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As a long-term webOS user, I could not disagree with the conclusion of this article more. WebOS did not fail because of a decision to use WebKit, it "failed" (

by j_col 15y ago

As a long-term webOS user, I could not disagree with the conclusion of this article more. WebOS did not fail because of a decision to use WebKit, it "failed" (in marketing and commercial terms, not in technological terms) because of a lack of decent hardware, which is still the case today. My own personal feeling is that the decision to put a web interpreter at the heart of webOS was inspired, I mean as an app developer what would you rather code in? 1. iOS - objective C. 2. Android & RIM - Java. 3. webOS - HTML5/CSS/JS. webOS the platform is fantastic, but has never been seen on decent hardware (with the exception of the Pre3 which is an amazing phone, but was never officially released outside of a limited European release). If the open sourcing of webOS leads to decent hardware manufacturers like Samsung or HTC releasing devices, it still stands a chance.

foobarbazetc 15y ago
"I mean as an app developer what would you rather code in?" 1 & 2... :)
viraptor 15y ago
> webOS the platform is fantastic It is and it isn't at the same time IMHO. It is for simple stuff and for typical applications it was great. It also has an amazing online designer. But it suffers when you had to do something more... I run into that for example when I needed to handle RSA. Have a look at how many encryption libraries are out there for ObjC and Java. Now try to find one for JS - you'll need to find 3 different parts usually - the rsa itself, key reader/writer, base64 library. Then you have to deal with their different inputs/outputs and missing features... Really not a great experience. So yeah - the platform is great, just misses the whole ecosystem which you take for granted in Java. That said, I don't know why people complain about hardware. I'm not letting go of my Touchpad - it can do all the 3d I would expect from it and more. With preware patches it's also more smooth than other pads I've played with so far.
ams6110 15y ago
But you can do 3 on iOS, as Safari is a WebKit browser. But for when that's not enough, you can do 1.
- rsanchez1 15y ago
  It's always enough on webOS, and in the rare case when it's not, you have C/C++ instead of Objective-C.
  - alexbell 15y ago
    You do have C++/SDL (roll your own UI!), but if I recall correctly you DO NOT have native UI APIs anywhere near what Cocoa is.
    - ryanwatkins 15y ago
      Because the 'native' UI is ... HTML/CSS/JS. There is no non-HTML 'native' UI on webOS. Don't want to implement RSA in javascript? Create a 'hybrid' webOS app using a C lib, but 'native' HTML UI. The 'native' Mojo or Enyo frameworks may not be as rich as UIKit, but the web UI ecosystem you can leverage to extend them is massive, and the source for both is all there for you to read and extend.
deleted 15y ago
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by j_col 15y ago

foobarbazetc 15y ago

"I mean as an app developer what would you rather code in?" 1 & 2... :)

viraptor 15y ago

> webOS the platform is fantastic It is and it isn't at the same time IMHO. It is for simple stuff and for typical applications it was great. It also has an amazing online designer. But it suffers when you had to do something more... I run into that for example when I needed to handle RSA. Have a look at how many encryption libraries are out there for ObjC and Java. Now try to find one for JS - you'll need to find 3 different parts usually - the rsa itself, key reader/writer, base64 library. Then you have to deal with their different inputs/outputs and missing features... Really not a great experience. So yeah - the platform is great, just misses the whole ecosystem which you take for granted in Java. That said, I don't know why people complain about hardware. I'm not letting go of my Touchpad - it can do all the 3d I would expect from it and more. With preware patches it's also more smooth than other pads I've played with so far.

ams6110 15y ago

But you can do 3 on iOS, as Safari is a WebKit browser. But for when that's not enough, you can do 1.

rsanchez1 15y ago
It's always enough on webOS, and in the rare case when it's not, you have C/C++ instead of Objective-C.
- alexbell 15y ago
  You do have C++/SDL (roll your own UI!), but if I recall correctly you DO NOT have native UI APIs anywhere near what Cocoa is.
  - ryanwatkins 15y ago
    Because the 'native' UI is ... HTML/CSS/JS. There is no non-HTML 'native' UI on webOS. Don't want to implement RSA in javascript? Create a 'hybrid' webOS app using a C lib, but 'native' HTML UI. The 'native' Mojo or Enyo frameworks may not be as rich as UIKit, but the web UI ecosystem you can leverage to extend them is massive, and the source for both is all there for you to read and extend.

deleted 15y ago

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