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HP Announces WebOS-Based TouchPad Tablet, Pre 3 and Veer Smartphones

mdriftmeyer said:
The specs are out.

www.palm.com/us/products/pads/touchpad/index.html
Click to expand...

Still no battery or price info. It tells something about battery, but not really about how long it will last when the hardware saps it.

$599 - 5 hours battery: my prediction.
It will be released on September 21st and by that time will seem like iPad 1.5 for a bigger price than iPad2. HP should have just said what their 2015 products will be like and how much they will rock the world.
 
chris975d said:
I'm watching the Engadget live feed of this, and I must say, the way Palm/HP have enabled the wireless synchronizing/communicating of these devices is a pretty amazing idea. If a call or text comes in on the handset (Pre 3) while it's on the Touchstone charger, it can instantly be answered/replied to on the tablet. That's something that I'm surprised Apple hasn't gone after yet.
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I just finished reading the Engadget stream and I have to admit HP has hit it out of the park with the integration and UI. This is a very compelling system. I really hope this pushes Apple to blow us away again.
 
aethelbert said:
There's no comparison between iOS and WebOS multitasking. They nailed it pretty well in their presentation: WebOS was designed for multitasking while it was an afterthought for Apple.


WebOS devices, when plugged in, come up like a flash drive and can be used as such. The apps on the device will then search the disk for appropriate content.
Click to expand...


Multitasking on the tablet? Doing what exactly? I must agree it looks cool - but that's about it. There are no tablets that can be a desktop replacement not even apple's iPad. Multitasking belongs when there are powerful enough productive apps on the platform which there isn't. Sure you can compose in Pages app but the iPad sucks because it's so slow. You'd probably be doing email, surfing, and maybe one or two streaming type apps - but even then you aren't really gonna multitask around like you are on a desktop.

The focus was multitasking and no one cares. If they did care, there would be MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of palm webOS devices sold. The company flopped and HP rescued it. Now they spit out the same old fail features no one gives a rats arse about.

Well, except the 1% of you whining little brats here on macrumors...multitasking is important but what iOS has suffices at best. If you don't like it, jump ship and put your money where your mouth is.
 
HP have no originality.....

Image00021_small.jpg

Copycats.
 
Popeye206 said:
It's more than the size that will determine battery life. It's the device and the OS as a whole and how it manages the power that makes the difference. Just an FYI
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I'm aware of that. There's nothing in the hardware specs or from webOS that gives me any indication to think battery life will be significantly worse a result. The dual core should actually help battery life.

That being said, I fully expect iPad 2 battery life to be superior to iPad 1 battery life.
 
g4Fever said:
I've been using WebOS on a Palm Pre for just under a year now, and I have to say, it's my solid #2 choice for a mobile OS.. a close second to Apple's iOS.

Android is just clunky, awkward, and cluttered. It's like Windows XP and Linux had a baby.

Technology should make our lives easier, not more complex. It's that minimalist approach that's made Apple so successful since Steve Jobs return to Apple, and it's a industry lesson the folks at Palm finally learned when they scrapped their long running PalmOS, and created WebOS.

In many respects WebOS is as good or better than iOS.. and this is coming from a true blue, dyed in the wool Apple fanboy since the Apple ][.

The release of the original WebOS was a prime example of remarkably poor timing and execution.

If the iPad 2 is released before this new Touchpad, WebOS will get buried again.. and history will repeat itself.
Click to expand...

Excellent analysis, g4Fever. I also used Palm Pre, got it at launch, as I was a very much a Palm fan (used Treo 90 PDA, and Treo smartphones 600, 650, 755p), and I really liked the simplicity and cleanness of the UI, the multi-tasking, the notification system, and the simple webOS SDK. However, I had issues with the lag and UI stuttering that plagued the early webOS builds, and which still are a bit of problem as of 1.4.5 (I think that's the current on the original Pre?), so I jumped ship to the iPhone 3GS after a few months, and then to the iPhone 4.

I am also, like you an Apple fanboy; I remember literally as an elementary school kid, the first computer I ever used was an Apple II+ then a IIe, and I lusted after the IIe for a long time, and was amazed by the Mac Plus I used in high school -- it was so much more beautiful and intuitive than PC's, although I had a PC at home and was a PC geek as well. I have a MBP that I love, and I still have an iPhone 4, though it has become something of a mini iPad because I finally got fed up with the annoying, terrible, "ANSWER ME NOW NOW NOW" notification system of iOS and went to a Blackberry for superior customization, email (in most respects) and a more sane notification system.

However, I am afraid you might also be right that webOS might get buried again because while this TouchPad I think compares favorably with the iPad in every respect except the sheer number of apps, unfortunately for HP, iPad 2 will be shipping before this sees the light of day.

I loved how you characterized Android as the offspring of Windows and Linux, lol.
 
Quite honestly I have always been more excited about WebOS than other iOS competitors. WebOS always had great potential, but Palm did not pull off the execution very well. Since this is HP, I'm sure it will support AirPrint too. Additionally, I think that HP will have better success marketing their devices to the corporate world than Motorola, HTC, or LG will have. HP already sells to these people and has existing relationships.

I think Apple may have more to worry about with a WebOS TouchPad than Android Honeycomb. Either way, the modern tablet market which Apple has created is going to have some new players. Pricing and marketing are going to play into the things in a big way as well.
 
I do agree with the argument that iOS notifications suck, which they do. That is my biggest comment about android over iOS.

Secondly, why is this on the front page of MR? I suppose it does have to do with Apple's competition, but I figured it for a page 2 story.
 
512ke said:
Isn't a fragmented world would be good for Apple, in that Android will be less likely to become the Windows of mobile gizmos?
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Exactly. In a fragmented market, Apple can cherry pick the most profitable fragment, but avoid being squished by one 90%+ sized monster, as was the problem against Windows. They can even enjoy being a strong #2 or #3 in unit sales, and thus avoid a lot of anti-trust scrutiny by not being the leading dominant player in the market.
 
If this had come out last summer, it would have been a legit competitor. So now HP is saying this summer, which probably means September, at which point the iPad2, which will probably have better hardware, will have already been available for several months. No money will be made with this product.
 
mdriftmeyer said:
Go back to 1998. And then come forward to 2011. You'll notice those business presentations mimicked Keynote after Steve brought it out and everyone was stunned at how much better his presentations were than the crap known as PowerPoint.
Click to expand...

Ugh, 1998? I'm pretty sure you're not saying HP is ripping Apple off now; but I'm scared that other people would actually bash HP over something that was "innovated" before most of them were even in the 5th grade.
 
Since Apple did the tablet first, every other table is just a copy of Apple?

I guess every car on the road today is basically a copy of Ford.
 
i am out of the loop i dont even know what webos is. im guessing it doesnt come close to having the app base as android and osi. it has some really impressive specs. makes me wanna hack it with android.
 
thetexan said:
Since Apple did the tablet first, every other table is just a copy of Apple?

I guess every car on the road today is basically a copy of Ford.
Click to expand...
Apple didn't "do the tablet first" as you put it.
They were the first to make one that was successful.
Tablets computers of some form or another have been around for nearly a decade.
 
alust2013 said:
I do agree with the argument that iOS notifications suck, which they do. That is my biggest comment about android over iOS.

Secondly, why is this on the front page of MR? I suppose it does have to do with Apple's competition, but I figured it for a page 2 story.
Click to expand...

It's a huge story in the tablet industry. And ios' crap notification system is what got me and many others to buy BiteSMS. It's embarrassingly outdated. In fact, it was bad when it was first release. There really is no good excuse.
 
Apple vs. World

This is not how you do presentations:

You unveil your device but the ship date, battery specs, camera apps, dual core apps, basically the rest of what the world cares about is missing. You then set a tentative ship date of summer or later.

Apple instead relies on secrecy. Most of you geeks here don't like being in the dark. You want to go gaga over the specs released on paper. SEe a video running on the device on how it is suppose to work. Write a bunch of threads complaining about apple products which you may not even own and swear to dump apple devices for X competitor device.

If I ran a successful company like apple, I would keep everything secret until ready to produce in mass quantities. You announce something that isn't even ready just to stir up ooohs and ahhs and that's what you get - verbage and the money never will be yours since you have nothing to ship. By the time you come to market, you are old news.

You think apple will stand around and let other companies take their bread and butter away? They aren't apple of 1987. If they don't give people what they want to buy, they will just fail like HP and others will. That's the mentality of these tech companies - taking a step at a time when competition heats up, you don't look at what the other people are doing - you look at yourself and change what you think people will want from you. Most of these companies are releasing catchup products with specs for fools.

Just because you can put a feature in does not mean it's something people will use all the time. That's exactly why alot of products suck because they cram so much BS into them that I hardly even use once. Everyone relies on competition but no one ever understands it takes more than an announcement on a product listing its specs to sell.
 
HP, unlike Apple, seems to be a company that listens to its customers. HP started off with the glossy screen trend, but kept matte screens because of demand. Apple refuses to listen - since 2007 refuses to bring back matte screens to the desktop iMac and smaller MacBook Pros (see petitions http://macmatte.wordpress.com). HP's willingness to listen to customers will surely pay in the long term.

I think the OS situation is a market-share game, and if HP is willing to licence it to everyone else, it could have a tilt at becoming the next Microsoft in the software arena.
 
iPadThai said:
Multitasking on the tablet? Doing what exactly? I must agree it looks cool - but that's about it. There are no tablets that can be a desktop replacement not even apple's iPad. Multitasking belongs when there are powerful enough productive apps on the platform which there isn't. Sure you can compose in Pages app but the iPad sucks because it's so slow. You'd probably be doing email, surfing, and maybe one or two streaming type apps - but even then you aren't really gonna multitask around like you are on a desktop.
Click to expand...
You asked what makes WebOS "so compelling." And below, you'll say that multitasking is important:

iPadThai said:
Well, except the 1% of you whining little brats here on macrumors...multitasking is important but what iOS has suffices at best. If you don't like it, jump ship and put your money where your mouth is.
Click to expand...
I did. Twelve months ago. And I'm still not complaining or running back.
 
HP is not competition...it's COPYtition

Wow...how tremendously underwhelming.

I like the last part of the post..it might as well have said this:
"HP said this is only the beginning...in a year or so they're going to announce more features just as soon as Apple comes out with something new for them to copy"
 
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