Stop me if you've heard this one before: There's an electronics company that you should never buy from because their stuff's so expensive, even though it's not any better than its competition. All it is, is it's shinier. But it runs hardly any apps, and it's less powerful than your friend's machine.
Everyone knows which company's products are stereotyped as being that way. And now HP appears to be aping it, right down to the label that says "Designed by HP in California." That's on the packaging for the HP TouchPad, its new WebOS tablet that looks almost exactly like the iPad but is supposedly not meant to compete with it.
Of course, given that Apple's extremely successful, it makes sense to try to learn from its success. Unfortunately, from the looks of the reviews HP is copying some of the aforementioned negative aspects, too.
Shiny look and feel
Macworld's Jason Snell wrote that "I spent half an hour in a meeting, using HP's new TouchPad tablet, before someone realized I wasn't using an iPad." Keep in mind, this man works at a publication called "Macworld." How identical to the iPad does the TouchPad have to be before even hardcore Apple enthusiasts will mistake it as one of their own? This may or may not be a bad thing, depending on how much you like the iPad's looks. But it doesn't set the TouchPad apart, either.
On the more positive side, the TouchPad has a distinct look and feel when it's turned on, thanks to the WebOS operating system that HP got when it bought Palm. Unfortunately, it's hampered by ...
Poor performance
Macs are reputed to have an "Apple tax," which explains why they cost so much more than similarly specced machines. In reality, people who buy Mac desktops or laptops are partly paying more for features that don't appear on a checklist, like aluminum unibody construction and Apple's obsessive attention to detail. But in HP's case, the TouchPad really is worse off than its competitors (that is to say, the iPad).
Where a finger-press or -swipe causes the iPad 2 to react instantly, the TouchPad has to think about it some of the time. This problem gets worse when you have lots of apps open; the TouchPad lets you multitask by shuffling app "cards" around, but it gives you more than enough rope to hang yourself with this way.
Oh, and speaking of apps, there aren't very many available. The iPad has over 65,000, but the TouchPad only has about 400. And while it can run apps designed for Palm phones, the way the iPad can run iPhone apps, instead of making them fit the whole screen it runs them inside a phone-sized box. That's more than a little ridiculous.
The price
The HP TouchPad costs the same as a Wi-Fi only iPad 2; $499 for the 16 GB model, and $599 for the 32 GB model. Unfortunately, that's exactly the wrong price point to be at. Why would anyone buy a TouchPad instead of an iPad 2 when the iPad works better and runs more apps?
Archos' upcoming tablets are priced starting under $300. Meanwhile, the bestselling Android tablet, the Asus Transformer, sells for $399. HP may want a premium price for its supposedly-premium product, but until it actually makes one this isn't helping to diminish its comparison with the Apple stereotype.
Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
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