Michael Arrington's
CrunchPad has never had a particularly firm basis in reality, and although we'd been promised that the
inexpensive browser-based tablet
would be launching soon, the sky's come crashing down: Mike says Fusion Garage, the company he hired to build the CrunchPad, has reneged on their deal, and that he's about to file "multiple lawsuits." What happened? Well, it's not exactly clear: according to Mike, the CrunchPad was ready to be launched on November 20, but on November 17 Fusion Garage decided to cut TechCrunch out of the deal and sell it directly. Oh, it's a sad tale, especially since Arrington claims a wide variety of industry heavyweights were lined up to support his tablet -- including development assistance from Intel complete with sweetheart pricing on Atom CPUs, a "major multi-billion dollar retailer" who offered to sell it at "zero margin," and even venture capital firms "waiting to invest in the company." Making matters worse, Mike's no longer buds with Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan, who he thought he'd be friends with "for the rest of our lives." Tear. Now, we're not sure we've heard the last of the CrunchPad -- if anything, Michael Arrington is irrepressible -- but we can't say we're surprised the first chapter has ended in such fantastic fashion. We're assuming several major Hollywood studios are already lining up to buy the rights, and we've heard unconfirmed reports that George Clooney has signed on to star for free because he believes in the project so deeply.
posted November 30th 2009 11:46AM
well, there goes the apple tablet.
i kid! i kid!
I don't know what I would've done with a tablet anyways. (please hear me apple and stop wasting your time on this idea).
Also, we need Engadget (Show) on the Roku.
This seems like Arrington coming up with an excuse so that he never has to release his failed product.
This entire scenario that he has painted with Fusion Garage all of a sudden telling Arrington to go F himself seems very bizarre and most likely made-up.
I am sure they just realized that they could not produce a product at the price point he thought with enough functionality for it to actually sell. There is a reason most companies keep the development stages of a product a secret, they don't always end up with a full product at the completion of development. Arrington's ego however made him want to publicly promote and expose the initial stages of development and it set him up for a huge personal fall if he could not deliver a product close to the spec's he originally claimed.
Its pretty hard to retain your credibility as a media personality who is critical of how others in the tech industry operate when you are guilty of some of the same errors.
@ASkoreyko
Exactly. He wanted to sell it for $300, then $400. Problem is a 12" LCD touch panel, by itself, is $250-$300 or more depending on volume. It's doubtful he had the money to buy a few million units so one individual component of this mythical device was going to cost 80% or more of his revised retail price point. It was impossible. When that fact got out he was going to either look like a scammer, a fraud, or someone who is very naive about the hardware industry. Not good for his credibility. The "big boys" may get into this market soon and hardware startups are almost always doomed for failure when this happens. You just can't compete with a company that has billions in the bank. They can produce anything quicker and cheaper. They can get it into more retail stores. They can spend more on advertising.
@ASkoreyko
"This entire scenario that he has painted with Fusion Garage all of a sudden telling Arrington to go F himself seems very bizarre and most likely made-up."
Yes, bizarre but could it be that Apple paid Fusion Garage to sink this product?
Yeah but this was scheduled for a November release. Past tense, as in, last week sometime. The "gee guys what's the cost of an touch panel" bit should have been settled, oh I dunno, sometime in 2008.
Sounds to me like this thing never got past the prototype stage, and I'm beginning to wonder if even that was smoke and mirrors.
Dear Engadget, thank you for your constructive and sincere comments. I hope you will be more successful with your innovative efforts. Umm with what?
@darthbergmen Well, we just launched a show and a major new redesign, all while running our site 24/7. I think we're pretty good at keeping our promises.
@darthbergmen at least engadget stick to what they are good at and don't launch into half-baked attempts in a whole new activity. jeez, Arrington was a bloody Silicon Valley lawyer. To be shafted like that speaks volumes...
@darthbergmen
why the fuck should a BLOG (techcrunch, engadget, huffpost) release a tablet device to compete against 180billion dollar company like Apple?
Oh yeah, its insanity... moving along...
Steamrolling along indeed.
Damn, I kind-of wanted one.
Damn I was hoping to play Duke Nukem Forever on the Crunchpad...sigh...
Could this be the troy duffy of the tech world?
I really like this device. Before courier comes to fruition ( If it ever does ) this would be a great step forward. But there is no way he has all this lined up and then has so many problems with production.
Everyone at Fusion Garage is a douche! We could have had this by now if they would have gone with the plan and not tried to screw Arrington. Some companies are just so greedy for money it's unbelievable.
a "major multi-billion dollar retailer" who offered to sell it at "zero margin,"
OK. At that phrase my sympathy for Michael Arrington went out the window, replaced with suspicion that this guy is blowing smoke.
What retailer of any size would offer to sell any product at zero margin?
Answer— none.
@wickedeast
I don't think Apple would even bother worrying about what Arrington was trying to do. It is not really Apple's style to concern themselves with the competition. They seem to just make exactly the product they want and find a way to sell a lot of them.
I still think the idea of having a "cloud" only tablet for internet viewing would of remained a very limited audience. However if you add in a kindle-like feature, iTunes functionality and some decent HDD space and I think you have a winner.
I am not an Apple fan-boy, but it seems like whatever product they make they sell very well with their intended audience. I could do without a lot of the Apple consumer smugness however...
@ASkoreyko
you mean the non-existent smugness? you'd be wise to not paint about 100 million or so users with this 1993 stereotype as rich pompous assholes.
cuz, you know, you really need to be Donald fuckin Trump to afford a 200 dollar iPod touch.
@(Unverified)
I own the following Mac devices:
27" iMac Core i5, 13.3" MBP, 32GB iPod Touch, 8GB iPod Nano.
I am not a Mac hater, I can appreciate a good product. However you might need to realistically look at some of my fellow Mac owners and evaluate their attitudes and behavior towards other computer users. The same can be said for the people who hate Apple for no real apparent reason other than they sell a lot of units.
Also please tell me where in my previous statement I said that you need to be rich to buy a Apple product? Your comment chastises me for making a sweeping generalization yet you are guilty of not only generalizing but creating facts to help your argument. Maybe you should try to look at the topic objectively and with some impartiality instead of retreading the same tired comeback time and time again.
Having been peripherally involved in the process of bringing a complex electronic device from idea to manufacture, I can say with some certainty that there is more to this story that what Michael Arrington has let on. Arrington is a lawyer and (arguably) a journalist, not an electrical engineer. Anybody can sketch out a basic idea for a new product, but actually MAKING that product - from designing and testing the PCB, to writing the software, to creating the molds and setting up a production line - takes an ENORMOUS amount of time and money.
With no actual engineering chops, I suspect Arrington's contribution to the project - the parts that really matter, not just writing about it - was little to none. If there really is a nearly-production-ready tablet in Fusion Garage's possession, it's due to their, efforts alone. Maybe after sinking a couple hundred thousand (minimum) into developing the idea, they decided that they didn't really need a useless mouthpiece on the payroll.
So he asked Fusion Garage to design him a tablet web browser which he had basically designed on a napkin with no technical knowledge whatsoever and after they spent all the time designing it they realised that technically speaking it was now their design....hmmmm I kinda thing fairplay, and once this baby goes on sale we all get to buy a Crunchpad or whatever they name it as RESULT ! Better luck next time Michael Arrington you now realise that starting a tech blog and wanting to "invent" an internet tablet does not make you Steve Jobs !
So there is a ton of there units somewhere? If it was three days before launch then they had a bunch of stuff ready to ship. Wait don't they need to ship to retailers before 3 days before launch? If there are a bunch of units lying around somewhere they are just locked up in legal limbo right.
If fusion garage could just kick him out, then they would have just kicked him out and it would have shipped. So they didn't just kick him out. Seems more likely that they wanted to change something, he didn't and locked the launch himself.
I would encourage anyone who is upset by these actions to sign the petition "Without Arrington I Wont Buy A CrunchPad" at http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/CrunchPad/
By the time the lawsuits have been sorted out, this product will have become antiquated, quite frankly. It's a battle of egos, and nothing more at this point, because Fusion Garage won't be able to actually build and sell these, assuming Arrington gets a judge to temporarily halt development and/or sales.
The only way out of this, is for Fusion Garage and Arrington to make nice, and quickly.
I would encourage anyone who is upset by these actions to sign the petition "Without Arrington I Wont Buy A CrunchPad" at http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/CrunchPad/
Mike's full of BS. The story makes no sense
tell the truth Mike, the Crunchpad was dead 2 months ago
"CrunchPad was ready to be launched on November 20, but on November 17 Fusion Garage decided to cut TechCrunch out of the deal and sell it directly"
It's December 1st, so what's up?
So I read the link. Seems "launch" is a bit misleading. By "launch" he actually meant "The device was stable enough for a demo. It went hours without crashing." [direct quote]
The CrunchPad has been the biggest piece of over-hyped vapourware/con trick since the Gizmodo.
All we need now is for Arrington to crash his Ferrari Enzo, and blame it on a mysterious German called Dieter...
Oh, DAMMIT.