The first generation of any hardware is going to be riddled with bugs. Apple’s original round iMac mouse was awkward to orientate, then along came the Mighty Mouse with right click and a scroll ball that broke after a week, but now we have the Magic Mouse, which is a dream to use. We’re hoping HP’s Touchpad undergoes a similar evolution.
Because it’s a promising offering, with a great OS and some functionality you won’t see anywhere else. So what does HP need to learn to improve it?
We wanted to like the HP Touchpad, really we did. The iPad 2 needs a decent challenger, and competition keeps these companies innovating, which means better products for all of us. It even has cards you can stack up. Cards! But sluggish performance and a lack of support meant we could only give it three out of five. So take note, HP: if you want to build on a promising start, you need to learn from your mistakes.
1 Don’t let a successor leak online before the original launches
The Touchpad isn’t due until July 20th, yet an internal document has already leaked, letting slip there’s a 64GB version incoming in August, with a 1.5GHz dual core Snapdragon processor to boot. Who’s going to buy the standard version knowing a better one is just a month down the line?
2 Announce it just before launch
The theory is that announcing months before launch helps build hype, with new rumours spilling out every week, but in reality the product is usually just a disappointment. The Touchpad was announced back in February, yet doesn’t land here for another couple of weeks; BlackBerry suffered the same with its PlayBook. It smacks of trying to play catch up with Apple. And five months is a long time in technology, chances are customers will just get bored waiting and buy a similar tablet. It’s not like there’s a scarcity of them around.
3 Choose someone a bit more on brand
Russell Brand? Really? We thought HP was targeting business customers with the Touchpad?
4 Have a rear camera
A lack of a camera was just about acceptable on the first generation iPad (they had to hold something back for the second gen), but now nearly all the competitors have one, it seems pretty shortsighted to launch without.
5 More apps
A tablet isn’t an end in itself, no matter how gorgeous the build quality might be. It’s a means of doing other things, whether it’s watching videos, creating and editing content, social networking, whatever. Hence it’s all about apps, which are all about third party support. And faced with Apple’s App Store, and Android Market, 300 apps isn’t going to win many fans.
