In what is certainly entirely expected, I was wrong about the whole CrunchPad drama. I suspected it was nothing more than a publicity stunt, but as it turns out, Fusion Garage’s side of the story confirmed that the break between them and Arrington is real. During a press conference today, Fusion Garage told their side of the story, while also officially introducing the CrunchPad Joo Joo.
Legal note
Chandrasekar “Chandra” Rathakrishnan, CEO of Fusion Garage, told his side of the story during an online press conference. He claims that Fusion Garage had already been working on the tablet device before Michael Arrington first blogged about his idea. The two parties came into contact, and Arrington promised to do marketing and promotion for Fusion Garage, and maybe later he would actually buy the company.
“Unfortunately, Michael was unable to deliver at the project’s date end, in February 2009,” Rathakrishnan said, “Pictures of a birthday cake do not mean a contract is in place. If the project was to go forward, it was up to Fusion Garage.”
“There was never any agreement of any kind between the two companies. This was nothing more than a potential acquisition that didn’t occur. Michael sat back while we took all the risk. The suggestion that Michael or TechCrunch owns anything is simply ludicrous,” he further explained, “TechCrunch didn’t contribute a single line of code. As Michael wrote in his own April 2009 blog post, ‘All credit should go to Fusion Garage’.”
I’m pretty sure we haven’t heard the last of that. Rathakrishnan denied that any lawsuit has been filed against Fusion Garage as of yet, something Arrington did state. “Despite what was written, there is no suit filed today. We own the IP and will defend it,” he said, “To emphasize: Michael did not deliver on his promises, and we have decided to move on our own.”
The Joo Joo
With all of the legal nonsense out of the way, let’s talk about the tablet Fusion Garage officially unveiled today during the press event. The CrunchPad name is obviously out, and the device has been renamed to Joo Joo. Hardware-wise, its biggest attraction is probably the 12.1″ capacitive touch screen, which is ridiculously large. It comes with a 4GB SSD, wifi (no 3G), and an accelerometer. It pumps out about 5 hours of battery life on a single charge.
The Joo Joo boots straight into a browser running on a UNIX system, and it has a boot time of about 9 seconds. There are no applications or whatever other than the browser, making it remarably similar to Chrome OS. The graphics chip inside the Joo Joo is powerful enough to do HD video. Other than the off switch, the Joo Joo has no physical buttons.
Pre-orders start at December 11, with a price tag of 499 USD. You can order them at TheJooJoo.com.
David’s Take on the Webcast
- TechCrunch intended to acquire Fusion Garage with his CrunchPad Inc corporation, but they were never able to arrive at mutually acceptable terms. Arrington wanted a controlling interest. Fusion Garage CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan’s side of the story is that most of the discussion between his company and TechCrunch was about this failed acquisition effort, implying that once the acquisition talks were off, there was no real connection between his company and TechCrunch.
- Rathakrishnan claims that there are no contracts of any kind linking Arrington/TechCrunch and Fusion Garage, and is emphatic that Arrington has no valid IP claims. He also says that as of yet no legal action has been initiated that he knows of.
- Rathakrishnan claims that Fusion Garage raised all the funds, did all the OS development, and interacted with the hardware partners. He downplays Arrington’s contribution and claims that there was a lot of talk and promises, but no concrete results. He says that Arrington promised to raise money and line up partners for the project, but wan’t able to come through on those promises, leaving Fusion Garage to come through with fundraising on its own.
- Rathakrishnan displayed the device in the video conference, but it was not a very good demo. He showed it boot up in nine seconds, and showed the main desktop, with icons for various web sites. The screen looked very green, but he said later on that it was a trick of the camera, and that the screen isn’t green-tinted. He didn’t demonstrate the device loading up any web sites. It could have been total puppetware for all we know. He didn’t display any of its capabilities.
- The big bombshell was that the ~$200 price point Arrington was aiming for was totally unrealistic, and the device, when launched, will cost $499. It will go on sale this month to be delivered in 8-10 weeks. It’s going to be called the JooJoo.
- He was very vague about the specs. It has a 12.1″ touchscreen and five hour battery life, and has been designed to store stuff on the cloud, so it doesn’t have a lot of flash memory. He defelcted a direct question from the audience about specs, so for some reason they don’t want to talk about megahertz and megabytes.
- He seemed very indignant about this whole imbroglio, and dismissive about TechCrunch’s contribution to it success, which is ironic because there’s no way this product would be getting so much attention had it not been for TechCrunch’s hyping it and especially the tech media’s morbid fascination with it now that there’s a big public spat. He should thank his lucky stars. As for Thom’s theory that this is all a big publicity stunt, nothing in the video conference pointed toward that, and I doubt that Rathakrishnan is a good enough actor to be able to fake the pissy mood he conveyed.
I couldn’t help laughing after I watched this. A 12.1 touch screen tablet that does nothing but boot into a web browser, gets five hours of battery life, and costs $500? Are they serious? My 1000HE netbook cost $100 less than that, gets 9 hours of battery life, and can do a boat load more than just booting up a web browser. Even worse, the device I use for very portable web browsing and other mobile tasks (my iPhone 3GS) gets two to three days of battery life, has 3g, and also does a lot more than simply web browsing. And it has a lot more local storage too. Are these people crazy? And… the Joo Joo? And I thought some of Apple’s iNames were kind of silly. I didn’t much like the name Crunchpad either, it sounded a lot more powerful than the device actually seemed it would be, but it was better than Joo Joo. It sounds like a kid’s toy, a very expensive one. Either that or the whole thing is one giant piece of candy. Either way… what a ridiculous name.
I doubt this is going to get anywhere. ChromeOS, a similar concept, might have a chance to get somewhere because it has the Google name behind it and the devices it is going to run on are most likely not going to cost $500, but more like $100 or $200. $500 for a web browsing tablet? No way!
But it’s a Tablet! Its lack of a keyboard, and the resultant aura of Geek Chic, handily justifies the higher price tag, poor battery life, and lack of applications.
Edited 2009-12-07 19:27 UTC
You’re missing the point.
We need to wait for Apple to release the exact same device, but with a smaller screen, less storage, slower processor, less RAM, and more restrictive software, at double the price.
Then this market segment will be ready.
You are probably right.
At the moment I don’t see any benefit from the tablet form factor.
If PDF(or whatever) reading is the major usage scenario then a OLPC (Pixel Qi) screen has to be added to such a device. Something that works without back light and in bright sunlight.
So unless this thing does something no other device does or it is build by Apple it will be dead in the water and only a few rich gadget lovers will buy.
And, don’t forget Apple’s new policy of “take it or leave it” when the product has issues:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9141894/Apple_customer_colla…
Apple replaced my MacBook Pro twice and the hard drive seven (!) times under warranty, no problems.
Still not sure if it was a batch of bad Hitachi 320GB drives (last time it failed I replaced it myself with a 320GB Seagate, end of problems) or a firmware problem making the disks eat themselves.
Granted, this was a totally ridiculous situation (seven dead drives in 9 months? WTF?!), but I really can’t complain about the service I received from Apple.
– chrish
AppleCare is really good about fixing or replacing just about anything. Battery, hard drive, network controller, just about anything…
… except the display.
Every time I buy a Mac (has happened 3 times), I ask to open the box, power it on, and check the display BEFORE I buy it. I come in ready to buy and flash the credit card. But this is my condition. They always ask the manager, and they always let me do it.
Ordering a Mac online may be more convenient than driving all the way to the Apple store, but I think it’s worth the inconvenience to make sure I get something that at least _starts_out_ good.
I understand why you’d think that, but there is no way they would launch something more restrictive than this thing.
This thing has all of the functionality of the first Iphone
… minus the ability to play music
… or make phone calls
Minus the ability to make phone calls.
Good point.
Also, I don’t think it will have the ability to make phone calls. So that’s even less functionality.
Does Skype or Google Voice have a browser applet similar to the MSN/ICQ/blah/blah browser applet versions?
Speaking of Apple, this’d be a good niche for them to make use of that Advertising inside OSes patent they’ve app’d for. Release a sub $200 ad subsidized tablet as an integral part of some new service… much like the iPod to iTunes
Please enlighten us as to why you think any Apple device in this sector would have less storage than this ‘toy’.
Granted it will be more expensive but less storage? Nah. Look how the storage used in the iPod touch has increased recently.
I would love to have this device, if it cost somewhere between 75-100$
That’s the price-value range I would place on this device also.
Why the apple bash, I thought this was a story about a tablet? Does Apple make a tablet? Am I missing something? It did say it contained a Unix-like OS, but didn’t mention OSX. Some people’s children..
If it was an arm processor (a dual preferably) and ran moblin or chromeos I’d be all over it, even at $500, it’d be well worth it.
Probably because I mentioned the iPhone in my original comment merely to illustrate a point.
@Thom: Dude, you might want to see a doctor. You’re getting a bit obsessive over the anti-apple rhetoric, to the point where it actually obstructs discussion. Let’s not derail this into an Apple vs everyone else thread like so many others. My point about the iPhone was an example as it’s a product that I’m familiar with (seeing as how I use one) that leaves this joo joo thing dead in the water. It was an example, ok? Substitute Android phone for iPhone if it makes you happy, the point will still be just as relevant. Hell, you could probably even substitute the Palm Pre into that sentence although I’m not certain of this.
This thing has less functionality than any other tablet out there, even ChromeOS is going to have at least some capabilities for ocal storage although probably not very much. There’s no way, no way at all, that even a controlling company like Apple could release something with less functionality than this.
@darknexus
You might want to grow a sense of humour
.
Don’t worry, no one understands my sense of humor even at the best of times, especially me. Apparently today isn’t even close to the best of times, either that or I need a replacement sarcasm detector.
Edited 2009-12-07 21:55 UTC
Don’t forget that Thom recently bought an iPhone that I’m sure he’ll reluctantly admit is teh awesome.
If it were me, I think I’d crawl into a hole and pull the hole in after me. But I don’t mean to seem judgemental.
Yeah, the article says it “Runs UNIX web-based OS”. What the dreck is that? Nobody apart from SCO uses the word “Unix” anymore (esp. when peddling products for consumers).
It seems as if they either didn’t know what OS it was running, or that they want to reserve the right to change the OS.
Incidentally, “joo joo”, depending on the tone of the speaker, means something like “yeah, whatever” in Finnish ;-).
Edited 2009-12-07 22:11 UTC
*yawn*
Anyone else remember the BeIA web pads from Comdex 2000?
FAIL.
This form factor, as price points over $200 is doomed.
Now, I understand that because of the breakup they can no longer use the name CrunchPad (which sounds both bold and impressive); according to Michael Arrington they can actually do nothing at all. I also understand that they had little time to think up a new name…
…but “JooJoo” ???
I even think LameName would have a nicer ring to it!
Perhaps they think that JooJoo will become JuJU and their dinky toy device will sweep everything in the world aside and become the next ‘Big Thing’ by somehow casting a spell over everyone.
Crunchpad sounds like something to eat for breakfast.
But it’s a world better than JooJoo.
Or exercise equipment of some kind (“I just did 50 reps on the CrunchPad”).
Hell yes. I can just imagine if this thing is ever discussed on television – every mention of it will probably be followed by the words “…spelled “jay-oh-oh, jay-oh-oh” to make it clear that it’s a product name and not a epithet.
I would have liked one of these. But I’m not paying $500 for the world’s best Etch-a-Sketch when that same sum will get me a real laptop.
I can’t help but wonder if the split had to do with Arrington knowing these things wouldn’t sell for $500, and Chaka-whateverhisnameis knowing they couldn’t be manufactured for $200 (though I wonder why not, unless large capacitive screens are expensive).
My Etch-a-Sketch, back in the 70s, had real knobs. This gadget would have to fake them up on screen somehow. The JooJoo is a failure even judged against the capabilities of an Etch-a-Sketch.
Even with the less-for-more crowd buying up a few thousand to even a few 10s of thousands of these things… I won’t be one of them. 500 dollars for less, and I mean a LOT less in real terms. Just spend 1000-1200 for an entry level Air and you get SJ up your rear end instead with real company support, and real software. JooJoo, (is that Jew-***phonetically?) is sure to piss off the religious conservative movement coming back into power in 2012 as well
NOW THAT IS FUNNY!
Just wait until the investors say, “I lost my money because of the JooJoo.”