

WebOS 3.0 SDK - rafaelc
https://developer.palm.com/

======
brianwillis
I've been thinking a bit about how the tablet game plays out over the next few
months. Just for fun, here's some speculation:

1) Apple sells a crap ton of iPads. Their biggest problem will be that they
can't make them fast enough. Don't whine to me about "openness" or the
notifications system. They'll sell lots of them and we all know it.

2) HP gets the TouchPad into stores. There are no queues to buy one on day
one, but it does OK in the first few weeks. Sells maybe a million units in the
first three months.

3) Consumers shopping for a tablet are now faced with a choice: I can buy an
iPad and wait four to five weeks for it to arrive (those are the times Apple's
website is currently quoting), or I can buy a HP TouchPad and take it home
today. For some, that'll be enough to bring them over to HP.

4) HP's TouchPad gets some traction. Enough to justify a version two. Nowhere
near enough to knock Apple off it's perch.

5) HP does something badly wrong. One of the MBAs gets in the way, makes a
decision he has no place making, and hands one of HP's competitors a major
competitive advantage. Maybe they decide the TouchPad should be US only for
the first year. Maybe they piss off developers in some creative way, so no-one
writes apps for the platform. I don't know what they'll do, but I can't shake
the feeling that they'll fuck it up somehow.

6) Android tablets come out too. Nerds like me buy them, while our
grandmothers buy iPads and TouchPads. There are many more grandmothers in the
world than nerds. Android tablets do badly. Attempting to explain this,
reviewers looking at 2011 retrospectively will cite a confusing UI, a flash
implementation that was promised but never materialised (or materialised in a
broken state), and many of the same compatibility issues that we see now with
Android phones.

7) Microsoft announces Windows 8 with a completely redesigned UI based on
Metro. This UI will try to work just as well with the keyboard and mouse as it
does on touch devices. Ballmer will use the phrase "bridging the gap" a lot.

~~~
morrow
I thoroughly enjoyed reading that -- spot on. Just for kicks, here's my more
optimistic vision for the future:

1) HP/WebOS focuses it's marketing message on using "open" tech (HTML, CSS,
JS). Some iOS/android developers convert apps, some web devs convert websites,
most don't bother.

2) People pick these up as they are in stock and get to the sites people need
with flash as a big selling point as well (news, mail, youtube, hulu,
entertainment, etc).

3) Google releases a ChromeOS Tablet, using point 2 above to their advantage
by claiming compatibility with all internet sites (even flash!). They sell
quickly and cheaply, as google takes a loss on each tablet in hope of gaining
market share and increasing google search usage (it's the default home-page on
this device).

4) More hardware / software manufacturers follow Google's lead, and momentum
shifts towards using tablets mainly as dumb web-clients (with offline storage,
better graphics, and other "native" features provided by HTML5 APIs).

5) Apple raises the bar by releasing an extremely-polished-at-this-point
itunes.com and a super-cheap "air/cloud" tablet (similar to chromeOS's offer),
allowing you to buy and sell "cloud" apps (HTML CSS JS) with existing app
store rules and credit cards on itunes.com or in the "cloud" app store. Buy
once, use on all your iOS and Mac devices (includes apps, music, video).

6) Tablets aren't bought and sold based on whether angry birds runs on them
(its a web-app and runs everywhere), but instead on hardware features and
performance (battery-life, screen size/resolution, heat, weight, etc.). Forced
to compete on these grounds, hardware manufacturers invent better batteries,
hybrid color e-ink/lcd screens that can be used in the sun, better speakers,
and maybe even something crazy like user-replaceable batteries, RAM, and hard
disks.

One can dream, anyway...

~~~
jdavid
If there is one thing apple is right about people won't buy tablets based on
specs. I do think they will buy on features.

I think the touchpad has a quad-core chip in it from qualcom.

------
lukifer
If any team has the right attitude and technology to out-Apple Apple, it's
HPalm. I really hope they do well, and I can't wait to tinker with this SDK.

My only peeve: no 7" WebOS tablet. It's a glaring hole in Apple's lineup,
currently dominated by the Kindle and Nook Color, but which will be a gold
mine for the first company to get it right. Blackberry has a chance with their
PlayBook, especially if they're willing to keep iterating on both hardware and
software.

~~~
tene
According to the rumours, there will be a 7" WebOS tablet in September.

[http://www.precentral.net/hp-touchpad-targeting-june-
release...](http://www.precentral.net/hp-touchpad-targeting-june-release-
priced-499-7-inch-coming-september)

------
forgotAgain
HP is comparable to Apple in that they have complete control of their product.
Yet I haven't seen anything that makes me believe that the management of HP is
comparable to Apple.

Installing webOS on all of their PC's strikes me as a really dumb idea. From
what I've read they are not delivering quality PC's these days. Associating
webOS with a poor product seems like a bad idea. Also I think a boot menu will
confuse the heck out of a lot of people. It seems that they are desperate to
show that they are doing something with the product and this is all they could
do in a reasonable time frame.

They have already owned Palm for a year and if that's all they got then I'm
not impressed. The creativity of HP was seemingly gutted by Hurd and will need
to be rebuilt.

We can learn a lot from the troubles Microsoft is currently having updating
their phone. An important key to success is turning out to be control of the
devices after they are sold. Microsoft is apparently screwed because there are
so many players in the process of releasing updates with each having a vote.
First Microsoft develops the update but then the device manufacturer and the
carrier have to agree to the release and can change the release to fit their
own needs. That's not the case with Apple. They control everything. Successful
product owners will need to mimic Apple and not Microsoft. They will need a
management with stones in order to get that deal if it's even possible now
that there are so many alternative products the carrier can provide. Android
also has this issue as can be seen by the number of OS versions that a
developer has to support.

Where HP has an opportunity is in their enterprise connections. I think this
will be a short lived advantage. HP would have to own this market before
Microsoft launches an enterprise tablet and reluctance to change gives them
the advantage.

HP has a great opportunity because they bought a great product. The odds are
better than even that they will blow it.

------
SingAlong
Best part about the signup form was a comfortable option for the security
question _"What is your favourite programming language?"_ , although a lot of
my friends can guess it if I used the right answer, it's still a good try to
give options related to the user.

------
jdavid
a few reasons WebOS is not done yet.

* pre 3 will be fast, really fast

* touch-to-share WebOS enabled devices can touch and share files.

* somehow drobox is tied into WebOS 3

* Unity Union - Unity Technologies will help you port your game.

* TouchPad - WebOS does multiple apps better than iOS.

* WebOS is way better than ChromeOS. HP will use it on Netbooks.

------
philthy
Requested access about an hour ago. Excited.

------
todd3834
It seems the more options we have for a mobile OS, the more persuasive a web
application vs native application becomes.

~~~
zmmmmm
It's persuasive until you actually try and do it. Then you find that you can't
make anything nearly as nice and it takes you 10 times as long to do it
because you spend forever figuring out weird quirks of mobile browsers that
make not much sense at all.

At least that was my experience.

~~~
ryanwatkins
Or you use the web technologies for a "native" app and focus only on the
browser for that platform. Then port to others as needed, rather than trying
to support them "all" from day one on a web app.

Certainly a web app is usually still not as fast and responsive as a native
app, but its getting much better.

People used to say the same thing about web mail services - that they were not
nearly as 'nice' as a native mail app. Now go look at how many people use
Gmail and dont bother with a native mail client on their PC anymore.

------
cheez
Well, WebOS was one of the things I was really looking forward to but the Pre
hardware was not very usable for me.

I really hope WebOS gets a decent second chance. When will the tablets be out?

~~~
philthy
What are your thoughts on the Pre3?

~~~
newman314
Handled one. It's quite nice and I'll be getting one along with the TouchPad
and Veer when they come out.

Also, the Pre3 will be a world phone in 2 flavors:

1) CDMA (US) + GSM (RoW) 2) GSM (US + RoW)

