Palm chief addresses poor TouchPad reviews, compares webOS to Apple's early Mac OS X - Page 2

He's right about the start of OS X. But it's also a fact that OS X and iOS share 85% the same source code, so by saying how much OS X has improved he is inadvertently complementing the iDevices too, and that can't be great for morale!

The free press is definitely a plus and if managed properly, could help HP a lot.

As far as comparing it to iOS when it was first released, it's a tough sell. The iOS experience was infinitely better than other market players at the time. WebOS is great but it isn't infinitely better. It does has a lot of visual polish, which is great, but the only true differentiator right now is the card based multitasking. It needs developer support as well as consumer interest. It isn't different enough to sway people from iOS right now. Does it have the potential to? Absolutely, but Apple and the rest of the competition for that matter, won't be standing still. They are trying to catch up to a mature platform (iOS and its developer tools) that is constantly improving.

The difference is OS X was version 1, this is version 3. Palm has a lot of good ideas, and if they beat Android to market back in the day they would have been the number 2 OS for sure, licensed and running on a miriad of devices. However, their version 3 product is 3 years late to market, it is slow, sluggish and big. I give Palm a lot of credit for what they are doing, but I just don't see webOS as anything other then an android skin at this point.

I am not sure it's the "you guys" that you refer to that need the reality check. Do you seriously think that Apple will be standing still in the next 3-4 years?!

Here's a thought experiment: go back 3-4 years and ask: what's happened in touch since then?

If I was on their PR team, I'd take that concept and run with it.....

You do get that WebOS is proprietary too right?

They are all proprietary, and they are all "open" to varying degrees.

WebOS is arguably the most open in that the focus is on open web-based apps. It has all of the (supposed) open-ness of Android (and more), without any of the downside.

Huh? You're saying that because you can develop using web tools it's open? For years the programming language of choice for Windows was C, did that make windows open? There's nothing intrinsically closed about a development environment that compiles to native versus one that is interpreted. Objective C is in fact completely open - the compiler Apple use is an open source fork off from GCC.

The day that HP release WebOS as open source you can say it's as open as Android, until then it's just as proprietary as Apple.

I'll the same here as I did on MacRumors:

I enjoyed seeing him working back with all my fellow NeXT colleagues but he's wrong assessing the popularity of the TouchPad to OS X.

The TouchPad is akin to a failed NeXTStation minus the technical prowess that was the NeXTStation relative to it's competition back in the day.

Jon never has been a visionary. He's a great engineer who knows how to execute the vision of others. He's also no salesman. It's not in his personality.

His need to try and be the next Steve is him overshooting his talents.

With 10.7 the move to LLVM/Clang will be complete and the code is all open source.

Even ARC has become open inside LLVM's Source Tree. Apple is changing the landscape in the FOSS world with LLVM.

10.0, Cheetah, was free and a public beta. 10.1, Puma, wasn't considered beta, but it was also free. 10.2, Jaguar, was the first version of OS X that was actually worth using as a primary system, but it wasn't free.

This is more about Palm's history than it is about the early days of OSX. I've been a palm developer for years and I see the same screw-ups they did back then, happening now.

I have zero faith in Rubenstein's ability to run it. Palm was dead in the water due to management's greed and incompetence. They screwed and abandoned their developers, got lazy, figured their Palm Treo's were the best thing since sliced bread, and flat-out did a RIM-job by sitting back and watching Apple / Android come out of nowhere and essentially shut them down.

Now comes WebOS. Admittedly a good mobile OS candidate. After the whole introduction hoopla (which I regret not buying Palm stock those first few months in 2009) and the iHaters calling it the iPhone killer, they introduce their WebOS phone that turns out to be a big turd. Flimsy quality, horrible battery life, keyboard that breaks after a few sentences. And Rubenstein's excuse? Bad timing. What a tool. Apparently, he refused to accept that he seriously ruined his one chance and once again, Palm was left on the vine to wither and die.

But wait... HP decided to hire Rubenstein's amazing ability to crash and burn, figuring he's obviously inept to run a company, maybe he could do better if he manages the tablet/WebOS unit instead.

And like dejavu all over again, he introduces the same piece of crap that is a bastard-child of the Palm Pre. Same build quality issues, and even with a few years of WebOS had to mature, it's still not ready for prime time.

I mean come-on!! I think WebOS had a better chance at competing with the iPhone in terms of OS potential, but Rubenstein just seems to be stuck in his glass office looking down at everyone and not noticing what the consumer does. He is as clueless now, as he was back then. I question his performance on the iPod. He was probably one of many people that contributed, but it wasn't his vision to get it going and make it successful.

When the Pre was announced, A friend I knew at Palm asked me to come back and develop for them. They were trying to extend an olive branch to all the developers they burned. She claimed Palm was really in a position again to be the top-dog in the mobile arena. I told her bluntly I would never contribute one iota of time to Palm ever again due to the way management ran that company. A few months after the Pre came out and got flushed down the toilet, she quit Palm quickly and told me later everything I told her that was wrong with the company has in fact remained the same. Rubenstein and his crowd of "yes men" alienated everyone that could make Palm a great company. Simple ignorance.

WebOS will be an asterisk in the history books as an OS that could have, should have, but in the end = "didn't have" what it took. So sad.

This is not an OSX story. Rubenstein is just slinging everything at the wall and hopes something sticks.

Actually the iPad has 1% of ALL WEB TRAFFIC, not 1% of the world's tablet air space, which is some feat!. Check again!

Hey - those cheap a** calculators saved many an engineer's hid back in the day. Of course that was when H and P were still running the company and HP had top of the line measuring and test equipment. The crap began when Carly Flatulence bought her way into the top job.

I can't believe he said that!

When Apple brought out OS X, there was nothing quite like it. It was either System 9, Windows 3.1 (urghh!) or command line interfaces like DOS, *NIX etc. Of course, they all gave out bad review as it is new and nothing quite like it but now, we have iOS, Android and Windows 7 with all new ways of interacting with the machine, WebOS is mediocre. Didn't he read RIM anonymous letter to the board? Don't sent out products when they are not yet ready just because you want to be a 'me too' and quarterly report is coming. Has he lost his engineering skills all the years working with Apple?

Scratch the last line. He never had.

HP will run into stiff enterprise competition from Cisco's Cius tablet, which, though based on Android, will have some Cisco original apps, most especially TelePresence.

On a side note I find it ironic that Cisco is using Android instead of its own IOS (Internet Operating System) or even a license of iOS (which could have been part of the deal with Apple to allow Apple to use the name iOS).

Cisco will be aiming this directly at the enterprise with no anticipated penetration of the consumer market.

Ah, Soli, a true nugget in today's discussion! I have no idea but I'd ask the obverse: Has Marathon Gas ever sponsored a sprint?

"Apple has followed the typical Apple sequence: (1) throw out something that’s popular and comfortable but increasingly ancient, (2) replace it with something that’s slick and modern and forward-looking and incomplete, (3) spend another year finishing it up, restoring missing pieces."

David Pogue

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/...nal-cut-pro-x/

The Peter Principle in action?

He definitely sees something in the mirror that his history has proven to be just a mirage.

How is this relevant? Are you saying the TouchPad is increaasingly ancient? Slick and Modern? HP isn't doing an OS-X or an FCP-X, they're not migrating an existing userbase over - they're trying to build a completely new one.

Love my HP-12C. Still use it after 30+(?) years. Agree about Carly. She ruined the company.

Marathon? Well said. Have you ever considered releasing it when you are closer to the finish line? If you know you are selling a half-done product, then why are you charging people full price?

There's fanboyish optimism and negativism of course. But one can also be realistic. I wish webOS and HP's Palm division well, but they've got it much worse than Mac OS X ever had. Apple bet the company on Mac OS X with everyone from the CEO to retail personnel doing everything they could to improve upon it.

A lot of people think HP gets "it". That they are going to use webOS like Apple is going to use webOS. Problem is that webOS is a not even a pimple on HPs org chart and it hasn't made them any money yet. By this time next year, the MS Windows forces with HP, the part of the company that contributes to large chunk of HP's bottom line, will have Windows 8 on ARM to play with. Those guys are going to have a gun pointed at Rubenstein's Palm division.

I don't know how long HP plans on carrying a multi-OS strategy, but it's going to come to head. HP has to commit the company to webOS to make it successful, but I really don't think they will. It's going to be a lot like IBM's OS/2 issues in the 1990s with inter-division rivalry. If webOS doesn't make any headway within a year, I think it's done.

He was referring to the transition from the "ancient" looking Palm OS 5 to the "slick and modern" webOS. webOS may have been more successful if there was more support for legacy Palm OS software, but I doubt it because the Palm OS was essentially dead by the time Jon Rubenstein came in.

Well HP did say that they wanted all of their PCs to have a version of webOS running atop Windows.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/09/w...year-says-ceo/

I'm sorry, but addressing a large email with the pronoun "Team" is just.... douchey. He's right though. No software is good at 1.0. Give them a year, they will make it fairly nice. Diminishing returns... iOS 4.0 is pretty good and it will be possible to match that within 12-18 months.

Good motivational letter. At least one executive is open with his works and knows what need to be done. However, I don't think WebOS will survive long because HP will look at the numbers and they will not be as patient as Rubinstein.

I'm a big fan of WebOS particularly when compared to Android.

I'm not sure who you're replying to when you said "I thought it was funny when someone said they have OS 9 to fall back on," so forgive me if I'm not interpreting your thoughts 100% correctly.

Regardless, in response to your comment, "How is a quite old legacy OS like OS 9 a fall back plan?" OS 9 wasn't so much of a back up plan, *but a fully functional platform that was 99% compatible with OS X*. For that reason, comparing the current version of WebOS to Mac OS X 10.0 is rather disingenuous. Maybe the current state of WebOS itself is comparable to Mac OS X 10.0, but the state of the software ecosystem is night and day!

Sure, there are some older phone-based WebOS apps that work on the TouchPad, but as far as I can tell, the compatibility layer is pretty janky. (Please correct me if I'm wrong. I haven't actually used a TouchPad).

That said, I actually really want WebOS to succeed! I think iOS is great, but it's not perfect, and I think it would be wonderful for there to be a legitimate alternative. But I'm not an Apple apologist, nor am I an HP apologist. If HP's shit stinks, then I'm not gonna pretend it smells like roses.

No, I'm pretty sure the beta was a separate thing. I remember buying it myself. I wonder if I still have that disk laying around somewhere. That would be kind of awesome. XD

If they're only expecting to get the last few holdouts on Palm OS to move across then I guess that applies - if they expect to pick up significant new business then they don't want to claim this to be like the OS-X transition - because it took near on a decade for Mac to really break out of its core market and it was the iPod that did it, and perhaps the MS bungling of Vista - the modern & slick OS-X was necessary but not sufficient. Oh and the transition to Intel helped because it gave a huge performance bump, WebOS doesn't have the option of moving to faster hardware - it's already on the fastest available without sacrificing battery life, and it apparently still feels slow.



(Graph from Low End Mac)

If Rubenstein is right then they're still going to need a miracle, maybe three.

That's not totally true. MacOS X 10.0 was preceded by NeXTSTEP and MacOS X Server 1.0, so MacOS X 10.0 wasn't exactly a "version 1.0" product either.

Exactly! Mac OSX was unique and compelling that it survived the birthing pains.

Web OS has stiff competition in the iPad and iOS. Indeed, if anything it's behind! You don't have time for excuses - if you want to pass Apple, you have to do it now - not some distant point in the future.

Because Apple isn't stopping either!

Heck, the filename for iPhoto's icon is still "NSApplicationIcon".

Apple could get away with this because they were first. HP isn't. That's the point - not that companies have growing pains or that "stuff happens" - the point is HP has lost the luxury of time and has to produce, or rightly take their lumps.

That's the way it works. HP isn't competing against iOS 1 or the iPad 1...

Has Bungie ever sponsored a Marathon? (ha...... ha....... get....... it........? ahhhhh.......)

People - most people anyway - aren't going to buy on potential. At some point real artists ship


Hope 'aint gonna cut it either. They will either step up and at least meet the iPad, or they won't succeed. He can make all the "right" points in the world, but great philosophical arguments won't sell tablets.

Oh, man, I want to work at 1 Geostationary Tower! lol that sounds awesome