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WebOS will be on 'every HP PC' shipping next year, says CEO

engadget.com

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Re: WebOS will be on 'every HP PC' shipping next year, says CEO

#71

Post by wmf »

dman wrote: post #54
glhaynes wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible for me so far to picture how a dual-OS system will benefit users. I keep hearing about some ability to boot the "little" OS when you just want to surf the web a little... that sounds horrible and I don't at all understand why you wouldn't just unsleep the machine from the "big" OS instance and use that. Is it just that sleep mode doesn't work well? ... So we're gonna throw on a whole other OS, too, to…

How about battery life? If you could throw in a arm chip in there and have the webOS parts always on then you could get great battery life. Essentially this would work very similar to nvidia's optimus technology where machines ship with a low power intel gpu alongwith an nvidia gpu. When you do real 3d work the nvidia gpu kicks in, otherwise youre running off the intel chip. Key thing is how seamless the transition b…

Dell shipped this (Latitude ON or something) and then never spoke of it again. Yo dawg, I put a computer in your computer so now you have to learn two different UIs, configure all your settings twice, try to sync data, etc. just to save some battery.

Re: WebOS will be on 'every HP PC' shipping next year, says CEO

#72

Post by nitrogen »

wvenable wrote: post #47
cryptoz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Huh, why not? Business. Look at IE6. Microsoft can't force system-wide updates for all their customers, so nearly 0 customers get dramatic software improvements. Of course, everyone gets security updates. > With Windows, it gets updated instantly whichever OEM built your PC. With Android. it can take upto a year after getting released, or never come out at all. This isn't really relevant to the point I'm trying to…

Microsoft could simply add an automatic update service right into the operating system, similar to how they have MSI for installations, and then apps would be updated similarly. It's quite possible they're actually working on something like that -- updates seem to get better and better all the time.

Yes, apt-get for Windows would be fantastic, if you were forced (or wanted) to use Windows. Right now a few Windows programs do updates well, like Steam and Chrome, but a platform-wide solution (like dpkg+apt, or rpm+urpmi/yum) would be better.

Re: WebOS will be on 'every HP PC' shipping next year, says CEO

#73

Post by seanb »

JonoW wrote: post #38

Just as Windows on a tablet sucks because it's not optimised for touch, isn't WebOS on a desktop PC going to suck when using a mouse?

The thing I'd really like to see in a portable computer is a touch-interface/mouse-interface hybrid. For example, you dock your iPad in a keyboard docking station (with mouse), and the interface morphs into standard OSX, with all the power and abilities that come along with that. Take it out of the keyboard dock, and it's an iPad again, with the finger friendly iOS touch interface (and limited to touch apps). Desktop apps and touch apps could share data, but would ideally have different interfaces. E.g. OSX's Mail.app and iOS's Mail app.

For HP of course, substitute webOS "slate" for iPad and custom desktop Linux distribution for OSX (I wish).

Re: WebOS will be on 'every HP PC' shipping next year, says CEO

#74

Post by wtracy »

jmulho wrote: post #68
ssharp wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A successful tactic for one situation for one company is not guaranteed to transfer. There was once a time where some people anxiously awaited what was coming next from Microsoft or IBM. How many people are eagerly awaiting HP's marriage of the PC and WebOS?

My question, unanswered after reading the link, is this: what is WebOS?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS

Re: WebOS will be on 'every HP PC' shipping next year, says CEO

#75

Post by Stormbringer »

cryptoz wrote: post #48
wvenable wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft could simply add an automatic update service right into the operating system, similar to how they have MSI for installations, and then apps would be updated similarly. It's quite possible they're actually working on something like that -- updates seem to get better and better all the time.

For at least the last 15 years, there has been no central way to upgrade user software on Microsoft Windows. Today, in 2011, there is no way to do this. Maybe it's coming eventually, sure. But again, these points are seriously minor issues compared to what I'm trying to suggest: The "mobile" OS space is consistently more user-friendly than the desktop space. Maybe desktops can catch up. Maybe MS is working magic behi…

Oh Lord, am I really about to argue that a Microsoft policy 'makes sense'? How the mighty have fallen. :-/

Not from my perspective, but from a corporate perspective this actually makes sense. gag

The problem is that corporates in general tend to test certain things to a ridiculous extreme, and other (usually more important) things not at all. Wherever I've worked at a large gov dept/corporate in the last ~4 years and they haven't updated from IE 6 the (lame) excuse is that it would require too much testing. Not of the new app, but of all the thousands of old apps, any one of which might get sideswiped by this change and you wouldn't even know why.

Last year I took a contract at a major govt dept where they were still using Windows I shit you not 95. That wasn't the only thing that prompted my swift exit, but it weighed heavily in the decision making.

Re: WebOS will be on 'every HP PC' shipping next year, says CEO

#76

Post by neutronicus »

cryptoz wrote: post #48
wvenable wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft could simply add an automatic update service right into the operating system, similar to how they have MSI for installations, and then apps would be updated similarly. It's quite possible they're actually working on something like that -- updates seem to get better and better all the time.

For at least the last 15 years, there has been no central way to upgrade user software on Microsoft Windows. Today, in 2011, there is no way to do this. Maybe it's coming eventually, sure. But again, these points are seriously minor issues compared to what I'm trying to suggest: The "mobile" OS space is consistently more user-friendly than the desktop space. Maybe desktops can catch up. Maybe MS is working magic behi…

Fuck that.

I think doing knowledge-worker things on an Android-alike, let alone an iOS-alike, would be _awful_. My workflow sometimes involves "have the pdf of the research paper with the equations in it over here, matlab open over here, emacs with some C++ code integrating with matlab in it open over here, and a terminal open over here to build the C++, all arranged so I can see each and every thing (actually emacs and the terminal are transparent so I can see the research paper through them)". I break into a cold sweat thinking about trying to do something like this on iOS, and this is far from the worst case scenario - I do scientific computing, so most of the applications involved, apart from matlab, are pretty integrated into the OS (e.g. compiler, terminal, general dev tools). But what if I were a mechanical engineer, and I have Pro-E/Katiya/AutoCAD, whatever piece of crap windows application I use to program a CNC mill, and whatever other piece or crap windows application (LabView if I'm lucky) I use to integrate with the fucking DAQ, and, of course, Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint?

Being able to see and copy/paste between multiple windows simultaneously is crucial. "Mobile" OSes just _seem_ more user friendly because people only try to use them to do dipshit pseudo-productive tasks. Engineering on one would be awful.

Re: WebOS will be on 'every HP PC' shipping next year, says CEO

#77

Post by dman »

neutronicus wrote: post #76
cryptoz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For at least the last 15 years, there has been no central way to upgrade user software on Microsoft Windows. Today, in 2011, there is no way to do this. Maybe it's coming eventually, sure. But again, these points are seriously minor issues compared to what I'm trying to suggest: The "mobile" OS space is consistently more user-friendly than the desktop space. Maybe desktops can catch up. Maybe MS is working magic behi…

Fuck that. I think doing knowledge-worker things on an Android-alike, let alone an iOS-alike, would be _awful_. My workflow sometimes involves "have the pdf of the research paper with the equations in it over here, matlab open over here, emacs with some C++ code integrating with matlab in it open over here, and a terminal open over here to build the C++, all arranged so I can see each and every thing (actually emacs…

Paper doesnt have copy and paste, still there doesnt seem to be any shortage of mind bending work that people do with paper. In the absence of copy and paste your workflow would probably look a bit different - possible read things one by one in sequential order and form a complete working model before opening the editor to actually write code. Depending on what you are doing this might/might not be a good thing.

Re: WebOS will be on 'every HP PC' shipping next year, says CEO

#78

Post by neutronicus »

dman wrote: post #77
neutronicus wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuck that. I think doing knowledge-worker things on an Android-alike, let alone an iOS-alike, would be _awful_. My workflow sometimes involves "have the pdf of the research paper with the equations in it over here, matlab open over here, emacs with some C++ code integrating with matlab in it open over here, and a terminal open over here to build the C++, all arranged so I can see each and every thing (actually emacs…

Paper doesnt have copy and paste, still there doesnt seem to be any shortage of mind bending work that people do with paper. In the absence of copy and paste your workflow would probably look a bit different - possible read things one by one in sequential order and form a complete working model before opening the editor to actually write code. Depending on what you are doing this might/might not be a good thing.

Paper has a desk, which allows me to look at several pieces of it at the same time.

When doing derivations on a legal pad, I often get angry flipping between pages and wind up ripping out of all of the pages of work and arranging them on a table so that I can look at them all at the same time. If I'm working from a book, I'll xerox the pages I want so I don't have to flip back and forth.

Android/iOS lack this important characteristic of paper, but traditional desktop OSes emulate it pretty well.

I have to see equations in a pdf and code in an editor at the same time. This is non-negotiable. If I worked at a company using some iOS-alike on their desktop workstation where there was only one app on the screen at a time I would be killing a whole lot of trees printing out papers so I could look at them while I code.

Re: WebOS will be on 'every HP PC' shipping next year, says CEO

#79

Post by yardie »

dman wrote: post #55
yardie wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just like to say that some of HPs offerings are really well done. Just like Apple they can't make a decent computer As a WebOS developer I think most people don't know what they are missing. It's really a beautiful OS (far better than Android, and better in some respects to iOS) I hope it continues to improve. And now that the designer behind it as at Google (Matias Duarte), Android users will be in for a great sur…

The recently launched dm1z seems to come pretty close to being a non sucky < $500 computer.

$549 - $100 instant rebate puts it into strange category of being over or under $500 depending on how you interpret it. In this day 3GB is the bare minimum for a new laptop.

Re: WebOS will be on 'every HP PC' shipping next year, says CEO

#80

Post by JonoW »

seanb wrote: post #73
JonoW wrote: post #38

Just as Windows on a tablet sucks because it's not optimised for touch, isn't WebOS on a desktop PC going to suck when using a mouse?

The thing I'd really like to see in a portable computer is a touch-interface/mouse-interface hybrid. For example, you dock your iPad in a keyboard docking station (with mouse), and the interface morphs into standard OSX, with all the power and abilities that come along with that. Take it out of the keyboard dock, and it's an iPad again, with the finger friendly iOS touch interface (and limited to touch apps). Desktop…

This is a cool idea. I'd also like to use the "full" OS when using it as a tablet if I want to, and maybe vice versa.
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