Here are a few images I ran across from a supplier catalog from a company called B & H. A co-worker handed me the catalog and sure enough there it was, the TouchPad right next to a Xoom.
HP TouchPad Assesment
Posted by Brian Deyo on February 19, 2011
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Here’s what we know about the TouchPad -
- 9.7 inch Screen
- 16 or 32 GB Hard Drive space
- 1.2 Ghz Dual Core Snapdraggon Processor
- GPS on 3G models
- Accelerometer, Compass, Gyroscope
- Front Faceing 1.3 megapixel webcam for video calling
- Beats Audio
- Touchstone 2 Compatible
- Exact Size as an iPad
- and Looks like this -
Software:
It is very similar to the iPad in dimensions, but is actually quite different from the iPad and other devices when you look a little closer. The reality is that the TouchPad is different in two major ways, the first is that it is running a software that is much more suitable for a tablet than iOS or even Android. The only other close comparison might be the new BlackBerry Playbook software, which interstingly enough, is almost identical to webOS. The software tweaks we do see in webOS for the TouchPad include the removal of the gesture area. While this could be considered a hardware change, it really impacts the software more than it does the hardware. There is no clear explanation on how the gesture area will be replaced in the new enyo framework, but the pieces that will need to be covered are – Back swipe, up swipe for launcher, advanced task switching full swipes, scrolling in webpages, forward swipe in webpages, and meta taps using the gesture area. Obviously that is a lot to replace. Only a few are required, but I know I’m not the only one that things these gestures are part of what makes webOS so good as a OS. From what we’ve heard and seen in demos it sounds like HP is going to leave some sort of gesture area on the Tablet that will allow for minimizing the cards with a single press. That is all we saw it do in demos. To access the launcher, you will hit the launcher button which will always remain in the app bar. Scrolling and website navigation seem trivial on a large screen, but the back swipe is one that will have to find a suitable replacement. According to HP most of the back swipes we perform are in applications that will now have panes instead of new cards that open or in the mojo framework, new scenes that are created. Instead of going back in the messaging app, you will just be able to go over to the left and your buddy list will be right there. This all sounds good, but I’m a little concerned that it won’t handle all of the situations needed. The other solution for older apps without specific code for tablets will be a gesture frame below the app that will allow for the back function. I suppose this is ok, but I think the gesture functions are a big part of what makes webOS so special on the phone and there is no reason to abandon them on tablets. I think eventually we’ll see Palm and HP implement an on screen gesture option that will involve multiple fingers like is rumored on the iPad. The first will be two figures for forward or back. The second will be a three finger quick app switch. To me this is what makes the TouchPad such a great potential productivity device and I think they have to keep quick task switching as an option.
Other software features are many of the items we are already familiar with on webOS 2.0. Just type, Synergy, etc. One that has changed a little on the TouchPad is the notification system. Now instead of popping up below the window and stacking on top of each other the notifications are going to be in the taskbar at the top of the screen and will pop up similar to a desktop notification on windows. You can then act on them just like you would on the phone. You can click to go to an app that the notification was from or you can swipe them off of the screen. I think this is a great solution. It would have been a waste of space to put those notifications in the bottom of the screen and this is the solution that is the least intrusive in my opinion. This is one of the areas that webOS has always really outshines the competition and thankfully they didn’t just keep it all the same like Apple has on the iPad.
One final thing Rubinstein tried to emphasize during the presentation was the webOS (Palm) profile. Apparently when any of us old webOS users get a TouchPad, we’ll be able to enter our webOS profile information and the device will automatically bring down all of our info. Google is pretty close to doing this kind of thing, but when you think about iOS, they aren’t even close. It is disappointing how hard it would be to set up an iPad exactly like your iPhone and with Android this really only works with Google products. HP and Palm have a unique openness that is forced by not having any of their own services they want to lock people in with.
Hardware:
The TouchPad is pretty much identicall to the iPad. If you want a reference point for what it will feel like, what the viewing experience will be like, and what the dimensions are, just reference the iPad. Fortunately for us, HP pretty much stopped duplicating Apple there. The TouchPad has 1gb of Ram (Rubi said 2x’s the Pre 2′s 512 mb), 1.2 ghz dual core processor, camera, dual speakers, Touchstone compatibility, and similar battery life as the iPad.
The TouchPad also has HP’s Touch-to-Share feature. There seems to be some confusion as to how the Touchpad passes information between devices with Touch-to-Share, but I think it is accomplished simply with a bluetooth connction between devices and a conductive coil running around the rim of the TouchPad so when the Touchstone coil from the phone touches the conductive coil from the TouchPad, the bluetooth connection shares the URL and a command is sent to launch the browser. Some are saying the TouchPad has NFC, but that is actually a chip and I don’t think that is what was implied at the “Think Beyond” event. It is possible, and I think they’ll need to in order to keep pace with Apple and the iPad 2, but it may not make sense to use that technology on the TouchPad right now and I don’t think there are any other barriers to keep the BlueTooth/TouchStone technology pair from covering all of the needs of Touch-to-Share. Theoretically, we’ll see the ability to pass entire states of the device on to another device. You’ll be able to pass all open apps to another device and the state they were in by just touching the two together. All that has too be passed by BlueTooth is the information about the states and the apps, not any actual data from the apps. The other device would then load it all up
Lastly for the hardware is the Camera. It is nothing spectacular, but it is something that we know the iPad 2 will have and HP has done well to keep it in the from the beginning. On this note, I also am glad that they didn’t put two cameras on the device. I think very few people will actually look for their Tablets to serve as point and shoot camera’s and most that have a TouchPad will have another device that will serve that purpose.
Apps:
We didn’t see a lot here, but it looks like Palm HP and the new Enyo framework are going to make app experiences on the TouchPad pretty special. They are doing a similar “Pane” funcationality as Google has done with Honeycomb and I thin most will find it much better than that simplistic and distjoined experience on the iPad. Right now the iPad is not consistent when switching between orientations and it is very much just a baby step from the iPod Touch software. Enyo appears to be a framework that will allow applications to work seemlessly on the TouchPad and look more robust because of the extra screen space. Right now all we got a glimps of was a few browser shots and the e-mail application, but they also announced that a full editing version of quickoffice will be on the device when it ships and they also demoed some magazine and game apps. Needless to say, HP is working pretty hard in the app space and I’m sure they’ll have a nice set of core apps ready to go at launch.
Conclusion:
I think the TouchPad is the right product at the right time. Not to sound cliche, but I think it is not going to be behind when it is released. Most are commenting that this device should have been launched now to be able to compete with the iPad 2. I just don’t see that being the case. HP is walking a nice middle ground between Apple’s simplicity and conservative feature set and Motorola, LG, and Android’s wild boundary pushing with 3d camera’s and high prices. I think what you are looking at here is essentially the same feature set of the iPad 2. I think the TouchPad will be considerably more powerful than the iPad 2 and will have features like flash and better graphics processing, but it will also be slightly heavier and thicker. I think in classic Apple style, this next release will be a very small iteration that will bring a faster processor (probably 1.2 ghz single core), more Ram (probably 512), and a front facing camera. I think that is about it. They’ll make some big software changes and package it in a much thinner and lighter device, but other than that I think we’ll have pretty similar specs.
That makes me think the TouchPad is going to be a great success out of the gate. As long as they get to market before the iPad 2 does, I think we’ll see really nice response to the device. It really is an impressive piece of hardware and obviously the software is leaps and bounds beyond Apple right now. The question is whether or not HP can tie it all together with a clear marketing message, a robust developer community, and a price point that makes normal people think twice about buying an iPad (I’m talking to you Motorola, what are you thinking??)
Well that’s it. There are a lot of unknowns about this device and HP did a good job of distracting us from them. I think we’ll see some more major annoucements leading up to the launch sometime in June. In the meantime I’m going to do a quick comparison of this device and the iPad. Like it or not, the iPad is the device that everyone knows about and right now it owns the market in a similar way to the way the iPod did when it first came out. For that reason, every device must compete with it and while much of my commentary above was focused on comparing the TouchPad to the iPad, I’m going to do a specific post about the two very soon.
HP Everybody On Ad Campaign
Posted by Brian Deyo on February 12, 2011
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Here is the first inclusion of webOS in a HP advertising campaign. Not sure if this is for TV, but it is a start. I’m sure there is more to come. You can find out more about the campaign here – HP everbody on
The Future of HP webOS is Bright
Posted by Brian Deyo on February 12, 2011
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Well the big day is over. We’ve seen all that HP has to offer for the event and there has been much written about every little detail of every device and announcement. Since most of you are probably already well aware of all of the new announcements, I’ll not waste your time with any of that here. Instead, I’m going to provide my quick thoughts on what stands out about the event and what it says about the future. If you are looking for great videos of the device and coverage of the event head on over to www.webosroundup.com and check out their great coverage of the event. I had the great pleasure of meeting their founder David Baxter. He is a wonderful proponent of webOS.
Feb 9th, 2011 will go down as one of the biggest turning points in the Palm/HP/webOS story. Until Wednesday, I was getting a little worried and beginning to buy into all of the naysayers talking about how HP was going to destroy Palm and continue terrible product launches and marketing and that the platform would eventually go the way of other HP purchases.
We began to get hints that wouldn’t be the case with Apotheker talking about how HP was going to become cool and would change their product launch plans and make sure they have product ready when they announce new products. However, that didn’t seem to be the case this week. So which is it? How in the world could I be pleased about this event when we’re not going to get the important products for another 5 months and old Palm users have pretty much been left in the dark with no updates coming?
This is why I’m thrilled about the future of webOS: HP demonstrated that they are putting the full weight of the company behind webOS. There are two important things in that statement. The first is the committment level. It may be up for debate, but I think we all know that it is going to require serious effort to go up against the likes of Google and Apple. The second is that fact that this is HP. It definitely isn’t Palm, thankfully it isn’t Nokia, heck it isn’t even dell or lenovo we’re talking about. This is HP. No matter what anyone says, they are the biggest technology company in the US. They may not be the most profitable or have the most revenue, but they are second only to Samsung as the largest in the world and they have more employees than Apple, Google, Microsoft, Dell, and RIM combined. Yes, you read that right. They have more employees than all those companies COMBINED. They have nearly 7x more employees than Apple.
Now I know that doesn’t ensure their success with webOS. But it is a major reason why I am excited about the future. HP is not like Palm. They won’t have the same problems Palm had. They won’t struggle making high quality devices. They won’t struggle with not having enough money to do a good marketing campaign. They won’t struggle trying to convince developers that they are a viable company in the future. They won’t have to worry about having enough clout to make big partnerships with content and service providers. HP can literally do what ever they want in the industry. If they need a good maps partner, they can go buy TomTom or something. If they need good music service provider, well never mind, they already bought two companies to cover that. You get my point. HP is here to stay and the are a huge company. Just as important they have put their full weight behind webOS. If you didn’t see that at the event, then you just aren’t looking. They have invested so much in this process and now webOS is a fully operating product within HP. It is going to get the kind of focus any of their other core products do. They are already shifting massive resources to develop the platform (they ditched the entire home server group and moved hundreds of developers to webOS). That kind of weight will get stuff done very fast. They immediately integrated Palm and webOS devices into all of their corporate marketing. They are already strongly hinting about their music synergy product and they are talking about their new massive advertising campaign “everbody on” which will focus around the Veer, Pre3 and TouchPad.
I know none of that will persuade some people to believe in Palm and webOS again, but I think what we saw on Feb. 9th was just a glimpse into the future of webOS. There were many, many details left out and while the community has pieced some of them together, they still don’t have the kind of confidence they need. I guess I hope you just keep coming back here and I’ll be sure to tell you why I think this is going one very exciting year for webOS
HP webOS “Think Beyond” Event Full Video
Posted by Brian Deyo on February 9, 2011
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Here is the link for the full video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnjwG7Z8AM8
I’m watching it now and reading everything else I can. I’ll post my prediction scorecard and some quick analysis of the event tonight.
HP webOS Will Ship on Windows PC’s from HP
Posted by Brian Deyo on February 9, 2011
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This is what we expected but there has just been confirmation that webOS will ship on PCs as a sort of touch optimized skin on top of the windows 7 installation. HP announced that webOS would be on their computers at the end of the event today, but they didn’t say if it would be a standalone installation or if it would be an additional install on top of Windows 7.
I predict it will start as an addition, but will eventually move to becoming more and more the predominant OS of HP. When you think about it they have a ton to gain by selling devices running only their own OS with their own application platform.
Here is the link to the Business Insider article – http://www.businessinsider.com/hps-webos-pcs-will-run-on-windows-not-replace-it-2011-2
HP webOS S,M,L
Posted by Brian Deyo on February 9, 2011
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This is the header that was used on the image from HP’s website. You can see it below
Small is the veer
Medium is the Pre3
Large is the TouchPad
Think Big = TouchPad
Think Small = Veer
Think AHEAD = Pre3 – I think that is why they slipped this one in.
HP Veer, HP Pre3, and HP TouchPad
Posted by Brian Deyo on February 9, 2011
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So here we have it folks. So far I’m batting 100 with my predictions.
The HP Veer, HP Pre3, and HP TouchPad were just leaked on HP.com’s shopping site.
PreCentral has also confirmed that HP is going to call it the TouchPad as they heard the rehearsal at the event.
Here’s what we know so far
- Veer is a tiny device. Robert Scoble is calling it the perfect date phone and that women will love it. He is also saying it makes small screens make sense now. It isn’t a huge superphone, but is valuable for what it is
- Pre3: we don’t know much about this other than we can assume it is a replacement for the venerable pre and pre2. I am guessing it is a superphone, but still has a slider keyboard, but we can’t really tell and the pictures aren’t clear at this point. I think it is the device we saw in the videos.
- HP touchpad – this device is the 10inch tablet we all expected. Precentral.net has heard at the rehearsal it is exactly the same size as the Apple iPad
- Branding – Looks like Palm is gone 
I called this right but am really really sad about it.
How Long The “Think Beyond” Event Will Last
Posted by Brian Deyo on February 9, 2011
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I’m sort of guessing about this, but right now www.palm.com is showing a countdown clock that by my math puts the time for “The future is revealed…” at 2 hours after the event starts assuming it starts at 10 am Pacific time. 10 am pacific means that the countdown clock will show 2 hours the moment the event starts.
That sounds like a pretty good amount of time to fit everything in. My hopes just went up a bit.
I suggest engadget’s live blog. Josh Topolsky is the best and he’ll tie it all together and give good perspective – http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/09/live-from-hp-palms-think-beyond-webos-event/
If you want someone from the Palm community check out precentral’s live blog – http://www.precentral.net/hp-palm-thinkbeyond-liveblog
Why webOS Can Be a Windows Replacement
As I was re-watching the webOS “Think Beyond” event video I realized that HP may be thinking that someday webOS will be a full fledged desktop opperating system. Now they’ll never just come out and say that until they only have about 15% of their revenue coming from devices running some other operating system, but the more and more I think about it, the more I am convinced this is possible and even likely. I believe webOS can become a windows desktop OS replacement because it has the best user experience of any mobile OS, it is designed for touch and keyboard input, and because it is the closest of any of the other main OS to being useful on the desktop.
First is that webOS really is a great experience. I’m not a usability expert by any means, but I do know that the things that webOS has built as a foundation will carry it very well if implemented as a windows replacement. Even the whole primary metaphor of cards is a better one for human interaction than the windows metaphor. Windows are too arbitrary and are located in an infinite space. The best UI and usabilty addition for windows is the Alt-Tab function to view your windows in a linear horizontal arrangement so you can select between them and quickly switch back and forth between open windows. Sound familiar? To me, I think cards instead of windows and a simple desktop minimizing swipe up or advanced gesture instead of the “Alt Tab” function.
The second thing about webOS is its intentional design for both Touch input and keyboard input. The iPhone doesn’t share that property. Android can claim it to some extent with the G1 and most popular original Droid having keyboards, but from the beginning they were not the focus of the OS. To the frustration of many webOS has always been on devices that have a physical keyboard. I think because of that, even when it is transported to the form factor of the TouchPad, it will still keep the DNA that was formed around the concept of keyboard input. Take just type for an example. It is built for use on a device with a physical keyboard and so the features are very much a core of the device and very feature rich. The integration of third party apps being able to access just type makes it leaps and bounds more useful than iOS’s search function. In iOS you can’t even type a web address and go straight to the browser. While this is an important differenciator between iOS and webOS, it wouldn’t be too hard for iOS to quickly add it to their OS. However, Just Type is so much a part of the device that keyboard input will be consistently developed and advanced in a way that will make the platform more naturally extensible to the desktop.
Lastly webOS is much more like a full desktop OS than any of the other mobile OS’s because it actually has a pseudo desktop environment where cards are manipulated. When you think about the workings of both Android and iOS, neither supports the kind of robust multitasking one will perform on a desktop environment. There is no reason why they can’t develop better systems, but right now they don’t have them. If the webOS platform becomes popular, I think we might see the card metaphor become dominant like the window metaphor and be used on all major platforms. We’re already seeing this with BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7. They have both copied the card idea and are using that linear horizontal layout to display and manage their multitasking UI and task switching functionality. Let’s just hope that this doesn’t end like Xerox/Apple/Microsoft when one pretty much invented the idea and another popularized it (Xerox/Apple invented and Microsoft Popularized) .
For these reasons, I think HP will realize (if they haven’t already) that webOS has the potential to really push the envelope of what we think of as a desktop OS. By the time the release of the TouchPad is upon us, most of us will have little to no need to do anything outside of the browser other than the creation of office applications. With the bundling of quick office there is no single reason that I could not use a TouchPad for all of my daily computing needs as long as I have the keyboard and there are functions for quick task switching without touching the screen. If I can go to card view and then to my last card and switch between the two with “Alt-Tab”, I will abandon my PC very, very quickly and will never purchase a netbook. Because of screen size it is likely that I’ll hang on to a desktop or laptop for daily use, but you get the point. Because of the power of small devices and the expanding use of cloud and browser based computing, a platform like webOS could very well replace windows for 90% of the population. HP knows this and that is why the talky about the difference between creation and consumption. For now they’ll focus webOS on consumption, but once the application support is there, moving it to devices for creation will leave no reason to support windows any longer. If webOS is successful by HP’s measurements in the next 24 months, I think we’ll eventually (5 years) see them replace windows with webOS as their sole operating system for all user facing products