The HP TouchPad
June 9th, 2011, 11:30pm by Jake
We now know the date & price for the PrePad lauch. You’ll be able to buy one on July 1, $499 for 16GB and $599 for 32GB with 3G models set for AT&T and other GSM networks later this summer, via every tech site on the planet including this one. That’s pretty much exactly one year since Palm was subsumed by HP, and all but ends the Palm brand– with a new, true flagship device that doesn’t carry the Palm name anywhere on it. It’s been 4 months since the TouchPad was previewed way before its time, but at least that time is a mere 3 weeks off. The prodigal Palm tablet has been speculated about on Pyslent many times, including during the iPhone 4 launch. Alas, there will be no sliding keyboard for the would-be PrePad. Enthusiasm still runs high among the small cadre of remaining Palm enthusiasts, with 50% of PreCentral readers planning to buy a slab.
Looks like I’ve been predicting the Palm Tablet since January 2010, although in retrospect the Foleo II name might not have been the best choice. By March, after the iPad launch but before the app onslaught, others joined in my clarion call. In November, I was getting impatient, to the point where I could likely have skipped out on the platform for a bit and returned a year later without having lost much in the webOS world. By December, the tech world was gearing up for tablet wars, but not long before it turned into a tablet massacre.
And against those long odds, HP/Palm joins the battle. I’ll be stupidly buying my copy on launch day, and we’ll see if a webOS tablet can be as fun as an iPad. Will there be millions of others joining me, or hundreds? Only time will tell. But there it is, I’m in, soon to be complaining about the lack of apps apart from Flickr Mundo II. Will this be the device that finally turns the rout into a contest?
June 10th, 2011 at 1:56 am
Quite a history, this PalmPad! I still can’t get over what a dumb name HP came up with. But at least it’s nearly here and your patience is finally going to be rewarded. Awaiting the reviews (incl yours) with more than a little trepidation.
Flickr’s website works pretty well on the iPad, BTW. Haven’t tried any of the Flickr apps yet.
June 10th, 2011 at 1:58 am
I commented previously, but it’s awaiting moderation. Wonder why?
June 10th, 2011 at 10:50 am
Derrick’s comment (Derrick!) was stuck in the moderation queue, too, for some reason. I’m guessing the spam filter has gotten a little more aggressive.
June 10th, 2011 at 6:08 pm
I just assumed all comments required moderation….was it something I said? (or maybe my bogus email address :). This blog is too smart for me.
June 10th, 2011 at 6:43 pm
It’s true. I used a bogus email address too. Maybe if it’s an address thats never been used before, the powers that be get suspicious.
June 10th, 2011 at 8:05 pm
BTW, is it just the post author that can approve comments suspected of spam? How do you know about them? Do I need to log in occasionally to check my posts for pending comments?
June 16th, 2011 at 12:59 am
Just watched some demo videos about the Touchpad. Glad to see that HP came to their senses and implemented the swipe up gesture to get into card view. It was excruciating seeing the guy demoing the Touchpad in February have to hunt for the button all the time. The fact that it ever entered their minds to remove it makes me feel like these guys just don’t get it some (most) of the time.
June 22nd, 2011 at 3:07 pm
Tom Bradley lies on CNBC:
http://forums.precentral.net/hp-touchpad/285536-touchpad-cnbc.html#post2999091
“What we’ve done differently is create a simple unique set of developer tools focused on simplicity and speed to bring these apps to the marketplace, the ability to develop an app once and have it work on a smartphone or tablet is a unique feature.”
Touchpads run Enyo apps, phones run Mojo apps. They are not the same, and this statement illustrate just how ridiculous HP’s current developer story really is.
1) We wanted to roll out Enyo dev tools for the Touchpad because we believe that the tablet experience is fundamentally different than the smartphone experience.
2) Make your tablet apps using Enyo with the large screen in mind.
3) Don’t bother investing in Mojo apps because we are working to bring Enyo to phones.
June 22nd, 2011 at 4:49 pm
I thought Enyo runs on webOS 2?
June 22nd, 2011 at 5:58 pm
No.
June 24th, 2011 at 9:50 am
Glad to see HP is setting their expectations a little more realistically. They’ve backed down on this “Number 1 Plus” stuff. And this “thousands of apps at launch” stuff.
Bradley and Rubinstein say that if the TouchPad’s reception is lukewarm initially, they’ll be patient. “We have a really good opportunity to become No. 2 in tablets fairly quickly,” Rubinstein says. “Possibly No. 1.”
The TouchPad will launch with 300 tablet-specific applications.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_27/b4235040584134.htm?campaign_id=yhoo
June 24th, 2011 at 12:13 pm
Let’s see what those 300 apps are– if they’re all Flickr Mundo level independent apps and mainline apps like Twitter & Kindle, it’ll be in good shape. If there of the same average quality as the typical app… not so much.
Hopefully will get a review unit in the next couple weeks.
June 24th, 2011 at 12:46 pm
The best thing about having a Kindle app is that Palm is justified in rejecting the ebook apps that comprise half the current App Catalog. I don’t expect any of the 300 showcase apps to be quite that bad!
HP has been deprecating mojo at every opportunity, so i worry that FMHD, as a mojo app, will suffer from the typical mojo ailments. It could be like when the pdk came out– after that there wasn’t a single good mojo game to come out. Wouldn’t surprise me if all the good Touchpad apps turn out to be enyo-based.
Webosroundup let it slip that they have a review Touchpad, so we’re just waiting for the embargo to get broken. It made me wonder– who’s gonna do the review on ThisIsMyNext? Topolsky is no longer the biggest webOS fanboy on staff…
June 27th, 2011 at 10:58 am
The thing that gives me the most hope about the Touchpad is the iPhone Twitter App. It uses these sliding panes which seems similar in inspiration to the dominant hierarchical structure of the enyo-bases webOs apps. Seems to work pretty well in obviating the need for a back button.
June 27th, 2011 at 4:35 pm
So my local Best Buy had 2 working demos on display today. My initial impression is that there are no surprises. It’s exactly what you’d expect from webOS on a tablet. The photos in the photo gallery did render instantly once the app got going (there’s some initial lag that I’m guessing comes from pre-caching adjacent photos).
I did check flickr, and there’s good news and bad news. The normal site loads (rather than the html5 version), but it does handover to a functional piknik, so that’s cool.
June 28th, 2011 at 6:16 pm
Hey Jake, as long as you were planning on getting the 32 GB Touchpad, HP is offering a loyalty discount of $50 to current customers. Better than nothing.
http://www.precentral.net/hp-makes-things-right-early-adopters-extra-50-discount
June 29th, 2011 at 2:32 am
I really hope that HP isn’t under the illusion that this “makes thing right” for all the lies told about Flash and webOS 2. It’s a nice marketing ploy, nothing more.
But hey, $50 is $50. I’ll take it.
June 29th, 2011 at 10:46 am
Obviously such an afterthought. HP specifically said they were working on a “path to 2.x” for legacy devices owners when they promised to “make things right.” Well, as I’ve pointed out in this thread, 3.0 is not 2.0. But I’m pretty sure this is the last we’ll hear of making things right from HP! That said, I haven’t gotten the email (as a former user), so maybe it really is an exclusive offer, rather than blatant attempt to upsell.
June 29th, 2011 at 2:05 pm
What I mean in the above is that HP obviously had something else in mind when they promised to make it up to legacy owners, and they couldn’t pull it off. I’d speculate that it involved getting the Pre3 on Sprint, or negotiating with at&t/ Verizon to let Pre/Pixi Plus users upgrade early, etc. Without those deals in place, there really wasn’t any offer that made sense, so they washed their hands of the whole thing with a token gesture.
June 29th, 2011 at 2:12 pm
I dunno, I visited the official “see if your phone is ready for the 2.0 upgrade” and it still says to stay tuned in the coming weeks for an update.
Annoyed at the whole thing, very much so. All I really want is to be able to *buy* the Pre3 on Sprint. Now I’m thinking I may go with a FrankenPre2 for at least a bit.
June 29th, 2011 at 4:31 pm
For the uninitiated, what are they “making up for?” It sounds like maybe they promised that webOS 2 would run on the Pre/Pre 2, and have Flash, and now it doesn’t?
If that’s the case, what could they have possibly done to compensate you, short of giving all Pre owners a phone that would run webOS 2? They held on to you as a loyal customer by (optimistically) overpromising or (pessimistically) lying.
At the first sign that they weren’t going to deliver, I think it would have been advisable to cut and run, since they weren’t ever going to be able to “make things right” with current customers. Or just resign yourself to the fact that you’d need to buy a new phone, and maybe also switch carriers, to continue to give them the loyalty they’ve worked so hard to earn.
June 29th, 2011 at 4:51 pm
I think all anyone wanted to “make things right” was a discount on a new webOS phone on Sprint.
June 29th, 2011 at 6:11 pm
That’s pretty much what happened Mike– Palm had promised that all webOS phones would get an upgrade to v2.0, then when it turned out that wasn’t to be, they promised to find a path for lagacy owners to get 2.0 and were working on a program to “make things right” for breaking their first promise. So the webOS community has been on pins and needles wondering what form this MTR program would take. In fact, there continue to be apologists out there that insist that this Touchpad rebate isn’t it, and that we will see another offer that fullfills Palm’s “obligation.” It reminds me of when Lucas starting fighting with a buddy during his classes’ CNY performance– simultaneously amusing and horrifying.
You’re right that they shouldn’t have said anything, but let’s face it, Palm has given us plenty of proof that they are totally clueless and therefore, it’s completely in character for them to put another foot in their mouth :). IMO, the best way to “make things right” would have been to release products that are on time and don’t suck.
Jake, I’m sure HP would love to offer a new webOS phone on Sprint.
June 29th, 2011 at 6:45 pm
Regardless, I have my new plan of attack that provides a small measure of comfort & revenge. Upon being stuck without WiFi, I resorted to downloading the FreeTether app for the Pre. The whole process took less than 10 minutes, maybe 5, no configuration & I was online. If I can use the Pre to tether without getting charged, the TouchPad becomes a lot more valuable.
Likewise, there’s this whole FrankenPre movement, to put the Sprint Pre radio into the Verizon Pre 2 or something like that, net effect is I’d have a Pre 2 with webOS 2 running on Sprint with free tethering, out less than a couple hundred bucks, not under contract and still paying $40/month. That, I could live with for another year, at which point webOS on phones will be a faint joke or the platform will be reinvigorated to the point where Sprint picks up the Pre4. We’ll see how the plan works.
June 29th, 2011 at 8:11 pm
Sprintifying a Pre2 doesn’t require a Verizon Pre– It’s cheaper to get an unlocked GSM Pre2. You’d probably even qualify for a developer one, which can be had at a discount. If you are committed to the platform, it seems like a nice upgrade over the Pre Minus. Are there ramifications? Would you still have access to webOS 2.X updates and the full App Catalog (such as it is)?
June 29th, 2011 at 9:01 pm
The guys from This is My Next weighed in on the $50 Touchpad rebate as a way for HP to atone for their sins: “Someone in our team chat had a great analogy: sorry about cutting off your arm, here’s a leg.”
June 30th, 2011 at 12:30 pm
I have my new plan of attack that provides a small measure of comfort & revenge.
So now that I think about it, how does this plan inflict any vengeance upon HP? It hurts Sprint because you’re getting free tethering, and Sprint deserves hurting for a number of unrelated reasons. But it doesn’t hurt HP– they just get to sell 2 more devices to their disguntled fan base. Way to send a message! š
June 30th, 2011 at 12:30 pm
Here come the reviews — a quick synopsis is at PC World. Sounds familiar — “has potential, far from perfect.”
June 30th, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Well, if HP sells me a developer device at cost, $250ish, they’re not making any money off me.
Also, Lucas is featured on the new screenshots for Flickr Mundo HD.
June 30th, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Yeah, lukewarm reviews at best. A for Flickr Mundo, that’s pretty cool. He’s looking tall and skinny as usual.
https://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?packageid=com.chofter.flickrmundo
June 30th, 2011 at 1:29 pm
My TouchPad is en route & will arrive tomorrow!
June 30th, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Can’t wait to read the Pyslent Exclusive Review! It makes me wish you were coming to our NYC meetup even more š