HP TouchPad vs iPad

[Bigmacduck]

Interesting "sister" forum:

http://forums.precentral.net/hp-touchpad/

Let's see which platform wins by end of 2014.

Today i think the iPad 2 is the clear winner, but 2.5 years from now the world could look totally different. Competition is good!

 

[Mac.World]

Interesting "sister" forum:

http://forums.precentral.net/hp-touchpad/

Let's see which platform wins by end of 2014.

Today i think the iPad 2 is the clear winner, but 2.5 years from now the world could look totally different. Competition is good!

I think we'll be lucky if the Touchpad is still around 2 years from now.

 

[ethics101]

Its all about community support. The OS on the touchpad is better than Android imo, but Android has the backing of google and their users.

 

[Bigmacduck]

did not even last for 2 months - LOL

It did not even last for 2 months on the market. HP just pulled the plug. Not just to tablets and handheld devices, but also considering spinning off the PC business altogether.

PC manufacturers have a hard time to differentiate themselves against other PC vendors. So it became a low margin business, and HP does not want to stay in that low margin business. Interesting that HP still makes the highest margin of all major PC vendors, but 5.x% margin is still too low for a company of HP's calibre.

Apple is a totally different story: The really differentiate themselves from others, are able to charge premium prices, and are attracting buyers that are willing to spend a bit more for a superior product.
PC vendors fell into the downward spiral of lower prices with lower innovation on style and technology. PCs are too cheap for making money. What is the point offering 249$ netbooks if they are ugly and low performing?

Same goes for tablets. Quality and style has it's price and that's why most of the Android tablet vendors will soon find themselves in the same dilemma as the PC vendors. Apple might not command the major market share one year down the road, but they will command the major share of the profit dollars made in the tablet markets.

So from that standpoint I hope that Apple will never ever go below 499 for an entry tablet. Apple needs the margins to innovate and do good things for us consumers.

 

[urkel]

So from that standpoint I hope that Apple will never ever go below 499 for an entry tablet. Apple needs the margins to innovate and do good things for us consumers.

Most ridiculous thing I ever heard.

I find it really gross when people worry more about corporations over consumers. There's actually a lesson here in this whole HP mess. They're taking a 100M loss in selling touch pads at this price point, but look at how many people are now curious in WebOS and its future. HP was taking a loss anyway so IF HP didn't mishandle their destruction of Palm/WebOS then they could've used these price drops as a marketing tool and could have positioned themselves as the "affordable, yet capable alternative to the iPad" rather than trying to be direct competitors and carved out a niche that would be appealing to both the public and to developers.

As a current Palm Pre user who watched this fantastic product get mismanaged from the start then I could talk for hours about how unfortunate this situation is for the brilliant (former apple) people behind WebOS. So the problem isn't "margins" preventing innovation, its the lack of faith from a parent company.

 

[bufffilm]

The really differentiate themselves from others, are able to charge premium prices, and are attracting buyers that are willing to spend a bit more for a superior product.

just wanted to comment that while i totally agree that apple's tablet is the superior product by far, i would disagree that they have the same superiority in the desktop and laptop market. in fact, their laptops in terms of performance and battery life are not the best.

but they can still charge more even when they're not the best desktop/laptop because of the strength of their branding with the consumer.

as for the OP's question, if the touchpad does live on, it will be as a hacked platform running android. so instead of making this a TP vs. iPad question, it's just goes back to an Android vs. iOS topic and that's already been discussed plenty of times and that landscape hasn't materially changed since the TP has come & gone.

 

[MRU]

With Rim's disappointing sales. The failure of the original galaxy tab. And reativly Luke warm reaction to Motorola's Xoom it's certainly been an interesting time watching the iPad Killers at work.

I do like WebOS (a pre & pre2 owner) but there was a lack of momentum Even after HP's takeover. The app store internationally was pretty much a wasteland before and after their involvement.

I hope we do get some competition because without it the industry stagnates, that being said with Retina Display and the inevitable A6 & multicore GPU in iPad 3 almost a certainty, even without the competition, one could certainly not accuse Apple to be resting on their laurels.

 

[sumone]

Most ridiculous thing I ever heard.

I find it really gross when people worry more about corporations over consumers.

Gosh, I wish you could fan people on MR because i'm always impressed with your post urkel.

 

[sracer]

As a current Palm Pre user who watched this fantastic product get mismanaged from the start then I could talk for hours about how unfortunate this situation is for the brilliant (former apple) people behind WebOS. So the problem isn't "margins" preventing innovation, its the lack of faith from a parent company.

How do you know how "brilliant" the people behind WebOS are? Are you basing it on your Palm Pre experience? The TouchPad/WebOS story is so complex and involves so many factors that only HP and Palm insiders would have an accurate picture, and then only a handful of those insiders know the whole story.

 

[JohnDG]

How do you know how "brilliant" the people behind WebOS are? Are you basing it on your Palm Pre experience? The TouchPad/WebOS story is so complex and involves so many factors that only HP and Palm insiders would have an accurate picture, and then only a handful of those insiders know the whole story.

One thing I found most interesting is that HP butched the hardware: WebOS ran twice as fast on an iPad than it did on the HP tablet.

jdg

 

[radiogoober]

I think we'll be lucky if the Touchpad is still around 2 years from now.

Haha! Who would have thought it would have been less than two months!!!

 

[bufffilm]

One thing I found most interesting is that HP butched the hardware: WebOS ran twice as fast on an iPad than it did on the HP tablet.

blame for the poor performance directly on Qualcomm for that since it's their processor. HP did make a poor decision to go with them.

 

[radiogoober]

Most ridiculous thing I ever heard.

I find it really gross when people worry more about corporations over consumers. There's actually a lesson here in this whole HP mess. They're taking a 100M loss in selling touch pads at this price point, but look at how many people are now curious in WebOS and its future. HP was taking a loss anyway so IF HP didn't mishandle their destruction of Palm/WebOS then they could've used these price drops as a marketing tool and could have positioned themselves as the "affordable, yet capable alternative to the iPad" rather than trying to be direct competitors and carved out a niche that would be appealing to both the public and to developers.

As a current Palm Pre user who watched this fantastic product get mismanaged from the start then I could talk for hours about how unfortunate this situation is for the brilliant (former apple) people behind WebOS. So the problem isn't "margins" preventing innovation, its the lack of faith from a parent company.

THAT is the most ridiculous thing ever. It's amazing how you have no idea how business works. Read the text below.

It makes total sense to me that the TouchPad is suddenly selling briskly, now that its price has been cut to $99 as HP sells off existing stock. And I agree that it would have proven popular if it had debuted at $199 retail. But I’ll bet they’d have lost $200 or so on each one at that price. And the more popular it had proven, the more they would have lost. Five million TouchPads at a $200 loss each is a billion-dollar bath. As of WWDC, back in June, Apple claimed to have sold 25 million iPads to date.

Sure, HP “could afford it”. (Or at least, they could have afforded it before they decided to spend over $10 billion acquiring Autonomy.) But how is that good business? What’s the eventual upside? Double the price of the TouchPad a year from now? That wouldn’t fly. Selling TouchPads at a steep loss wouldn’t just burn a ton of cash “at first”. It would burn a ton of cash continuously, every time one was sold.

Tweets lack depth, of course, so maybe what Topolsky is suggesting is that HP should have sold TouchPads at a steep loss when they debuted — but only as a limited time promotion. I.e., they could have made it clear that these were $499 devices but that you get one, right off the bat — say, for the first week or two — for $199. That might have actually made sense. Still, though, even if they’d sold 500,000 of them it might have cost $100 million. That’s a lot of money to spend on a promotion.

Sustainable businesses are built on profit.

HP could have the worlds most popular tablet by giving them away for free. The only problem is HP would go broke. Almost instantly.

 

[Jman13]

As a new Touchpad user who got one in the firesale, I have to say that while not up to the iPad in performance and especially app support, it is a very nice tablet.

There is one key thing, though...Preware and Homebrew apps and patches are ESSENTIAL to the touchpad. Out of the box, it's a pretty laggy experience, and somethings are just VERY slow. But...you tweak things with the homebrew patches and kernels, and it's a night and day difference. The nice thing is that HP and the 'legit' WebOS team actively encourage the Homebrew community (even advertising it as a feature in their App store magazine). After turning off/down logging, installing some patches that speed up core features, and installing the UberKernel which will overclock the processor to 1.5 GHz (which is the true speed of the machine, and has very minimal effect on battery life)...the thing is downright snappy. Not as fluid as an iPad, but very nice...at least twice as fast as stock.

After using it extensively for a day, I have to say...WebOS does somethings very, very nicely. The card manager and tossing gestures are brilliant, as are swiping up from the bottom to minimize an app. The fact that a swipe down of the main menu gives me instant access to battery percentage, brightness control, Wi-Fi settings, Bluetooth settings, VPN settings, Airplane mode, Rotation lock and Mute, is well....awesome. Once the performance issues are taken care of with the Homebrew tweaks, it's an extremely enjoyable tablet to use. In some ways, it's a better experience than the iPad, especially with the ability to do some nice things in the browser, like view Hulu natively (without paying for Hulu Plus). Of course, the lack of a big app catalog is by FAR the biggest detriment, and it isn't super fluid on some HD movies (but is fine on others). The browser also doesn't render complex pages nearly as quickly as Safari does. Still...I think it's probably at least worth $300, and was an absolute steal for the $150 I paid for my 32GB version.

 

[radiogoober]

That's great that you can hack your extinct TouchPad and improve it's performance. But that doesn't mean anything to Joe Consumer. The consumer picks it up, experiences the laggy piece of crap that it is, and then goes and buys an iPad. An extremely small percentage of people who buy a tablet are capable of installing the hacks, patches, etc, and dealing with all of the crap and headaches that goes along with it.

You can't create a winning product by appealing to 1% of the crowd. Apple does it right, by appealing to 99% of the crowd, and the 1% that wants to do childish things like customize your icons, or have animated backgrounds or widgets, can sit there and go buy something else (although, their choices are slowing becoming smaller and smaller!)

 

[urkel]

THAT is the most ridiculous thing ever. It's amazing how you have no idea how business works. Read the text below

I have no problem with someone saying I don't know how business works because in this economy then clearly VERY few people actually know how to sustain a successful business without government aid. But to quote Gruber as someone who DOES know anything about business is a joke.

 

[aristobrat]

But to quote Gruber as someone who DOES know anything about business is a joke.

I mean, nobody's expecting a thesis from you, but since you brought the idea up in the thread, you've put some thought into it. What is the eventual financial upside for HP selling TouchPads at huge loss? Marketshare alone doesn't always translate into a financial upside.

"What’s the eventual upside? Double the price of the TouchPad a year from now? That wouldn’t fly. Selling TouchPads at a steep loss wouldn’t just burn a ton of cash “at first”. It would burn a ton of cash continuously, every time one was sold."?

 

[QuarterSwede]

IMO, Gruber has a good counter-point for that.

It makes total sense to me that the TouchPad is suddenly selling briskly, now that its price has been cut to $99 as HP sells off existing stock. And I agree that it would have proven popular if it had debuted at $199 retail. But I’ll bet they’d have lost $200 or so on each one at that price. And the more popular it had proven, the more they would have lost. Five million TouchPads at a $200 loss each is a billion-dollar bath. As of WWDC, back in June, Apple claimed to have sold 25 million iPads to date.

Sure, HP “could afford it”. (Or at least, they could have afforded it before they decided to spend over $10 billion acquiring Autonomy.) But how is that good business? What’s the eventual upside? Double the price of the TouchPad a year from now? That wouldn’t fly. Selling TouchPads at a steep loss wouldn’t just burn a ton of cash “at first”. It would burn a ton of cash continuously, every time one was sold.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/08/20/touchpad-topolsky

Sounds like Sony's philosophy to me.

[EDIT] He changed his post after I posted.

 

[Jman13]

That's great that you can hack your extinct TouchPad and improve it's performance. But that doesn't mean anything to Joe Consumer. The consumer picks it up, experiences the laggy piece of crap that it is, and then goes and buys an iPad. An extremely small percentage of people who buy a tablet are capable of installing the hacks, patches, etc, and dealing with all of the crap and headaches that goes along with it.

You can't create a winning product by appealing to 1% of the crowd. Apple does it right, by appealing to 99% of the crowd, and the 1% that wants to do childish things like customize your icons, or have animated backgrounds or widgets, can sit there and go buy something else (although, their choices are slowing becoming smaller and smaller!)

I agree entirely that the average person is not going to do the homebrew patching and speed improvements, and it's a shame HP didn't just take them and bake them into to the OS. One thing you may be misunderstanding as that it's different than jailbreaking on iOS. Like I said earlier, it's actually somewhat encouraged by HP. Which makes it more astonishing that they didn't just hire some of the Homebrew team members to make some of these portions of the homebrew standard on the OS.

You also have to realize that most of the Homebrew apps and patches are not the childish things you're mentioning...they're core improvements to the system on the whole. It's a different type of community than that of the Jailbreak community.

I have absolutely no doubts that the iPad as a whole is a significantly better tablet, primarily due to the way Apple really optimizes iOS for each device, and the huge developer support for third party apps. (I absolutely love my iPhone 4 for these very reasons) If I had a desperate need for a tablet, and a spare $500 around, I'd get an iPad 2. That said...I don't want to spend that much on a tablet (which is why I haven't had one until now), and for the prices they were available for, the Touchpad is a steal...the OS is very nice, and the limited apps that are available are pretty good. For someone who won't be using a tablet as a major content creation device, and more of a content consumption device to watch some movies, browse the web, look at news, etc, it's a great device at an amazing price. And it's a shame that WebOS is doomed...as an OS it's really quite brilliant. I don't know if I would like it as much on a phone, but as a tablet interface it's really, really nice.

HP did totally botch the release, though...if they had put more effort into optimizing the hardware and then originally introduced it at a much more competitive price (say, $275 for the 16GB and $350 for the 32GB), they'd have sold a lot more and developed a lot more mindshare as an alternative to the iPad, thus spurring developers to write for the platform...it'd be a very strong competitor in that case. But, well, they didn't. And so the platform will likely die (though there are rumors that the OS development will continue with possible licensing to Samsung and HTC for hardware development...that'd be pretty cool). If HP doesn't license the OS to other hardware manufacturers, I hope Apple buys it from HP and uses many of the great interface things for future iOS releases. They do a LOT of things right in webOS, UI-wise.

 

[aristobrat]

Sounds like Sony's philosophy to me.

I think in the console market, all of the major manufacturers were sure they could sell the hardware at a loss and make their money from licensing fees.

Based on current price points ("fire sales" for discontinued tables excluded), it doesn't look like anyone in the tablet market is willing to make that bet.

[EDIT] He changed his post after I posted.

Sorry, in the time it took me to type that out on my iPad (and let the dogs outside), someone else had already posted Grubers quote (so I removed mine).

 

[iOSFanBoy]

HP Touchpad is dead. WebOS completely sucks and they basically ended it. Apple is really taking the tablet market by far. It's rare for me to see someone walking with an Android Tablet. They always have the iPad and it's for a reason.

The way Apple goes about making their tablets is the reason they've accomplished so much. Not to mention everyone is going crazy now that iOS5 is around the corner.

By the time 2014 comes I think Apple is going to find a way to once again revolutionize the tablet industry, or maybe another mobile product and be crowned king at what they do once again.

 

[urkel]

I mean, nobody's expecting a thesis from you, but since you brought the idea up in the thread, you've put some thought into it. What is the eventual financial upside for HP selling TouchPads at huge loss? Marketshare alone doesn't always translate into a financial upside.

To me, there is no upside because I could care less about HP's losses or how they've ruined their name. My concern is the fate of WebOS and how these moves hurt the future of the OS because instead of looking like a (potentially) great OS that was mismanaged by an idiot company, its now being viewed as a product which wasn't good enough to compete and that's not entirely true. Sure the product has shortcomings, but imagine if this came out as a cheaper iPad alternative at $250-300 rather than a fully flawed iPad competitor at $499-599.

Marketshare isn't important in a dead end product, but its only a dead product because HP designated it to be one by making it a firesale rather than a marketing tool.

 

[Jman13]

HP Touchpad is dead. WebOS completely sucks and they basically ended it.

Yes, the TouchPad is dead...but when you say WebOS completely sucks, I can tell you've never really used it. The OS is not the reason it failed. Marketing, hardware optimization, fewer apps...sure. The OS is not the reason. It is a VERY good operating system with several things that are better than iOS. It is not as fluid as iOS and not as polished, but there are some VERY nice things.

 

[radiogoober]

I have no problem with someone saying I don't know how business works because in this economy then clearly VERY few people actually know how to sustain a successful business without government aid. But to quote Gruber as someone who DOES know anything about business is a joke.

No where in this text do I see you explain how HP selling the tablet at a loss is sustainable. Instead you just insult Gruber who makes a perfectly valid point.

Edit: Before I get called a Gruber fanboy, I enjoy and usually agree with his Apple/tech analysis. But I usually wish he'd get hit by a taxi when he starts posting political things. 100% diametrically opposed to his political views

 

[urkel]

No where in this text do I see you explain how HP selling the tablet at a loss is sustainable. Instead you just insult Gruber who makes a perfectly valid point.

Its not sustainable. Selling at a loss is yet another dumb move by a company that has been set in a tailspin ever since their CEO Hurd spent 1.2billion in a platform that they are abandoning and then proceeded to get ousted by a sex scandal. HP is NOT a well run company and they deserve to lose every penny for their mistakes.

I guess by defending a non-Apple product then I'm coming off as a BrandX fanboy, but thats not true at all. In fact, with Palm then I'm the opposite because after being burned (pretty badly) with the Palm Pre on Sprint then I've vowed never to buy a Palm product again. Yet here I am buying TouchPad's for people in my family and getting one for myself simply to mount in the car for my daughter to watch Disney movies. So IF I have a point (which I probably don't) then its that Tablets ARE in demand and its a shame that a perfectly healthy mobile OS has to exit the race in a wheelbarrow.

As for Gruber, hes a pro a filtering out people who don't kiss his but so don't worry about him. There's a reason why he doesn't allow comments on his site.