HP SVP Ari Jaaski Defends TouchPad: “Go and Judge Yourself!”
Former Nokia Meego VP and current SVP for webOS Software and Services Ari Jaaksi is blogging on HP’s progress with webOS thus far. His article, titled “7 First Months,” starts off by discussing HP’s progress thus far…
“We got the HP Veer out a month ago. A week ago, we started selling the HP TouchPad running webOS. I’m proud of the progress we’ve made. It is so important now to get products out and get webOS to developers and customers.”
He extolled the many redeeming qualities of having webOS on a tablet. He went on to add that the product is “very good already” but admitted “the work has only started and we still need to improve.” The most interesting part of his blog entry comes when he addresses reviewers’ criticisms point-by-point.
1) Lagginess, bugs
Amazingly, Mr. Jaaksi busts out with this… wait for it…
“Some reviewers are pushing the first hours of the TouchPad usage harder than we expected.”
According to Jaaksi, the problem was that many reviewers synced a ton of accounts and data while simultaneously trying to do other resource-intensive activities. He doesn’t hide behind this excuse too much, however, and closes by saying “We need to clearly improve the system performance especially when setting up new accounts and downloading a lot of data.”
Our take: Some of us find this defense a little hollow since our TouchPads still lag long after they’ve synced their data… others find his statements to be fair. Still, his words don’t exactly paint the TouchPad as the serious workhorse HP would make you believe it to be. Finally, are folks at HP that shocked that the TouchPad wasn’t buttery smooth? Any of these guys picked up an iPad? Thankfully, he admits there’s a problem and that HP needs to solve it.
2) Lack of Apps
Well, I see a steady stream of good quality applications. We started later so we need to work really hard with developers. This is also a reason why we wanted to get the TouchPad out as soon as possible. TouchPad needs applications, and developers need TouchPads. We are getting very encouraging messages from developers. I firmly believe webOS is a very good platform to develop apps.
Our take: We totally agree with Mr. Jaaksi here. While the TouchPad may have a relative dearth of apps out of the gate, it’s totally unreasonable to expect that it would have launched with very many. There are also many encouraging signs behind-the-scenes: HP is hiring more dev relations people, the device loaner program is in effect, software “SWAT” teams are growing, and changes have been implemented which hope to accelerate App Catalog growth.
3) The little things
In addition, there is a few embarrassing things. As an example our dictionary included “dont” and “wont” instead of ”don’t” and “won’t”. What can I say? Stupid. But hey, English is not my first language. Yeah, I agree, not good enough – and you need to add the missing words yourself.
Our take: Heh. We’ve met Mr. Jaaksi in person… he’s a very intelligent guy and while his English is actually quite good, we hope he’s not the one in charge of webOS 3.0′s autocorrect dictionary. One humble correction, Mr. Jaaksi: it’s not “judge yourself” … it’s “judge for yourself!”
Jaaksi closes by saying there’s “more good stuff coming” and encourages readers to go out to stores and draw their own conclusions after playing with the TouchPad. So? How many of you have “judged for yourselves?” Let us know what you think below.
[Source: Ari Jaaksi's blog]
