WebOS Chief: Don't Fret Over TouchPad Reviews

Fudge Factor 3000 writes "HP released their much trumpeted enterprise tablet, TouchPad, last week. This device was also the first to showcase WebOS in a tablet. The tablet received several harsh reviews, though some stated that the OS showed potential. Most of the criticism surrounded the sluggish software and the lack of apps. As reported by CNET, WebOS chief Jon Rubenstein rallies his troops by comparing the WebOS tablet's debut to that of Mac OS X, which also struggled early on. However, it is not entirely clear if the comparison is appropriate, since WebOS has existed since 2009, and OS X had the ability to run most classic OS 9 apps during the transition period. Nevertheless, one can certainly argue that the situation is similar in spirit." Another reader tips a related article which suggests that — for better or worse — Apple has succeeded in defining what a tablet should be, making it difficult for competitors to get a foothold in the market.

Comments

Sad, but interesting

[Microlith]

While it's pathetic and sad that so few vendors can come up with something whose usability matches the iPad, it is interesting to see Apple take such a huge slice of that pie.

Last I recall they had something like 90% of the market, which is easily monopoly territory. It'll be fascinating to see if they succumb to the temptation to abuse it, or if they can stay their hand.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[mellon]

What's even more ironic is that this is true despite the various ways that Apple has chosen to cripple the iPad. All they need to do is make something iPad-like that isn't crippled, and the people who want an iPad that isn't crippled will buy it. (I have an iPad and like it, but the fact that I can't do shortcuts on the keyboard and can't run an interpreter on it or fork subprocesses means that it is much less useful to me than it could be.)

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Microlith]

Indeed, but they don't want you. At least, they don't want you as you are, but as they want you to be (getting kinda Nirvana here...)

Apple's hostility towards technical users should be well known at this point, which is a tragic turn from where they are with OS X.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

When has Apple not abused their position as the 800-pound gorilla on the block?

Re:Sad, but interesting

[h4rr4r]

Tragic turn?
OSX will be dead as a consumer OS soon enough. It will be moved to only the Pro line.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[UnknowingFool]

Having the largest marketshare isn't really the legal definition of a monopoly. Apple's marketshare must be so dominant and controlling that (1) they can set whatever prices they wanted and (2) customers have no suitable alternatives as the barrier to entry is too high. Well given that many of their competitors can release products (some of them cheaper/some more expensive) is really enough to fend off any monopoly charges. The fact that the competing products have mostly sucked so far isn't really on Apple but on their competitors' inadequacies. After that Apple must be shown to somehow curtail competition through the use of their monopoly. Having 90+% marketshare wasn't the problem with MS and Windows. It was their dealings with OEMs and partners to harm Netscape and Sun that was why MS was convicted.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Microlith]

Yes, when they went from the power user friendly OS X on all of their devices to declaring that the mobile space was for Apple only, and if you wanted to play you had to pay money and be blessed by them.

And yeah, I expect them to become more hostile and move the restrictive platform up the stack, locking out more developers. Boy, I'd hate to have grown up with a locked down iMac as my family computer. I'd never have gotten into software development.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Guspaz]

They can get away with this because most people don't care about this stuff anyhow. There is a significant portion who do (two years ago, it was said that 10% of iPhone users were jailbreaking), but that still leaves 90% who don't, and I suspect a decent chunk of those 10% are jailbreaking to pirate stuff anyhow (not judging, just saying).

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Microlith]

given that many of their competitors can release products (some of them cheaper/some more expensive) is really enough to fend off any monopoly charges

When Microsoft was tried for abusing their monopoly, other vendors were releasing OSes and browsers. Nonetheless, they were found to have a monopoly. The direction for abuse would be threats against App Developers directed towards other mobile platforms.

The fact that the competing products have mostly sucked so far isn't really on Apple but on their competitors' inadequacies.

No argument there.

After that Apple must be shown to somehow curtail competition through the use of their monopoly. Having 90+% marketshare wasn't the problem with MS and Windows. It was their dealings with OEMs and partners to harm Netscape and Sun that was why MS was convicted.

Right, and it's much easier to do so when you control a huge percentage of the mobile space. Again, my post was wondering if Apple would be able to resist that temptation.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[petteyg359]

It'll be fascinating to see if they succumb to the temptation to abuse it

Ha. Haha. Want to sell something through a link on a webpage that somebody viewed in Safari on their iPad? Not allowed! Apple must have their 30% cut!

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Guspaz]

I'm pretty sure that having a dominant market share *is* the legal definition of a monopoly. Having a monopoly isn't illegal in and of itself, but it places additional restrictions on your behaviour under various countries' competition laws.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[kwerle]

We're way off topic...

What's even more ironic is that this is true despite the various ways that Apple has chosen to cripple the iPad. All they need to do is make something iPad-like that isn't crippled, and the people who want an iPad that isn't crippled will buy it. (I have an iPad and like it, but the fact that I can't do shortcuts on the keyboard and can't run an interpreter on it or fork subprocesses means that it is much less useful to me than it could be.)

I agree with everything you said. But there's a bit of a caveat:
You and I represent a tiny tiny fraction of 1% of consumers: those with technical wants.

If Apple catered to us, then every stupid developer (99% of 'em - let's be honest) would fork stuff and use keyboard stuff and generally screw up the experience and battery life. It is entirely NOT in Apple's best interests (or the consumers that love iDevices) to allow those kinds of things.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Cinder6]

Is that why they're releasing a new version this month?

Re:Sad, but interesting

[h4rr4r]

The one that is only coming out through the appstore?
Think about that for a while.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Microlith]

There's a difference between giving people technical options, and having a controlled App Store serve as the primary software source.

Apple gives no option at all. You are supposed to be a passive consumer. Unless you're an "artsy" type, then you can create all you want. But not if you're the technical type.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[DavidinAla]

What's even more ironic to me is that you don't seem to understand that Apple is succeeding BECAUSE it has a product that is "crippled," from your point of view. Your needs and wants are NOT the needs and wants of the majority. If Apple tried to cater to what you wanted, the company wouldn't have the huge hit that it has. Apple is focusing on what a much wider audience wants, NOT the desires of the geek crowd.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[LordLimecat]

When until the last 1.5 years has apple been the 800-pound gorilla on the block? Your revisionist history of apple is quite interesting; id love to hear more.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Man On Pink Corner]

Apple is definitely looking like Microsoft in the 1990s era. Their strengths and fortunes are exactly the same: they're one of many large technology companies with competent management and a healthy engineering culture, and they're uniquely blessed with the most head-slappingly retarded competitors in the history of human commerce.

So yes... if history repeats itselfl, Apple is most likely going to cross paths with antitrust authorities in the USA, EU, or both. It's not a good-versus-evil thing, it's just what happens when a company gets that lucky.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[swb]

For me its only crippled in two ways:

1) Lack of support for bluetooth mouse AT ALL. I could (grudgingly) accept not supporting it in native apps, but with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, it could pretty much stand in (via RDP) for a PC.

2) Lack of reasonable support for external storage. I understand there are workarounds with the camera connection kit, but still, why not just a SD slot? It'd also be nice to support some kind of "commons" storage area that wasn't object type specific, and maybe this is what's being avoided.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[LDAPMAN]

Apple gives you an option. If your truly a "technical" type then pony up $99 and join the iOS developer program. Then you can do anything you like on your iPad. If you really want the power...then pay for it.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

There's a difference between giving people technical options, and having a controlled App Store serve as the primary software source./quote.

That difference mainly being that we don't have a weekly story on Slashdot about how 10's of apps were pulled for being malicious.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

When has Apple not abused their position as the 800-pound gorilla on the block?

When did that happen? According the the commenters here on Slashdot, Apple's marketshare is only 3%!

Re:Sad, but interesting

[stewbacca]

Riiiiight. If anything, with the dumbing down of Server, the Pro line will be dead before the consumer lines.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has always been the 800 pound gorilla on the block. And we've always been at war with Eastasia!

Re:Sad, but interesting

[PopeRatzo]

There's a difference between giving people technical options, and having a controlled App Store serve as the primary software source.

A huge difference.

The difference is so big, in fact, that they are completely incompatible.

Time to face facts: Apple doesn't want technical users, they want the far more lucrative consumer market.

Sony did something similar back in the 90's when they turned away from technical users of their high-end audio gear and focues on the more lucrative consumer market. Now, their consumer electronics division is sucking for everyone.

Apple started out by targeting a product to hobbyists and techies. Abandoning those people shows a distinct lack of corporate character. When fashions change as they inevitably do, the loyalists won't be there.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[swalve]

The problem is, it isn't a computer. It's a giant smartphone minus the phone.

I don't have a problem with iOS. It seems to do what it does well. What I have a problem with are people (possibly not even Apple) trying to proclaim that iOS is some super productive computer operating system. "See, you just install all these apps, buy a keyboard, subscribe to a cloud service and modify your expectations, and it's nearly as good as a netbook!"

Re:Sad, but interesting

[PopeRatzo]

If your truly a "technical" type then pony up $99 and join the iOS developer program. Then you can do anything you like on your iPad. If you really want the power...then pay for it.

And all you get for that $99 is access to the device you already paid for when you bought it.

I guess a lot of people just aren't smart enough to be insulted.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[node 3]

What's even more ironic is that this is true despite the various ways that Apple has chosen to cripple the iPad. All they need to do is make something iPad-like that isn't crippled, and the people who want an iPad that isn't crippled will buy it.

Isn't that what Android is supposed to be?

Newsflash: the iPad isn't crippled.

Crippled implies missed functionality. The only functionality that even remotely fits this bill is the lack of Flash, and that's more of a thing that people talk about, but end up not really missing all that much (and there are apps in the App Store that make almost all Flash sites work on the iPad). Hardly sufficient to call it "crippled" in the eyes of most people.

(I have an iPad and like it, but the fact that I can't do shortcuts on the keyboard and can't run an interpreter on it or fork subprocesses means that it is much less useful to me than it could be.)

And while that's true for you, it's not really true for most people in any practical sense.

That's why the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch have enjoyed such great success, in spite of the cries from the slashdot crowd. Those things that matter so much to you? For most everyone else, they quite simply could care less.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

What's even more ironic is that this is true despite the various ways that Apple has chosen to cripple the iPad. All they need to do is make something iPad-like that isn't crippled, and the people who want an iPad that isn't crippled will buy it. (I have an iPad and like it, but the fact that I can't do shortcuts on the keyboard and can't run an interpreter on it or fork subprocesses means that it is much less useful to me than it could be.)

You used the word crippled three times when in fact you bought the wrong device. Anyone can come up with a list of pet wants and say any device is much less useful than it could be. But... This is Slashdot and your ramblings got you a +4 Insightful. Enjoy your iPad while the other tablet makers starve.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[node 3]

The one that is only coming out through the appstore?
Think about that for a while.

OH MY GOD, THEY ARE USING THEIR STORE TO SELL THEIR OS!!!

Seriously, they are moving all their software to the Mac App Store. This is a sign to you that they are about to shitcan a product, or move it to a "Pro" line? Please, explain your logic.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[node 3]

Protip: If you think Apple is about to end their highly popular Mac operating system, you just *might* be going insane.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[PNutts]

Agreed. Or jailbreak it.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Bing Tsher E]

That's a weird point of view.

I've never, ever, had a friend say "I would like a cool new game to play. And it has to be one that I can only download from one site. I would never want to download it if there were dozens of people, not all approved by the hardware vendor, creating competing games."

But you apparently live in the Magical Walled Garden, which can only exist because the Steve is watching.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[PNutts]

That's not true.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

You honestly don't understand that not everyone thinks like you and your buddies do, huh?

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Bing Tsher E]

Not allowed! Apple must have their 30% cut!

Now, you're exaggerating. It is only strictly prohibited if it relates to the iPod/Pad/Phone itself. They have the platform as locked down as an IBM 360, which is ironic, given they did that whole "1984 Superbowl Ad" thing.

But it's not surprising. One of the things Jobs specifically did to 'save the company' when he returned was close up things that had gradually become more open at Apple. His sanctimonious comment that the Macintosh was 'hacker' proof * at the press conference where the Mac was announced still holds.

(* which got a loud FUCK YOU from The Rest Of Us, some of us still refuse to own any Apple hardware because of that)

Re:Sad, but interesting

[willy_me]

When Microsoft was tried for abusing their monopoly, other vendors were releasing OSes and browsers.

But none of them would run the required software - software for Windows. You will recall the GP listing the requirements as follows: (1) they can set whatever prices they wanted and (2) customers have no suitable alternatives as the barrier to entry is too high.

When Microsoft was convicted they could basically set whatever price they wanted. The cost of producing Windows had nothing to do with the pricing. The only thing that limited the price was piracy and the fact that people would avoid new purchases if the price were too high. Apple is not in this situation. Should they choose to price their iPads at $2000 then people would still purchase tablets - just not from Apple.

The second item talks about suitable alternatives and at that time, there were none. Linux existed but could not run all the specialized software that people required. Windows was simply required for 90%+ of the population. Now with things like the internet, wine, remote desktop, and virtual machines - this Windows monopoly has been seriously weakened. But at the time, the vast majority of the population _had_ to run Windows. Now Apple does have a bit of a monopoly when it comes to playing DRMed media purchased from iTunes. But so long as versions of the media are available elsewhere, people are not locked into Apple.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[mellon]

Right. I.e., there's a market there. 10% of iPad sales is better than any of the Android tabs are doing right now, as far as I know. It's certainly better than the TouchPad is doing.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing I am thinking is how stupid you are.

What does it being distributed digitally have to do with Apple's support for OSX.

Does that mean that Microsoft is dropping Windows and Sony is getting out of the games business ?

Re:Sad, but interesting

[mellon]

That's as may be (I don't entirely disagree, but I don't agree either). But what I can say with some confidence is that there are people who would buy a tablet like the iPad only with some more features that are easily provided. But so far nobody's delivering that: they're delivering things that are less useable than the iPad, not more.

I'm looking forward to seeing Honeycomb on a tablet, but it's going to have to have a *lot* of usability work done if it's going to approach the iPad's usability, based on my experience with Gingerbread thus far. Gingerbread works fine, but the UI flow is very jumpy. In theory you could get a pad that doesn't have to be jailbroken, but when I look around for pads like that, nobody's saying whether or not a jailbreak is required, which tells me that it is, or they'd be bragging about it.

Actually I'd be interested to see if the Touchpad does a better job of this. But the TouchPad doesn't offer me anything the iPad doesn't (e.g., it's still locked down, as far as I've been able to determine), so I have no real incentive to try it out.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[mellon]

No, that's not true. You may be able to access the keyboard through an undocumented low-level API (if I know, and I am not saying I do or don't, I would be prohibited by the developer agreement from saying). But you definitely can't fork subprocesses. You can install an interpreter. But I have to say that having paid the $99 two years in a row, I'm getting a little tired of it. It's pathetic that I have to pay for this access to a device that I paid for in full.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[mellon]

If you jailbreak it, you are trusting a third party who has no fiduciary responsibility to you with full access to your device. This is not worth it to me, even though I am sure the jailbreakers are all really swell people.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[mellon]

What makes you think I don't understand Apple's produce positioning? I'm just saying that their product positioning creates an opportunity for competition.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[mellon]

That's not why Apple's security model is a win. Apple's security model is a win because the fact that an Application is running on your iPad does not mean that it can plunder all your personal information. And it's a win because there's a reasonably high bar to jump over before someone can sell you an app, and there's at least some chance (pretty minimal, though) that Apple could track down an app developer who behaved badly.

There's nothing wrong with Apple's business model here. But if HP wants to take some market share from Apple, there are opportunities.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[mellon]

Actually, you know what really fried my chicken? There's no support for a bluetooth headset! The lack of a mouse doesn't bother me, because Apple is trying to encourage a different use model. But the lack of a bluetooth headset is a deliberate crippling of the device, since iOS very definitely has support for bluetooth headsets.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[mellon]

Seriously? Flash? Who cares? No bluetooth headset. No keyboard navigation. Completely locked down, requires $99 subscription to develop. *These* are the things it's missing. If it had Flash, you'd be complaining about battery life.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[DavidinAla]

If you think that one company can produce the iPad AND the anti-iPad, you don't understand brands and positioning. That's for some other company to do. The same brand can't stand for both things.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

that's like a car dealership charging an extra $1000 for the 'right' to actually drive the car you just bought..

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

And you apparently live in your mom and dad's basement which can only exist because your mom and dad can't get rid of you.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[symbolset]

HP has some uniquely interesting stuff here. They are integrating WebOS with their Windows build, and putting it on every pc they ship. They ship a lot of pcs. That's a quick ramp to an intresing numberof app buyers.

They are late to the party. Maybe they bring something interesting. Maybe not. But although I agree with you and the parent and the fine summary, I think it's too early to count this one out just yet.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[spire3661]

Hostility is the wrong word, especially considering your phrasing. Functionality bloat can hamper usefulness. While we may debate the degree to which Apple takes it, you cannot say its a hostile act. Of course a gilded cage is still a prison. Perspective I suppose, and in case you were wondering what im smoking its some nice Jack Herer and no you cant have some.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[iluvcapra]

Apple started out by targeting a product to hobbyists and techies. Abandoning those people shows a distinct lack of corporate character. When fashions change as they inevitably do, the loyalists won't be there.

You don't often hear the argument that nichy fanboys are critical to the long-term success of a company -- the hobbyists and techies of the computer market aren't liable to maintain any real brand loyalty, the know too much and their needs aren't mass marketable. Techies want FOSS, but its not a useful selling point.

Sony makes great audio gear; the "hobbyists and techies" of that market are the ones paying $200 for copper wires. Nobody outside of their circle can tell the difference, but they swear that it's a big deal. A lot like platform openness.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[DJRumpy]

You do know that it does support a bluetooth headset right?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4111

Re:Sad, but interesting

[DJRumpy]

Much easier to do with a large or majority market share, but the fact that Apple is releasing it's hardware at the same cost, or even less than the opening products from the competition definitely does not say 'monopoly'. It basically indicates a healthy, competitive market, although the other vendors have yet to step up to the plate with a good front runner.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[AndrewStephens]

The Microsoft-of-the-90s comparisons are overblown. Microsoft didn't get slapped by the antitrust police for being successful. They got punished (weakly) for a series of dick moves against their competitors and even their own OEM "partners". They used their products' power with consumers to drive deeply unfair deals with the OEMs to prevent other products from even being offered.

The only way that Apple could so something similar would be to prevent retail outlets selling Apple gear from selling any competitor's product. There are pretty strict rules about that sort of thing, and (so far) Apple hasn't broken them.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

The way I read your opposing statements actually supports the parent...

When Microsoft was tried for abusing their monopoly, other vendors were releasing OSes and browsers.

But none of them would run the required software - software for Windows.

And none of the other tablets will run anything from the apple App store. In fact, Apples App Store is even more restrictive than the software distributed for Windows.

When Microsoft was convicted they could basically set whatever price they wanted. The cost of producing Windows had nothing to do with the pricing. The only thing that limited the price was piracy and the fact that people would avoid new purchases if the price were too high. Apple is not in this situation. Should they choose to price their iPads at $2000 then people would still purchase tablets - just not from Apple.

Remove the phrase "Apple is not in this situation" and replace it with "This is the same situation Apple is in" and I agree. You're saying if $company greatly overpriced their offering (instead of undercutting the competition and abusing their monopoly status) then people would buy stuff elsewhere. Piracy may not be involved in the Apple situation, but the rest holds true for both situations (and then some).

The second item talks about suitable alternatives and at that time, there were none.

I disagree. Nearly anyone could get by with using a Mac or a Linux box (or others) at that time, and still can. Even situations where one "had" to have Windows (ex. business environment that "needs" word), that business could standardize on something else - there were even more office systems back then that came darn close to competing with MS Office than there are now, and most had at least a few features that MS Office lacked. One may have had to use some software that didn't have exactly what the thing on Windows had, but they'd gain a bunch of stuff for free that wasn't on Windows. IMO, it was more about the abuse of the monopoly - for example, tying IE into the OS.

Linux existed but could not run all the specialized software that people required.

No different than today, and it's very similar on Mac, and there's even fewer ports of "specialized software" that only runs on Windows available for iPad. Games - still a Windows dominated world; MS Office - replacements have always been around and were and are arguably better at supporting old versions of docs; Adobe Photoshop - Mac and Windows only (and Solaris and maybe Irix a long long time ago), and there's competing software (Corel, Gimp, etc) unless your one of the 1% that really needs 100% of Photoshop and CMYK and etc; Macromedia Flash (IDE) - Mac and Windows, and again a 1% target; CAD stuff - small market again, and you could get by with alternatives if it wasn't your primary task; etc.

Windows was simply required for 90%+ of the population.

"required" is an awfully strong word. I think it's more like "Windows was simply the only OS that shipped on an affordable PC, and it was difficult to even find one that shipped without an OS". That's how "90%+ of the population" ended up with it - not because they required Windows.

Now with things like the internet, wine, remote desktop, and virtual machines - this Windows monopoly has been seriously weakened.

Internet - ok, that's fair.
Wine - it's nowhere near a common replacement. It helps when someone has already dedicated themselves to making the move, and needs a crutch to run some specific app. It had and has the potential to be a game changer, but it's never proven to do so.
Remove desktop - into what? Still got that other Windows license running somewhere.
Virtual Machine - useful, yes; more licenses needed than remote desktop and, if anything, strengthens the Windows market.

But at the time, the

Re:Sad, but interesting

[node 3]

Seriously? Flash? Who cares?

My sentiments exactly. That's why I said, "the only functionality that even remotely fits this bill is the lack of Flash". In other words, not a big deal, but if anything, that's something people talk about.

No bluetooth headset.

What?

No keyboard navigation. Completely locked down, requires $99 subscription to develop. *These* are the things it's missing.

Not to 99% of the people out there. This is the exact point I'm trying to make. The things slashdot nerds care about aren't nearly as relevant as they seem to think.

If it had Flash, you'd be complaining about battery life.

Yes, I would. I don't have Flash installed on my Macs, except via Chrome. I've noted a marked improvement by not installing Flash. I'd shudder to think of the impact Flash would have on a handheld device or tablet!

Re:Sad, but interesting

[R3d M3rcury]

Indeed, and breaking their own rules: No Kernel Extensions and No Installers.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[MimeticLie]

I think he took it as a sign that Apple is trying to migrate OS X to the iOS model of distribution and control. Personally, I can't see that happening at this stage of the operating system's life. It'll be interesting to see what route Apple takes with OS X's successor, though.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually WebOS is very open and documented. Check out Preware or WebOS internals. They treat the community pretty well. You can totally feel free to experiment with your device, however they may not be able to help you if you brick. Though they have a good java sw designed specifically for "Doctoring" your phone or factory reset. (WebOSDoctor) Check some out if you are a power user, you may be a bit happy.. I used a terminal app to ftp and upload a file from my phone in command line hah

Re:Sad, but interesting

[epyT-R]

sigh.. quit apologizing for them.. their desire to not cater to the geek crowd has nothing to do with it. they could release the exact products they do now minus the draconian lockdown and since most people never touch the innards, nothing would change for them. this lockdown isn't for the consumer, it's for apple.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Hello Kitty]

Actually, it's not; check out WebOS Internals for a good introduction to how the homebrew community works for WebOS.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[R3d M3rcury]

I think Apple's problem will come with iTunes.

iTunes currently controls around 70% of the market for downloading music. That's definitely monopoly territory. So the argument could be made that because you can only download music on iOS devices via iTunes, that Apple is using it's music monopoly to expand into phone sales.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[DavidinAla]

I couldn't care less about "apologizing" for anyone. Apple is producing products that millions of people want. The fact that the geeky minority don't approve of what those people want doesn't make them wrong. You're letting your bias for the model that works for you get in the way of understanding why many other people want something different from your preference.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[FlyingGuy]

As has been said many many many times before...

A. The percentage of people that think it is "crippled" is very very very VERY small.

B. The percentage of people who find it the handiest thing to have is very very very VERY large.

Apple has produced a device that appeals to B.

Companies love them as well. They can write and install apps for them that the idiot "Road Warriors" can't fuck up.

Kaiser Permanente is currently testing them to replace desktops and laptops in their hospitals and exam rooms.

The "Walled Garden" that you despise, they love. They can put quality apps on them and get work done.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

...90% of the market, which is easily monopoly territory. It'll be fascinating to see if they succumb to the temptation to abuse it, or if they can stay their hand.

 
Your wish is granted. They've already been abusing the fuck out of it. But the users seem to like the rough trade.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[manekineko2]

And you are letting your bias for the model that works get in the way of your understanding that it is not the only model in the universe that may work.

It isn't implausible that epyT-R could be right, that Apple may have been able to "release the exact products they do now minus the draconian lockdown", and have been just as successful.

Just because they succeeded as is doesn't mean that they couldn't have succeeded in some other way, and there's no need for you to go around getting in everyone's face here with the aggressive and insulting demeanor.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[DavidinAla]

I can't tell if you have problems with reading comprehension or if you're just stupid, but I don't have the time and inclination to teach you basic logic based on what was actually said, not what you want to be true.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[ceoyoyo]

Other companies make non-crippled devices. The people who want an iPad but don't want it crippled buy those. Thus, Apple has a 90% market share.

There just aren't that many people who wan to run interpreters or fork subprocesses on their tablet. And most of the ones who do are perfectly capable of jailbreaking an iPad anyway.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[tumnasgt]

There is nothing stopping iTunes-bought music being played on other devices. TV shows and movies are another story, but from what I could see when I got my Android phone, practically all smartphones and even a lot of feature phones support playing AAC files.

The matter of getting music on to an iOS device is a bit more complex, as the only way to load new music onto the device is with the iTunes Store App or iTunes. Up until now, iTunes has been required to use an iOS device, so getting music from other sources has been simple. However, with iOS 5, Apple are saying that no computer is required, so it is possible that a user could be stuck in the position where the only possible way to get music on his/her iOS device is via the iTunes Store App, effectively boosting iTunes music sales with the popularity of iOS devices.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[ceoyoyo]

Other vendors were releasing OSes but they didn't get anywhere because MS had such a dominant market share with Office, and the Office formats were closed so you couldn't write software that would interact with it properly.

Other vendors were releasing browsers but they didn't get anywhere because MS built their own browser into their OS, and it could do special things others couldn't BECAUSE it was built into the OS. Ditto for Office.

MS didn't get convicted of being a monopolist because they made Windows or Office or IE. They were convicted because they made all three, and used the interaction between the three to make it extremely difficult for anyone to get any traction in any of the OS, office suite or web browser arenas.

Yes, if Apple threatened developers to prevent them from developing for other platforms that would be monopolistic behaviour. Notice what they HAVEN'T done?

Re:Sad, but interesting

[ceoyoyo]

You've got that backwards. If Apple were leveraging their monopoly (in online music sales) to expand into phone sales, you'd only be able to play iTunes tracks on iOS devices.

Your way around they'd have to be leveraging their phone monopoly to expand into music. But they didn't do that - music came first.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[ceoyoyo]

Then you're wrong. A monopoly is having a dominant market share that is protected somehow, either a natural monopoly, a government granted one, or something where the barrier to entry is simply so high that others can't do it. Just because everybody else makes sucky products doesn't mean you've got a monopoly.

You're right though, not only do you have to have a monopoly, you have to abuse it to be in the wrong.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

You can do Bluetooth headsets, see above. Why you would expect to use keyboard navigation on a touch device is beyond me, seems absolutely mind boggling that's even an issue. $99 dev account is a legit complaint, the others are pretty much either made up or non-issues.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an iPhone. I'm a technical computer user. And I like my iPhone. It just works. It works very nicely. I don't have to dick around with it. I leave that for my linux box.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[epyT-R]

no.. read what I said. the devices not being open does not benefit or hurt the average user. their experience doesn't change unless they choose to go outside apple's garden and hit the wall.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[epyT-R]

..to finish what I was saying, the point is that the locked garden serves no one's interest other than apple's.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the page you linked says it's limited to audio out -- and as you may be aware, the distinction between headphones and headsets is that headsets have microphones for audio in. Considering GP said "headset" and not "headphone", you might imagine he wanted to use the microphone (e.g. for VoIP).

So pedantically, when he said "There's no support for a bluetooth headset!" he was wrong. There's half-support, not no support. But it's equally useful for any use case where you'd actually choose a headset.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Wovel]

Your just confused. The only restriction is Apps linking to external sources to buy digital content...

Re:Sad, but interesting

[grapeape]

I dont think that would be gaining marketshare but simply trading it and I would imaging the power user market is far far smaller than the average consumer one. I really dont think Apple cares to be number one or about catering to everyone, they have found a niche and those that have them seem to love them and those that dont are free to find something else.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Oceanplexian]

If you don't have the capacity to jailbreak your own device safely, then you shouldn't be messing with it.

Apple is absolutely great for technical users. The barrier to entry is purposeful, and keeps "expert" users from opening their devices and calling into support. In the meantime, I absolutely enjoy the soldering, hacking, and pentalobe screws in exchange for excellent build quality and fantastic design.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[davester666]

Actually, for a relatively small fee, you can run whatever application you want on your iOS device with no censorship from Apple.

Just get a developer account, and you can sign any app with your developer credentials, and load that app on all your iOS devices. And even all your friends iOS devices.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

You really can't see why anyone would want keyboard and mouse support on a device with more than enough horsepower to serve as a thin-client (and for many use-cases, a full desktop)? Your poor wee boggled mind.

Here's a hint: Lots of people still have the dream of a single truly personal computer you carry around with you, and using the same machine (with all state naturally intact) at a desk or table, with a few peripherals to give back what was compromised for portability. Bigger screen, bigger (and tactile) keyboard, and mouse -- lock the CPU to max frequency, and you're good. I know tablet PCs and UMPCs never really took off, but quite a few early adopters bought them on exactly that promise -- and were let down by battery life first, and (depending on their use pattern) either horsepower or UI for mobile use second. A modern ARM tablet fixes battery life vs all x86es, beats the old Pentium Ms and most UMPC Atoms for horsepower (though the latest Atoms are still a bit more powerful), and whether iOS, Android, WebOS, or Meego, has greatly improved UI vs. WinXP. It's perfectly positioned to fulfill that dream, and while I can see reasons a manufacturer might not implement the peripheral support for desktop use (good ones like limited development resources being targeted elsewhere, and bad ones like fear of cannibalizing Mini and iMac sales), I can't fathom how it's "mind boggling" that the same users who got burned with tablet PCs would very much want that.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[inKubus]

What I really DON'T like is when journalists make subjective statements like "Apple has succeeded in defining what a tablet should be" out to be some type of fact. Really, that's what a tablet should be? I'd say they've only really succeeded in showing what the MARKETING for a tablet should be (e.g. a big phone, not a small, general purpose computer). I'd argue that they didn't really invent much but just packaged it right. Sure, there's something to be said for that, but to somehow say that it's any different than Kraft Macaroni and Cheese versus the store brand is to totally miss the point. It's classic monopolistic competition. Of course Apple saturated the consumer market with something but the problem is the business market is much larger (in dollars) and they missed that. And they don't care. I'm just not interested in toys. I find that the majority of these Apple kissing "journalists" (who likely get a kickback, and if they don't are idiots;) also are huge fans of board games and fantasy books. Let me know when it can actually do work.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[inKubus]

Anyone who uses a made up word like "protip" is not a pro and is not giving you a good tip.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[inKubus]

And don't forget that Microsoft was selling 500 million copies of something, not 10 million. Pft, the tablet market is small. It's a toy. And maybe useful for delivery drivers. Watch it fade away again. Smart phones, that's where it's at, and no one is going to win that game, it'll just be divided up amongst the players. Microsoft/Nokia and Blackberry for business customers, Apple for "creative" professionals and Android for the cheapskates and hackers.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait... "succumb to the temptation to abuse it"?

They already have...

Re:Sad, but interesting

[petteyg359]

Whoosh goes the exaggeration and cynicism as they fall down the sarchasm.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Serious Callers Only]

the fact that I can't do shortcuts on the keyboard

This will be in iOS5.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[bemymonkey]

"The problem is, it isn't a computer. It's a giant smartphone minus the phone."

Doesn't really make sense... most smartphones are becoming more and more like computers - the only ones stlil moving away from this with arbitrary restrictions are Apple's :(

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

About monopoly, will there be any choice for tablets in enterprises when MS decides that only Windows tablet works with MS's closed infrastructure...

Re:Sad, but interesting

[mbessey]

> (I have an iPad and like it, but the fact that I can't do shortcuts on the keyboard and can't run an interpreter on it or fork subprocesses means that it is much less useful to me than it could be)

For what it's worth, webOS is lacking in the keyboard shortcuts department, but otherwise meets those requirements. and you can install any software you want on it, without getting anybody else's permission first.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Elbereth]

You don't get irony, do you?

Re:Sad, but interesting

[R3d M3rcury]

If Apple were leveraging their monopoly (in online music sales) to expand into phone sales, you'd only be able to play iTunes tracks on iOS devices.

No, you'd only be able to purchase music on your iOS device. Which is the case.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[smash]

Define: crippled.

Perhaps for you or I, there are things we can't do with it, but one thing steve "gets" is that 99.99% of users out there simply *don't care*. They are far more interested in being protected from malware, having their kids protected from porn, and protected from having to make a hardware choice.

In the apple ecosystem, if you want a tablet, you buy an ipad or an ipad2 (if you're richer). In android/other land? There's a huge array of options, and many of them are rather crap. The typical end user doesn't care that they can't root their device and install SSH on it, they just want it to work as advertised. Rather than risk making a bad choice, they just get an iPad.

The apple gear generally works, as advertised.

They'll never bother to make an ipad that isn't "crippled" because the market return vs investment required simply isn't there for it.

If you want to do stuff an iPad can't do, Steve will sell you some variety of Macbook (likely, the Air).

Re:Sad, but interesting

[ggy]

Try reading that again. It says "Bluetooth car kit functionality is limited to audio output. Additional car kit features are not supported on iPad.".

Re:Sad, but interesting

[joh]

What's even more ironic is that this is true despite the various ways that Apple has chosen to cripple the iPad. All they need to do is make something iPad-like that isn't crippled, and the people who want an iPad that isn't crippled will buy it. (I have an iPad and like it, but the fact that I can't do shortcuts on the keyboard and can't run an interpreter on it or fork subprocesses means that it is much less useful to me than it could be.)

Hard to do keyboard shortcuts without a keyboard, but if you pair a BT-keyboard to it, the iPad can do shortcuts very well. Including Emacs shortcuts for cursor movement everywhere. Really.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[dissy]

(I have an iPad and like it, but the fact that I can't do shortcuts on the keyboard and can't run an interpreter on it or fork subprocesses means that it is much less useful to me than it could be.)

Keyboard shortcuts are provided by an app called Activator.
All the special keys are handled, as well as command anything (I suppose this would be windows-key anything on non-apple keyboards)

As for interpreters, my iPad has perl and python installed. Java too, thou not exactly an interpreter there.
I do wish TCL was ported over, as I much prefer that language. Ah well.

As for forking subprocesses, you need to install the BSD subsystem and you can fork processes just as you do in any unix environment.
In C you use fork(). In bash you append a &

My iPad runs a bash script on boot that sits in a while [1]; do loop.
It gets the location services coordinates, and makes an http get request using wget to my webserver. The result back is checked to make sure its an integer, and passes that to the sleep command, before repeating the loop.

On the server side, that script just logs timestamped cords to a database, which can be pulled up on a google map. I can also change the sleep time this way, from the normal 30 minutes down to 1 minute if the device goes missing, and do near-real time tracking.

All of that runs as bash scripts on the iPad, forked in the background, using standard unix tools (and one non-standard package, 'erica utilities')

You should really check them out. I have both my iPad and iPhone 3gs setup this way and it makes life so much nicer and easier. Plus you get to keep the polished UI that no one has yet copied well.

In conclusion, you not wanting to install the software to do all those things, does NOT mean one can't install the software to do those things.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never, ever, had a friend say "I would like a cool new game to play. And it has to be one that I can only download from one site. I would never want to download it if there were dozens of people, not all approved by the hardware vendor, creating competing games."

Me neither. On the other hand, I've also never heard a friend say, "I would like a cool new game to play. And it has to be one that I can download from more than one site. I would only want to download it if there were dozens of people, not all approved by the hardware vendor, creating competing games."

See because the vast majority of people just want to play the damn game. They don't give a shit about what rules the developer had to play by to get the game to them. That's what people on this site don't seem to be grokking. Apple gives users a consistant, simple experience. If they want a game, they open the App Store, locate and download it. It all happens with a minimum amount of fuss (except when Apple changes its ToS...what UX genius thought it was a good idea to make someone go back into the App Store after accepting?) and it just works. While us geeks chafe at the restrictions the device places on us, non-technical users feel comforted by them. The limited functionality of the device makes the functionality it does have more accessible. And that's why Apple is dominating that market. It's because of the limits they've placed on the device.

For me, it took seeing how my mom interacted with an iPhone after a year of using an Android phone. A year into the Android phone, she had only figured out how to place calls. She'd somehow managed to turn the ringer off, so she couldn't answer incoming calls. A week into the iPhone, she had downloaded a custom ringtone from iTunes, figured out not only how to place and receive calls, but also how to manage her voicemail. And she was bugging me to install a Scrabble app so that we could play online. Seeing that transformation was enlightening. Using the iPhone was somehow non-threatening enough that she wasn't afraid to dive in and try things. And that wouldn't be the case if there were options to allow users to install alternate App Stores or half the other "Power User" features everyone on Slashdot always complains about the iPhone lacking.

And a quick word-to-the-wise for everyone here who gets called on for tech support from family...the iPhone is a godsend in that regard for me. Rather than have a frustrating telephone call where my mom describes what she's seeing on the screen (always managing to focus on the least significant pieces of information), we now use FaceTime and I get to look at what she's seeing on the screen. It's like screen sharing without any of the fuss of getting it to work. Calls that used to take close to an hour are now finished in just a few minutes. It's made my life so much easier.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think I don't understand Apple's produce positioning?

We think you don't understand it because you keep repeatedly stating the iPad can not do things that it can and has been doing for years.

Look, you don't want to jailbreak your device. That's fine! Completely fine choice you made there.

The problem is when you claim that choice does not exist, even after being repeatedly corrected, that shows you don't understand and don't really care to.

Running a program on your computer with the iDevice attached and waiting a few minutes is all that is required to gain all the abilities and features you keep saying do not and can not exist.

You don't have to pay an additional dime to develop and release software for the iphone/ipad, if you don't want to. There are many benefits to doing so, but again it is not required like you say.

Every last feature you claim is not there, can be added as easily as installing a program.

It's just like someone claiming that it is totally impossible for the iPad to make fart sounds, when clearly there are a million apps to do just that.

Your choice to not jailbreak is not the problem. Plenty of valid reasons not to.
Your choice to keep claiming it is impossible to do however is a problem, and only goes to show your ignorance on the subject. Claiming it is impossible to do what others have been doing for years just throws any and all credibility you had out the window.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[dissy]

Actually, you know what really fried my chicken? There's no support for a bluetooth headset!

Try pairing one with it. You might be surprised!
You don't even need to jailbreak it for this one.

Stereo sound out, as well as sound in, are supported.

Regarding the mouse, once you jailbreak it even that is supported.
It's not really pleasant to use with normal apps, since all are designed for touch instead of a pointer, but it does work and has a pointer.

The mouse is really handy however for the VNC client, remote desktop client, and x window server built into the ssh client app.

I carry a bluetooth keyboard and mouse with my iPad for just those reasons, and really only use them for the remote type apps when controlling a PC or mac using the iPad.

My bluetooth keyboard happens to be built into the ipad case, so I do use it for more than just remote apps, but really not too much.
I have command-1 to command-6 set to run the apps in my dock. It's also handy for getting an idea into notepad quickly, to be emailed to my desktop for further formatting.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[jira]

Right, and it's much easier to do so when you control a huge percentage of the mobile space. Again, my post was wondering if Apple would be able to resist that temptation.

Well, in the past they did not accept into their store apps that offered alternative to they own products and services.

In the early days of its App Store, Apple rejected two Google applications - Voice and Latitude.

The company said that, in the case of Voice, it replicated one of the iPhone's core functions - something which broke the App Store's terms of use.

Apple's rules were later relaxed, following an investigation by the US Federal Communications Commission.

Source http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14027466

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not think you can call it a monopoly if people have a choice between similar offers of different companies and just prefer to buy one distinct brand. Tablets are nice and very useful, but I guess most people can live without it if Apple does something their customers hate. You can abuse your market power only if your products are vital for most people and if they depend on you. While I love Apple products I can easily live without them if they should ever do something I totally disagree with.

On the other hand, if there was only one petrol seller in my country (or all petrol sellers would agree on the same price), this would be hard for the countries infrastructure and to many people. If there was only one private internet provider in my country, this would be a monopoly because many companies provide online services and therefore depend on the internet. I guess this is the reason why in the past important services were owned by the country and not left to private companies.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Why exactly would Apple care about the .0000149% of people out there who would bother forking a subprocess on a tablet device? I mean, really? That's a requirement of yours?

I'm not trying to be an ass when I say that, but statements like yours are *exactly* why the Slashdot community fails to "get it".

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt "Apples hostility towards technical users". If you are a technical user and want to customize your ixxx, there are no limits for you. Only thing is, you cannot expect Apple to give you support if you foolishly break something. That is fair. A "technical user" should know what he does and can do.

Regarding the iPad complaints in the post before, it is a consumer product. It is for reading ebooks, browsing the web, watching movies, playing games, reading and writing emails, administer your contacts and calendars and so on. Nobody ever complains that he cannot get a gui on his toaster or washing machine or even dvd player to customize it. Even though that probably would be useful and interesting too.

As for the shortcuts, I think in a future version of ios it will be possible to create them.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

no, it is not monopoly. If apple would require music companies to sign exclusive contracts so they cannot offer their songs anywhere else, it would be. Although not a very important monopoly anyway.

If people just buy most of their music through the iTunes store (although they could as well buy their cds or dvds or use any other commercial download source like Amazon) it is just a sign that they do something better than other companies. Btw, I think those 70 % are an exaggeration. You forget file sharing platforms.

iTunes does *not* "control" the market. Customers do. You are questioning free consumer decisions.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[brunes69]

What makes you think they are not already abusing it?

Did you totally tune out the whole extortion fiasco with newspaper and magazine publshers on the iPad?

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Rennt]

They haven't actually threatened developers, true. But they did ban the use of toolchains designed for writing cross-platform apps.

For a developer without much in the way of resources it amounts to the same thing: "You can develop for our platform, or you can develop for theirs, take your pick"

Re:Sad, but interesting

[garyebickford]

That is an interesting and valid point. The classic marketing lesson is that "whoever is late to the market must 'buy' market share" - the best case in point that I know of was the original handheld scientific calculator market where, oddly, HP was at one time king. HP basically owned the scientific calculator market with the HP35, 45, 55 and 65 with market share close enough to 100%. These machines used 'reverse Polish notation', which made for a very efficient stack-based parser. Texas Instruments decided they wanted this market, and for years sold their calculators for at or below cost. According to estimates back then they were losing $30 on each one, for a total of hundreds of millions of dollars. But the combination of cheaper products and 'easy to use' algebraic notation finally gave the TI calculators their advantage in the schools, leaving the HP calculators to the geeks and purists.

Let us assume that modern handheld-digital-thingy markets are not so binary in nature,and the potential feature set means that there will be niches for many similar products with different 'hooks' for different types of users. If so, then HP only has to find a significant niche where they can distinguish themselves and protect their 'turf'. As you point out, they have a powerful advantage in the Windows connection, if they can protect it and follow through with cool apps that take advantage of that to provide the kind of seamless integration that Apple is noted for.

Of course I haven't used a Mac in years, and I rarely use Windows, so none of that will matter to me - I _hope_ that they will provide a good API so folks can do the same kind of integration with Linux platforms. That would provide a small but important additional advantage. Another lesson I learned in the tech industry is that the best ideas for advancing the technology comes from the users. So supporting an API and encouraging developers to use their platform might help to consolidate their base.

Oddly enough, I'm a long term Palm developer but haven't ever built anything for the Palm.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[gilesjuk]

The first home computers were very limited, the first laptops were very limited so it's obvious when you create a new form factor that it will be limited at first and then grow and develop naturally.

An iPad with x86 and a more complete OS would have failed. It would have had about 3 or 4 hours battery life, been twice as thick, weighed more, cost more and so on.

Most computer users are not programmers, are not command line wizards. If this was a tablet being launched in the 1980s then sure, it would be complex, hard to use and geeky. But the Internet has made most people computer users, people who weren't interested in computers even though they were around for decades.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[shilly]

I can't work out if you're being deliberately obtuse. The iPad has not just sold well because of slick marketing, which would be the implication of "they've only really succeeded in showing what the MARKETING for a tablet should be". You have also completely and utterly missed the point if you think that the marketing has been about the iPad being a "big phone" (or indeed a small, general purpose, computer"). The marketing has been about the iPad's ability to help customers with thousands of very specific tasks or desires. It has been benefits-focused, not feature-focused: "you can play music, read a book, watch TV, find an address, look at an x-ray, flick through your photos etc". The whole point about it has been that it makes doing those things super-super easy. And if you think that was a straightforward thing to do, and required no innovation, you need to spend more time with your dictionary, learning to distinguish between simple and simplistic.

Finally, this perception you have of business use is really really weird. I work for an organisation that has lots of very rich, very smart people at the top. They are all getting iPads, because it's easier for them to read and share info that way than on a laptop, which they all also have. The physicians I work with here in the UK are all also getting iPads, which they are using in consultations. So I think you're deluding yourself.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[shilly]

How do you do the FaceTime thing? How do you get to see the screen itself?

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a (actually two but only one good one) Lua interpreter on mine. Came from the official app store and all.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't tell if you have problems with reading comprehension or if you're just stupid, but I don't have the time and inclination to teach you basic logic based on what was actually said, not what you want to be true.

Wow. Don't know about logic, but if you had the time and inclination, I'm sure you could teach him a thing or two about being a jerk.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[am 2k]

Much easier to do with a large or majority market share, but the fact that Apple is releasing it's hardware at the same cost, or even less than the opening products from the competition definitely does not say 'monopoly'. It basically indicates a healthy, competitive market, although the other vendors have yet to step up to the plate with a good front runner.

No, it just means that Apple has to compete with other markets, like netbooks and smaller laptops (like their own MacBook Air 11").

Additionally, close to nobody really needs a tablet device, so it has to be priced low enough to be viable as a toy purchase.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[BasilBrush]

A new version of the OS seems to e a perfect reason for an exception from those rules.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[BasilBrush]

Come now, everyone knows that Apple is motivated by evil rather than profit, and are quite willing to lose a cash cow if doing so will offend the sensibilities of the slashdot hive mind. What's insane about that?

Re:Sad, but interesting

[CharlyFoxtrot]

And yeah, I expect them to become more hostile and move the restrictive platform up the stack, locking out more developers. Boy, I'd hate to have grown up with a locked down iMac as my family computer. I'd never have gotten into software development.

Because Apple got where they are by being complete idiots right ? Apple is incredibly developer friendly. Not only do they ship that "locked down iMac" (sic) with a world class IDE and compiler (with a lineage that stretches back to the NextStep days) as well as the most used developer tools (python, perl, etc) for free but they actively keep adding technologies to OSX to make it easier for developers to create great apps: Core Video (10.4), Core animation (10.5), Grand Central Dispatch (10.6), etc. etc.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[CharlyFoxtrot]

It's called "eating your own dogfood." Besides it's a good way to promote the Mac App Store by showing it can handle the load that the Lion release is going to put on their servers: millions of people all trying to buy and download a >4Gb file at once.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[SvnLyrBrto]

Also, I'd bet there are a number of people in a similar situation to myself. I *WAS* jailbreaking my iPhone. But I came to realize that Cydia is even more a vast sea of crapware than any app store. I eventually wound up with my phone jailbroken for one reason only: backgrounder, so I could have Pandora and iHeartRadio keep playing while I did other things.

With iOS 4 and background apps official supported; I haven't bothered to jailbreak since.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Computers are everywhere now, not every computer has to be a multi-purpose device. You want multi-purpose ? Buy a Mac. You want a handy, well designed device for playing games, browsing, etc. ? Buy an iOS device. This isn't rocket science.

iOS devices are made in the spirit of Raskin at Apple :

"Users do not care about what is inside the box, as long as the box does what they need done."
"As far as the customer is concerned, the interface is the product."

Humane interfaces for users, not technocrats.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[CharlyFoxtrot]

It's more like having to buy an extra device to access the onboard computer diagnostics in your car. Which they actually do.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Facetime can switch between the front and rear camera. So I assume he asks his mother to point the rear camera at the screen, she would still be able to see him on the screen while holding the phone in this way.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Dog-Cow]

Not only do you not have to purchase media on the iOS device today, but you won't have to in the future. iOS 5 will give the option of computer-free operation, but it won't insist on it.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[UnknowingFool]

Yes purchasing music through Apple requires iTunes but playing said music after purchase does not require an Apple product. I think both Amazon and MS require you to use their software to purchase which in itself is not illegal. Back when all the music was DRM'ed you might have more of a strong argument. Complicating your argument is that Apple is only the reseller of content; they don't manufacture the content and are under contracts about what they can and cannot do.

Also in monopoly definition the market has to be defined. The market cannot be so narrowly defined so that It is guaranteed that every case is a monopoly. It cannot so wide that no monopolies can exist. In the case of iTunes, what is the market? If the market is media, the consumer has many choices which don't involve Apple. Even if you narrow the market down to digital media you can purchase, you still can get media without Apple quite easily.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Small correction: you can get the SDK for free and develop that way (if you just want to learn or something), the $99 are to deploy to actual devices. But yeah, that policy sucks.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[CharlyFoxtrot]

They haven't actually threatened developers, true. But they did ban the use of toolchains designed for writing cross-platform apps.

For a developer without much in the way of resources it amounts to the same thing: "You can develop for our platform, or you can develop for theirs, take your pick"

They've since lifted that restriction.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Pft, the tablet market is small. It's a toy. And maybe useful for delivery drivers. Watch it fade away again. Smart phones, that's where it's at, and no one is going to win that game, it'll just be divided up amongst the players.

Actually Apple seems to betting on a multi device future where people use smartphones, tablets and computers depending on what they're trying to do and where they are with those devices being kept in sync over the cloud.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[CharlyFoxtrot]

How's that abuse ? The newspapers could choose to go web-app instead, which exactly what some have done. It also seems like the whole thing was more like a (very public) negotiation since Apple has since relented on some points.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Hognoxious]

If you think that one company can produce the iPad AND the anti-iPad, you don't understand brands and positioning.

BMW make the hulking monstrosity that is the X6. They also make the Mini.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[shilly]

Was being dumb and not reading between the lines that this is about support for the computer, not support for the iPhone

Re:Sad, but interesting

[mellon]

You're right, after having this conversation I realized that I was just assuming that WebOS is locked down; turns out it's not. This makes the TouchPad a much more attractive option for me. Smart move on HP's part, as long as they keep with it.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[mellon]

Right, remember the original topic? WebOS's competitiveness? The question is whether HP is that other company. But in fact, lots of companies have done well with sub-brands. Consider the BMW M-series, for instance, or Toyota's "Lexus" brand.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[mellon]

Dude, you seem to have flown off the handle. I am saying that if someone sells a product that has to be jailbroken to have certain desirable functionality, and someone else sells a similar product that does not need to be jailbroken to provide that same functionality, people who want that functionality and don't want the hassle of jailbreaking (which, let's be honest, is most people), are going to buy the product that does not require jailbreaking, and thereby save themselves a lot of trouble.

You seem to be in the segment of the market that gets a kick out of jailbreaking, and more power to you. But I'm not in that market segment—I do not want a jailbroken device. I would up switching to Android instead of buying an iPhone 4 precisely so that I could get a device that will run a stock development kernel without jailbreaking. If I could have gotten the same functionality out of the iPhone 4, I would have gotten an iPhone 4. That's what market differentiation _is_.

Re:Sad, but interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

(I have an iPad and like it, but the fact that I can't do shortcuts on the keyboard and can't run an interpreter on it or fork subprocesses means that it is much less useful to me than it could be.)

For fucks sake! Buy a bloody netbook or something! You are in the very small minority here.

Is a car also crippled because it wasn't designed to carry as much cargo or tow a heavy trailer?

Re:Sad, but interesting

[inKubus]

I fully get irony. I don't get why people make up words to try to be cool rather than utilize our perfectly good existing language. Also, the rumor is a large part of the core OS team has indeed left Apple due to their increased focus on consumer electronics, which apparently does not sit well with the Bay Area Unix veterans (I can't imagine why). So, while they will not "end" MacOS, it's already becoming a locked-down operating system like you're already used to on your phone, designed to vertically integrate the software and media publishing distribution and retail. Thus they've taken all the years of hard work making Unix and the internet this open and free information exchange and then taking it's stability and using it to enslave the users into consuming copies of bits for real money.

HP CAN BITE MY DIRTY HAIRY ASS !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard !!

What does it do that Android doesn't do better?

[Rix]

If the answer is "nothing" or "something they could have just implemented on Android" then why didn't they just make an Android tablet?

Re:What does it do that Android doesn't do better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Multitasking (the whole card metaphor). Most intuitive and easy to use solution out there.

The Touchstone is nice... no need for wires to recharge your tablet/phone.

There's a lot more... try it out, you may like it.

Re:What does it do that Android doesn't do better?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the answer is "nothing" or "something they could have just implemented on Android" then why didn't they just make an Android tablet?

how about real multi-tasking without the clunkiness of the android interface.

Re:What does it do that Android doesn't do better?

[the linux geek]

WebOS, when implemented properly, is a better system than Android - Just Type and card-based multitasking are my favorite features. The problem is that hardware so far has been either plain bad (Pre, Pre2), unreleased until some far-future date (Pre3), or weird and niche (Veer.) I haven't had a chance to use a TouchPad yet, so I can't comment, but the problem is not the software.

Also, the amount that Slashdot users seem to love the idea of an Android monoculture is vaguely disturbing.

Re:What does it do that Android doesn't do better?

[manekineko2]

Actually, from the reviews of the TouchPad, it sounds like the problem is the software. Random slowdowns and gradual slowdown without reboots, even on their top-of-the-line TouchPad, all promised to be fixed with a future update.

What the problem is not is the user interface. Their conception of mobile multitasking is truly a thing of beauty, and I dearly wish Google and Apple would rip them off like RIM did.

Re:What does it do that Android doesn't do better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Non-bastardized libc?
Real, user-controllable multitasking?

(Seriously, WebOS's cards and Maemo's dashboard are the only two mobile multitasking implementations worth 5 cents. It's entirely coincidental, I'm sure, but they're also the only ones that keep most of the typical desktop X11/GNU/Linux stack...)

Re:What does it do that Android doesn't do better?

[Anonymous Coward]

>The problem is that hardware so far has been either plain bad (Pre, Pre2),

The OMAP 3630 in the Pre2 was ahead of just about everything at the time. The APQ8060 in the TouchPad is a superstar of a processor.

WebOS hasn't been hardware deprived. It's all the fault of software.

Re:What does it do that Android doesn't do better?

[Anonymous Coward]

They would then have almost zero control on how the system actually works -- guaranteeing that they could never make any real improvements over generic Android in the future, at least not if Google doesn't want them to.

See here for an example of the control Google wields: http://thisismynext.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-lawsuit-motorola-samsung/ -- the technical arguments Google has against Skyhook are 100% true but the whole story and the info on OEM licenses is very, very enlightening. This is why HP and the OEMs are still looking for alternatives.

Re:What does it do that Android doesn't do better?

[the linux geek]

The Pre2 has a 480x320 screen. In what universe is that acceptable in late 2010 and early 2011?

Re:What does it do that Android doesn't do better?

[ChunderDownunder]

Last year's model. The Pre 3 - for release real soon now (Friday?) - has 480x800.

Re:What does it do that Android doesn't do better?

[gbjbaanb]

well, you know what they say: "Make it work, Make it right, Make it fast".

Some credit...

[jcr]

I don't think WebOS is going to end up succeeding, but I am going to give HP some credit for at least trying to do more than just ship whatever Microsoft hands them.

-jcr

Re:Some credit...

[Eponymous Coward]

Have you seen what Microsoft is trying to hand them? They don't really deserve much credit for turning that down. Besides, I think they are selling a Windows tablet already.

It's a shame that nobody other than Apple seems to give a damn about build quality or battery life.

Re:Some credit...

[oztiks]

I found the TouchPad’s battery life was only 60% of that of the iPad 2. In my standard tablet battery test, where I set the screen brightness to 75%, keep the Wi-Fi connection active and play local videos back to back, the TouchPad lasted just 6 hours and 5 minutes, compared with 10 hours and 9 minutes for the iPad 2. H-P claims 9 hours of continuous video playback, but that’s with Wi-Fi turned off. In mixed use, battery life was decent.

You know testing the battery life is a good idea, but honestly my iPad 3G+Wifi (when 3G is disabled) you're lucky to get 5 hours of active use, I highly doubt this guys benchmark was at all accurate, rather, I'm guessing he read the 10hour battery life off the back of the iPad box pitted it against the TouchPad to draw his conclusion.

Re:Some credit...

[Wovel]

I quite easily get over 9 hours of continuous wifi use on my iPad.. Maybe your is broken. That would be the low end with very heavy use.

Re:Some credit...

[mbessey]

I'm really enjoying my Touchpad. I'm biased, of course, having helped write the software, but I think the usability of webOS is superior to iOS 4, and at least the current version of Android. The app catalog is a bit thin, but the apps we have are pretty great, and some of the features built into the platform make it so we don't need "an app" for every little thing (Synergy sync, in particular).

Whether the usability, lack of tight-fisted control over the platform, and our unique features will be enough to push it into the "success" column will be determined by whether we hit a "sweet spot" for developers and users.

Re:Some credit...

[Cinder6]

Seconded. I was astonished that the iPad (I have the original, not the new one) actually lived up to the battery claims.

Re:Some credit...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think WebOS is going to end up succeeding, but I am going to give HP some credit for at least trying to do more than just ship whatever Microsoft hands them.

-jcr

say for example if apple was a entrant in the tablet market and HP was the major vendor then would u have given apple credit for trying? . I find it amusing that when HP/google/xoom create a bloat of software for tablet PC that we should give credit for it ! There is no credit for trying . this is thebig leagues . fuck that!

Re:Some credit...

[Just Some Guy]

How bright is your screen? I don't have an iPad, but if it's anything like my iPhone, lowering the brightness has a huge impact on battery life.

Won't work: Apple aims for the luxury category

[DrYak]

Currently they have the only product managing an interresting enough balance between quality and price.
But in the long run ? Once the hype dies ?

They'll probably remain as a luxury type of product as usual. The masses will probably slowly start to get more attracted to cheaper solution produced by noname asian companies and running free Android.
(The cheapest iPad 2 starts at more than 450€. There are *full blown* netbooks and laptops costing less than that. The post office at the corner of my street is having a sale on an Android tablet for less than 100€)

---

Back to TFA's subject :

the lack of apps

Come on ! What do you expect ?! The TouchPad has just been released now. Of course there aren't much applications available yet. Specially if you compare with the iPads which have been around for quite some time, and to the android devices (where unofficial tablets have been around for quite some time before the official launch of Tablet-oriented android versions, giving some head start to application developers)

The speed might be slightly more problematic: Lots of stuff which was done in Java in the webOS 1.x serie has been now replaced with Javascript in the webOS 2.x-3.x Until the Javascript engine is brought to some serious level of optimisation (I don't even now if it is JIT-ed or not), this is bound to be slower than the highly optimized and JITed engine of Java. I hope future versions of the OS will address these shortcomings.

Re:Won't work: Apple aims for the luxury category

[Cinder6]

On the app front, it might be important to remember that the iPad launched with over 2000 iPad-specific apps--so the comparison is more valid than you would initially think. On the other hand, I can't think of any other tech product that launched with such support. The iPad has proved itself an anomaly rather than the norm in that regard. But that doesn't mean people won't make the comparison.

This Pathetic Apple Troll Still Exists???

[Anonymous Coward]

Go away loser. Everyone hates you.

Re:This Pathetic Apple Troll Still Exists???

[jcr]

How's your therapy going? Do the doctors have any hope to offer, or do they think you'll be like this for the rest of your life?

-jcr

Mac OS X is a bad comparison, but misses the point

[mveloso]

When Mac OS X was released, Mac OS 9 still worked. It took until 10.3 or 10.4 before Mac OS X was used extensively, if I remember correctly.

It takes around 4 years for an OS to develop, and another 2 to fully bake. The iPad got an early start, since it's mostly the same as the iPhone. WebOS lost a year due to the acquisition.

They need to keep iterating. The embedded market is huge, and can afford to wait. Apple will never embed iOS, and Android has licensing issues vis-a-vis Microsoft. That leaves the embedded market to...HP?

I like mine

[Anonymous Coward]

I just picked up my TouchPad this morning, and I think I'm really going to like it. I find it snappy, nicely built, and has a nice display. I'm looking for a platform to hack on, and WebOS looks so much more friendly to me than Apple's iOS.

Re:I like mine

[Hello Kitty]

I'm enjoying the hell out of mine (right now, in fact), but I'm mystified by the lack of appropriate cases, of all things. Hope you got a chance to pick one up wherever you are. Seattle's fresh out.

Hostely, I like the whole WebOS interface

[Kagetsuki]

It looks a lot more like what I'd want if I were to purchase a tablet. It's unfortunate HP's approach to the OS won't get it into everybody-and-their-brothers tablets like free-for-all Android, and HP doesn't have the fanbase of Apple... and it's just another platform to port to with a limited number of users so developers will probably not even bother and the lack of apps will kill it.

Sorry HP, you did a good job but this fight was over before it started.

Re:Hostely, I like the whole WebOS interface

[manekineko2]

I'm a big fan, too, and was pretty saddened by the poor reviews of the TouchPad to see I'd been let down.

It's a little hard for me to understand what HP was thinking. From where I'm standing it doesn't look to me like they did a good job in a that fight over before it started. It looked to me like they under invested and screwed the platform.

You get to pick up to 2 of: fast, good, or cheap. They managed to be none of fast, good, or cheap.

Fast: They were late to market, with HP doing seemingly nothing for about a year. They're enormous, why didn't they hire more (or more likely, better) people if they couldn't iterate as fast as the competition.
Good: They had more time than the competition, and are an enormous company, yet managed to still ship a half-baked product with major bugs like random slowdowns promised to be fixed in a future update.
Cheap: Worst of all, they have decided to price the TouchPad as a premium tablet, about the same as the iPad2, or Samsung Galaxy Tab. They couldn't stand taking a few video-game-console-style quarters of losses to build market share for their nascent ecosystem?

If this was their plan, I don't know why they bothered to buy Palm at all. Palm under HP didn't seem any better funded or to execute any better than when Palm didn't have the backing of the world's #1 computer maker.

Re:Hostely, I like the whole WebOS interface

[garyebickford]

Fast, good or cheap ...

Fast: They were late to market, with HP doing seemingly nothing for about a year. They're enormous, why didn't they hire more (or more likely, better) people if they couldn't iterate as fast as the competition.

I don't know the details of the innards of the platform software (scale or complexity) but the general rule is that adding more people - even 'better' ones - generally slows projects down and just burns money. It takes newbies to a platform a year or so to get to the point where they understand the architecture well enough to really do good work. It's possible that they spent the year just fixing architectural issues in the system, rather than painting lipstick, but I don't know.

Good: They had more time than the competition, and are an enormous company, yet managed to still ship a half-baked product with major bugs like random slowdowns promised to be fixed in a future update.

HP has never been fast. Just integrating the Palm product into their corporate structure probably took most of that time. But that's still their bad.

Cheap: Worst of all, they have decided to price the TouchPad as a premium tablet, about the same as the iPad2, or Samsung Galaxy Tab. They couldn't stand taking a few video-game-console-style quarters of losses to build market share for their nascent ecosystem?

I think this is the most dangerous, but perhaps not as much as it seems. It's a gamble that controverts the classic 'buy the market' tactic. They are betting that even with a higher price point they can get sufficient market share to meet their objectives and maintain long term growth and success. HP has the resources to keep it going for long enough to develop a stable niche (a longer, slower way of buying share), and with a higher price point they can both play the 'quality' card and have more profit margin to develop newer and better future products - IF they can actually sell enough of them in the long term. This goes back to their strategy of integrating WebOS apps on their very large Windows PC presence. That is reminiscent of the Apple integration strategy. I think they will make this a very business-oriented integration approach, giving the enterprise users the kind of integration to their internal operations applications as the iPad has to the consumer. It may work, but it may not. Again, HP can afford to take the long slow road, they would have a ready and very stable corporate market (in the process beating up on RIM), and it may work. It would certainly work better than trying to fight it out in the commodity Android space, where price will be so important.

Is anyone surprised?

[Virtucon]

I'm not really surprised. Yes, WebOS and the remnants of Palm are still alive and kicking but Palm didn't do themselves any favors. There was a time that Palm made the best products out there and had the operating system that everyone loved. The along came RIM and the Blackberry and at first, the old Blackberry devices did well but they sucked to use. Anybody remember the 857 and 957 from a long time ago? Then along comes Apple, then comes Android.. It's cyclic in nature and Palm didn't keep up with the industry. The first release of WebOS was interesting but again it was trapped in the Palm Pre. Mine locked up so many times that after one month I returned it.

Do I give WebOS some credit? Well, yes, there are some nice UI elements but again, what's it compatible with and what developers will build apps for it?
RIM is now seen as a fading player so what does that leave for everybody else? Will the tablet and phone world start to look like the Windows World in the 90s where MSFT just built an O/S and there were multiple players who built the hardware? Who knows, but I will tell you that Apple doesn't like to share and marginalize their profits. The challenge will be making the next device because the cell phone market is already slipping from them.

HP's problem is their Brass

[LurkerXXX]

HP has the same problem as Nokia and RIM. Company execs aren't putting enough resources into their new OS's to get things moving.

Nokia had a good thing started with Maemo/Meego. Just look at the recent N950, N9 reviews by Engadget and others (
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/21/nokia-n9-first-hands-on/ ; http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/30/nokias-n950-demos-meego-harmattan-in-marathon-video/ ). A great start/ideas, but they didn't put enough of their not insubstantial resources behind it to get it developed quickly. They gave developers a mixed message, which had a lot of them sitting back waiting to see if there was going to be full commitment by the company before joining in.
Result, the new OS floundered from lack of backing, and they ended up turning to Microsoft.

RIM had been giving the developers the same mixed message about where they are headed. QNX could be an awesome phone OS. Frankly, I'm not sure why someone wasn't putting it on phones years ago. Will it succeed? If it does, it will be despite the big brass's ambivalent attitude.

And now we have HP, which bought a great little OS in WebOS from Palm, that just didn't have the money to dig themselves out of the hole they let themselves get into.

HP's administration said they were going to "double down on WebOS." Their new CEO says they are going to "be cooler than apple". He's also said they were going to avoid the same mistakes made in the past and that they would now "ship products within weeks of announcement"".

HP keeps claiming they have 'incredible scale' and vast resources to make WebOS a success. But since the purchase of Palm, they haven't put their money where their mouth is.

What have they done with those vast resources?

They let the bulk of the creative talent from Palm, the folks who had all the great ideas that make WebOS the induitive OS that it is, leave to go to Apple, Google, or anywhere but HP.

They've put out the Veer, which is basically a smaller version of the original pre, with slightly upgraded hardware.

They have essentially converted a tablet that they were originally going to have run a MS OS. Their Touchpad is bulkier, heavier, and has slower hardware than the competition. And the OS is laggy.

The 'Cool thing' about the Touchpad was that it is supposed to synch with their(new) phones, (Veer, and Pre3). The veer is selling terribly because it's too tiny for a smartphone.

And the Pre3? The Pre3 was announced in February. It's going to ship (in the U.S.) in the Fall. With specs that are way outclassed by phones already released with Android, and facing a likely new iPhone in the fall, as well as some insanely better hardware in the Galaxy S2.

Not much to show for HPs vaunted vast resources.

And then there's customer service...

Original Pre owners were strung along for many months by HP, who told them their Pre phones would be upgraded to WebOS version 2.x and finally get FLASH, that was promised to them 2 years ago when the phone first went on sale. Then at the last minute, folks found out (via twitter, not even a real press release) that that wasn't going to happen.

Then they said they'd do something to 'make things right' to the WebOS users. What did they do finally? Their marketing guys attempted to upsell those folks by giving them a $50 coupon for the touchpad. But only if they got the high end 32MB version. And only if they did it within 30 days of the notice.

Not timely, not cool HP.

I'm afraid WebOS is fated to go the way of BeOS. O

Re:HP's problem is their Brass

[jcr]

Their Touchpad is bulkier, heavier, and has slower hardware than the competition. And the OS is laggy.

That is surprising. Rubinstein certainly knows how to make good hardware (he did it for NeXT and Apple for many years). I don't know of any reason why HP wouldn't be able to match if not exceed what Apple's able to do in that area.

-jcr

Re:HP's problem is their Brass

[spire3661]

As a Palm Pre Plus owner Im glad to see the WebOs tablet sink and burn. If HP hadnt left me out in the cold I might have at least tried it. And I KNOW the only reason Pre Plus didnt get 2.0 was because of the vanilla Pres.

Keeping it from relocking itself annually

[tepples]

If your truly a "technical" type then pony up $99 and join the iOS developer program.

Then what do I do once 365 days are up and the iPad relocks itself? By the time I've spent $499 on an iPad and $495 on keeping it from relocking itself annually, I could have spent that much money on a MacBook Air.

The opportunity to fail

[SuperKendall]

I'm just saying that their product positioning creates an opportunity for competition.

Then you are saying that you don't understand Apple's product positioning at all, because the "openings" you see are the craters left from previous attempts in the market.

Apple has figure out the way to build tablets people actually want to use. The "openings" you and many other Slashdot readers perceive are not really there, are not really viable.

Such as console gamers

[tepples]

I've never, ever, had a friend say "I would like a cool new game to play. And it has to be one that I can only download from one site. I would never want to download it if there were dozens of people, not all approved by the hardware vendor, creating competing games."

Such people are the kinds of people who prefer console gaming over PC gaming. One rationalization that I've read in comments posted by console fans on Slashdot is the difficulty of finding a worthy PC game amongst all the shovelware. Another is various methods of digital restrictions management, such as install limits, online activation requirements, and the battery power consumed by an optical disc drive, which interfere with legitimate use of PC games and even of the computer on which they're installed.

Not Very Bright Either...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you cry yourself to sleep every night in your black turtleneck jammies about how badly Android is destroying your piece of shit iPhone in the market hipster douchebag?

Re:Not Very Bright Either...

[jcr]

Do you cry yourself to sleep every night

No, I check the value of my AAPL shares before I go to bed, and it tends to put me in a good mood.

Android is destroying your piece of shit iPhone in the market

You seem to have a lot of ego investment in the matter of which product sells more. Why is that?

-jcr

Misperception

[SuperKendall]

I've never, ever, had a friend say "I would like a cool new game to play. And it has to be one that I can only download from one site...

That's odd because I've heard a lot of people say that very thing about Live or PSN, that they like having a place to go find stuff.

They don't define it as a single source, approved by a hardware vendor. But they end up using it more EXACTLY because of those conditions which lead to products they want being in that store.

iPad-exclusive applications

[tepples]

Should they choose to price their iPads at $2000 then people would still purchase tablets - just not from Apple.

Unless they have to run iPad-exclusive applications. Your argument appears to be based on the existence of critical Windows-exclusive applications and the nonexistence of critical iPad-exclusive applications.

Amazon disagrees

[SuperKendall]

Want to sell something through a link on a webpage that somebody viewed in Safari on their iPad? Not allowed!

Amazon and Egghead, to name just two companies, both disagree with you given I loaded Safari in my iPad and bought something from them...

Re:Mac OS X is a bad comparison, but misses the po

[Anonymous Coward]

Or possibly meego.

Re:Much better than a netbook

[kirbysuperstar]

The processor power is too low, the display too small, the battery life horrible.

Funny, I have an ASUS Eee 1000HE, and while I might give you the processing power bit, the 10" display is fine for most things and the battery lasts for nine hours plus.

Re:Much better than a netbook

[Hero Zzyzzx]

LOL wut? My asus 1215n has a dual core Intel D525, a gorgeous 12 inch display at 1366x768 and gets a solid six+ hours on the battery. It is the best portable computer I've ever owned, and I've owned many in 15 years. I do wish it had faster mechanical storage, but that can upgraded. Running debian stable, I pretty much never feel like I'm waiting on my hardware.

Perhaps you need to update your knowledge of the current state of netbooks?

HP Will Surprise You

[transami]

I think everyone is under estimating HP an letting Apple fanboys dictate the PR.

Here's the first think that will differentiate the TouchPad from the iPad: PRICE

Although the SRP is the same as the iPad, Apple doesn't discount. HP does. Expect to see the TouchPad for $50 less than SRP to be common place. And as production scales up expect deeper discounts. HP doesn't sell more computer than anyone else for no reason. While the hardware specs might not be quite a good as iPad2, at a better price point they will prove good enough --especially at the next issue comes into play...

Most of the speed issues are software issues and will be ironed out over the next couple point releases of webOS. As will the number of Apps available. By Christmas the outlook will be much better.

Also, expect HP to release more many models. Already there are rumors of a 64GB model and a 7" model. HP's ability to produce models is actually a little scary --have you ever looked closely at all the models of printers and PCs they role out? It's like three new models every quarter. I don't expect them to go that far with their tablets, but I would not be surprised to see a half-dozen more tablets and/or phones sometime during the next year or so.

And then there's webOS on the desktop. That's the next shoe to drop. Expect HP to replace the "splashtop" they now offer with a light version of webOS. Now all those HP computer buyer are getting used to webOS too. That can have a powerful effect in a couple of years!

Bottom line, all HP has to do is hang tough and they will make out. And they have more resources than anyone else to do just that.

Oh, and did I mention webOS on printers?

Re:HP Will Surprise You

[Wovel]

very few people will be swayed to a tablet with no software for $50. HP has a steep climb ahead.

Re:HP Will Surprise You

[IHateEverybody]

very few people will be swayed to a tablet with no software for $50. HP has a steep climb ahead.

You underestimate the cheapness of the average gadget buyer. That $50 discount will likely turn into $100 discount in short order and with lower prices come more buyers and with more devices out there come more developer interest. And with more developer interest will come more apps.

Unless of course HP changes the developer framework yet again as they did for the Touchpad and continues to discourage developers. That's HP's real problem. They need to pick an API and stick to it.

Re:HP Will Surprise You

[joh]

May be, may be. But what you're *actually* saying with all this is: "Don't buy a WebOS tablet right now! They will get better and cheaper soon!"

If this is what every thinking person thinks about a product, you've had a very bad start, believe me.

Re:HP Will Surprise You

[garyebickford]

Yes. Also, HP doesn't need consumers so much as business, where they sell most of their PCs. So I predict that there will be a lot of integration of WebOS on the PC to 'enterprise' apps like SAP, and extending that integration to the Touchpad to provide 'secure instant remote access' to the corporate data from anywhere. The larger form factor of a 'pad makes it a perfect growth path from the crackberries and things of that ilk. IMHO HP is better positioned for this market than anyone.

I don't think the 'late to market' question applies, as this market tends to lag the trendy consumer market by two or three years. So the present Touchpad can be a testbed for corporate developers to try WebOS apps out on their PCs and the Touchpad itself, and the next version makes those apps sing just in time for the volume buys. Look for SAP on the Touchpad.

Re:HP Will Surprise You

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh finally! A multitasking printer!

Oh joy.

Re:HP Will Surprise You

[sootman]

With the world of difference between the iPad and the TouchPad, do you REALLY think $50 off will make a huge difference in sales?

Furthermore, Apple doesn't "discount" things in the traditional sense, but they are (contrary to conventional wisdom) being EXTREMELY price-competitive on their iDevices. Have you noticed that there are very few ten-inch tablets selling for the same price as the iPad, and nearly none selling for less? That many seven-inch tablets sell for about the same? There are tablets on the market that are faster than the iPad, and thinner, and cheaper, and lighter, and possibly even with better battery life, but no tablet is more than 2 or 3 of those things. The iPad is, objectively, better than all of the competition overall. (And here's why.) And don't forget that Apple started working on their tablet in mid-2004; the rest of the industry started making touch-sensitive tablets after the iPhone came out.

The price will eventually come down and the specs will increase. And Apple will sell the old models and/or refurbished. Other than the camera, the TouchPad doesn't have much on the original iPad, let alone the iPad 2. The day the iPad 2 came out, Steve Jobs announced that the iPad 1 would be available for $399. You can get an iPad 1 (refurbished) for $349. And look at the iPhone: when the iPhone 4 came out, Apple kept selling the 3GS for $99 and later, $49. So there's your "discount."

The very first iPods were a bit expensive in terms of price-per-GB, but that was because a) it was a new product (Apple does like their fat margins, at least at first) and b) it used 1.8" drives instead of 2.5" drives. (Which led to a smaller, lighter, and eventually more popular device.) Then they added space for the same price, then they dropped the price, then they did both of those things repeatedly.

The reason to fret

[jbplou]

The teal reason to fret is that on an article about webOS the majority of the posts don't even mention HP or webOS but instead apple, iOS, and ipad

Re:The reason to fret

[wkcole]

The teal reason to fret

I believe we have a new Slashdotism...

is that on an article about webOS the majority of the posts don't even mention HP or webOS but instead apple, iOS, and ipad

Most definitely a teal quirk, along with the fact that much of the Apple-bashing comes with Android cheerleading (has anyone actually tried to use a Xoom?) There haven't been HP fanbois in a long time, so an HP article is doomed here to become a platform for Android v. iOS blather.

Apple in power

[Anonymous Coward]

"When until the last 1.5 years has apple been the 800-pound gorilla on the block?"

Apple II vs the Apple Clones

Mac OS / Desktop Publishing vs DOS

Locking down the mobile devices is EXACTLY the same as locking developers out of the original Lisa

They laughed at Apple, they laughed at Google...

[alispguru]

They also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

It's anyone's guess as to which WebOS is.

You own your microwave, but you can't write

[Brannon]

software for it. Why aren't you protesting in front of GE? They don't even offer the option of a $99 developer license.

Re:You own your microwave, but you can't write

[PopeRatzo]

You're comparing iOS devices to a microwave?

Well, I guess you have a point.

2 easy steps to happiness

[Brannon]

Step 1: Buy an Android, hack it all you want. Post blogs about your shitty software with direct links to let anybody download your virus invested bloated battery killing software.

Step 2: Acquire inner peace sufficient to allow for a world large enough for people who want a robust appliance and people who want something they can tinker with.

Ever been to DisneyWorld?

[Brannon]

Go to the Magic Kingdom, notice that there are no liquor stores and strip clubs on Main Street? Also note how happy people are while they are there, almost like they actually enjoy the concept of a walled garden.

Note how they are free to leave anytime they want. Are you starting to get the idea?

Walled gardens are nice, people like them. If you don't like them, then don't go into one.

sigh...you don't understand how computers work.

[Brannon]

It's okay, not everybody does. You probably are good at other things, like gardening maybe?

But you don't understand computer security, in particular you don't understand how 'draconian control' leads directly to Apple succeeding where others have failed.

Maybe you should get back to your lawn.

One simple answer ....

[Anonymous Coward]

At the other companies he worked for, he had a good team that made him look good.

At HP, that team does not exist or is shielded by a layer of bureaucracy and or others with personal political agendas.

We'll see, I guess

[mbessey]

I'm really enjoying my Touchpad. I'm biased, of course, having helped write the software, but I think the usability of webOS is superior to iOS 4, at least. Whether the usability, lack of tight-fisted control over the platform, and our unique features will be enough to push into the "success" column will be determined by whether we hit a "sweet spot" for developers and users.

Re:We'll see, I guess

[Cinder6]

I really hope that webOS succeeds. From what I've seen (I haven't used a device yet), the interface puts Android and even iOS to shame. Unfortunately, I'm not willing (right now) to go out and buy a TouchPad when it's getting a rocky start like this. Sadly, I would imagine there are a lot of people in the same boat as me, and if we would all just jump ship things wouldn't be quite so rocky.

Re:We'll see, I guess

[Serious Callers Only]

Congrats on the superb UI and interesting os. We need real alternatives to Apple and webos is certainly light years ahead of Android and ahead of iOS in some areas. I use iOS but love the way webos has chosen a different direction in both UI and use of HTML, and the idea of cards is great.

As a developer I'd say I'm hesitant about supporting the plaform purely because of the political calculus - will the suits at hp stand behind this os for long enough to build a real ecosystem, and will they resist the strong pressure from their largest partner ms to kill this once it becomes popular? Unfortunately I don't have confidence that they will do the right thing, and strangely without hp backing it I would be a lot more confident about webos.

Re:We'll see, I guess

[lucian1900]

The UI is indeed very interesting, congratulations for working on it. However, I am reluctant to invest much in WebOS since it's closed source, where Android is not. I'd love HP even more (I already love the dm1z) if they open-sourced WebOS and licensed other manufacturers for the WebOS name.

yeah but...

[smash]

... OS X was competing with Windows 98 and Windows 2000. Which were, by comparison, rather crap - Windows 98 had fairly dodgy memory protection, and Windows 2000 had very little software compatibility.

HP are now competing against an entrenched market leader at a similar price point and a huge application library. Unless they can offer lower cost, higher performance, smaller size, better battery life or some other "hook", they're boned.

The app store is an awesome lock-in for apple. All the apps purchased are not transferrable to a non-apple device. Unless they can give me a compelling reason to ditch all of the apps I have purchased on my other i-devices, its going to be a fucking hard sell to get me to buy any tablet other than an ipad.

I don't own one yet (doesn't do anything for my usage patterns), but if i was in the market, it would be a no-brainer.

Re:yeah but...

[garyebickford]

I think HP is in a different market than Apple. Apple's success is still mostly in the consumer space. HP has major market share in the corporate and business space, and is making noises about integrating WebOS on the PC with WebOS on the Touchpad and other devices. That market is less price sensitive, is two or three years behind the consumer market trends, considers performance less important than "works with SAP" - or QuickBooks, and is _very_ interested in working with a strong, big, reliable (if unsexy) company like HP.

So I think HP is going to own the corporate *pad business, but it will take three to five years.

Re:yeah but...

[smash]

I suspect they are too late. The iPhone has made huge inroads into corporate land, and execs have been buying apps like everyone else. But you are correct in saying that is likely hp's best bet.

Re:Much better than a netbook

[smash]

You want a macbook air, not an iPad.

Re:No wireless, less space than a nomad. Lame.

[Serious Callers Only]

The problem is, it isn't a computer. It's a giant smartphone minus the phone.

Which happens to be what many normal people actually want from a computer. For the vast majority of people a tablet is actually a better browsing and email machine than a general purpose computer. I have a laptop (which I use for actual work) and a a tablet, which I use for reading, but the lines are starring to blur, and the tablet and even my phone is often used for emails and real work nowadays.

PS This message comes to you courtesy of one of those newfangled and apparently inferior tablet thingamajigs.

Re:Much better than a netbook

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...haven't tried one of the new AMD netbooks have you? 5 hours battery life, will output 1080p over HDMI, has enough power to play WoW or pretty much anything else you'd do with a "normal" PC just in a portable package. they are really nice. Of course they ain't as cheap as an Atom based junker, but an iPad ain't as cheap as a CCC aPad either, still you can get them for $60 less than an iPad and you can do more with it than consume content.

As for TFA? I wish them look but it is probably too little too late. my prediction is thus: Google and Apple trading first and second back and forth and if MSFT gets DirectX and XBL on the Nokia WinPhone they'll get third, a solid third if they can also tie in Skype and AD/GPO support so they can take RIMs former customers.

So while I wish them luck honestly I just don't think there is enough room in the market for four OSes in mobile. Google has a juggernaut that is exploding in popularity and those that follow iSteve will have nothing less than Apple, and MSFT has enough pull in business markets as well as the X360 to pull in consumers to get third place, that is if they don't shoot themselves in the foot like they did with the Kin. If they would have hit the ground running and rushed out a product right after they bought it? maybe they could have built buzz and momentum. I just don't see that happening this late in the game.

it is important

[Anonymous Coward]

we (me) are very quick in criticising new products and used to judge rather hard. This short post reminds me that behind all products there are developers, engineers, designers who put a lot of their heart and soul into this project. They certainly deserve fair feedback.

That said, I think the TouchPad could be interesting. It looks quite good and I wanted to buy one to find out more about it and webos. Unfortunately I found no way to order it online, it is only available on amazon.com and hp germany. I am in Austria and,strangely, hp germany does not send to Austria or any other EU country. I think that hp has great developers and engineers, but their distribution system and marketing department could be by far better. They do not have enough ads to promote the TouchPad and they do not let people know where they can buy (or order) it.

Now I realise how much Apple has done in being able to sell their products worldwide within an acceptable timeframe. (I can buy the same stuff other Europeans can buy at the same time they can) - and most people do know where to get Apple products. HP has an online store, but they do not use it efficiently.

christian louboutin clearance sale

[Louboutins]

christian louboutin clearance sale shoes High heel sandal is one of the popular trends in the society. From celebrities to the common people, everyone is demanding stilettos matching their sexy appeal. High heel sandals are usually costly and expensive. Buying them in a discount is not so easy. It announces sample sale every year and this is always considered as a best time to grab the kind of shoes one actually desires.

Slashdot!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't help but remark that slashdot has become a socialist advertising pad and nothing more. Where big money can bash the competition, but also incompetent teams like this one can tell fairy tales about their half baked project. 2 years from now there will be another idiot claiming to reinvent the iPad, iPhone or whatever and fail miserably because of anything else than their inability to match their dreamt skills with reality. Bleah!

Apple has defined what a tablet should be?

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly Apple has defined what branding a tablet should have.

In an Appley sort of way.

Re:Much better than a netbook

[Anonymous Coward]

You hardly ever post anything that isn't simply advertising for Apple products. You should be ashamed of yourself.

"SAD, but interesting"

[Anonymous Coward]

there is an article about HPs new TouchPad. It is certainly interesting and promising.
But all the comments here are about Apple-iPad-monopoly- is apple good or bad? Oh, and some comments about "Android is the best".
Please, do not disregard this new tablet. Write about your experiences, pros and cons. It would be helpful.

Though I like WebOS...

[Junta]

This is just delusional. The part where he compares the launch to OSX launch was particularly goofy. It pretends that WebOS is a platform that *hasn't* had over two years in the open market to mature. Comparing OSX launch (completely different OS than previously released by Apple) to a tablet launch using an OS that has had a comparatively long time to work out the kinks is just sad. Further complicating things is they showed this thing off nearly 6 months ago in pretty much the same state as it was at launch. With all the intervening time, they didn't seem to complete these evidently 'trivial' fixes.

This also overlooks another major sore spot for the reviews. Even the most favorable expressed disappointment in the dimensions and particularly the weight. Most noted the fact that HP seemed to be chasing the iPad 1 size and weight, though with a considerable bump in hardware performance.

The application space seems unfortunately sparse. They indicated a number of key partners at their announcement in February that didn't seem to actually show up. Netflix being a notable example. They have had an incredible homebrew community that can churn stuff out quickly (probably due in no small part to the ease of Linux SDL code for the desktop being ported to the phone), but it just hasn't been enough. I'm reminded of early on when a very select set of software producers took a leap of faith and released WebOS software on Pre launch, only to abandon it when the market reality set in.

The marketing message is also a bit confused. The Veer keeps saying 'small phone because you want a tablet and why would you want a big phone', but at the same time all their demos and discussions focus around their unreleased 'big phone' Pre 3 as the optimal companion to their tablet.

I may be a bit bitter over the fact that HP seems to have neglected their phone product launch efforts trying to chase this tablet market, and I personally don't want any tablet and might have been interested if they got a Pre3 in my hands in a reasonable time frame instead. Rubbing salt in the wound, the announcement of 'making things right' for early adopters that were told the software upgrades would go further than they did would be $50 off the higher priced tablets seemed to emphasize just how much they are thinking tablets above phones.

I keep hearing this bull snorting

[Whuffo]

The typical adult has many things to do each day; work, home, take care of the wife and kids, enjoy a hobby, maybe more.

They can't take the time to customize each and every piece of hardware that crosses their path. Sometimes, the thing that just works is the right answer; by using that, more time is available for other activities.

If you've got nothing better to do than recomplile your kernel, then you're welcome to your avocation and something like the iPad isn't what you want. For the vast majority of consumers, though - Apple nailed it. They satisfy the consumer market and that's why they sell so many units.

HP is late to the game, and this lame offering (we know it kinda sucks, but buy it anyway and we'll fix it later; really, we promise we will) is a fail. Mr. Common Man will continue to purchase the item which "just works" and the final result is the same as if HP had just stayed home.

The market is still there, and if you (or someone else) can put a tablet out there that is demonstrably better than the iPad for the general consumer - then you've got a winner. Until then, give it a rest. It's a big world, and most of the people in it don't want to hack their tablet. Get used to it.

WebOS is still slow?

[TheNinjaroach]

I trashed my Palm Pre with gusto after tiring of how freaking slow it ran. New shiny hardware still can't keep up? Then the problem really is as bad as the reviews say.

OS and Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

To create a good OS takes lots of money (for good developers), time, and butt load of end user testing and human-computer interfacing. Even then you could get IBM's OS/2 - which seemed to be the bigger programs and functions the better.

Even if they manage to make a good OS then you need the apps and developers support. You say you need 500 apps to get started and yet no one will make apps because there are is no apps. Like the chicken and egg issue. You need the large apps library to attract new apps but you need new apps to build the large apps library...

Then the thing that make Apple king is human-computer interface. Apple's OS and many apps are just stupidly easy to use and the interface is just intuitive. My 2 year picked the iPod Touch and was easily able to use it and play games. My 90 year father in law picked up the iPod Touch and learned how to use it in under an hour and loved using it so much he spend the next 4 hours non-stop on it.

Android is getting close largely to the vast community that wants a choice other than apple. I have used it and they have some brilliantly creative people in the community that are devoted to improving it. 5 years from now it will undoubtedly surpass Apple, if they can survive that long.

Re:Much better than a netbook

[tehcyder]

The processor power is too low, the display too small, the battery life horrible.

But enough about iPhones!

Galen Gruman writes like a 'tard.

[Hognoxious]

They have designs inspired -- and in the case of the Galaxy Tab, perhaps outright aped -- by the iPad

Hang on, who is supposed to be copying whom here?

punditocracy

That is not a word, and I pray it never becomificises[1] one.

users have become unwilling to spend more than $50 on a cellphone or $600 on a PC that will need to be replaced every year or so rather than paying 50 percent more for an item that will last several years.

They won't spend more than 600 bucks, but they'll spend 900?

superificial

That's not a word either, although if it was it would be a darn good description of Apple phanboiz[2].

The gold standard for industrial design of course is Apple

Bollocks, it's Canon. Or DeWalt. Hang on, maybe it's Porsche.

If you ape Apple's designs, it begs the question for a buyer: Why not buy the real thing?

No, it most certainly does not.

resembance

Not a word either.

People will not buy a less capable product for the same price as a well-known superior one.

ROFLMAO.

[1].[2] Fuck off, it doesn't count if you're doing it intentionally.

Re:Mac OS X is a bad comparison, but misses the po

[sootman]

Actually, 10.2 was totally usable (a few glitches, but miles better than 10.0 or 10.1) and by the time it was out, Adobe and MS had their major apps running natively. In addition to cleaning up a lot of crap from the early versions of OS X, 10.2 added Quartz Extreme, which really helped performance (if you had the right hardware which, sadly, we didn't--10.2 ran better on my 800 MHz G3 iBook with a QE-supported video card than it did on my dual-533 G4 without.)

10.3, 10.4, etc., were nicer and nicer and nicer but 10.2 was fine, and I say that as someone who used it full-time in a large enterprise. We had OS X 10.2, Adobe Photoshop 7 and Illustrator 10, MS Office X, and *shudder* Lotus Notes, all running natively.

But that's just me being nitpicky. I agree with your main point(s). :-) (Though I'm not sure about webOS in the embedded space.)

Not WebOS but HP software

[Anonymous Coward]

Hp has for the last few years gotten in the habit of developing bloated top heavy software (50MB for a base print driver?) WebOS is great, it's HP that doesn't know how to make software that isn't ridiculously bloated and broken. Hence the sluggishness.
I hate HP for this, 45 minutes for a full featured printer install? Seriously? At 350 MB? Common...

What if

[symbolset]

What if HP not only installed it everywhere, but made it open source so as to expand the audience for their app market? WebOS as a Windows app solves a lot of difficult problems for HP, the biggest of which is finding the knee of the adoption curve. It also solves many of the problems with Windows that we have been struggling against for many years. It wouldn't kill iOS or Android, but it might be a credible third choice if they are quite careful about terms.

Re:What if

[garyebickford]

I like it!