Blackberry gave away Playbooks to anyone who developed an app for it, which resulted in a lot of "developers" who produced low-quality, minimally useful apps.
Is there some quality control that will limit who counts as a developer for the TouchPad? If not, I expect this will have a similar result. And really, even if they get real mobile developers, it may result in some half-hearted ports unless it becomes clear at some point that the platform has some kind of future.
They should recast the program to send out the tablets as loaners, then forgive the debt for the developers who make actually decent apps. A curated giveaway.
And how exactly would you define a "decent app" in a way that wouldn't be absurd or totally not useful and wouldn't give you ton of grief if a developer tried to challenge your decision? It's essentially the iOS App Store problem except you're mailing around physical hardware to boot.
I have no idea, I'm not a developer-relations or product manager. I'm sure something relatively fair could be thought up, though. I'm not pessimistic about that, and someone is going to complain no matter what, so I think as long as you tell everybody up front what the rubric is, that static can be minimized.
"So what does the TouchPad cost to build? The teardown by iSuppli pegs the cost of the components used in the 16 gigabyte version, which sells for $499 at retail, at $306.65. Meanwhile, the 32GB version, which sells for $599, costs $328.65 to build. (The difference, obviously, is memory.)"
HP seems to have no mandatory development requirements, meaning a development such as with the Playbook is somewhat unlikely. Also I suspect that RIM wanted to push with this move more the market'ability of their devices in regards to to the availability of apps and developers than to have actually useful apps produced.
Palm and then HP has a very long history of giving cheap and heavily discounted devices to developers for development purposes. I've been registered as a developer since, 2003 or 4, and it was common practice with the Treos.
Is there some quality control that will limit who counts as a developer for the TouchPad? If not, I expect this will have a similar result. And really, even if they get real mobile developers, it may result in some half-hearted ports unless it becomes clear at some point that the platform has some kind of future.