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HP Confirms Slate To Run WebOS
Kilrah_il writes "After HP bought Palm a few weeks ago, many rumors emerged regarding the new parent company's plans to further expand the scope of devices running WebOS. Now it appears that at least one of the rumors is true: The Slate will be running WebOS. 'Today an HP exec has confirmed that the company is developing a WebOS tablet which should be available by October.'"
Which OS in particularly do you want them to use?
I believe you can already get Linux and Windows 7-based tablets, and they haven't exactly been flying off the shelves.
Are you saying you are in the market for a tablet, but you are just waiting for one with the right OS? Or are you waiting for Linux or Windows to be updated with a better touch interface? Or apps to be created/updated for these OS's to be better touch enabled?
And are there enough copies of you that will buy this device to make it worthwhile?
On another note, what specific problems do you have with PalmOS?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
To 'root' my pre on the first day involved only downloading the official development platform from Palm for Linux. I didn't have to go to Windows or OSX or wait for someone in the community to 'jailbreak'. Meanwhile, Android phones from most manufacturers take a few weeks for the community to jailbreak before the fun begins. I'd rather go with a platform where the manufacturer blatantly allows the users the power Palm does. I find it ironic as the base platform is more closed in theory, but in practice is a bit more amenable to hacking.
Though I'm personally not enthused about their HTML5/Javascript 'premiere' approach to applications, I do like the simplicity of SDL/GL/C code to develop other apps.
As a user, I find WebOS' current interface a bit slicker on the multitasking front.
Of course, all this said I don't think I'll ever be interested in a tablet. It's in a useless spot for me of not being as useful as a laptop yet not as convenient as my 'phone'.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
So why would anyone choose to develop for it?
If HP sells a few million of these devices in the first year of sales (Which really isn't a terribly large prediction considering that the iPad has probably sold close to two million units already.) that's several million people who might be interested in paying for apps. Since developers are people and people need to eat, sometimes it's better to go where the money is rather than basing development off of reasons such as openness of the platform or ease of development. If Android and iPhone marketplaces get crowded, WebOS might be an attractive platform for new developers who don't want to compete against several established developers.
It’s become pretty clear at this point that scaling a smartphone OS up, rather than scaling a desktop OS down, is the better approach. Someone had to stick their necks out and try it. Microsoft tried and failed to scale Windows down, but Apple has apparently succeeded going the other way. Let’s not forget that the outcomes were far from obvious even as recently as a few months ago. HP getting on stage with Microsoft in January was their throwing in their lot with the desktop approach. I think they’ll ultimately come out happier having reconsidered. It actually took corporate chutzpah for them to cancel the Windows 7 Slate after showing it.
It is a stopgap, at best. Someone needs to take the time, do the research, and do the work to write an OS for these devices instead of trying to patchwork add and remove bits and pieces of systems clearly designed for other purposes.
You may be right, but remember: shipping is a feature, and, IMO, the most important one.
(disclaimer: happy iPad owner here...)
For now I'd either go with Android, bank on Google and Java and that environment, or wait for MeeGo to grow up a bit and then develop what amounts to a standard Linux system (linux, GNU coreutils, etc...).
Either way you'll need to write some code for touchscreen UIs, but at least both platforms are pretty darn open.
WebOS has some open stuff in the base layer, but their entire GUI layer is pretty much closed, right? So why would anyone choose to develop for it? I mean, if you want a closed-source environment, why wouldn't you just go with Apple's offerings?
If you haven't used it, grab the free SDK (works on Linux, Mac, and Windows) and take a look at the emulator or take a look at a Palm Pre/Pre Plus. Palm's WebOS has a very smooth interface, something Android is missing to some extent. Also, programming for WebOS is quite open and they allow and even *encourage* modifications and unofficial applications outside the "app catalog", which makes it a lot more open than the iPad.
Unless you want to modify the GUI engine itself (which is basically just a way to throw pixels for a WebKit/V8-based Javascript engine, and for PDK apps, a way to manage slightly SDL, and OpenGLES, and the SDL is part of the GUI that is open source....) WebOS is just as open from a practical standpoint as Android if not slightly more open since no rooting is needed whatsoever. Also, one can modify apps and make themes easily since everything is just Javascript text files basically. (You get a root prompt to do what you want with with the SDK!) When's the last time you could modify Google Maps on Android, for just one example? You can do that with WebOS, closed source or no closed source, the source is there. :-) Homebrewers have added features to it, such as Google Latitude, that Google disabled on WebOS because they have a bit of preferential treatment to Android and their former board member Apple rather than little rival Palm. ;-) Also, many other included apps have all sorts of modifications available for them called "patches". It's very much in the spirit of open source. You can even grab alternative kernels, and enhance the performance of your Pre or Pre Plus (I don't know if they bothered making alternative kernels for the Pixi yet, though that could be interesting...)
It also resembles a standard Linux distro more under the hood than Android really, which is a very good thing, almost all the frameworks you'd find on a Linux desktop, like gstreamer, are there, and the file system hierarchy should be familiar as well. Only the N900 really has it beat as far as that goes, and the N900 is a little *too* Unixy in the interface department unlike WebOS. (Though if you insist, the Homebrew folks have developed Qt and X11 for WebOS too, which makes a wealth of ugly apps such as even OpenOffice, if you want to really torture yourself trying to run it ;-), available for WebOS. ;-) Maybe OpenOffice will run better on the HP Slate though...)