Litl CEO Responds to Apple iPad Unveiling

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Following on from our full coverage of Apple’s launch of the iPad, and consequent to reporting on Litl Webbook a couple of weeks ago, John Chuang, the founder and CEO of Litl, has offered his reaction to the Apple iPad – and his thoughts are consistent with what we’re hearing from other industry players.

As reported by Xconomy, who tipped us on John Chuang’s reaction to the iPad (thanks Liasa) Litl’s CEO reaction to Apple’s iPad is, as noted above, is very much that Apple have missed a golden opportunity that could otherwise have furthered the status of the Tablet some considerable way. Indeed, John Chuang hardly holds back in stating that he belives that Apple took ‘the easy road’ and that the iPad is, in essence, ‘just a big iTouch’.

Here’s John Chuang’s feeling concerning the iPad published here with permission of Xconomy (also credited below):

“We think [the iPad] is an extension of what they already have done, in a different form factor. Ultimately, we are about a much bigger change in how operating systems work and how computers work. We are about operating-system-as-a-service, about being extremely maintenance-free, about content, about synching. [The iPad] is more of a traditional device—an extension of the mobile platform, which we’ve seen, but at the end of the day it’s still local hardware, with local storage, and that’s not what we’re trying to accomplish.

[On the absence of an expected Apple announcement on January 27 about a cloud-based, streaming music service]: That sort of service is where we see our company going. A service like that would not only benefit Apple users but it would benefit Litl users, because everyone will be able to access their information from any device. That’s the world that Litl is moving toward. They had the opportunity to transition their operating system more toward that, but that’s not what they did…We’re actually relieved to see that Apple didn’t jump head first into the cloud. That’s where computers are going, and that’s where we are now. We’re going to use our head start to keep making our product better.

[On whether Apple's entry into the tablet market could enhance consumer awareness of devices sized between phones and laptops]: They’ve introduced this easel-like concept, and our take on that is that, with the Litl Webbook, we’re giving you a device that is fully functional in laptop mode and in easel mode. It’s purposely designed to be a no-compromises experience, with a full keyboard. They obviously approched it with a tablet, and it will be interesting to see how successful that is. But at the end of the day, I think there is definitely going to be more choice for consumers between a plain old laptop and a cell phone, and all of that is good. The Litl vision of computing can really be put on all sorts of different devices with different form factors.”

Interesting. So we’re not the only ones disappointed with the iPad (like we didn’t know that already?).