HTC eyeing webOS purchase to compete with Apple's iOS - Page 2

I'd still like RiM to buy it. QNX/AIR doesn't seem to be working out so well for them

http://gizmodo.com/5839317/qnx-black...lendar-noooooo

How can Google know my actual present location if I don't search? And don't let me start on where did they try to get my contacts. Advertising is nothing without data and search data alone is so 5 years ago.

I think you will find that the HP touchpad was more than capable hardware wise 1.2ghz dual core CPU /w 1gb ram and that it was WebOS that was borked. In fact webos has been borked from its very inception and has had wave after wave of broken promises of fixes and updates. Ask any Pre owner.

can't you see humour? why so much anger and attacks?

More and more it looks like Android is just a bandaid to patch the iPhone created wound until the phone makers can find a real answer. Not exactly a product I would want to hitch my wagon too. "This is a great OS! At least until we can find something that actually works and doesn't cost us so much..."

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I can't imagine that Apple could ever buy WebOS. The DOJ would be all over them and stop the purchase on antitrust grounds.


HTC is big enough to do both. And, arguably, having a backup gives them leverage that they wouldn't otherwise have.


There's a flipside to that, though. There will be something like a million HP TouchPads out there. If HTC were to buy WebOS and continue to support the Touchpad, that's a sizable starting point for developers. And the fact that they're going for $200+ on eBay for the base model suggests that there is consumer interest. I suspect that there is no other tablet (other than the iPad, of course) with a greater installed base-which should make developers happy.

Give me one reason I'd love to have my videos playing in the background or any other 'feature' of "real" multitasking.

Unlike those two, HTC actually produces technically competent phones.

I want Real Racing HD -and- Infinity Blade running in the background while I have my iPod playing, CinexPplayer playing AVIs while Videos plays both Movies and iTunes U videos constnatly without any way to suspend anything. That would be true multitasking and truly awesome¡

OH! I got it. Have the app More Cowbell! running in the background and accepting taps, so every time you touch the screen, it does the cowbell *tink!*.

Okay, now I want "true" multitasking.

Google wants a lot more then advertising space. They data mine. A lot of personal information is stored at Google from Android users.

No. If you can't download porno from the torrents while playing a game while watching a video while on the phone while emailing your boss about why you're not at work, then why have a phone? You might as well get a laptop or something.

I think if we just substitute "Multitasking" with "ADHD Therapy", everyone will get along. Those that clamor for "true" multitasking (whatever that is on a mobile device), has supported every nonIOS platform that has essentially failed, or is geared towards the minority of consumers that essentially provides zero revenue.

If HTC, Samsung, LG, and Sony (and other major Android manufacturers) were smart, they whould get together and buy WebOS and/or all Palm patents at a bargain basement price from HP. Then, even if they don't use WebOS, they will all have more than enough patents to prevent Apple and Microsoft from suing them. Having an alternative OS will just be a bonus.

This post did not get nearly enough credit for what it is. Which is "the most epic thing I've ever read on this forum."

Thank you.

Don't forget... I want it to do all that PLUS have it running Seti@home in the background! And then afterwards, I want to demand that Apple have an iPhone with a removable battery because it has such terrible battery life for some unknown reason.

This is important stuff!

LOL SETI@Home. Touché.

The cost of purchasing webOS vs. the cost of licensing Android: no contest, Android wins (assuming patent issues are non-existent for sake of argument), because you only have to sign a deal with the devil, who is, you know "not evil" or something, and as long as you don't mind being second fiddle to Motorola, a Google Company. Android is "free" right? Buying webOS would cost a lot up front, plus you become responsible for its maintenance and to keep it competitive for the foreseeable future, so add those costs in.

Secondly, I don't buy the argument that if HTC left Android, the number of activations would drop. Google would just count every incompatible Chinese fork to keep their numbers high.

That's not what happened when they announced FCP X. So much for your "sheeple theory."

I'd like to see WebOS live on as it does have potential. Unfortunately WebOS 3 has a long way to go. In the short time I've been using it on my TP I was frustrated by some of the performance I was seeing. Even OC it and installing quite a few performance patches I found it to be running much slower than it should on that hardware. What I've learned that the "multi-tasking" was toned down quite a bit with 3.02 to fix some performance issues. Also have learned that their JavaScript implementation is single threaded, which explains the SunSpider score and rendering sites that use a lot of JavaScript of about twice as long as that of the iPad 2. See this HP/Palm Developer thread for more detail.

Anyway, I don't think Multitasking is a big deal anyway. I loved BlackBerry's commercial as it looked cool - but why do I need to have Thor, a racing game, a Jennifer Lopez video and a skiing video running on a tablet all "at the same time"?

It's just too late. WebOS is dead. Any company that tries to build a client computing platform on top of WebOS will fail.

If HTC really does this then HTC is done. Not because buying WebOS in and of itself would kill HTC, but because the decision is an indicator of stupidity, and a company run by such stupid people cannot survive in the long run (unless it's Microsoft).

Yes, you can consider WebOS to be the OS of the future...

...and it always will be!

It would seem to me that WebOS is the 21st Century Amiga. Beautiful, possibly ahead of its time, but ultimately doomed.

I don't believe people still use the multitasking thing...since iOS 4 Apple has implemented a good enough version of multitasking for mobile devices.

Reminds me of when Atheists (a group I belong to) use the stupid argument "Religion is responsible for ALL the wars in the world." when it is clearly not.

But yea. All that was meant by multitasking was background realtime updates, streaming audio, etc....all that has been dealt with in a rather intelligent (See no duh) way that saves battery life.

Android has similar means (and has had for a while) but a lot of devs don't implement them thus leading to a significant battery drain from some apps with lazy devs.


in summation...the multitasking argument is retarded.


Also as someone said, that blackberry playbook commercial made no sense to me either...if I leave a video to check my email, or a random youtube video I expect to go back to it and start off exactly where I left...stupid commercial is stupid.

Ummm... let's see if we can gain a "last-to-market" feature-set advantage:

+ Fast Dual-Core CPU GPU
+1 GB RAM
+ Real-Mulitasking
+ HDMI
+ Wicked Slow UEX
+ Dual CEO Global Posturing
+ Voice-Activated Blather
+ Mumbo-Jumbo Marketing
+ Serendipitous Support System (even we didn't know we knew that)
+ Invisible Infrastructure
+ Ephemeral Ecosystem
+ Flash and the Full Web Experience



- EMail
- Calendar



? Messaging
? Voice Calls

Who says we don't know how to set priorities?


... in the singing voice of Dandy Don: "Turn out the lights... The party's over..."

Developers.....developers......developers
How many os's will be supported and viable
Maybe 2-3
It's a reasonable strategy for apple to ALLOW
Webos to be purchased since it drains android
And fragments the market

Can't blame HTC really.... Google effectively told them and the other android headset makers to take a hike by buying. Oto. You know they will give moto the upper hand and set it to succeed.

As far as webOS being "better" at this and that, as others said, multitasking on mobile is a tad odd and limited in what it can actually offer....but even if we say it's really superior technically for arguments sake, the technology Cemetary is full of seemingly superior but unpopular technologies. Don't know how many remember OS/2, BeOS, etc.... It's not that they even went through life cycle like say the Amiga or Atari... They never caught on despite their perceived superiority.

. . . and from iPhone users.

That's why I thought this move would make sense for HTC.

Did they do that? If so it was with your permission, since Google requires Opt-in for gathering personal data.

As for where Apple gets your location, even if you don't "search":

In its letter to Congress last year, Apple said that it only collects location data from people who use apps that require location. It doesn't specify how often a person must use the app for intermittent collection to occur.
Apple also said in the letter that it collects Wi-Fi and GPS information when the phone is searching for a cellular connection. Apple said the data it transmits about location aren't associated with a unique device identifier, except for data related to its mobile advertising network
Apple gathers the data to help build a "database with known location information," the letter says. "This information is batched and then encrypted and transmitted to Apple over a Wi-Fi Internet connection every twelve hours (or later if the device does not have Wi-Fi Internet access at that time)," the company wrote in the July letter to Congress.


Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...#ixzz1XmBpMakT

Actually, I can give you a pretty good reason for the current iPad -- and even more so for the next one. It's rather specialized, but here goes:

There already is a VideoCam with WiFi that transmits the image to an iPad during live capture.

As the video is shot, an assistant logs, evaluates and classifies various shots to prepare them for editing. This very tedious and time-consuming job is usually done in the studio and delays the actual editing process by several hours. With "live logging" the delay is virtually eliminated.

Sony launch XMPilot an iPad app that lets you log shots as you shoot for direct ingest into Final Cut Pro bins


I believe the iPad with A5 CPU/GPU/RAM may be robust enough to background transcode the shots into something lightweight like ProRes Proxy. During pauses in the filming they could begin transmission of these proxy clips to the studio.

Or, 2 iPads could be used -- one for logging and another for transcoding.

As the proxy clips arrive, the editor can ingest them into FCPX and and immediately start editing the proxy media and very quickly get to a rough or first cut. Later, as the full-quality media arrives, it is immediately ingested and replaces the proxy media, while preserving the edits already applied.

I can see this being used for news, sports, live events -- where turn-around time is critical. No need to be concerned about battery, because the electrical equipment required by the cameras is more than enough to keep the iPads charged.

You might be watching video of that event you just attended on the iPads in your car -- before you leave the parking lot!

Wait, what you're saying is "Apple should allow competitive copying so that its competitors will start innovating." It doesn't make sense. I don't understand how some people don't get that Apple is trying to thwart copying, not innovation. Companies that try to steer clear of copying end up creating something new, i.e. they innovate. Since the iPhone and iPad, almost every competing product that has come along looks just like an iPhone or an iPad. I don't get how that fosters innovation. It's the opposite.

Everyone wants to get in on the profit pie that Apple has created, and they want to get in fast. So they make calculated decisions to imitate almost everything that Apple does. It's the fastest way to snatch their piece of pie. But don't delude yourself. This scenario is not inspiring more innovation. When Apple slaps their hands away from the pie, then we'll see some innovation. I'm not convinced that Apple has come up with some sort of ultimate, absolute design that is so perfect that no other competing product could ever compare or surpass it. Once Apple's competitors start thinking outside the imitation box, one of them may just create the next big thing.

I've read many times from people who own both iOS devices and WebOS devices that WebOS is really good and in some ways better than iOS. So why do so many people keep saying that WebOS is a failure as an OS? Surely it failed due to other corporate support reasons but not due to being a bad OS. It isn't as good as iOS in some ways but isn't that expected? There will only be one best OS. So what if WebOS is number two.

We know that Android is fragmenting, There are versions of Linux that work on some tablet devices but none of them are perfect. WebOS could become a great OS in position number two. If it were owned by one company it wouldn't become fragmented and would eventually be a strong competitor. Who knows, one day it might overtake iOS if HTC or somebody will build great hardware to run it.

Maybe some of the WebOSs problems were from hardware limitations. Somewhere there is a hacker who has put it on an iPad to see how it works. It probably ran better than on the HP hardware.

Please don't do it. There is no space for another player and webOS has no developers left. Just let it die off so we can start something new.

webOS multitasking is much better because of the card interface. iOS's multitasking UI sucks. I don't care nearly as much about what's allowed to run in the background.


webOS's notifications are much better than in any version of iOS.

I think this is a ruse. Given that Google just bought up part of Motorola, I'm thinking some of Google's partners might be feeling a little threatened or uncertain at the moment. It would make good sense to talk about bailing on Android in public and becoming a competitor. Seems like a little corporate saber rattling to me.

I wish it were true however. I'd like the smartphone market not follow the same path as the PC industry, where you had basically one OS and many hardware makers, and anyone not playing into that scheme was relegated to niche status. While that arrangement looks like lots of competition, it really isn't nor does it function like a competitive market (as we all saw in the 90s when every company in the tech landscape was more or less a division of Microsoft.) It would be interesting to see true competition with lots of different companies, each with their own hardware line and OS.

I agree having tiles is better for switching between apps, however for me the tabbed safari is much better and faster for switching between web pages.

I disagree with your statement about notifications. Again I do like that there is a visable queue that you have notifications in webos, but ios5 gives me much more detail including showing the header from the recent messages in multiple accounts rather than just showing that I have one message in one account, 2 in another and 5 in the third and just the subject of the first one in each account. It also does a better job at showing upcoming events in calendar and even alerts from other applications.

I think he's speaking pre-iOS 5 (the OS that's on the market right now) as of iOS 5 the notifications seem (from what I've seen) to improve greatly upon what Android has had in place.

Can't really go wrong there.