• All Things Digital, Thursday, June 30, 2011 1:38 PM

To date, no tablet has come close to challenging Apple's iPad -- and Hewlett-Packard's new TouchPad won't change that fact, according to tech guru Walt Mossberg. No, despite the best efforts of the world's largest PC maker, its first tablet is "simply no match for the iPad," Mossberg writes. Among other "deficits," he scolds, the TouchPad "suffers from poor battery life [and] a paucity of apps." On the bright side, Mossberg professes to like the TouchPad's interface a lot.

"Instead of a screen full of app icons, the main screen of the TouchPad's operating system, called webOS, presents running apps as 'cards' -- large, live rectangles that you scroll through in a horizontal row," he writes. Better yet, "In many ways the TouchPad is a joy to use." Alas, "at least for now, I can't recommend the TouchPad over the iPad 2."

Industrywide, while countless multi-touch tablet computers have launched this year to take on Apple, its iPad still managed to sell 25 million units and attract 90,000 tablet-specific apps in just about 15 months.

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