“We noticed a minor textual change on the JooJoo order page just a few days back, and apparently it was no mistake – Fusion Garage has announced today that its long-awaited tablet PC has started to ship from the factory. For those who pre-ordered (and stuck with it), they’ll get theirs as early as March 29th, while everyone can get in line by plopping down their USD 499 after the fact.”
$499 for that? You might as well go for an iPad or an Android tablet. You’d get more functionality, more storage space, and a product that can actually do more than browse the web. What a joke, but then again if the name didn’t scream idiotic then I don’t know what else would be a big enough clue.
Android tablet, definitely. iPad? No. Atleast I can use any internet service than rely on some unknown SIM technology. That said, the price is crazy..
Won’t buy a JooJoo because :
1/I want a real OS ^^ Not a browser restricted to a browser and a media player, that’s being trapped in cloud madness. Neither an iPhoneOS device that wants me to lick the a** of Jobs in order to do a single thing. Hope the Courier team listens to me…
2/I’m not buying anything from Fusion Garage after what they did to TechCrunch.
Still… Hope they manage to make this sell well, just so that Apple get punched in the face. They’re getting more and more evil, powerful, and arrogant lately, and hence really deserve it before getting even more ambitious and trying to make the Macbook Air turn into an iPhone-OS powered device, then the rest of the Macbook family, then the iMacs, and then break iThing compatibility with Windows…
Edited 2010-03-26 07:45 UTC
Macbooks will always exist as the Macbook Pros are used a lot for laptop DJs (Ableton etc) and producers (eg Logic), software / iPhone developers, artistic professions (for Photoshop and the lark). and for a whole range of other power hungry users.
While Apple are finally realising that average people don’t generally want / need powerful machines (something ASUS already knew a few years ago), they’re not stupid enough to turn their back on their existing (and some might argue “bread-and-butter”) customers either.
Agreed, not because of the lack of a real OS. Since it’s rater stock Atom hardware, and should not be to hard to stick a real OS on it. I think one of the post over at TechCrunch mentioned demoing it with ChromeOS/Anroid and Win7, back when it was the CrunchPad.
But the same as you, the way Fusion Garage does business is a big reason. The other and bigger reason is the limited hardware versus price. It’s way to expensive for the limited functionality it delivers. Incidentally much the same reasons why I will not get an iPad either.
In any case there are lots of alternatives emerging all over the place. I’m waiting for some Cortex-A9 based ones with, decent screens. Or perhaps one of the cheaper Cortex-A8 based ones(Same as the iPad) that are emerging.
If one want to go for a Atom based one like the JooJoo, the WePad seems superior( http://wepad.mobi/en ).
Do we actually know what really happened? Not what Fusion Garage nor what ego-case Arrington say happened, but the actual events that lead up to and through that fiasco?
Well, both accuse the other of being the vilain, so it’s a matter of common sense : what do we know about Arrington and Fusion garage ?
TechCrunch is not a profit-centered website. It’s not Amazon, Ebay, or whatever. They make profits through ads, but essentially are a community-oriented news website. Arrington started the Crunchpad thing because a pack of people including him tought that a $200 tablet device for browsing the web would be something great.
The primary goal of Fusion Garage, however, is not to share thought and centralize information, nor to make something because it looks cool. Their primary goal, as a company, is to make a lot of money.
Then, as the Crunchpad project gets close to completion, a magical event makes it the property of Fusion Garage. And they won’t mention the people who started it all, no, they even change the name to something totally idotic so that it’s not about TechCrunch anymore. Look for a mention of the name of Michael Arrington or of TechCrunch on thejoojoo.com : there’s none. It’s all about Fusion Garage. They made it all.
Sure, Arrington may have done some nasty things on his side. But the final setting is Fusion Garage trying to money out of the Crunchpad idea without even telling about the authors. This violates intellectual property, not in the DMCA sense of “property of people who patented it” but in the logical sense of “property of people who got the idea to begin with”.
So in my opinion, Fusion Garage look extremely suspicious, and are indeed guilty of IP violation…
Edited 2010-03-26 18:29 UTC
No, but I do know its a ridiculous price with a stupid name made by a company without deep pockets launched against a flurry of other, better devices. They might as well throw in a life time guarantee, as the devices would only need to work until he company disappears.