6 ms·

Once again, HP proves that the collective vision of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard is so long-dead that the tombstone has crumbled to dust. I'm gutted. Genuinel

by donw 15y ago

Once again, HP proves that the collective vision of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard is so long-dead that the tombstone has crumbled to dust. I'm gutted. Genuinely. When I was younger, before Fiorina stepped up to be the first to rape the corpses of the founders, I was a massive fan of HP. My first graphing calculator was an HP48G, which taught me the joys of Lisp... well, Psil, because it came with Reverse Polish Lisp. WebOS could have been the resurrection of that culture -- fully JavaScript development environment, app development across multiple mobile and tablet platforms with a single environment... just genius. It's sad to see that vision evaporate, along with some of the novel telephony and interactive features that made WebOS a joy to work with.

ra 15y ago
That's exactly how I feel; WebOS is everything I want in a tablet platform. Seriously HP, how do you expect us to trust you next time you woo us to develop for your platform? Maybe there won't be a next time.
- Steko 15y ago
  I wonder if one of those nervous Android licensees will pick up the WebOS assets as a hedge. It's a shame Nokia didn't have the balls/foresight to buy Palm, they could have been shipping gorgeous Nokia crafted WebOS phones for the last couple quarters instead of getting slaughtered by Android et al.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > next time you woo us to develop for your platform? What next time? HP jumped off a cliff. There will be no next platform. Not from them.
chaostheory 15y ago
I can't help but think of MS in this situation. It reminds me of MS breaking into the video game console market and fighting really hard to stay in it. Even after a major hardware snafu that cost them an estimated 3 billion dollars they kept fighting. After six years of work, it's finally doing well. WebOS was worth fighting for and it was in better shape than the 1st and 2nd Xbox IMO. What a waste.
- isani 15y ago
  Was it worth it for Microsoft, though? Their entertainment unit made 32 million dollars in profit last quarter – a quarter which they considered an immense success. With that kind of income, the project will never break even, never mind turn an overall profit. Even if you consider intangibles like strengthening the Windows platform, it's hard for me to believe that those billions were best invested into Xbox.
  - berntb 15y ago
    That is irrelevant. You can use a monopoly to get monopolies in other markets. You go into those other markets and take losses, until all others have quitted. Then, when you have another monopoly, you can earn back the money. It might not have worked so well in the hardware games consoles.
    - sunchild 15y ago
      Actually, what you describe is illegal in most developed countries. Microsoft knows this better than anyone. They've been strung up for "bundling" and "predatory pricing" many times. Also, their position in their "monopoly" markets are weakening by the day.
spaghetti 15y ago
After developing for iPhone/iPad I was excited to port apps to WebOS. Trying out my officemate's TouchPad was a great experience. I bet Apple is letting out a sigh of relief... the HP TouchPad was imo on par with the iPad.
- olefoo 15y ago
  So, why wasn't it as appealing to the broader base of consumers? I played with one for a bit at Best Buy, but it felt clunky and didn't look as good as the ipad. OTOH I didn't buy an iPad either, as tablets just don't work for me.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    > So, why wasn't it as appealing to the broader base of consumers? A fruity brand is important these days. Fashion dictates what people buy. "Fashion over function".
    - pestaa 15y ago
      Why is this answer so downvoted? People around me constantly rationalize how they made the best phone/tablet purchases, where in reality it's just fanboyism without admitting the product's faults.
      - rbanffy 15y ago
        An article that hit the home a few days back explains it: many consider this observation as a personal attack. It's not that prople who buy iPads are fashion victims - it really is great product. It's just not the perfect product for everyone. That and what we perceive as rational choices usually aren't. Our brains contain a whole lot of mammal under its thin layer of Homo Sapiens. HP was really stupid launching the "Ouchpad" at prices similar to the iPad because the sum of iOS and its application support make it a better product. With a lower price, it could win some market share. WebOS deserved better management.
      - acdha 15y ago
paul9290 15y ago
Time for Nintendo to buy WebOS and start up their iPhone competitor devices. Such could be a real serious competitor to Apple and Nintendo is losing market share. They know how to do hardware and know how to market hand held IP devices. Why shouldn't they jump head first and give Apple/Android significant competition?
- chaostheory 15y ago
  Nintendo is the closest company to Apple. It would be interesting to see what they do if both 3DS and Wii U fail. Who knows maybe it is time for them to do another major transition like they did around the 70s.
  - Steko 15y ago
    Standing predictions: (1) Wii U will be a huge bust for holiday 2012 leading to... (2) a huge bidding war a couple quarters later for Nintendo as an exclusive 3rd party. (3) Microsoft will win, overpaying heavily. (4) Shigeru Miyamoto's swan songs of Mario and Zelda with Kinect will be Co-Games of the Year 2013 but... (5) less than a year later Nintendo will opt out of the Microsoft deal and produce for everyone.
    - ansy 15y ago
      Nintendo will have to have a string of spectacular failures before it starts share cropping. Remember n64? Remember GameCube? Both were pretty lackluster compared to Super NES. VirtualBoy? Disaster. The Wii U and 3DS might be disappointing, but Nintendo is a survivor. It has the internal support to last through dry spells on the strength of first party titles alone. It would be very difficult for a company as resilient and conservative as Nintendo to sink itself in such a short time frame. Remember, too, this company also started off making playing cards 100 years ago. The only bad end I could see in Nintendo's immediate future would be an aggressive if not hostile takeover. I believe its market cap is only $20 billion, and supposedly half of that is in cash. If Apple or Microsoft wanted to pay a premium for the ultimate maker of killer apps this is the time to make a move. In another cycle it will be too late: the mobile wars will be decided and/or Nintendo will likely have recovered. Who knows how well the company would survive a takeover though.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
I was just rewatching this video and got sad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY4HDftIllw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY4HDftIllw Enyo let you write HTML5 apps in Chrome, Firefox or whatever, and essentially (to simplify) add a few WebOS hints and you have a fully functional native app. More than anything else, I hope Enyo becomes completely open source so we can write html5 cross-os apps that are as snappy as those on WebOS with a framework that lets you create reuseable parts.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Also, WebOS daemons/services were just node.js scripts. How awesome is that.
  - justincormack 15y ago
    Yeah. I think an open source port of this for Android would be cool...
- emehrkay 15y ago
  I feel silly for not developing any apps. It is just JavaScript and CSS. I've heard that a million time, but never really looked into it. edit: booting into webos would be booting into a browser the same way booting into chrome os is booting into a browser.
- jianshen 15y ago
  I would've loved to see ChromeOS + WebOS. I was just on a Virgin America flight where they were lending out Chromebooks to try and part of me thought why aren't they lending out tablets on a plane instead? And porting some of those chromeOS apps would've been pretty easy...
KevinEldon 15y ago
HP is not developing hardware for WebOS. They will probably try and license the software. Spinning off the PC division might actually allow their consumer products to get the right focus and agility to compete against Apple on something other than price. Trying to fight Apple and IBM (and Cisco, and Dell, etc.) as one giant company is bad for HP's shareholders and HP's customers.

by donw 15y ago

ra 15y ago

That's exactly how I feel; WebOS is everything I want in a tablet platform. Seriously HP, how do you expect us to trust you next time you woo us to develop for your platform? Maybe there won't be a next time.

Steko 15y ago
I wonder if one of those nervous Android licensees will pick up the WebOS assets as a hedge. It's a shame Nokia didn't have the balls/foresight to buy Palm, they could have been shipping gorgeous Nokia crafted WebOS phones for the last couple quarters instead of getting slaughtered by Android et al.
rbanffy 15y ago
> next time you woo us to develop for your platform? What next time? HP jumped off a cliff. There will be no next platform. Not from them.

chaostheory 15y ago

I can't help but think of MS in this situation. It reminds me of MS breaking into the video game console market and fighting really hard to stay in it. Even after a major hardware snafu that cost them an estimated 3 billion dollars they kept fighting. After six years of work, it's finally doing well. WebOS was worth fighting for and it was in better shape than the 1st and 2nd Xbox IMO. What a waste.

isani 15y ago
Was it worth it for Microsoft, though? Their entertainment unit made 32 million dollars in profit last quarter – a quarter which they considered an immense success. With that kind of income, the project will never break even, never mind turn an overall profit. Even if you consider intangibles like strengthening the Windows platform, it's hard for me to believe that those billions were best invested into Xbox.
- berntb 15y ago
  That is irrelevant. You can use a monopoly to get monopolies in other markets. You go into those other markets and take losses, until all others have quitted. Then, when you have another monopoly, you can earn back the money. It might not have worked so well in the hardware games consoles.
  - sunchild 15y ago
    Actually, what you describe is illegal in most developed countries. Microsoft knows this better than anyone. They've been strung up for "bundling" and "predatory pricing" many times. Also, their position in their "monopoly" markets are weakening by the day.

spaghetti 15y ago

After developing for iPhone/iPad I was excited to port apps to WebOS. Trying out my officemate's TouchPad was a great experience. I bet Apple is letting out a sigh of relief... the HP TouchPad was imo on par with the iPad.

olefoo 15y ago
So, why wasn't it as appealing to the broader base of consumers? I played with one for a bit at Best Buy, but it felt clunky and didn't look as good as the ipad. OTOH I didn't buy an iPad either, as tablets just don't work for me.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > So, why wasn't it as appealing to the broader base of consumers? A fruity brand is important these days. Fashion dictates what people buy. "Fashion over function".
  - pestaa 15y ago
    Why is this answer so downvoted? People around me constantly rationalize how they made the best phone/tablet purchases, where in reality it's just fanboyism without admitting the product's faults.
    - rbanffy 15y ago
      An article that hit the home a few days back explains it: many consider this observation as a personal attack. It's not that prople who buy iPads are fashion victims - it really is great product. It's just not the perfect product for everyone. That and what we perceive as rational choices usually aren't. Our brains contain a whole lot of mammal under its thin layer of Homo Sapiens. HP was really stupid launching the "Ouchpad" at prices similar to the iPad because the sum of iOS and its application support make it a better product. With a lower price, it could win some market share. WebOS deserved better management.
    - acdha 15y ago

paul9290 15y ago

Time for Nintendo to buy WebOS and start up their iPhone competitor devices. Such could be a real serious competitor to Apple and Nintendo is losing market share. They know how to do hardware and know how to market hand held IP devices. Why shouldn't they jump head first and give Apple/Android significant competition?

chaostheory 15y ago
Nintendo is the closest company to Apple. It would be interesting to see what they do if both 3DS and Wii U fail. Who knows maybe it is time for them to do another major transition like they did around the 70s.
- Steko 15y ago
  Standing predictions: (1) Wii U will be a huge bust for holiday 2012 leading to... (2) a huge bidding war a couple quarters later for Nintendo as an exclusive 3rd party. (3) Microsoft will win, overpaying heavily. (4) Shigeru Miyamoto's swan songs of Mario and Zelda with Kinect will be Co-Games of the Year 2013 but... (5) less than a year later Nintendo will opt out of the Microsoft deal and produce for everyone.
  - ansy 15y ago
    Nintendo will have to have a string of spectacular failures before it starts share cropping. Remember n64? Remember GameCube? Both were pretty lackluster compared to Super NES. VirtualBoy? Disaster. The Wii U and 3DS might be disappointing, but Nintendo is a survivor. It has the internal support to last through dry spells on the strength of first party titles alone. It would be very difficult for a company as resilient and conservative as Nintendo to sink itself in such a short time frame. Remember, too, this company also started off making playing cards 100 years ago. The only bad end I could see in Nintendo's immediate future would be an aggressive if not hostile takeover. I believe its market cap is only $20 billion, and supposedly half of that is in cash. If Apple or Microsoft wanted to pay a premium for the ultimate maker of killer apps this is the time to make a move. In another cycle it will be too late: the mobile wars will be decided and/or Nintendo will likely have recovered. Who knows how well the company would survive a takeover though.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

I was just rewatching this video and got sad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY4HDftIllw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY4HDftIllw Enyo let you write HTML5 apps in Chrome, Firefox or whatever, and essentially (to simplify) add a few WebOS hints and you have a fully functional native app. More than anything else, I hope Enyo becomes completely open source so we can write html5 cross-os apps that are as snappy as those on WebOS with a framework that lets you create reuseable parts.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Also, WebOS daemons/services were just node.js scripts. How awesome is that.
- justincormack 15y ago
  Yeah. I think an open source port of this for Android would be cool...
emehrkay 15y ago
I feel silly for not developing any apps. It is just JavaScript and CSS. I've heard that a million time, but never really looked into it. edit: booting into webos would be booting into a browser the same way booting into chrome os is booting into a browser.
jianshen 15y ago
I would've loved to see ChromeOS + WebOS. I was just on a Virgin America flight where they were lending out Chromebooks to try and part of me thought why aren't they lending out tablets on a plane instead? And porting some of those chromeOS apps would've been pretty easy...

KevinEldon 15y ago

HP is not developing hardware for WebOS. They will probably try and license the software. Spinning off the PC division might actually allow their consumer products to get the right focus and agility to compete against Apple on something other than price. Trying to fight Apple and IBM (and Cisco, and Dell, etc.) as one giant company is bad for HP's shareholders and HP's customers.