HP attacks Apple iPad over Flash, ARM expects 50 new tablets in 2010

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
As HP attempts to push its own Flash-playing slate PC over the Apple iPad, one ARM executive said he expects more than 50 tablet-style devices to be introduced this year alone.



HP pushes Flash for its slate PC



HP this week began touting the ability of its forthcoming "slate" device to run content made in Adobe Flash -- something the iPad will not do. Though HP did not mention the iPad specifically by name, its choice of words and the specific promotion of Flash make it clear that the company is looking to take away some buzz from Apple's forthcoming device, due to launch April 3.



HP boasted that its slate PC, running Windows 7, can access the "complete Internet -- including Flash." Another note said "Access the full web and not just a part of it!"



"With this slate product, you're getting a full Web browsing experience in the palm of your hand," the company said. "No watered-down Internet, no sacrifices."



HP included a new 30-second video highlighting the ability of its slate to run both Flash and Air content from Adobe. The video shows a multi-touch interface and has a similar feel to Apple's own iPad advertisement, which debuted Sunday during the Oscars.







In addition, the company released a video on YouTube with a live demonstration of the slate's Flash capabilities. Alan Tam, senior product marketing manager at Adobe, showed off Flash-based Web content on the device, including video from MTV.com and an interactive Spongebob Squarepants game.







HP's embrace of Flash is a stark contrast from Apple, which has not allowed the Web standard onto its iPhone or iPad mobile devices. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is even alleged to have made disparaging remarks about Flash and Adobe on numerous occasions.



ARM expects 50 new tablets in 2010



Beyond Apple and HP, the tablet market is expected to get much more crowded by the end of 2010. Roy Chen, ARM's worldwide mobile computing ODM manager, said he expects more than 50 devices to debut in 2010.



According to Computerworld, most of the hardware will be introduced in China, but new tablet-style devices will be released in all markets.



"Like many chip makers, ARM often gains an inside view of products its chips are being used in, sometimes when asked for additional engineering support and other times due to partnership programs," author Dan Nystedt noted.



Chen's comments came during a press meeting in Taipei, where ARM showed off two tablets running the Google Android mobile operating system -- one from Compal Electronics with a 7-inch screen and Nvidia Tegra 2 chips, and a smaller device called the Armadillo. Both rely on ARM cores in their chips, like Apple's iPad.



The iPad sports a custom processor known as the Apple A4. One report alleged that the CPU is a stripped-down ARM Cortex-A8 system-on-a-chip running at 1GHz. It has been predicted that Apple spent $1 billion to design its own silicon. The Cupertino, Calif., Company purchased fabless chip designer P.A. Semi in 2008 for $278 million.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 262
    bigdaddypbigdaddyp Posts: 811member
    All this competition is good as it will force Apple to continue to innovate. The flip side is that I wonder how many of these companies that are introducing their slate devices will be around in 2 years?
  • Reply 2 of 262
    gfizgfiz Posts: 32member
    sadly, HP is right. from a pure web surfing experience, the HP is indisputably superior. Can't even use the Windows vs. OS X argument here. The kicker will be the battery lives. Steve claims adding flash woudl knock down the battery life from 10 to 2 hours. Something tells my the HP slate is going to have more than 2 hour battery life.
  • Reply 3 of 262
    adamiigsadamiigs Posts: 355member
    YES! Give me a full OS made for a keyboard, no matter what 'touch' controls they have it's still made to be used with a keyboard, and throw flash on it, that will be an awesome experience for oh say 2 hours till the battery is toast.
  • Reply 4 of 262
    targontargon Posts: 103member
    "HP attacks Apple iPad" "Though HP did not mention the iPad specifically by name"



    Get over yourselves AI stop trying to over-ride the situation with these tabloid style articles to generate traffic. Stick to the legitimate content such as "ARM expects 50 new tablets in 2010".



    Image and ad blocking of AI is my personal boycott.
  • Reply 5 of 262
    There'll be the iPad and 49 fragmented tablets. We'll see how long many of those 49 last, given their individual uptake (and hence scale).



    And, if there's touch involved, careful with the IP, HP!
  • Reply 6 of 262
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AdamIIGS View Post


    YES! Give me a full OS made for a keyboard, no matter what 'touch' controls they have it's still made to be used with a keyboard, and throw flash on it, that will be an awesome experience for oh say 2 hours till the battery is toast.



    Actually I was just given one of the new HP Tablets for work and on average it has about a 5-6 hour battery life. Its not Tablet you are talking about its the TM2T, and it works pretty well.



    Its not like the iPad is going to have a 10.5 hour battery life once you turn WIFI on. WIFI alone on the Touch sucks the battery life out of the device in about 3 hours.



    Also you don't 'throw flash" on something you can either go to sites with flash, avoid them or not use the plugin.
  • Reply 7 of 262
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by anantksundaram View Post


    There'll be the iPad and 49 fragmented tablets. We'll see how long many of those 49 last, given their individual uptake (and hence scale).



    And, if there's touch involved, careful with the IP, HP!



    HP has been using Touch for a long while now their TouchSmart computers have been around for a while. They also use BumpTOP which is actually a pretty cool 3D desktop, its suppose to be coming to the Mac soon. If fact it looks like it is already available for the Mac.



    http://bumptop.com/
  • Reply 8 of 262
    rob55rob55 Posts: 1,291member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    HP pushes Flash for its slate PC



    HP this week began touting the ability of its forthcoming "slate" device to run content made in Adobe Flash -- something the iPad will not do. Though HP did not mention the iPad specifically by name, its choice of words and the specific promotion of Flash make it clear that the company is looking to take away some buzz from Apple's forthcoming device, due to launch April 3.



    Tell us something we didn't know. It was inevitable that one of the other players would play this angle. Though, calling the web browsing experience on the iPad "watered down" is relative. I don't consider the browsing experience on my iPhone "watered down". Before the iPhone came along, browsing the web on my BB Curve was excruciating.
  • Reply 9 of 262
    reliasonreliason Posts: 135member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by gFiz View Post


    sadly, HP is right. from a pure web surfing experience, the HP is indisputably superior. Can't even use the Windows vs. OS X argument here. The kicker will be the battery lives. Steve claims adding flash woudl knock down the battery life from 10 to 2 hours. Something tells my the HP slate is going to have more than 2 hour battery life.



    I agree that it is all about battery life. I think that HP will be LUCK to get 2 hours out of it's slate running Win 7. The hardware requirements for Win 7 are just so much higher that the extra energy spent on CPU/GPU will suck the batteries dry faster than iOS.



    And that is, of course, if Apple doesn't get a 'cease and desist' order against HP for infringing on the multi-touch metaphor.
  • Reply 10 of 262
    hattighattig Posts: 860member
    The $1b figure has already been debunked. That's for developing from scratch, not plugging together purchased intellectual property (ARM Cortex A8, Imagination PowerVR SGX, etc, as Apple has done.



    Sure, it's probably a fairly chunky price in the tens of millions still. Tegra is in the hundreds of millions, but that does include a large chunk of NVIDIA proprietary IP in the form of the graphics and video cores.
  • Reply 11 of 262
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,822member
    He in lies the problem of Apple showing and telling long before sales started. IMHO Apple should have come out of the box with a ready to sell product. The developers could have been under NDAs or in the dark if Apple really wanted to be secret, the flip from iPhone to iPad development isn't hard and if Apple had all their apps such as iWorks ready plus the 2 x App feature there would have been enough stuff to start with to keep interest until developers got up to speed. Coming out early was a gift for the wannabes and copy cats to confuse the public. Hopefully Apple will be so differentiated by the interface and apps as to make all these worries moot.
  • Reply 12 of 262
    gazoobeegazoobee Posts: 3,754member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    As HP attempts to push its own Flash-playing slate PC over the Apple iPad ...



    Don't you wish they could be original instead though?



    That tablet is a crystal clear violation of Apple's trademark they were granted a couple of weeks ago, it looks almost identical, especially from the front. Apple likely won't take them to court over it, but it's just so lame to copy another device so closely.



    Even the Dell version (unfortunately named the "streak"), at least looks quite different from the iPad. HP was the market and design leader for cool new mobile devices not that long ago. Now they are copying Apple molecule by molecule it seems and Dell is the innovator? Yikes.
  • Reply 13 of 262
    reliasonreliason Posts: 135member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by extremeskater View Post


    Actually I was just given one of the new HP Tablets for work and on average it has about a 5-6 hour battery life. Its not Tablet you are talking about its the TM2T, and it works pretty well.



    Its not like the iPad is going to have a 10.5 hour battery life once you turn WIFI on. WIFI alone on the Touch sucks the battery life out of the device in about 3 hours.



    We routinely get 3-5 hrs of life out of our Panasonic Toughbooks here. But 1.) the toughbooks weigh in at more than 1.5# and I doubt we would get 5+ hrs of life running video (regardless of wifi). The bench mark, for me, is can the iPad deliver on the promise of '10 hours of video playback' in a 1.5# device.



    I have both 3g and Wifi on my iPhone constantly. It is only a drain when I use push notification from some apps. But, yeah, if push is one, I can drain a battery in under 3 hrs.



    But in active use of a single app? Wifi or no, I get 5 hrs or so on my iPhone.



    And correct me if I am wrong, but aren't the current HP tablets in a $2000- $3000 USD price range? :-)
  • Reply 14 of 262
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by gFiz View Post


    sadly, HP is right. from a pure web surfing experience, the HP is indisputably superior. Can't even use the Windows vs. OS X argument here. The kicker will be the battery lives. Steve claims adding flash woudl knock down the battery life from 10 to 2 hours. Something tells my the HP slate is going to have more than 2 hour battery life.



    [laughing]

    "Indisputably?" Are you serious? Flash makes this tablet better than the iPad?

    [/laughing]



    Wow, next time you try to think, reconsider. When HP gets done with this thing, it will probably have a battery life of an older digital camera. Click. Flash. Done. Reload. Adding Flash is not the end game for the iPad, sorry.

    -360
  • Reply 15 of 262
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by reliason View Post


    I agree that it is all about battery life. I think that HP will be LUCK to get 2 hours out of it's slate running Win 7. The hardware requirements for Win 7 are just so much higher that the extra energy spent on CPU/GPU will suck the batteries dry faster than iOS.



    And that is, of course, if Apple doesn't get a 'cease and desist' order against HP for infringing on the multi-touch metaphor.



    Lets ignore the battery life aspect...



    Flash depends heavily on hover, and click and drag. How many flash (games esp., since this is something that cannot be done in HTML5) are actually compatible with a touch interface? Here are some of the changes Apple's flash decision has already made:



    1) Major (Virgin Atlantic) sites are redoing their sites without flash, and are realizing they didn't need it and were pummeling my CPU for no reason.

    2) Vimeo, Dailymotion, Youtube all have moved to encoding in H.264. They all have HTML5 betas. This is great news for my mac, linux desktop, and smartphones (remember, for all the anti-Apple hoopla, even Android does not YET have flash).

    3) Smaller websites (esp. restaurant ones) are redesigning without flash, which means they are making their websites simpler, and less obnoxious.
  • Reply 16 of 262
    hattighattig Posts: 860member
    HP's Windows 7 tablet will be running an Atom chip. That uses a lot more power than an ARM, especially an integrated ARM SoC. The battery life on HP's tablet will be a lot shorter than the iPad, or it will be a lot fatter/heavier device. Windows 7 is also a lot bulkier OS than iPhone OS, which will affect operation. And application compatibility beyond whatever touch UI Windows 7 exposes for tablets will be pointless when you're trying to use a pointer-precision UI with a fat finger.



    Regarding Flash - websites will be forced to adopt HTML5 video tags if the iPad takes off, so that "flash advantage" will not be a concern by the end of the year for any site worth its salt.



    And flash games - will be ported to the iPad and iPhone, either as a rewrite, or using Adobe's iPhone flash compiler technology that they've talked about. They'll also be adapted to fix the "mouse hover" problem with touch screen technology. Flash uses mouse hover extensively in practice, and the HP tablet is going to be frustrating in that regard - you'll see the content, but you won't be able to interact with it!
  • Reply 17 of 262
    backtomacbacktomac Posts: 4,579member
    I don't know why HP would build and market a product around porn and Farmville.



    Good luck with that.
  • Reply 18 of 262
    quadra 610quadra 610 Posts: 6,757member
    Here come the "iPad-Killers" and the generic "competition is good" remarks.
  • Reply 19 of 262
    wonderwonder Posts: 229member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AdamIIGS View Post


    YES! Give me a full OS made for a keyboard, no matter what 'touch' controls they have it's still made to be used with a keyboard, and throw flash on it, that will be an awesome experience for oh say 2 hours till the battery is toast.



    Exactly. These people just don't get it.



    Windows 7 tweaked to run with touch does not make for a great user experience.

    Fingers just don't and can't replace a mouse for controlling Windows.



    The iPad OS was designed from the ground up as a touch OS, there is a huge difference.



    Just try touching some of the small targets you get on a Windows 7 touch device.

    I tried a Sony Touch Desktop running Windows 7, it took 3 attempts to hit the X to close the window, as it is so small compared to the end of your finger. You either miss or get the wrong button.
  • Reply 20 of 262
    chronsterchronster Posts: 1,894member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by gFiz View Post


    sadly, HP is right. from a pure web surfing experience, the HP is indisputably superior. Can't even use the Windows vs. OS X argument here. The kicker will be the battery lives. Steve claims adding flash woudl knock down the battery life from 10 to 2 hours. Something tells my the HP slate is going to have more than 2 hour battery life.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AdamIIGS View Post


    YES! Give me a full OS made for a keyboard, no matter what 'touch' controls they have it's still made to be used with a keyboard, and throw flash on it, that will be an awesome experience for oh say 2 hours till the battery is toast.



    LMFAO!



    One person mentions what Steve Jobs said, then just a few minutes later here comes someone to REPEAT WHAT HE SAYS!



    I had a good laugh at that one. Think differently indeed
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