it, not that I really give a damn about Flash. When you tear the tablet apart, it looks like the insides of a cheap pc, not a tablet. There are hardly any apps available for it. They hilariously priced it at the exact same price as the undisputed #1 tablet which rules the universe.

The modern tablet era, which was ushered in by the arrival of the groundbreaking iPad is still pretty young, but the tablet graveyard has already begun to fill up with the corpses of tablets which have already met their early demise. I imagine that in 6 months time, the corpse of the HP Touchpad will be feeling pretty comfortable lying 6 feet underground, next to his neighbor, Mr. Xoom and all of the other poor, unfortunate bastards.
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post #48 of 112
6/30/11 at 6:21am
Quote:
Originally Posted by anonymouse View Post

Tens of millions of people have forked out $500 for a tablet, it's called the iPad.

Why is it so hard for people to read posts and recognize context?

Quote:
So far we haven't seen large numbers of such people willing to fork out 500bucks for a tablet. Maybe the next time google release data we'll see an uptick though.

In the context the word 'such' meant the people that Mac.World was talking about ie.

Quote:
These are the folks that will buy the best tablet that doesn't start with an "i"

So what you just said is that 10s of millions of inveterate mac haters who will avoid iProducts in the face of overwhelming odds have bought iPads - which I'm quite sure you didn't mean.
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post #49 of 112
6/30/11 at 6:28am
Quote:
Originally Posted by nvidia2008 View Post

Google Translate detected it as... Wait for it... Esperanto ...Which Google Translate can't translate yet.

OMG! It is Esperanto. Try here: http://traduku.net for a translator. Basic translation (my interpretation of what the translation program reported): "What did you expect for a first try?"
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post #50 of 112
6/30/11 at 6:31am
Quote:
Originally Posted by jm6032 View Post

OMG! It is Esperanto. Try here: http://traduku.net for a translator. Basic translation (my interpretation of what the translation program reported): "What did you expect for a first try."

Heh - esperanto is great example of the failure of a product due to negative network effects - hardly anybody learns esperanto because hardly anybody speaks esperanto. I guess the same applies to this touchpad - so that was clearly a highly meta posting
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post #51 of 112
6/30/11 at 6:44am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Big KC View Post

Butthead once told Beavis that "you can't polish a turd", and he was spot-on. Even if they manage to optimize the OS and add missing features, and gain a reasonable number of available tablet-optimized apps, the hardware is still a disaster. TouchPad 2 had better be badass, or the whole concept is doomed.

By the way, MythBusters (TV Show) did indeed prove that you can polish a turd. Just in case anybody was wondering...
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post #52 of 112
6/30/11 at 6:45am
Quote:
Originally Posted by cloudgazer View Post

I'm not going off Samsung's dodgy shipment numbers, I'm going off the Android app market's data.

http://developer.android.com/resourc...d/screens.html

3% of devices have large screens, meaning 7inch, thats around 3.5mil - the largest part would seem likely to be the galaxy tab, at least I can't think of another 7inch that actually made it into the wild in any numbers yet.
.

Huh??!!

I must be missing something here.

3% of what?
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post #53 of 112
6/30/11 at 6:47am
Somebody has to explain to me the fascination with a rear-facing camera on a tablet. Is anybody really going to carry around this dinner plate to snap photos?
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post #54 of 112
6/30/11 at 6:49am
Steve Jobs has indeed been proven correct. We now have a slew of Android phones, several Android tablets(with dual-CPUs), the Blackberry Playbook and now the HP TouchPad. None, *NONE* of them run flash well or consistently. And all now join the happy family of Flash zero-day exploits.
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post #55 of 112
6/30/11 at 6:52am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jacksons View Post

OMG Walt Mossberg didn't like a non iProduct!? Really? I can't beleive it. Oh wait...

Tough to be not critical when anything's compared to iProducts, where the worst example of iProducts are better than average, and most are in the range of exceptionally good to brilliant.

I guess he needs to learn to lie a little to satisfy the ABA crowd.
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post #56 of 112
6/30/11 at 6:54am
Quote:
Originally Posted by cloudgazer View Post

Why is it so hard for people to read posts and recognize context?



In the context the word 'such' meant the people that Mac.World was talking about ie.



So what you just said is that 10s of millions of inveterate mac haters who will avoid iProducts in the face of overwhelming odds have bought iPads - which I'm quite sure you didn't mean.

Well, in that case, you're saying that maybe Google will publish numbers that show an uptick in stupidity? Well, it's entirely possible.
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post #57 of 112
6/30/11 at 6:58am
Quote:
Originally Posted by island hermit View Post

Huh??!!

I must be missing something here.

3% of what?

By the content of that page, it sounds like it meant 3% of all Android devices. However, their 4 category of screen sizes is vague when there's no real numbers to define what qualify as a "large" screen.
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post #58 of 112
6/30/11 at 7:05am
Quote:
Originally Posted by xsu View Post

By the content of that page, it sounds like it meant 3% of all Android devices. However, their 4 category of screen sizes is vague when there's no real numbers to define what qualify as a "large" screen.

Exactly. The 5 inch Dell Streak is advertised as a tablet and probably is lumped into the 3% of Androids with large screens?
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post #59 of 112
6/30/11 at 7:12am
Well that's easy to take care of. Just subtract the 16 Streaks they sold.

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post #60 of 112
6/30/11 at 7:12am
Quote:
Originally Posted by blackbook View Post

Exactly. The 5 inch Dell Streak is advertised as a tablet and probably is lumped into the 3% of Androids with large screens?

I'm kinda assuming that nobody bought the dell streak
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post #61 of 112
6/30/11 at 7:14am
Quote:
Originally Posted by anonymouse View Post

Well, in that case, you're saying that maybe Google will publish numbers that show an uptick in stupidity? Well, it's entirely possible.

No - I'm saying that we might see more stupid people willing to spend $500 on a honeycomb tab. I'm assuming that the number of stupid people is fairly static on a monthly timeframe.
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post #62 of 112
6/30/11 at 7:16am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Curmudgeon View Post

Somebody has to explain to me the fascination with a rear-facing camera on a tablet. Is anybody really going to carry around this dinner plate to snap photos?

Augmented reality and FaceTime are good uses of a rear-facing camera on an iPad.
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post #63 of 112
6/30/11 at 7:22am
A few thought:

HP is getting compared to the iPad and found wanting, in part because they publicly said that they were going to be better than #1. They were going to be #1+. Add that to the stupid things they have said about themselves in comparison to Apple over the last few months, and you get the harsh criticism of the TP. HP sowed the wind, and is now, reaping the whirlwind. No one learns.

If HP had come out with the Xoom, or Gtab firmly in their sights, they might have been reviewed more favorably. But no, they, along with everyone else, seems to have an  fetish. When the reviews finally come out, WebOS fans say it is unfair to compare the TP to the iP2.

Lest we forget, the original iPad launched with 5,000 apps written specifically for the device. It is very fair to note the lack of apps, and thus, developer interest in the product at launch.

Finally, why is the iPad succeeding where everyone else is failing? One, there is no tablet market, and never has been. People are not buying tablets; they are buying iPads. Competitors cannot make iPads; they can only make brand X tablets. When SJ introduced the iPad, he spent a long time laying out the justification for the iPad's existence. He said that if it could not provide a superior experience in those areas, it has no reason to exist. Every tablet since has no justification to exist other than the fact that the iPad exists, and everyone else just wants a piece of it.
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post #64 of 112
6/30/11 at 7:22am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Curmudgeon View Post

Somebody has to explain to me the fascination with a rear-facing camera on a tablet. Is anybody really going to carry around this dinner plate to snap photos?

It's better than not having it there... convenience, that's all... and convenience to me is what it's all about. Just one snap a week makes it worthwhile to me.
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post #65 of 112
6/30/11 at 7:31am
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Originally Posted by Mac Voyer View Post

Finally, why is the iPad succeeding where everyone else is failing? One, there is no tablet market, and never has been. People are not buying tablets; they are buying iPads. Competitors cannot make iPads; they can only make brand X tablets. When SJ introduced the iPad, he spent a long time laying out the justification for the iPad's existence. He said that if it could not provide a superior experience in those areas, it has no reason to exist. Every tablet since has no justification to exist other than the fact that the iPad exists, and everyone else just wants a piece of it.


It's not too often that you find innovators in charge of a company... that's where Apple differs from most companies. Usually you find sales guys or number crunchers. With no real vision they usually have a "me too" attitude... copiers. Anyone with any brains would have cooked their product for a much longer time and really brought something worthy to the table, because, in my mind, there is a tablet space... tablets are here to stay and their potential will be realized and their market will grow. With more innovation some of these manufacturers could bring a product to market that will be successful... but to trip over each other trying to be first to market is embarrassing.
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post #66 of 112
6/30/11 at 7:44am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac.World View Post

You "assume" a Windows 8 tablet will be out before 2013. I think you are being quite optimistic.

I didn't get the implied time frames

In any case I'm happy to do a 12 month signature bet with you! Basically, a Windows 8 tablet (or slate or whatever they call it) comes out before 2013 and I win... one doesn't come out and you win.

The winner gets to choose the losers signature for the next 12 months (within AppleInsider TOS of course!)
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post #67 of 112
6/30/11 at 8:08am
It does sound rather mediocre from the reviews...

... but ...

I'd KILL to have a number row above the iPad keyboard and/or adjustable key heights! I've been wanting that since I got an iPad 1 on launch day.
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post #68 of 112
6/30/11 at 8:12am
I'm sad to hear that the hardware is so lacking. HP has exactly one chance to get this launched, and going in with problems like this seems like death.

Which is too bad, because from the little I used it, webOS is a much better OS than iOS. And I say that as someone with an all-Mac house.

The "cards" idea is simply brilliant, and I found it way easier to move around the system than on the iPhone or iPad. And the federated address book is precisely what I've been trying to get my iPhone to do since day one.
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post #69 of 112
6/30/11 at 8:21am
If amateur hour is over, this must be "open mic night".
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post #70 of 112
6/30/11 at 8:49am
It's a shame. Ars Technica liked it though - although still second to the iPad and thus because of its pricing the iPad still wins.

I think it has a lot of promise, but it's still a year of solid software engineering away from matching the current iPad 2 in terms of features, software. Let's not even think about how many years away having 100,000 apps on the app catalog will be.

However the devices App Catalog got a lot of praise from Ars, especially the in-store magazine idea.

If it wasn't for HP I'd be interested, but I've been burnt one too many times by their dodgy hardware.
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post #71 of 112
6/30/11 at 8:54am
Quote:
Originally Posted by cloudgazer View Post

I'm kinda assuming that nobody bought the dell streak

I know someone with one, and they like it.

Android 3.2 is meant to the the version of Android that is enhanced for 7" tablets (with 3.0 the one for 10" tablets), so the Android based tablets will only get better.

HP look to be licensing WebOS as well, so that should increase their marketshare if a decent designer licenses it. In addition I am sure that they will soon start including it on some PC lines even if it requires a touchscreen on the device. Palm on its own would be nearly, if not completely, dead by now, so I'm glad the software has a chance to become something.

RIM ... well, never mind.

Windows 8 for tablets. Let me know when it's available.
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post #72 of 112
6/30/11 at 8:59am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Curmudgeon View Post

Somebody has to explain to me the fascination with a rear-facing camera on a tablet. Is anybody really going to carry around this dinner plate to snap photos?

Lately i have been using the rear camera on my ipad to scan documents. There are uses other than taking personal photo's for a rear camera.
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post #73 of 112
6/30/11 at 9:03am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Firefly7475 View Post

I didn't get the implied time frames

In any case I'm happy to do a 12 month signature bet with you! Basically, a Windows 8 tablet (or slate or whatever they call it) comes out before 2013 and I win... one doesn't come out and you win.

The winner gets to choose the losers signature for the next 12 months (within AppleInsider TOS of course!)

It's entirely possible that Microsoft could get a tablet out before Q4 2012, but based on previous mobile device entries, I doubt it. You can pick my sig though if M$ does get a tablet into consumer channels prior to 2013.
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post #74 of 112
6/30/11 at 9:04am
Quote:
Originally Posted by island hermit View Post

Huh??!!

I must be missing something here.

3% of what?

3 % of android devices connecting to the google market over some period around june 1st
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post #75 of 112
6/30/11 at 9:29am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac.World View Post

It's entirely possible that Microsoft could get a tablet out before Q4 2012, but based on previous mobile device entries, I doubt it. You can pick my sig though if M$ does get a tablet into consumer channels prior to 2013.

Sweet! That just made it more interesting!!

Their tablets are Windows, not Windows Phone, so I'm not sure of the influence the mobile division has over the Windows 8 release date. I definitely don't think they will be selling tablets exclusively through the mobile carriers like phones.

Sinofsky is in charge and that dude is a machine. I don't think he has ever missed a release date.

I think they will stick to the Windows 7 release schedule. Private beta will be end of this year, public beta will be early next year (Jan/Feb), RTM will be July and retail will be Oct/Nov.

The main problem is remembering the bet!
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post #76 of 112
6/30/11 at 9:57am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jacksons View Post

OMG Walt Mossberg didn't like a non iProduct!? Really? I can't beleive it. Oh wait...

Apples MobileMe Is Far Too Flawed To Be Reliable - Walt Mossberg
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post #77 of 112
6/30/11 at 10:33am
Arstechnica gave a pretty positive review of it actually and they're regularly accused of being Apple fanboys heh. I'd still rather wait for an iPad 3 to get a tablet for myself. I'll just use my wife's iPad 1 till then

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/revie...pad-review.ars
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post #78 of 112
6/30/11 at 10:34am
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post #79 of 112
6/30/11 at 10:36am
Quote:
Originally Posted by SSquirrel View Post

Arstechnica gave a pretty positive review of it actually and they're regularly accused of being Apple fanboys heh. I'd still rather wait for an iPad 3 to get a tablet for myself. I'll just use my wife's iPad 1 till then

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/revie...pad-review.ars

They say at the end that the only reason to buy it is if you hate apple, they say it with a euphemism, but they say it nevertheless. That's not really a good review.

just like those Android tablets, its hard to recommend over an iPad at the same price. But the competition does creep ever closer, and the TouchPad stands as a solid iPad competitor for those who, err, "think different."
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post #80 of 112
6/30/11 at 10:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by astrosmash View Post

Here we are at version 3 of WebOS, on its fastest hardware yet, and it's still slow, buggy, and power hungry.

The UI is pretty, as usual, but it's still a mess under the surface.

WebOS was a hail mary attempt from Palm; after years of trying to develop the next generation Palm OS they whipped together "WebOS" from a Linux kernel and WebKit in only a matter of months, and it appears there are serious architectural problems as a result. I'll be surprised if there are any WebOS devices in the market in a few years. Its flaws are just too deep.

The problem isn't necessarily webOS but that HP bought it. Since when did HP know how to optimize software, their software & drivers are horrible crap.
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