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Insiders Call HP's WebOS Software Fatally Flawed
Hugh Pickens writes "Some of the people involved in creating WebOS, the HP TouchPad's core software, now say the product never had a fighting chance because it relied on WebKit, an open-source software engine used by browsers to display Web pages, that just didn't have the horsepower to run fast enough to be on par with the iPhone. 'Palm was ahead of its time in trying to build a phone software platform using Web technology, and we just weren't able to execute such an ambitious and breakthrough design,' says Paul Mercer, who oversaw the interface design of WebOS and recruited crucial members of the team. 'Perhaps it never could have been executed because the technology wasn't there yet.' Another problem was the difficulty in finding programmers who had a keen understanding of WebKit as Apple and Google snatched up most of the top talent including Matias Duarte, vice president of human interface and user experience for WebOS, who left for Google a month after HP's acquisition of Palm. 'When he left, the vacuum was just palpable. What you're seeing is frankly a bunch of fourth- and fifth-stringers jumping onto WebOS in the wake of Duarte's leaving.' CEO Meg Whitman has announced that HP will release the WebOS code for anyone to use, similar to Google's open-source strategy with Android, but some say WebKit will still leave WebOS underpowered relative to Apple's software."
now say the product never had a fighting chance because it relied on WebKit
Who cares. The apathy is shallower than that.
It never had a fighting chance with the users because it was just another wannabe. What was special about webos from the user point of view, other than some "HP" branding, which in the old days meant something, but for more than a decade that brand has come to mean outsourcing, downsizing, clueless dilbertian executive management, hatred/screwing over of customers, and failure? So its just like my friends phones except it's not cool, and it can't run any of their apps. How profoundly unappealing to the users, and not because of the intimate details of the development library. "My alternative phone is just like yours except its not as good, not as cool, doesn't do anything yours can't do, yet costs just as much". How can that not fly off the shelves?
It never had a fighting change with 3rd party devs because it was just another wannabe. A wannabe has a chance if it does or uses something new and exciting, to balance out the lack of popularity. You know what would be weird? A mobile OS written completely in Ruby and Erlang. How truly weird, yet fascinating. I'd take some of my valuable holiday vacation time to play with that platform even if I were the only owner of that kind of phone in the whole world. Thats how internal OS library choices drag in developers. But, its just tech I can play with in more convenient systems, F that, I'll play with Android instead, or more likely play Skyrim some more. Whoops.
So that brings me back to my original summary. Does anyone not a HP employee, in engineering or astroturfing, being paid to toe the corporate line want to develop on webos? My guess is, "no". Who cares.
Nobody wants or needs it seems to be the actual "fatal flaw".
The standard /. car analogy is the famous Alaskan "bridge to nowhere" was not fatally flawed because it would have been much more appealing to paint it a slightly different color, it was fatally flawed because "no one" (rounded down to zero) wanted or needed it, other than the guys who built it.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
More like: "We got this open source rendering kit for free and didn't have the skill or people to modify it to do what it was never intended to do. Damn you open source!"
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.