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HP To Put WebOS On PCs In 2012
Stenchwarrior writes "Hewlett-Packard's chief executive officer Leo Apotheker announced that WebOS will be on every PC that HP ships in 2012. The move is intended to attract more developers and push the operating system from mobile devices onto desktops. Apotheker made the announcement during a presentation to HP's staff in India, according to a report by Bloomberg. It's not likely that WebOS will supplant existing operating systems on PCs, but rather would run on top of Windows to be able to launch WebOS apps. HP had previously announced its plans to push WebOS onto PCs last month, but, at the time, the company didn't reveal the scope of its commitment to the operating system. We now know that HP means each and every PC it sells starting in 2012 will have WebOS installed."
I guess I don't understand why one would want to launch WebOS applications when they're sitting at their desktop or laptop. Is there an actual desire for this that I'm just too dense to understand?
...Yet they will not take even consumer friendly Ubuntu seriously. IS the idea of Linux as a consumer friendly OS a dead end?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The Web site of Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) is down.
I'm sure this will be a raging success, a truly innovative and high quality product, just like everything else HP has produced in the past decade.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Great Idea.
Aaaaand... One more reason why my first task on any new OEM PC boils down to "wipe and reinstall the OS".
I honestly don't know if I "like" WebOS or not yet, but if I want a Windows PC, I damned well want a Windows PC, not a frankenbox designed to push some crack-addled CEO's latest cross-marketing wet dreams on an otherwise unwilling audience.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Part of the reason why these OEM's will keep seeing their Desktop PC margins disappear is because they can't commit to a single vision and execute it properly.
What kind of a message does it send when you're spreading your bets across two half-baked platforms? Dual booting is seen as bipolar behavior by consumers. Make your choice and push forward. Dont' force the consumer or the developer to make the hard choices. You're the device supplier, you should make the decision.
Choice isn't always a good thing. Markets, Consumers, Developers â" they all like a clear, decisive path. Not a shit sandwich that forces your to burn calories and look for trade-offs.
HP's message with this: "We don't know what the fuck we're doing."
No matter what a PC comes with, the first thing I do is slash and burn and install whatever I want. There's no way I'm going to put up with all the bloatware and possible malicious software the vendor installed.
Do people still actually buy HP computers?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Only 10 years after Apple put Unix on consumer desktops!
That /. Is as close-minded and resistant to change as ever. None of you know any details of how this will work, and I'm betting most of you have never even used WebOS, yet you immediately shit on HP and proclaim you'll never buy their products again.
Posted from my Palm Pre, running WebOS 2.1.
"Launch on top of Windows" - A.K.A. an emulator app (even if through a virtual machine, nonetheless it will be an emulator for something that allows web OS apps launch seamlessly on windows ... none of whcih I can see as anything close of newsworthy)
-><- no
and I bet there is not a restore disk for either system in the box. here's a nickel, Leo, go buy a clue.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
This would be great news! I (as much as anyone who has used PCs for the past fifteen years) am sick and tired of Windows. If HP can pre-load this Web OS along with Windows, maybe they can eventually get developers' attention focused on the alternatives whilst still satisfying Windows consumers.
As a die-hard PC user, I don't care what system it is, as long as I don't have to put up with Windows anymore. Thus pre-loading another system is a step in the right direction.
Yet more bloatware for me to remove from new machines that my company buys, oh joy. :)
This brings up several questions. WebOS is a dedicated touchscreen app. Using one of those OSes with a mouse is much less appealing and doesn't feel as productive. Ever tried running the iOS emulator (comes with the SDK) or somesuch? It's just not meant for it.
Also, wouldn't you have to recompile all the apps? ARM is a different processor
Everyone seems to be coming up with something like this. And I think it's all to encourage you to stay within the owner's ecosystem where they make the rules and skim the profits of everything that comes through.
Apple iStore started it.
Then Steam. GamesForWindowsLive is an obvious ripoff. Apple is offering more and more stuff, Facebook wants to start offering credits or something like that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Credits App Stores, Paypal, etc. it's the wave of the future.
Everyone wants to be the broker through which you do all your stuff. I kinda hope that they all screw off and drop dead. I don't need any more middle men between me and my destination.
Maybe the marketplaces will proliferate to the extent that none of them can become truly mandatory. Or maybe one day you'll choose between the 300 different app markets that do all sorts of shit and you'll have to be careful to shop out the one with the best terms. Or maybe you'll have to join a bunch of them (that product you just bought requires you to join another one, please generate ANOTHER unique username and password!) and you'll have to manage all 300 digital identities.
Perhaps you can see how excited I am.
-- "Oh. This guy again."
Instead of running within windows, run it instead of windows. This has been done before with laptops prompting to load a "quick browser" instead of loading a full windows OS.
My laptop for instance has two power buttons. One brings up the normal OS loader, and the other brings up an instant-on OS to play media files and a browser. I never use it, but its an idea.
Put WebOS in its own partition. Let them choose it at boot time...or with its own power button. Heck, if its in ROM it could be pretty nifty.
I suppose from TFA that this is going to be run as a virtual machine layer. The last thing we need is yet another layer on our computers to slow them down even further. I suppose it will be ironic, however, if User-Friendly, Widely-Accepted Desktop Linux finally comes in the form of a product you run inside of Windows.
I'm gettin' a Dell.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
"Continue" being the point of interest in there. My only HP laptop had its display panel die just after 2 years. My friend's HP laptop has component failure every 4-6 months, it seems.
Perception is the thin dividing line between reality and fiction.
Anyone posting so far ever used WebOS. In case you don't know, webOS was written by Palm, used on the Palm Pre, and even my 1.4.5 version of WebOS kicks the crap out of iOS for usability. The new versions and the new development model since HP bought Palm, can run entirely within the browser. Think in terms of super web toolkit. So any app you buy for your phone/pad can run on your desktop as well in your web browser. Not sure if they are planing on tightening the browser into core Windows a bit more, the way IE4 and 98 were tied together. If done right, will prove to be a boon to those who have a Palm/HP phone or Pad
Is that the one with cobwebs on it?
This is incredible! Who do these people think they are giving away potentially useful software for free! I'm happy to accept the free trials and bloated services they give me for free. But I'll be damned if I'm going to accept an alternative to the Windows environment for free. I'll stick with Apple where they charge me for everything, including updates. That really is the only civilized way to handle things. Free software is obviously a clear path to anarchy and must be opposed.
2012 WILL be the year of the Linux (HP) Desktop.
It's just speculation that HP will ship WebOS on top of Windows. Maybe, what will really happen is that HP will provide a dual boot solution (think bootcamp) for customers so that they can boot WebOS as the primary operating system.
Talk about good news and a hell of a potential application boost.
A forum member/webOS developer ArthurThornton on preCentral began a discussion about getting Classic running on webOS 2, and then 2.1. Early this morning, he posted a detailed set of steps, including the files needed (and webOS Doctor versions from which they come), to get Classic working again; Arthur verified it on his newly-OTA-updated Pre 2, and other users are beginning to test as well (as will we).
We know that many of you have always seen Classic as a sort of disincentive for webOS innovation, but for others, Classic was and remains a mission-critical app. For those users, help has arrived.
- Now they are working on getting the emulator working on android and Blackberry OS.
Yo dawg, i heard you liked OSes so we put and OS on top of your OS so you can...... What exactly is the point of this again?
My last HP laptop was 10 years ago, the hard drive died in less than 1 year and I had to take it in twice before I could convince the idiots at the authorized service center that my hard drive was going bad - it was making the click of death and running extremely slowly because of drive errors, so it should not have been hard to diagnose. Bad drives can happen to anyone but should not been a hassle to get them fixed. Apple on the other hand just replaces my parts when I complain, no questions. Dell seems pretty good too but my experience with them has just been corporate machines with gold-plated service contracts. I won't be buying HP anyway so I don't care what bloatware they load on it.
Which was only 16 years after HP put Unix on a portable computer!
(The first version of HP-UX was released for the HP Integral PC.)
I am tired of web browsers and skins thinking they are operating systems. If you require any existing software to be present on a device in order to run, then it's not an OS.
Recently some of my in-laws brought me their new HP notebook complaining that it was (of course) slow, and that intermittently they could or could not load their pictures onto it. Turned out that it was one of these notebooks HP had shipped with the webos as some kind of pre-boot setup and my less than technically savvy family members weren't able to tell when they were in windows (yes, a nightmare unto itself) or were in the webos. The solution was to backup their data, wipe the machine and install stock Windows 7 from scratch. They haven't had any complaints since.
HP, this does not bode well!
Who gives a rat's?
HP sucks.
They made some nice calculators a long time ago.
Other than that: shitty Unix workstations with a crap port of Unix on a crap architecture, shitty printers (with chips in cartridges), shitty PC's and other consumer hardware.
HP: no thanks. One of the world's most irrelevant multinationals.
Wozniak had the good sense to quit HP in the 1970's to start something cooler.
What, all 5,000 of them? Wow ...
That's gonna attract throngs of developers!
Caveat emptor!
I just cleaned up my son-in-law's Acer computer of all sort of shit, purportedly put in by the manufacturer to "help" the consumer get a great experience with their product.
Mostly useless stuff taking up RAM and processor cycles and delivering usage information to Acer "parteners" (God Bless you Peter Sellers!)
Nowadays, you have to either live with the bloatware or be knowledgeable enough to know what you can remove safely. Starting with the horrible Norton / Symantec shit...
A couple of weeks ago a cleaned a Sony (my daughter's) and it wasn't as bad; I haven't seen a recent HP but my guess is that everyone is jumping on the easy "partners" money, so this shit is here to stay.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
It looks to me more like a way for HP to phase in a product without taking too much of a risk (burning their bridge to Microsoft before they've erected their skyway to the cloud).
Remember how for the longest time Microsoft continued to developed DOS while they were trying to perfect their Mac System clone called "Windows"? Until Win 95 came out, Windows was one mess of a barely good enough graphical interface.
Ditto for Google and their seemingly perpetual "Beta" offerings.
I suspect HP's first goal is to develop product awareness. When enough people are aware, they have the option of using WebOS as their one and only desktop operating system. Of course, this all depends on the positive reaction that WebOS would get from the tech media or social networks. If they market it correctly, then they just might beat Google to the first widely deployed Internet-centric (aka cloud, App-based, network) computer.
Microsoft might have to shoot itself in the foot to compete, as it chooses between maintaining lock-in support for its cash cow Office suite or developing an App-based OS.
.. glad you showed up.
At my company you cannot buy Dells. After 5 orders which had 2 to 5 PC's, every order was screwed up in some way. DOA, wrong operating system, no operating system (yes that last is true).
On our second order from HP we got a computer in and looked at the form factor and called them up and said we would happy with the fan placement. They took it back. Put the RMA tag on it and UPS came by and picked it up.
Where there is a http://opensource.palm.com/, I don't know to what extent they're opening up the entire OS.
Could WebOS be the Great White Hope for geeks now that Nokia has gone to the dark $ide?
And how open (rooted) are HP current or future WebOS handhelds to be?
Is there any HP analogue to the N900?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
What's wrong with HP computers?
Granted I haven't been in the market for a long time, but the last time I was, HP computers were quite solidly built, with toolless removal of disk drives, heavy (i.e, high-quality) power supplies, etc.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Since WebOS applications is just web apps run in a V8 javascript environment with some nice javascript api:s for notifications, window management aso. my guess is that the PC WebOS will be a layer on top of Windows (and Linux mybe?) that just runs WebOS apps. They have said it will be an integrated experience, so they will probably have ported their notification, window management and other apis to be a gateway to the underlying os.
I will be surprised if they will be able to run the "native" binaries, like the 3D games... since they require Linux underneath.
HP computers are fine as long as you wipe out any of the HP software on them. Software from HP is a special kind of hell I would only wish on my worst enemy.
I frequently find myself switching between my PC & Blackberry, replying messages on one hand and doing some other work on the PC with the other. I for one would be happy to have the BB OS on the PC just so that I can use only one keyboard instead.
So yah, I can definitely see the appeal of this approach.
geek page at KY speaks
"It's not likely that WebOS will supplant existing operating systems on PCs, but rather would run on top of Windows to be able to launch WebOS apps" link
`HP chief technical officer Phil McKinney told the Seattle Times that the company's PCs will have an "integrated WebOS experience." It won't be a virtualization, he said, but rather an "enhancement" to Windows' link
"Since WebOS applications is just web apps run in a V8 javascript environment with some nice javascript api:s for notifications, window management aso"..
"webOS is a proprietary mobile operating system running on the Linux kernel, initially developed by Palm, which was later acquired by HP" link
I have a niggling feeling that the top PC maker worldwide (based on PC shipments) sells a few more than 5,000 PCs a year. Must be at least 5,003.
WebOS could work as one of those minimal "instant on" OSs like iOS, Android, Chrome and some other proprietary menu driven mini-OSs. Here's an example: Instant boot laptop for "everyday" computer use, and a real OS for real computing. I could see my 2.5 and 5 year old daughters dealing with WebOS much more easily than, say, Windows or OS X. So, when they want to use the tablet/laptop/computer they get WebOS or iOS. When they need to start doing word processing, layout, image manipulation, they can use the grown-up OS.
That being said, this market is already taken by iOS and Android. It's probably too late.
M
Browse at 1. You'll thank me later.