The speed and smoothness of the interface looks awesome. I wish I could have amplified the video.
Poll Technica: do the new TouchPad videos have you lusting for one?
Late last week, HP announced that its first webOS-based tablet, the HP Touchpad, will launch in the US on July 1. As part of the prelaunch buzz-building effort, the company has released nine new videos of the TouchPad in action.
The videos linked below don't really contain much in the way of new information, but they reinforce just how good of a fit the webOS multitasking model is for a larger screen size. All of the webOS devices released so far have been hampered by inexplicably poor industrial design and small screens. But with the TouchPad's much larger 9.7-inch display, the card-based multitasking paradigm will be able to reach its full potential. The card paradigm is also the primary edge that webOS has over iOS, since the latter doesn't really have as consistent and OS-wide a way to juggle multiple running apps. (What is it with Apple and multitasking? Does anyone remember how long it took MacOS to catch up to Windows in that regard?).
Overall, the TouchPad looks like the best candidate for mounting a real challenge to the iPad, especially for more business-minded users. Indeed, most of the factors we cited in an analysis of the Pre's demise aren't really relevant to the TouchPad, or they're relevant in a different way. The TouchPad is blessedly not designed for or marketed at women, so the form factor and attendant ad campaign won't suffer needlessly the way that Pre's did. At 0.54 inches thick, the device is thicker than the iPad 2, but not to the point that its bulk will be off-putting. And the strong business orientation could minimize the impact of the "long tail for app stores" factor that I cited as a big barrier to the Pre's mass-market uptake.
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