It was apparent from day one that the economics of this device just didn't jive. Large high resolution touch screen display assemblies are expensive. There's no way around that. Even if this device was powered by a wad of used chewing gum it would be hard to hit a $300, $400 or $500 price point. Let's assume it's not powered by used chewing gum and speculate you need a CPU capable of handling modern web technologies. I believe Flash support was promised? Double, or triple your baseline CPU specs. Flash isn't getting any skinnier as the years go on. So you have this wonderful device with a huge touchscreen and a fast CPU that magically costs only $300, er $400. Great.
How's the battery life? Turns out good small form factor battery technology isn't cheap. Unfortunately that big LCD touchscreen and fast CPU need lots of power. Let's assume you want the battery to last at least 2 hours (which would be on the low side of acceptable for a modern laptop) but you don't want the device to be 2 inches thick. Maybe with a really good battery and some serious power management tweaking you can get your 2-3 hours. (just don't watch a flash video with your backlight turned above 50% or cut that figure down to 45-60m)
Don't forget industrial design. No one wants a 2" thick tablet so figure almost everything in the device has to be carefully designed to fit into you enclosure. Make sure it doesn't overheat. Make sure it gets good radio reception. Make sure there isn't a design flaw that causes the battery cover latch to break and fall off due to repetitive stress. Make sure you built it out of durable plastic. It's probably going to be bumping around in people's backpacks a lot. You might also want to include some boring stuff like BlueTooth, 802.11 wifi, at least leave some space for a GSM/CDMA chip and antennas. Probably wouldn't hurt to include some storage so you can run an OS. Oh you need one of those too. Linux is a great starting point but there's probably no off the shelf solution that is going to perfectly fit your hardware. Expect to have at least a small team of developers working on it for you.
It's doable. The CPU doesn't have to be an x86 or have a huge amount of memory. A small amount of flash memory also suffices instead of spinning metal. It could all be mounted directly on the motherboard, reducing manufacture costs and required components (no need for a SATA controller if your flash is not connected through SATA). Linux runs fine on ARM. If we want to get fancy, couple the touchscreen with a PixelQi LCD and you have an LCD that works fine without backlight.
Heck... I would be delighted to help designing such animal. I want one badly.
The only thing I'm really upset about here is the lack of communication. A new product type made by a new company is going to be delayed. Especially when you're dealing with hardware. It would be unreasonable not to expect a delay or two.
But you shouldn't just disappear. Everything that was posted on TechCrunch about this product seemed to be aimed at one goal: to get people invested in the idea. Now that they've done that it's really bad form to just let several deadlines pass with not even a word as to why nothing's happened.
I'm not saying reveal specs or anything but just a simple tweet would do. "Hey, we've run into delays on the Crunchpad, expect announcement in November" (or whatever)
One thing I'm surprised about (or maybe annoyed actually) is how, with time, the rumored Apple tablet has become something certain to compare other products to. Even though nobody has ever seen one.
Specially publications with articles like "Microsoft's Secret Plans To Kill Apple Revealed". I've never seen so much linkbait crammed into seven words.
People aren't, in their minds, comparing anything to a fully-realized "Apple Tablet"—they're just comparing things to their vision of a 8.5x11" iPhone, however close or far that is from the truth.
It's a page straight out of Microsoft's playbook. Microsoft pulled the same shenanigans with Cairo and we're still hearing about how some of the features promised back then (WinFS) are right around the corner. It's really not a bad strategy at all. You assume very little risk by not having to actually produce anything, chip away at any foothold a leader might establish and then release your own incremental improvement if your competitor shows there's a viable market.
In Apple's defense they haven't announced anything and I doubt the leaks we've seen were planned by Apple (since they're all over the place in regards to features). Microsoft would actually announce the product and then not deliver when their competitors folded.
There's no need to defend Apple. It's not necessarily a bad thing. It may annoy some people, but it's hard to argue its effectiveness. So-called leaks are another good method. You get to see which ideas resonate with consumers before investing in their development.
I remember a Joel article (at least I think it was Joel) about a slightly similar concept. He talked about putting a link in a web application to some feature that didn't exist yet. Then you would track the number of 404 hits on the link to gauge interest.
I see what you're saying and I don't really disagree. I'm just not sure that's what Apple's doing. The problem with Apple is many of their fans are so rabid that they'll fall for even the most ridiculous leak. Steve Jobs says his Toilet paper's scratchy and there will be fake Apple toilet paper leaks on the Web by sundown. So it's hard to tell when Apple's actually leaking and when it's just everyone going crazy.
> Intel squeezed AMD very hard with a lot of "Merced" hype, and look what happened.
Intel started taking market share back from AMD when they returned to delivering CPUs with better $/performance, and $/watt/performance, in 2007. While AMD was building better mousetraps, they steadily took market share; nobody outside of HPC was taking IA-64 seriously beyond about 2004 anyway.
Any news surrounding the CrunchPad has to be taken as seriously as everything else from Arrington's mouth, which is to say not very.
I'm surprised it has made it this far, but I doubt we'll see an actual product in the near future, otherwise Arrington's hype machine would be in overdrive.
I think they're finding out that coming out with a consumer electronics device is a lot more involved than simply coming up with a list of features and telling someone else to go build it.
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.
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.
>> "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.
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.
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.
Also turns out that talking about what you want a project to be is easier than making it so. Good lessons for everyone here.