“Sure, the iPad will sell a few million units to the Apple faithful, of whom there are many. Being very little else than an oversized iPod Touch, or an extra-large iPhone without the phone, iPads will appeal to the same people who already use the minuscule versions,” Bylund writes. “But there’s a flash flood of competing products coming up… Hewlett-Packard, for instance, promises to present a tablet of its own that has been in development for five years, looks similar to the sleek iPad design, and gives you the full experience of a larger computer. This one has a customized Microsoft Windows 7 operating system and full Flash support.”
Bylund writes, “The HP slate rocks an Intel Atom chip while the iPad runs on an ARM processor developed in-house by Apple… The iPad is a market-defining device, but not likely to remain a top choice in the market it created for very long. It’ll cannibalize iPod sales and sink in a sea of choices… In the end, given these shortcomings the iPad will join the Apple TV in the footnotes of Apple’s history.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Genius prognostication sometimes hides in strange places. Anders has quickly shown us one strange place that we can safely ignore. There must be some unwritten rule where each publication has to have at least one stupid anti-whatever-Apple’s-about-to-launch article in the database for some unknown reason. Whichever hack draws the short straw has to stick his byline on it. That’s really our best guess; people can’t really be that obtuse can they? Regardless, we’ve iCal’ed this article for future use.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “David E.” and “Luis E” for the heads up.]
I expect he said the same thing about the iPhone.
Yeah right….any buyers for the Brooklyn bridge?
Well, now we know who the Fool is…
Oh, yeah, because a “rockin'” Atom processor and Windows f****n’ 7 is sooooo much better than Apple’s custom A4 and the iPhone OS, which is, y’know, built around a touch interface.
Geezus, what a hit whore. The guy can’t actually believe what he wrote, can he? He can’t really be that stupid.
——RM
He doesn’t understand that it not just another tablet pc.
Sure and I believe in Father Christmas!
Wow. You really can’t make people see. An HP tablet running Windows 7 is the best he’s got? Man, they’re not even making it tough for Apple. There are people who do foolish things and then are people who are fools. This gentleman couldn’t have found a more aptly named employer.
Yeah, the guy contradicts himself in his own article:
“It’ll cannibalize iPod sales…” and “the iPad will sell a few million units to the Apple faithful”.
Apple still sells over 50 million iPods each year the last 3 years. To truly “cannibalize” sales, Apple would have to sell in excess of 5-10 million per year. Does this guy even read what he wirtes?
There’s no denying that much of this evaluation is widespread. The challenge for Apple will be to attract customers beyond the faithful to iPad. And, if there are alternatives, such as the HP model discussed here that are actual computers (sorry Windows nonetheless) and not simply a larger version of touch, that’s going to be an even greater challenge.
And, MDN’s iCal is getting very crowded on this matter.
It amazes me how the naysayers forget the X factor of Apple products — APPLE SOFTWARE!!! It can’t be duplicated and Windows will NEVER EVER quench the thirst of the masses!! Rather, they will choke on Windows all the way to the Apple store where the dark cloud will be lifted! It’s not the iPad! IT’S WHAT RUNS ON IT!! Why don’t they get it?!! O M G!!
So many tech writers on somebody’s payroll!
eeeeer…….. Everyone talked that same smack when the iPhone came to the market. These idiots never quite get it. It’s the software morons.
The hp slate may have a few things going for it. Like a decent sized hard drive, the ipad choices aren’t so great. Also the ability to install anything you want as opposed to a closed system where those decisions are made for you. The downside is that it runs windows and probably won’t be instant on and battery life will be crap.
I prefer apple products so I’ll end up with the ipad. One huge advantage the ipad has other than the apple magic is the iTunes/AppStore ecosystem. That’s a killer feature that can’t be matched by anyone no matter how hard they try.
A quick note about flash also. I use click2flash on my mac and I love it.
I was thinking how awesome it would be if apple bought click2flash and put it on the ipad iPhone and iPod touch. It would be an awesome solution and a welcome option for countless people. However I can live without flash but this would be a welcome feature and solution for me.
“”Sure, the iPad will sell a few million units to the Apple faithful, of whom there are many.”
You could substitute the words “iPod” or “iPhone” into that sentence in place of “iPad” and pretend it’s 2002 or 2007 all over again.
I did a trial subscription to the Motley Fool once, around 10 years ago. I didn’t care for a lot of what they said then; typical analysts giving conflicting advice based on the same poor data set and personal opinions. The worst part is, they are *still* spamming me with emails to subscribe, even though I’ve tried to get off their mailing list. This group is like a bad cold. They’re insufferable, confusing, and you have a devil of a time shaking them off. So at this point, I don’t even try anymore; I just have their emails shunted off to the junk folder automatically. I just have to empty the junk folder periodically. Otherwise, they are dead to me.
Who is the patron saint of “press tech experts”? Wile E. Coyote is my guess.
I still hope to see apple do something like an “ipad pro”
that would be somewhere in between the iPhone os and osx.
I think there is a sweetspot in the middle there somewhere and would really love to see apple find it.
Every talking point, straight off the memo. Incredible.
The problem with dolts like this is they live in a vacuum, where they don’t read all the other articles that other dolts with talking-point lists have already written.
No matter.
Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.
@ Stephen
Back off, he’s my cousin.
@LordRobin… I know many “analysts” and believe me they really are that stupid… Not all of them, but if you dig into the background of these people you find that they have absolutely no business writing about technology, finance or anything for that matter. Most of them were the bottom of their class at some small liberal arts college and can barely form a complete sentence. You should see the unedited copy… scary shit. Enderle is the poster-child for this group of morons.
@iMaki — you are so right on that point. It is the software. Who wants a modified Windows OS to work with touch or an iPhone OS built around touch. Plus, people will load HP’s Slate Device with whatever software they want but it won’t work very well because its not built for touch. I’m surprised no one here hasn’t mentioned the fact that HP’s device only has a 3 1/2 hour battery life — which still remains to be tested.
The way analysts like the Motley Fool is to write a bunch of wildly conflicting “alerts”; ones that take opposed views. Then whichever way the market eventually goes, they can show quotes from their previous writings that show that they predicted the eventuality. They look like miracle prognosticators. Very few “fools” pore over the complete set of writings of these guys to learn how they work. These guys are totally unaccountable for their idiocy unless someone like MDN iCals them.
@kevin
have had the same experience and did the same thing!
“Another Hit whore iCal’d”
Frankly, I stopped reading after ‘Apple faithful’.
“Sure, the iPad will sell a few million units to the Apple faithful, of whom there are many.
Just like….
“Sure, the iPhone will sell a few million units to the Apple faithful, of whom there are many.
and just like…
“Sure, the iPod will sell a few thousand units to the Apple faithful, of whom there are many.
Anyone tired of this pattern? And don’t these sad wanjers get tired of being proven wrong.
Maybe HP’s tablet will be better than the IPad, but this article sure the hell didn’t give any reason to believe that. Reads like an HP fanboy rant instead of an objective review.
@ Kevin J. Weis and Spark:
you guys are right about the Motley Fools. I also suscribed to their newsletters back in 1999-2000 time frame. These jesters were the same clowns preaching the “new economy” of the Internet. When that bubble popped, they suddenly were claiming stalwarts of “sound business practices, not exhuberances”. The title appropiately fits an anybody that follows their advice.
Here’s what I understood so far about Apples strategy:
1st generation of iPod Touch and iPhone was great devices, but they had not so many functions. Later iPhone 3G came up and iPhone OS v2 you gained access to download apps. So you can say 1st gen. iPod Touch & iPhone were just beta devices of future product. Apple updated iPhone by adding new great feature to every new generation. By that way Apple “made” people buy new iPhone every year.
iPad is just another beta of new device. They use iPhone OS there because it’s better to use already existing OS that has already many apps. I think when developers will make many apps specially for iPad that uses whole screen and runs perfectly and then Apple will create another version of Mac OS X, which is more advised than iPhone OS.
‘”Fail-looking” iPad is part of Apples plan. Apple knows when it’s time to show aces.
Anders Bylund (Bio and Archives*)
Anders Bylund is a steady contributor to the Fool, with a weekly feature to his name. He tends to graze the pastures of technology and online business,…
That explains a lot. Bylund is an ass in goat’s clothing.
*http://www.fool.com/about/staff/andersbylund/author.htm
When will they finally get it?! Windows is not a feature – it’s a bug!
So apparently HP and “friends” now make operating systems and advanced multitouch UIs, and they must have been doing so for at least a few years, I can’t wait to see what they come up with!!
Newsflash, everyone hinging their future on microsoft’s “innovation” is in for a rude awakening as soon as they decide to open their eyes.
HP is next. Then Acer, we’ll need a gaming mac for the death knell
The only source I know with a flawless prognostication record is MDN.
– “I still can’t believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player?”
– “All that hype for an MP3 player? Break-thru digital device? The Reality Distiortion Field is starting to warp Steve’s mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off.”
– “Better bring that price down or you wont sell any of these babies”
Comments from clueless MacCentral readers after the 2001 iPod introduction.
“The HP slate rocks an Intel Atom chip while the iPad runs on an ARM processor developed in-house by Apple…” Apple had the opportunity to use the Atom. Intel was *dying* for Apple to use the Atom. Apple decided it wasn’t good enough. What does that tell you?
HP will be joined by a few dozen other iPad wannabes of similar design and capability. All, in the end, will be fighting for the scraps from Apple’s table.
How do these guys keep a job?
WTF!!
@ Msavwah: “The hp slate may have a few things going for it. Like a decent sized hard drive, the ipad choices aren’t so great.”
Actually these devices aren’t meant to be primary computers or for those that use them as their primary computer, those people are more than likely casual computer users, so the need for huge hard drives is not important as you would expect.
“Also the ability to install anything you want as opposed to a closed system where those decisions are made for you.”
Apple’s system is not closed, it is limited. Decisions aren’t made for you, you’re provided with a limited selection of software to choose from. Of course in this case “limited” means choosing from a library of about 140,000 applications. From an average user’s perspective, this is not much of a limitation at all.
@ Geo –
Not sure what you’re talking about when you say, “By that way Apple “made” people buy new iPhone every year.”
I still have my first-generation iPhone and I love it. I never saw the need to buy a new iPhone because this one still rocks, and with the free software upgrades it does about 95 percent of what the latest iPhone can do.
Sure, it’s a little slower, and doesn’t have GPS, but it’s still the same great phone I enjoyed when it was brand new (and $15 a month cheaper to operate). Apple doesn’t “make” people do anything — except covet the best tech products on the planet.
One of these days I’ll buy a new iPhone, but it won’t be anytime soon, and it won’t be because Apple came out with an even better model. As for the iPad, I’ll buy one of those as a replacement for my G4 Powerbook. Personally, I can’t wait.
So funny, the way he says “This one has a customized Microsoft Windows 7” Like he’s actually proud of it.
When it’s like a cream-cake man saying his products have a dead rat lurking inside each one…
Stop me and buy one. Every bite – a delicious surprise.
Yeah, and they also probably think they can beat Mike Tyson.
Two glaring duhs:
“This one has a customized Microsoft Windows 7 operating system and full Flash support.”
FLASH IS DEAD(or dying) PEOPLE!!!!!
and Windows………..well it’s Windows….need I say more?
ok. more.
@btaylor rumours of Flash’s death may prove to be greatly exaggerated, or at the very least decidedly premature. It’s the biggest sticking point for me in buying an iPad. Jobs’ claim of best browsing experience just doesn’t stack up with so much content inaccessible.
Apple has made it’s pitch. It had two choices for the iPad. Mac OS or iPhone OS. It could have gone the HP way quite easily. OS X runs rather well on an atom, especially from a ssd. It could quite easily have produced the ‘full computing experience’ the Fool advocates by adding touchscreen controls to Mac OS.
It decided that the more limited (in some ways) iPhone OS on a more miserly chip was best.
If it was going to be my only device, I’d have preferred a mod’d Mac OS X. As a supplementary device, i think Apple has it right. We’ll see.
Me thinks he does protest too much….
(hit whore)
Again, Apple’s strength is leveraging there entier ecosystem. What does HP have, MS???
@kevt
The iPad is not meant to replace a full fledge laptop. It is not it’s intent. I know that people, like my wife, could very easily get along with an iPad as opposed to a Macbook, wich is what she has right now. 90% of home users do not need a full fledged computer to e-mail, view media or read. This is what the iPad is here for and what Apple intent is all along.
Trying to make a tablet with Windows 7 on an Atom is like trying to make a high performance motorbike out of car parts.
Do you remember all the iPod killers the press trumpeted? Guess what Apple has sold 250 million iPods.
Do you remember the iTunes killers? Guess what 10 billion songs later Apple’s the largest music retailer in the US.
Do you remember all the iPhone killers, The Storm, N900, Nexus One, HD2, Droid etc. Apple’s making more money from Mobile than Nokia.
Can you guess what’s going to happen to all the “iPad killers?”
“The HP slate rocks an Intel Atom chip..” Is this guy out of middle school yet.
As I’ve said before, when you have use other companies products to show how unique your product is, you have already run out of ideas. The HP pad is “special” because it relies on Intel, Flash and Windows? Is that really the best this guy and HP can do? Oh yea, I forgot, it has a USB port or something.
Oh come on guys. The article has to be sarcasm, doesn’t it?
HP has been developing its next tablet offering for five years?
Jesus, what were they working on? I mean, the OS isn’t even theirs. The form factor didn’t even hit the main stream until Apple introduced iPhone. Multi-touch wasn’t conceived of.
What he really meant to say is that HP has been designing and re-designing and re-designing their next thing to follow the lead of what is sadly tech’s only real recent innovator. Guess who?
A huge number of geeks and other technology-watchers I’ve talked to or read online have been heavily critical of the iPad. It reminds me a lot of the iPhone post-announcement but pre-launch.
However, I work in a computer store, and I have yet to talk to a customer who is negative towards the iPad. Most people seem at least cautiously optimistic at worst. I’ve mentioned it to a lot of customers looking at netbooks, and they were all very interested and most decided to put off purchasing a netbook in order to wait to see it when it’s available (which won’t be until the end of April as I’m in Canada).
To me, the most ridiculous “criticism” that gets constantly repeated is: “it’s just a large iPod touch” or “it’s just a large iPhone without the phone”. To which I generally respond “Yeah, and? How is that a bad thing?” I’ve yet to have a good response to that.
Motley Fool indeed… an experiment in amateur investing advice that turned out to be… amateur investing advice. Its day of glory never came, and MF is just a corpse which doesn’t seem to know it’s deceased.
Anything HP and friends could come up with, is by his own valuation – Just Another Tablet PC, which has been rejected by business and PC land. If HP cannot transform itself into an IBM soon, in a couple of years it will be more like a Dell.
Forget about estimating how many iPads will sell this year. Any guesses or bets on how many millions the iPad will be pre-ordered by the end of this weekend?
Bylund is a hater. He was the one who floated the mistake that 1.5M T-Mo G1s were pre-sold, and when I took him to task for his mistake, he never answered.
And, this year he put Apple as the #1 Worst Stock for 2010. He basically came to that conclusion based upon iPhone sales only going up 9% last in the Fall of 09. Of course, he didn’t realize that the 9% was shipments, and that real sell-thru was 41%, cause in 08, they had to restock the channel, which boosted shipments by 2M.
HP tablet: The full windoze experience complete with viruses and malware. Oh boy
They will kill the iPad because it’s their only hope of competing.
Et tu HP and friends? Et tu?!!!?
@Kevin and Spark:
Yep, same exact experience. Anything with “Motley” in it goes directly to /dev/null these days.
“Hewlett-Packard, for instance, promises to present a tablet of its own that has been in development for five years, looks similar to the sleek iPad design, and gives you the full experience of a larger computer. This one has a customized Microsoft Windows 7 operating system and full Flash support.”
Good God, what tripe! A “customized” Windows 7 system means pruned back to fit the HP tablet that was designed 5 years ago. “Full experience of a larger computer”? Really? Is he aware that the iPad will run on OS X, just as the iPhone does? Unlike Windows, Unix can be scaled to fit any device. It’s STILL OS X.
I expect that the iPad will cannibalize iPod Touch sales. Isn’t the main thing holding back Touch sales, screen size? And if the Touch has already sold 45 million units, doesn’t it look rosier for the iPad?
Hmmmm. Resource hungry Windows 7, a disk hard drive, and Flash? . . . Sounds like a hot little number, to me. Slow too. . . . Maybe even expensive. I’m sure that it will be a real crowd pleaser.
But isn’t this still just vaporware until it’s officially announced and hits the market?
Just goes to show you how much these journanalyst read and copy MDN. Consider the oh so slight modifications needed to convert Bylund’s article into a Zune Thang post:
“You MAC lemmings are yada yada. Hewlett-Packard promises to present a tablet of its own that has been in development for five years, looks similar to the sleek iPad design, and gives you the full experience of a larger computer. This one has a customized Microsoft Windows 7 operating system and full Flash support.
The IT guys at work love it, and my mom can use it as a cookie sheet next time we have a Windows party.
Just you wait, soon DOS will wipe out the MACs and Zune will take over the iPods, and the zunophone will obliterate the iphone. Then it will be buh bye MAC fools.”
See just a few touches and you have a trademark Zune redundant repetitive posting. All that is needed is a fan club at the Motley Fool to explain to everyone else that Bylund is using sarcasm.
I predict you will be getting a LOT of use out of that iCal’d reminder of this tragically stupid article.
For fun, try reading it again with the word “iPhone” substituted for “iPad.”
That’s how much fun we’ll have “remembering” this spectacular face-palmer two years from now.
@Msavwah IQ=52
I get sick of all this open/closed platform software crap. You can buy whatever you want at the App store. And be reasonably assured it works. Anyone can develop free apps too and Distribute them there. So basically you either are porn obsessed and/or steal other developers apps by illegally downloading them.
It will be so good to have the iPad actually on the market so we no longer have to read ultra-idiotic-speculative-garbage from tech pundits who can’t think of anything better to blunder about. (o_0)
There will be many others. But will they work as well?
I agree with the article. The ipad is not even a Mac. It is overpriced, limited in so many ways. I have a mac now. I dont want ipad computer that limits my software.
@Motley — FOOL,
Just a few of the many comments from the article site.
“I’ve been reading the Motely Fool for many years and they have always poo poo’d APPL. Luckily I never listened and stock I have held since 2002 is up 1900% and 2003 1800%. No I didn’t add an extra zero.
Makes you wonder what else they have been so wrong on.
This is supposed to be the place where you get unique and original analysis, but this article seems to be a rehash of the introduction of the iPhone, which was a rehash of the introduction of the iPod….
Sad really,”
“This article by Anders Bylund is not only myopic, but seems also to be an attempt at Apple stock manipulation.
This is a good example of why I don’t trust information or advice from Motley Fool. Bylund clearly has no clue about Apple and this article makes him an authentic fool.”
As you can see, in the old days everyone hated Apple and the comments reflected that…. now the readers love Apple and the comments reflect that.
Motley — FOOL is just that. A stock manipulating effort if ever there is one.
Just a thought,
en
Sorry, I could not resist. Here is one more of the article replys.
They make me smile so..
“Oh, please, more prognostication from Anders? For the guy who got the 1.5M T-Mo G1s pre-sold wrong, and the same guy who called Apple the Worst stock for 2010, you now want to add predictions about iPad killers?
You wrote “the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPad is not unique, nor necessarily the best of breed in the media tablet sector”
Anders, the iPad is NOT a tablet computer. It is a computing appliance. Tablet computers use laptop cpus and laptop OSes, just like your HP Slate. The iPad does not use a laptop cpu or a laptop OS, cause it’s not a tablet computer.
You wrote, “Being very little else than an oversized iPod Touch, or an extra-large iPhone without the phone, iPads will appeal to the same people who already use the minuscule versions.”
You make it sound as if being a larger iPod touch is a bad thing? Why is that? Prior bias?
Is it because they are not successful? I mean, how may iPod touches and iPhones have they sold so far? Over 60M? I’d say that’s significantly more than the number of tablet computers in the same timeframe.
You wrote, ” have a hard time overcoming what it lacks, like running multiple programs at once, presenting a full-featured Web experience with Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) Flash support, or doing anything you can’t already get in the smaller iPod or iPhone packages.”
Tell me what the advantage is for running multiple 3rd-party apps? Pandora in the background? Developers have started to figure out how to run radio in the background. Flash apps requires a user-interaction feature set, like hover, that tablets don’t have. Sure, tablets can run Flash video, but most video like Youtube already runs H.264 video that’s perfectly fine, and many if not most video purveyors are considering using H.264, a web standard. Flash is NOT a web standard, no matter how ubiquitous.
You wrote, “looks similar to the sleek iPad design, and gives you the full experience of a larger computer.”
Okay, so, it has an Atom chip with Win7 OS. Guess what, it’s a netbook without the keyboard. And, since it’s sleek, there isn’t more than a 3-cell battery in there, and we KNOW how long a netbook with a 3-cell battery lasts, at most, 3 hours. And, you’ll get Windows virii with that “full experience of a larger computer”.
You don’t get it, the iPad is NOT a tablet computer, precisely to avoid virii, to mitigate the battery life issue, and to not be a computer, but an appliance.
Anders, your analysis is on par with John Dvorak, Rob Enderle, Paul Thurrott, Scott Moritz and the like. It’s laughably bad. Keep your head in the sand.”
…. wow… nice bait