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iPad Competitors Begin to Disappear Even Before Being Released

Even though I honestly never expected the Courier to be released, I am still bummed to hear it's officially been killed. I loved the concept and definitely would've bought one! I fit a niche b/t my iPhone and laptop that I am looking to fill better than the iPad does.
 
facepalm1.jpg


I'm simultaneously amused and disappointed. I like competition, so I really think that the lack of a solution from Microsoft (at the present) is going to lead to only market stagnation. HP/Palm had better had something good up their sleeves, don't let Apple rest on its laurels!
 
GQB said:
#3, predictable bounce-back of the entire market after Wall Street got over its hissy-fit at being called on the carpet for being thieves.
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$30,000,000,000 in bonuses at AIG for 25 executives in 2009. That is about a billion dollars each. Sickening. Obscene. Inexcusable. Wall Street and all like it should be closed down. They are parasites.
 
yg17 said:
I don't know how anyone can say this is a good thing (although I know the fanboys have already corked the champagne). Less competition is bad for consumers.
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What competition, if only, this was VaporWare. I remember seen this 2 year ago, when Ipad was not even in the news, if MS is competition for innovation we are all screwed.

Just be glad they do come out with at least something worth buying from time to time. :rolleyes:
 
Vapor for sale, cheap

Kavier said:
Even though I honestly never expected the Courier to be released, I am still bummed to hear it's officially been killed. I loved the concept and definitely would've bought one! I fit a niche b/t my iPhone and laptop that I am looking to fill better than the iPad does.
Click to expand...

You would have bought one? Without knowing the cost? Without knowing battery life? Without knowing how heavy it was? Without knowing how well it actually worked in real life?

Really?

This is why Apple doesn't do concept products. They aren't products!

The final line from the linked article:

A commercial company’s ability to innovate is inversely proportional to its proclivity to publicly release conceptual products.
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monsterofNone said:
the courier turns out to be vaporware? shocker.
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Same here! I saw the CES Slate demo as just another piece of "me too" quick to patch together, vaporware to keep the stock price from falling so they can say to the analysis types "We demo'ed a pen computer."

My outside guess, knowing those corporate cultures, is that the Slate architecture died the death of a thousand committee meetings, focus groups and emails. HP management probably got sick of Microsoft's lack of response on technical issues and took a working and local solution.

This kind of reminds me of the Palm / Be merger to rescue the ARM-based Palm development about nine years ago. While the Palm name was on the outside the OS guys from Be were better, management knew it, purged the internal Palm engineering and let the "Be boys" run the show. I remember being told there was a big "BeOS" banner over the engineering building on the then Palm campus on Great America Parkway near 237 letting everyone know who was in and who was out.

Will the kick ass Palm webOS group come into HP and make a space for them doing tablet computers right as the Redmond devotees get the ax or worst "remote reassignment" with this merger? My bet is that how this will go down.
 
splashman said:
If nothing else, we ought to give Microsoft credit for realizing they were about to lay an egg. I assume their next step is to somehow use WinPhone7 to make a "WinPad" that closely matches the iPad on spec but adds an FM tuner.
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Your comment assumes that Microsoft was serious about Courier as a product in the first place. It never was. MS has never been good at making money from hardware, except for the Mouse I guess. They make money by selling Windows and Office, and locking in people with the network effect and constantly shifting, obscure, poorly defined and complicated defacto standards. They do anything they can do to delay or discourage competitors.
 
LagunaSol said:
You just painted a million diehard MSBots (and the Engadget Apple Hater Commenter Horde) with a very wide (and accurate) brush.
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People in the Engadget comments were the worst offenders. I never thought a CG video could fool so many people. Boy was I wrong. It's alright, I've sanctioned them off into one category known as the 'anything-but-apple' crowd.
 
oh please...dont get too exited. hp webOS tablet will be a very good ipad rival.
 
CFreymarc said:
Same here! I saw the CES Slate demo as just another piece of "me too" quick to patch together, vaporware to keep the stock price from falling so they can say to the analysis types "We demo'ed a pen computer."

My outside guess, knowing those corporate cultures, is that the Slate architecture died the death of a thousand committee meetings, focus groups and emails. HP management probably got sick of Microsoft's lack of response on technical issues and took a working and local solution.

This kind of reminds me of the Palm / Be merger to rescue the ARM-based Palm development about nine years ago. While the Palm name was on the outside the OS guys from Be were better, management knew it, purged the internal Palm engineering and let the "Be boys" run the show. I remember being told there was a big "BeOS" banner over the engineering building on the then Palm campus on Great America Parkway near 237 letting everyone know who was in and who was out.

Will the kick ass Palm webOS group come into HP and make a space for them doing tablet computers right as the Redmond devotees get the ax or worst "remote reassignment" with this merger? My bet is that how this will go down.
Click to expand...

Uh, just to clarify as I think some people are getting confused: The HP Slate is NOT the Courier project. The Courier was a prototype device leaked from Microsoft at the tail end of 2009 (I believe) using a unique folding form factor (uh, unique if you exclude the Nintendo DS anyway) and bespoke software. The HP Slate is a more traditional tablet running Windows 7 that'll be out fairly shortly and... probably sell about as well as every other Windows tablet has over the years, i.e. not well.

Courier is dead, HP Slate is not.
 
I'm laughing so hard my stomach is hurting. All of these apple haters swore up and down that the Ipad was going to be a failure.

Endless chants of failure and epic fail,etc and then turn around and then the
Apple Haters wetdream a.k.a HP slate has been shelved! Funny how things turn out :D

Apple haters head down to your local Diner because Crow is now being served!

PWND!
 
jdhandi said:
oh please...dont get too exited. hp webOS tablet will be a very good ipad rival.
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Well considering what HP has done to compaq,Voodoo PC and Digital. I doubt the webos tablet will even make a dent.

HP will probarly market it as a low cost device putting very cheap components into it. So cheap that it will have build quality issues. And Lest not forget that famous Bloatware HP is known for. That will end up on the Tablet too.

And that is even dependent on how much HP micro manages WebOs. Because they could be saying they will leave Rubenstein and Co to their own devices. But the minute this deal closes it will be a whole new ballgame
 
iPad Competitors Begin to Disappear Even Before Being Released

Yesterday I only thought two dead flies were lying on the floor with their legs in the air.

But today we learn that Microsoft, the very company that's spent the past 9 years telling us they've "got some very exciting products in the pipeline", including at least two tablets, is also now giving up the game!

I'm a huge fan of Apple's very clever and highly successful business model, and I know it's a serious force in the tech world, but now we have proof that they're actively killing MS. And that's significant.
 
splashman said:
1. Apple once again defines a market with a single product.

2. Apple's product is poo-poo'd by Apple wannabees and by those with a vested interest in the wannabees.

3. Apple's product is a spectacular success.

4. The wannabees scramble to duplicate Apple's product as closely as possible.

5. The wannabee products fail spectacularly.


It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic and predictable. This pattern says less about Jobs' genius than about his competitors' complete lack of ability to compete.
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Yeah, what I'm taking away from this is that they've played with the iPad for a little while and realize this is the right direction to go (with quibbles), so they'll try to imitate it without crossing IP lines (which may be difficult). Even PC-centric sites (Cnet today) really buy into the way the iPad works as opposed to existing devices. Five years from now Apple will be on Gen 5. Still without Flash-Blu Ray-Ethernet or Keyboards, and still selling every one they make.
 
Competition

Apple has made the innovative products without "competition". The argument that we need competition to "make sure Apple stays on their toes" is just not valid. In fact, the reverse is true. Apple defines the market with a new device and the others follow. Apple is keeping the industry on it's toes....
 
splashman said:
1. Apple once again defines a market with a single product.

2. Apple's product is poo-poo'd by Apple wannabees and by those with a vested interest in the wannabees.

3. Apple's product is a spectacular success.

4. The wannabees scramble to duplicate Apple's product as closely as possible.

5. The wannabee products fail spectacularly.


It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic and predictable. This pattern says less about Jobs' genius than about his competitors' complete lack of ability to compete.
Click to expand...

It's truly outstanding that they appear unable to break this cycle - MS are becoming more and more irrelevant everyday.
 
JediZenMaster said:
I'm laughing so hard my stomach is hurting. All of these apple haters swore up and down that the Ipad was going to be a failure.

Endless chants of failure and epic fail,etc and then turn around and then the
Apple Haters wetdream a.k.a HP slate has been shelved! Funny how things turn out :D

Apple haters head down to your local Diner because Crow is now being served!

PWND!
Click to expand...

Wow, you're mature. This site is turning to garbage.
 
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