The Crunchpad Is No More

[craigix]

It is how you get people to part with millions that confuses me. Who are these people? Has anyone ever come forward and said 'I lost x million to Gizmondo?'.

So who are these mysterious people behind the CrunchPad?

I know if I had my money wrapped up in it I'd not be keeping quiet right now.

 

[emil10001]

It is how you get people to part with millions that confuses me. Who are these people? Has anyone ever come forward and said 'I lost x million to Gizmondo?'.

So who are these mysterious people behind the CrunchPad?

I know if I had my money wrapped up in it I'd not be keeping quiet right now.

I'd call it successful fund raising. Not all fund raising is getting large amounts of venture capital. There are safer ways of doing it, I am a bit fuzzy on the details, but I do know that there is a distinction.

 

[Esn]

It is how you get people to part with millions that confuses me. Who are these people? Has anyone ever come forward and said 'I lost x million to Gizmondo?'.

So who are these mysterious people behind the CrunchPad?

I know if I had my money wrapped up in it I'd not be keeping quiet right now.

Maybe that's why they're keeping quiet: they don't want it to be known publicly that they're idiots.

 

[Ravnos]

How the hell that thing cost $3million to make I'll never understand, and now they are looking for MORE funding? And it has been made in Asia?

I suspect a lot of that 3mill went on someones bonus.

i would have bought it for 200 dollar. not for a sick 500 dollar.

fuck joo joo, i wanna have crunchpad.

I would have even bought it at 400, but at 500 that's way too much. No sale.

 

[Chip]

This looks like the same sort of thing, only better. No pricing yet, but it will supposedly be made in 7", 11" and 15" versions. And since it runs Android, you can do more than just browse web sites with it.

 

[Tag5]

See here http://www.techcrunc.../crunchpad-end/

This is a very pretty device. Would of been nice to use.

 

[OrR]

Why not just use a Touchbook?

 

[craigix]

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/11/crunchpad-federal-lawsuit-filed-some-additional-thoughts/

It has got even more mental now, I love the way Bruce Lee is involved. It is getting more and more like Gizmondo every day.

 

[neko]

It is how you get people to part with millions that confuses me. Who are these people? Has anyone ever come forward and said 'I lost x million to Gizmondo?'.

So who are these mysterious people behind the CrunchPad?

I know if I had my money wrapped up in it I'd not be keeping quiet right now.

If the investors are keeping quiet, it may be because they were the ones who created the mess.

The way these things often work is an investor says, "Okay, I'll give you a million dollars, but I own 50% of the company." If the money runs out, then the investor says, "Okay, I'll invest another million, but I want 100% ownership."

What sometimes happens is that an investor will intentionally try to push a company near bankruptcy, so that they can negotiate a larger share. Sort of a double-or-nothing gamble. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it fails spectaculary. Anyway, gamblers don't like to talk about their losses.

 

[Polossatik]

This looks like the same sort of thing, only better. No pricing yet, but it will supposedly be made in 7", 11" and 15" versions. And since it runs Android, you can do more than just browse web sites with it.

looks nice, would be good to see a device with that NVIDIA Tegra stuff in it.
The only real + side on the crunchpad was the price point...
I think not so many people can buy a few for 500 (+) USD "jojo" (what a name, for g*ds sake..) tablets to scatter around the house...
Let alone what that Vega will cost...

 

[Chip]

Oops. Looks like Fusion Garage is making the same mistake OP made. Paypal cannot be trusted.

 

[craigix]

Hehehe. The good old days.

I've often wondered if we could have got round it by just selling the place in the Pandora queue, rather than the Pandora itself.

 

[Esn]

Hehehe. The good old days.

I've often wondered if we could have got round it by just selling the place in the Pandora queue, rather than the Pandora itself.

That sounds really dodgy to me, and a very obvious attempt at trying to circumventing rules upon a technicality. But PayPal, as we've seen, aren't too concerned with technicalities - they use broad strokes. If they even bothered looking over your explanation, they could've just said that the place in the queue would be worthless until the product existed, and therefore it's the same thing.

 

[atomicthumbs]

I've often wondered if we could have got round it by just selling the place in the Pandora queue, rather than the Pandora itself.

Then they'd ask to see evidence that you shipped it.

 

[Chip]

Moving conversation from here.

Basically, just before the launch, the guy's Taiwanese business partner betrayed him, decided to steal all his ideas and significantly raise the price. Thus the JooJoo was born. The original creator filed a lawsuit. I think it would be immoral to buy a JooJoo now, because they are going to use the money from the preorders to pay their legal fees.

Arrington made little to no input into either the hardware or software design of the Joojoo. He was nothing more than a mouthpiece and cheerleader for the product, and the manufacturers realized he wasn't needed and dropped him. All the real work was done by Fusion Garage, and there's no reason they should cut Arrington in on any (undoubtedly slim) profits. His lawsuits are of the nuisance, crybaby, money-grab variety, and make me sick. He deserves nothing, least of all the publicity and page views he's getting from this nonsense.

 

[Exophase]

Arrington made little to no input into either the hardware or software design of the Joojoo. He was nothing more than a mouthpiece and cheerleader for the product, and the manufacturers realized he wasn't needed and dropped him. All the real work was done by Fusion Garage, and there's no reason they should cut Arrington in on any (undoubtedly slim) profits. His lawsuits are of the nuisance, crybaby, money-grab variety, and make me sick. He deserves nothing, least of all the publicity and page views he's getting from this nonsense.

Do you have some sources to back that up? I'd like to see more on the full situation too. The only information I had gathered before is that Fusion Garage had way more negative dirt on them than Arrington, which does say a bit as far as credibility goes.

 

[Chip]

I only know what the two sides are saying, and Arrington's version doesn't make any sense. The progression of the device, as far as I can piece it together, is as follows:

• About two years ago, Michael Arrington wrote a blog post on Tech Crunch about his ideal tablet concept. His ideas weren't exactly novel, and basically boiled down to "A 10-12 inch tablet computer with a browser-based OS (and not much else) for $200".
• About a billion comments later, he decides he's going to try to build one.
• He hires a prototyping company to come up with one prototype, then another one a few months later. At this point he's still not 100% sure about mass production, and the estimated cost for the final product goes up by $100 with each prototype.
• Shortly after the 2nd prototype, Fusion Garage contacts him. They explain they've already developed a similar product, and ask him if he'd like to assist with the final tweaking of the UI, and let them use the Crunchpad name.
• Arrington makes one trip to the FG offices in Singapore, lasting about three days. According to his own statements, his contributions to the "design" consist of suggestions like "The icons should be big". He provides no code, and the hardware design is long finalized at this point.
• Several FG employees travel to the US and stay in a house provided by Arrington for a couple weeks. Neither side has said exactly what they worked on during this time.
• Arrington continues to promote the product, and supposedly lines up multiple investors and marketing partners.
• In November, FG informs Arrington that they've decided they don't need him or his connections. They intend to release the product under their own (rather silly) name for $500.
• Arrington goes mental, accuses FG of stealing his product, and sues.

The important things to note - the things that even Arrington doesn't dispute - are these:

• There was no contract of formal agreement between Arrington and Fusion Garage. None. If there were, they would certainly have been mentioned in the lawsuit, and they are not. Nobody with any business savvy would invest actual money or resources into a project like this without a contract, especially not a corporate lawyer with an economics degree.
• Fusion Garage is not trying to use Arrington's name, or the name "Crunchpad" to sell the device. There are no patents involved, and Arrington didn't even bother to file for a trademark on the name "Crunchpad" until after everything went south.
• The final hardware design of the device was already final (or nearly so) before FG ever contacted Arrington. It was developed entirely by FG, separately from Arrington's own prototypes.
• As no documents have been provided to state otherwise, at best Arrington can only claim joint ownership of the copyright for the OS code. As co-joint-owners, FG is still able to use and sell devices using it, even without Arrington's permission.
• None of Arrington's business-related "contributions" came to anything. While he claims to have tons of deals lined up for distribution and promotion, nothing was ever signed, or even announced officially.

There are a ton of reference links on the Wikipedia page, if you're interested. The most damning is Nilay Patel's observations over at Engadget. He's a lawyer, so I am willing to put more faith in his analysis than that of most bloggers.

Now, I don't think you'll find anybody who will claim that this product would have been a success, whoever sold it. It did too little and cost too much, and you can't sell a device like that unless it has an Apple logo on the back. I think FG realized this as well. That's why they cut out Arrington as an unnecessary mouthpiece. They couldn't afford to split whatever meager profits this thing turned with him, just for the privilege of using his name.

 

[Exophase]

Thanks. I did think the lawsuit was pretty pointless and futile; the lack of contracts has been plainly evident and the source of most of the controversy.

But the sticking point of all of this is whether or not Fusion Garage really did do all the work, and from what I'm gathering their "prototype C" design was clearly derivative of the ones Arrington had previously contracted to be built. And even if they really did everything from scratch I think pulling out three days before release is a pretty dirty thing to do.

I guess the next key point will be whether or not people have after 10 weeks have passed since December 11.

 

[Chip]

But the sticking point of all of this is whether or not Fusion Garage really did do all the work, and from what I'm gathering their "prototype C" design was clearly derivative of the ones Arrington had previously contracted to be built.

Arrington's own words, regarding prototype C:

This version has a bottom-up linux operating system and a new version of the browser. We also switched from Via to the Intel Atom chip. The total software footprint is around 100 MB total, which is a solid achievement. Also, this time the ID and hardware work was driven by Fusion Garage out of Singapore. In fact, all the credit should go to Fusion Garage.
...
But 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. Those guys are rock stars.

Source

 

[craigix]

This kind of stuff happens a lot in the industry, it just usually happens behind closed doors.

I doubt the Crunchpad will come out. Paypal will have stopped them accepting orders as you can't use them for pre-orders, unless they are asking their customers to mark the payment as a donation or something like that.

Also, the price is insane.

I was looking to see if anymore has happened since it all blew up, but there does not seem to be any news.