That is assuming the PlayBook is not next on Apple's hit list. After all it does very much look like a small iPad.
Unless RIM does some form of major overhaul to the Playbook it will die a quick death all on its own (even with the overhaul I don't give it much hope).
That is assuming the PlayBook is not next on Apple's hit list. After all it does very much look like a small iPad.
Apple does seem to have helped itself to the all you can sue buffet - but the Playbook looks nothing like the iPad to me (unless the colour black is patentable, of course ), has a completely original OS with a vastly different GUI and touch sensitive bezel + screen, therefore having a completely different form of navigation and interruption for many aspects of the system.
I love Apple and all that jazz, but if Apple sue RIM for patent infringement for trade dress or some kind of touch interface patent, I will find Mr Jobs and pimp slap him personally.
Thanks for that, Daekwan (I won't retype the long post, but look for it above, worth reading). I had the same experience about 10 years before and never looked back. I still use a Windows PC, but solely for running games.
Some forum posts seems to lament the failure of HP webOS to provide competition for Apple, but really, if Apple was driven solely by competition, they'd never have made the iPad. Everyone seems to take its success for granted, but remember just 18 months ago, opinion on the success of the iPad was divided between those that were ready to preorder one, and those who laughed at it's name and thought Apple would fail spectacularly. Now everyone is scrambling to build a tablet, down to calling it a "pad" (in the case of HP). Seriously, it's Apple that's providing competition in the industry, not the other way around. Companies like HP only know how follow and make it cheaper.
Wonder how long it'll take them to move the HP display out of the way to make room for more of the Samsung Galaxy, Motorola Xoom, Toshiba Thrive and cheap Vizio tablets no one is buying either.
There's plenty of room in the Toilet Paper Aisle.
My thought on DOA tablet's: Make it $50 and not-that-hard to get kids-movies on it, and it can come along for long car rides. It doesn't need a touch-screen or even a fancy OS. A DVD-player level physical push-button O/S would be enough.
No one can compete with iOS, so don't. Go for the movie-player market:
16GB, 7"-9" old-tech screen, 3 hour battery-life, physical-button interface: $50. It doesn't have to be *that* thin, or *that* light, and no touchscreen.
Why doesn't one of these big guys go all-in on selling a 1-trick-pony movie player cheap for the car?
Portable DVD players still creep over $100 on Amazon. Really? And I have to bring the discs and battery life is awful?
A $50 movie playing tablet is worth having even if you have 2 iPhones, an iPad, and an iPod Touch. The youngest child in the car gets the cheap tablet. End of story.
ANYTHING over $50 for a DOA tablet and one should hold out for ANY iOS device. Used iPod Touch 2nd generation for $75 beats any $99 tablet, given the iOS ecosystem.
Am I crazy? Maybe the $50 is too low for 16GB, 7"-9" crapscreen ANYthing, even with endless engineering shortcuts.
I'm thinking of buying one. You guys think it will sell for a lot in a few years? As a collector item I mean.
There are 2 ways a piece of technology works for collectors. 1.) It had some very fancy technology that pushed the bounds of technology as we know it and will be secretly mentioned 5 years from now. 2.) Limited production run, scarce, not 250,000 made 3.) it was the undoing of a giant company, thought to not be capable of failing.
I think if anything this baby is close to number 3, but it wont dump HP yet. So i highly doubt it would work as an electronic collectors item.
Statements like this prove you know nothing about Apple.
And it shows you know nothing about history. That doesn't surprise me as most of the commenters on here are a bunch of kids and blinkered Apple fanboys with no appreciation of the real world. Competition leads to innovation as opponents strive to stay one step ahead of each other. Without competition, bloat will set in, people will take their foot off the pedal. That's just human nature.
Consumers just don't give a damn about it. They didn't care when Palm had it. They didn't care when HP had it. It's too late to get Joe Average to care about it when the iPad is setting the bar and getting all the attention.
Let's stop trying to resurrect failed operating systems. WebOS is good for ripping a few ideas from. That's about it, that's all it's good for: parts.
I hate to be contrarian, and I really have no love for Palm, webOS, Rubenstein, or HP, but in the back of my mind, there was another company that sold vertically integrated hardware/software system, failed spectacularly, spun off their hardware business, hung on to their operating system software attempting to get it onto other hardware, before finally coming home when Apple bought NeXT. And at its new adopted home, the software flourished. But it wasn't immediately obvious back in 1996 that the NeXT purchase would save Apple, as Apple was at it's lowest, weakest point back then (it's stock price hit below $10). Plus, the same "spun-off their hardware business" story could also apply to BeOS, which disappeared into history. Which one will be the webOS story?
I'd asked in another thread why Sony, Nokia or Nintendo couldn't pick up webOS and marry it to some interesting hardware, perhaps with an original twist instead of trying to slavishly copy the iPhone / iPad formula. All of the companies I listed have a history of success with proprietary platforms, and each have products that are vertically integrated. And each is down in the dumps because they're in need of something modern. Personally, I think Nokia could take webOS and make it work.
it can be accurately said that "the iPad 2 killed the TouchPad." the TouchPad was obviously designed to match the original iPad's hardware. [...]
Agree. HP, like so many other would-be iPad cloners, can only react to models Apple has already shipped. They'll always be playing catch-up, always a year (or more) behind. Meanwhile, Apple is aggressively developing iPad. They've learned that complacency is a killer and they're moving ahead.
On the other hand, Palm never learned that lesson. They pioneered the PDA market, single-handedly created the "stylus era" of portable computing, and were the undisputed leader for many years. But then things started unraveling. The founders quit and formed Handspring. The company was bought by 3Com and split into hardware and software companies. The hardware division (palmOne) hedged its bets by shipping Windows Mobile versions of their products. The hardware branch then merged back together with Handspring, then merged back with the software company again.
Meanwhile, PalmOS stagnated. Palm OS 5.0 was first released in 2002, and only received minor updates from then up until the HP acquisition. (Palm OS 6.0 was released but failed to generate any interest from potential licensees.) The software company spun off from Palm (palmSource) sold Palm OS to ACCESS, then had to buy the right to modify Palm OS back from ACCESS without paying penalties. I could go on...
All of this wasteful legal maneuvering cost Palm dearly. Engineers quit, products weren't updated, profits plummeted, the stock value tanked, and Palm lost mindshare to its competitors. This all cost Palm years of development time, Palm OS began to show its age, and competition ramped up. Then iPhone was announced and the smartphone world changed forever.
In spring 2007, Jeff Hawkins, the founder of the original Palm Inc., announced a new concept in Palm hardware: Foleo. And it was cancelled three months later. Just before the netbook era. Foleo would have been one of the pioneers, it not *the* pioneer, of the netbook category if it had been produced. Didn't happen.
Palm's history since around the turn of the century has been full of "woulda, shoulda, coulda." It's a warning from the past.
I hate to be contrarian, and I really have no love for Palm, webOS, Rubenstein, or HP, but in the back of my mind, there was another company that sold vertically integrated hardware/software system, failed spectacularly, spun off their hardware business, hung on to their operating system software attempting to get it onto other hardware, before finally coming home when Apple bought NeXT. And at its new adopted home, the software flourished. But it wasn't immediately obvious back in 1996 that the NeXT purchase would save Apple, as Apple was at it's lowest, weakest point back then (it's stock price hit below $10). Plus, the same "spun-off their hardware business" story could also apply to BeOS, which disappeared into history. Which one will be the webOS story?
I'd asked in another thread why Sony, Nokia or Nintendo couldn't pick up webOS and marry it to some interesting hardware, perhaps with an original twist instead of trying to slavishly copy the iPhone / iPad formula. All of the companies I listed have a history of success with proprietary platforms, and each have products that are vertically integrated. And each is down in the dumps because they're in need of something modern. Personally, I think Nokia could take webOS and make it work.
I hate to be contrarian, and I really have no love for Palm, webOS, Rubenstein, or HP, but in the back of my mind, there was another company that sold vertically integrated hardware/software system, failed spectacularly, spun off their hardware business, hung on to their operating system software attempting to get it onto other hardware, before finally coming home when Apple bought NeXT. And at its new adopted home, the software flourished. But it wasn't immediately obvious back in 1996 that the NeXT purchase would save Apple, as Apple was at it's lowest, weakest point back then (it's stock price hit below $10). Plus, the same "spun-off their hardware business" story could also apply to BeOS, which disappeared into history. Which one will be the webOS story?
I'd asked in another thread why Sony, Nokia or Nintendo couldn't pick up webOS and marry it to some interesting hardware, perhaps with an original twist instead of trying to slavishly copy the iPhone / iPad formula. All of the companies I listed have a history of success with proprietary platforms, and each have products that are vertically integrated. And each is down in the dumps because they're in need of something modern. Personally, I think Nokia could take webOS and make it work.
The one thing that you fail to mention is WHY Apple picked NeXT. Because it came with Steve Jobs. Plus even though Steve had a lot of anger toward how Apple treated him, he still wanted to come back to Apple. Apple was one of his children that was dying and he couldn't bare to watch and do nothing.
WebOS has no champion like that, and unfortunately it will probably go the same way as Be did.
HP would be smart to take advantage of Google buying Motorola. License WebOS to companies who don't want to compete with Google on hardware.
I also think HP really bungled the roll out of its products. It should have put WebOS as an alternative bootable OS on its computers. That would have gotten people used to it, and developers time to build applications for it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quadra 610
WebOS is done. Game over.
Consumers just don't give a damn about it. They didn't care when Palm had it. They didn't care when HP had it. It's too late to get Joe Average to care about it when the iPad is setting the bar and getting all the attention.
Let's stop trying to resurrect failed operating systems. WebOS is good for ripping a few ideas from. That's about it, that's all it's good for: parts.
I was surprised by this news. Of all the iPad competitors out there, HP seemed to have the most promise with WebOS.
If I saw one on sale for ultra cheap I'd probably pick one up, if only to Netflix.
Ultimately I think people are starting to recognize that you don't get the same experience and marriage of hardware/software that you get with iOS and Apple products. They can clone it all they want, but until they bring something new to the table they'll just be cheap (or not cheap) clones.
HP seems to be a classic example of what happens when the founders leave and the company moves into the stage of revolving door CEOs. Chasing short-term profits, wrangling of deals, mergers, and acquisitions, shuffling the org charts, and finally the CEO pulls their golden parachute and heads off to the next company.
It takes a lot of dedication to keep a corporation focused on producing good products for a good price, and keep the R&D pipe filled with future profitable products.
Once Steve J is gone, I hope Apple has a successor from the inside ready to take over to maintain Apple's personality, and I hope they can keep promoting from within for a long time. Once you pull in a mercenary CEO, it's over.
The one thing that you fail to mention is WHY Apple picked NeXT. Because it came with Steve Jobs. Plus even though Steve had a lot of anger toward how Apple treated him, he still wanted to come back to Apple. Apple was one of his children that was dying and he couldn't bare to watch and do nothing.
WebOS has no champion like that, and unfortunately it will probably go the same way as Be did.
I recall that Steve didn't pitch NeXT to Apple; instead someone at Apple knew someone at NeXT and called them up one day, one thing lead to another. Apple was considering both NeXT and BeOS at the time, and I recall that NeXT was chosen because it was far more mature and complete an operating system at the time compared to BeOS, particularly in their TCP/IP (networking) stack. And yes, Jean-Louis Gassee was Be's evangelist and champion, and was personally connected to many in the Apple community, having been John Sculley's number 2 man for many years.
Not confused at all. The Philippines is an extremely poor country, with over 25% of its population living on less than US$1.25 per day. The cities are horrendously overpopulated, and there are millions of families with handfuls of children living in poverty, having more, and more, and more children.
And Pac-man wants to ban condoms and all birth control in the country.
Asshole extraordinaire.
Wrong....you are definitely confused. The Philippines in not an extremely poor country. Haiti is an extremely poor country, with over 80% of the population in poverty. 25% may be in poverty, but the population is over 100 million people. I've been there many times and seen lots of developments and efforts to improve. So Manny wants to ban condoms and birth control, soooo what! He's Catholic and it's his belief. I don't agree with him, but it's his opinion. You probably didn't know he did lose an election, so he doesn't have all influence over all Filipinos. You probably don't know he is helping build a hospital for his home province. Using words like 'extremely, asshole and horrendously' show your ignorance and have no clue of the whole picture.
I hate to be contrarian, and I really have no love for Palm, webOS, Rubenstein, or HP, but in the back of my mind, there was another company that sold vertically integrated hardware/software system, failed spectacularly, spun off their hardware business, hung on to their operating system software attempting to get it onto other hardware, before finally coming home when Apple bought NeXT. And at its new adopted home, the software flourished. But it wasn't immediately obvious back in 1996 that the NeXT purchase would save Apple, as Apple was at it's lowest, weakest point back then (it's stock price hit below $10). Plus, the same "spun-off their hardware business" story could also apply to BeOS, which disappeared into history. Which one will be the webOS story?
I'd asked in another thread why Sony, Nokia or Nintendo couldn't pick up webOS and marry it to some interesting hardware, perhaps with an original twist instead of trying to slavishly copy the iPhone / iPad formula. All of the companies I listed have a history of success with proprietary platforms, and each have products that are vertically integrated. And each is down in the dumps because they're in need of something modern. Personally, I think Nokia could take webOS and make it work.
Walked into my local Costco this afternoon, past the big display of HP TouchPads in blister packs near the front door. It was a very full display of actual units, not the cardboard pictures you exchange at the checkout for the real thing. I guess Costco isn't much worried that someone will steal these suckers. Wonder how long it'll take them to move the HP display out of the way to make room for more of the Samsung Galaxy, Motorola Xoom, Toshiba Thrive and cheap Vizio tablets no one is buying either.
So this morning (Saturday) I walked into the same Costco and most of the tablet displays are gone completely - poof. The only one left was the Vizio.
Comments
That is assuming the PlayBook is not next on Apple's hit list. After all it does very much look like a small iPad.
Unless RIM does some form of major overhaul to the Playbook it will die a quick death all on its own (even with the overhaul I don't give it much hope).
That is assuming the PlayBook is not next on Apple's hit list. After all it does very much look like a small iPad.
Apple does seem to have helped itself to the all you can sue buffet - but the Playbook looks nothing like the iPad to me (unless the colour black is patentable, of course
I love Apple and all that jazz, but if Apple sue RIM for patent infringement for trade dress or some kind of touch interface patent, I will find Mr Jobs and pimp slap him personally.
Some forum posts seems to lament the failure of HP webOS to provide competition for Apple, but really, if Apple was driven solely by competition, they'd never have made the iPad. Everyone seems to take its success for granted, but remember just 18 months ago, opinion on the success of the iPad was divided between those that were ready to preorder one, and those who laughed at it's name and thought Apple would fail spectacularly. Now everyone is scrambling to build a tablet, down to calling it a "pad" (in the case of HP). Seriously, it's Apple that's providing competition in the industry, not the other way around. Companies like HP only know how follow and make it cheaper.
Wonder how long it'll take them to move the HP display out of the way to make room for more of the Samsung Galaxy, Motorola Xoom, Toshiba Thrive and cheap Vizio tablets no one is buying either.
There's plenty of room in the Toilet Paper Aisle.
My thought on DOA tablet's: Make it $50 and not-that-hard to get kids-movies on it, and it can come along for long car rides. It doesn't need a touch-screen or even a fancy OS. A DVD-player level physical push-button O/S would be enough.
No one can compete with iOS, so don't. Go for the movie-player market:
16GB, 7"-9" old-tech screen, 3 hour battery-life, physical-button interface: $50. It doesn't have to be *that* thin, or *that* light, and no touchscreen.
Why doesn't one of these big guys go all-in on selling a 1-trick-pony movie player cheap for the car?
Portable DVD players still creep over $100 on Amazon. Really? And I have to bring the discs and battery life is awful?
A $50 movie playing tablet is worth having even if you have 2 iPhones, an iPad, and an iPod Touch. The youngest child in the car gets the cheap tablet. End of story.
ANYTHING over $50 for a DOA tablet and one should hold out for ANY iOS device. Used iPod Touch 2nd generation for $75 beats any $99 tablet, given the iOS ecosystem.
Am I crazy? Maybe the $50 is too low for 16GB, 7"-9" crapscreen ANYthing, even with endless engineering shortcuts.
deleted
Not sure that Ellison needs to prove that anymore.
I'm thinking of buying one. You guys think it will sell for a lot in a few years? As a collector item I mean.
There are 2 ways a piece of technology works for collectors. 1.) It had some very fancy technology that pushed the bounds of technology as we know it and will be secretly mentioned 5 years from now. 2.) Limited production run, scarce, not 250,000 made 3.) it was the undoing of a giant company, thought to not be capable of failing.
I think if anything this baby is close to number 3, but it wont dump HP yet. So i highly doubt it would work as an electronic collectors item.
Statements like this prove you know nothing about Apple.
And it shows you know nothing about history. That doesn't surprise me as most of the commenters on here are a bunch of kids and blinkered Apple fanboys with no appreciation of the real world. Competition leads to innovation as opponents strive to stay one step ahead of each other. Without competition, bloat will set in, people will take their foot off the pedal. That's just human nature.
WebOS is done. Game over.
Consumers just don't give a damn about it. They didn't care when Palm had it. They didn't care when HP had it. It's too late to get Joe Average to care about it when the iPad is setting the bar and getting all the attention.
Let's stop trying to resurrect failed operating systems. WebOS is good for ripping a few ideas from. That's about it, that's all it's good for: parts.
I hate to be contrarian, and I really have no love for Palm, webOS, Rubenstein, or HP, but in the back of my mind, there was another company that sold vertically integrated hardware/software system, failed spectacularly, spun off their hardware business, hung on to their operating system software attempting to get it onto other hardware, before finally coming home when Apple bought NeXT. And at its new adopted home, the software flourished. But it wasn't immediately obvious back in 1996 that the NeXT purchase would save Apple, as Apple was at it's lowest, weakest point back then (it's stock price hit below $10). Plus, the same "spun-off their hardware business" story could also apply to BeOS, which disappeared into history. Which one will be the webOS story?
I'd asked in another thread why Sony, Nokia or Nintendo couldn't pick up webOS and marry it to some interesting hardware, perhaps with an original twist instead of trying to slavishly copy the iPhone / iPad formula. All of the companies I listed have a history of success with proprietary platforms, and each have products that are vertically integrated. And each is down in the dumps because they're in need of something modern. Personally, I think Nokia could take webOS and make it work.
it can be accurately said that "the iPad 2 killed the TouchPad." the TouchPad was obviously designed to match the original iPad's hardware. [...]
Agree. HP, like so many other would-be iPad cloners, can only react to models Apple has already shipped. They'll always be playing catch-up, always a year (or more) behind. Meanwhile, Apple is aggressively developing iPad. They've learned that complacency is a killer and they're moving ahead.
On the other hand, Palm never learned that lesson. They pioneered the PDA market, single-handedly created the "stylus era" of portable computing, and were the undisputed leader for many years. But then things started unraveling. The founders quit and formed Handspring. The company was bought by 3Com and split into hardware and software companies. The hardware division (palmOne) hedged its bets by shipping Windows Mobile versions of their products. The hardware branch then merged back together with Handspring, then merged back with the software company again.
Meanwhile, PalmOS stagnated. Palm OS 5.0 was first released in 2002, and only received minor updates from then up until the HP acquisition. (Palm OS 6.0 was released but failed to generate any interest from potential licensees.) The software company spun off from Palm (palmSource) sold Palm OS to ACCESS, then had to buy the right to modify Palm OS back from ACCESS without paying penalties. I could go on...
All of this wasteful legal maneuvering cost Palm dearly. Engineers quit, products weren't updated, profits plummeted, the stock value tanked, and Palm lost mindshare to its competitors. This all cost Palm years of development time, Palm OS began to show its age, and competition ramped up. Then iPhone was announced and the smartphone world changed forever.
In spring 2007, Jeff Hawkins, the founder of the original Palm Inc., announced a new concept in Palm hardware: Foleo. And it was cancelled three months later. Just before the netbook era. Foleo would have been one of the pioneers, it not *the* pioneer, of the netbook category if it had been produced. Didn't happen.
Palm's history since around the turn of the century has been full of "woulda, shoulda, coulda." It's a warning from the past.
I hate to be contrarian, and I really have no love for Palm, webOS, Rubenstein, or HP, but in the back of my mind, there was another company that sold vertically integrated hardware/software system, failed spectacularly, spun off their hardware business, hung on to their operating system software attempting to get it onto other hardware, before finally coming home when Apple bought NeXT. And at its new adopted home, the software flourished. But it wasn't immediately obvious back in 1996 that the NeXT purchase would save Apple, as Apple was at it's lowest, weakest point back then (it's stock price hit below $10). Plus, the same "spun-off their hardware business" story could also apply to BeOS, which disappeared into history. Which one will be the webOS story?
I'd asked in another thread why Sony, Nokia or Nintendo couldn't pick up webOS and marry it to some interesting hardware, perhaps with an original twist instead of trying to slavishly copy the iPhone / iPad formula. All of the companies I listed have a history of success with proprietary platforms, and each have products that are vertically integrated. And each is down in the dumps because they're in need of something modern. Personally, I think Nokia could take webOS and make it work.
A very insightful comment!
I hate to be contrarian, and I really have no love for Palm, webOS, Rubenstein, or HP, but in the back of my mind, there was another company that sold vertically integrated hardware/software system, failed spectacularly, spun off their hardware business, hung on to their operating system software attempting to get it onto other hardware, before finally coming home when Apple bought NeXT. And at its new adopted home, the software flourished. But it wasn't immediately obvious back in 1996 that the NeXT purchase would save Apple, as Apple was at it's lowest, weakest point back then (it's stock price hit below $10). Plus, the same "spun-off their hardware business" story could also apply to BeOS, which disappeared into history. Which one will be the webOS story?
I'd asked in another thread why Sony, Nokia or Nintendo couldn't pick up webOS and marry it to some interesting hardware, perhaps with an original twist instead of trying to slavishly copy the iPhone / iPad formula. All of the companies I listed have a history of success with proprietary platforms, and each have products that are vertically integrated. And each is down in the dumps because they're in need of something modern. Personally, I think Nokia could take webOS and make it work.
The one thing that you fail to mention is WHY Apple picked NeXT. Because it came with Steve Jobs. Plus even though Steve had a lot of anger toward how Apple treated him, he still wanted to come back to Apple. Apple was one of his children that was dying and he couldn't bare to watch and do nothing.
WebOS has no champion like that, and unfortunately it will probably go the same way as Be did.
I also think HP really bungled the roll out of its products. It should have put WebOS as an alternative bootable OS on its computers. That would have gotten people used to it, and developers time to build applications for it.
WebOS is done. Game over.
Consumers just don't give a damn about it. They didn't care when Palm had it. They didn't care when HP had it. It's too late to get Joe Average to care about it when the iPad is setting the bar and getting all the attention.
Let's stop trying to resurrect failed operating systems. WebOS is good for ripping a few ideas from. That's about it, that's all it's good for: parts.
If I saw one on sale for ultra cheap I'd probably pick one up, if only to Netflix.
Ultimately I think people are starting to recognize that you don't get the same experience and marriage of hardware/software that you get with iOS and Apple products. They can clone it all they want, but until they bring something new to the table they'll just be cheap (or not cheap) clones.
It takes a lot of dedication to keep a corporation focused on producing good products for a good price, and keep the R&D pipe filled with future profitable products.
Once Steve J is gone, I hope Apple has a successor from the inside ready to take over to maintain Apple's personality, and I hope they can keep promoting from within for a long time. Once you pull in a mercenary CEO, it's over.
RIP HP.
- Jasen.
The one thing that you fail to mention is WHY Apple picked NeXT. Because it came with Steve Jobs. Plus even though Steve had a lot of anger toward how Apple treated him, he still wanted to come back to Apple. Apple was one of his children that was dying and he couldn't bare to watch and do nothing.
WebOS has no champion like that, and unfortunately it will probably go the same way as Be did.
I recall that Steve didn't pitch NeXT to Apple; instead someone at Apple knew someone at NeXT and called them up one day, one thing lead to another. Apple was considering both NeXT and BeOS at the time, and I recall that NeXT was chosen because it was far more mature and complete an operating system at the time compared to BeOS, particularly in their TCP/IP (networking) stack. And yes, Jean-Louis Gassee was Be's evangelist and champion, and was personally connected to many in the Apple community, having been John Sculley's number 2 man for many years.
Not confused at all. The Philippines is an extremely poor country, with over 25% of its population living on less than US$1.25 per day. The cities are horrendously overpopulated, and there are millions of families with handfuls of children living in poverty, having more, and more, and more children.
And Pac-man wants to ban condoms and all birth control in the country.
Asshole extraordinaire.
Wrong....you are definitely confused. The Philippines in not an extremely poor country. Haiti is an extremely poor country, with over 80% of the population in poverty. 25% may be in poverty, but the population is over 100 million people. I've been there many times and seen lots of developments and efforts to improve. So Manny wants to ban condoms and birth control, soooo what! He's Catholic and it's his belief. I don't agree with him, but it's his opinion. You probably didn't know he did lose an election, so he doesn't have all influence over all Filipinos. You probably don't know he is helping build a hospital for his home province. Using words like 'extremely, asshole and horrendously' show your ignorance and have no clue of the whole picture.
I hate to be contrarian, and I really have no love for Palm, webOS, Rubenstein, or HP, but in the back of my mind, there was another company that sold vertically integrated hardware/software system, failed spectacularly, spun off their hardware business, hung on to their operating system software attempting to get it onto other hardware, before finally coming home when Apple bought NeXT. And at its new adopted home, the software flourished. But it wasn't immediately obvious back in 1996 that the NeXT purchase would save Apple, as Apple was at it's lowest, weakest point back then (it's stock price hit below $10). Plus, the same "spun-off their hardware business" story could also apply to BeOS, which disappeared into history. Which one will be the webOS story?
I'd asked in another thread why Sony, Nokia or Nintendo couldn't pick up webOS and marry it to some interesting hardware, perhaps with an original twist instead of trying to slavishly copy the iPhone / iPad formula. All of the companies I listed have a history of success with proprietary platforms, and each have products that are vertically integrated. And each is down in the dumps because they're in need of something modern. Personally, I think Nokia could take webOS and make it work.
These other also-rans aren't Apple.
Walked into my local Costco this afternoon, past the big display of HP TouchPads in blister packs near the front door. It was a very full display of actual units, not the cardboard pictures you exchange at the checkout for the real thing. I guess Costco isn't much worried that someone will steal these suckers. Wonder how long it'll take them to move the HP display out of the way to make room for more of the Samsung Galaxy, Motorola Xoom, Toshiba Thrive and cheap Vizio tablets no one is buying either.
So this morning (Saturday) I walked into the same Costco and most of the tablet displays are gone completely - poof. The only one left was the Vizio.