Insiders Call HP's WebOS Software Fatally Flawed 191
Hugh Pickens writes "Some of the people involved in creating WebOS, the HP TouchPad's core software, now say the product never had a fighting chance because it relied on WebKit, an open-source software engine used by browsers to display Web pages, that just didn't have the horsepower to run fast enough to be on par with the iPhone. 'Palm was ahead of its time in trying to build a phone software platform using Web technology, and we just weren't able to execute such an ambitious and breakthrough design,' says Paul Mercer, who oversaw the interface design of WebOS and recruited crucial members of the team. 'Perhaps it never could have been executed because the technology wasn't there yet.' Another problem was the difficulty in finding programmers who had a keen understanding of WebKit as Apple and Google snatched up most of the top talent including Matias Duarte, vice president of human interface and user experience for WebOS, who left for Google a month after HP's acquisition of Palm. 'When he left, the vacuum was just palpable. What you're seeing is frankly a bunch of fourth- and fifth-stringers jumping onto WebOS in the wake of Duarte's leaving.' CEO Meg Whitman has announced that HP will release the WebOS code for anyone to use, similar to Google's open-source strategy with Android, but some say WebKit will still leave WebOS underpowered relative to Apple's software."
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:0, Insightful)
Obviously you're missing that 'The best engineers at HP' couldn't understand that not only is Webkit the same rendering backend as Apple's, but it's also the same rendering backend as Linux's competitor to Firefox, and fast enough even on 15 year old hardware to offer an acceptable if not speedy experience. So given the specs of the WebOS devices it is most certainly fast enough to compete with Apple's solutions. Now mind you they might've f'd it up somewhere else in the chain, or not understood it well enough to make rendering optimizations that would give it that 'real time' feel, but all that is on them, not Webkit.
Re:Most stupid story (Score:4, Insightful)
It is, but webapps on iOS run into similar performance issues as highlighted in this story - Apple don't accelerate the version of WebKit which is used by webapps that are launched from icons on the desktop as much as the version of WebKit which their Safari browser uses, and its pretty noticeable.
The "story" here is that everything in WebOS is WebKit based - there is no Dalvik or Cocoa equivalent (I'm not sure as to the validity of that statement as I'm not interested in WebOS, but everything I have read indicates that it is correct), which are much closer to the metal and thus have a performance advantage.
Open source community fixes these things. (Score:4, Insightful)
Have to agree (Score:2, Insightful)
WebOS was never going to do anything other than fail. Things like google Apps might be ok for really light work where shared access is the most important feature but they are the goto for very few people. Otherwise dropbox would not be nearly so popular. Don't get me wrong [xh]tml + java script might be a wonderfully flexible thing to develop your shell in but its not going to provide the rich experience users want out of an application.
No matter what the industry shills and marketing droids try and tell you tables are about data consumption and limited types of data acquisition, not creation. Consumers use them to read, watch, and play, and some very limited musical composition with external instruments ( the tablet is really an acquisition device), I have seen tools to catalog private collections of books,music, and movies, and you see QR and bar code apps to look up prices, homepages, and real estate ads. That is how these things are used in the consume space. You see more acquisition type tasks in the business logistics and medical space but its a toy everywhere else. You have to deliver a positive and rich multimedia experience and "web" technologies are basically the lowest common denominator in that domain.
Yes lots of IOS/Android apps are thin wrappers around webkit or whatever render droid is using that works for facebook, wikipedia, imdb, etc but the games and more interesting applications are native or VM code because they need to be deliver the experience people want; java script + html DOM are just not flexible enough and things like canvas don't perform well enough for use on power conscious devices.
Sending what is a basically a web browser with some java script libraries out to compete against polished binary platforms in a consumer already dominated by well polished easy to manage binary apps was space was not and is not going to work.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:4, Insightful)
*WebOS uses WebKit to render its user interface* and you compare that to web browsers, where it's reasonable to use the webkit to build the favorite pages menus and such.
Why is it reasonable to render the UIs of Web apps using WebKit but unreasonable to render any other kind of UI using WebKit? Your objection doesn't make any sense. If WebKit is totally unsuitable for rendering UIs then Web-based apps must be unusable on iOS, Android, and BlackBerry, all of which use WebKit to render Web UIs. I don't understand the artificial distinction you're creating between "Web UI" and "every other kind of UI."
Explain to me this: In all of the (presumably many) times you have used a WebOS device, has the performance of the UI been your #1 complaint? What didn't you like about the UI on WebOS?
Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
now say the product never had a fighting chance because it relied on WebKit
Who cares. The apathy is shallower than that.
It never had a fighting chance with the users because it was just another wannabe. What was special about webos from the user point of view, other than some "HP" branding, which in the old days meant something, but for more than a decade that brand has come to mean outsourcing, downsizing, clueless dilbertian executive management, hatred/screwing over of customers, and failure? So its just like my friends phones except it's not cool, and it can't run any of their apps. How profoundly unappealing to the users, and not because of the intimate details of the development library. "My alternative phone is just like yours except its not as good, not as cool, doesn't do anything yours can't do, yet costs just as much". How can that not fly off the shelves?
It never had a fighting change with 3rd party devs because it was just another wannabe. A wannabe has a chance if it does or uses something new and exciting, to balance out the lack of popularity. You know what would be weird? A mobile OS written completely in Ruby and Erlang. How truly weird, yet fascinating. I'd take some of my valuable holiday vacation time to play with that platform even if I were the only owner of that kind of phone in the whole world. Thats how internal OS library choices drag in developers. But, its just tech I can play with in more convenient systems, F that, I'll play with Android instead, or more likely play Skyrim some more. Whoops.
So that brings me back to my original summary. Does anyone not a HP employee, in engineering or astroturfing, being paid to toe the corporate line want to develop on webos? My guess is, "no". Who cares.
Nobody wants or needs it seems to be the actual "fatal flaw".
The standard /. car analogy is the famous Alaskan "bridge to nowhere" was not fatally flawed because it would have been much more appealing to paint it a slightly different color, it was fatally flawed because "no one" (rounded down to zero) wanted or needed it, other than the guys who built it.
Re:Web Obsession (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nonesense (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:4, Insightful)
Graphical rendering of your screen is most processor-intensive part of the unit. It's why iPhones and iPads have a dedicated GPU [wikipedia.org] What - you think those page wipes and zooming were done by the main cpu? That would be a cpu made with unobtainium.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:4, Insightful)
But with WebOS, Palm employees initially constructed each app from scratch. Later, they made such blocks, but they were overhauled once by Palm and then again by H.P., forcing programmers to relearn how to build WebOS apps.
This is the same schtick that came around after Nokia dropped Qt... I'd say it's armchair quarterbacking from people who don't really understand programming at all, sounds good in the executive boardroom during the "lessons learned" meeting, but is impossible to verify unless you're in the trenches, and I bet that in the trenches you can find all kinds of conflicting opinions about what went wrong.