“HP unveiled its new webOS-powered TouchPad tablet to the Australian media [yesterday] morning, and it was met with a resounding “meh,'” Adam Turner reports for The Sydney Morning Herald.
“Anthony McMahon, vice president of HP webOS, took to the stage to sell the TouchPad’s virtues – but what we saw was yet another also-ran,” Turner reports. “The TouchPad has a Snapdragon dual-core 1.2GHz processor and 1GB of RAM under the bonnet, but you wouldn’t know it based on the sluggish hands-on performance… The TouchPad’s menus are slow to rotate, it’s sometimes slow to respond to touches and the browsing experience falls short of Mobile Safari and the Honeycomb browser.”
“McMahon kept throwing around the word ‘unique’ but could offer very little to back it up. Things didn’t turn ugly, but McMahon copped a few brutally honest questions such as a straight out ‘why would I buy one?'” Turner reports. “‘The way you interact with the device is unique,’ we were told, although we didn’t see anything ground-breaking.”
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Turner reports, “It’s hard to find a reason to get excited about the TouchPad… With no killer feature to capture the imagination, HP’s TouchPad will have a tough job winning people away from the competition.”
ull article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “macca” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
HP bumps Rubinstein from webOS lead after TouchPad launch failure – July 11, 2011
Rubinstein addresses poor HP TouchPad reviews, compares webOS to Apple’s early Mac OS X – July 5, 2011
HP fiddles while Apple innovates – July 10, 2011
Rubinstein addresses poor HP TouchPad reviews, compares webOS to Apple’s early Mac OS X – July 5, 2011
HP TouchPad simply cannot compete with Apple’s iPad 2 – July 5, 2011
Pogue reviews HP TouchPad: ‘Doesn’t come close’ to Apple’s iPad – June 30, 2011
Mossberg: HP TouchPad ‘simply no match’ for Apple iPad 2 – June 30, 2011
They won’t “have a tough job”. They just simply “won’t”.
The norm among artists and designers is ” Copy the best and improve on it” !!!
Other than that it’s a crap !
“The HP TouchPad”,
or, as it will soon be known as, “More blood on iPad’s Touch Screen”.
HP’s expertise nowadays mostly consists of manufacturing plastic encrusted junk. I don’t see the TouchPad deviating much from this. HP hasn’t offered anything unique in the consumer area for quite some time.
Having owned an HP handheld before I shudder at the thought of owning anything made by HP. HP’s thought process seems to be to manufacture something for as cheap as possible without any thought to design functionality. This is an area where Apple excels.
The HP handheld running Windows Mobile 6 was the worst piece of crap I’ve ever owned. I don’t think HP did any usability tests before foisting it on an unsuspecting public. The salesman I talked to told me that it was a better alternative to Palm and I took his word for it. It was a complete disaster to say the least. I will never trust anything with an HP brand on it – I know it will turn out to be an extremely disappointing experience.
So now HP is trying to foist this piece of crap TouchPad on an Australian public. I’m sorry but it just won’t work. There’s no chance anyone with an IQ above 20 will touch the TouchPad with a 20′ barge pole. In fact a leper would be more welcome in my home than the TouchPad. There’s no pulling wool over the eyes of the Australians – they know crap when they see it.
The TouchPad will fizzle out like a damp squib and will be quickly consigned to the bottom of the Great Australian Bight.
Tit for tat. Crocodile Dundee III for the HP Touch Pad. Crap for crap.
😀
I reminisce back in the day to my youth when HP made the best calculators, functional, unique, great design and finish, best user interface. Actually, I wish I still had one, that is how great they were.
HP = Hilarious Products. 🙂
HP should really staff up its QA dept. Apple never announce anything when its ready for release with 100% certainty. HP and other companies announce their products when its at alpha stage!! I guess HP is learning something from MSFT, huh?! 🙂
“There’s no chance anyone with an IQ above 20 will touch the TouchPad with a 20′ barge pole.”
Those with an IQ below 20 all have Android tablets already. HP just can’t win.
So in other words he failed to provide a visual representation of his “unique” on the POS! Maybe he should have brought up some FLASH video sites to show how unique his POS was. 😉
Yet, consumer reviews of the product are off the charts. Average ratings on Amazon and FutureShop are 4.5 stars.
Go figure …. I noticed that too on Amazon …..
Gotta wonder if HP is stacking the deck?
Sane people stay away. Fanboys vote it up.
Oh well! Another week, another “iPad kill”.
HP printers suck hard, the TouchPad will as well
Greetings, I understand that this is “Mac Daily” an Apple favored website. I used the iPad1 for a year and iPad2 for two months until I purchased the Touchpad on July 1st. At first there were a lot of negative reviews but it seems things are somewhat turning the tables with the Touchpad. I do miss the rear camera and the app selection when I had the iPad2 but I would not underestimate the HP Touchpad. It has a lot of features the iPad2 cannot do. One of the legitimate comparisons between the two is from techharvest on Youtube. Remember that the operating system (WebOS) was something acquired from Palm about a year ago, so I wouldn’t compare old HP stuff to this device.
FYI, I’m not a fanboy of any company, I just like good devices. If you click on my name you will see that I own and test out a lot of tablets.
It’s all about personal preference.
I’ve been a loooong time Apple user (since the Apple II) and have always just preferred their products over others and absolutely love my iPad.
I for one would love to see HP succeed with WebOS in this area, however I believe that there really isn’t a tablet market out there for other companies to sell their warez in; at least not for the general consumer. There will always be gadget freaks and technophiles who buy these products, but for the general consumer, there is only the iPad, just as with the iPod. So while other companies may do okay, they need to stop comparing themselves too the iPad.
Does anything can be better than Apple products ? Sure not, you fanboys look harder under the hood of your mac’s , and you’ll see an inferior hardware that doesn’t cost a have of the price you pay. Windows laptop’s have a much better hardware for a price twice cheaper, all you pay is for the shiny exterior. Hah hah hah!
Mike:
Just making stuff up doesn’t work here. And Windows laptops have one major flaw that “apple’s” don’t: they’re stuck running Windoze. No one wants that anymore.
“Does anything can be better than Apple products ?”
haha.. hey retard- learn how to fucking convey a thought before anything else. good luck!
Chill. They may be foreign using broken english. Or Yoda 😉
Having seen one in action, I can verify that the things are obviously slow. And I’m not just talking Adobe Flash trash. The marketing behind the thing is HILARIOUS because they pulled the ridiculous trick of stating the OPPOSITE of what the gadget actually is, which of course invites the customer to test the claims, ALL of which FAIL miserably. Very bad show HP. Red ink for you.
And it’s a shame that WebOS continues to suffer from bad hardware. It’s not a bad OS and eventually it may be the competitor we require against Apple’s iOS. But not in this outing! Hopefully with Jon Rubinstein out of the picture WebOS will flourish. He may well have been the source of its problems so far.
All you fanboys are so blinded. I love Apple, but I’m objective. I don’t give a shit about any of you or Steve Jobs. When I pick something up, and start using it, if it’s great, it’s great, regardless of what logo is on it.
I’ve been heavily involved in tablets for years. I owned the iPad 1 and have a lot of experience with other tablets. Tablets in business and for personal use. I tested the TouchPad last week and although I like the build quality on the iPad better, the TouchPad is really a great tablet. The best one out there next to the iPad.
In terms of who people use a tablet, I get more done on the TouchPad than on the iPad. webOS is simply better on a tablet. When I go back to the iPad it’s so limiting in comparison. I like all the Apps, build quality, etc. with the iPad but the TouchPad has a lot of benefits.
If you read actual user reviews, you’ll see that while there are some complaints of it being slow at first, it mostly subsides after they use the device for a few days. Now that Rubenstein is gone (socially inept idiot that he is), I have full confidence that webOS will have most of its kinks ironed out shortly.
webOS, I predict, will have a stake in the ground in the tablet space because it’s a damn good operating system.
iCal time.