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How Dead is WebOS?

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Re: How Dead is WebOS?

#31

Post by eekfuh »

davej wrote: post #25
eekfuh wrote: post #5

I've developed a fairly well known (to the webos community) application. I had a top 10 app in Palm's million dollar contest. I've been on their print and web promotional tools and featured several times in their app catalog... yet I feel and felt that HP and Palm both have dropped the ball when it has come to developing for WebOS. They have terrible, poorly documented API's. I think its all fine and dandy that they…

I know absolutely zero about WebOS development so this is probably a very naive question. Isn't Node.JS available to WebOS, couldn't you use something like http.request()? http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.4.7/api/http.html#http.request

Node.js is only available for WebOS 2.0 (~90% of people are on older versions of WebOS).

Re: How Dead is WebOS?

#33

Post by JoelSutherland »

I had a Pre for two years, just got the Nexus S and my wife has an iPhone 4. Without question, the biggest UX differences between the platforms are:

1. General responsiveness (iPhone leads)

2. Notifications (iPhone trails dramatically)

3. Web Page as a 1st class OS object. (WebOS is the only one that does this)

This third point is NEVER discussed. With Android and iOS, you have to go to the browser and then jump to a particular tab. When multi-tasking, this forces you to do more clicks through two different mental models. In WebOS, everything is a card. When you're trying to pull ESPN back up, you seek ESPN, not 'browser'.

Given google's position on the web, I am just surprised they haven't done a better job of this. It makes sense that Apple is making webpages 2nd class citizens, they want a 30% cut.

Re: How Dead is WebOS?

#35

Post by Duff »

podperson wrote: post #22
jchrisa wrote: post #7

HP will be shipping WebOS on all its laptops and desktops. They are the #1 computer maker. You do the math.

Here's my math. It seems to me there are two possibilities: WebOS fails on the laptop and desktop (e.g. is perceived as crap/bloat-ware or simply ignored). In this case the math doesn't look good. WebOS succeeds on the laptop and desktop. This means that a whole bunch of users are willing to give up on Windows for their computing needs. Long overdue, since most people's computing needs are met by a web browser and a…

The PC business model is a zombie right now. I work at a joint that rolled out about 12,000 PCs a year, every year. Since 2008? 2,000/year... mostly laptops to folks whose jobs have become more mobile.

ALL of the good customer facing people with companies that peddle PCs in my neck of the woods have either moved on to greener pastures or are holding out for retirement.

My guess is that in 2014, those 6+ year old PCs will start failing and be replaced with tablets for about 60% of the workers. I betcha that the rest will be PCs from no-frills vendors like Asus.

Big enterprises are very conscious of costs, and the "whale" of client-computing costs is that fat Microsoft EA that just gobbles up capital. That's a big cash flow to build a business case for an alternate product.

Re: How Dead is WebOS?

#36

Post by jonah »

JoelSutherland wrote: post #33

I had a Pre for two years, just got the Nexus S and my wife has an iPhone 4. Without question, the biggest UX differences between the platforms are: 1. General responsiveness (iPhone leads) 2. Notifications (iPhone trails dramatically) 3. Web Page as a 1st class OS object. (WebOS is the only one that does this) This third point is NEVER discussed. With Android and iOS, you have to go to the browser and then jump to a…

  In WebOS, everything is a card. When you're trying to pull ESPN back up, you seek ESPN, not 'browser'.
That I like. It harkens back to the days of non-tabbed browsers on the desktop. But while the desktop is conducive to working with many tabs successfully (UX- and hardware-wise) on mobile, it makes a lot more sense to have a single level of windowing rather than the nesting a tabbed browser gives you.

Re: How Dead is WebOS?

#37

Post by mikecane »

whatusername wrote: post #17
mikecane wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know his comment sounds smug at face value, but he is correct. If you do the math in terms of sales outlets, they have an impressive footprint globally and I'd expect that to translate into impressive sales down the line. Don't forget they expect to integrate webOS into their printers and other things too.

But doesn't the same "Math" apply to Nokia/Microsoft?

It could, but what do they have to sell? Nothing yet, right? So far from the press I've read, MS can't get updates out smoothly yet. I think Palm, and now HP, take a different approach than MS. After all, HP builds its own hardware and MS does licenses.

Re: How Dead is WebOS?

#38

Post by mikecane »

podperson wrote: post #22
jchrisa wrote: post #7

HP will be shipping WebOS on all its laptops and desktops. They are the #1 computer maker. You do the math.

Here's my math. It seems to me there are two possibilities: WebOS fails on the laptop and desktop (e.g. is perceived as crap/bloat-ware or simply ignored). In this case the math doesn't look good. WebOS succeeds on the laptop and desktop. This means that a whole bunch of users are willing to give up on Windows for their computing needs. Long overdue, since most people's computing needs are met by a web browser and a…

In my reply (pushed down), this is the math I was talking about: HP claims to have 88,000 retail locations

>>>Let’s do some math with that. If every one of those stores sold only one of our products every day during one year, that’d be 365 sales times 88,000 -- or thirty-two million and one-hundred and twenty thousand. Isn’t that incredible? Just one sale per store per day for one year.

I wasn't even getting into the whole desktop thing, just how webOS could like spread big in their tablets, phones, and printers.

(BTW that quote is me writing it the way Todd Bradley should have stated it in his dull presentation.)

Re: How Dead is WebOS?

#39

Post by davej »

eekfuh wrote: post #31
davej wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know absolutely zero about WebOS development so this is probably a very naive question. Isn't Node.JS available to WebOS, couldn't you use something like http.request()? http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.4.7/api/http.html#http.request

Node.js is only available for WebOS 2.0 (~90% of people are on older versions of WebOS).

Ok, I see that the original pre and pixi don't support WebOS 2.0, that's a real pity. From what I can see the WebOS 2.0/3.0 developer ecosystem looks a lot nicer (although it's probably not practical to drop 1.0 support yet), have you tried out Enyo + Node on 2.0/3.0? Any thoughts?
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