HP TouchPad: Shipping July 1 | Hacker News Reader

HP TouchPad: Shipping July 1

blog.palm.com

106 pointsmarklabedz83 comments

Well it looks like they have already done something better than all their non-Apple competitors - instead of rushing it out half finished they seem to have waited until it's done. Given the biggest complaint about webos on the phone was the power of the processor this stands a good chance of being a nice product. fingers crossed for them

(I'm unlikely to give up my iPad given iCloud now but there really should be a decent competitor in the market place) ((and by decent I mean something a casual purchaser will be happy with and not a tablet that is good enough to make someone happy who pointedly doesn't want to buy Apple and will put up with all sorts))

The 500MHz processor in the original Pre really does hold back WebOS. Running an overclocked custom kernel, I have mine set at 1GHz, makes a huge difference to the usability and surprisingly doesn't reduce battery life by much (which is partly due to the custom kernels clocking the CPU back to 500MHz when the screen is off).

It looks like HP/Palm have learned from this and aren't going to make the same mistake twice, the more recent videos of the Touchpad show how much they've optimised the UI to remove the lag: http://www.precentral.net/webos-3-0-optimizations-make-smoot...

As I was completely unaware of overclocking in WebOS and specifically for the original Pre (which I have), I'll save the user the bit of googling I did to find overclocking. I had no idea it was this easy in preware:

http://www.precentral.net/why-i-overclock-my-palm-pre-its-ea...

So now I have my distraction for the next half-hour while I play with the overclocking options and test the responsiveness.

So thank you for mentioning that. +1 to you!

I don't know how many times I said the words "I had no idea it was so easy" when I had my Palm Pre. It really is an impressive OS.

> they seem to have waited until it's done

That's about the most positive spin I think you can put on being horribly late to market. But do you have evidence that they actually "waited until it was done" and didn't just rush to market also, just later because they started even further behind?

I have been waiting for this device for months.

It's not the second coming or anything, but for those of us that don't want to buy Apple, and think that android is ugly. WebOS devices are a nice balance.

It's also been true that Samsung has not been able to get clean devices out. They are buggy and expensive.

The TouchPad may not be as fast as an iPad 2 or the new Samsung tablet, but it will be faster than the iPad 1, and most of the Android Tablets on the market. The OS is clean and is easy to use.

If the device sells well the app market is not yet crowded and there will be plenty of room for app developers to create a niche for themselves.

I also think that HP will have better distribution into the enterprise.

Touch to Share will not just be about moving files between your phone and tablet, it will be about moving files between all of these devices including your laptop, your printer, and your mobile, ( maybe even your camera ).

Imagine if Mom could buy a printer, a camera, and a phone and just print out photos by taping her phone to the printer. What if you could print out those TPS reports by tapping your tablet on any one of a hundred printers in an enterprise?

And then there is the touch stones, which wirelessly charge your devices.

Yes, I am excited someone is finally competing with iDevices by creating a better experience, not just a cheaper one.

HP don't just make it cheaper, make it easier to use across all of my devices.

And don't forget that there is that rumor of dropbox integration into webos 3.

They are also offering free TouchPads to webOS developers who can demonstrate a working TouchPad app that they intend to submit to the App Catalog. Details on their blog: http://developer.palm.com/blog/2011/05/show-us-your-app-at-w...

Step 1 to get your free TouchPad: get to Paris or Berlin.

A company the size of HP can afford to give away piles of TouchPads and Pres to developers that might be mildly interested. HP should have somebody hunting down the twitter accounts of prolific app developers and mailing out starter packs of hardware. Google has been handing out hardware left and right and doesn't seem to be slowing down one bit.

You don't have to get to Paris or Berlin. You can email them (that's what I did).

2. Must be registered for and present at the event to be eligible. 4. Must be able to show your app in progress to a designated HP webOS representative, in the form of an .ipk file we can load onto and test with an HP TouchPad.

"You can also email us at TouchPadSDK [att] palm [dott] com and one of our app specialists will work with you to see how you can qualify for this program."

They need to think about what the word "must" means.

There are also events at the Palm campus in Sunnyvale today (June 9) and next week (June 16)

http://developer.palm.com/content/community/events/webos_wor...

Step 2, build a time travel device to go back to 25-27th of May.

Did you do this before or after the events?

Just once, I'd like to hear an electronics developer, in HP/Palm's situation, humbly concede, "We realize that we're entering a crowded market. We realize that we're entering late. However, our strategy is simple: ply the development community with incentives which, over time, should help us flesh out our platform into an engaging and useful product."

I've read little but boasting from HP about the new round of WebOS devices. Let's be honest: they have a very tough road ahead if they want to get any market share. They need all of the help and good will that they can get.

They've been inching towards being flexible. Hopefully their statements about possibly licensing webOS with other manufacturers will bear fruit.

I could care less about talk in any case. I've been following Windows Phone 7 as of late and it seems that they've made it easy to program for the platform by offering development tools, samples, and instruction. There is scant documentation or examples for Enyo.

They changed app dev frameworks on all of their existing developers from Mojo to Enyo. That can't help either. I think they have a near Herculean task in trying to claw back market share. There seem to be a few evangelists who love the webOS platform and its devices but when it comes to consumers paying at the door that is in jeopardy.

Enyo docs are scant because Enyo is still a beta and the docs are under NDA, but they do exist and aren't that bad. There is still plenty of room for HP to improve their docs and more code samples though.

I still fail to understand on why companies prefer to price their products at the same level as iPad?! Spec for spec, there are not many things that put HP TouchPad to an advantage. No extendable memory, no extra ports, a weak app ecosystem, etc.

Ever since the ASUS Transformer was released at 399$ for a 16GB model, that pretty much became the price to beat for a tablet which wanted to compete with the iPad2

In principle I agree, however, much has been made of Apple's buying power when it comes to key components (displays, solid state storage, etc). Apple may well have the lowest actual component cost.

I understand the fact about Apple's buying power. But when someone is trying to compete with an established product, you gotta offer something more at some price less to get people to even look at it!

It's going to be interesting to see how the HP Touchpad & Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 do in the next few months. However, the real competition will start when Amazon jumps into the market with their rumored Kal-El tablets later this year.

The dollars don't matter so much. eBay matters is that you are seen providing better value (which may indue cost). Unfortunately, with the WWDC announcements, it really doesn't look like HP has a better value.

They need something more to compete if they don't want it to be a race to the bottom with Chinese, Taiwanese, and South Korean vendors.

Unfortunately, with the WWDC announcements, it really doesn't look like HP has a better value.

For as long as the MS/Windows ecosystem is a going concern, a sufficiently well executed non-Apple tablet will have a market in those who are anti-Apple.

Nope, it's not possible to offer more for less. Apple is a "good" monopoly, that passes their saving onto customers.

The only way to beat them is to attack from below. Make a tablet that is only good for browsing the web. Maybe add a few cheap features like a camera and GPS, but skimp on expensive features like storage.

If you really want to be cool, add some kind of console controls, so teenagers can play games. Maybe even add some sort of social element - allow them to connect to each other through USB, and play arcade games.

Or attack some other niche that Apple don't own. You could add a bunch of graphics calculator functions, and target students. Just be careful you don't do anything that a $3 App won't do.

Price it at half the price of an iPad, and hope you gain a toehold.

I think you're describing the Nook Color and/or Nook.

>When trying to compete with an established product you gotta offering something more at some price less...

Like the iPhone and it's $600 starting price?

Apple created the market for touch-friendly pocket computers. There were no established products in that market.

Yes the Newton was a great product.

Newton was stylus-driven.

I didnt get the memo which stipulated that you need to use fingers for it to be classified as touch based.

Maybe mouse-driven computers should be considered touch-based too?

I believe an interface is touch based if you use an object to touch the screen to interact with the interface. Mice do not have this property. Given the downvotes I imagine people at HN disagree with this notion, but here are some links that suggest that there is a part of the world which considers stylus based devices as touch based.

[1] http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/TouchSystems/Tou... [2] http://www.pdapanache.com/stylusfaq.asp

[3] http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=354774&dl=ACM&...

Not only are you wrong, but your links are to vendors of pens that emulate touch. The vendors aren't arguing that "style = touch" but that "our stylus works on touchscreens" (as opposed to styluses that work on pen-based systems).

The fundamental idea of the iPad is that you don't need something else to make it work. It isn't that you mustn't use something else.

The third link was not from a vendor. Here are some non vendor links: [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface - "Touchscreens are displays that accept input by touch of fingers or a stylus. Used in a growing amount of mobile devices and many types of point of sale, industrial processes and machines, self-service machines etc."

[2] http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=touch+screen... - "A display screen that is sensitive to the touch of a finger or stylus."

Why not quote Wikipedia's article on "Touch Screen": "A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touching the display of the device with a finger or hand. Touchscreens can also sense other passive objects, such as a stylus."

Oh wait, because it doesn't suit your purposes either.

Could HP not just sell below cost for a while to grab some market share? Instead of $100 million in marketing, drop the price by $100 and sell a million devices. It's a more direct benefit.

It's not as easy as you'd think to sell a $399 tablet with no marketing budget.

See: The surprise in this thread being expressed that Asus' tablet has been available for sale for months.

However, Asus' tablet is either out of stock or sells out very quickly, so one could argue that there's not much need for marketing from that standpoint.

It's not necessarily all or nothing.

Certainly they've already spent quite a lot - trade shows, etc - and have the geek faithful aware of the tablet already. It'd be much easier for me to evangelize this at a lower price point.

A $299 price point would rock. "Correct, it doesn't do as much as an iPad, but it's also not as expensive."

This notion that "the market says $499 price points are what tablets should be priced at" is stupid. $499 is what iPads will sell at - no one else has yet demonstrated that a $499 is viable for any other tablet than the iPad. I will say it's foolish to keep trying this late in the game. If a company as big as HP isn't willing to do what it takes to get these in to peoples' hands (which may include selling below cost), there's little hope this will be a viable competitor.

It's not as easy as you'd think to sell a $399 tablet with no marketing budget.

Is this in part due to the plethora of crappy Android tablets that came out in the last year?

I was going to post a snarky comment about how the Transformer can't compete with the iPad because its not actually shipping yet, blah blah, but I did a search first and found out that it shipped over a month ago.

Which can only mean that ASUS really botched the PR on this one. Neither Engadget nor Gizmodo (arguably the two largest gadget sites) have reviewed it, but the few reviews I did find were generally positive.

I've read about tablets from Motorola, Toshiba, and Samsung, but nothing about the ASUS, which looks to be a decent, relatively cheap Honeycomb tablet.

Engadget reviewed the UK edition of the Transformer in April and seemed to generally like it. http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/18/asus-eee-pad-transformer-...

I have heard a lot of actual talk on tech forums about the Transformer and people trying to find it and excited to buy it. Way more than the other tablets.

I wonder if Asus just didn't send review units to Engadget and Gizmodo. OTOH, isn't the press supposed to be covering things on their own??

Your comment only strengthens the case against Asus' product marketing execution.

I just got my 32GB Transformer from Newegg on Monday.

Pricing is also signaling, so you have to be careful undercutting someone if your story is "we have a better product". If the TouchPad is destined for failure, undercutting Apple isn't going to prevent that. The market's already said "$499 is good for a tablet" so it's smart of them to listen to that.

One of the cooler things about WebOS when I was using a 1st generation Pre was the large community of jailbreakers and the mods and apps that they produced. Given some of the cool things they made possible on the Pre I'm really interested to see what they'll do with the TouchPad. Here's hoping it's a success, I really liked WebOS.

I like WebOS, so it's too bad that the form factor lags behind a generation. A 1.6 pound device will be palpably less comfortable to use than the new generation of 1.3 pound devices (iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab 10.1).

If that's the case, I think you should go out and do some exercises.

Can you really tell the difference between 1.6 pound and 1.3 pound gadgets ?

If you're using them in bed, you absolutely can. Even an ounce makes a huge difference when you're holding it up for hours on end.

I sold my iPad 1 because I didn't enjoy holding it up for long periods of time. I wouldn't call it heavy so much as awkward to use in many of the standard tablet use-cases (in bed, holding it up like a book).

I'm in good shape, thanks.

As a webOS fan/user/developer I'm happy to hear this. It's a big step forward for the platform. Sadly though what I really need is a new phone. Where is the pre 3, when is that going to be release? A new phone would do much more for me right now than a tablet.

I am a fan of the Android notifications but I have told that the webOS ones are even better! This should be an interesting device all in all.

WebOS notifications are nice because you can swipe away individual notifications. But they also take up more screen than on Android (which matters because Palm/HP loves tiny phones). I'd say it's a push overall.

It would be really nice if they have a notification tray (or rather a summary area). That would make it the best notification system on any current platform. Right now, once you swipe the notifications away, there's no single place to go and view those notifications. I can't recall if it still keeps a small reminder icon on the bottom.

Ideally, swipe left to dismiss, swipe right to dismiss for now (still listed in the notification "tray").

> I can't recall if it still keeps a small reminder icon on the bottom.

It does this if you don't swipe it away and you interact with some other app. So, if I'm writing an emial and a text message comes in, it will show up with the full notification, but if I touch the email again, it will show the tiny reminder icon.

One major problem with WebOS notifications is that you can't interact with some of them when they appear. You have to wait until after (1) they've minimized themselves, (2) you've tapped the minimized icon in the lower right corner, and then (3) tapped or swiped the expanded notification item. It's particularly infuriating with the WiFi "Captive portal detected" notification.

"Touch to Share capability for sharing web addresses between HP TouchPad and compatible webOS phones"

I'm sure all 5 people who still have the palm pre can barely contain their excitement...

Seriously, what's HP thinking? I think the Palm Pre came out with more fanfare, and that didn't turn out that great. If all that really differrentiates HP's tablet from the iPad is the OS, well, quite frankly, it's been done before with the Palm Pre vs. iPhone, with less than flattering results for Palm.

I just don't see the sensible part yet... if someone else does, please point it out to me...

Yeah... I want to see webOS do well, but making one of your main differentiators be tight integration with a product that essentially nobody owns isn't normally the route to success.

It's not compatible with the original Pre or Pixi. It's compatible with the veer, which just came out, and the pre3, which doesn't even have a release date yet. It might be compatible with updated versions of the Pre2 but I don't think they're banking on people buying those.

No, the touch to share functionality is based on some form of near field communications. I don't think the Pre2 has the hardware. The Veer (with a software update) and Pre3 are supposed to support it.

Palm made the mistake of not realizing fanfare isn't the same as distribution. Touchpads are going to be available at Amazon.com, HP.com, BestBuy, Walmart, Sam's Club, OfficeMax and several others within two weeks of launch, not to mention the international push. The Pre was stuck on the nation's 3rd largest network for like 6 months. It really had no chance of competing with current offerings on AT&T and Verizon being that old.

Yup, and it took me over two months to get a Pre after it came out. And I was the first to get one from that Sprint store.

That's a valid point. It'll be an interesting case study, if it does indeed meet with some success. However, there are already other Android based tablets out there (Best Buy/CompUSA) which have had lackluster sales. Are they really banking on distribution channel being the key differrentiator? (yes, I know... WebOS too)

I enjoyed reading your comment from my pre, while sitting in the park on a nice day. I agree that the fanfare over gee-whiz features is just hype. What should interest you is the potential, though unlikely emergence of another serious competitor. As with copy/paste, multitasking, notifications, and over-the-air updates, having competitors that show that Apple is not the only place great ideas come from can only be good for us all.

Where did Jon Rubenstein's team come from again? ;-)

Aside from the the hardware and the OS, the most exciting part of the announcement is how HP is using their sizable scale and distribution channels to get the touchpad into the 4 of the top brick and mortar retailers. It will make it far more accessible to the average consumer than the iPad. I wish the price was lower, but sadly if they didn't match the pricing of the iPad then too many people (or worse media outlets) would automatically assume that it was priced cheaper because it's an inferior product (which it isn't).

>>HP also said today that it will be partnering with AT&T to introduce a connected version of HP TouchPad later this summer. No details yet, but stay tuned.

I think HP's marketing is wrong, they shouldn't be touting the WebOS operating system so much because ordinary people don't care. The operating system is irrelevant in this type of device. In fact, I think something along the lines of Google's ChromeOS is the right operating system for a tablet -- an ultralight web-browsing only device with cloud-connected filesystem for downloads/photos/movies etc. It's the only type of device that I foresee being able to really compete against the iPad.

It might be relevant because it's going to run on desktops too. That means you get webos in both places - it's a word people will have to remember.

It's important if one of the goals of the TouchPad is to rejuvenate the WebOS brand so they can market it for notebooks and other non-tablet/phone devices in the future.

If webOS fails, I think its legacy will be being too ahead of its time twice- one for being a neat smartphone OS back in 2009 with several features that both the iPhone and Android lacked (card system for multitasking, development platform based on web programming languages), and second for getting into the multi-device platform game prior to OS X Lion and Windows 8 (the webOS will run on everything from desktops to printers initiative that HP is currently pushing).

Too ahead of it's time? I'm pretty sure it's just that they were too late to market.

(1) they launched on Sprint. Sprint is a distant 3rd now.

(2) they didn't reach Verizon in time.

They had this lovely window of time before Verizon launched the first Droid phone. Verizon users were hungry for a smartphone. Droid got their first and filled the niche.

It's easy to armchair quarterback but, after trying the Pre on Sprint, I kept wishing for them to get a faster Pre on Verizon before Android arrived.

Too little, too late.

What you're saying is true, but I still think that mine are true as well. webOS seems to be the first to have:

1. Certain features like cards, a good notification system, and requiring only HTML/CSS/JS knowledge to develop for, back in 2009

2. Currently being the only(?) mobile OS out that is designed to be also run on non-tablet/smartphone systems.

So it boils down to webOS being ahead of its time on some technical features, while marketed poorly and thus causing it to miss the boat.

It's a Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-CPU APQ8060 1.2GHz

But they don't mention RAM or cpu.

It runs flash, but doesn't mention java (so it probably doesn't).

I believe the spec is 1GB of RAM.

> But they don't mention RAM or cpu.

How's saying that it's 1.2 ghz cpu is not mentioning cpu? As for RAM, Wikipedia page says it'll have 1 gb.

sorry, typo, I meant gpu (or is that integrated into the SoC?)

Ah, right, GPU. Here: http://www.fudzilla.com/mobiles/item/21816-qualcomm-official...

> ... comes paired up with Adreno 220 GPU ...

Thanks! 1080p 30fps seems not quite there yet (though impressive for a tablet).

Preview for their lead game doesn't look "console quality" to me http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY7lUziafr4 Though the first games usually don't max out the hardware and of course tablets will probably go through a few generations before the next console generation (excluding nintendo's Wii U), so it's only a matter of time. Just not there yet.

I saw elsewhere that it's not as powerful as the iPad 2 (though clocked 20% faster...)

It's part of the SoC -- it's an Adreno 220 GPU that's based on the mobile GPU technology that Qualcomm bought from AMD/ATI. It uses shared RAM with the system.

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