HP TouchPad sales take off

The announcement that HP has abandoned tablets and that it is to stop making the TouchPad is sad news for everyone that likes these devices, and a lot of people do. One of the reasons, perhaps the main one, is that sales were poor and few people bought them.

Is it a bad product? No, it is actually quite good and both the hardware and operating system are quite attractive. So why didn't it sell?

The main reason is that it was against the iPad and Apple's tablet is very good indeed. In fact, all Apple's products - desktop computers, laptops, phones and iPods are very good. It is very difficult to compete head to head with an Apple product. If you're going to make a £400 tablet and grab a slice of the iPad's market you are going to have to make it better than the iPad and that is difficult.

The same is true of iMacs and MacBooks. If you want to sell laptop computers in the £1,000 to £1,500 price range then it's up against the MacBook Pro which is a great computer. The iMac is in the same price range and if you're looking for a desktop computer with this much cash to spend then it is a good buy. In the price ranges Apple sells in it does very well and it has a good market share.

The huge market share that Windows PCs and laptops have is mainly because they are cheap. Many people either can't afford £1,000+ computers or don't want to spend that much. They buy millions of cheap Windows PCs and are happy with their bargain.

The same is true of mobile phones and although the iPhone sells really well, it actually only has a small part of the overall market. That's because it has one expensive smartphone. It is outsold by millions of cheap alternatives and Android phones are set to dominate the market.

The tablet market doesn't have any cheap alternatives to the iPad. Tablet makers saw the great sales of iPads and though that there was a huge market for a premium priced products. There is, but Apple was in there first and continues to dominate it. To grab market share from Apple you'd have to create a better iPad.

This doesn't mean that there isn't a market for other tablets and since HPs announcement to stop the TouchPad the price has been dropped to a fraction of its original selling price. What happened is that sales shot through the roof and the last remaining stocks are selling out so fast it's hard to find one. The demand is huge.

This means that there was nothing wrong with the HP TouchPad and it was simply sold at the wrong price point. It shows that there is a big demand for cheap tablets and it just takes someone brave enough to create one.

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Chrome Web Store problems

One of the great features of Google's Chrome web browser is the way that it can be enhanced by adding extensions. One of the reasons why Firefox has grabbed such a large market share from Internet Explorer is because if the huge range of add-ons and extensions. Chrome is catching up fast, both in terms of extensions available and market share. Perhaps the two are related in some way, who knows?

Finding and installing extensions for Chrome is very easy and Google has built an online store. Just click the spanner icon in the top right corner and select Tools, Extensions. Then there's a link to go to the store. Well, store isn't quite the right word because most extensions are free. You just browse the categories, find one you like and click the button to install it. It's a piece of cake, or is it?

It is not hard to find people having problems accessing the Chrome Web Store though and some people have the curious problem of the images not displaying. The text is fine, but most or even all the images just appear as broken link icons. If you manage to browse the store and find something you want (even though you can't see it), clicking the install link fails to install it. You just get a message stating that the app is currently unreachable.

If you search the web for this error message you will find other people with the same problem. Many people offer solutions in forums and help pages, but they rarely work or they worked for one author and not
for anyone else.

I had this Chrome Web Store problem for weeks and tried some of the suggested fixes, but none of them helped. One thing that did work though, was to clear Chrome's cache, Click the spanner, Tools, Clear browsing data. Restarting Chrome and going straight to the store afterwards then enabled it to work, but only briefly. Just enough time to grab an extension. I installed Chrome in a virtual machine running Vista and the Chrome web store worked straight off. However, it soon stopped working. Perhaps it briefly worked because the cache was empty and when it was full it stopped. It's weird.

There are reports of people having this problem and they find it suddenly fixes itself. I had this. It wasn't working for weeks, then one day I tried it and it worked perfectly. It is still working. I didn't change any settings, install any software or do anything special. One day it just started working. I don't know what the problem is or how to fix it and no-one else seems to either. Just keep clearing the cache and trying it each day. One day it will work.

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Should I upgrade to OS X Lion?

Apple recently launched OS X Lion and it is very cheap and very easy to download from the Mac App Store, providing you have a fast internet connection that is. Does this mean that upgrading the the latest version of the OS is a no brainer? Should you upgrade? If not, why not?

Instead of asking yourself whether you should upgrade you should ask what you want to achieve. What do you want to do with your Mac? Can you do it with the current version of OS X? If you can't and whatever it is that you want to do can only be done with Lion then definitely upgrade. For example, if you are still running Tiger or Leopard and you want to be able to purchase software in the Mac App Store then you need to upgrade, at least to the latest version of Snow Leopard with all the patches and updates and preferably to Lion.

Each new version of the OS enables you to take advantage of new technologies and software. So if you're still running Tiger you won't have the Mac App Store, Time Machine and so on. Lion brings some new technologies and one of these is Auto Save, which automatically saves files without you having to click File, Save. It automatically stores previous versions in Time Machine fashion, but without needing Time Machine or an extra hard disk drive. It will sync with iCloud, an online storage service that will work across all Apple devices too. Is this a technology you need or can you live without it?

There are many more new features, such as extra support for trackpads on MacBooks and the Magic Trackpad, LaunchPad, Mission Control and so on. Do you need them or can you live without them? There is no doubt that they are nice to have, but are they really essential? Will the iOS-like full screen apps and menu system really increase your productivity?

If you can do everything you want with the current OS X then there is no advantage in upgrading and there are several disadvantages. As the operating system becomes more complex it grows in size and becomes more demanding of the hardware. It takes more disk space and it uses more memory. These are important factors if you have a Mac that is a few years old and you may find that it is struggling to run the latest OS.

Compatibility is an issue too and there is always a small risk that some hardware you have won't work after the upgrade. A scanner, printer or NAS (network attached storage) device may not be compatible. It's software may even conflict with Lion when you install it. Some people have found that NAS devices used for Time Machine no longer work after upgrading to Lion for example.

There is software compatibility to consider too and Rosetta, a technology that enabled modern Macs to run old software written for the PowerPC, is not supported. Do you have any old software that you rely on? It may not work if you upgrade. It's a risk you need to consider.

I have always found OS upgrades to be a case of two steps forward and one step back. Overall they are worth it and the all the advantages outweigh the few disadvantages.

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