Crunchpad renamed "JooJoo" will cost $499 on sale Dec. 11

http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/07/fusion-garage-crunchpad-video-conference-liveblog/

by maudineormsby • 17 years ago

204 211 17 years ago

engadget.com

maudineormsby4• 17 years ago

Ultimately, I think $499 is too much for a device that essentially browses the web, and that's it.

My netbook will do the web and lots of other things. Like let me play Civ II.

conflux0• 17 years ago

Many people said the same thing about netbooks, when they first came into the picture. In any case there might be a market for it, and it might be too early to decide the usefulness of the device.

wvenable9• 17 years ago

Yes, but now netbooks exist. I got mine for $279 and I can comfortably run Visual Studio on it. This device is significantly less powerful, not particularly more portable, and costs more. For the right price, I'd buy one -- this is not the right price.

eli2• 17 years ago

That's a good point, but you can buy a legit laptop for $500 these days. I bet I could pick up a previous generation Thinkpad tablet for somewhere around there.

I wonder how things will evolve once Chrome OS hits the scene.

halo• 17 years ago

To be fair here, a more accurate comparison would be people saying the same thing about the $500 Palm Foleo, a similarly limited device which was crushed by negative press and relative limitations compared to its launch rival the Eee PC.

SamAtt• 17 years ago

I'm sure there's a market for Tablets but this thing is $50 more expensive than Dell's top netbook which comes with a built in TV Tuner or GPS. In addition to the 160Gb hard drive, full copy of Windows, WiFi, keyboard and a screen just slightly smaller than this tablet (12.1 vs 10.1).

For a device offering so little it's overpriced.

dbreunig3• 17 years ago

Oh man. Say goodbye to productivity with Civ II on a tablet...

sjs3825• 17 years ago

Agreed, but wow, this thing really gets style points from me. :)

The thing has a USB port that could (presumably) be used for a keyboard if you required one. Wish I could get one with a full-fledged OS on it. In that case, I'd consider it.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

It is a bit pricey, but it's a nice size. I see Youtube in the photos so presumably it does Flash. If it handles HTML5 as well then the lack of local storage may not matter a whole lot. Much depends on the quality of the touch sensitivity.

Meantime, Chandra is certainly being assertive about his side of the TechCrunch saga. If his claims are true then Michael Arrington's business cred is going to take a major hit.

elblanco4• 17 years ago

They would have probably been better served by giving a simple "no comment".

warfangle2• 17 years ago

Absolutely.

I'm really confused as to why they decided to roll their own OS rather than put a customized Android system on it.

mikeryan2• 17 years ago

AFAIK Fusion Garage was originally founded as an OS company prior to their involvement in the crunchpad.

seiji3• 17 years ago

Just because something is available doesn't mean it should be used.

Android actually kinda sucks (second post on page): http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2009/11/04/

elblanco4• 17 years ago

Amazingly people don't say the same thing about Apple's ridiculous pricing.

netcan4• 17 years ago

I think I agree, though you never know. My instinctive reaction is they should have pushed on the price. Smaller screen, whatever.

While this may prove to be an incredibly useful device in the future, it hasn't yet. At the moment it's in the toy category, like the ipod touch. It's almost twice the acceptable price for a toy.

BigZaphod• 17 years ago

It says the weird green screen effect in those photos is a trick of the camera, but it's remarkably consistent given the different camera angles. What would cause that?

maudineormsby4• 17 years ago

A low light filter on the webcam would do it consistently. I turn yellow on most webcams for some reason.

ErrantX• 17 years ago

I get a feeling this is going to become a case study in how not to develop a product.

It's looking more and more like Arrington has totally screwed up contracts, agreements etc. And then it looks like this Fusion Garage CEO has a complete lack of understanding why the CrunchPad was a great name (etc)....

Im willing to bet we never actually see a product - either that or it will bomb.

maudineormsby4• 17 years ago

I'm voting bomb. They claim to have inventory already.

seiji3• 17 years ago

It looks like they have no marketing or branding experience. Their logo is astonishingly confusing considering their name: https://thejoojoo.com/images/logo.jpg

"Let's call it JooJoo and have the logo read iooioo even though it's supposed to be spelled JuJu![1]"

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juju

arthurk• 17 years ago

And notice that the website title is "The Joo Joo". So, is it spelled "JooJoo" or "Joo Joo"?

nvasilak• 17 years ago

Crunchpad was a far superior name. Unless theyre hoping religious puns bring it more press.

mattmcknight• 17 years ago

And they don't even have joojoo.com How can you pick a gooft name like that and not even own the domain? It's a Korean site...

sjs3825• 17 years ago

I think CrunchPad was a great name, too. But with that said, I think the joojoo logo is pretty slick and makes the brand stronger. :)

hristov4• 17 years ago

Crunch pad was not a good name. The word crunch is a terrible word to put in there. It is related to a website, whose audience is rather specialised and much smaller than the intended audience for the device itself. Also, you do not want to name a general browsing device after a specific website, because people that are actually aware of the website may take it to mean that it is intended to browse that site only.

For people that are not aware of the website, the word "crunch" provides connotations of (i) doing numerical computations (ii) working for long hours and (iii) working out, all of which are negative connotations for a device like this.

So yes, crunch pad was a terrible name, but I think joojoo is even worse. That will just elicit bad jewish jokes.

chris100• 17 years ago

crunch pad was a terrible name

Actually, it had two huge benefits: a lock-in for early adopters, and it is memorable. Don't discount the second benefit. Once enough early adopters talk about it, the general public will come to remember the name. This is extremely important for a consumer product.

(remember the FatBrain naming story).

zaidf5• 17 years ago

The best Crunch I know is a candy. And it tastes pretty awesome!

allenbrunson2• 17 years ago

So, here it is: Fusion Garage's side of the story. And what do you know, it doesn't exactly match up with Arrington's version. Best bit: "There are no contracts between Fusion Garage and TechCrunch."

Holy crap. I knew there was going to be more to this.

joshfinnie• 17 years ago

I have to agree with you. With Arrington's resent openness about the whole issue, you'd think he'd slap those contracts up on TechCrunch as fast as possible to refute any claim like this.

He put up the lawsuits that were filed, but I haven't seen any contracts which lead me to believe they never existed.

This is definitely a story of botched communications, but don't be so quick to believe this guy. I think when the dust settles, the truth will be somewhere in the middle of the two stories we are hearing.

mechanical_fish2• 17 years ago

you'd think he'd slap those contracts up on TechCrunch as fast as possible

IANAL, but I suspect that from a legal standpoint his best plan is to say nothing. Even what has been said so far is much too much. If TC hadn't made such a big public push for the product that it was impossible to just let it quietly fade from view while the court battle was fought, I suspect TC wouldn't even have published what we've already seen, let alone more internal contracts and communications.

What a clusterfk.

The other obvious point that even a non-lawyer can make is: The absence of paper is not the same thing as the absence of contract.

9oliYQjP• 17 years ago

I have made some harsh comments toward TechCrunch recently about this very issue (just check my comment history if you're unfamiliar). My suspicions were true. But now it's time to dish it out toward Fusion Garage. If I were Fusion Garage and an entity was marketing MY product as if it were their own, I would send a cease and desist letter immediately. Fusion Garage isn't exactly coming out of this story looking perfectly clean. TechCrunch probably does have some substance to a lawsuit should they file any.

My gut tells me the whole venture is going to crash and burn. One shady business practice is indicative of a whole sh*tstorm of shady business practices and I would bet the launch of this product is met with delays, unmet promises, logistical mistakes, etc.

dunk0102• 17 years ago

Not having firm contracts up front was just silly - on Arrington's part. They've pulled a Microsoft on him, and it's fair enough. It's a jungle out there, and on a personal level, I don't feel any sympathy for tech crunch at all.

wheaties• 17 years ago

Looking at what he's holding versus what I saw in the hype pictures is a starkly different product in terms of size. I don't care if the green is a trick of the camera light or not Arrington was right if he wanted it priced topping in at 300-400. Netbooks are a much better deal.

pavs• 17 years ago

The only thing I liked about the whole webcast/interview is that fact that he said it the way it is, "Techcrunch is just a blog". Not only that, its a tech blog with authors that has little to no tech knowledge about the underlying technologies they write about.

A tech news blog is itself a subject of news because of its hunger for drama.

seiji3• 17 years ago

It's still possible this entire debacle is just a marketing grab and will be "resolved" amicably.

kierank• 17 years ago

I get the feeling Techcrunch is doing a whole "Tomorrow Never Dies" thing here both with the "Twitter Leaks" and now this "argument about the Crunchpad"...

rms• 17 years ago

What a clusterfuck.

tfh2• 17 years ago

indeed, that term describes it very well.

jeremymims• 17 years ago

You typically want to buy hardware from a trustworthy company. Whatever the truth is, I'd have trouble trusting Fusion Garage after this mess.

ivankirigin• 17 years ago

Indeed. You only need the appearance of impropriety to erode trust. Just because they can win a lawsuit doesn't mean they have a chance at making it.

Also, I love how the camera made the screen green. It's pretty much the worst possible thing you could do in unveiling a product. I wouldn't buy it unless I saw it in real life, but I find that unlikely.

vaksel2• 17 years ago

agreed....paying $500 for a product from a company that may not even exist 6 months later due to litigation, is insane.

allenbrunson2• 17 years ago

I agree this looks bad. In their place, I would have tried to smooth things over ahead of time, to keep Arrington from writing the incendiary blog posts which started all this. But who knows? Arrington isn't known for being the easiest guy in the world to communicate with. Maybe they tried to do just that and failed.

All things considered, if I really wanted one of these things, I don't think I'd let this flap deter me from buying one. But I don't want one, so take that with a grain of salt.

ryanwaggoner5• 17 years ago

It's hard to tell exactly what's going on here, but clearly Arrington was an idiot if he didn't have any contracts in place.

That said, I find fusion garage's side of the story pretty suspect, and even if it's true, I highly doubt they'll succeed. They seem way too focused on the product and the technology and seem to think it will market and sell itself.

I hope TechCrunch sues. Even without a written contract, there must be heaps of verbal and written evidence as to exactly what the relationship here was. Letting the courts sort it out might be the only way to get close to the truth.

dbreunig3• 17 years ago

I bet the IP TechCrunch owns is simply the brand "CrunchPad." Good luck with that suit.

Fusion Garage's story is infinitely more believable than Arrington's. After both sides have spoken, I imagine it went down like this:

They show him their OS in hopes of getting press and subsequent funding. Arrington loves the idea and wants in on the concept. Fusion Garage goes and actually builds the thing. Meetings take place with Fusion Garage probably passively hoping for funding through Arrington's connections and Arrington monopolizing the conversation with "product ideas" that are more pie-in-the-sky thinking than actual engineering.

In the meantime, tablet fever grips the nation and a Fusion Garage with a working prototype has no trouble scoring VC meetings. They probably had to fight off the cash being thrown at them. Suddenly they don't need Arrington and those that actually came through with funding demand they end the charade of him being a participant. All they have to do is come up with a new name (Joojoo? Come on...)

What remains to be seen is how TC's audience will react. The idea that Arrington apparently tried to glom onto the project with no engineering contributions perfectly fits the tropes discussed on HN: MBA-types make a buck off the back of those who actually built the thing. I wonder if this tale will actually hurt his rep?

Who here will approach TC and Arrington differently after today?

ryanwaggoner5• 17 years ago

The idea that Arrington apparently tried to glom onto the project with no engineering contributions perfectly fits the tropes discussed on HN: MBA-types make a buck off the back of those who actually built the thing.

The fact that you already have so many upvotes just perfectly illustrates how so many people still don't get that sales and marketing are just as important to product success as engineering. Maybe more. Characterizing Arrington's involvement as an attempt to "glom onto the project with no engineering contributions" is both unwarranted idle speculation and irrelevant, as there are many other contributions to be made beyond just engineering.

sjs3825• 17 years ago

TechCrunch has already given the project tons of visibility. Maybe they just needed an initial press push. I guess we'll see...

wvenable9• 17 years ago

That may be true but Fusion Garage has decided to go without Arrington's marketing. That may be a bad idea; I'm already not impressed with the name. But the point is that there's no evidence that Arrington has any claim to the product.

dbreunig3• 17 years ago

As an employee at an ad agency, I completely agree. (I mean JooJoo? Really?)

Perhaps I wrote that sentence a bit odd, but I don't mean to imply myself that this is what happened. The 'idea' central in this story simply fits similar tropes and themes I see on HN all the time. And you're right, the up-votes verify this.

nir• 17 years ago

"sales and marketing" != "having a popular blog"

EDIT (for some reason reply doesn't seem to work): TC is a hugely popular site, of course, but my point is that sales and marketing is a lot more than what any website can do. They can have huge impact on a website's traffic (though the long term effect is arguable) but getting readers to follow a link isn't the same as getting them to pay a few hundred $ for a product.

hristov4• 17 years ago

But marketing does not give you an automatic right to the product. (Note I am only mentioning marketing, because Arrington did not sell any of the products, obviously). You may tell how great your iphone is to all your friends, but that will not give you a right to any share of the iphone's profits.

If Arrington signed a contract with fusion garage to do their marketing, than he is entitled to what the contract gives him. But to say that he has an ownership interest in the product just because he did some marketing for it is imo just not true. While he may have ownership interest in marketing materials he may have created (such as the crunchpad name) I don't see how he can get ownership of the actual device.

BTW -- this is just wild speculation based on incomplete facts, none of it is legal advice.

tptacek5• 17 years ago

You're right, but in a case where one side is contributing mostly intangible business value, you expect written contracts. The alleged lack of them is damning.

Marketing, of course, is not about the product name. It's feature/function, pricing, ship dates, channel development, and general promotion/branding.

cowmoo• 17 years ago

Thank you for your $0.02; this might be really obvious to you, but could you be kind and enlighten the oblivious engineering crowd on this forum and be more specific as to what kind of value-add does sales and marketing add to a early-stage hardware startup or any consumer-oriented tech startup in general?

codexon12• 17 years ago

Think about it this way.

If you have no product, having the best marketers in the world will not make you a single penny (unless you do preorders, which you still need a product eventually).

If you have a product and no marketers, will you still be able to sell some units? Most certainly.

Because of this, the actual engineering of the product is more valuable than the marketing if you were forced to choose between all engineers, or all marketers.

ojbyrne2• 17 years ago

I don't think anybody believes that sales and marketing are as important as engineering. I think instead that most people here believe that all the sales and marketing people treat engineering as if it doesn't matter at all. And we'll cheer for anyone who says it's not the case.

wvenable9• 17 years ago

The lack of contracts seems to indicate that Fusion Garage's story is more accurate. It's entirely possible that the original idea, however, was Arrington's and that Fusion Garage simply decided to build it. However, Arrington says that they contributed IP to the project -- I wonder what that is supposed to be.

hristov4• 17 years ago

The original idea is something everyone had the moment they saw the first iPhone.

mechanical_fish2• 17 years ago

infinitely more believable than Arrington's

Well, no doubt many people are happy to assume that the person holding the soldering iron is automatically the one who is right.

I will make no such assumption; "infinitely" is more than a little strong. ;) All I will say is: What a lose-lose situation.

tptacek5• 17 years ago

He has two really compelling pieces of (alleged) evidence: a new working piece of hardware and the fact that there were no written contracts.

That doesn't get them out of the woods legally, but if all TC has is incriminating snippets of email, it does make them more credible than TC.

jeromec• 17 years ago

> Well, no doubt many people are happy to assume that the person holding the soldering iron is automatically the one who is right.

I can't believe how many are making that assumption. I had been reading TechCrunch for years before the day I saw Arrington post the original hypothesis for the CrunchPad. In fact, I can probably look up my comments on Google encouraging his going forward, and suggesting features. I'm blown away at how off track this has turned out. Unfortunately, if he didn't handle the legal stuff he has to take the turmoil I guess.

rbanffy7• 17 years ago

"many people are happy to assume that the person holding the soldering iron is automatically the one who is right"

Well... If it were a chainsaw, then there would be no question whatsoever.

As it is, it's the team who has the soldering iron, who wrote the code, who designed and built the prototype, who figured out production against the other guy who is known for having occasionally hidden ties to companies he talks about on his blog, who has thus doubtful journalistic standards and who posted a couple pictures, promoted the device and published stories about how it would change the world, painting himself as an internet visionary turned hardware mogul.

I stay with the guy with the soldering iron on this one.

Interestingly, I also can't see US$ 299 as such a ludicrous price. I doubt an e-paper display is much less expensive than a LCD twice its size and there are devices in this space that cost $299.

hristov4• 17 years ago

I agree. When reading those Arrington articles, it was obvious that he had no technical contribution to the thing.

That being said, Fusion Garage really fell on their face. The only thing they needed to do is come up with a name better than crunch pad, which should not have been too hard. And they come up with joojoo??? Ouch.

maudineormsby4• 17 years ago

If Arrington is spouting off and doesn't have contracts in hand, he's severely hurt the credibility of FusionGarage among their core market for the product. A countersuit might be in order.

dskhatri• 17 years ago

I'm honestly really surprised (and a little appalled) at the number of upvotes your comment has received. There's a mob-like response whenever a story comes up about MA or TechCrunch. As far as I can tell, Fusion Garage's response (from this Engadget article) is hearsay as well.

jodrellblank4• 17 years ago

> I'm honestly really surprised (and a little appalled) at the number of upvotes your comment has received.

Me too, considering it's basically an attack on Mike Arrington based on an imaginary situation where Arrington/Techcrunch do things the author dislikes so he can paint him in a bad light.

It's no more worthy of upvotes than: "I imagine Mike Arrington met the CEO of Fusion Garage and kicked his children in the face. Isn't he a horrible person?"

tptacek5• 17 years ago

FG's claims are more easy to refute than TC's. FG says they did virtually all the technical work and they signed no contracts. Easily refuted claims are more credible than vague ones.

uuilly• 17 years ago

Engineering is not the only story here. They got a lot of attention that they never would have gotten w/o the biggest name in tech news singing their praises from his bully pulpit. Imagine the uphill battle these guys would face trying to sell what is essentially a new computer on its merits alone.

It seems to me the FusionGarage people have gotten what they need from Arrington; attention. Now that he is no longer useful he's been sidelined. Kind of a Machiavellian move, since no lawsuit can undo the press they got.

Arrington was using them and they were using Arrington. Which, in the end, is the nature of all business relationships.

michaelneale• 17 years ago

I have no idea about the whole mess, but I think the statement "techcrunch is just a blog" would probably resonate with a lot of people and actually get them sympathy.

I do think the TechCrunch PR and marketing probably could have made it better, but perhaps there is a bit much credit and attention given to the louder mouths then is deserved.

In any case, interesting to watch, and a device like this for that price point would be awesome if anyone can pull it off.

prabodh• 17 years ago

http://twitter.com/arrington/status/6442811004 "There aren't any more CrunchPad posts coming from us. It's all in the lawyers hands now." This is what Arrington/TC had to say....

bl4k2• 17 years ago

this guy would be talking to a wall if it wasn't for Techcrunch. He would have never been able to raise any money either, since most of Asia won't talk to him and certainly nobody in Singapore does since he burnt his last startup in much the same way.

This guy is a complete scammer and has a track record of doing exactly this. Watching HN people take his side after watching his video spin and not knowing anything else about him is just sick.

codexon12• 17 years ago

Do you have any links for information about his last startup? I would like to see it.

mpk2• 17 years ago

I have only the foggiest idea of what's going on here (this is a tablet PC running a web OS, right?), but this whole thing smacks of desperation.

ChromeOS just went public, Apple may or may not do some tablet thing, Arrington is somehow involved and seems to be acting like an ass again, etc.

I think someone pushed the panic button and said something along the lines of 'we go live now or the whole thing is dead!'

All-in-all not a good way to start. My magic eight-ball tells me this project is doomed.

wheels• 17 years ago

Significant missing detail: there seems to have been disagreement on the pricing, with Arrington presumably wanting a lower margin product that was closer to his original vision. This seems to be the thing that Fusion Garage's investors balked at.

bl4k2• 17 years ago

definitely. I mean both HP and Apple have engineers, but I could never figure out what makes Apple better - please explain? Since the argument is that it is all engineers and 'lines of code', that means that it comes down to who writes the code, right? Which explains why Apple is so great, or maybe not.

The sooner you wake up to what marketing really is the better

mbreese• 17 years ago

I find it interesting that this all apparently happened so quickly, but the timing still seems off.

The domain "thejoojoo.com" was registered on Nov 10th.

They told TechCrunch about the split on the 17th, and that day TechCrunch applied for the trademark.

I mean, who was running this show? Domain names and trademarks are supposed to be lined up and checked much further in advance. (Not to mention contracts...)

On a side note: this is the tech equivalent of celebrity gossip... I'm sure that much worse has happened in the past, but never this publicly.

ryanwaggoner5• 17 years ago

Don't you have to actually use a trademark before you can register it? This might have prevented them from doing so earlier?

roc• 17 years ago

In the US you can file based on "Intent to Use".

jodrellblank4• 17 years ago

> On a side note: this is the tech equivalent of celebrity gossip...

Which is why I'm surprised the submission is not a techcrunch URL.

asciilifeform2• 17 years ago

Might someone explain to me why this device was ever considered interesting? In just what way is it unique?

jodrellblank4• 17 years ago

Because there's nothing like it out there?

It's not a cheap netbook with a small screen and a small keyboard, and it's not an expensive tablet PC with PC laptop innards - it's a cheap netbook innards/tablet PC form factor/touch screen browsing device.

Because despite the price they were aiming at sounding too good to be true, everyone went "oh that sounds too good to be true ... but they say it so it must be true! I'll buy two!".

nl• 17 years ago

I've posted it before & I'll post it again:

http://wholesale.alibaba.com/product-gs/268088826-touch-scre...

http://wholesale.alibaba.com/product-gs/268087366-10-2-inch-...

10" touch screen, Atom Processor, standard netbook specs in a touchscreen tablet, prices from $288 in bulk. (I suspect it isn't a capacitative touchscreen but it's still inaccurate to say there is nothing like it out there)

pibefision• 17 years ago

Comments at engadget are really funny

ajaimk• 17 years ago

So, why did they name it "penis" in chinese again?

rbanffy7• 17 years ago

Because it has a 12 inch screen?

forensic3• 17 years ago

Why does it only browse the web? How hard can it be to throw a desktop on there?

You make all that hardware and then cripple it with limited software? Whateva. I would pay $499 if it had bluetooth and could run a normal OS.

Also, these Fusion Garage guys need to hire a marketing/PR firm STAT. Fingerprint-marred green screen and scary looking nerd glowering at the camera is bad for business.

netcan4• 17 years ago

You can already get a tablet that does that. I never understand these kinds of comments.

"I wouldn't buy that. Why didn't they make it into a completely different kind of product." It's like looking at a motorbike & saying "They should have given it four wheels & aircon."

forensic3• 17 years ago

I guess I just don't understand wtf the point of this thing is when the Archos 9 is on sale for $499

vaporstun• 17 years ago

I am most intrigued at how Michael Arrington, a former attorney, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Arrington] would have failed so miserably at doing anything to protect his interests. No contract? No formal IP? Nothing?

That's quite an indicator that he likely had little to do with this device as Fusion Garage claims. If he'd actually done more to bring it to fruition, he would probably have taken the appropriate steps to safeguard his investment. For anyone else I may attribute a lapse like this as simply a mistake, but for an attorney to drop the ball this badly sounds quite suspicious...

rbanffy7• 17 years ago

He may be an incompetent attorney. That could explain why he writes about technology in the first place ;-)

jws• 17 years ago

Was he a good attorney? In my experience the range of good to bad in attorneys is as great as it is in programmers.

datums• 17 years ago

So it was a fairly recent decision.

thejoojoo.com

Created: 2009-11-10

Expires: 2011-11-10

Updated: 2009-11-10

To ditch crunchpad or to go with joojoo

tlrobinson• 17 years ago

No contracts? That seems like a newbie mistake I wouldn't expect from Arrington...

johngalt• 17 years ago

Smartphones/netbooks have pretty much filled the niche for this device. You could add a radio to the cruchpad and it would be a bad cellphone. Even if there was any kind of success here, Quanta would zip in and build a netbook with a touchscreen and put them out of business fast.

The flap over who owns it doesn't matter, it's already dead. The whole advantage of a "small team" development is to avoid issues like these all together. If Fusion and Arrington had both put everything into this project, it might have gone somewhere. But mediocre product + fractured team = failure.

Best bet now would be to open the platform and hope someone with an open OS looking for hardware saves you.

jrockway2• 17 years ago

Someone posted a comment that says:

Hasn't the Archos9 existed already at that price point?

http://www.archos.com/products/nb/archos_9/

Possibly with more features? Or is it vaporware?

But it seems to have been killed. I think he is right, though; the Archos is a much nicer device that's already shipping and that's cheaper.

tfh2• 17 years ago

I wonder how all this story will affect the sales of the "joojoo" and of Apples coming Tablet. I was actually planning to get me a crunchpad but now I'll wait until all this settles down...

david927• 17 years ago

I'm surprised at the vitriol here. This was clearly a joint project that got hijacked out of greed.

I was looking forward to buying several Crunchpads, but it will be a cold day in hell before I ever buy a JooJoo, just from principle.

CamperBob2• 17 years ago

I seem to recall hearing a lot of people say the same thing when the Revolution became the "Wii."

Readmore• 17 years ago

It's an interesting story but at $499 I don't see it selling all that well.

I'll continue to wait for the Apple Tablet.

zaidf5• 17 years ago

Wow, all I can say is if they had nothing signed, Arrington committed a pretty amateur mistake. As a lawyer, he should have known better. That's assuming we know everything.

minalecs• 17 years ago

the only way i can see this thing succeeding, is if its extremely hackable. Allowing users to run any os.. would be the first start. Otherwise as web client - could be ok , but again, netbooks are much cheaper, and does possibly the same. I would like it mainly as an e-book reader as the 10" from amazon is around the same price point, but with no pdf reader, no sd slot, or any idea of internal memory its a fail as a reader.

jonursenbach• 17 years ago

joojoo: "karma. bad luck." http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=joojoo

elblanco4• 17 years ago

Pricepoint sounds more realistic yet still reasonable, glad to see it's still moving forward. Sad to see all the ugly behind the scenes business stuff (which is usually hidden from view, but all too common) airing in public.

julio_the_squid• 17 years ago

Well, they've certainly received a lot of publicity out of this. I read Tech Crunch an average amount and I actually wasn't aware at all of this device until recently. The device looks fairly average to me, and I can't image spending that much on a limited tablet style computer.

The racism in the comments over at engadget sure is unpleasant. Also, the green screened pictures is certainly doing them a disservice!

jsz0• 17 years ago

My theory, which is pure speculation, is that Fusion Garage misinterpreted Arrington's support. He promotes many companies on his blog, TC50 and elsewhere. It seems entirely plausible that FG thought Arrington was simply an enthusiastic supporter trying to help a small company bring a product to market. Maybe they figured he would buy a bunch of units OEM and rebrand them as CrunchPads while they were free to sell the design to other companies or market a device at retail themselves. The fact that Mr. Arrington, who is a tech savy lawyer, apparently did not enter into any formal contracts supports this theory. He should know better. It's very suspicious that he would not clearly define the terms very early in the process. This suggests to me he wanted to swoop in and take control of the product only when it was nearing its completion. FG takes most of the risk -- he jumps in at the last second if they pull off the engineering side of things. The big question is who was paying the bills?

Mr. Arrington originally said the CrunchPad was not about profit. So what's the problem with Fusion Garage selling their own device? Or even selling the design to other companies? Again this strikes me as being very suspicious. Wouldn't more manufactures competing against each other be true to his original vision? Was FG unwilling to sell him this hardware to be re-branded as CrunchPads or were they unwilling to give him exclusive access to it?

gregking• 17 years ago

$499!? -- I'll wait for Apple.

sandee• 17 years ago

It looks like FusionGarage was looking at initial funding (or acquisition) from techcrunch early in product development cycle. And techcrunch (i believe intentionally) avoided commiting anything earlier itself since they thought it as too risky. Techcrunch thought that they would bring in world class investors and team later around the product development ( few months before launch) and get a good stake in the product for that. And FusionGarage investors were frustrated that TC can come around later (when the risk is too low) and take a major bite of it.

In between, TC claims that they did initial marketing for the product. Technically it may be correct. But From risk factor, what was at stake here for TC ? Actually TC biz model works on buzz factor. More Buzz equals more readers and Revenue. So at worst (if product fails), they made some money out of the whole buzz. But for FusionGarage (and their investors), everything was at stake.

Arrington might be correct, they could have negotiated on the product stake. ( How about : 2% for initial idea discussion, 2% for initial marketing, and 2% bring in new investors and team .) I guess such a 5-6% offer would have still led to such a breakup. (But can u give a 30% stake just for blogging about a product ?)

To me, Arrington is a Bad (Scary) Startup-Investor here (keeping the startup in guessing game till end ..), and FusionGarage has a bad CEO who could not anticipate what was to come. And those investors are smart to bring the whole stuff out before the product is actually launched.

shabda• 17 years ago

Zoozoo is also the name of Vodaphone's India mascot, and has proved very popular. Not sure how that affects this, buts its not a terrible name, IMO. http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&ei=NrMdS6-xGo3u7AP3...

c00p3r• 17 years ago

Did they still want their custom OS instead of port of the Chrome OS? It seems that they should think again.

mike9999• 17 years ago

I'm betting this is a publicity stunt. This has all been too public for a real lawsuit. They have gotten much more mindshare from all the blogs due to their "fight" then if they had just announced the product in a normal way.

khangtoh• 17 years ago

Even touchpad, webpad or cloud-D sounds way cool then joojoo and I just thought of those while in bed and typing this on my iPhone.

herval• 17 years ago

Is it just me or that guy looks a lot like a Klingon?

Crunchpad renamed "JooJoo" will cost $499 on sale Dec. 11

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