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HP's Slate To Be Replaced By WebOS Tablet?
itwbennett writes "Last week the rumor mill was rumbling about the demise of HP's Slate. 'This past weekend brought fresh rumors to the surface,' writes blogger Peter Smith. 'Now the insiders are saying that the Slate will be reborn as the HP Hurricane, and it will run WebOS. That makes perfect sense given HP's recent purchase of Palm and HP's declaration that they were 'doubling down on WebOS.' More surprising is the rumored launch date of Q3 of this year, which seems like a pretty fast turn-around. Particularly so if HP ditches the Atom and goes with an ARM processor, which Electronista suggests it would have to do.'"
Last week the rumor mill was also discussing WebOS tablets. This isn't a new shocking development, this was pretty much expected the moment they bought Palm.
I think it's going to be an also ran against Android and iPhone OS.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I put my money on Palm having a Pre-production (pun intended) version of a WebOS tablet ready to go and just needed a sugar daddy to pay for manufacturing.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Could they pick a tackier or more insensitive name?
It could be but lets be fair.
WebOS has a better UI than Android.
WebOS has Multitasking which even iPhoneOS only sort of kinda has.
The one area that WebOS really was weak in was the SDK. The whole "javascript+HTML" thing is very limiting. The new PDK will give you access to C and some real performance and hardware access.
From just a UI point of view WebOS is a better choice than both of those for a tablet.
So maybe it will be a good alternative to both.
You know this desire to have a "Standard" really isn't a good thing. There was a lot of innovation and excitement when we had Apple, Atari, Commodore, Ti, Radioshack, and goodness knows how many others fighting it out.
When IBM came and "created" a standard the standard SUCKED. The 8088 was a terrible CPU with a terrible ISA. Systems like the Atari ST, and Amiga which where cheaper, more powerful, and offered features that MS-DOS wouldn't have for years could never compete.
Do we really want to dismiss alternative this early in a new and important market like the mobile space?
I mean lets be honest it would have been easy to say that the iPhone was going to be an also ran to WinCE/Mobile and PalmOS. I mean look how many devices and applications those OSs had!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Dear HP,
Please release a WebOS rom/image/update/etc for all the Palm TX's and other Palm devices that are already out there but probably not being used on account of stagnant OS software and applications.
I believe many of these devices are capable of running WebOS and you could create a community almost overnight. I'm sure I'm not the only geek looking at my TX wishing I could use it in some meaningful capacity again.
Yay me! ^^
I think this is a good move for HP. The slate would have been the same as all the tablet pc's that came before it which basically failed in the market. A web OS tablet might be a decent competitor to the iPad.
Prior to having been given a G1 over the weekend, I didn't think very highly of Android OS. It strongly reminded me of the Windows Mobile scene I was involved in when I had my WinMo devices (Treo 750, HTC Excalibur/Raphael), which was anything but pleasant. However, as I spend more time with the device, I am constantly growing fonder of it. It's very versatile, extremely expansive and, in my opinion, is a mobile OS that actually has the potential to double as a useful and appropriate OS for tablet computing.
With that said, how does WebOS stack up against Android? On the whole, is it a stronger or weaker OS, and how much more difficult is it to develop for? I haven't yet tried making apps for the Android, but I've heard that it's very straightforward.
The IBM PC was more powerful than other systems at the time, and the 8088 was probably the highest performance/$ processor available, and had a better ISA than the 6800 series CPUs, IMNSHO. IBM didn't force anyone to buy PCs; they caught on because they were more powerful and reasonably priced. The 68000 was far too expensive at the time, and the inexpensive systems using it, the Macintosh, Amiga, and Atari ST, didn't arrive for another 4 years. By this time, the compelling reason to buy a PC or clone was for the huge software library.
I think it was obvious from the start that the Palm acquisition was all about WebOS and tablets, not smart phones. Anyone else see this purchase and cancelation of Slate as a huge setback for Microsoft? It's basically a public admission by HP that Windows can't cut as a tablet OS.
HP just broke their direct dependence on Microsoft for an emerging market for a good reason: Microsoft's failure to produce an innovative user interface for tablets.
Which leaves RIM, which has good solution for business and has a large market of consumers who want to look like important business people, and the dwindling share of Windows Mobile, some reports indicate a 50% drop in market share since fall of last year.
The fact that iPhone is more closed that some people want causes pain, but would you rather have a company like MS suing everyone that uses OSS software on the mobile platform? I think we can just celebrate that with Google and Apple producing good products using OSS, we can stop wasting time on the Open versus Proprietary debate, and just produce many different good products from which people can choose.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Oh, and it comes with embedded corn by default.
It's called a microkernel.
It's a damn tablet! Not every bloody piece of technology is supposed to be able to have something to do with Linux. You want Linux on your tablet? Too bad, go buy a Netbook. You Linux users get right on my nerves most of the time: 'Is this microwave open standards compliant?' 'Is this toaster open source?' 'Does anybody know where I can get a Linux compatible table lamp?' 'Has anyone tried installing Linux on an alarm clock?' I tells you it never ends!
"There might be intelligent beings created by God in outer space even if there are none here on Earth." -Anonymous
It's just a big Palm Pre? What a ripoff! /sarcastic
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I hate to respond to trolls, but I just tried it out, and Redtube works fine on my iPhone. You'll be happy to know that you can still play the skin flute without Flash installed.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
I have an MSI Wind all in one touch screen PC running Windows 7, and I understand perfectly why HP dumped Windows 7: it wasn't built for touch interfaces, period. The simple task of logging into the touch screen PC is a monster task, stuff like right click is clumsy, some gestures are all right but it's not made for touch screen. Also, a lot of interface elements are just too damn tiny, good luck selecting a tiny arrow from a drop down button that is about 22 x 22 pixels with arrow being about maybe 4 pixels. We pretty much stopped using the touch interface for our kitchen computer and just have a wireless mouse close by, and we don't do complex tasks on it, mainly some web surfing, online videos and XBMC.
I am pretty sure HP had other reasons too, possible battery life, need for more memory and storage, but I think the main reason for the dump was the awful interface. When you compare Windows 7 touch interface with other OSes, it is like comparing a Russian Lada (Win7) to a Bugatti Veyron (iPhone/Chrome/Android/WebOS).
This can already be done.
http www.webos-internals org/wiki/Debian
It's webOS, lowercase "w."
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
I've used a Palm Pre, it's UI is slick, intuitive and a joy to use.
Then I tried to get an SSH client, there isn't one as far as I could tell. I thought "oh that's fine I'll use VNC web access" but then remembered it's implemented as a Java applet. The browser sucked, Gmail got stuck in infinite reloading loops when it wasn't outright crashing the browser (to be fair it didn't crash the OS). I tried finding an application repository, no joy. I tried an h.264 video, no support. I looked at developing for it, then found I couldn't use programming languages, I was forced to cludge together "applications" with document mark up languages. I gave up.
I'll stick to Android. (iPhone works but you can't help but feel like your taking it up the ass from some guy in a turtle neck)
Not really. The 8088 in the PC was clocked at only 4.77 MHZ by that time multiple vendors where shipping Z-80s that where clocked at 6 or even 8 MHZ. The larger address space really didn't come in to play at that time since the PC ships standard with 16k and maxed out at 256k. Also 6502s at two to three Mhz where also available.
I would also say that the it is arguable that the x86 ISA was better then the 6809.
The 68000 was available at that time and frankly would have been fine at the HUGE price point that IBM introduced the PC.
The Amiga and ST where every bit the match in performance for the much more expensive AT.
The PC sold because of IBMs name. I was there and everybody thought IBM==computers.
The PC was a TERRIBLE standard but one we got stuck with.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Uhh, you're talking about a pen based interface, not touch. Get it right.
Also Windows XP was horrible for Tablets, I know, I had one.
I have SSH running on my Pre. If you get 'Preware' installed on you phone (some guides over at precentral.net), use that to install the console and command line utilities. An SSH client is included in that.
(I can even use a VPN app to tunnel into my work network to check on some machines if need be :)
FUNK!