It’s tablet week on the internet, and now it’s time for the Joo Joo to take centre stage again (after the iPad and HP’s upcoming Slate). Engadget received its review unit last week, and yesterday, they published their review of the device. In what will surely not come as a total surprise to anyone, their conclusion is that while the hardware is decent and slick, the software is not.
According to Engadget’s Paul Miller, Fusion Garage has the hardware aspect nailed down pretty well. “The JooJoo is a beautifully crafted piece of hardware, and even if the iPad wasn’t out there for comparisons, its minimalistic design would remind us of an aesthetically pleasing Apple product,” he writes, “The front of the device is nothing but LCD, and the slightly recessed power button on the left edge is the only physical button on the entire thing.”
Miller does note that while the aluminium back cover looks “sophisticated”, it’s slightly “flimsy” in the middle due to its size. Another problem is the lack of a home button or something similar, forcing you to use the UI to switch back to the home screen – and the UI, well, is where things start to break down.
The multitouch display is responsive (the vertical viewing angle is crap, though), but sometimes, the software wouldn’t keep up – restarts were needed to get things going again. The accelerometer had similar problems – but whether the software of the hardware was at fault there remains to be seen. The ambient light sensor works just fine, but its location is unfortunate (it’s frequently covered by the thumb).
Making a beautiful piece of hardware is not as difficult as making a good piece of software. Phone makers can most certainly attest to that, I’d say. Sadly, the Joo Joo is no exception, and this summary article here on OSAlert is simply too short to list all the problems the Engadget team noted with the Joo Joo’s software, which they deem to be alpha quality. “The user interface on the JooJoo can best be described as a Monet – very attractive from afar, but a total mess up close,” they conclude. Major brownie points for employing a Monet reference, by the way.
So, what about the big selling point, support for Adobe’s Flash? Timing is key here. Flash 10.1 isn’t ready yet, so hardware acceleration isn’t there yet – in other words, choppy video and massive battery life reduction because all the work is done by the processor. Hardware accelerated Flash will come to the Joo Joo, but it all depends on Adobe.
Engadget’s conclusion, therefore, is clear and direct. “There are just so many things we wish Fusion Garage did differently with the JooJoo,” Miller writes, “Even putting aside the fact that Apple’s $499 iPad brings more to the table than just web browsing, the JooJoo is less portable, has a worse (if larger) screen, is unintuitive to use, and ships with half-baked software. We commend the start-up on its nice piece of hardware design, but until the software is given some much-needed love and the price is seriously reevaluated we simply cannot recommend this tablet.”
I’d have to echo Engadget’s musings about what could’ve been – why on earth didn’t Fusion Garage use ARM instead of Intel’s Atom? It boggles the mind why a tablet aimed purely at the web would not use one of the ten gazillion available ARM platforms instead of the power-hungry and fan-churning Intel Atom.
On that same note – why didn’t Fusion Garage work with, say, the Ubuntu team to work on the software? Why devote all that manpower to develop a software stack that is, at this point, utterly broken? Sure, weekly software updates are promised, but wouldn’t they have been able to deliver a more complete software stack by employing Ubuntu?
Despite all the problems, though, I have to commend them for their gusto. They have managed to deliver a very decent piece of hardware without that many delays and empty promises, and while the software is severely broken – it’s just software, and software can be fixed. At the very least, you can throw another Linux distribution on there.
For a start-up, that’s not bad. Still, the internet has become a lot less forgiving than it used to be (these days, the internet is more about brutally murdering new companies than about cheering them on and supporting them – imagine a Be, Inc. in today’s world), and I have my doubts whether or not Fusion Garage will be able to sell enough of these to stay afloat and improve the product or produce version 2.0. We’ll see.
If the hardware is indeed that good then sell us one without the OS at a discount (never happen but worth a try).
Or I can wait until they discount this due to lackluster sales, then maybe pick one up for cheap. Hopefully by then they will have a few people who have hacked it.
My problem is I just don’t want to pay $500 for the iPad.
Same here, I can wait until it drops to 300. Then I will buy three and put win7, Android and ChromeOS on them
That would still be cheaper than an iPad if you count in cost of the apps you dont need to buy and the services you dont have to pay for…
Not to mention that with three joojoos in front of you, you can take “multitasking” to a whole new level
Edited 2010-04-06 14:54 UTC
Or you can buy a thousand JooJoos and make a JooJoo based cluster. Don’t mind, I’m just kidding…
JooJoo with Android sounds great. I don’t know about Windows 7, maybe a cut down version of XP will be better. If Haiku had any interesting and usable apps I could be tempted about buying JooJoo and install Haiku on it, even if it isn’t a tablet os.
This is our closed mind world. On the other side, you have iPad, software good, hardware bad.
Any chances of Apple becoming a more open company when Jobs dies? I would gladly pay for OSX, but paying for the entire overpriced hardware just because I like the OS is insane
“Any chances of Apple becoming a more open company when Jobs dies?”
No.
So any chances of another OS company learning how to do decent user interfaces too?
If they have a feature-driven mentality, probably not.
Good design most often stems from learning to say no…
Then we are all doomed. Nerds are all about features and complexity…
It remembers me an article I read about users that prefer horrible interfaces. After some research to discover why, they found that they feel good when using it, because they feel superior, as normal people can’t use the software.
The article was about some hardcore financial software, but I think it applies perfectly to open source software and other techie products.
Ideally you hide that sort of complexity behind the front ui layer.
The problem is that it’s hard to know where to stop on the front layer. What a developer might tend to use could be completely different than what most users need. You have to be vicious. The problem is that you’ll get a ton of flack for it.
Seriously though. I’m not sure we’re screwed. I think geeks often overstate their value to the market. Sure, we’re often first adopters, but there are a lot of people in the general market that would be first-adopters if interfaces weren’t so daunting. Look at the Wii. I’ve got a feeling someone will get it. Palm sorta already did… not perfect, but miles ahead of the others.
Edit: Oh, and as someone who supports people, I hate that feeling of getting it while no one else does. I’ve realized that the people around me aren’t stupid, just victims of really un-intuitive design. Watching my 80-year-old grandfather easily operate an iphone when he can’t check email on his desktop… it makes you think… Even the Mac is really difficult. Kudos to Ubuntu, they’ve covered a lot of ground, but the desktop is a mess on every platform. Way too much abstraction.
Edited 2010-04-06 15:38 UTC
There are plenty of techniques to hide or minimize complexity on software (see http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/07/minimizing-complexity-in…)
The problem is that design is often viewed as just cosmetics, pixel-pushing, and button placement not an holistic process that’s everyone concern (Christian Crumlish).
http://mashable.com/2009/01/09/user-experience-design
Hey, it was good you remembered Palm. Their product is really great, I can’t really understand why they are failing with such a great product..
They have, IMO, the best mobile OS out there, and yet, people continue buying crap like windows mobile and symbiam…
perhaps, if I could buy a pre, I would?
Nah, power users are all about features. Nerds are all about complexity
Those must be some poor idiots if they were preferring some interfaces just because other people can’t use them.
http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2010/03/25/some_users_want_terrible_u…
Haiku maybe BeOS had that clean neat designed feel.
So who knows maybe Haiku will be the cool opensource answer to OSX.
Best not hold your breath this may take some time.
By the time Haiku is ready we will already working on quantic computers
just kidding
Haiku is very nice but sadly it hasn’t enough developers, designers, manpower, and killing apps…
Now, if a company like Google or Canonical would invest in Haiku…
I think there’s a little chance on that. I think Linux is great, but also a little mess (too much archaic conventions like /etc for configuration files? why not /config)
But there are already a very rich ecosystem around Linux, and even if Haiku is much greater, these companies won’t abandon that and invest manpower in something new and different
No.
J/K. Sure why not?
Some people do prefer performance and usefulness over UIs designed for persons with disabilities…
Performance and Usefulness don’t equate to tons of buttons, but I’d certainly hope that software would be designed elegantly enough that people with disabilities could use it.
This sort of thinking is why people scream when there’s no flash support. They’d rather throw something up in flash and who cares if a blind person loves the band, or wants to eat at a restaurant. It’s sad that the tech savvy are so blatantly biased.
A lot of things that are hard shouldn’t have to be. Shoveling software with terrible, complex design is an embarrassment. But, then again, it’d be sad if your expertise wasn’t needed. Better to keep things mediated…
That’s rather offensive. Mind clarifying exactly what you were trying to imply by that? Are you trying to say my mental abilities are less than yours, for example?
I was trying to say that crApple ^A(R) oversimplifies UIs.
Ah. I’m not sure I’d say they over-simplify their UIs exactly, just that they oversimplify the underlying configurability. A simple UI for the essential tasks is often the best. It’s not Apple’s UI that gets to me, but their controlling nature. They don’t want you taking control away from them, so they limit what you can do. I don’t think oversimplified is the right word for that, just locked down.
Any chance that Jobs eventually dies? Last time I heard of him from some crApple zealots, he was walking on water.
Ha! Except that the JooJoo is significantly heavier, has a worse display than the iPad does (bigger does not equal better), and has a quarter of the battery life. Calling the iPad’s hardware “bad” because it doesn’t have ports you might like is a poor judgement rationale.
Edited 2010-04-06 17:21 UTC
Calling the Joo Joo’s hardware “bad” because it doesn’t have screen properties or battery life you might like is a poor judgement rationale.
See, it goes both ways! For some people, those ports might actually be important, who knows.
If I had called the JooJoo’s hardware “bad” then maybe you would have a point. You should go back to reading comprehension class.
Ha! Except that iPad’s CPU is significantly worse, that the iPad display is small and has an old 4:3 form factor, not 16:9, that it lacks USB ports and it lacks 3G in base model, that it completely lack flash and it makes the web experience a very poor one, that you need to convert media just to play it on iPad, that you ar forced to buy apps only from AppStore, that it has a poor quality flash drive, it is a “wonder”, “magical”, “revolutionary”.
I don’t see what’s the problem if iPad consumes half – not a quarter as you said- than JooJoo. iPad consumes half only because it has a weaker, poorer hardware.
The previous poster was correct. Engadget notes that the iPad lasted 10.75 hours on a charge while the JooJoo lasted 2.5 hours. I’m no mathematician but I’m pretty sure that’s a 4:1 ratio.
Yet the iPad hardware is not four times “weaker” than the JooJoo.
Except you are wrong on all accounts. the iPad’s screen is smaller but better quality and is covered by glass not plastic. The hardware may be slower but considering what both devices actually do, even Engadget said that ARM was the better choice for this type of device, which Apple actually uses. What’s the point of having a bigger device that you can;t hold for a prolonged period of time or gets too hot to hold in your hands when you are watching video? What’s the point of having an USB port on the device when you can only really use it for charging not to upload content (since the software is primarily web based)? What’s the point of having Flash support when its not actually usable. Did you even read the original engadget review instead of coming spouting nonsense?
I stopped caring about processor power on consumer devices a long time ago. Take the Joojoo. For it’s faster processor, it still can’t run flash worth a darn, and running flash drains the batteries like crazy. So what if it has a faster processor?
And that experience in the article highlights the issues with Flash. Flash is fine when a device is plugged into the wall. Sure, an errant flash ad on a page may consume 50% of your CPU and slow your system down, but it’s not too difficult to manage. But when you’re running off of battery, it sucks life out of any device it runs on. When I use my laptop on battery, the first thing I do is close all browsers to make sure I don’t have any flash running. Even OSAlert could potentially eat up CPU if there’s an ad on the side running a computationally intensive ad for enterprise software. It’s the difference between my laptop lasting through a 4 hour flight and it warning at 10% battery life 20 minutes into the flight.
While the iPad is on the “weaker hardware”, you can watch HD content on a bright, stunning IPS screen, and it would last the entire way through a flight from LA to London.
You’re upset that Apple doesn’t give away OS X so they can have their profits undermined by knock-offs?
Apple took a huge financial risk when they invested in OS X and they deserve the rewards. There’s no reason to begrudge them for keeping their OS closed. It’s unrealistic to expect all software to be open source.
Most software depends on the proprietary business model which keeps r&d investments inside the company products. The main problem with investing in open source is that your competitors have free access to any improvements you make.
I’m not demanding it to be open source. I just wanted to install it legally on non Apple hardware.
I’m quite mad because I’m buying a overpriced hardware with very weak specs just because OSX it’s the OS I can use without getting (too) angry.
You say their hardware is overpriced but the iPad uses a unique ARM design and provides longer battery life than the competition.
But I understand if you don’t like how they tie OS X to their other products. However even if you got the government to deem their practice illegal you couldn’t use the government to force them to sell their OS at retail or make sure it works well with non-Apple hardware. They’re holding all the cards here. It’s their product and they can do what they want.
If you want OS X cheap then I would suggest getting a mac mini from ebay. I personally find OS X to be overrated but it is good for annoying relatives that are prone to malware.
Edited 2010-04-06 18:13 UTC
ok, iPad uses a cellphone processor with a big battery (compared to a cellphone), that’s why it’s battery life is much bigger then that HP Slate, which uses and Intel processor with a full desktop operating system.
It much more like a good design then some kind of awesomeness of the chip
Edited 2010-04-06 18:30 UTC
I don’t see why you feel it is overpriced when they are using non-standard hardware that offers an advantage over the competition. It isn’t as if there is a cheaper alternative that offers similar functionality and better battery life. I think their price point is fair when compared to the competition. The makers of the Joo Joo tablet weren’t even able to undercut them on price.
ah, sorry, when I said overpriced, I was talking about iMacs and MacBooks, not about the iPad
Actually, in the US, a Macbook isn’t that overpriced. Any quality laptop runs about the same, give or take $50-$100 USD. Sure you can get a Dell for $400 but you’ll sacrifice a lot of build quality as compared to Apple, Asus, and other midrange brands. World pricing, on the other hand, is another matter entirely and Apple haven’t seemed to figure out that changing the currency symbol doesn’t make it a fair price in a different country.
Now, the iMacs and Macbook Pros are, indeed, priced way higher than the competition and let’s not even mention the Macbook Air.
Still, if you think Apple’s prices are bad, have a look at a Fujitsu or Lenovo with similar specs. Apple’s laptops are in the middle when it comes to price for the most part with the exception, I think, of the 17-inch mbp which is just outrageous.
The iPad now… that, imho, is overpriced for what it does, but value is in the eye of the beholder and to some it may be worth it.
I disagree. A $700 Asus will have a better cpu and screen than a $1600 Macbook. Asus notebooks have also been rated as more reliable than Macs.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9141032/Mac_laptops_less_rel…
I never said anything about reliabilty, I was speaking about quality of components. A $700 Asus is not going to have the same type of display a $1600 Macbook Pro is going to have or a solid aluminum body. Just like the Joojoo doesn’t have an LED backlit IPS screen. Reliabilty wasn’t a factor in my lost. MacBookPhave better displays than cheaper laptops. You just can’t make an Apple to pear comparison and expect the same price is all I’m saying.
I don’t think their CPU design (or the CPU design of the company they bought in 2008) is in any way better or smarter than any other Cortex-A8. The single thing that makes it different is embedding DRM schemes in CPU.
I do actually believe that Intel Atom is much better than Cortex-A8 which iPad CPU is based upon.
I don’t want cheap Mac Os X. I want Mac Os X to be installable by any user on any user on any x86 compatible with it (that is any x86 that has SSE3 or better) after paying the licence price.
I want any user to be able to choose what app can install on iPhone, iPod, iPad and any iNothingness, and be able to decide from where they can get it.
I want any user of iGadgets to be able to download songs from any web store, not just crApple’s.
I believe that crApple is a software company making a bunch of money from poorly designed, overpriced hardware. Why not sell the damn software and let the people buy the hardware from anywhere they want? Why not sell the damn iGadgets and let the users install apps from anywhere they want? Why not let the developers publish apps on any place of their choice?
It’s anticompetitive and illegal in EU (maybe in US too). What if Microsoft were forcing you to buy some 3000$+ hardware from them in order to use Windows?
There’s no law in the US that states your software cannot be artificially tied to hardware.
Even if there was such a law Apple could just create a real tie or just stop selling the OS at retail. There’s a thousand things they could do in fact. Suggesting government intervention in this case is pointless.
I don’t know how is the law in US, but in EU we have the European Commissioner for Competition which deals with anti-trust and anti-competitive practices. We have a history of finning badass enterprises such as Microsoft, so Apple will be just a big fish for the European Commission.
Right now, EU Commissioner for Competition has to deal with a complaint against IBM over exactly similar matter: IBM has tied its z/OS and z/VM Operating Systems to their zSeries hardware.
I think that it will be interesting to see what the Commissioner will decide in IBM’s case. It may concern Apple, too.
Except that Apple isn’t monopoly nor have they abused their power. They locked down their own software, yeah, but that is not a monopoly. Think, just think. MS has over 90% of the market, 90%! How can Apple with its meager 10% (if even that), and that 10% is mostly in the US, be a monopoly? Why, because they don’t want to give away their OS to be installed on crappy OEM hardware? that makes them a monopoly? Are we redefining what a monopoly is now?
Not give away but sell. That crappy OEM hardware are sometimes a lot better and always a lot cheaper.
Tying software is an anti-competitive practice.
Yes but they DON”T WANT TO SELL IT! I don’t see why people have an issue with that or don;t seem to understand that point. They don’t want ti installed on other hardware, period! They can’t be forced to just because a couple of people think that they should.
As forthe hardware, like I said before, in-terms of functionality these crappy OEMs may be better, in-terms of build quality anc ompnent quality that isnever the case. If you were to look for laptop with similar components (the Dell Adamo for example) you will see equivalent pricing sometimes with less functionality. A cheap Dell’s display is not comparable to a Macbook Pro display, it jut isn’t, the quality is not the same, the color gamut is not the same, the backlighting is not the same. The Joojoo proves that. The screen quality is NOT the same even though it bigger and higher resolution. On paper the screen looks like it should leave the iPad in its dust, but that is not the case. Apple uses higher quality components in their products, and use solid aluminum bodies. When manufacturers can say the same at lower price points then you can point at them and say here is a cheaper/better machine. That is not the case. Build quality i just as important to product as its functionality. Its why people pay more for Mercedes-Benz when they can get a Kia that gets them to the same place.
Edited 2010-04-07 02:32 UTC
Software bad, not good. It’s bad because you can’t choose freely about what apps you may install, you’re condemned to buy them through AppStore. Android has a healthier system where you can get apps of your choice, at least as good as those for IphoneOS from any place you want, and sometimes even free.
I can agree it’s a very unhealthy system, but the software quality is great. And third party apps for it are just awesome (see OmniGraffle).
I’m quite disappointed with the quality of Android apps, so disappointed, that I just bought an iPhone, even if I totally condemn their software distribution policies
No it doesn’t. The game selection isn’t close to comparable.
There’s also a lot of industry specific apps that are iphone/blackberry only. The iphone has been out longer and has had greater corporate adoption.
I think the Ubuntu Netbook Remix UI would be great for a tablet.
PS. iPad free news stream is a great feature!
“”The user interface on the JooJoo can best be described as a Monet – very attractive from afar, but a total mess up close,” they conclude. Major brownie points for employing a Monet reference, by the way.”
Keep a few brownies. Someone’s been watching Clueless.
Heh. A friend of mine said something similar about a car he has been working on for 8 years now. He is a perfectionist so he works on a part, then reworks it, and is never satisfied with it… I told him he should just shoot for “good.”
He said “yeah, I’ll fix it up to be a 20-footer… looks good as long as you don’t get too close.”
At some point you’ve gotta ship, I guess.
Plus Monet’s paintings aren’t exactly crap. There isn’t a wasted brush stroke. Each one is perfectly placed. The guy was a genius. I’ll buy as many monets for $500 as you’d sell me.
In fact, I’d love to someday create an actual monet interface. It would be Beautiful. ( Plus I could use it with my glasses off).
Wasn’t the crunch pad supposed to be ready like last November or so?
To all the Apple fan boys (I was included for 3 decades) the time of reckoning has come. It started with the over priced and lame performance of the Air Book, and then the company and its stock, and now they are breaking ‘new ground’ with devices that have been in design for decades (Magic Link for instance, or go back further to the DynaBook) and calling it revolutionary. You have Apple now as the master of minimalism, and maximum pricing. Live with it. The MBP I have will suite me fine for the 3-5 years on OS X 10.5/6 until someone can awaken the sleeping masses to the mess and stupidity called Steve Jobs Bukkake.
Probably they considered an ubuntu contract but that might have been too expensive. Nevertheless it could be worth it instead of shipping a broken stack.
The idea of tablets, but I wish that someone would add in handwritten character recognition to them.
JooJoo seems to be EXTREMELY limited in terms of storage, but otherwise decent. [EDIT] This also make JooJoo WAY too expensive for it’s retail price point, along with it’s pathetic battery runtime. [/EDIT]
iPad gets a dealbreaker by no user-replaceable battery, no SD card slot, and no USB connectivity.
So… I’m still awaiting. Maybe Apple will give up and release another revised iPad with replaceable battery and at least a USB port… should look up exactly what that 30pin port is that engadget mentioned as well as mentioning that ALL Apple mobile devices have them, so there might be some I/O there as 30pins is WAY more than what’s needed for charging. OTOH is the question of just which pins did Apple actually connect. There’s no reason that they have to wire up everything as they have on other devices, could’ve just been cheaper to use the larger connector.
Edited 2010-04-07 15:49 UTC
It is, but it’s incredibly easy to remedy hardware wise. The spec say the JooJoo uses an SSD, so replacing it with something bigger is a no brainer.
Unfortunately I suspect the biggest problem, is the broken Fusion Garage SW on it. It’s designed to be web-only, so a increased storage will probably not make a difference as it’s not designed to utilize it. So if Fusion Garage don’t scrap their “brainchild” web-os and install something useful, the user needs to do it. For a geek not really a problem, but it will not generate much mainstream sale for the JooJoo. Putting it more or less dead in the water, leaving the market to more crafty competitors. Like the WePad, HP Slate or one of the other emerging Atom based tablets.
Even when Flash 10.1 is ready, it won’t help. As far as I know the hardware acceleration for flash is only available on Windows & Mac, not on Linux.