CrunchPad
Encyclopedia
The JooJoo was a Linux
-based tablet computer
. It was produced by Singapore
development studio Fusion Garage. Originally, Fusion Garage was working with Michael Arrington
to release it as the CrunchPad, but in November 2009 Fusion Garage informed Arrington it would be selling the product alone. Arrington has responded by filing a lawsuit against Fusion Garage.
in July 2008, initially aiming for a US$200 tablet, and showed a first prototype (Prototype A) a month later.
Beginning 2009, working Prototype B was introduced by the TechCrunch
team led by Louis Monier, based on a 12 inch LCD screen, a VIA Nano
CPU, Ubuntu Linux and a custom Webkit
-based browser. The device was rapidly-prototyped
by Dynacept and a customized version of the Ubuntu distribution was compiled by Fusion Garage. After announcing Prototype B, there arose a desire for the tablet to come into production. Louis Monier worked closely with Fusion Garage as the team's lead designer.
Initially in 2008, $200 was mentioned as the price-point goal.
In the first half of 2009, $300 was mentioned as more likely.
By the end of July 2009, news stories said the actual price when it would ship in November 2009 would be about $400, putting it in potential competition with netbooks and low-end laptops.
The project generated some press and was mentioned in Washington Post and other media.
In July 2009 it was reported that Arrington founded a company of 14 employees around the tablet (Crunchpad Inc.) in Singapore,
and that there would be a public presentation of a finished product later in the month.
By late September 2009, the lack of publicity on the CrunchPad led Dan Frommer of The Business Insider to ask, in an article headline, "Where's The CrunchPad?"
Apple and Microsoft were rumored to be working on new tablet computers, receiving more media coverage.
In early October 2009, Popular Mechanics magazine recognized the CrunchPad with an award as one of the top
10 Most Brilliant Products of 2009,
"the top 10 most brilliant gadgets, tools and toys that you can buy in 2009."
Other organizations questioned the appropriateness of the award as the CrunchPad was not available for purchase at publication time.
On the November 12, 2009 Gillmor Gang
podcast, Michael Arrington announced the product is "steamrolling along", that rumors of high prices are untrue, and that the product will probably retail for US$300–400, likely subsidised by features that are sponsored but won't impact negatively on the user experience (similar to Firefox's search bar).
On August 15, 2011 The successor to the JooJoo and a new Smartphone were announced after a made-up company "TabCo" unveiled it was, in fact, Fusion Garage. The announcement included a tablet and Smartphone named the Grid 10 (10.1 inch tablet) and The Grid 4 (4 inch Smartphone), both running GridOS, a fork of the Android operating system.
"We Want A Dead Simple Web Tablet For $200. Help Us Build It."
Michael Arrington wrote:
No further commitments were made in 2009 about making the design open and public, which would make it easier to add additional features such as a standard keyboard connector and increased storage.
On December 7, 2009 - Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan announced that he is releasing what had been developed as the CrunchPad and which he is now calling the "JooJoo", and that it will be available for pre-sale December 11, 2009 for $499 USD.
On December 10, 2009 Michael Arrington
/Techcrunch
filed a lawsuit against Fusion Garage in Federal court.
On February 1, 2010, Fusion Garage CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan announced that JooJoo pre-orders had increased following the debut of the Apple iPad, and that additional funding of $10 million had been obtained. He also announced that Fusion Garage was in the process of forming a partnership with a mobile phone manufacturer that would handle the production of the device.
On February 3, 2010, Fusion Garage announced that the manufacturing of JooJoo tablets had begun as part of a new agreement with CSL Group. In exchange for absorbing manufacturing costs of the JooJoo, CSL Group would take a percentage of profits from the sale of the devices. CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan stated that JooJoo shipments would reach customers by late February, and that the device would support Adobe Flash
at launch.
On February 26, 2010, Fusion Garage announced a manufacturing delay of the JooJoo tablet, citing an issue fine tuning the touch sensitivity of the capacitive screen. JooJoo tablets are now to ship out on March 25, 2010, and all pre-order customers are to be provided with a free accessory to compensate for the delay.
On November 11, 2010. Fusion Garage announced that Joojoo tablet at its current iteration is at “its end of life” and the company will be exploring several new platforms that will not have backward compatibility.
filed a lawsuit against Fusion Garage in U.S. federal court, accusing the firm of fraud and deceit, misappropriation of business ideas, breach of fiduciary duty, unfair competition, and violations of the Lanham Act
. On March 30, 2010, the lawsuit revealed that only 90 pre-orders for the JooJoo had been placed before it began shipping.
Kernel hacker Matthew Garrett filed a complaint with US Customs and Border Protection against Fusion Garage for copyright infringement, since the company shipped GPL software without making the required offer of source code. The issue was resolved in January 2011 when Fusion Garage started providing the required source code at their web site.
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
-based tablet computer
Tablet computer
A tablet computer, or simply tablet, is a complete mobile computer, larger than a mobile phone or personal digital assistant, integrated into a flat touch screen and primarily operated by touching the screen...
. It was produced by Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
development studio Fusion Garage. Originally, Fusion Garage was working with Michael Arrington
Michael Arrington
J. Michael Arrington is the founder and former co-editor of TechCrunch, a blog covering the Silicon Valley technology start-up communities and the wider technology field in USA and elsewhere...
to release it as the CrunchPad, but in November 2009 Fusion Garage informed Arrington it would be selling the product alone. Arrington has responded by filing a lawsuit against Fusion Garage.
Crunchpad
The CrunchPad project was started by Michael ArringtonMichael Arrington
J. Michael Arrington is the founder and former co-editor of TechCrunch, a blog covering the Silicon Valley technology start-up communities and the wider technology field in USA and elsewhere...
in July 2008, initially aiming for a US$200 tablet, and showed a first prototype (Prototype A) a month later.
Beginning 2009, working Prototype B was introduced by the TechCrunch
TechCrunch
TechCrunch is a web publication that offers technology news and analysis, as well as profiling of startup companies, products, and websites. It was founded by Michael Arrington in 2005, and was first published on June 11, 2005....
team led by Louis Monier, based on a 12 inch LCD screen, a VIA Nano
VIA Nano
The VIA Nano is a 64-bit CPU for personal computers. The VIA Nano was released by VIA Technologies in 2008 after five years of development by its CPU division, Centaur Technology...
CPU, Ubuntu Linux and a custom Webkit
WebKit
WebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. WebKit powers Google Chrome and Apple Safari and by October 2011 held over 33% of the browser market share between them. It is also used as the basis for the experimental browser included with the Amazon Kindle ebook...
-based browser. The device was rapidly-prototyped
Rapid prototyping
Rapid prototyping is the automatic construction of physical objects using additive manufacturing technology. The first techniques for rapid prototyping became available in the late 1980s and were used to produce models and prototype parts. Today, they are used for a much wider range of applications...
by Dynacept and a customized version of the Ubuntu distribution was compiled by Fusion Garage. After announcing Prototype B, there arose a desire for the tablet to come into production. Louis Monier worked closely with Fusion Garage as the team's lead designer.
- April 9, 2009 - Prototype C is shown, looking very much like the original concept pictures. Michael Arrington wrote that the hardware, software and industrial design improvements seen in Prototype C were all driven by Fusion Garage. "... one thing I’ve learned about hardware in the last year is that you need partners to actually make things happen, and the credit for what we saw today goes entirely to the Fusion Garage team.", he said.
- June 3, 2009 - near-final industrial design
- November 17, 2009 - Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan emails TechcrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is a web publication that offers technology news and analysis, as well as profiling of startup companies, products, and websites. It was founded by Michael Arrington in 2005, and was first published on June 11, 2005....
, and informs them "out of the blue" that Fusion Garage's investors want to pull out of the partnership, and that they are under the impression that Techcrunch does not own rights to the project, but are simply helping advertise it.
Initially in 2008, $200 was mentioned as the price-point goal.
In the first half of 2009, $300 was mentioned as more likely.
By the end of July 2009, news stories said the actual price when it would ship in November 2009 would be about $400, putting it in potential competition with netbooks and low-end laptops.
The project generated some press and was mentioned in Washington Post and other media.
In July 2009 it was reported that Arrington founded a company of 14 employees around the tablet (Crunchpad Inc.) in Singapore,
and that there would be a public presentation of a finished product later in the month.
By late September 2009, the lack of publicity on the CrunchPad led Dan Frommer of The Business Insider to ask, in an article headline, "Where's The CrunchPad?"
Apple and Microsoft were rumored to be working on new tablet computers, receiving more media coverage.
In early October 2009, Popular Mechanics magazine recognized the CrunchPad with an award as one of the top
10 Most Brilliant Products of 2009,
"the top 10 most brilliant gadgets, tools and toys that you can buy in 2009."
Other organizations questioned the appropriateness of the award as the CrunchPad was not available for purchase at publication time.
On the November 12, 2009 Gillmor Gang
Gillmor Gang
The Gillmor Gang is a podcast about information technology run by Steve Gillmor, a former contributing editor at ZDNet.-History:It was originally hosted on ITConversations.com. From May 2005 until November 2006, it was hosted by Podshow. The show then ended until being resurrected in November 2007...
podcast, Michael Arrington announced the product is "steamrolling along", that rumors of high prices are untrue, and that the product will probably retail for US$300–400, likely subsidised by features that are sponsored but won't impact negatively on the user experience (similar to Firefox's search bar).
On August 15, 2011 The successor to the JooJoo and a new Smartphone were announced after a made-up company "TabCo" unveiled it was, in fact, Fusion Garage. The announcement included a tablet and Smartphone named the Grid 10 (10.1 inch tablet) and The Grid 4 (4 inch Smartphone), both running GridOS, a fork of the Android operating system.
Crunchpad manifesto
In the founding July 21, 2008 manifesto"We Want A Dead Simple Web Tablet For $200. Help Us Build It."
Michael Arrington wrote:
-
- "So let’s design it, build a few and then open source the specs so anyone can create them."
- "If everything works well, we’d then open source the design and software and let anyone build one that wants to."
No further commitments were made in 2009 about making the design open and public, which would make it easier to add additional features such as a standard keyboard connector and increased storage.
JooJoo
On November 30, 2009 Michael Arrington announced that the CrunchPad project was dead. Three days prior to the planned debut, Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan had informed him Fusion Garage would be proceeding to sell the pad alone. Arrington claims the intellectual property shared between both companies, so the product could not proceed legally. He said his side "will almost certainly be filing multiple lawsuits against Fusion Garage, and possibly Chandra and his shareholders as individuals, shortly".On December 7, 2009 - Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan announced that he is releasing what had been developed as the CrunchPad and which he is now calling the "JooJoo", and that it will be available for pre-sale December 11, 2009 for $499 USD.
On December 10, 2009 Michael Arrington
Michael Arrington
J. Michael Arrington is the founder and former co-editor of TechCrunch, a blog covering the Silicon Valley technology start-up communities and the wider technology field in USA and elsewhere...
/Techcrunch
TechCrunch
TechCrunch is a web publication that offers technology news and analysis, as well as profiling of startup companies, products, and websites. It was founded by Michael Arrington in 2005, and was first published on June 11, 2005....
filed a lawsuit against Fusion Garage in Federal court.
On February 1, 2010, Fusion Garage CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan announced that JooJoo pre-orders had increased following the debut of the Apple iPad, and that additional funding of $10 million had been obtained. He also announced that Fusion Garage was in the process of forming a partnership with a mobile phone manufacturer that would handle the production of the device.
On February 3, 2010, Fusion Garage announced that the manufacturing of JooJoo tablets had begun as part of a new agreement with CSL Group. In exchange for absorbing manufacturing costs of the JooJoo, CSL Group would take a percentage of profits from the sale of the devices. CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan stated that JooJoo shipments would reach customers by late February, and that the device would support Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
at launch.
On February 26, 2010, Fusion Garage announced a manufacturing delay of the JooJoo tablet, citing an issue fine tuning the touch sensitivity of the capacitive screen. JooJoo tablets are now to ship out on March 25, 2010, and all pre-order customers are to be provided with a free accessory to compensate for the delay.
On November 11, 2010. Fusion Garage announced that Joojoo tablet at its current iteration is at “its end of life” and the company will be exploring several new platforms that will not have backward compatibility.
Litigation
On November 30, 2009, Arrington said the CrunchPad project had ended in disagreement between himself and Fusion Garage. On December 7, 2009, Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan said his company would release the CrunchPad as the JooJoo, and that customers could preorder it on December 11, 2009, for $499 USD. On December 10, 2009, Arrington and TechcrunchTechCrunch
TechCrunch is a web publication that offers technology news and analysis, as well as profiling of startup companies, products, and websites. It was founded by Michael Arrington in 2005, and was first published on June 11, 2005....
filed a lawsuit against Fusion Garage in U.S. federal court, accusing the firm of fraud and deceit, misappropriation of business ideas, breach of fiduciary duty, unfair competition, and violations of the Lanham Act
Lanham Act
The Lanham Act is a piece of legislation that contains the federal statutes of trademark law in the United States. The Act prohibits a number of activities, including trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and false advertising.-History:Named for Representative Fritz G...
. On March 30, 2010, the lawsuit revealed that only 90 pre-orders for the JooJoo had been placed before it began shipping.
Kernel hacker Matthew Garrett filed a complaint with US Customs and Border Protection against Fusion Garage for copyright infringement, since the company shipped GPL software without making the required offer of source code. The issue was resolved in January 2011 when Fusion Garage started providing the required source code at their web site.
See also
- Tablet PCTablet computerA tablet computer, or simply tablet, is a complete mobile computer, larger than a mobile phone or personal digital assistant, integrated into a flat touch screen and primarily operated by touching the screen...
- Adam tabletAdam tabletThe Adam Tablet is a tablet computer designed by Bangalore-based firm Notion Ink. The worldwide launch occurred on December 18, 2010 via a video released by Notion Ink detailing their Eden Interface...
- ExoPCExoPCThe EXOPC is a Tablet PC, in slate form, that uses Windows 7 Home Premium as its operating system, and is designed by the company of the same name, based in Quebec, Canada. The EXOPC Slate is manufactured by Pegatron. The first EXOPC slate was launched in October 2010 directly from EXOPC Corp. on...
- HP Slate
- iPadIPadThe iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...
- Sakshat TabletSakshatThe Aakash is an Android tablet computer jointly developed by the London-based company DataWind with the Indian Institute of Technology Rajasthan and manufactured by the India-based company Quad, at a new production centre in Hyderabad — under a trial run of 100,000 units. The tablet was...
- WeTabWeTabWeTab is a MeeGo-based tablet computer announced by German producer Neofonie in April 2010.The specifics include a 11.6" TN-panel touch screen , a 1.66 GHz Intel Atom N450 processor with fan, 16 GB NAND memory and a total weight of the device of an announced , but actually .Currently most...
External links
- Fusion Garage
- Dynacept
- TechCrunch: About Those New CrunchPad Pictures (April 10, 2009)
- The Business Insider.com
- The End of the CrunchPad (November 30, 2009)