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Tapwave Closes its Doors
ewhac writes "Tapwave, makers of the universally acclaimed Zodiac mobile gaming device/media player/PalmOS PDA formally announced on their Web site that, 'the Zodiac business was discontinued and service and support are no longer available as of July 25th 2005.' The Zodiac was a PalmOS 5.2 device with gaming and media features, including ATI graphics and Yamaha sound acceleration, proportional joystick, two SD slots, Bluetooth, 200MHz ARM CPU (Freescale i.MX1), and up to 128M of RAM. At the most recent Palm developer conference, Tapwave employees were showing Zodiacs running their own port of Linux 2.6.10, with ports of SDL, Python, PyGame, mpg123, and primitive power management. It is unknown what will become of this work."
The problem with this device, as I remember looking at it at the local shop, was that it was an answer to a problem no one had.
If I want a game system that's pocket portable, I will play with my PSP (better library of games, better gaming platform).
If I want a PDA, I will use my HP hx4705 (VGA screen, better support by 3rd party programmers, better power management).
The other features just sucked. It was slow, and it was 'campy' in design. I know - it's hard to come up with something professional and fun to use in a gaming environment. Just because it can/would have been able to run Linux doesn't make it the pancea of the mobile product world. Sorry, but it's true.
If the Zodiac is no more, then what do I say, if someone asks me what my sign is?
*sits here, watching the following thread for the puns and fun answers*
Luke
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Have a teaching-about-computer-basics website? Maybe you might want to swap links with ChristianNerds.com?
Shame, really. Product so far ahead of its time. But that's why it failed in the marketplace.
Makes you wonder what kind of market it is that rewards the incrementalists, while punishing innovators.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is very sad.
If you're looking for a replacement, the closest you're probably going to find is the GPX2, which is being made by the makers of the GP32. It runs linux and has an incomplete but pretty decent sized fraction of the Zodiac's feature list. They claim they want to sell it for $100, but it seems almost ridiculously improbable they could pull that off..
My theory is that it tried to go toe to toe with Nintendo and the GBA. Sure it had the whole touch screen thing before the DS but you just don't mess with the Gameboy.
Maybe they should have consulted with the makers of the NeoGeo Pocket, Wonderswan, GP32, Atari Lynx, Game Gear, Nomad and various others on how to try to tackle the Gameboy.
"I hope they do the right thing and open-source the code..."
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Like all other game consoles that failed, they didn't have enough brand-name games. They had quite a few overpriced shareware games, and some ports of older PC games like Doom 2 and spyhunter, and a few interesting original games. The PDA itself was a really good design. I liked the one I saw in CompUSA and I was seriously considering getting one just as a PDA. It had a large ammount of RAM, dual SD slots (one SDIO), bluetooth, a display that matched the high end PalmOne PDAs like the T3. It is a shame the company went under. Maybe they wouldn't have if I actually bought them instead of obsessivly checking their website.
It's universally acclaimed, and by "universally acclaimed" I mean that neither I nor anyone I know had even heard of it before this article. Maybe everyone who used one liked it, but you have to be ubiquitous before you can be universally acclaimed. Of course, nobody who knows what ubiquitous actually means other than "cool gadget that I saw in Best Buy on two occasions" has ever had a story approved for the front page of Slashdot.
This was completely predictable: a PalmOS machine with a proprietary gaming library was a really stupid idea. It made them dependent on PalmOS, tied them to an outdated software architecture, and meant that they still had to do lots of custom software development.
I think even if they had started off with Linux on those devices, they would have failed: wrong market, wrong timing. But they would have had a slightly better chance than with what they actually did.
"You can always spot the pioneers by the arrows in their backs."
--William Calvin
I was in your camp, until I got a PalmOne Treo 600.
Acceptable battery life, a usable camera, and (at least the GSM model) a good usable phone. Plus, having all the data service I can eat on my provider means that I'm always on IM and have instant and perpetual accesss to my E-mail (both with good third-party apps).
And, I only have to carry one device.
Nokia's phones are notorious at being lousy cameras and PDAs. But, to Palm's credit, the Treo made me a believer in the concept. It is, indeed, possible to get enough usability out of one device to make it worthwhile.
I had(have) one. Wonderful little device in almost every way. Solid design, good screen (a bit washed out colors, but still), plenty speed for a PalmOS.
The only problem was the DRM.
See, software that took advantage of the special hardware accelerator/screen API/system functions in the Zodiac had to have been cleared and approved by Tapwave, they'd turn on the "Not Evil" bit and you could run it. Otherwise, it'd reset your device.
They blocked access to parts of the OS, so no third party language addons would work (no russian, no japanese in my case).
Since all programs had to pass by them, they got to pick what they would allow people to run. I remember a big stink when they wouldn't authorize a GBA emulator, because Nintendo had threatened the company that wrote it (not Tapwave) originaly. That certanly hurt them, and I have seen developers stay away from the Zodiac for worry about whether their program would be allowed to run on it. (This is once again, only for programs that changed the OS, or used the zodiac special features, hardware accelerated graphics, and so on)
Furthermore all software that was authorized to run, could only run on your one zodiac. It'd reset otherwise. I had a hell of a time with that when having to replace my Zodiac for another one.
In the end it had great hardware, so-so software, and a draconian enough DRM to annoy most users, and a fair amount of developers. Really sad to see it go, but I have been expecting this.
Yet another victim, left unable to sustain itself in the vacuum of the N-Gage's wake, falls before the allmighty Nokian. The powerful N-Gage Arena community bellows a mightly laugh at the plight of the vastly inferior Tapwave. Said Jorma Ollila, "How could any device with a name like that ever hope to succeed? One can be engaged, but not tapwaved!"
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
Zodiac had three problems:
1) Games. They needed a "Killer App" in the worst way. I mean, even the Saturn had "Panzer Dragoon" and Dreamcast had "Soul Caliber." Instead, they seemed to pursue the most mediocre and middle-of-the-road games they could, the "premier" game being a warmed over version of Doom.
2) Marketing. There was no buzz. They scored the incredible coup of getting their device prominently displayed in every CompUSA, but failed to advertise it, or even poisition it where it would be visible to it's target audience. (20-something professionals.) Take out a full page ad or two in Maxxim, fer chrissakes.
3) Not gearing themselves to succeed small, and grow big. They overreached themselves without a killer game and proper publicity. There are high-tech products that survive and thrive despite flying under the radar (see Sony's Qualia division, or McIntosh Audio, or Saleen supercars for good examples.) But, you need to batten down the financial hatches, and realize you're going to live on the edge of solvency for the first five ro ten years. (Alienware is a great example of such a company who actually made it.)
So, even tho the Tapwave was one of the sexiest pieces of kit on the market (that metal shell felt like a William Gibson wet-dream), it couldn't deliver the killer app, it wasn't advertised to it's target audience effectively, and Tapwave tried to grow too quickly, and drowned in venture capital it had no hope of repaying.
Ah, well, if I find one on clearance, I'll buy it regardless, because hey, it is a cool little gizmo.
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