"Inside look"at HP webOS trajectory (The Next Web)

[The Bard]

Originally Posted by bluenote

More leaks are coming out of this blog:

WebOS runs twice as fast on a safari browser in the iPad and was only made to run on HP TouchPad because it was already made by HP 2 years ago.

Wow, its all coming out now. Too bad.


HP tested webOS on an iPad. It ran over twice as fast. - TNW Apple

ps could we buy ipads and get webOS on them, what would it take?

If there is a way for users to load iPad with WebOS.. then I will do it too on mine..

[spud101]

Originally Posted by bluenote

More leaks are coming out of this blog:
ps could we buy ipads and get webOS on them, what would it take?

Yeah that would be cool, a dual booting iPad . Or the option of webOS in the browser seems viable too to me.

[DoobieDoo]

So Sad ..I think I am going away to a corner to sob softly...

[hagster]

Originally Posted by The Bard

If there is a way for users to load iPad with WebOS.. then I will do it too on mine..

I'm guessing, but I guess the truth is that they tested some ENYO apps on Safari on the iPad2 and they ran twice as fast. I doubt they ran full webOS as this would have been a big task.

This is not really a surprise at the Touchpads browser has come off badly in most JavaScript and DOM benchmarks. The 3.0.2 update closed the gap a little, but they had plenty of room for improvement.

Interestingly in one of Richard Kerris's tweets yesterday he stated that they were increasing their investment in ENYO for HPwebOS platform. Does this mean that they see ENYO as the future rather than webOS???

[nyuepik]

I think Hagster is right on this. Based on my tests developing Audiophile's gui on the iPad and then porting it to the TouchPad, I think twice as fast is an understatement.

And contrary to what the article suggests, you can't blame the speed difference on the hardware. The fact is that WebOS has a horribly slow WebKit implementation that is not hardware accelerated versus the iPad, which has a very good WebKit implementation.

The sad fact is that the WebOS dev team was a bunch of JavaScript programmers who really didn't understand OS development. They always focused more on creating "innovative" APIs like Mojo and Enyo than they did on basic OS functions like process scheduling and hardware rendering.

When WebOS moved to the TouchPad, they should have completely rewritten the OS. Instead they focused on making sliding panes, and added a few Qualcomm specific optimizations to the core OS.

I kinda figured the end would come quickly when I tried to implement a very basic CSS rotation on the TouchPad and it crashed on me. WebOS developers are a patient lot, but your average developer is not going to start work on an OS when there are memory errors at the most basic level of the OS that cause unpredictable behavior.

Two years ago WebOS was innovative; now it is just a sad case study in how engineering, marketing, and business failures can come together to create a $2 billion failure.

[Hobbz]

Yeah, kinda interesting how webOS runs twice as fast on an iPad. I was just coming to include this article found on the same site which described it.

Interesting how it also says the TouchPad hardware was allegidly already developed some time ago and it was hampering the webOS team from going further.

HP tested webOS on an iPad. It ran over twice as fast. - TNW Apple

[sorli]

Interesting and does everyone else wonder what Samsung and HTC could do with webOS besides snag the bevy of patents!

Samsung and HTC would be fantastic and I'd love to see them make a move, but would we even see webOS and is it possible to Frankenstein it into Android??? Neither Samsung or HTC will step away from what is presently making them profit and doing quite well. I personally don't have much use for Android, but with webOS integration on some levels...anything is possible. Sorli...

[hagster]

Originally Posted by nyuepik

The sad fact is that the WebOS dev team was a bunch of JavaScript programmers who really didn't understand OS development. They always focused more on creating "innovative" APIs like Mojo and Enyo than they did on basic OS functions like process scheduling and hardware rendering.

When WebOS moved to the TouchPad, they should have completely rewritten the OS. Instead they focused on making sliding panes, and added a few Qualcomm specific optimizations to the core OS.

Well summed up. Although Mojo and Enyo are more frameworks than API's.

A lack of good APIs for developers to talk to enable developers to do cool things was another issue that never seemed to get sorted. How long did it take to get an audio capture API, and when it came it was so basic that you could do very little with it. I wanted to port a guitar tuner, but the API would only let me stream the data to disk. webOS was very good for writing twitter and facebook apps though, but I suspect the likes of Shazam would have struggled.

[nyuepik]

Originally Posted by hagster

Well summed up. Although Mojo and Enyo are more frameworks than API's.

Thanks for the correction, I have never really been comfortable with JavaScript terminology.

[hstechfl]

Originally Posted by TopTongueBarry

In this picture we get to see a glimpse of what was coming before Leo decided to shutter the hardware operation. There's some nice stuff he killed.

Actually, those were mock ups created in a contest on this very website.

[hagster]

Originally Posted by nyuepik

Thanks for the correction, I have never really been comfortable with JavaScript terminology.

I know what you mean, web developers have never been too hot on precise terminology. JavaScript has absolutely no connection to Java for a start. What on earth is web2.0 and don't get me started on HTML5.

[Nokia_webOS]

Am I the only one who is getting annoyed with these big corporations ditching these amazing platforms?

Nokia did the same thing to Meego-Harmattan and its Swipe UI to go with WP7?

I had fears that this would happen to webOS because HP is not a smartphone developer in any sense of the word.

Even though webOS is over 2 years old now, I still think of it as a modern/next gen mobile OS just like MeeGo.

What are my choices now?

iOS, Android, BB OS, WP7.....No thanks, I dislike them all. Maybe I'll sell my smartphone and move to Antarctica.

Depressing.

[bluenote]

this guy from chicago's paper had nice things to say about the ingenuity of webos vs ios and some choice words for HP's decision, makes me more sad than anything else to see this through the eyes of an admiring outsider, excerpts below:
H-P

or what HP has done to consumers . . . oh, yes, they deserve it. There are people who excitedly bought a TouchPad on the very first day it was released in their countries, and then became orphans less than 48 hours later. That’s just wrong.

I’m hugely disappointed that HP never gave the TouchPad a chance to find its legs. But it might have been the only sensible choice available to them. The trouble was that there were just so damned few TouchPad buyers to screw over. This week, AllThingsD reported that since the TouchPad’s US launch on July 1, only 25,000 of the 270,000 units HP shipped to Best Buy had sold - and that figure didn’t even include the number of products that had been returned. And so, in their quarterly earnings call on Thursday, HP announced that they were “shutting down WebOS hardware” (meaning, no more TouchPad and no more WebOS phones), bringing to an end a two-year saga in which the new mobile OS won lots of fans and earned surprising respect, but had never found its Oprah Moment.

HP did leave the door open to licensing WebOS to third-party phone and tablet makers....
HP could no more distance the TouchPad from the iPad than Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious could distance that song from Frank Sinatra. Their work would not, could not have existed without the original to serve as a template. But throughout the WebOS/TouchPad experience, I saw, in flourish after flourish, places where an engineer looked at some element of the iPad and thought “That’s great, but what if we did it like this instead?”

A blow-by-blow review would be a waste of your time and mine. Still, I can’t help but compliment WebOS’ engineers on creating a UI that was easy to figure out and which made sense as an integrated unit.

The device itself felt a little cheap, compared both to the iPad and the Motorola Xoom.

But that’s kind of HP’s schtick. By and large, they aren’t in the business of making premium hardware. A company that once was known for rock-solid products was chased by competition into building ‘em cheap and shipping them in huge volume.

Still, I initially couldn’t recommend that people buy it. At its original $499 list price, I was going to award the TouchPad a “nice try.” You can’t compete with the iPad by selling something not as good for the same price.

HP quickly cut the list price down to $399 and the thing immediately got interesting.

Then it became clear that shrewd shoppers could combine deals and coupons and get it for under $350 and that’s when the TouchPad became verrry interesting. Any halfway-decent color 10” multitouch tablet with a great mail app, a web browser, the Kindle app, and even a bare assortment of third-party apps is highly competitive. The key was going to be for the TouchPad to compete with the Amazon Kindle instead of the iPad...

[jhoff80]

Originally Posted by Hobbz

it also says the TouchPad hardware was allegidly already developed some time ago and it was hampering the webOS team from going further.

I believe it. They had to rework the paradigms of the OS completely to account for the lack of a gesture area. Doesn't seem like something you do if given the opportunity to design your own hardware. I'd bet they were ready to go with an Android tablet, realized it was crap, and then bought Palm and reworked webOS entirely to fit what they were working with.

[bluenote]

Forbes reporter covers last night's nyc developer's launch party:
feeling more sad, what a loss

webOS Developers Bewildered By HP Decision To Drop Hardware - Forbes

[omahawildcat]

Leo is a complete fool and I hope HP crashes and burns. They have no chance in hell competing with Oracle.

HP lost 300+ million mostly on webos? Well no ****! What products were out on the market long enough to make up for the investment you put in? Of course you're going to lose money at the very beginning. Yet they delayed and delayed getting products out and when they did finally get the TP out it wasn't even optimized and they had to do an over the air update which retailers couldn't even get onto the trial units.
There were many people getting interested in the Touchpad just by word of mouth of the precentral community and it would have sold if things were implemented correctly with apps. They spent money developing the toucpad go, they developed the pre 3 and neither of these were put out on the market. You don't think you're not going to lose **** loads of money doing this?

Leo hates hardware and he thinks he can convert HP into a huge software giant. Not going to happen.

[bluenote]

This guy at Zdnet says Leo never had his head into webOS, was just wanting to recreate SAP and then conceivably would ditch the hardware division in tandem. I tend to think he was right as the Autonomy acquisition discussions very welll might have been going on in the early winter. At that point, it was clear Leo had no clue when TouchPad was coming out and he was clearly very far away from it, he thought it was coming out in Feb or March:

Leo Apotheker's HP never wanted webOS to succeed | ZDNet

[Rnp]

"Leo Fiorina".

Lets gonna be honest: Leo is a incompetent!

Many peoples tried to help him, but kill the PC division of biggest PC maker of the world is too much foolish.

Just because he don't know work with hardware. Why he cannot go and leave place to something that know...

Somebody have the HP's board mails?


Best Regards...

[TexZenFool]

Originally Posted by omahawildcat

Leo is a complete fool and I hope HP crashes and burns. They have no chance in hell competing with Oracle.

Oracle - now there's an idea. No experience or presence in the consumer marketplace but Oracle does understand software. I think that Larry Ellison actually appreciates elegant S/W design and I'm sure he would love to show the world how easily he can take something Leo couldn't handle and make it a success.

[chalx]

Originally Posted by nyuepik

...
And contrary to what the article suggests, you can't blame the speed difference on the hardware. The fact is that WebOS has a horribly slow WebKit implementation that is not hardware accelerated versus the iPad, which has a very good WebKit implementation.

The sad fact is that the WebOS dev team was a bunch of JavaScript programmers who really didn't understand OS development. They always focused more on creating "innovative" APIs like Mojo and Enyo than they did on basic OS functions like process scheduling and hardware rendering.

When WebOS moved to the TouchPad, they should have completely rewritten the OS. Instead they focused on making sliding panes, and added a few Qualcomm specific optimizations to the core OS.

I kinda figured the end would come quickly when I tried to implement a very basic CSS rotation on the TouchPad and it crashed on me. WebOS developers are a patient lot, but your average developer is not going to start work on an OS when there are memory errors at the most basic level of the OS that cause unpredictable behavior.

Two years ago WebOS was innovative; now it is just a sad case study in how engineering, marketing, and business failures can come together to create a $2 billion failure.

For this post my friend, few days ago, you would be near ban here, flamed all over thread and labeled as troll. We have seen lot of insanity lately, and not only in HP trenches. In a way, I understnd change of HP course toward WebOS, but I don't understand why they allowed Touchpad and Veer production at all.

As some of us pointed many times, one of biggest WebOS problems was fact that it's not good in it's core. Users always blamed impotent hardware, but truth is - it is unoptimized, and it is left unoptimized from beginning till today. This fact hurt WebOS the most.