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Comment by axod | Hacker News Reader

Perils of believing there is a large market where there isn't one?

I love the Apple rumors also. "As reported somewhere else, someone said on his blog he believes Apple is 'definitely' working on a tablet." Oh well, that proves it then.

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I think the market is there, but it may not be uninitiated so to say. Once someone explains to people that they can now comfortably browse the Internet while sitting on the john, the sales will go exponential :-) But this is a substantial marketing expense, so .. hmm .. perhaps crunchpad may be in the right position after all. They have effectively reserved for themselves a market niche of inexpensive tablets, and so they just need to sit tight for a while and let Apple do the marketing. Once the tablet ball gets rolling, they can introduce their stuff and capitalize on the pre-established "cheap tablet pioneer" status.

Hmm .. so it may work after all. Weird :-)

>> "at they can now comfortably browse the Internet while sitting on the john"

That's what a netbooks for, and better than a tablet, you can put it on your lap and have 2 hands free to operate it.

I use my Macbook on the toilet, in bed, on the sofa etc all the time and have never thought "hey I wish this didn't have a keyboard, and I wish I had to hold the screen with one hand and try to type one handed on the other on the screen"

Don't know about you, by my browsing of the Internet and reading of the PDFs requires virtually no typing. Ideally I'd like to have a notebook with a detachable touch display, and the tablet is as close as it gets to that.

I want a tablet so that I can read a pdf on the metro on my way to work. Often there are enough seats for everyone in the morning so I suppose a netbook would work then but in the evening I'm usually standing so keeping something on my lap wouldn't work. Holding a light tablet and scrolling down by sliding a finger down the screen would be awesome though.

Ill be shocked if their not.

It seems a natural progression from the Iphone, e-book readers with internet connections proved somewhat popular and they have a market ready lined up.

If they do release an Apple Tablet, it sure as hell won't be cheap. It'll be more like the MacBook air than crunchpad in terms of tech and price point.

Oh yeh I agree. Thing is though - they will still sell buckets of them.

To be honest though I think Arringtons proposed price for the Crunchpad was crazily low (and it seems his initial estimate was too low). That had to be his competitive edge: he cant begin to compete with Apple on brand and I seriously doubt he has the capacity to compete in terms of baseline discount (i.e. how much discount you get for bulk manufacture).

I think also though, the type of people who want a tablet PC, are the ones who will happily pay $1k+ for such a device. It's a niche market. It was never going to be in the same league as netbooks.

Indeed, the crunchpad is the exact kind of device that sounds really cool when you first hear about it, but then after you think about it for a minute you realize there's no way you would ever need to use something like it

Are you kidding ? I would buy it just for being able to read stuff at the kitchen table or in the bed. The $200-300 is exactly right price for this sort of gadget.

I use my macbook in bed all the time, or on the kitchen table, with no problems at all

So do I. In fact I wrote a good third of my first startup code in bed at a nighttime. It died shortly after though because I didn't vacuum it regularly :-)

The thing is that I really don't need a keyboard to read a PDF, nor do I need it to browse a couple of dozen of sites I frequent. And this is all I do before going to bed or in the mornings. The CrunchPad-like tablet is not as a replacement for a laptop, it is more of a beefed up (ebook/Internet) reader. Lighter and simpler, both physically and functionally. It doesn't appeal to you - fine, to each his own. But there is a substantial demand for this sort of device, so yay for it.

> The $200-300 is exactly right price for this sort of gadget.

Not if the manufacturer wants to be profitable.

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