Finally something we can work with. While both the iPad and the Joo Joo are technically still vapourware, people have at least had the opportunity to play with the former, while the latter remained somewhat illusive. Now that the device has been set to ship at the end of this month, Ars Technica finally had some time to play with the Joo Joo and talk to Fusion Garage’s CEO, Chandra Rathakrishnan. There’s good news, and there’s (potentially) bad news.
Since I’m in a good mood (because I’m in my second Mass Effect 2 playthrough as one of the harder classes [Adept], on the hardcore difficulty setting, and I’m doing all right), let’s start with the unicorn good news first. Ars Technica was invited to Fusion Garage’s office in Singapore, and while there, had a chance to play with the Joo Joo.
The good news is that the Joo Joo has a Human Interface Device (HID) driver built-in, so that you can use the USB port to plug in any keyboard or mouse. Ars’ Paul Mah tested it with a wireless Microsoft mouse, and lo and behold, it worked just fine. The Joo Joo has an interface designed entirely around multitouch, but the prospect of being able to use a mouse and keyboard too is a nice one to have when you’re at home – and it doesn’t need to be an expensive branded one. There’s a stand, too.
The bad news is that Mah did not get to see the final version of the software running on the Joo Joo. Anyone with a bit of experience in this field knows that having good hardware alone gets you nowhere – it’s the software that really makes or breaks a device like this. Rathakrishnan said the software is about 90% complete, and with devices supposed to ship at the end of this month, they’re cutting it close.
Then again, the histories of great companies is laden with stories of barely-made deadlines – the first Amiga, the original Macintosh, the BeBox.
Inevitably, the Joo Joo has to be compared to the iPad, but Rathakrishnan is convinced there’s place for both on the market. The CEO is apparently quite proud of the Joo Joo’s design, and looking at the pictures of it, it’s hard to disagree with him – for a start-up, it looks surprisingly well-made.
“We have managed to pack in more hardware profiles than the iPad without compromising on sleekness [of the JooJoo],” Rathakrishnan told Ars. The device is about as thick as the iPad, while still sporting a larger screen (9.7″ vs. 12.1″) with a higher resolution (1024×768 vs. 1366×768) that’s still a capacitive touch screen. It only has WiFi, but Fusion Garage is not opposed to releasing models with 3G built-in in the future. It has a webcam too, which the iPad doesn’t (yet) have.
It’s difficult to say if the Joo Joo stands a chance here. Despite all the tablet hype, it’s still a market that does not yet exist, and none of us have any idea whether or not people will actually buy these things. I’m still sceptical, but if I had to choose between the two, the Joo Joo would win it hands-down, but only under one condition: the hardware has to be accessible by others, too. I need to be able to fiddle with the Linux system, and I need to be able to add functionality to it. I’m sure the same applies to many OSNews readers.
If that’s not possible, than the device is just as limited and constrained as the iPad. In which case, I won’t bother with either of them.
It does have a bigger screen, making room for more pixels (at the same density), and it does have a camera. However, it is bulkier and heavier than the iPad, has not 802.11n, no 3G, tiny 4GB internal memory, half the battery life, and worst of all is completely dependent on the internet and web apps. Want music? It must be streamed from the net. Want to read things? Must be read from websites only. Want to make documents? Only dumbed down web office suites allowed. Want to use it outside a WiFi hotspot? Sorry, you can’t.
The iPad is somewhat crippled software wise, but this is just completely useless in comparison. Why would you prefer a Joo Joo Thom?
Edited 2010-02-05 00:07 UTC
Maybe because he will actually own the device and can put any flavor of OS he desires on it.
This is OSnews after all.
PS. It still sucks, just not as bad as the Ipad. I want ARM and Pixel Qi.
Has it actually been proven that the OS is replaceable on the Joojoo?
And you know this will be possible… how? Some people read the word “Linux” and automatically jump to the conclusion that it is a completely open device. Didn’t Tivo and Android teach us anything? Just having a Linux-based os is no guarantee of openness.
If it is open, all well and good. If not, it’sa whole lot less useful than the iPad would be, and I’m not too big on the iPad myself.
Did you read the article, at all? It’s clearly stated that IF the Joo Joo is open. IF.
IF.
I think it is a safe bet. That small company had enough trouble with the touchscreen and the UI software. I am sure that they haven’t strayed from your standard Atom ref design, which is totally supported by Linux and you will not have to jailbreak anything.
I am willing to take bets on that one. Any takers?
I think it’s ARM.
EDIT: Oh, apparently, Gizmodo once saw it POST, and claim it’s Atom. Huh.
Edited 2010-02-05 00:55 UTC
You could have read the Ars Technica you link to, it say x86 Atom processor. And when it was the ChrunchPad, it was reported as Atom based.
I think they added that later. Didn’t see it when reading.
Reasonable asumption, it’s aparently based on licenced IP. From Pegatron, the manufacturing part of Asus.
Based on the ~reported~ specs, features, and pricing I’d say the JooJoo sucks even more than the iPad.
Another one incapable of reading.
As the article states remarkably clearly: if I can extend the functionality – i.e., the device is open, contrary to the iPad’s illegal-to-hack – then yes, I’d MUCH rather have the Joo Joo. Hack SAMBA access to it, and it’ll have access to all the data I have. I’ll be able to add codec support, remove stuff I don’t need, and so on. It’d be one heck of an entertainment machine.
I’d not take it on the road – I mean, I have a real computer for that (a netbook).
But, as I said, the tablet concept in and itself is a hard sell at this point. There is no tablet market. Nobody knows if this stuff will sell, and I’d probably not buy one anyway. however, if you make me choose, then yes, IF the device is “open”, then I’d certainly go for the Joo Joo.
And put a sticker over the name tag, of course. Because dear lord, what a retarded name.
Edited 2010-02-05 00:49 UTC
Even if it is hackable, the Joo Joo is still pretty useless. One cannot expect a big ecosystem of polished hacks to be available for it, so even hacked extensions (such as samba and codecs) will probably just make the device unstable and slow.
At least for now, it’s not ‘illegal’ to ‘hack’ your own device as long as it doesn’t infringe on others property (i.e. don’t hack on pirated sofware). Even if the Joo Joo is hackable, it’ll still be less useful than an iPad. Don’t expect hacks to be polished like the iTunes app in the iPod and don’t expect major commercial vendors to create hacks for the Joo Joo.
At least the iPad is designed for local storage, can run outside WiFi hotspots, and can do most things netbooks do in a fun touchscreen package. I’d certainly appreciate openness in the iPad, but at least the closed product is more polished and useful than any fringe market Joo Joo hack may become. I don’t get why anyone would want a Joo Joo over an iPad, or even justify the $500 price tag even if the iPad didn’t exist.
Hardly. The whole point of hacking devices like these is to /add/ functionality.
So to say it would still be useless is somewhat pessimistic
That’s what a community is there for. IF the Joo Joo is hackable, then a community will spring up.
That’s a somewhat unfair assumption given how little we know about the device and how good many hacked devices are (eg XBMC on the XBox).
Perhaps you should save that kind of FUD until the device has actually been hacked, let alone released.
Again, you’re making huge and unjust assumptions (for the reasons stated above).
The Joo Joo has USB so you can add local storage – even if it’s just a pen drive.
You’re only good point.
So can the Joo Joo.
Now you’re comparing the corporate release of an integrated OS with a hack project that doesn’t exist.
Please at least compare like for like.
Because not everybody likes Apple products – and this is something you’ll just have to accept.
And, for me, the Joo Joo would work out cheaper as I don’t own a Mac and I’m not about to install iTunes on the only Windows install I have (due to it being a streamlined real time system).
So if I want an iPad, then I’d either need to buy a new Mac or buy a new Windows license – either of which would work out more expensive in the long run than buying a Joo Joo.
Edited 2010-02-05 11:44 UTC
Better watch your mouth Thom, or Sarah Palin will be calling for you to be fired! =P
You do realise that Sarah Palin is totally hawt, right? She can call for my resignation anytime. Preferably in person.
I dunno, her complete idiocy would detract from that in my experience. Body aside, completely moronic girls annoy me and she’s as dumb as they come.
Thom, I realise many people on here are down on the iPad, but it is not vapourware by any stretch of the imagination. It has been seen in public and real people have used it in informal settings. It has an SDK with a simulator. It has an entire OS revision (3.2) that is specifically geared towards it at the moment (and iPhones have no 3.2 at all..) It would be vapourware if Steve Jobs had mentioned it, held up a non working prototype and showed a concept video.
The Joojoo on the other hand, is still quite an enigma, which I would consider bordering on vapourware.
By all means, if Apple don’t ever release an iPad, please feel free to call me out, but that would be a pretty unlikely turn of events.
If the Joojoo actually makes it to market in any great volumes and makes any kind of impact past novelty Geek toy, I’ll be pretty amazed.
“Technically still vapourware” is what I wrote. Notice the technically: we have no products. We can’t buy them. We can’t test them. We have no idea if EITHER of them are ready.
So yes, technically, they are still vapourware.
Well sure, if you want to redefine vaporware. It’s always carried a connotation of late to extremely late to unlikely to ever come out. “Not released yet” does not mean vaporware.
Wikipedia is terrible at times, but I don’t disagree with them in this:
None of this applies to the iPad, and you look a little petty trying to shoehorn the term in. And from the editor in me: the word is “elusive”
I can’t stand that name, Joo Joo. Seriously, what were they thinking… or maybe more to the point, what were they smoking? It sounds like a toy or some type of candy. I doubt I’d ever be able to talk about it with a straight face.
Like Ipad and Wii?
Well, I don’t own nor plan to own a Wii or an iPad either. I agree about the Wii, at least iPad (while stupid and unoriginal) makes a sort of Apple sense, the iEverything line. It just doesn’t sound as comical, somehow. Too bad Apple won’t come out with a vacuum cleaner, the iSuck. Now, that’d be even funnier than Joo Joo.
I totally forgot how bad the joojoo name was after the iPad was announced. joojoo just sounds stupid, but not “oh my dear lord, why didn’t a woman tell them not to name it that”, bad. I mean, the jokes wrote themselves years ago *before* the product was conceived. But yeah, joojoo as a name sucks. I think I’ve been pretty consistent about expressing my displeasure for both devices, and I’ll stick to that.
They both suck, can we talk about some Operating Systems now? Or at least yell at intel for their confusing as hell processor feature support?
Literally:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx449r1vhos
Or Twitter… hard to take a company/service seriously when “twit” is the first thing that comes to mind as a singular noun for the service (and its users).
Edited 2010-02-05 21:23 UTC
Yes, awful names, all of them.
The issue is not the size of the market they (fusion garage) are entering, but the size of the player they are going against.
The argument seems to be a red herring addressed to an unasked question. Unless they were trying to assure their investors that the market is big enough to afford them to subsist as a nice player.
Edited 2010-02-05 03:54 UTC
Who wouldn’t want to support a company that is a “nice player”? 🙂
I hope this company is successful as I don’t want a tablet monopoly. Let’s see OSX tablets, Android tablets, Windows 7 tablets, Chrome OS tables, ubuntu tablets and WebOS tablets. The more choice there is the better off we’ll all be.
In the end what we really don’t want is any one company being the sole significant distributer of electronic books, magazines and papers.
Wooops “nice” -> “niche”
Well, unfortunately most customers don’t tend to apply charitable ends as part of their purchase-making decision process.
If anyone is going to challenge apple in the tablet arena, it will probably be another big player. Unfortunately the success/failure of these devices may depend upon the volume of content and its distribution model. And just the hw/sw combo, and the quality of it, may not be enough to combine customers. And I am sure content publishers are not going to offer good deals or even support niche platforms. Oh, well…