

Remind HN: webOS Announcement Today - malte
http://www.palm.com/us/company/events/

======
mgkimsal
I dearly hope the offer a decent tablet that is inexpensive and _not_ tied to
a mobile carrier. I think one of the things that killed Palm/Pre was that they
tried to play the 'mobile phone' game, when they could have gone 'retro' with
the "pda without a mobile phone" and done much better.

Lots of geeks and non geeks would be willing to give a device a spot in their
lives that doesn't displace their current mobile phone. Given the current
state in the US, we're overwhelmingly tied to 'contracts' and steep monthly
fees. The threshold any device needs to meet to displace our current devices
at any given time is huge.

However... many people are willing to plunk down $150+ for an iPod Touch -
which is for most purposes an iPhone with no phone, which also means no
contracts, carriers, monthly fees, etc. If you like it, great! If not, it'll
make a nice gift for some family member or friend. The barrier to trying one
out is much lower.

Regardless of the initial price ("free phone!") most of us now understand that
any "mobile phone device" we get is going to cost us $500-$1000/year for
multiple years. Playing that game is way too costly - the stakes are too high
- the carriers have no real incentive to push you 3 months from now when the
next model of something else is 'new'. iPhones have been the exception to all
this, and betting your company on being the next disruptive exception was/is
foolhardy (Palm pre-HP).

Apple already _proved_ there's a large market for wifi-only devices - let's
hope HPalm's new webOS devices offer sanely priced wifi-only options.

~~~
mdasen
I think to be successful, Palm would have had to offer both a PDA and a
smartphone. I think the problem was that Palm didn't have the resources to do
both. Even when you look at something like the Palm Pre 2, you can kinda see
that Palm hasn't been able to keep up. At a time when only the really low-end
devices have 320x480 screens and 3.1" screens, the Palm Pre 2 gets introduced
with those specs.

Apple has shown that there's a decent market for modern PDAs like their iPod
touch. However, it's a bit harder to make something like an iPod touch due to
the lack of subsidy. The iPod touch lags behind the iPhone because of that.
The new iPod touch's display doesn't have IPS, it's rear camera is a paltry
1MP, etc. I'm guessing Apple's margins on it are probably lower too. Plus, I
feel like I should point out that the iPod touch starts at $230, more than 50%
over your $150 mark.

I think the smartphone space is a logical place to start. There's a reason why
HTC, LG, Samsung, and Motorola have all created great Android smartphones and
have left the PDA space to Apple. I'd love to see more devices without a
monthly recurring charge. However, I think the smartphone space is a lot more
profitable and I don't think that Palm had the ability back then to move
against Apple's iPod touch. With HP backing them (and if HP is willing to risk
it), they probably have the resources to try.

*Palm also hitched their wagon to Sprint which was, at the time, haemorrhaging customers. Verizon customers waited for the Droid line, T-Mobile customers already had Android devices, AT&T customers already had the iPhone, and Sprint customers probably knew that Palm wasn't going to create a second platform against Apple when Apple was on a more popular carrier and was, well, Apple. If Palm had been non-exclusive before the Droid, Droid Eris, and Hero came out, they might have done a lot better. But they thought they could do what Apple did and force users to a specific carrier - with the exception that Apple was forcing customers to the #1 or #2 carrier depending on the quarter while Palm was trying to force customers to the #4 carrier (based on net adds before their devices came out).

EDIT: Think about it this way: Apple is charging $200 for an iPhone with
contract. They're charging $600 without a contract. There's a $400 difference
there that AT&T is covering. Now, one could argue that Apple was trying to
charge more for the no-contract phone, but really Google is selling the Nexus
S no-contract for $530 so there's still a $330 difference. Anyway, a 3G radio
isn't costing them $300-400 to add to the iPhone. The economics of high-end
smartphones are more appealing than PDAs and that's a big reason why the
Android manufacturers aren't paying much attention to it compared to what
they're doing for phones.

~~~
mgkimsal
re: contract phones.... they're still tied to carriers, no? I don't think I
can use that no-contract iPhone on any other carrier than AT&T, can I? I
really don't know. It's insulting to have to pay that 'subsidy' markup when in
fact I can't use it on any other network anyway.

~~~
technomancy
You can use any unlocked tri-band GSM phone as a phone on any GSM networks,
but many of them use different bands for 3G. In the US, the only other GSM
provider is T-Mobile, which doesn't share AT&T's bands.

------
jarin
I just wanted to chime in and say that webOS is pretty cool to develop for. I
went to a developer outreach event in San Diego a while back, and managed to
make a fully-functional FMyLife app in less than 3 hours (not knowing anything
about webOS beforehand).

Developing for webOS is a lot like developing Flex applications (which I had
done previously), except the API is way less complicated than Flex's API, and
it's all in HTML/CSS/JavaScript. I had a set of posters with all of the Flex
objects/events/methods and it was seriously 3 posters worth of 9pt text.

I was really happy to hear that webOS was given new life at HP, because I had
a really nice time developing for it and I was hoping that it would get some
traction so I would have a reason to develop for it for real.

~~~
btipling
The OS is promising but the phones are ugly. Those keyboards are just weird
looking. I hope webOS takes off though, a trio of iOS, Android and webOS would
be pretty cool.

~~~
wazoox
The keyboard may be weird-looking, but more importantly it's pretty easy to
use and way more efficient than on-screen keyboards.

------
fname
Touchpad leak: [http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/09/palm-touchpad-
leaked-1-5-...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/09/palm-touchpad-
leaked-1-5-pounds-13mm-thick-and-just-moments-f/)

~~~
allwein
Sadly, there's no news on the relevant question yet. Will it be price
competitive with the iPad?

~~~
ugh
I think there are several unanswered relevant questions:

1\. Is it priced competitively (base model between $400 and $600)?

2\. Does the software fit the form factor (unlike current Android tablets)?

3\. Is its hardware up to the task (not in terms of specs but in terms of
“snappiness”) and does it have competitive battery life?

4\. Will it be available immediately or very soon?

Some of those questions will be answered today, others only later in reviews.

~~~
darklajid
So after the event it seems it's now

1\. We don't know yet

2\. Yes, it looks really nice on a tablet size device

3\. According to the demo it is (although an independent review would be
better)

4\. "This summer", or "No, it won't".

4 is the real bummer for me. Again the Pre-alike "We got something cool, _wait
for it_" attitude..

------
asolove
Oh boy oh boy oh boy, nothing makes me quite as excited as "Planned
availability this summer." What terrible marketing.

------
mhd
Just hope that they'll keep supporting the original Pre. I kinda like the
little pebble, hardware is fast enough and with some decent software upgrades
it still should come in handy.

------
prestia
Is Verizon really launching two phones this month (Pre 2 and iPhone 4) that
will be superseded by summer? That two-year contract is going to hurt.

~~~
ugh
Why?

Normal people don’t buy a new phone every year.

------
mikecane
Veer, Pre 3, and HP TouchPad. So, those are the names. Still waiting to see
what they are like.

------
xal
Please oh please open source it. You failed to do it with Be, please learn
from the past!

~~~
xuki
I don't think so. WebOS is a valuable asset and HP definitely want to keep it
to themselves.

We'll see =).

~~~
aidenn0
I don't think they care if they keep it to themselves or not so long as they
have a fair amount of control over it. They've been bitten in the past being
tied to a 3rd party for improvements to their mobile OS and want to avoid
that. If WebOS hadn't gone up for sale, they would likely have used Android

------
superdude
"Vibrant 18 bit" display - is that just spec jargon for a cheap TN panel?
6-bits for each R, G, and B? The IPS panel in the iPad is a huge selling point
for Apple. It is higher quality than almost any modern laptop screen.

------
oconnore
Weird, the Pre2 hasn't even hit a major carrier and they are going to Pre3.
Also, awesome.

------
mdb
Anyone know of any live-blogs following the event? Is there a live video
broadcast?

~~~
mdb
Engadget's also got a liveblog:

[http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/09/live-from-hp-palms-
think-...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/09/live-from-hp-palms-think-beyond-
webos-event/)

------
mikecane
The countdown clock is for the website refresh. The live event begins at 10AM
PST.

~~~
ugh
That’s 6 pm in London, 19:00 in Paris and Berlin, right?

Times zones make my brain hurt.

~~~
binbasti
Try <http://everytimezone.com>

~~~
aidenn0
Everyone seems to think that site is awesome, but it has never worked for me.
I've tried firefox, chrome, midori and IE 8. What browser are you guys using?

~~~
frossie
_it has never worked for me. I've tried firefox_

Hmm it works for me:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.14) Gecko/20110124
Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.14

At least, I can manipulate the time okay. If there is a way to make it revert
to current time (without loading the page), I don't see it.

------
mlinsey
The day before Verizon iPhone day? Poor timing IMO.

------
ddkrone
I really hope they do come out with something nice. I wrote applications for
the palm pre with their ares IDE and it was a blast. They just don't have the
user base to make it worthwhile for developers and it sucks because I don't
think anything beats HTML/Javascript when it comes to writing mobile apps.

