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 Originally Posted by CGK
But even ubunutu gets to 1% because PC hardware is em.. common in a way that phone hardware is not, there is not a HP distro of it, a dell distro of it etc etc. Phone hardware is not the same in this regard, so the number of people who will try this will be many many times lower.
to add to your point the vast majority of computers in the market can pretty easily be dual booted with multiple OS's as well so you can have window whatever, the most popular OS and whatever other OS you want be it ubuntu or whatever. So you can easily have both. That's hard for a phone OS.
 Originally Posted by Zukny
when Apple came back out of no-where back in the day the knock on them was that Developers didn't make applications for their computers & that in order to do anything you had to go Windows..
Well apple did something Amazing that no one ever talks about, and it might be the real reason it has succeeded so well today. Apple began making their own Applications that stood out among the rest: Garageband, Iphoto, Imovie, Itunes were HUGE when it came to creating a computer for the every day person.
Instead of talking about making WebOS work on every device possible, people should put a lot more emphasis on a 4-5 applications that will create vibes throughout the internet!
1. a podcast- Music application that can rival garageband
2. a simple video editing program specifically made for uploading videos to youtube
3. A program that out competes any when it comes to schoolbooks & writing notes. all inclusive type of deal
and
4. Sports.. Gotta get live sports on your webOS device.. I don't care how you do it, but an app that streams all live sports (cost I dont' care)
The fact is, you can put WebOS on every device in the world but people aren't going to use it until they see it do something they can't do.. Or at least don't expect to do. When Apple came out w/ Ilife people thought the world of it and no longer saw the necessity to stay w/ Windows. As a matter of fact, a lot of people went to apple not realizing you can make a Podcast on other computers.. I know this message is long, but the point has remained the same. Great applications need to be made to save WebOS
 Originally Posted by Zukny
I don't want to set the wrong impression.. I don't think WebOS should/could be like Mac instead I think they should take a few pages from what Mac did to turn themselves around.
I also think creating a few apps that people will think they NEED is the perfect way to create a much larger base & great buzz around WebOS. I wish I had the talents to create apps!
It does amaze me that Apple still only holds 5 percent of the market share, but if you count in their IPADs that share goes to something like 12 percent.. Also, they have become so popular w/ the younger generation that their base is only going to grow in coming years..
i respect your argument but i think it's amiss in some areas. And i'm just talking here not having a go at you. Just friendly discussion. But changes at apple came for many reasons but the end result was not the end result webos needs. Apple's changes brought profitability not market share. Profitability of webos would have been nice but if you can't also attract a lot of consumers you have a problem. Regardless it wasn't merely about making some apps that fixed Apple. Jobs returned and streamlined their product line. They axed tons of products. He changed the way they did inventory. Apple to this day only makes what it can sell. Jobs stopped them from having tons of warehouses full of inventory. Then there was the imac. It was a different box, an all inclusive box and a colored box in a sea of white boxes. That was a large part of its appeal. It had no floppy drive. It was different. Better products, less wasted inventory all helps. Not to mention they stopped cannibalizing their own products by ending licensing deals with people make PowerMacs or powerpcs or whatever the name was.
Also the iPod was a massive contribution to Apple's resurgence. It was a game changer. It started the transformation of music consumption along with itunes obviously. That wasn't the first hard drive player but it was the best. It destroyed Sony Walkmans as a product. Itunes basically destroyed the cd as the option for legally buying music. (Can't ignore Napster as a real catalyst too). But itunes made it legal and easy. At one point ipod accounted for more of Apple's profit then computers. It was their most successful product. So HP needs to introduce a product that revolutionizes an industry, that is drastically above everything else in the market. That is a tall order these days. Maybe do to tvs, vcrs, and dvd what ipods did to walkmans, tape decks, and burners but nobody has been successful at that yet. It's a tough ask to say make something that changes the game like the ipod did.
And those were company wide changes and changes to the Apple philosophy where as we wouldn't be talking about a change in HP philosophy but a change in a product. Hell Leo tried to change HP's companies philosophy to try to make them a more enterprise focused company. That got webos where it is now.
Another point about your strategy i'd add is of garage band, iphoto, itunes ect. the most successful is itunes and it's multiplatform because to make selling music and ipods feasible it had to hit pc users. I wouldn't disagree that someone would have to at least make good basic apps but i guess my feeling is apples approach to do it all itself was very different to Microsoft's which was to license the OS and let others make plenty of other apps. Microsoft won that fight by a landslide. And even one of their biggest apps suits, Office, is a multiplatform suite. So the company that is winning the desktop OS war is doing it all while having software that runs on multiple hardware. I think it's would have been a much better strategy.
Interestingly Apple dropped unprofitable products at this time too. Things Jobs thought were not up to par like the Newton. Using that same rational the sad part is the unprofitable product at HP was all the webos devices. Thus i'm not sure strict adherence to what Jobs did at Apple really is what the webos faithful want.
Another thing that helped Apple a great deal was the emergence of the internet. Where before a lack of apps really hurt Apple, (interesting as it hurts webos too) with the growth of the internet, email, social communities like AOL, compuserve etc, much of what people do went onto the internet. Go to Best Buy and count how many people are in software section. Not many. Computer use went internet. the "i" in iMac originally meant internet. Apple didn't need the apps as much. That's why we had the browser wars and litigation over things like bundling browsers with operating systems.
And one thing i'd mention is webos already had a photo app, a video editing app. It's not like they never had a chance to do these correctly. And i'm just not sure how important a note taking or schoolbook app is. Not really sure what that is. And ereader? That shouldn't be hard. There's already kindle. I mean you say create a few apps that people think they need but personally i'm not sure all the ons you mentioned are what most people are screaming they need. As for live sports. Live streamed video is a separate license that has to be negotiated. if you want to stream the NFL you need to buy the rights from the NFL. I may be wrong but it's possible only the NFL official app streams the NFL. But the same applies for all sports. If you want a network that like ABC or something that broadcasts live sports on tv they can only stream that game over the net if they have the streaming rights. These are things that are not entirely up to tech companies to merely have on a device and many things are flat out just expensive. I know you don't care about cost but the tough reality is anyone actually doing it would care.
Generally, Apple's resurgence is more then just making a few good apps and even so i don't think it's directly analogous to HP's or Webos's current situation.
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