Comment by commandar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by commandar | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I think the TouchPad is a cautionary tale that exemplifies something Apple does right:

Don't ship broken hardware.

I have a tech journalist friend who knew I was extremely interested in the TouchPad prior to launch, and let me play with his review unit for a bit. I was ready to drop $500 on one at launch, and walked away crushingly disappointed. The software clearly wasn't ready and with the product launch only a few days off, it was clear that HP was pushing this thing out the door too soon.

Here's the thing - I could tell that the problems were software-related and could be fixed by HP down the road. But HP went from a willing customer with $500 cash in hand, to one that two months later says "eh, maybe I'll pick one up if I catch one of those $350 sales." And I'm sure it's cost them sales since my tl;dr when people ask me about it is "absolutely brilliant interface, awful performance. I wouldn't buy one yet."

If HP had left the TouchPad in the incubator another couple of months and sorted out the performance issues before kicking the thing out the door, the reception would have been very different. I really, really wanted to like the TouchPad, and HP blew it.

You don't get do-overs on first impressions. Apple gets that. If the rest of their competition would figure this out and push out complete products rather than rush them out on an arbitrary time scale, Apple would be a bit less dominant than they are now.

Amazingly, webOS/palm got a do-over, in the form of HP buying them.

"We're too small to compete" was the Palm motto towards the end, and HP buying them was seen by the faithful as a way of "getting it right" - more money and resources behind them, they'll be able to really get webOS out there.

And they did the exact same stuff they'd done two years earlier.

Announce and briefly demo a product at start of the year? Check

Delay getting SDK to developers? Check

Ship poor hardware with buggy software to retailers later than anticipated? Check

WHAT THE HELL? The entire webOS unit got a do-over, and still hosed it, with the budget/muscle of one of the largest companies behind it. Of course, that doesn't mean HP actually was really supporting it as much as people expected.

The TouchPad (and webOS stuff in general under HP) seems to have been treated about the same as every other model of HP laptop/desktop rollout they do. Just another SKU on the balance sheet, it'll be on the shelf for a few months, then retired and shifted to overseas support.

Amazingly infuriating to watch company after company claim to want to be a player in the mobile/tablet space, and fail continuously against Apple. It's far less that Apple's doing so much right, but everyone else keeps getting it so wrong, even with successful competitors to copy (this isn't revolutionary groundbreaking stuff any more, launching a tablet).

I find it amazing that people haven't learned the Apple lesson yet. Apple is doing well specifically because it doesn't release a product until it's perfect. They put a lot of thought and effort into every aspect of every device.

Why is it that companies like HP think that getting it out the door is more important that putting out a polished product? Just look at the white iPhone 4. Apple wouldn't release it until it was perfect, despite the fact that people were knocking down the door begging for it.

I've never owned an Apple product, but if I were going to get a tablet it would be an iPad. Everything else is just a cheap imitation and no one has proven to be anything other than that. I was really hoping the TouchPad would be the one device that could finally compete on polish and style with the iPad.

I'd say Apple don't entirely - ipad 1 vs ipad 2. They could've waited another 6-9 months for a camera (and the ipad2 camera really isn't all that hot anyway). Apple doesn't put out gold 100% of the time.

A lot of people waited on ipad 1 for v2 because of the things it didn't have (camera, etc) But... perhaps closer to your point, what the ipad v1 did, it did very well. Better to leave a feature out altogether than do it half-baked.

I've been wanting a webOS device for a couple years, but I'm not going to pay the premium for it when I know out of the box it'll be less useful to me than the ipad these days (volume/variety of apps, third party products/etc).

I said this a couple times before - a touchpad - 7 or 10" - at $249 or $299 would KILL. HP could take the money from lame commercials and airport branding and magazine ads and such, apply it towards subsidizing cheap tablets, and own second place, possibly even the tablet first place in certain verticals. But they keep approaching this with marketing ideas that pretend that the iPad is 'just another product in the marketplace'. It's not. It created a marketplace. It defines the marketplace. So... quit trying to play in that market, and define your own.

My view is entirely the opposite - I'm amazed at how well Apple nailed the first iPad. Aside from processing power (which is really just a factor of time), the only improvement on the iPad 2 was a camera.

I concur. The first iPad was ridiculously well done in my opinion. However, one should remember that it was essentially the same software on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Consider the folders thing. Or background tasks. Apple usually releases things that work. I'm shocked how rare this is.

the ipad 1 has a hole in the frame that fits a camera (http://www.ipadforums.net/ipad-hacking/3730-ipad-has-room-ca...) they could probably have shipped it at launch, but maybe they knew they'd have to hold something back for ipad2.

Or perhaps the software side (FaceTime, iMovie) for the iPad wasn't ready yet, and they didn't want to release a half-baked solution; or it could simply be that the performance of the solution on iPad 1 hardware was unsatisfactory.

Maybe they are reading too much Hacker News and the "ship ship ship" we preach over here. I know I have heard some companies thinking like that without realising it's not the best strategy for every company.

I don't think Apple really does anything different than what HN preaches. The best way to do "ship ship ship" well is to cut your feature set to the absolute bone, even if that means your initial launch is with just one single feature, as long as that one is polished enough and works well.

This is basically Apple's modus operandi; they'll take the hits from the nerds on not having every feature under the sun in return for being able to entice people with a small, well chosen set of features that "just work".

The HP's, Acer's et al are stuck in the mindset that they simultaneously need to shoe-horn in every idea they can think of while "ship ship ship"ing by throwing the product out the door as an unfocused, half-baked mess.

Aggressive curation of your feature set is a powerful strategy for nearly every company.

It's a good observation. So many web startups think "ship early!" works for everything, and it doesn't. Certainly not hardware. Yes, for a website, where you can change the system in 5 minutes if you find a small mistake, or you can reindex a db and fix perf issues - yes, get it out there and validate and iterate. Hardware is a totally different beast.

There are many reasons why you shouldn't just ship and with tablets like the TouchPad there are at least two good reasons: the hardware (for the reasons you said) and the price (which is expensive for something that is not unique or particular innovative).

You can keep the features to a low though, just make sure they are tight. Like the Kindle.

Software and hardware are totally different ballgames. With software, if you ship and you find that your product needs major changes, you iterate and you're not really out of anything.

Ship bad hardware? Well, you end up with things like partners demanding you take back a quarter of a million unsold units.

Amazingly infuriating to watch company after company claim to want to be a player in the mobile/tablet space, and fail continuously against Apple. It's far less that Apple's doing so much right, but everyone else keeps getting it so wrong, even with successful competitors to copy (this isn't revolutionary groundbreaking stuff any more, launching a tablet).

It isn't easy to make a successful tablet. Apple made it look easy, but it really isn't.

Apple came into the tablet market with:

- A core OS that's had over 20 years of work put into it.

- A touch UI layer with five years of development.

- A large developer ecosystem primed and ready to start making software for the new platform.

- A worldwide online software store with a gigantic existing customer base. (Do not estimate the difficulty of making it possible for developers anywhere in the world to sell software to customers anywhere in the world without forcing anyone to jump through the hoops of international tax law!)

- An online media store selling music, movies, and TV shows.

- A brand new ebook store.

- A worldwide network of physical stores to demo and sell the new devices.

You can't build that overnight. Apple has spent over a decade making smart decisions and putting themselves into the position where they are today.

Probably sounded like I was trivializing it, and I 100% agree, the Apple ecosystem (stores, accessories, etc) all help support new products (ipad, etc).

That said, there's been some staggeringly dumb things the webOS team has done with respect to getting stuff out to developers (like, you know, functioning handsets, SDKs, updates, information). Apple can afford to be tightlipped about this sort of stuff, but others can't. Developers will be the earlyvangelists for new products if companies will let them be. That means supporting them, and Palm and then HP both dillydallyed around way too long in both cases. I say this as someone who'd signed up for the SDK for the original webOS launch, and waited, and waited, and waited, then was rather disappointed with what was eventually released.

Yes, Apple does have a lot of stuff in place, but what is stopping other companies from doing this? It won't be overnight, sure. It takes a long term vision, and perhaps Apple really is the only large company that can execute on this. I don't see HP, Dell, Lenovo or any other PC/electronics company having even a medium term vision, let alone a long term one, when it comes to consumer electronics and computing.

MAYBE Google could fill this? Maybe. But really only if they get in to the hardware and retail game. Apple controls the hardware and software and sales channel, and can create a strong, consistent and cohesive experience. No one else can do this - the hardware guys point the fingers at licensed software, retail chains push whatever they get a big check for, etc.

So, yes, Apple makes it look easy, and it's not, but it's certainly possible. Year after year we see lackluster 'me too' stuff from companies that are only addressing one portion of the end-user experience. Can MS ever get in to this game? Not without some serious long term vision from the top, a restructuring of their business, and a willingness to piss off some long-term partners. I don't see it happening...

webOS is built on Linux, "a core OS that's had over 20 years of work put into it."

That touch UI still can't get notifications and multitasking right.

Now sudddenly Nokia doesn't look too dumb right? Replace HP with nokia and webos with symbian and this could a story we'd be reading sometime in future.

Unfortunately, most big corporations still judge progress by scheduling and budgeting performance. Did we meet the schedule? Yes! Did we stay under budget? Yes! This is a paper victory.

Nobody asks "is the product ready to ship to customers?".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com