Posts Tagged ‘TouchPad’

There are a relatively small number of apps that determine whether or not a mobile platform is “feature complete” from the end user’s point of view. Some of these defining apps are Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook and Twitter. If these apps are missing from a mobile platform, the platform feels incomplete. I would also add Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader app to the list of apps that define a platform. And, HP announced this week that a beta for its webOS based HP TouchPad tablet is now available.

Now you can curl up with a good book (or two, or three, or 950,000) on your TouchPad (HP Palm Blog)

I found it interesting that HP did not provide any screenshots of the app and that Amazon does not even mention it in their Kindle mobile app list or in a press release.

A person commenting in the blog notes that PreCentral.net notes that the app is geo-locked to the U.S. This means that the app is only available to TouchPads in the U.S.

Did you buy an HP Palm TouchPad on Friday? If yes and you have a WordPress powered blog, you might want to take a look at the official (and free)…

WordPress for webOS (product page)

Welcome to WordPress for webOS (blog announcement)

The app may be the most unique looking and functioning official WordPress mobile app available. It features:

1. Sliding Panels to gesture and tap to select comments, drafts, posts and pages
2. Visual Editor
3. Pending comments notification
4. Built-in WordPress Stats

The app’s source code is Open Source (GPLv2 license).

The webOS based HP TouchPad tablet will be available for purchase in the U.S. starting next week Friday (July 1). And, according to TechCrunch, it may be the first tablet with a Facebook app tuned for the tablet form factor.

The HP TouchPad Will Come With Its Own Facebook Tablet App (Leaked Pics)

An official Facebook for iPad app was said to be in the queue a few weeks ago but has not yet appeared. Facebook’s Android app scales to fill a Honeycomb tablet display. However, the icons and text are scaled for a phone’s smaller display creating an unsatifying experience on a tablet.

Like the Facebook apps for Windows Phone and BlackBerry Playbook, the Facebook for TouchPad was developed by the platform vendor (HP in this case) and not by Facebook itself.

Will a tablet tuned Facebook app convince consumers to spend $500 (16GB model) or $600 (32GB model) HP TouchPad instead of an iPad? Perhaps not. But, it would be much worse if the TouchPad had not good Facebook window at all. HP needs to lower the price of each model by at least $100 to compete with the iPad.

The tablet computer market was very simple during the past decade. There was Microsoft’s Tablet PC Edition (later more or less merged into Windows Vista) that was purchased by narrow vertical markets. It remained simple after Apple released the iPad in 2010 too. Windows based tablets remained in their niches and the iPad dominated.
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