You know what's lacking from this list? A killer feature that both Android or iOS lacks. And that doesn't just have to be software, it can be the backing of other high profile manufacturers or a super low price point. The problem is that when you don't have market share you have to have bells and whistles the get geeks excited. I love HP as a company, and they're great as making stuff — but making an operating system is a different ball game of sorts.
Why Geeks Should Love HP WebOS
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Re: Why Geeks Should Love HP WebOS
#72Are you stuck with the hp app store or can you go to places like apptown?
Re: Why Geeks Should Love HP WebOS
#73If HP made an iPod Touch competitor, I would buy one in a heartbeat. I don't want to buy another phone, but I'd love to have a WebOS device to play with.
Agreed - been saying for years that Palm screwed themselves over by trying to get in to the phone market with the Pre. They should have gone after reinventing the "PDA" market which they'd invented years earlier. Something like ipod touch with webOS 2 years ago would have, imo, allowed Palm to be a much different beast today.
Re: Why Geeks Should Love HP WebOS
#74You know what's lacking from this list? A killer feature that both Android or iOS lacks. And that doesn't just have to be software, it can be the backing of other high profile manufacturers or a super low price point. The problem is that when you don't have market share you have to have bells and whistles the get geeks excited. I love HP as a company, and they're great as making stuff — but making an operating system…
Good point... if I was writing this again, I'd mention the Synergy system that ties in data sources from email, contacts, and calendar sites online into the core webOS PIM apps, giving you a unified view of everything. I didn't list it because it's a bit hard to build on, but I feel like it's the stand out feature.
Oh, and really nice multitasking. Effortless app management... but those are more user concerns.
Re: Why Geeks Should Love HP WebOS
#75Are you stuck with the hp app store or can you go to places like apptown?
For purchasing apps, you use the HP App Catalog, but you can easily sideload applications using the developer tools, and that can install alternative catalogs like PreWare.
Re: Why Geeks Should Love HP WebOS
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, I hadn't seen Ares before. An in-browser SDK. Sweet. Honestly, WebOS itself is way better than android or iOS, it's just that Palm sucked at marketing it, the Pre was only available on Sprint, they didn't attract many app developers, and they only sold 2 WebOS phones. I hope it's not too late for HP to fix it. Between the gestures, notifications, card-based multitasking, and JS/CSS/HTML apps I'm in heaven.
Not only can you design and code your app from the browser, you have full debugging support in the browser that can remote debug on a physical device that's plugged in to the computer. I love iOS and its SDK, but Ares sure beats 4 GB Xcode updates.
Wow. I will definitely be making a WebOS app now. It's really too bad Palm didn't think of Ares. It could have definitely changed the game.
Re: Why Geeks Should Love HP WebOS
#77I think WebOS is great. But all the Palm devices are sliders which kinda sucks. I wish they'd come up with something comparable with Nexus S or iPhone 4. A simple, but cool nice little piece of smartphone. But, that's just me.
The Palm Pixi is not a slider, and I love it.
Re: Why Geeks Should Love HP WebOS
#78I love it simply because its the best SSH experience of all of the smartphones. One click gets me the phones real terminal and then "ssh -l me whereever.com". No bogus setup screens, with each server requiring a 5 minute fill in the blank session to connect to, no menus full of special keys to transmit (most covered with the orange key), just pure .ssh/id_dsa public key in my home-dir win . Its 10x easier than the be…
Connectbot is pretty excellent for Android, I'd have to add.
I agree, and it's open source too. In fact I am currently working on getting it to work well with the full keyboard on my new Android tablet/netbook.
Re: Why Geeks Should Love HP WebOS
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not only can you design and code your app from the browser, you have full debugging support in the browser that can remote debug on a physical device that's plugged in to the computer. I love iOS and its SDK, but Ares sure beats 4 GB Xcode updates.
Wow. I will definitely be making a WebOS app now. It's really too bad Palm didn't think of Ares. It could have definitely changed the game.
Actually, Ares has been available for over a year now -- the technology team behind it has been building our new Enyo framework for websOS 3.0.
Re: Why Geeks Should Love HP WebOS
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of my main issues with WebOS from day one has been the lack of what I would regard as decent hardware. Another issue in the past, which I hope has much improved since is the developer outreach which really sucked when I tried to engage. This was pre-HP acquisition. The fact that @unwiredben is active in this discussion is a good sign.
The Pre actually had decent hardware except for being light on mem. The OMAP chip was particularly overclock friendly and once overclocked along with some additional tweaks was nice and fast. The problem was the earlier webOS versions had no GPU acceleration at all and ended seeming sluggish sometimes.
It needs a bigger form factor in slicker package - CPU/GPU matter but not as much as form factor for the Pre atm. Having the tiny Pre screen does little justice to webOS.
If they could get a SGS2 or Atrix type device out with GPU accelerated webOS UI and may be ship Android compatibility until webOS apps catch up - it would become a really credible player.