There’s already been quite a bit of ink spilled over the demise of the CrunchPad but I thought I’d add a few drops. My opinion is this: the CrunchPad was a testament to the power of online media and a fascinating study in the ability of new media to enact real changes on the real world. While the product faltered, it’s fascinating that the project went as far as it did given the forces arrayed against it.
Think about what happened: if we reduce this to its component parts you have some dudes in California who talked to some dudes in Singapore and who agreed to work together on a piece of hardware. I’ve seen the prototypes and the thing worked and worked well. Most hardware manufacturers can barely take each others meetings let alone coordinate a massive project while separated by a culture and an ocean.
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Look, we already know a lot about the so-called Apple Tablet. We know the project is real and a lot of man power has been dedicated to the project. A China Times article might have answered a few of our questions though. That is, if the translated article can be trusted.
The Chinese trade publication is stating that Apple is working on a large screen touchscreen device; we knew that. What we didn’t know was when this device was coming out, but the Chinese supply chain companies are stating October. That’s also when the unibody Macbooks where introduced last year, btw. Read More
Now this is a jolly little happenstance. A Chinese manufacturer is selling what he says is a prototype CrunchPad “internet tablet” made by the inimitable Michael Arlington.
Big Mike has been pretty quiet about the CrunchPad since it was first leaked the other month and for good reason. We’ve heard from reliable sources that Apple is still on track with an oversized iPod Touch in the coming months. We more or less know everything there is to know about the CrunchPad, but a few more specs have popped up thanks to the NYT and SF Biz Times. The CP, made by Fusion Garage, is 16mm thick with a 12-inch screen encased in aluminum.
What Simon Dumenco lacks in tech savvy he makes up in relative prescience. There are a few issues media companies are dealing with now. There is a loss of ad revenue, competition from blogs, and, most importantly, falling circulation rates in communities that actually crave local news but don’t want to pay for it. There is a certain cohort of reader, however, that does not want to see the newspaper go away in its present form and there is a simple solution to their kvetching. Some folks expect the swift delivery of their news subscriptions in a format that is easily readable. While you could say “I thought that’s what the Internet is all about!” how are you going to convince a generation – folks in their thirties and beyond, for example – with the expectation that every morning a newspaper will be on the doorstep and a magazine will be in the mail to give that up and read their news on a screen?
By giving them a free e-reader.
We’ve been working hard behind the scenes on the CrunchPad since our last update in April, and have just about nailed down the final design for the device. We’re showing the conceptual drawings here today. In another few weeks we’ll have the first working prototypes in our office.
It’s time for an update on the progress we’ve made on the low cost touch screen tablet that I first wrote about in July 2008 when I asked for a dead simple touch screen web tablet that boots right to the browser. Here’s our first post on the tablet, which we’re now calling the CrunchPad internally.
