Hewlett-Packard is taking mixed reviews for its new TouchPad tablet with webOS pretty seriously, going by a leaked internal memo from the head of
HP’s Palm Global Business Unit to staff that declares it will be “a marathon not a sprint” to fix the initial shortcomings of the device.
John Rubenstein, senior vice president and general manager of HP’s Palm unit, sent the memo on July 1, the day the TouchPad was officially released in the U.S. It was apparently
leaked by an anonymous tipster to Pre Central, a specialist tech website covering HP’s mobile business.
While the memo cites The New York Times reviewer David Pogue’s opinion that the TouchPad shows “signs of greatness,” Rubenstein also concedes that Pogue and other “reviewers rightly note things we need to improve about the webOS experience.”
That’s a tacit admission that the TouchPad has a long way to go in areas like app availability and user friendliness before it lives up to one HP executive’s
pre-release boast that the tablet would take on
Apple’s market-dominating iPad and “become better than number one.”
PCMag’s Lead Analyst for Audio and Video Timothy Gideon didn’t disagree with Rubenstein’s assessment (reprinted below), offering up the “general feeling that the good outweighs the bad with the TouchPad.” Our
full review of the tablet offers much the same sentiment.
Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard is planning to follow up on its Wi-Fi-only, 16GB and 32GB TouchPads with a “white glossy” model due out in August that sports a more powerful processor and 64GB of internal storage, as well as a 32GB TouchPad with support for AT&T’s 4G HSPA+ network in the same August timeframe, according to
leaked HP product roadmap slides, also published this week by Pre Central.
Here’s the leaked internal email:
“Team,
“Today we bring the HP TouchPad and webOS 3.0 to the world. The HP team has achieved something extraordinary—especially when you consider that it’s been just one year since our work on the TouchPad began in earnest. Today also marks the start of a new era for HP as our vision for connected mobility begins to take form—an ecosystem of services, applications and devices connected seamlessly by webOS.
“If you’ve seen the recent TouchPad reviews you know that the industry understands HP’s vision and sees the same potential in webOS as we do. David Pogue from The New York Times says, “[T]here are signs of greatness here.” … You’ve also seen that reviewers rightly note things we need to improve about the webOS experience. The good news is that most of the issues they cite are already known to us and will be addressed in short order by over-the-air software and app catalog updates. We still have work to do to make webOS the platform we know it can be, but remember—it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
“In that spirit, Richard Kerris, head of worldwide developer relations for webOS, reminded me yesterday of the first reviews for a product introduced a little over ten years ago:
“…there are no quality apps to use, so it won’t last”
“…it’s just not making sense…”
“It’s hard to believe these statements described MacOS X—a platform that would go on to change the landscape of Silicon Valley in ways that no one could have imagined.
“The similarities to our situation are obvious, but there’s also a big difference. Like David Pogue, our audiences get that webOS has the potential for greatness. And like me, they know that your hard work and passion, and the power of HP’s commitment to webOS, will turn that potential into the real thing.”
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