Say Hello To The Palm Touchpad | Hacker News Reader

Say Hello To The Palm Touchpad

crunchgear.com

31 pointsbhavin11 comments

I wish they had gone with a different name to distinguish itself more from the iPad. It's like when the rumors started coming out that Apple was going to call their tablet a 'slate'. Even Ballmer stood on stage to show off the 'Slate PC'. Instead Apple went with iPad, and everyone has a 'pad' device now.

Maybe the name signals an attempt to position it between the iPod Touch and the iPad?

Does anyone else think this is a terrible name? For me at least, this brings up an image of the trackpad on my laptop - which is... imperfect at best.

Aside from that, it just seems horribly generic. Touch? Pad? That's all you have to say about your product?

Yes, but it's just as generic as i-anything, which is similar to e-anything. I'm pretty sure "e-phones" could have been a mid-90's spoof name of a pocket-pc. And "pad" was derided as similar to a feminine pad, a much worse link than a trackpad.

The magic was in product and marketing execution, and now i- (and "pad") signifies something more than generic. If HP/Palm pulls this off correctly they could integrate "touch-" into a whole line of WebOS devices that has brand-recognition with consumers.

If they want to do that, then they should have avoided "pad." They can't come out with a "touchPhone" or a "touchPod" without looking like they're trying to imitate Apple. Not that HP/Palm don't deserve some creedence, but I would never recommend anyone go head to head with Apple on branding alone - and that goes double if your strategy is clearly derivative of theirs.

TouchThis (TM)

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The software looks cool and spotlights some of the deficiencies of iOS and the iPad, particularly around multitasking, integration and notification. But it's a complete bummer that they didn't give the price or battery life and availability was just "summer" for wifi and "later" for 3G. The fact that there is no 64 GB model reinforces my fears that it won't be price competitive.

The Touchpad could be lapped by the upcoming iPad 2 before it even reaches any users. The iPad needs strong competition but this is not looking promising.

I have to admit WebOS on a tablet size screen seems like a thing of beauty. Multitasking on this device is much more of actual multitasking than it is on the iPad. It's one of the reasons I never kept my iPad. The fact that they did not announce battery life or pricing is of concern. Apple has become a master at controlling their supply chain and unless HP is able to do the same, this thing could end up with Xoom like pricing, which would make it dead in the water. Hope that doesn't happen.

Oh, and HP, its about time to get rid of the physical keyboard on the Pre.

I hate multitasking on my iPad. This is really a breath of fresh air.

A typical day on my iPad:

- surf surf surf, mostly reddit while waiting.

- kabling goes Apple's shit-tastic notification system. My friend has IM'ed me! Tap on button to chat with him. If I dismiss it without switching apps, the notification is gone forever.

- slooooooow switching between apps. Wait wait wait.

- oh but wait, since there isn't real multitasking, wait even more for my IM app to reconnect. Then download my message.

- finally, chatting with my friend.

WTF Apple.

Also, I go to sleep and my Exchange calendar gives me a bunch of notifications overnight. I wake up in the morning and have to hit "Close" on 20 notification messages stacked together before I can even use my device.

The Veer (credit-card sized phone) is interesting. I resisted getting a smart phone for a long time because they were all so damn big.

I owned a Palm Pre for a about a year, though, and the overall ownership experience was so disappointing that I'm not sure I will try Palm again. That thing was really slow, and was buggy for the first 6 months I owned it.

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