TouchPad on Trial: It’s the Ol’ iPad2 Switcharoo! [DAYS 11-13]
We know a lot of you are on the fence about buying the HP TouchPad and are looking for brutally honest opinions from actual TouchPad owners. Our Senior Editor Dan Ramirez was in the same boat. So he took it upon himself to take the plunge and share his journey… will he keep it? Or return it?
Just joining us? Check out the first two installments of this series.
I know what you guys are thinking: please, not another iPad2 comparison! Well, this is going to go down a little differently than you might be used to. My good friend David owns an iPad2 and is an unabashed fan. He uses it mainly for pleasure (apps, browsing, photos, Apple TV), but is pretty confident it can do just about anything (are Apple fans any different?).
So for two days, we did a wife tablet swap – me with his Apple iPad2, and David with my HP TouchPad, including case and Touchstone charger. (No worries folks… I gave him a detailed orientation on cards, wireless charging, Just Type, Synergy… even the Angry Birds Easter egg!) You will hear impressions from both a webOS fanboy and an iSheep Apple devotee. Here’s how it went down…
David’s Take: Umm… it wasn’t pretty…
Within a few hours after our swap, I texted David to ask him for his initial thoughts. More specifically, I asked if there were any features of the TouchPad that he liked thus far. His answer was very tongue-in-cheek:
“Umm… the charger is cool?”
I decided to leave it at that for the moment.
When it came time to give the tablets back, he started off gently, giving the TouchPad its due credit… he repeated his admiration for the Touchstone charger, actually admitted that the TouchPad keyboard was superior to that of his iPad, and also liked that so many TouchPad-optimized apps were offered for free. His son had also enjoyed playing Angry Birds HD and reading Curious George storybooks.
When I asked him to give me the negatives and pull no punches… he obliged, only too happily: battery life was “not all that good,” it was laggy enough to be “bothersome,” and apps in general took way too long to load. He was most annoyed by the fact that apps would sometimes not load despite multiple taps… and Lady Luck frowned on me as he was able to demonstrate it right in front of me. “A Luna reboot will fix that…” I mumbled, though more to myself. While weight was not an issue for him, he did mention that a co-worker noticed the TouchPad’s extra heft right away. And then that’s when he said something I was totally not ready for:
“And this?” He started swiping through cards left and right. “I don’t get the point of this. On my iPad I can go to my home screen and launch whatever app I want. If I double tap the home button I can see whatever app is open and run it from there.”
I’ve always argued that webOS was one of those “had to be there” kind of things… perhaps two days with the TouchPad was not enough for someone used to iOS to fully grasp the power of real multitasking… or maybe he was on to something. Personally, having lived with webOS for over two years, I tend to think his problem was the former. Hey, maybe tech reviewers needed to spend more than just a week with the TouchPad, like ZDNET’s James Kendrick, who has owned the TouchPad for a good while and seems to be quite taken with it. Still, it’s HP’s case to make when enticing new users to the platform. Otherwise, what’s HP’s new mantra gonna be, “You’re Using it Wrong?” Hope not.
My Take: iPad2 is the best tablet on the market today. BUT…
Surprised? Well have you picked up a friggin’ iPad2 lately? It’s a thing of beauty. With their cases on side-by-side, the TouchPad is a friggin’ porker, I’m sorry. When David pointed this out, I was only able to stammer HP’s excuse about Beats Audio speakers and Touchstone coils… but c’mon let’s cut the crap, HP. Expandable memory or HDMI out would have been a much more desirable excuse. Meanwhile, the iPad2 is an engineering marvel from a hardware perspective. Many have argued the iPad2′s reduced weight is only barely perceptible versus the TouchPad but yeah, I could tell I was holding a lighter device every time I picked the iPad2 up. Plus, the software is buttery smooth. It don’t get no smoother, folks. Scrolls almost never hung and apps (many of which were at least decent) loaded almost instantaneously. Zooming out a bit more, I may not like Apple’s “walled garden” approach or even their way of doing business… but they’re obviously the ones blazing the trail here. All in all, compared to the competition as it is today, the iPad2 is the best tablet on the market. … Excuse me for a bit while I go wash my hands a few hundred times. ;)
BUT…
It’s not for me. While I inwardly gushed over the iPad’s many redeeming qualities, my appreciation for webOS on a tablet only grew while using it. See, I think I have it pegged… by design, iOS is meant to get out of the way, and it’s all about the apps. My problem with that is the OS doesn’t really do anything to facilitate your interaction with these apps. Sure, the folders are a good idea, but interacting with a stock iPad2 still remains a very linear experience. Tap in, tap out. Tap in, tap out. It just doesn’t flow. (Sound familiar?)
Not only that, I’m convinced Apple would rather you use tons of apps than freely browse the web. As much as the TouchPad’s browser needs to improve (seriously HP, keep working on this), browsing on the iPad2′s browser felt like an incomplete experience. Yes, I know this is controversial, and yes, I’m talking about Flash. I don’t care if it’s buggy, I don’t care if it’s doomed to die a slow painful death as Jobs would have you believe… but right now, today, a browser without Flash is an incomplete one indeed. It’s one thing to have tons of apps for an optimized experience. But as in the iPad2′s case, it’s another to cover up the fact that iOS cannot bring you the full web. That Apple has no intention to do so in the short-term bothers me. [As if on cue, go here for a much more eloquent take on this. -Ed]
Contrary to the TouchPad’s case, I’m not sure another two weeks with the iPad2 would have changed my opinion on these things. And, quite frankly, it’s hard for me to see oodles of untapped potential in iOS unless some paradigm shift in its inner-workings takes place.
As for YOU, TouchPad…
I’ve seen the potential in webOS since January of 2009. But that’s a damn long time to be seeing that which has yet to materialize. Sure, there’s been innovations, tweaks, and optimizations – Rome wasn’t built in a day, after all. But even in webOS 3.0, we users have had to deal with the same tiring issues – lags, freezes, battery life issues, lack of apps – for far too long, much less see our beloved OS take a revolutionary step forward where the market takes notice. I know there’s plenty of explanations and excuses and promises of that which is yet to come, but there comes a point where “chasing a dream” loses its luster, even for a starry-eyed webOS die-hard like myself.
As I left David’s apartment, he was proudly streaming Netflix wirelessly to his Apple TV from his iPad2 – obviously glad to have it back. Sitting in my car, I looked down at my TouchPad, blankly swiping cards to and fro… wondering if I had yet another investment in the name of under-developed potential left in me.
