The birth of a new computer era

When the iPad came out last year, it was a shock. I was shocked. Everybody had an opinion about it. A few saw this coming. One year later, the computer industry is again in a state of shock... Well maybe not but what HP announced yesterday was quite impressive. I'm talking about the TouchPad.

What HP seems to be ready to deliver is quite impressing, very classy and at some level, better than the iPad. One of the main difference between the iPad and the TouchPad (and most of the soon to be released tablets on the market) is this: the iPad is the one where the user experience is entirely focused on the active application. Once an application is running, it takes all the screen and leave very little space for other things like notification and task switching. On the other hand, the TouchPad with its card-based metaphor, leaves some room for other things beside the currently running app. The use of the status bar to peek at notifications is very reminiscent of the traditional desktop computer. On the iPad, the home screen is so traditional in its presentation. Remember Palm devices with row of application icons on the screen? For this, webOS is unique and I feel it is a sexier user experience for a tablet than a row of icons. Besides that, I don't know how well the webOS scales with swiping cards on a tablet with many dozen of installed applications.

Generally, reactions are very positive. A lot of people liked what they saw. But a few really important points still remains without answers:

1. Pricing
2. Battery life
3. App distribution

On pricing, HP has no choice but wait for Apple's next move. RIM is doing the same with its PlayBook. This make the announcement a little bit awkward. Anyway, the TouchPad is not a finished product on the software side. It won't go for sale before this summer. In about six months. This is a very long time. I wonder if this is not a lost opportunity here for HP. This is kind of scary for HP because they try to compete with the iPad, a product that is about to be replaced by another one! I don't expect the next iPad to be a major revision, more like what we saw from the iPhone 3Gs compared to the previous revision.

On battery life, again, this product is in the final stage of tweaking and they don't want to over promise and under deliver. They know they have to come up with something similar to the iPad. 

On the App Store, or whatever it will be called, we know a thing for sure: developers have more than half a year before they can start to offer their apps. More to get real profits.

All in all, Steve Jobs is once again right: the age of traditional computers is coming to an end. Fast. Apple knows it. Google knows it. RIM knows it. And now HP seems to know it too. Microsoft? Nope. See here.

To get even better perspective on yesterday announcement from HP and how Apple might play its next card, please read:

• Daringfireball's article: The next six months. 
• Techcrunch's article: iPad 3. 
• Cocoia's Blog: HP webOS event roundup.