Can HP’s webOS Rise from the Ashes?

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/508251/can-hps-webos-rise-from-the-ashes/

by rdahbura • 14 years ago

61 27 14 years ago

There is some precedent for left-for-dead tech being brought back to life: the Firefox Web browser, now one of the top browsers, was built from the open-source version of Netscape Communicator, which battled with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

If there was another open source web browser already leading the market in the late 90s, then Firefox probably never would have happened.

Anyway, kudos to these hackers and I wish them luck. WebOS is great.

programminggeek• 14 years ago

I don't think webOS is going to get a second chance for similar reasons that BeOS never got a second chance. Even if it has a lot of great ideas, apps, whatever, the groups who should be interested in webOS are using Android.

Look at China, there are some mobile phone companies in China that could take webOS and make it really awesome and sell to millions of customers, but they are busy building Android phones and are working on building Tizen. Mozilla could have taken webOS and built on that, but instead they are doing their own OS.

HP itself doesn't even seem to care about webOS, so it's hard to convince anyone else to do so either. It seems like webOS, Meego, bada, and all these other OS's are going to end up in the footnotes of the smartphone revolution similar to the many desktop PC os's that never quite took off.

beagle3• 14 years ago

> It seems like webOS, Meego, bada, and all these other OS's are going to end up in the footnotes of the smartphone revolution

If bada is on that list, so should Windows Phone be:

http://www.neowin.net/news/ouch-bada-os-market-share-larger-...

zem• 14 years ago

i am still, despite everything, holding out hopes for a maemo/meego resurrection, simply because i have never before or since found another mobile platform as pleasurable to develop for. i kept feeling that meego was (like linux-on-the-desktop, perhaps) perpetually on the brink of a tipping point that would suddenly surprise everyone with an accelerating cascade of apps gushing forth.

sadly, the experience of using it (on my n900) was plagued by the same problems that linux had in the early days, where the hardware and software randomly decided not to get on with each other (specifically, in my case, phone calls that would drop before the phone app swapped in, and a gps that took anywhere from 20 minutes to never to get a lock). i cannot help but think that if only nokia had thrown their full weight behind it, the second or third generation phone would have been truly stunning.

cletus• 14 years ago

This is one of those times when the answer is simply "no" (before anyone mentions that stupid "law" like it's the first time anyone has seen it).

The most you could do I think is skin Android to look and act like WebOS.

There is significant technical work in getting it to work on hardware. It's simply not going to go anywhere until you can get manufacturer and/or carrier buy-in and what's the upside of this over, say, Android or even Windows Phone 8?

Google, Apple and Microsoft can put, have put and are putting significant cloud infrastructure behind their mobile OSs. That's not something easily replicated with another OS and I have little faith that HP can deliver equivalent infrastructure.

The fact of the matter is that WebOS failed on Palm. HP screwed up whatever chance they had by some corporate schism showing that they just weren't that interested (particularly once Hurd was ousted).

I remember seeing the same thing after BeOS failed. Let it go. It's over.

mortenjorck2• 14 years ago

For smartphones: Definitely too late.

For tablets: Maybe not too late.

It's over in handhelds, a duopoly between iOS and Android, with a niche duopoly between RIM and Windows Phone. Tablets are going to get much more interesting, though, with balkanized ecosystems forming around Android offshoots such as Amazon's Kindle, and the fallout from Microsoft's surprisingly desperate move of trying to front-load its tablet OS into its flagship desktop OS.

The difference between tablets and desktops is going to get blurrier in what we accomplish with them, but perhaps not in how we accomplish it. There's room for a dark horse here.

clarky072• 14 years ago

I disagree. I think the tablet market is such that it is tied to the phone ecosystem and vice versa. If you can't compete in one, you can't compete in the other. Microsoft might be able to compete with the tie to it's desktop (instead of/in addition to the phone). webOS has no mobile or desktop tie in so it has no chance.

hahainternet• 14 years ago

A remarkably accurate analysis in my eyes.

Osiris3• 14 years ago

On my HP Touchpad I prefer WebOS over Android. The reason I use Android is the quality of the apps, not the OS.

* Cards - Application switching is fast and easy. While in card view you can see the current state of running applications. Card stacking is pretty cool too.

* Clean UI - The WebOS UI is very clean an uncluttered. I find it pleasing to look at and it's easy to use.

* System-wide Mute - When I go to a meeting or other environment I need a full system-wide mute. On Android I'll turn down the sound only to have an annoying notification sound go off in a meeting because notification volume is still at 100%.

* "Home button" - switches to card view and shows the application launcher. This means that a single button works for 1) closing apps, 2) switching apps, 3) launching apps.

So in short, I hope WebOS does make a comeback, though they may want to look into adding some type of Android compatibility layer to make it easy to port apps over as that's the biggest downfall of the platform.

jonhohle2• 14 years ago

But what niche does that fill that iOS doesn't?

> * Clean UI - The WebOS UI is very clean an uncluttered. I find it pleasing to look at and it's easy to use.

The WebOS UI is clean compared to Android, but years behind iOS. I was excited to try WebOS when I got a discounted TouchPad last year, but really disliked how unpolished the entire thing felt. Text selection was abysmal. Actions were often hidden in menus. Animation was not smooth or coherent. Cards is a cool concept, but I don't think it improves usability significantly (at least not significantly more than four-finger swipe).

> * System-wide Mute - When I go to a meeting or other environment I need a full system-wide mute. On Android I'll turn down the sound only to have an annoying notification sound go off in a meeting because notification volume is still at 100%.

Again, not an issue on iOS. Couldn't this be fixed with an app in Android (honest question, people always talk bout everything being replaceable in Android).

> * "Home button" - switches to card view and shows the application launcher. This means that a single button works for 1) closing apps, 2) switching apps, 3) launching apps.

This is largely the same in iOS, but the priorities are different - 1 click to launch new apps, two clicks to switch/close apps.

I put CM9 on my TouchPad because development was stagnating on the TouchPad and I was really surprised how B-grade the entire experience is - even compared to WebOS. An iPad is fast, consistent, clean, and works out of the box. Besides cost, I really don't see what people like about _using_ WebOS or Android over iOS (philosophically I understand, pragmatically, I just can't get there).

Osiris3• 14 years ago

I can't compare the experience to iOS as I've never owned an iOS device. I can't afford it.

The two Android phones I have I got free with my cell service, I have a B&N Nook ($200) that I put Android on, and an HP Touchpad ($150) with Android.

Mute - I found Android apps that offer it but it would be better if it was built into the OS. On iOS isn't the mute switch on the device a ringer mute, not a full system mute?

pessimizer• 14 years ago

>The WebOS UI is clean compared to Android, but years behind iOS. I was excited to try WebOS when I got a discounted TouchPad last year, but really disliked how unpolished the entire thing felt. Text selection was abysmal. Actions were often hidden in menus. Animation was not smooth or coherent.

I think the WebOS UI blows iOS away - the only problem with the WebOS UI is that it was buggy and unfinished. Both the iOS UI and the Android UI are clunky and terrible in design IMO, but they have had a lot more work put into them (and in the case of iOS, hardware tuning), so they're going to be a lot smoother and account for a lot more minority or uncommon use cases, and to have discovered more workflow speedbumps.

I think the UI design of WebOS and Maemo/Meego are head and shoulders above the incumbents, but that a lot of extra-technical issues sank both OSes. You can't really stumble as bad as HP/Nokia did in such a tight duopoly and expect to survive.

veeti• 14 years ago

> On Android I'll turn down the sound only to have an annoying notification sound go off in a meeting because notification volume is still at 100%.

I don't understand your problem. On tablets like the Nexus 7 the volume slider is global and muting will mute the device completely. On a phone turning down the ringer volume to vibrate/mute will stop all notification sounds. Only the media volume of the music player and games and whatever is separate.

grayrest• 14 years ago

The answer is no. It's kind of sad since WebOS had by far the most awesome OSS community. As a dedicated frontend developer, I'm rooting for a phone ecosystem using the browser stack for apps but B2G is my current hope and I don't give it great odds for success. I'll probably use/make apps for it but it's a tough sell for others.

jonhohle2• 14 years ago

As the owner of an HP TouchPad, I could never figure out what people found so appealing about WebOS - it was slow, not really that polished (more than Android, significantly less than iOS), unintuitive (menus hiding actions in many apps), and had a terrible on-screen keyboard. Cards made me feel like I had manage apps in a way that iOS and Android don't. The hardware was heavy and bulky. The only way to make the device reasonably usable was to spend a significant amount of time installing hacks to bump the CPU speed, turn off logging, and a host of other things that end users shouldn't have to deal with for a device of this type.

Maybe the experience was better on phones. The only thing redeeming about the TouchPad was it's great screen for the time and price ($99 for 1024x768 10" IPS display).

clauretano• 14 years ago

On phones, webOS was pretty slow and not all that smooth, until the Pre 2 came into existence with about twice the processing power and webOS 2. Unfortunately, webOS was already floundering at this point and Verizon was the only U.S. carrier to launch the Pre 2, so very few people ever got to experience it. There was the HP Veer on AT&T as well, but that was quite the niche offering.

Despite webOS being around for two years before the launch of the HP TouchPad, the device was less refined because so much of webOS 3 was new. It was the first webOS device without a hardware keyboard, for instance. It was also the first without a gesture area, the first with that new notification system, etc.

jlkinsel• 14 years ago

I'm not sure what I need less - another programming language (elm) or another mobile platform...

IheartApplesDix• 14 years ago

Speak for yourself

frozenport• 14 years ago

I think he did?

onedev• 14 years ago

Surprised someone hasn't posted Betteridge's law yet.

mark-r• 14 years ago

The example of Firefox doesn't really apply here. It succeeded because Microsoft dropped the ball and there weren't many viable alternatives. Does anybody think Apple and Google will make the same mistake?

cpeterso• 14 years ago

webOS development continues at Gram, an HP spin off developing webOS TVs with LG. As a Treo fan and ex-Palm employee, I wish Palm and webOS would be allowed to rest in peace. :\

http://www.webosnation.com/gram-working-lg-open-webos-tv

Nux• 14 years ago

No.

Can HP’s webOS Rise from the Ashes?

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