Source: TechCrunch

Was the CrunchPad yet another mythical tablet computer made of dark matter and moon dust? Perhaps it doesn’t really matter. Whatever it would have been had it ever seen the light of day, it’s (apparently) dead now.

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington announced the official end of the much publicized project on Monday. The tablet, developed by TechCrunch in partnership with Singapore-based Fusion Garage, was intended to be a thin touch-screen device priced at around $300 that people could use solely to access the internet. It was scheduled to make its debut as a prototype at the Real-Time CrunchUp event in San Francisco on November 20.

But instead, greed, dirty dealings -- or market reality -- killed the CrunchPad.

Arrington kicked off the project on July 21 2008, writing in a TechCrunch post, "We want a dead simple web tablet for $200, help us build it". The project inspired a significant amount of enthusiasm and publicity over the next year and a half.

In a poignant post by John Biggs which appeared on TechCrunch today, accompanied by a painting of a sad-faced clown, the tablet was billed as much bigger than the sum of its parts: "…the CrunchPad was a testament to the power of online media and a fascinating study in the ability of new media to enact real changes on the real world. While the product faltered, it’s fascinating that the project went as far as it did given the forces arrayed against it."

"This is a massive change in this industry," Biggs wrote. "A few years ago a blogger couldn’t get a press pass to CES let alone enough attention to build out a massive and mass-market hardware project."

While some TechCrunch posters mourned the death of the CrunchPad, others were less than supportive:

Good god. As far as the world is concerned, you had a couple of blog posts about a mythical tablet. Get over yourselves, drama queens.

Product design across oceans is nothing new and is not a function of new media.

Gawd, what a load of self-serving tripe. The product didn’t even ship and now it appears DOA. And yet this failure is somehow a shiny example of New Media’s victory…over, er, something or other.

Arrington, on Monday, wrote in the TechCrunch blog that the CrunchPad project came to an abrupt end "over nothing more than greed, jealousy and miscommunication." He claimed that he received an email from Chandra Rathakrishnan, CEO of Fusion Garage, three days before launch, stating that "based on pressure from his shareholders he had decided to move forward and sell the device directly through Fusion Garage, without TechCrunch’s involvement."

Arrington suggested that the whole kerfuffle might be a pressure tactic to force renegotiation of the current deal, certainly not an unheard of tactic in the less brightly lit corridors of international business.

The most puzzling part of this whole drama is whether Arrington, a former corporate lawyer with a client list that included Netscape, Pixar and Apple, would have signed off on a contract that didn’t specify precisely what would happen if such a clawback was attempted by investors or partners. No one has posted the contracts online for the general public’s perusal (although Arrington has stated the IP is shared) and, since lawsuits are apparently brewing, people are either being very careful about what they say or aren’t saying anything. Fusion Garage has removed the company blog from fusiongarage.com, and did not reply to an email requesting comment.

There had been some rumors in early November that the CrunchPad was doomed. Dan Frommer, with Silicon Alley Insider, predicted the demise of the Crunchpad a few weeks before Arlington tossed it into the Dead Pool.

But apparently the folks at Popular Science didn’t get the memo, as their November issue lists the CrunchPad as one of The 10 Most Brilliant Products of 2009. You can just hear the gnashing of editorial teeth when you read this piece now, which states that "Most breakthrough innovations make their greatest contributions when they become products people can buy. Here, Popular Mechanics awards the top 10 most brilliant gadgets, tools and toys that you can buy in 2009" and heralded the CruncPad as "the proof that today a tech fanboy can take the director’s chair and quickly prototype a smarter product."

An update, posted yesterday on Popular Science's site, states: "On Nov. 30, 2009, CrunchPad’s Michael Arrington announced that the product introduction was being canceled, owing to a business dispute. By giving an award to a prototype, PM took a risk: that a promising product created by a smart group of people might fail to be realized. In this case, it seems, we were a bit too quick to act on our enthusiasm for an innovative idea. While this product is not coming to market, Popular Mechanics anticipates that tablet-style devices for consuming media will represent an important trend in the coming year."

While it now seems likely that the CrunchPad will live on in courtrooms far longer than it did as a viable tech project, it’s possible that Arrington will announce next week that everyone has kissed and made up and the project is on again.

Whatever. Here at Mac|Life, we’re eagerly anticipating an announcement from Steve Jobs proclaiming that the Apple Tablet is ready to ship, just in time for the holidays, and the first 1000 tablets sold will come complete with a special limited-edition live magic unicorn.