Android On HP TouchPad

NicknamesAreStupid writes "As fast as you can say '$99 blowout sale,' PC World reports on an Android port to the now defunct HP TouchPad. 'Of course, it will turn out to be the best Android pad ever, making the iPad stink by comparison,' reports Muphy's Law Reports."

Comments

"No ecosystem"

[EponymousCustard]

HP have inadvertently discovered how to create huge demand and massive customer base overnight: find the right price point and lots of publicity

Re:"No ecosystem"

[Anonymous Coward]

So the right price point is over $200 below bill of materials? The 16GB TouchPad has a bill of materials estimated at $323. People are rushing to buy this due to perceived value. There are Android based tablets that retail for $75-200 right now, but no one wants to buy them. They're lower quality specs, screens, and builds. This is a rush to buy something that's supposed to be really expensive at an insanely low price.

Re:"No ecosystem"

[_KiTA_]

True. Unfortunately, they're selling these at Around a $100-$200 loss on each model sold.

Perhaps in 5 years the Touchpad could be profitable at $100-150. But not today.

Re:"No ecosystem"

[jawtheshark]

I know you are right, but the problem is as following:

• You either have to be significantly cheaper than the iPad to compete on similar capabilities. When I mean "cheaper", I don't mean $50 cheaper, I mean really much cheaper. If it's only 50€ difference, get an iPad, then you get something "known to work". This is the "perceived" value, you talk about. Capabilities includes quality hardware, so the cheaper ones you talk about are not competition.
• Offer something that that the iPad doesn't have and beat it on capabilities while matching the iPads price. That is very hard as the iPad has so much going for it: large installed base, great "walled garden" app store (Which is a "pro" for most people, I assure you) , quality hardware. You simply know what you get... It cannot something that only few people care about, as that will not give you a great install base.

The iPad has become the "Windows of Tablets". The two arguments above are exactly why Windows still rules on the desktop.

Re:"No ecosystem"

[Lumpy]

And being a guy who paid ipad prices for a real android tablet with the horsepower to run the apps smoothly, I still bought an iPad.

Why?

it's the apps man.

I can't get an app that will show me where the satellites are in the sky in a Augmented reality like I can on the iPad.
I can't get an integration app for Microsoft One Note on android.
I can't get a PDF annotation app that is as smooth and simple as the one for the iPad.
Only recently was I able to get an autocad viewer for android. but not an andriod honeycomb native, it's a phone app that scales.
And on and on.

Android falls on it's face with tablet specific apps simply because it has been around a short time compared to the iPad. Maybe in 2 years when the application base builds up I'll look at what android tablets are doing once more, but then I'll have to abandon all the software I bought for the iPad and re-buy all my software again.

the XOOM tablet is a nice piece of hardware and snappy... but it failed on the app front. I was lucky enough to have bought it early and chose to sell it early to get most of my money back on ebay.

I use a tablet for work. both my day job and my side photography business... and the iPad kicks android hard in the photography apps arena.

Re:"No ecosystem"

[jcr]

AFAIK the iPad cannot read SD cards nor accept USB mass storage devices.

There's a dongle for that.

-jcr

Re:"No ecosystem"

[auLucifer]

I use an iPad at work and have since it was first released in .au. The best thing it does that a notebook (this is assuming pen and paper notebook) can't is get my notes on my computer. I write once in evernote/awesome note/whatever note application and it's then everywhere I will need it. Same for using dropbox and scibbling apps. I don't have to later scan or rewrite, it's all there on my desktop/phone/laptop for whenever I need access to it.

If you're talking about a laptop, I use the iPad for the same reasons above. Plus my macbook pro is heavy and my air is too big to easily carry or use in small areas like behind the sink when I work with recipes. I also can't use my finger to simply scribble diagrams or have others scribble notes from across the table. Also having the iPad gets rid of the 'wall' between me and my clients so it's useful for body language too, something I never underestimate.

As for everyone YMMV but those are the reasons I use an iPad. Next year I'll likely change to Android as I've had enough of the walled garden.

Re:"No ecosystem"

[metalmaster]

You had me right up to this point

The iPad has become the "Windows of Tablets". The two arguments above are exactly why Windows still rules on the desktop.

Windows is an operating system. It can be installed on anything with the right components. Do you remember the "Vista Capable" fiasco? Just because a box has a CPU, RAM, a hard disk and a video card doesnt mean those components have to be specced high enough to run the software smoothly. Additionally, Windows doesnt rely on a walled garden of apps. Its the exact opposite. If you wanna install the latest application from www.iwannastealyourbankinfos.net you are entirely free to do so.

The ipad took off for a few reasons:

1. - It was the first trustworthy tablet to market
2. - It had the familiar interface and functionality that people loved with their ipod touch and iphone
3. - It's got the developers behind it. As much as I hate to say "$x - theres an app for that" is pretty damned accurate. If you want something its probably out there. If not, you may be able to find a competent developer to write an app for you.

Im not a fan of Apple at all, but the above points are true for the most part. These are the reasons why i told my mom to return her touchpad and get an ipad.

Re:"No ecosystem"

[squiggleslash]

I'm not sure either are that hard, and I think people are over-thinking the whole thing.

Tablets are "selling" right now because... well, because they seem like they might be a nice idea, but in practice they don't really do a lot, and they're not that practical. Most people who get them don't really use them that often. And realistically, when they do, it's to browse the web.

Given that, virtually every tablet selling for above $250 or so (which, generally, are tablets that include capacitive touchscreen technology, decent sized screens, etc) is "better" than the iPad, in that 99% of them include Flash. You and I and the average Slashdotter can go in circles as to whether or not Flash is actually a good thing for the web, but there's a world of difference between whether a technology is a good idea, and whether having it available to a user benefits that user. A web browsing device that doesn't support Flash is, right now, a second class web browsing device.

So the question really is, given that, why are they not selling as well as the iPad?

Well, quite honestly, it's the marketing. It's an impressive device rather than a (right now) utilitarian one, and while Apple happens to have done a lot of good innovative work in the last decade and a half, they also have done an astonishing amount of marketing based upon brand image.

Remember that what restored Apple to profitability wasn't Mac OS X, or the iPod's scrollwheel UI, or Firewire. It was the rather weird decision to replace the case of their Beige G3 all-in-one with a retro-shaped translucent colored plastic, and to name the resultant product the iMac.

Like the iPad, the iMac - the first version - sold like hot cakes. It was bundled with Mac OS 8/9, which quite honestly was, at the time, an ugly, kludgy, unstable alien OS that only hard-core fans of the system had any love for. It required an Internet connection or external floppy drive (external hard disks weren't common at the time) to transfer files from it. It didn't even have an outstanding software base at the time, as most of the software world had given up on the Mac platform.

But it sold. It sold because Apple marketed the hell out of it, and concentrated on it as a device that looked nice rather than had some kind of specific functionality that you had to have.

Now, Apple's ads for the iPad do spend a lot of time concentrating on functionality, but it's notable that - step away from the RDF for a second - and virtually nothing it's advertised as doing is something it's particularly good at, at least compared to a comparatively priced laptop or a much, much, much, cheaper e-reader. Why do the ads look impressive? Because they concentrate on the look of the functionality rather than the functionality. Nothing you see is something that works better on an iPad, but virtually everything you see looks really slick and aesthetically amazing.

Beating Apple is going to be hard for the moment. The major decider will be whether tablets take off in general. Once they become things everyone's accustomed to, I think the importance of functionality will become more of an issue. Until then, if it's going to be a beauty contest, and right now it is, you can't expect the supermodel to lose against the greasy engineer.

Re:"No ecosystem"

[Dog-Cow]

You really don't get it, do you? I am posting this from an iPad. I and my wife use our 'pads for browsing, email, gps navigation, reference books, games, note taking, calendar, and address book. Lack of Flash is a minor annoyance, but to claim people don't use their iPads sounds like the wishful thinking of a bigot. Why the iPad instead of a netbook? Convenience. Larger screen. A battery that lasts through a day Netflix (wife was on bed rest until last night due to pregancy). Windows on a small screen sucks and Linux is too painful for me as a desktop.

Re:"No ecosystem"

[EsbenMoseHansen]

No, why would I?

Re:"No ecosystem"

[AmiMoJo]

Not in the UK, they are still £400+ here :-(

Why do we always get ripped off?

Re:"No ecosystem"

[multipartmixed]

> I just cannot see what a 'pad can do that a notebook cannot do better

I'd like to see you fit a notebook on a music stand.

Re:"No ecosystem"

[cheekyboy]

Im still pissed off apple charges 5x retail price for the 16-32gig price difference.

Common apple, for that price diff, offer people a 32gig vs 96gig setup and a 256gig VIP option for real cashed up geeks/celebs.

Re:"No ecosystem"

[E IS mC(Square)]

Dongle?? But that would spoil the looks of such a beautiful toy!!

Seriously though, after paying shitload of money, you still have to buy dongles and addons for basic functionalities?? Fuck that.

Re:Best Android Tablet ever?

[neokushan]

No, it's obviously much simpler than that: Price.
When it comes to android tablets, there's a lot of high-end offerings that can compete with the iPad in terms on performance, the problem is that they cost as much as (if not more) than the iPad.
Then there's the other end of the spectrum - the "cheap" android tablets. They're cheap in every regard: resistive screens, slow processors and minimal memory, they're mere toys. The fact that the touchpad is flying off the shelves shows that people are waiting for decent tablets to come down in price and don't care if it's not an iPad.

Android's tablet offerings could learn from this (And yes, I know it would be impossible to produce this tablet at this price and make a profit).

Terrible article. Terrible summary.

[HumanEmulator]

The "summary" makes it sound like a port is available now, and then throws in an iPad comparison that's nowhere in the original article. From TFA:

"Figure this will take a good long while. Keep your expectations very low and for now enjoy WebOS..."

and my favorite...

"Further complicating the initiative, some of the developers don't yet have TouchPads."

So this is 3 guys planning a porting effort of an older version of Android. (Google hasn't released the source code to Honeycomb yet.) Also from TFA:

"Still, people who bought it took a risk, since it's not clear if HP will continue to develop the operating system."

Really, that's not clear? You think HP might be planning major OS updates for a tablet they just fire-saled?

Re:Terrible article. Terrible summary.

[netsharc]

Indeed...

Hey PCWorld, I'm planning on porting Android to the iPad, no I don't have an iPad yet, I have no time and I have no idea how to do it, but I have a wiki. Why don't you write an article about me?

Well, it was fucking PCWorld. Should've expected that shit from them.

Re:Logical contradiction

[Dracos]

Mods, please irrevocably suspend user account MyCleanAss (#2444274) as an obvious spammer. Also, please pursue legal action against this person who is clearly violating the Geeknet terms of use.

Not looking at it for now

[MichaelSmith]

My wife picked up our touchpad yesterday from Harvey Norman for 98 AUD. Its hard not to be happy at that price. I can see that most of the time we will use the web browser to it doesn't matter much what operating system we run.

Re:Not looking at it for now

[Gaygirlie]

My wife picked up our touchpad yesterday from Harvey Norman for 98 AUD. Its hard not to be happy at that price. I can see that most of the time we will use the web browser to it doesn't matter much what operating system we run.

I too wish I could pick up a HP TouchPad for that price. But unfortunately the Finnish shops haven't realized the firesale and are still stubbornly selling them with the original price... :/

Re:Logical contradiction

[geminidomino]

isn't their spirit what made america great in the first place?

They're spamming scumbags, but yeah... their spirit has certainly played a part in making America what it is today...

Re:best advertising post ever

[ciderbrew]

Really? My friend told me MyCleanPC is malware. I am now worried MyCleanPC could be bad and make all my gigabits run slower if I use it. My computing has many gigabits plus lots of rams too. It is hard to trust MyCleanPC and other products when I see adverts in message boards.

If that was true

[aglider]

Then HP should either consider to go back on its own footsteps or to sack the CEO.
Better both.
And, by the way, the iPad really stinks.

Re:Logical contradiction

[Opportunist]

(*delivered in the best Clint Eastwood voice*)

You're really getting on my nerves, sonny. You better be careful, I've DDoSed people for less...

Re:Logical contradiction

[DarwinSurvivor]

Perhaps the mods should modify the script to auto suspend any account who links to MyCleanPC?

TFTY

Re:Logical contradiction

[ByOhTek]

As an owner of a Toshiba Thrive, and several IPad 2s, I'd have to disagree with you completely.

Can you expand the storage by 128GB with an SD card on the IPad[2]? No
Can you plug HDMI and USB into the IPad[2]? No
Does the IPad[2] have a user replaceable battery if yours dies, and you don't want the downtime of a standard replacement/fix? No
Does the IPad[2] have a 1280x800 or better screen? No
Can you get an IPad2 for $550, with 16GB of storage? No
Does the IPad[2] have more apps? Yes
-- Does it's apps contain a wider range of functionality? No
Can you get a large range of apps to give you most of the fun/functionality you need on an IPad[2], for free? No
Does the IPad[2] have flash? No

So, the advantages ot the IPad[2] are more apps (not necessarily functionally more, just more), and probably less malware (only a problem if you are ADD or a moron when downloading software), no flash, and it helps if your wallet is too heavy. Oh, and you get a device with a logo that shouts "I'm a pretentious prick!"

Yum.

A different point of view.

[MachineShedFred]

Can you expand the storage by 128GB with an SD card on the IPad[2]? No
Do most people in the target market care? No.
Are you in the target market? No.

Can you plug HDMI and USB into the IPad[2]? No
Can you plug HDMI into the iPad[2] with an available dongle? Yes.
Was the previous quoted question a half-truth? Yes.

Does the IPad[2] have a user replaceable battery if yours dies, and you don't want the downtime of a standard replacement/fix? No
I've got no argument with that.
Does the IPad[2] have a 1280x800 or better screen? No
Or that.

Can you get an IPad2 for $550, with 16GB of storage? No
You're right.
Can you get an iPad2 for $499, with 16GB of storage? Yes.

Does the IPad[2] have more apps? Yes
-- Does it's apps contain a wider range of functionality? No
Are subjective statements subjective? Yes.
Can you get a large range of apps to give you most of the fun/functionality you need on an IPad[2], for free? No
Are subjective statements still subjective? Still yes.
Have either of us tried every single app available for the iPad in order to make an objective statement regarding app availability, pricing, and functionality? No.

Does the IPad[2] have flash? No
Might this be regarded by some people as a feature, rather than a missing feature? Yes.

Re:A different point of view.

[Deliveranc3]

How do we get on this "Target Market" gravy train?

We support devices, we recommend devices, hell we buy a lot of devices as gifts. These gifts often create whole customer ecosystems in families and recipients.

Now I task the Slashdot collective with this question: How do we as geeks, nerds, and savvy consumers become "The Target Market" how do we outshine the shine. How do we get our complaints into the media, the marketer's ear, the boardroom. Let's make a plan together and follow it through. People paying $500 for a toy they think is a computer is just unacceptable. People buying something without the option of having data backed up to a removable external system is unacceptable (Support a borked IPad ["It won't turn on " ,"I'm ready to wipe... oh wait!" vs one that backs up user data on removable media).

Can we implement a standard $15 fee, where we research the best product for the user and tell them where to buy it? How about a "you're on your own for buying a stupid product without proper counsel" clause?
Is being hard asses the way to go?

My Dad just bought my mom a $3000 Mac laptop without consulting me, she HATES it. How is this crap still going on? I didn't know she wanted a laptop even!

Re:A different point of view.

[SiMac]

Does the IPad[2] have flash? No
Might this be regarded by some people as a feature, rather than a missing feature? Yes.

Who would find this to be a feature? Especially considering you don't have to install flash on any tablet that has it.

Those of us who support open standards. If all tablets could run Flash, there would be more Flash out there. That's bad for HTML5.

Re:A different point of view.

[scot4875]

Can you plug HDMI and USB into the IPad[2]? No
Can you plug HDMI into the iPad[2] with an available dongle? Yes.
Was the previous quoted question a half-truth? Yes.

So you can plug a standard connector into an extortionately priced proprietary dongle? Awesome!

And you still didn't answer anything about lack of USB support.

--Jeremy

Re:A different point of view.

[dgatwood]

Agreed. It's slow, buggy, and it crashes browsers and/or browser helpers with such regularity that one can safely assume that the mere existence of Flash on your computer or device poses a security hole so big you could drive a truck through it.

Flash also leads people to create overly complex web site designs that don't work well over slow connections (e.g. EDGE, 3G, etc.) and waste tons of bandwidth that could cost customers actual money on metered networks (Comcast, AT&T DSL/U-Verse, pretty much all cellular services, and many others). Add to that all the stupid banner ads and other such nonsense that uses Flash for no good reason, and it is really a bandwidth pig.

Finally, Flash is inherently fundamentally incompatible with small devices like phones because of its CPU overhead. If I play a Flash game on my laptop, I can run the battery down in about an hour and a half. Doing normal work, my laptop lasts six hours. Scale that to a phone, and you can safely assume that if every web page used Flash, your smartphones would have to be recharged several times a day just from doing light web browsing.

So yeah, it's a feature. As much as I'd like the option of installing Flash on my iPhone (in a *separate* web browser that only gets used for the occasional site that require it), I'm really glad it doesn't come with it installed by default, and given the choice between no Flash at all and built-in Flash, I'd pick no Flash in a heartbeat.

Re:Logical contradiction

[Mr0bvious]

Computers are like air-conditioners - they work great until you start opening windows.

Re:Logical contradiction

[CastrTroy]

Can you get an IPad2 for $550, with 16GB of storage?

No, unless you want to pay extra for it. The iPad2 with 16GB of storage is only $499.

Re:Logical contradiction

[sootman]

Can you name one 10" tablet currently on the market that has the same battery life (or better) than the iPad 2? Is it also as thin (or thinner), as light (or lighter), and the same price (or cheaper) than the iPad 2?

"Pretentious prick", indeed.

Re:Logical contradiction

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

I don't know... I got a good chuckle out of this:

Everything was overclocking and running at maximum gigabits!

I might be in favor of just letting him ride if we continue to get gems like that.

Re:Logical contradiction

[scot4875]

Only one of the criteria you listed really matters.

You can't be bothered to pick up a tablet that's 2mm thicker and 0.1lb heavier? I think the "pretentious prick" label fits well.

--Jeremy