Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
HP Turns WebOS Open Source, Could Offer Manufacturers Alternative to Android
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
They marketed the fire sale.
Please provide source. I don't think an Android tablet sold 5 million.
Dude, that's such an old song, and no one believes it could happen. Component manufacturers were leaving during the 60s and gone by the 70s. By the end of the 80s the most of the assembly jobs were history. You're talking ancient history.
Besides you're mixing programming and hardware in the same argument.
Grinding out code is one thing, but envisioning what needs to be accomplished with that code is genius... a lack of which is everywhere, but especially less so at Apple.
WebOS Open sourced!.
The best news I have heard for a long time. This is what WebOS needs in order to survive and thrive in the market.
I hope Google will also support it to make better diversity in the market where their ubiquitous services can be running seamlessly on all mobile devices. This move will certainly worry Apple as IOS now have another competitor that had the potential to out-do its base feature set over time.
In fact, all OSes should be open sourced in order to ensure strong security and transparency in features, thus benefiting everyone. Thanks Meg and HP, great move!.
The best news I have heard for a long time. This is what WebOS needs in order to survive and thrive in the market.
I hope Google will also support it to make better diversity in the market where their ubiquitous services can be running seamlessly on all mobile devices. This move will certainly worry Apple as IOS now have another competitor that had the potential to out-do its base feature set over time.
In fact, all OSes should be open sourced in order to ensure strong security and transparency in features, thus benefiting everyone. Thanks Meg and HP, great move!.
This is more of a threat to Apple than Android's bottom line. As a lot of people point out here in Apple land iOS makes ton's more cash than Android. People tired of iOS that hated Android will now jump to WebOS if it gains traction. And how about a phone that dual boots Android and WebOS as seen in a HP touchpad or a merger of features between the two? Don't look now but Apple will be in more trouble.
If Apple is smart they should buy WebOS as the basis for a new iOS replacement. Update their aging platform with good features and keep Android OEM's away from it. Sad part is that Apple will most likely be tied up in legal battles that they can't finish. Adding 2 major features in ios 6 will be a disaster. Apple needs a major redesign.
If Apple is smart they should buy WebOS as the basis for a new iOS replacement. Update their aging platform with good features and keep Android OEM's away from it. Sad part is that Apple will most likely be tied up in legal battles that they can't finish. Adding 2 major features in ios 6 will be a disaster. Apple needs a major redesign.
So... HP had bad marketing when they tried to sell the TouchPad like a normal tablet... but they had good marketing when they slashed prices and unloaded their stock.
The TouchPad could have had the most amazing marketing ever. But at $500... it didn't offer any reason to buy it instead of the iPad.
That's been my point all along. The TouchPad didn't live up to expectations compared to the iPad... I don't think marketing had anything to do with it.
$500 was too much to pay for the TouchPad... even if it had an amazing TV commercial playing every 5 minutes and a full page ad in every newspaper.
But at $99... people bought the TouchPad. That's not exactly a victory. HP knew they were getting out of the tablet hardware market... thus the fire sale. And it was only a matter of time until they decided the fate of WebOS.
And here we are... HP open-sourced WebOS... the TouchPad is gone... close the book.
Also... the global shipments of Tablet PC are 16.7 million units, while iPad only accounts for 66.6% and the shipments are 11.1 million units. The shipments of Tablet PC with Android system are 4.5 million units, representing 26.9% of the world's Tablet PC shipments.
Those were Q3 numbers... shipments of course.
My point was... iPads 11 million... Android tablets 4.5 million..... and TouchPad around 1 million.
We're spending way too much time discussing the TouchPad. It was never a major player even if it held the "best-selling" title for a week or two.
And now it's over.
That may have been true in the beginning. But at the end of the day, if Apple didn't put a good product in people's hands to back it up, that's all the iPad would have been-a well-marketed product. If the sales numbers are any indication, Apple's doing a pretty good job of backing up their marketing.
It did have marketing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZiWTdc6Dc8
MS doesn't sell crappy products. What are you on?
----------
True, but it would not have sold well without their marketing.
What's your point?
----------
My point exactly. HP spent $1.2 billion to buy Palm. And let me tell you, HP bought themselves a gem. Palm brought two decades worth of experience in the PDA space, complete with patents. By making Palm open source, HP is wasting everything.
So yes, it appears that is no longer about money, but the point is that it should matter to HP. It should matter to them that they're going to end up having wasted $1.2 billion.
Depends on how fast they are going to implement this and by who. Like what other people have been saying their needs to be a single driving force to make sure regular updates get out. Also an active community who will use it in their devices.
If development cannot go fast enough by the time it catches up to everyone else, they will already be too far behind.
Don't see why they need to replace their iOS system as its doing quite well and was even the driving force behind AV foundation that is being used for FCP X on Mac OSX.
iOS 5 was an excellent upgrade even fix a slight lag issue when waking from sleep with my iphone. Added a lot of new features and integration with Mac OSX and the iCloud.
An "Aging" platform is not always enough reason to replace it with something new, that may not offer anymore then what iOS already has. In fact probably far behind in many areas.
Yes... people love sales... but HP sold the TouchPad for $99 to get rid of their stock and get out of the tablet hardware business.
It wasn't some brilliant scheme to gain market share... it was to exit the business. And today's news of open-sourcing WebOS is the next step.
Maybe something will happen with WebOS in the future... but the TouchPad as you know it is done.
There are multiple reports of Q3 tablet shipments... here's one:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/are-android-tablets-selling-as-well-as-claimed-10212011.html
The TouchPad's fire sale was also during Q3... but it wasn't even big enough to matter. Or else no one reported it.
Indeed.
For historians, iOS, Meego, Android, and webOS all can't claim "built from the ground up for mobile devices" because they're all based on stripped down desktop kernels.
On the other hand, Blackberry's mobile OS, Qualcomm's BREW, Nokia's abandoned Symbian OS, and Windows Mobile/CE really were built from the ground up for mobile devices.
(For those anti-MS'ers who are confused, Windows CE was never a stripped down NT kernel; it really was built up for mobile devices.)
Open source doesn't mean free for all. They'd still have to license patented features from HP.
It's highly doubtful that 5 million Android tablets have been sold in total. (I assume you mean Honeycomb tablets for this timeframe. Besides, we shouldn't be counting any pre-3.0 Android tablets since Google themselves say not to use pre-3.0 Android for tablets.)
Andy Rubin claims "6 million Android tablets out there", which is to say, in existence. Including those sitting on shelves and warehouses and recycling bins.
http://mashable.com/2011/10/19/6-million-android-tablets/
A guess based on information from Google puts the number around 3.8 million.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/10/only-3-8-million-honeycomb-tablets-sold-so-far/
Right....
My point is... even after the fire sale... there can't be that many TouchPads out there. 1 million to 1.2 million at best.
It must be such a low number that they didn't even count it in last quarter's tablet shipments.
Well... we know none of the Android tablet manufacturers ever talk about sales... only shipments.
I'd like to believe that no one buys any other tablet besides the iPad
But the Android manufacturers keep making them. Somebody must be buying them.My question was... is the total number of Honeycomb tablets sold to consumers greater than the number of TouchPads sold to consumers?
Honeycomb tablets... while their sales are weak compared to the iPad... they've been around since February.
The TouchPad only went on sale in July... and HP killed it in August... a mere 48 days later.
HP couldn't have manufacturered that many of them in the first place.
If there are, in fact, only 3.8 million Honeycomb tablets in consumers' hands... the TouchPad is still far below that number.
We like to joke that Android tablets aren't selling.... I think HP sold even fewer TouchPads...
I believe that after this next fire sale... the TouchPad will be extinct.
To posters in general: using the phrase "true multitasking" doesn't win you any arguments, it only means you don't know what you're talking about regardless which team you're cheerleading for.
The word "multitasking" refers to many things. Conflating the contexts only makes people more confused.
At the kernel level, all 4 OS's (iOS, Android, WP7, and webOS) have preemptive multitasking. Which is to say, the same kind of multitasking abilities as your modern desktop computer. Timers are triggered, interrupts happen, context switches occur, new task is running. For all intents and purposes, I doubt anybody will find any reason to believe any of them are better than the others at this level.
Beyond this point, I don't have any information about WP7 as I don't own a WP7 device. On the other hand, I do own the others.
At the user application level (aka, "what does the multitasking system impose on each individual app"), everything differs.
iOS) Apps are suspended and or killed in the background. (with rare exceptions)
*Benefits include lowering system overhead, guaranteeing that the developer needs to be aware of state, less need for physical memory, more predictable UI latency, reasonable guarantee that 3rd party apps cannot do stuff without you knowing about it. It also means battery life is solely dependent on the OS and the foreground app.
*Downsides: less control over application running state, as in inability to indefinitely run an arbitrary app in the background. (in the long run, most users will consider this "problem" to be a benefit when you consider Android.)
Android) Apps each run on top of their own Dalvik VM process. These VM processes continue to run when their UI is backgrounded.
*Benefits include full developer control over process lifetime. This gives the developer flexibility. Since Dalvik uses Java as the model for the language, it's very familiar to the common Java developer to get started with; although some things like Activity are a bit odd.
*Downsides: Most developers don't know how to behave properly as they previously developed in an environment which had a glut of resources. This typically means that apps will continue to consume resources that are not vital to the backgrounded app, and allow developers to continue bad habits, leading to the need for more memory compared to iOS and webOS and worse battery life.
Don't argue with me on this; even Larry Page agrees: http://www.techradar.com/news/phone...your-android-battery-should-last-a-day-690439
webOS) There doesn't appear to be any documents stating exactly whether or not each apps gets its own Javascript VMs instance, but all evidence points in that direction. These VM processes continue to run when their UI is backgrounded unless the device goes to sleep. (https://developer.palm.com/content/api/dev-guide/mojo/background-applications.html)
*Benefits: Use of Javascript/HTML/CSS makes it easy for any web developer to start making basic apps. Since most web apps are event driven with controlled polling, it's easy for a web developer to make a well-behaved app.
Developers could continue to do operations in the background as long as the device is awake.
The callback timer is easy to configure.
*Downsides: It's a web app. Great for most apps, but overhead will eventually grow faster if you need to make more complex apps. Once you leave for the native SDK, then you lost most of the benefits.
At the UI level (aka, meta-app level)(aka, "how do I go from task to task"):
All three allow you to switch to existing apps by using the launcher. Notifications menu also allow switching to related app.
iOS) Double tap home button for recent apps. Can kill some apps by holding down and clearing recent apps list.
Android) Nothing else unless the custom Android distro included something. (I only have ASOP.)
webOS) Card views show you state of app. Tap to enter. Flick to kill. Slide for more.
In summary:
At the kernel level, everybody's equally good.
At the meta-app level, the card task switcher is just plain awesome. Everybody else pales in comparison.
At the app level, it depend on what you value. iOS gives you the least flexibility but more consistent and higher quality because you're pressed into a "best practice or nothing" situation. webOS gives you ease of development (if you're familiar with web tech), higher likelihood that you'll naturally do the right thing, more flexibility than iOS, and more performance than Android. Android gives you the most freedom and the longest leash, of which most developers will use to hang themselves with.
Mmm, yes, open source mean fee for all. If they have to pay licenses to use it then is not open source
No, the default behavior is to pause the app in background, like iOS. Look at the developer reference life of an app
As a fire sale Touchpad owner, and someone who has friends who has and had WebOS phone that I have used, I have to state my opinion that WebOS has many many many problems with design and efficiency that make my user experience horrid (even with rooting/hacking/jail breaking it)!
I'm hoping that with WebOS being open source that there will be an influx of developers to make this product stand out as a true competitor to Android and iOS.
I'm hoping that with WebOS being open source that there will be an influx of developers to make this product stand out as a true competitor to Android and iOS.