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> WebOS—true multitasking when iOS and Android couldn't handle it Am I missing something?
3rd party apps couldn't do anything in the background until iOS 4, and it's always been a bit limited. I think he's wrong about Android, although AFAIK Palm had a nicer task switching UI at first.
> WebOS—true multitasking when iOS and Android couldn't handle it Am I missing something?
I must be missing the same, because I had a Palm back in the day, and the OS was IMHO absolute crapware
I actually own a discount touchpad. It was snappy as hell, promised to at some point have the Android app store, and could easily be jail broken by design. The software ecosystem was not even bad - my basic needs were all met.
The UI was slick feeling, like an Apple product, but the exterior finish was plasticy and more like an Android device. Battery life was incredible compared to Android devices of the time.
All in all, I really liked it. What might have been!
> WebOS—true multitasking when iOS and Android couldn't handle it Am I missing something?
I must be missing the same, because I had a Palm back in the day, and the OS was IMHO absolute crapware
If 1.2 billion dollars in valuation was destroyed in 49 days because the CTO wasn't there, there's something to be said about the CTO's inability to delegate and ensure they have a team that supports their decisions and vision and can carry on without them. "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
The absolute lack of vision in post millennium HP leadership is so toxic to innovation. It's a good case study in the pointlessness of obsessing over tech company financials.
I wonder how many companies had this play out? IBM is another famous example of internal rot of engineering excellence in the 2000s as the business shell was gives fresh coats of paint and varnish.
We have AI. WE HAVE AI. Why aren't you using our AI?
What if we replaced our stagnating search with AI? Would you use it then? Please? It's AI, which is the future! We're so focused on AI we fired everybody that wasn't working on AI.
AI.
> WebOS—true multitasking when iOS and Android couldn't handle it Am I missing something?
On iOS and Android at the time, all apps were full-screen. When you switched to another app, the previous app suspended execution entirely. The OS would keep the memory footprint of the app warm in RAM if possible, but back then RAM was in short enough supply that more often than not the memory state of the process was dumped to disk instead.
There were lots of clever UX hacks to make this feel seamless - when an app was suspended it was also screenshotted, and the screenshot would be displayed to the user upon switching back, until the actual app could be restored and resume running.
But the app executable was totally suspended during this time.
Whereas on WebOS the UX was oriented around showing multiple "Cards"[1] at the same time, but each one represented a live running process that was able to interact to the user and render new UI.
This was a pretty big deal at the time.
Since then both iOS and Android gained a lot more capability and nuance around multitasking.
[1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/4508/hp-touchpad-review/2
While it's less clear cut now, back when HP acquired WebOS, they would've had to put in a lot of work to make WebOS competitive, and enable WebOS apps to work as well as iOS or Android apps. HP had the resources.
We don't have a third or fourth mobile platform mainly because of tragically poor leadership at HP and Nokia. Both were almost killed by CEOs who thought they were the corporate savior.
> WebOS—true multitasking when iOS and Android couldn't handle it Am I missing something?
If 1.2 billion dollars in valuation was destroyed in 49 days because the CTO wasn't there, there's something to be said about the CTO's inability to delegate and ensure they have a team that supports their decisions and vision and can carry on without them. "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
The new CEO was brought in to chart the path forward not dwell on the past, and clearly in his eyes the Palm acquisition was a sunk cost. The Touchpad disaster, combined with the CTO completely shirking responsibility for it (as you can tell from this article), probably showed him the writing on the wall. WebOS was neat for sure but HP was never in a position to compete with Apple. More mobile device launches would s…