Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready, Are you hey there, Tex Stuff listeners. This
Speaker 1: is Jonathan Strickland and I have got a request for
Speaker 1: all of you. Now. Chris and I have decided that
Speaker 1: we're going to try and experiment. We're doing our first
Speaker 1: crowdsourced episode of tech Stuff and we want to know
Speaker 1: what your pick is for the worst video game of
Speaker 1: all time. Now, nominations you can. You can make one nomination.
Speaker 1: You nominate one game, and you need to tell us
Speaker 1: the name of the game and the platform it was on.
Speaker 1: And it could be any platform. It could be an
Speaker 1: arcade game, it could be a PC, Mac, Xbox, PS three,
Speaker 1: Nintendo handheld console. It can be web based if you like.
Speaker 1: But just you let us know what the platform is
Speaker 1: so we can make sure we count that as the votes.
Speaker 1: So you can nominate your game either through email, which
Speaker 1: is text stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can nominate through Twitter or Facebook. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: put a cut off date on this. I want to
Speaker 1: have the episode go up by the end of September
Speaker 1: of even so let's say you need to get your
Speaker 1: nominations in by September eleven, So if you get those
Speaker 1: nominations into us, we will make sure we include those
Speaker 1: in the process and we will have an episode where
Speaker 1: we give you the worst video games of all time
Speaker 1: based upon the votes of our listeners. Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: You can't wait to hear from you. Get in touch
Speaker 1: with technology with tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Hello again, everyone, Welcome to tech Stuff. My name is
Speaker 1: Chris Poulett. I am an editor at how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. And sitting down across from me because he
Speaker 1: just doesn't want to stand, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Sometimes when we touch, the honesty's too much and I
Speaker 1: have to close my eyes and hide. That typically has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the electronics and computer industry, but
Speaker 1: today we're talking about a very weird situation, the the
Speaker 1: HP touch pad and its fate and uh and reaction
Speaker 1: to that fate and what that reaction to that fate
Speaker 1: might actually mean and how it could change the fate.
Speaker 1: And I got a headache. Yeah. So a few podcasts ago,
Speaker 1: and I don't even remember which one it was on
Speaker 1: because I didn't think about it until just now to
Speaker 1: look it up. Um, we talked about web OS and
Speaker 1: in terms of and it was a tablet And I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I actually have finally had the chance
Speaker 1: to mess around with an HP touch pad. Um And
Speaker 1: it was the first time I had ever actually encountered
Speaker 1: the web os in the wild. Um, I think there
Speaker 1: was an elephant standing nearby. It was a little scary,
Speaker 1: an elephant in my pajamas. How I got on my
Speaker 1: touch pad I'll never know, but uh, but yeah, it
Speaker 1: was the first time I had actually ever had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to tried. I never actually seen a Palm pre
Speaker 1: or anything, you know, anything else that ran it. And
Speaker 1: I really liked the OS and I didn't spend hours
Speaker 1: with it. I spent about five minutes with it, but
Speaker 1: I thought, hey, you know what this is. This is
Speaker 1: pretty nice. And I used Android on my phone and
Speaker 1: I use you know iOS, I've got an iPad. I thought, well,
Speaker 1: this this is a pretty nice o S. I really
Speaker 1: like it. I would like to mess with it some more.
Speaker 1: And I thought, maybe HP has got something with this thing.
Speaker 1: Except HP didn't think so. Um. Well, before we before
Speaker 1: we jumped too much into the actual story, we probably
Speaker 1: should revisit. We did an episode on Palm which is
Speaker 1: where you were thinking of the web os. We did
Speaker 1: an episode on on the the rise and fall of
Speaker 1: Palm and kind of it's a pathway and uh. And
Speaker 1: in a way, what we're talking about now is almost
Speaker 1: the death of Palm, although there's a glimmer there's a
Speaker 1: glimmer of life left in what Palm created. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: a in a nutshell, Palm, of course was h personal
Speaker 1: digital assistant company. They made the hardware for UH, for
Speaker 1: this device, which in the was wildly popular with business people. Um.
Speaker 1: It was a predecessor to the smartphone, a company where
Speaker 1: the the company founders left and created another company called Handspring.
Speaker 1: They came up with the Trio, which was a very
Speaker 1: early smartphone. It used. They licensed the Palm operating system
Speaker 1: from Palm, and eventually Palm acquired hand Spring and started
Speaker 1: making Trios, and they sort of, you know, gradually started
Speaker 1: the smartphone market more or less, I would say, along
Speaker 1: with BlackBerry. Right, BlackBerry was getting a lot of traction
Speaker 1: in the enterprise field, so all the professionals, right, executives,
Speaker 1: people like that, were snapping up Blackberries and getting hooked
Speaker 1: on them. Uh. And then Palm was courting that same
Speaker 1: customer base. Uh. Neither Palm nor BlackBerry at the time.
Speaker 1: We're really making a huge dent in the general consumer
Speaker 1: market that we didn't see the general consumer get interested
Speaker 1: in smartphones really until the introduction of the iPhone in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven. Yep. And the thing is, BlackBerry had
Speaker 1: the enterprise market sewn up, partially because of their thorough encryption.
Speaker 1: They have their their proprietary encryption system and network. UM
Speaker 1: and iPhone had this brand new operating system, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, Palms operating system which hadn't really been
Speaker 1: updated significantly. I mean, yeah, I've been gone through periodic updates,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't uh really new or refreshed. UM started
Speaker 1: to really show its age. I mean BlackBerry and and
Speaker 1: an Apple, we're really setting it behind. And it was
Speaker 1: painfully obvious that Palm was losing ground very very quickly. Right,
Speaker 1: So let's flash forward to two thousand nine. January two
Speaker 1: thousand nine at C E. S. Palm unveils the Palm
Speaker 1: pre running the brand new web OS. The press went nuts,
Speaker 1: Oh boy, did they? Yeah? Look at that this was
Speaker 1: a device that had more buzz around it than just
Speaker 1: about anything else on the floor that year. There were
Speaker 1: a couple of other items that also got some some
Speaker 1: major buzz, but the Palm pre was was way up there,
Speaker 1: and everyone who saw it thought it looked really snazzy.
Speaker 1: That the web operating System or the web OS rather
Speaker 1: was that it was very um uh snazzy. It had
Speaker 1: a nice, uh flashy look to it. It looked like
Speaker 1: it was very responsive. Uh, it looked like it could
Speaker 1: really give the iPhone a run for its money as
Speaker 1: far as design is concerned. Because really, I'm a huge
Speaker 1: Android fan, don't get me wrong, So when I say this,
Speaker 1: know that I'm saying it as someone who owns Android
Speaker 1: products and loves the Android system. Android does not have
Speaker 1: the flash or style of iOS. It doesn't. It's it's
Speaker 1: a very useful system, and it has a lot of
Speaker 1: flexibility and a lot of customization built into it, which
Speaker 1: is fantastic and that's why I love it. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't have the kind of snazzy look of iOS or
Speaker 1: web os. So the response was, Hey, this is a
Speaker 1: smartphone that might appeal to the same potential customer as
Speaker 1: Apple's customers, right, not just like not just smartphone buyers,
Speaker 1: because some smartphone buyers are like me, you know, they're
Speaker 1: gonna be I want the Android one because it it
Speaker 1: kind of caters to my style. Some are going to
Speaker 1: be I like this one because it's pretty and it works.
Speaker 1: And uh, and there's nothing wrong with either of those two.
Speaker 1: By the way, I'm not passing any judgment. I just
Speaker 1: happened to fall into that one category versus the other. Now,
Speaker 1: the webOS the Palm pre like I said, made a
Speaker 1: huge splash, but there was a problem in that it
Speaker 1: didn't get to market until June of two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: So it was it was unveiled in January and then
Speaker 1: six months passed before it hits store shelves. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there's another problem too, and it really hit a long
Speaker 1: time before this, and that is that Palm did not
Speaker 1: move early enough to make this work. Not really right.
Speaker 1: So by two thousand nine, the iPhone has been out
Speaker 1: for two years. The Android phone has been out for
Speaker 1: almost as long. Android launched just a few months after
Speaker 1: the iPhone became available, and so you already had these
Speaker 1: companies already had a jump in the smartphone market. We're
Speaker 1: already building a customer base, and so you're starting to
Speaker 1: lose the number of people who are interested in smartphones.
Speaker 1: But don't already have one, and then that means that
Speaker 1: you have to get whatever group is left, like people
Speaker 1: who want a smartphone but haven't bought one. They've held
Speaker 1: off that that number has gotten very small, or you
Speaker 1: have to convince people who have bought a smartphone to switch,
Speaker 1: which is tough because most of the time, at least
Speaker 1: in the United States, those smartphones are coming with contracts
Speaker 1: that last at least two years, and to get out
Speaker 1: of that contract you have to spend more money. So
Speaker 1: it means that the purchase price of a new smartphone,
Speaker 1: you know that part of it, that's the base amount
Speaker 1: of where you're gonna spend, but you're also going to
Speaker 1: spend the money to get out of your current contract
Speaker 1: on top of that, so it makes those smartphones even
Speaker 1: more expensive. Or you know, if you buy a phone
Speaker 1: that isn't connected to a plan, that adds money to
Speaker 1: the purchase price. So anyway, uh, yeah, Palm was already
Speaker 1: behind in the game, and then the fact that it
Speaker 1: took six months from the unveiling to the launch meant
Speaker 1: that that buzz that was so powerful back in January
Speaker 1: had died down to just a murmur by June, and
Speaker 1: so it the Palm pre did not have a hugely
Speaker 1: successful launch. Uh. They followed it up with the Palm Pixie,
Speaker 1: which had even worse But anyway, Palm started to suffer
Speaker 1: and then the company began to waiver financially. And that's
Speaker 1: when HP stepped in in two thousand ten and purchased
Speaker 1: the company. Yeah, they had been sort of, I would say,
Speaker 1: not so secretly looking for suitors, you know, who wants
Speaker 1: to pick us up. We got some good stuff and
Speaker 1: uh an HP was was the winning bidder on the
Speaker 1: company and picked it up. And people began saying, okay,
Speaker 1: so is HP going to get in the smartphone business? Now?
Speaker 1: What does this mean for the web os? And HP
Speaker 1: pretty much said definitively they were not interested in the
Speaker 1: smartphone business. That didn't mean that they were going to
Speaker 1: completely discontinue all that, but they they the company made
Speaker 1: it very clear that this purchase was really for webOS
Speaker 1: more than anything else. And and so people were saying, okay,
Speaker 1: so if you're not going to make smartphones with it,
Speaker 1: what are you going to do with it? And of course,
Speaker 1: in with the launch of Apple's iPad um, it became
Speaker 1: clear that there was a market for consumers to buy
Speaker 1: tablet computers. So the tablet computer race is now on,
Speaker 1: with Apple firmly in the lead. Uh and HP starts
Speaker 1: to develop tablets as well. And tablets were not again,
Speaker 1: not a new thing. Tablets have been around for a while.
Speaker 1: It's just that iPad was the first one to really
Speaker 1: become a success in the consumer market, and it was
Speaker 1: depending up. I don't want to say it's clear that
Speaker 1: Microsoft Windows was not a good operating system for tablets.
Speaker 1: I'll say that a lot of engineers did not like
Speaker 1: using Windows for tablets. They found it to not be ideal.
Speaker 1: Plus the form factor for tablets to previous tablets the
Speaker 1: Microsoft operating system, tablets were primarily essentially notebook computers for
Speaker 1: which the screen would flip inside out and you could
Speaker 1: snap it down. So it was more or less the
Speaker 1: size and heft of a laptop computer, a smallish laptop computer,
Speaker 1: but not the same form factor the small size of
Speaker 1: a of an iPad. Then, yeah, so HP starts working
Speaker 1: on on actually are they been working but they they're
Speaker 1: developing the touch pad. That's their their tablet, and the
Speaker 1: touch pad launched officially on July one, yep, July one,
Speaker 1: and we're recording this, uh towards the end ish of August,
Speaker 1: when we're sitting down in the studio. We know that
Speaker 1: you guys are listening to this later because you're not
Speaker 1: in here with us, right. But the thing is, UM.
Speaker 1: In July they announced, you know, they released these and
Speaker 1: on August I heard of a story in which Best
Speaker 1: Buy was saying, these things aren't selling. We want HP
Speaker 1: to take them back. Uh. It was a rumor because
Speaker 1: you know, the companies aren't really gonna do that. But
Speaker 1: basically what happened was they had they had purchased a
Speaker 1: lot of inventory, and the inventory wasn't moving. They weren't
Speaker 1: moving them. Yeah, and they were priced about the same
Speaker 1: as an iPad, and they were around the same amount
Speaker 1: as an iPad. And and so you're talking tablets, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're talking about the five to eight dollar range, depending
Speaker 1: upon the tablets. UM. So the touchpads were not really moving.
Speaker 1: And then HP dropped a bombshell on the world, uh,
Speaker 1: in a in a call on August nine, and that
Speaker 1: was when HP said that the executive said that they
Speaker 1: were no longer going to support the developing web os products.
Speaker 1: Now the software will, according to HP, continue to be
Speaker 1: supported in some way that wasn't really addressed in that
Speaker 1: particular discussion. But so there's no immediate indication that webOS
Speaker 1: itself is really going away, but the HP is no
Speaker 1: longer going to be building products for web Os, and
Speaker 1: that means no more smartphones or tablets running the web
Speaker 1: Os operating system, which is you know, only a few
Speaker 1: weeks of the tablet being out there, forty nine days
Speaker 1: to be specific, And in fact, forty nine days means
Speaker 1: that the HP Touchpad did out pasked one other electronic
Speaker 1: device that was famously launched and then abandoned soon thereafter,
Speaker 1: and that was the Kin from Microsoft sow. The Kin
Speaker 1: was the the the follow up to the Sidekick. You know,
Speaker 1: Microsoft purchased danger yes, and then UH decided to introduce
Speaker 1: the Kin, which was running on on the the Dangerous servers,
Speaker 1: and that lasted forty eight days from launch to abandonment.
Speaker 1: So the touchpad survived a day longer than the Ken did.
Speaker 1: These were not, by the way, just I don't want
Speaker 1: to give the indication that both of these stories happened simultaneously.
Speaker 1: The kN that that happened before the touchpad story. But anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this ended up making some waves in technology circles.
Speaker 1: People were starting to talk about does this mean that
Speaker 1: Palm is officially dead now that webbos has essentially been
Speaker 1: abandoned uh, And then there were other people saying, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, let's not jump to conclusions, because, as HP
Speaker 1: has said, they will continue to support at least the
Speaker 1: software side of web os UH. My question is that, UH,
Speaker 1: is there enough of an incentive for developers to continue
Speaker 1: developing applications for web os knowing that there are no
Speaker 1: plans for any future hardware that will run the operating system,
Speaker 1: at least not any from HP. I mean, there's always
Speaker 1: the possibility that HP could license out operating system to
Speaker 1: some other hardware manufacturer, right right, so we might see
Speaker 1: some other branded UH device come out with the web
Speaker 1: Os on it. Yeah. Now let's pretend, for for for
Speaker 1: just a moment, that the story stops right here. UM,
Speaker 1: I think the podcast would pretty much stop right here,
Speaker 1: because I think, UH, speaking for myself anyway, I would
Speaker 1: say it's unlikely that HP is going to do anything
Speaker 1: with it. It's unlikely, considering the difficulty with which Palm
Speaker 1: UH fund itself trying to be purchased, that anybody will
Speaker 1: want to pick it up. So I would say that
Speaker 1: this is the death of the web os. That's if
Speaker 1: the story stops here. But weirdly enough, so it doesn't.
Speaker 1: The touch pad became the most popular obsolete device I
Speaker 1: have ever heard of. It's it's very strange. Now, it's well,
Speaker 1: it's that's completely strange. But well, so we have we've
Speaker 1: we've already uh, you know, touched on the fact that
Speaker 1: there are tons and tons of them out there right
Speaker 1: they're not selling. Um. Yeah, the article I had, um
Speaker 1: I read about was Eric Hesseldahl from All Things d
Speaker 1: who who he was going on rumors that Best Buy
Speaker 1: had bought two hundred seventy thousand touch pads and it
Speaker 1: only moved twenty five thousand of them. She actually mentioned, well,
Speaker 1: I mean you talked about the discounts. There was a
Speaker 1: discount for fifty dollars and then a hundred dollars on
Speaker 1: on the touch pad that ended up being a permanent discount.
Speaker 1: After they still weren't selling. They said there was a
Speaker 1: deal on woot dot com for a hundred twenty dollars
Speaker 1: off the sixteen gigabyte model six D twelve. People went
Speaker 1: in for it. It's not really a lot of people
Speaker 1: showing interest in it. Again, no one's gonna pick it up.
Speaker 1: They've killed it off. It's not except at this point,
Speaker 1: with all these touch pads in the marketplace, HP and
Speaker 1: all these retailers decided to put it on a steep discount.
Speaker 1: So there are two models, the sixteen and the thirty
Speaker 1: two gigabyte, and they started going for as low as
Speaker 1: ninety nine dollars. Yeah, and and include there was one
Speaker 1: place where you could get it for forty because here's Staples, Staples, Staples,
Speaker 1: because Staples was running a promotion, whereas fifty dollars off
Speaker 1: a tablet for the back to school promotion. So if
Speaker 1: you bought the nine dollar sixteen gigabyte touch pad from
Speaker 1: stay Poles, you would get the fifty dollars back. It
Speaker 1: was a forty nine dollar tablet. If I had seen that,
Speaker 1: I same here. Okay, I do not own a touch pad, Chris,
Speaker 1: you do not own a touch pad, but both of
Speaker 1: us at a hundred dollars. That's this is This is
Speaker 1: where the story really gets interesting because it could mean
Speaker 1: huge changes coming up in the tablet market going forward,
Speaker 1: because people have taken notice when HP reduced the prices
Speaker 1: for the sixteen gigabyte down to and the thirty two
Speaker 1: gigabyte was down to a hundred and forty nine dollars.
Speaker 1: People started sweeping them up. People were buying them in bunches,
Speaker 1: because you could buy five sixteen gigabyte touch bad tablets
Speaker 1: for the same price as and iPad. Yeah, and they've
Speaker 1: started showing up on eBay for more than that for yeah,
Speaker 1: some in some cases more than what the retail price
Speaker 1: was when they were in stores. But the that was
Speaker 1: the the interesting thing was that people started jumping on
Speaker 1: these deals, and in fact HP was soon out of stock,
Speaker 1: although of course lots of other type pads are still
Speaker 1: on their way back to HP. So by the time
Speaker 1: this podcast goes live, I can't say for sure that
Speaker 1: there will be more sales because I don't know the numbers,
Speaker 1: but I do know that between the time we're recording
Speaker 1: and then there probably will be another sale on HP,
Speaker 1: and and that HP even invited people to sign up
Speaker 1: for notifications when it would go on sale again. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and the thing is to HP has said we're
Speaker 1: temporarily out of stock, we will be getting more of them, right,
Speaker 1: and and there are all the other places that we're
Speaker 1: selling them for the nine dollars. Very quickly sold out,
Speaker 1: and there were websites dedicated just to tracking these deals
Speaker 1: and letting people know when the deals were active and
Speaker 1: then when the deals had had expired, like when all
Speaker 1: the inventory was sold out. And I was watching these
Speaker 1: for a while because I was thinking, you know what,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll pick one up because a hundred dollars, that's
Speaker 1: that's tempting. Um. And even though knowing that the web
Speaker 1: os operating system may be obsolete, you know, there may
Speaker 1: not be that much more developed before that operates istem
Speaker 1: just because again, if you're a developer and you're going
Speaker 1: to spend the time, money, and effort to build something,
Speaker 1: you want to hit. Uh. You want to build an
Speaker 1: application it's going to as many people as possible, and
Speaker 1: you don't do it for an operating system that's obsolete, right,
Speaker 1: one would guess. But because these sales have gone so
Speaker 1: crazy all over the place, now there's a renewed interest,
Speaker 1: at least in the journalism sphere, of where could webbos
Speaker 1: go after this, because it's shown that people are willing
Speaker 1: to buy this product at this price. Uh, Now it
Speaker 1: may not go anywhere for webOS. Well, it is important
Speaker 1: to note, um. I read in the Christian Science Monitor
Speaker 1: an article by Chris Gaylord who pointed out that apparently
Speaker 1: the parts cost for a touch pad. Actually he quoted
Speaker 1: I supply, um, the parts inside a touch pad cost
Speaker 1: about three six dollars. So if you're wondering if HP
Speaker 1: is gonna go, huh, well, we can sell these, but
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to deeply discount them. They're gonna have
Speaker 1: to if they want to make a profit on it.
Speaker 1: And they would make a profit on the hardware, not
Speaker 1: on the software. You know, other other companies can do that,
Speaker 1: you know, people like Sony with the PlayStation. They're gonna
Speaker 1: make some money on the games. HP is not really
Speaker 1: going to make money on the software side, so they
Speaker 1: would have to price it above three d seven dollars.
Speaker 1: I'm sounding like the prices right one dollar? Um, so yeah,
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars. They're not going to make any money
Speaker 1: on it. But the thing is now there is an
Speaker 1: entrenched base of users sort of. I mean there there
Speaker 1: weren't people before. Now there is an incentive to develop
Speaker 1: software for the web os because there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people now, not not as many as with the
Speaker 1: iPad or with the Android tablets. But there are people
Speaker 1: using the web os. The question is is it worth
Speaker 1: catering to that audience or is it worth just exploring
Speaker 1: options of catering to the Apple and Android audiences, which are,
Speaker 1: like you said, much larger. Um, I think and and not.
Speaker 1: And to complicate that a little more, I know that
Speaker 1: there are people furiously working on ways to uh to
Speaker 1: essentially white webOS off the tablet and replace it with Android. Um,
Speaker 1: I've I've seen, I know, I've seen reports about early
Speaker 1: Gingerbread builds, Gingerbread being that the in the smart No, no,
Speaker 1: that's Honeycomb. Gingerbread is the old smart Point. There's the
Speaker 1: smartphone operating system. Yeah, and there's plans of incorporating the
Speaker 1: Honeycomb operating system, assuming that you know, the hardware can
Speaker 1: can run it properly and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: By the time, by the time this podcast goes live,
Speaker 1: there may very well be a Honeycomb build specifically geared
Speaker 1: so that you know, you can replace your webOS with
Speaker 1: Honeycomb if you wanted to. So there's that problem, because
Speaker 1: you know, there might be developers saying, yeah, they're all
Speaker 1: these there are all these tablets that are out there,
Speaker 1: but there's a certain percentage of tablet owners who don't
Speaker 1: even want that web os in the first place, So
Speaker 1: why would I develop for it? Then? But beyond that,
Speaker 1: this shows that there is a demand for tablets. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of people who want a tablet,
Speaker 1: but who are not willing to pay the prices that
Speaker 1: you find on your your average tablet on the marketplace.
Speaker 1: And they want a tablet that's of a certain quality,
Speaker 1: meaning better than some of the low end tablets that
Speaker 1: you find on the market uh, but they don't want
Speaker 1: to pay the premium price for it. And when I
Speaker 1: say premium price, I'm talking about from their perspective, the
Speaker 1: consumer perspective, not necessarily the manufacturer perspective, which, depending upon
Speaker 1: the manufacturer may have spent quite a bit of money.
Speaker 1: There may be a very low margin on some of
Speaker 1: those tablets. Um. So it could mean that perhaps tablet
Speaker 1: manufacturers say, why don't we look at a way to
Speaker 1: build a tablet that's going to cost less to for
Speaker 1: the consumer but still deliver a satisfying experience so that
Speaker 1: people don't feel like they've bought an inferior product. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think I think that's you know, the scramble
Speaker 1: where you just see this incredible passion for a product
Speaker 1: that is pretty much obsolete right now. UM. That that
Speaker 1: does that that raises some eyebrows, That that gets attention.
Speaker 1: You know, they're going to be some companies out there
Speaker 1: that are gonna say, you know, if this is the
Speaker 1: kind of excitement we see, we need to find the
Speaker 1: best price point for a tablet and then figure out
Speaker 1: the most economical way to produce a tablet for that
Speaker 1: price point where we can make a profit. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that's going to be the larger question. I don't
Speaker 1: think HP will get in back into the tablet business
Speaker 1: and turn it around and go, oh, you know what,
Speaker 1: people really do want this. Um. I. I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: surprised though, to see web os come back in some form,
Speaker 1: And by that I don't necessarily mean that HP will
Speaker 1: do it. UM. I wouldn't be surprised to find that
Speaker 1: somebody else wants at least the technology for use in
Speaker 1: their products. UM. But I also, you know, I was
Speaker 1: on a website, one of the tech websites that I
Speaker 1: sadly I can't remember, had a poll about what we
Speaker 1: thought should happen, and most people who answered that poll,
Speaker 1: non scientific, thought that it should be open sourced. So
Speaker 1: you know, there there could be a lot of things
Speaker 1: that happened to the operating system, and it could end
Speaker 1: up in other locations. But I wouldn't be surprised two
Speaker 1: sometime down the road, I don't think this is these
Speaker 1: questions about HP and the web os specifically are going
Speaker 1: to be coming in the next few weeks. I think
Speaker 1: this is going to be one of those things that
Speaker 1: plays out over some time. But I think it does
Speaker 1: show some interest in the possibility of of using the
Speaker 1: web os. I think it's it's absolutely a viable product.
Speaker 1: Question is who's willing, you know, whether HP is willing
Speaker 1: to let it go or sell somebody else or make
Speaker 1: a contribution to the open source community and say you
Speaker 1: know what, guys, here it is go to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's gonna this is gonna be one of
Speaker 1: those wait and see situations really on multiple fronts. What's
Speaker 1: the future of webbs was what is the future of
Speaker 1: low end tablets? Uh? Like, what does this say about
Speaker 1: the market in general? Um? But I didn't think we'd
Speaker 1: even be having this conversation. No, No No, it was just
Speaker 1: it was August. Normally, for those of you who are
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with tech news, you normally it's a very slow month,
Speaker 1: and it started out slow this year, but some things,
Speaker 1: some things have shaken things up. Um, the HP touchpad
Speaker 1: was one of the first big stories that really shook
Speaker 1: things up. There was an earthquake on the East Coast
Speaker 1: and then the response to that through various social networks.
Speaker 1: That was a big story. And that was even that
Speaker 1: an earthquake on the East Coast where it was felt
Speaker 1: from Virginia all the way up to New York City.
Speaker 1: That would you would think that would be the biggest
Speaker 1: story of the week. But then there was a story
Speaker 1: that broke that was even large than that. And depending
Speaker 1: on when this podcast goes live, you may or may
Speaker 1: not have already heard our podcast about that. And of
Speaker 1: course we're referring to Steve Jobs resigning from Apple and
Speaker 1: we're going to do a podcast on that, or maybe
Speaker 1: we've already done a podcast on that. I don't know,
Speaker 1: because I don't know what the schedule will be. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, we you didn't mention Google and motoral mobility.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, another huge story Google. Yeah, it's a very
Speaker 1: odd August. I think maybe they figured everyone was on
Speaker 1: vacation and we should make our big moves now. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's and we'll have to do a story about
Speaker 1: that too. So anyway, guys, that that's the kind of
Speaker 1: our our take on the touchpad situation and what happened
Speaker 1: and what might happen. Uh, It's it's really all up
Speaker 1: in the air, and it's kind of an interesting if
Speaker 1: any of you guys rushed out and bought a touch
Speaker 1: pad and took advantage of one of those deals. Just
Speaker 1: let us know what you think. Let's know about Well,
Speaker 1: let first of all, let's know about how what the
Speaker 1: experience was like purchasing it, and then let us know
Speaker 1: what you think about the actual tablet. Are you going
Speaker 1: to keep the web os? Do you like it? What
Speaker 1: do you what do you think is the best part,
Speaker 1: What do you think needs more work? Or do you
Speaker 1: plan on actually using the tablet and replacing the operating
Speaker 1: system at some point? I want to know all those things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some people did report problems trying to get their hands
Speaker 1: on one because some outlets uh went back on the deal.
Speaker 1: They said, oh sorry, we don't have a supply these
Speaker 1: after all. Sorry, after they had already made a purchase,
Speaker 1: so they got emails, named went to social media and
Speaker 1: complained bitterly out loud to the to the planet. I
Speaker 1: think that was really a case of lots of people
Speaker 1: flooding the system so quickly that it couldn't keep pace
Speaker 1: with the inventory. So, in other words, in other words,
Speaker 1: that it's not that the company was doing this in
Speaker 1: bad faith, it's just that literally the demand outstripped the
Speaker 1: supply and the capacity to to monitor how many units
Speaker 1: were being sold at any given time. And of course,
Speaker 1: like I said, you know, a lot of those places
Speaker 1: shipped their units back to HP, which we do expect
Speaker 1: to sell uh the rest at a hopefully at the
Speaker 1: same price, although that remains to be seen as of
Speaker 1: the recording of this podcast. But anyway, if you guys
Speaker 1: have bought one less no tell us what you think
Speaker 1: and you can email us. Our address is tech stuffs
Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com, or let us know
Speaker 1: on Facebook and Twitter. You'll find us there as text
Speaker 1: Stuff H s W and Chris and I will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Keep in touch. Be sure
Speaker 1: to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works
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