This school year, the tech world saw its fair share of highs and lows.
First, Hewlett-Packard discontinued its flagship tablet, the HP Touchpad, and all other webOS devices in August after slow sales. The Touchpad had only been on the market a little more than a month.
Angela LeBlanc, kinesiology sophomore, told The Daily Reveille in August that tablets like the Touchpad had advantages.
“It’s nice to be able to draw diagrams into your notes,” Leblanc said. “But in my opinion, the advantages and conveniences of tablets don’t outweigh the disadvantages of not having real ports or drives.”
In October 2011, Apple announced the iPhone 4S, the sucessor to the wildly popular iPhone 4. The device sports a faster dual-core processor, better graphics and a faster data network. It also includes Siri, the voice assistant with an attitude, who The Daily Reveille interviewed shortly after the phone was released.
When asked what her favorite color was, Siri responded, “Well, I don’t know how to say it in your language. It’s sort of greenish, but with more dimensions.”
Siri, while not directly insulting Google’s Android operating system, mentioned that she “thinks differently.”
Perhaps more importantly, the October 4 “Let’s Talk iPhone” conference was the first without Apple co-founder Steve Jobs as CEO. Jobs died Oct. 5 after battling pancreatic cancer since 2003.
Apple released a statement saying, “Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.”
In November, Amazon released the Kindle Fire, a 7-inch tablet e-reader meant to compete with Apple’s iPad. The Fire is $199, much cheaper than the $499 iPad.
At the same time, Barnes & Noble announced the Nook Tablet, also a 7-inch tablet e-reader. It was priced slightly higher at $249, but a $199 version was announced in February 2012.
Also in February, Sony launched the PlayStation Vita, sucessor to the PlayStation Portable. The Vita has a 5-inch touchscreen, front and rear-facing cameras, dual analog sticks and a touch panel on the back.
Sales of the Vita have been slow. As of the last week of April, 12,299 units had been sold, while the competing Nintendo 3Ds sold 74,282, according to IGN, a video-game news website.
March brought the first Apple press conference since Jobs’ death, and CEO Tim Cook revealed the new iPad. Successor to the iPad 2, the new iPad has a “Retina display” like the iPhone 4S and an improved graphics processor for gaming.
The minor upgrades were enough to spark some interest, as 3 million iPads were sold in the three days after it launched, according to an Apple news release.
Most recently, Samsung announced the next phone in its Galaxy S line, the Galaxy S III, on May 3. The phone has a 4.8-inch screen and a quad-core processor for multitasking.
 
—- Contact Taylor Balkom at [email protected]