by JG Mason on Jun 30, 2011
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http://www.gadgetell.com/technologytell/article/why-is-hp-touchpad-full-of-bugs
Yesterday afternoon, the embargo was lifted (or broken) and reviews of the HP TouchPad that releases this Friday hit the web. While there are a lot of things to talk about regarding the TouchPad, the one we’ll focus on here is bugs. Bugs in the software were reported in most reviews and point to ominous signs. Can a buggy product have any chance of success?
“Huge problem. Huge problem that’s eerily reminiscent of issues with Motorola’s Xoom and BlackBerry’s PlayBook, both of which shipped with glitchy software. If a tablet misbehaves as much as the TouchPad does, it doesn’t really matter how good it is in other respects.” -Harry McCracken
“All across the OS I found myself discovering dark corners of unfinished or untested chunks of the UI, like when I would use the upward swipe gesture to bring up the launcher, and accidentally open an app instead.” -Joshua Tolpolsky
“I also ran into plenty of bugs in my tests, even though H-P said I was testing a production unit. For instance, on various occasions, the email app failed to display the contents of messages, the photos app failed to display pictures, and the game “Angry Birds” crashed repeatedly. All of these problems required a reboot of the device to resolve.” -Walt Mossberg
HP is full of smart folks who typically build good to great products for a large portion of the world. How can HP ship a product to reviewers full of these issues? The result can only lead to suppressed customer excitement (at least by those that rely on the web for decision-making info).
Did HP believe the other features would balance out the bugs? Things like swapping a webpage from the phone to the tablet are cool but not necessary. Each reviewer said using the tablet was fun, that’s great but why ship with bugs? Where’s the standards?
HP, I am sure, was faced with a tough challenge: launch with bugs or wait until the bugs were ironed out and face competition from a potential iPad 3. The reviewers generally agree that the TouchPad competes with first-generation iPad hardware, so competing with 2 iterations further down the design cycle is a risky move at best. It’s an unfortunate trade off.
Click here to view the full article
http://www.gadgetell.com/technologytell/article/why-is-hp-touchpad-full-of-bugs