4 ms·

WebOS 3.0.4 released

76 points by j_col 15y ago

bergie 15y ago
made connectivity with non-HP phones possible I wonder what that means. Synchronization? Tethering? Notifications about calls and SMS on the device?
- unwiredben 15y ago
  The TouchPad can now work as a Bluetooth speakerphone for non-webOS phones that support the right profiles. It can also do SMS access on phones that expose that database.
suivix 15y ago
For some reason this reminds me of the guy who recently ported Prince of Persia from the Apple 2 to the Commodore 64.
deyan 15y ago
Thanks for the link! Does anyone know if this breaks the 3.0.2 recommended patches (e.g. muffling logging, etc.)
- yoshamano 15y ago
  Word 'round the Precentral forums is that it breaks most patches. Like with all updates, you'll lose custom kernels until the kernel source is released. So I made a list of all the patched I use then removed them along with UberKernel.
- warthogkernel 15y ago
  muffle is broken until I have time to make a new patch. Probably not till this weekend.
j_col 15y ago
Love one of the anonymous comments on there: "From one HP employee to another: THANK YOU for this awesome OS and OTA. The Touchpad, the Pre 3 ... such awesome products. I truly hope our new leadership will do the right thing and bring the platforms back."
- pconf 15y ago
  It is an awesome OS except for one significant drawback: javascript. If not for the dependency on js these phones and tablets wouldn't lock-up hard so often or hang for several seconds after touching the screen more often than not. I know js fans will object but their single-threaded, interpreted language is the #2 source of Palm/HP's troubles. The #1 Palm issue, however, is the hardware manufacturer/s. If Palm had been able to use the same CN fabs as Apple the Pre would be _big_. But they weren't and as a result the Pre/Pixi/Touchpad are larger than they could have been and, more significantly, the (Pre/Pixi) keyboards are the worst on any smartphone.
taylorbuley 15y ago
I am lucky enough to own a tablet of each breed, and my TouchPad is by far my favorite. Sure there are less apps by an order of magnitude, but HP nailed most of the core services. For example, mark all as read -- I've yet to find this basic feature on my Honeycomb tab or iPad.
- coob 15y ago
  You can now mark multiple emails as read in iOS5.
  - maaku 15y ago
    mark multiple emails = O(n), mark all = O(1)
    - tadfisher 15y ago
      "Mark read" is a broken interaction anyway. You only ever use it when you haven't read the message. So why do people do it? I do it to clear out messages that aren't worth reading, to get that number of unread emails in my Inbox folder down to 0. Why do I care about unread messages? What I'm really worried about are unseen messages, and the set of unread messages contains these. "Read/unread" and "Seen/unseen" are really just labels anyway, right? These could be automatically applied on seeing the message in a list view and on reading the message. Now I have some sort of cool multiple-select label filter in place, and all I need to do is select the "Inbox" and "unseen" labels to get to email that I need to peruse. Every time I look at this label combination, all mail is marked "seen" and I never have to check off messages or apply a "read" state to messages that I have not read. Notmuch (notmuchmail.org) gets close to what I want. I want to see its ideas adopted by the major webmail/mobile interfaces, so I don't have to contend with the legacy of email sorting.
      - untog 15y ago
        I don't know, I feel like you're over-thinking it. "Mark as Read" is exactly that- "mark this as if I have read it, even though I have not". I don't see how it's broken.
brackin 15y ago
Yet did HP not announce there would be no more Web OS devices, HP needs to open source this. The more choice the better! I can see Samsung or HTC producing some slick devices running Web OS. Hardware was always a key issue for me, the Pre was slow and boring.
- Tloewald 15y ago
  I forget, didn't people demo Android running much quicker on touchpad hardware? If so, it's the decision to depend too much on the JavaScript stack and not the hardware that's the ultimate problem.
  - davux 15y ago
    Android really doesn't run quicker than WebOS yet. There isn't any 2D hardware acceleration (last I knew, a few days ago). This means that sometimes Android is really fluid, but then it starts studdering and kind of ruins the experience. I also had a ton of Force-Close's on the browser. I'm back to WebOS until the Android CM7 builds get past Alpha. It looks like it'll be usable, but not really yet.
  - vondur 15y ago
    You are correct, Android does run fast on the Touchpad.
csomar 15y ago
Hi. I don't understand anymore. Didn't HP kill the tablet and WebOS? What does this mean? Will there new tablets? If not, why WebOS is being updated?
- RexRollman 15y ago
  HP probably wants to keep it updated in case they can sell the WebOS unit.
- camiller 15y ago
  They killed the hardware. They have the #2 tablet by user base (admittedly due to selling many tablets at a loss during the fire sale) and do need to support them for a reasonable period of time, bug fixes and such, which is what this release is. They always said they wanted to keep the software alive.
zwieback 15y ago
Great for the many HP employees like myself who got a TouchPad in the employee fire sale, supposedly there will be a lot of TouchPads going out as Christmas presents. If nothing else, the current TouchPad population is one giant, if expensive, beta program for WebOS - let's hope someone does something awesome with it.
jarek 15y ago
You have to kinda feel for Ari Jaaksi: jumped ship from Nokia when Maemo/Meego was going down, only to find himself at Palm/HP...
thinkcomp 15y ago
This is still my #1 problem with the TouchPad: http://forums.hpwebos.com/t5/HP-TouchPad-Software-Hardware/Ampersands-in-URLs-Still-Don-t-Work/td-p/359930 http://forums.hpwebos.com/t5/HP-TouchPad-Software-Hardware/A... Otherwise it's great.
- morrow 15y ago
  I didn't realize that it converted all ampersands in the URL -- what a ridiculous oversight. What bugs me is that the browser doesn't support @font-face fonts. I don't understand the design process that led to implementing node.js as a service on a mobile device before adding in fundamental CSS support...
- unwiredben 15y ago
  Can you provide more detail? Is this when entering URLs directly? Have you tried going through j.mp or bitly.com and shortening the URL, then bookmarking that version?
  - thinkcomp 15y ago
    It's when entering them directly, clicking on links, or using bookmarks. The & gets passed through to the server--it's not just an issue with the UI. Annoying as hell.
Pent 15y ago
I own a touchpad and without a developed app base it feels so rigid to me. I don't want to share links by email I want to share them through my various online accounts. I don't want to multitask by navigating to cards I want to have in-app multitasking through swipes. Even reading a PDF on it is painful because the font rendering is so poor. I don't think HP really "got it". It was barely worth the 99 I paid for it. I installed the new update today. And while this update increased the responsiveness it didn't address the fundamental workflow problems... But since they are abandoning it anyway I probably shouldn't expect anything anyway.
- j_col 15y ago
  Sounds like you should sell it on eBay to someone who loves webOS, and make yourself a tidy profit in the process. The workflow issues you describe are basically how webOS fundamentally works, so it sounds like it is a design decision that you will never be comfortable with.
parasitius 15y ago
TouchPad didn't work out for me, even at $150... Listing on eBay soon. I only wanted to do one single task: read pdf programming books and make notes. PDFs are blurry as hell and you have to manually navigate 100's of pages, there is no way to efficiently skip... And taking notes? iPad can't even handle that. You have to memorize what you want to write on notepad, go to notepad, type as much as you can remember, so on and so forth alt-tabbing back and forth 100 times... Really lame. (No copy and paste either of course)

76 points by j_col 15y ago

made connectivity with non-HP phones possible I wonder what that means. Synchronization? Tethering? Notifications about calls and SMS on the device?

unwiredben 15y ago
The TouchPad can now work as a Bluetooth speakerphone for non-webOS phones that support the right profiles. It can also do SMS access on phones that expose that database.

suivix 15y ago

For some reason this reminds me of the guy who recently ported Prince of Persia from the Apple 2 to the Commodore 64.

deyan 15y ago

Thanks for the link! Does anyone know if this breaks the 3.0.2 recommended patches (e.g. muffling logging, etc.)

yoshamano 15y ago
Word 'round the Precentral forums is that it breaks most patches. Like with all updates, you'll lose custom kernels until the kernel source is released. So I made a list of all the patched I use then removed them along with UberKernel.
warthogkernel 15y ago
muffle is broken until I have time to make a new patch. Probably not till this weekend.

j_col 15y ago

Love one of the anonymous comments on there: "From one HP employee to another: THANK YOU for this awesome OS and OTA. The Touchpad, the Pre 3 ... such awesome products. I truly hope our new leadership will do the right thing and bring the platforms back."

pconf 15y ago
It is an awesome OS except for one significant drawback: javascript. If not for the dependency on js these phones and tablets wouldn't lock-up hard so often or hang for several seconds after touching the screen more often than not. I know js fans will object but their single-threaded, interpreted language is the #2 source of Palm/HP's troubles. The #1 Palm issue, however, is the hardware manufacturer/s. If Palm had been able to use the same CN fabs as Apple the Pre would be _big_. But they weren't and as a result the Pre/Pixi/Touchpad are larger than they could have been and, more significantly, the (Pre/Pixi) keyboards are the worst on any smartphone.

taylorbuley 15y ago

I am lucky enough to own a tablet of each breed, and my TouchPad is by far my favorite. Sure there are less apps by an order of magnitude, but HP nailed most of the core services. For example, mark all as read -- I've yet to find this basic feature on my Honeycomb tab or iPad.

coob 15y ago
You can now mark multiple emails as read in iOS5.
- maaku 15y ago
  mark multiple emails = O(n), mark all = O(1)
  - tadfisher 15y ago
    "Mark read" is a broken interaction anyway. You only ever use it when you haven't read the message. So why do people do it? I do it to clear out messages that aren't worth reading, to get that number of unread emails in my Inbox folder down to 0. Why do I care about unread messages? What I'm really worried about are unseen messages, and the set of unread messages contains these. "Read/unread" and "Seen/unseen" are really just labels anyway, right? These could be automatically applied on seeing the message in a list view and on reading the message. Now I have some sort of cool multiple-select label filter in place, and all I need to do is select the "Inbox" and "unseen" labels to get to email that I need to peruse. Every time I look at this label combination, all mail is marked "seen" and I never have to check off messages or apply a "read" state to messages that I have not read. Notmuch (notmuchmail.org) gets close to what I want. I want to see its ideas adopted by the major webmail/mobile interfaces, so I don't have to contend with the legacy of email sorting.
    - untog 15y ago
      I don't know, I feel like you're over-thinking it. "Mark as Read" is exactly that- "mark this as if I have read it, even though I have not". I don't see how it's broken.

brackin 15y ago

Yet did HP not announce there would be no more Web OS devices, HP needs to open source this. The more choice the better! I can see Samsung or HTC producing some slick devices running Web OS. Hardware was always a key issue for me, the Pre was slow and boring.

Tloewald 15y ago
I forget, didn't people demo Android running much quicker on touchpad hardware? If so, it's the decision to depend too much on the JavaScript stack and not the hardware that's the ultimate problem.
- davux 15y ago
  Android really doesn't run quicker than WebOS yet. There isn't any 2D hardware acceleration (last I knew, a few days ago). This means that sometimes Android is really fluid, but then it starts studdering and kind of ruins the experience. I also had a ton of Force-Close's on the browser. I'm back to WebOS until the Android CM7 builds get past Alpha. It looks like it'll be usable, but not really yet.
- vondur 15y ago
  You are correct, Android does run fast on the Touchpad.

csomar 15y ago

Hi. I don't understand anymore. Didn't HP kill the tablet and WebOS? What does this mean? Will there new tablets? If not, why WebOS is being updated?

RexRollman 15y ago
HP probably wants to keep it updated in case they can sell the WebOS unit.
camiller 15y ago
They killed the hardware. They have the #2 tablet by user base (admittedly due to selling many tablets at a loss during the fire sale) and do need to support them for a reasonable period of time, bug fixes and such, which is what this release is. They always said they wanted to keep the software alive.

zwieback 15y ago

Great for the many HP employees like myself who got a TouchPad in the employee fire sale, supposedly there will be a lot of TouchPads going out as Christmas presents. If nothing else, the current TouchPad population is one giant, if expensive, beta program for WebOS - let's hope someone does something awesome with it.

jarek 15y ago

You have to kinda feel for Ari Jaaksi: jumped ship from Nokia when Maemo/Meego was going down, only to find himself at Palm/HP...

thinkcomp 15y ago

This is still my #1 problem with the TouchPad: http://forums.hpwebos.com/t5/HP-TouchPad-Software-Hardware/Ampersands-in-URLs-Still-Don-t-Work/td-p/359930 http://forums.hpwebos.com/t5/HP-TouchPad-Software-Hardware/A... Otherwise it's great.

morrow 15y ago
I didn't realize that it converted all ampersands in the URL -- what a ridiculous oversight. What bugs me is that the browser doesn't support @font-face fonts. I don't understand the design process that led to implementing node.js as a service on a mobile device before adding in fundamental CSS support...
unwiredben 15y ago
Can you provide more detail? Is this when entering URLs directly? Have you tried going through j.mp or bitly.com and shortening the URL, then bookmarking that version?
- thinkcomp 15y ago
  It's when entering them directly, clicking on links, or using bookmarks. The & gets passed through to the server--it's not just an issue with the UI. Annoying as hell.

Pent 15y ago

I own a touchpad and without a developed app base it feels so rigid to me. I don't want to share links by email I want to share them through my various online accounts. I don't want to multitask by navigating to cards I want to have in-app multitasking through swipes. Even reading a PDF on it is painful because the font rendering is so poor. I don't think HP really "got it". It was barely worth the 99 I paid for it. I installed the new update today. And while this update increased the responsiveness it didn't address the fundamental workflow problems... But since they are abandoning it anyway I probably shouldn't expect anything anyway.

j_col 15y ago
Sounds like you should sell it on eBay to someone who loves webOS, and make yourself a tidy profit in the process. The workflow issues you describe are basically how webOS fundamentally works, so it sounds like it is a design decision that you will never be comfortable with.

parasitius 15y ago

TouchPad didn't work out for me, even at $150... Listing on eBay soon. I only wanted to do one single task: read pdf programming books and make notes. PDFs are blurry as hell and you have to manually navigate 100's of pages, there is no way to efficiently skip... And taking notes? iPad can't even handle that. You have to memorize what you want to write on notepad, go to notepad, type as much as you can remember, so on and so forth alt-tabbing back and forth 100 times... Really lame. (No copy and paste either of course)