And, of course, just as I decide to leave the live blogging to play a game of Left 4 Dead 2, HP drops the big bombshell right at the end of their press event: webOS is coming to PCs!
The news was dropped at the end of the press event, and few details were given. At this point, it’s not exactly clear if HP plans to turn webOS into a full-on alternative to Windows, or if it will be some sort of an instant-on environment like Splashtop. One thing is clear though: HP is throwing its full weight behind webOS.
Today, we saw the unveiling of two new smartphones, as well as a new tablet running webOS. Later this year, we’ll apparently see webOS on desktop PCs and laptops. This is probably wishful thinking on my end, but I think HP has had enough of Windows on the consumer side of things.
The PC and laptop business has been a race to the bottom for a long time now, and Windows OEMs such as Dell and HP are seeing their profits from Windows PCs and laptops decline. There’s only one company which has consistently managed, for years now, to increase the profit on their PCs and laptops: Apple.
That’s what HP wants to become. They have to offer something to differentiate themselves from the competition, and with everybody using the exact same hardware components from the exact same three companies (Intel, AMD, NVIDIA), the only way to do so is via software. Apple has Mac OS X, and now HP has webOS.
On the consumer side, HP could be transitioning their machines to running webOS, which would extend webOS’ cross-device integration (as demonstrated today) beyond smartphones and now tablets to desktops and laptops. Sure, they’ll still sell machines with Windows, especially on the business side of things, but webOS will become the consumer-facing, uh, face of HP.
It would give HP the same kind of end-to-end control over their products as currently only Apple enjoys. Considering Apple is making boatloads of money, taking a few cues from their book might not be a bad idea. Of course, it’s all wishful thinking for now, but one thing is for sure: 2011 is going to be incredibly interesting.
Very interesting. The powers that be at HP have major cojones, that’s for sure. My question is, what if Google decides to evolve Android into a full-blown desktop OS? I am not sure the market can handle more than three competing high-end desktop OSes.
Google stands a better chance at beating everybody in this game, IMO. After all, Android’s market share is growing so fast, it’s scary. With the imminent introduction of Motorola’s Xoom, things are going to heat up even more. Apple OS, by contrast, is now stagnant.
As a fan of Android, I hope that HP succeeds.
Its scary how much Google knows about me, but it also seems to best fit my usage patterns.
I feel the same.
I stopped using Chromium and switched back to Opera purely because I realised I was using Google on my phone, home laptop and at work.
While to some, it might seem like a silly reason to stop using a web browser, I don’t dislike other browsers where as I do dislike other search engines and mobile OSs. So at least I’m cutting down my dependence without forcing a change in my usage patterns.
Try DuckDuckGo.com for a decent search engine. I tried it about a fortnight ago and haven’t used Google for anything (but image searches and SEO research) since. I haven’t had that, “what results am I missing?” feeling that’s so off-putting on Bing/Yahoo/Ask.
Thank you a million times over – If I could mod you up I would.
I’ve been looking for an alternative search engine for months now.
Er? From the FAQ it looks like they use Bing for their searches (among a couple other sources).
They have their own crawler.
From what I understand, the other sources are only if you use !bang commands.
For example, DDG don’t currently have an image search built in, so if you use !i [search criteria] then DDG will use Bing’s image search.
This is quite a clever idea as it brings DDGs functionality up to par instantly without placing a dependance on other search engines for “normal” searches.
At least, that’s if I understand the FAQ (http://duckduckgo.com/faq.html) correctly. It doesn’t really make it all to clear how much their own crawler contributes to their index
To stay off-topic, try blekko.com or bigooya.com. blekko, just like ddg is a young and coming search engine whose results unfortunatly suck if you are looking for non-english content. bigooya is just a metasearch over Google, Bing and Yahoo, but it anonimizes your search and, compared to the others, is fast.
I see that often: “Its scary how much Google knows about me.” I am no expert in security, but I am also not sure this idea of Google knowing is properly represented. As a number, they probably know how many freckles there are my bottom, but whether or not my “number” is ever associated with my name is questionable. I think, in many cases, Google has that capacity, but I am not sure they actually ever go that far, or would reveal that information, unless it is in regard to a criminal investigation, which IMO, would then be appropriate. But, truthfully, I don’t really know and also am not too concerned. But then…
I’ve googled the web in depth for information about myself and cannot find anything. Recently, a company that owed me a considerable sum from a long time ago (a long story), tried to contact me using all the tools available for specifically finding people. they reached a dead end. Guess how they found me: through Social Security (which will act as a conduit for messages of this type). Frankly, considering my social security number is somehow connected to almost everything I do, I am much more afraid of Social Security than I am of Google.
I, as one poster noted, also appreciate the targeting Google makes based on my number, as long as they don’t call me 666. BTW, the company did pay me, displaying considerable grace and proving that decency is alive and well in America.
“Stagnant” does not mean what you think it does…
Enlighten us then, oh wise one…
stag·nant Adjective /ˈstagnənt/
adjective: sluggish, inert, slack, stationary
1. (of a body of water or the atmosphere of a confined space) Having no current or flow and often having an unpleasant smell as a consequence
– a stagnant ditch
2. Showing no activity; dull and sluggish
– a stagnant economy
Given that Verizon’s biggest launch to date is the iPhone 4, and that iTablets are selling like hotcakes, and the only thing that the xoom has going for it so far is a half assed superbowl commercial. I fail to see how iOS devices can be remotely referred to as being “stagnant.” Esp since the iPad 2 is around the corner.
And yes Android devices share is also growing rapidly. But from there to saying iOS is frozen is a bit of a stretch. iOS for example has already unified support for both phones and tables. Whereas Google is yet to even address some consistency between Android 3 (tablets) and Android 2 (phones mostly)
Edited 2011-02-10 06:35 UTC
What makes you think of iOS, when the poster talks about desktop PCs and Apple OS?
It’s hard for Android to become a full blown desktop OS. After all, Android’s APIs are Java based, which seems to be fine for mobile applications, but not a smart choice for desktop.
Imagine Photoshop or Crysis written in Java.
Omg… I just couldn’t imagine them eating up even more resources before. Thanks for the nightmare.
*steps back, shocked, with an image of a garbage-collected photoshop finally managing to eat up 6 GB of RAM plus all of the VRAM when editing an average 10 MB JPEG file in the head*
Edited 2011-02-10 21:42 UTC
I don’t buy it myself.
OS X sells because it’s a powerhouse for the creative industry. From musicians and producers through to photographers and graphic designers – OS X remains a popular choice.
Where as WebOS is just a fancy front end to various social networking sites. Given it’s target platforms, everything else it does in addition is very rudimentary when compared with OS X and Windows. Not to mention the fact that JS (compiled or not) will never out perform Objective C / .NET
I think HP just have their sites set on a SplashTop alternative or – at most – an alternative for ChromeOS netbooks.
[q]Not to mention the fact that JS (compiled or not) will never out perform Objective C / .NET [q/]
That’s crazy talk. I don’t know where you got that idea, but I’d have to see the proof (rigorously mathematical at that) for myself.
Well Unless there is some sort of *fast* equivalent to Core Data and it’s Managed Object Context in JS or at least Cocoa style bindings (where delegates are built in/expected/implicit) then it will have to be slower.
It is not that it *cant * be done it is just that who is really willing to throw all of that development resources to an environment that will be second or worse to market.
See there is really only a certain of window between a developer getting ‘IT’ and the next 2 great technologies thar (s)he will see and then they are 31-35 and have better things than to do other than being on the bleeding edge. (Who wants to know about Carbon or CFM Mac Apps?) That just like Java used to be the future. And it was more recent but didn’t catch mindshare but cocoa and cappuccino well these are matured versions of smalltalk and really. It is not that hard to wrap my head around. If HP ships a NeXTStep clone that enables cappuccino apps to launch 20% quicker (six not eight seconds to useful user input) then unlike Gruber’s “Shit Sandwich” (sic) you have an environment that is standard and open (unlike dot-net) well HP is gonna eat the lunch of whoever doesn’t “dig this new scene”
Hold on, you were talking about Objective C a programing language’s speed versus Javascript another programing language speed.
Now you are talking about a library and comparing it to a language. Oranges meet apples.
But you got to what you meant at the end. You don’t think this platform will be developed to the point where it will be as fast as competing platforms. Ok, that is not crazy, but your original statement was.
But in the land of sh*t sandwiches the man with his own lunchbox is king. All I am saying is what a sensible person or a engineer wnats and understands to be _true and correct_ is often beyond the concern horizon of the other 95% of the computing consumer’s concern.
I hope that they can do most of it in JS. But as far as really solid and quick development I will prefer doing it in Cocoa. And If I would write a ‘web app’ in 2011 i would go with Cappuccino.
But if an app takes 8 or 6 seconds to load will most users care? Well will they care a lot? That sucks. I for real suppose that 10 seconds on the outside is terrible. So give me a casual game or augmented reality app that is worth waiting 10, or 8 or even 6 seconds to load AND is java then maybe I will give that a second look, until then I really like the low activation energy in MacOS X
BTW just taught eight 11 year old kids how to link up bindings in core data. Took all of 3 90 minute sessions. From nothing to Persistant State – goodness -(•_~) my bad Guiness and Coffee.
Yeah, none of that was a response to my comment. You just seem to have said that an unrelased version of webos on unreleased hardware is slow compared to OS X on different hardware. Well, that’s a useful comparison. Now, in that grand tradition lets compare Micheal jackson’s early eighties music versus the music played while the titanic sunk for best lead bagpipe solo.
This smells like fanboism. Really, I consider myself a Java zealot, but in 2011 a quick web-app would be either in PHP(the absolute king of quick web-apps for the last 10 years) or Ruby(with RoR)
Are we still comparing runtime speed ? Or development now ?
Who knows. I regret ever bringing the topic up now.
That pretty much sums it up. Everyone has their own opinion of what “faster” means.
Yeah… That is where I couldn’t read any more…
I agree with the article that this will be for the consumer devices only, so who cares about the speed of the underlying language? Consumers generally only need computers for web, email and maybe a bit of social networking. If they do play games then on an OS like WebOS it’s more likely to be casual games.
That’s not entirely true though. If consumers buy a laptop / desktop, then it’s because they wanted/needed to do more than just go online or play a few games.
It’s because – and at the very minimum of their usage – they have letters to type, personal accounts to tabulate or photos to crop and print.
Many might have software they need for work – from interactive whiteboards to bespoke solutions. Or perhaps they’re studying at college / university and want to run the same software suites at home.
The fact is, most people who buy a laptop or desktop do so intentionally because they want the potential flexibility that comes with a fully-fledged desktop OS. Thus if they only wanted to surf the web or play games, they’d buy a tablet PC (and we’ve seen proof of this with how popular internet-ready gadgets have been of late). WebOS just can’t compete with OS X terms of productivity thus suggesting WebOS is part of HPs plans to phase out Windows and become HP’s own Mac OS – as Thom suggested – is completely bonkers.
Obviously there will be people who just want to browser some HTML yet will still prefer a laptop. There will always be exceptions to the rule. However while the majority of people only surf the net the majority of the time; I think it’s grossly unfair to say that’s all they do all the time.
Generally, I tend agree with you, but your examples are really weak. “they have letters to type, personal accounts to tabulate or photos to crop and print.” These are all things that webOS could easily excel at. Heck, have you taken a survey of all the online office suites and photo-management tools out now? Many of them approach the functionality and power of native software–and manage to perform snappily while they’re at it.
For “creatives” such as myself (a developer and sometimes musician) it will be a long time before the traditional desktop can be replaced. For many average use cases however the barriers are blurring fast.
Have you seen how people take photos these days? They take high res shots and then fill those 300gb drives that have become standard on laptops. What do you expect consumers to do? Upload these massive archives and then use an online editor to manipulate 10mb files? That would just seem slloooowww and I’m sure those online tools have file size limits.
Client applications are refined and readily available and browsers are free, consumers should be left to choose how much they want to use the web. Cloud-centric operating systems are a step backwards.
My point was about the power of JavaScript-based solutions, not about applications that actually live in the cloud per se. Just saying, JS & web technologies are indeed powerful and fast enough for this use case, for the average user.
I’m not so sure about consumers needing to do their accounts etc. I guess it boils down to which consumers you know. I know I need a lot of flexibility from a computer, but I know plenty of people who buy laptops because they find their phone is too small for using Facebook, and because Farmville or Cafe World doesn’t work on their phones. That’s all. For these people, all they need is a web browser, a Flash implementation, and some way of uploading photos from their camera to Facebook. The only reason they use Windows is because Macs are too expensive and that’s what their laptop came with. WebOS or Android would be great alternatives for these people who “need” a proper keyboard and decent sized screen so they can keep an eye on their cafe customers while watching tv.
I’ve seen this claimed for years but it never pans out in the real world.
Everyone I meet depends on at least one desktop application. This web-only group seems like an internet creation.
I live with two girls who could get by on pretty much anything, but both have high-powered, hot-running Vista-based laptops for their internet. One buys clothes online, books cinema tickets and plays Farmville and Cafe world a lot (and I mean an unhealthy amount)… The odd time she opens a Word file or whatever but uses OpenOffice for that, or GoogleDocs if it’s something she got in her email. That’s the whole of it! The other girl looks up TV listings and uses Skype a lot, but doesn’t even have an office suite installed. Granted, they’re probably not the majority, but in my eyes they’re two “average” users.
I don’t doubt web-only people exist, I’m just not meeting them.
I think it is more average to depend on either MS Office or iTunes.
I know many people who just use Ubuntu for office, printing, email, webbrowsing and that works fine. For years now.
What else do these people need ?
Do only thing special might be that our government was smart enough to make a cross-platform application for doing taxes. So that too is able to run on Linux.
Edited 2011-02-10 19:10 UTC
are we stuck in yet another how people use their computers debate. This is old.
Sure some people absolute need certain programs, and engineer might be tied to a particular CAD program, because he needs to be able to share he work with all of his coworker, everyone needs to be using compatable programs. Accountants are likewise probably best served by using the same spreadsheet program, and you can come up with a million examples of people who could not possible use another OS for some reason or another. And its tempting to looks at that list of people who simply cannot move and see what platform most of them are on and declare that platform the winner for all time.
But sometimes simplicity is a need too and that can often be achieved by deliberately not supporting some features. There is a place for a limited OS in the world, you can’t discount some people needs for simplicty just because others have a need for complexity.
Of course sometimes it not always necessary to compromise, which is what HP is probably hoping for with webos. It will ship alongside windows in some way, either through instant on, virtualization, an emulator or something else. I am certainly at least interesting in how it turns out.
True, but that’s just because people in the so called “creative industry” are snobs, not IT specialists.
OS X isn’t in any way better than Windows, Linux, BSD.
What would be Os X without all bells and whistles?
Some professionals use Photoshop, which isn’t officially supported on Linux/BSD. So they use Windows or Mac for that.
I didn’t say it was better. However it’s not in any way worse either.
That said, OS X is way better than Linux and BSD for audio professional – and I can say that safely being a non-snobby full time Linux user and IT specialist who dabbles with music as a semi-professional hobby.
That doesn’t even make sense.
Can Logic, Garage Band, Photoshop or Quark run on WebOS? No? well then OS X isn’t just WebOS with some “bells and whistles”.
Android apps are Java based, not JS (javascript) based.
Java apps are compiled, not interpreted. The loss of speed is from JVM – the virtual machine which runs the interpreted code. .NET is also compiled and runs also in a virtual machine.
Speed wise, I saw C and C++ apps running faster than Objective C.
That could be because of Obj-C Message Dispatcher.
Edited 2011-02-10 19:45 UTC
I know but Android has f–k all to do with this thread. However WebOS (which is the platform we’re discussing) /DOES/ use JS.
Actually they’re both. They’re compiled to byte code that then gets interpreted by the Java Virtual Machine
Yes, .NET is also byte code. Thanks for pointing out something we all ready knew.
That would be down to shoddy programming then as your point is as nonsensical as arguing that C apps run faster than C++.
Edited 2011-02-10 22:48 UTC
Yes, worth to note however is that Google uses a JIT-compiler for Javascript rather than interpreting. The JIT-Compiler they bought (V8) is very fast and unlike most other JIT-compilers it converts directly to machine code instead of the traditional bytecode, which means they don’t need a ‘virtual machine’ but instead runs native code.
With both the code generator and the GC being state of the art I can see why Google bought V8. As for performance relative to Java or C#, obviously Java and C# being statically typed gives them an advantage but it would still be interesting to see just how much of a difference there really is.
Given that people write quite advanced games in purely interpreted languages like Python and Lua, there’s no reason that JIT-compiled Javascript won’t be able to perform well for many tasks given that the really heavy lifting will be done by the underlying system using native code and hardware acceleration, with Javascript merely handling the program ‘logic’.
Indeed, there’s nothing inherit in ObjectiveC that would make it’s performance lesser than that of C or C++, this would be a question of the code quality generated by the compiler.
while I appreciate that machine code > byte code, but wouldn’t there still be additional overhead with compile times using in using a JS JIT compiler?
Granted it would be negligible for web apps, but for larger programs like games, I’d have thought the JIT compiler would become rather noticeable
Also, the mainstreem Python implimentation (CPython) also compiles to byte code – much like the .NET family does. So it’s not really a “purely interpreted” language anymore.
In fact I can’t speak for Lua, but I think most traditionally interpreted langauages are processed as byte code these days (Perl, Ruby, Python and PHP certainly all do)
Edited 2011-02-11 12:44 UTC
Most home users pretty much only use their computers to access social networking sites…
A device which is cheap, fast and stable for doing this without having to worry about malware, software updates and all the other crap average people would rather not have to deal with should sell quite well. Computers are excessively complex for what most people use them for, simpler devices will benefit most people.
[q]Most home users pretty much only use their computers to access social networking sites…[q]
Citation needed.
My wish is to have a PC in the form of some sort of home appliance. Something which is instant-on, powerful enough to run little apps for every day use smoothly, easy to use. And cheap.
This is my hope that somebody build something like that. Maybe HP is trying to do something along those lines.
Except maybe for the “cheap” part, you are describing exactly what the iPad is.
I was even waiting for the punch line at the end of your post. The XOOM and Touchpad will very well join it soon. But for now, the thing you’re looking for have been selling like hot cakes since last April 🙂
Yeah, I forgot to add a big screen to my previous comment
Then maybe what you want is a Surface… I tried it a Microsoft Store recently. One side of me wasn’t impressed, now that I’m so used to the iPad, but the shear size of it was pretty cool.
I could use one of those at home 😀
For sure, it will be sweet having one of those, but I can’t imagine the price of having one.
I would love to have been a fly on the wall back in the Carly Fiorina days during the HP/Apple negotiations. So much is influx. Windows needs something lightweight (and secure) and the Mac needs something that is better than casual gaming as an iOS hook. – Sony has had some good ideas, and lately so has HP but what to do if you are going to be second to market or have to wait for the Cupertino Juggernaut to make a mistake and *pray* that you can capitalize on this?
I have seen many good things this past 6 weeks, but what if apple’s app store actually makes money (more than it does) when one twelfth or one tenth of the users are on on hackintoshes. No that is not 2011 but why not in three or five years. What if I take TCL/Tk app and redo it in GNORM (the NeXTStep environment for Linux)? What is an app other than an executable and the view?
Soon just like we can skin a phone or a laptop or an OS soon we will skin an app in XAML and then who fails? Apple is the good Unix.
Finish the gnustep desktop environment. Finish the Finder.app, finish Terminal.app, finish the web browser, finish the window manager (write it in obj-c entirely) as well as a chat client and the mplayer frontend. Then Linux will have something solid to compete against Mac OSX with. The APIs are pretty much there the DE in GNUStep needs fixing.
As much as I respect GNUStep, I think Enlightenment is a better choice if we truly want a Linux DE on par with Aqua. Unless, of course, you’re referring to easy cross-compiling of apps. In that case, yes GNUStep would be a logical choice. But I honestly think E17 is closer to a “production ready” state, as well as being more modern and (dare I say it) prettier.
Also, GNUStep is more than just a DE, it’s an entirely different way of approaching desktop computing than the normal Linux model. You can put Windowmaker on any Linux distro and it’s just a look-and-feel thing; spin up the GNUStep live CD and you get a better idea of how great the whole GNUStep philosophy is.
How about this: Finish both, put them on top of Debian Squeeze and see which one comes out on ahead. I’d root for either one myself.
Don’t forget about EtoileOS. Now with Debian/k-freebsd I would like an Etoile/GNUstep desktop for this variant.
The libraries and underpinnings of E17 are supposedly already used for mobile.
But the question becomes, why would Nokia with their QT use it ?
Apple is the expensive, lazy and bloated UNIX. But hey, it’s fancy and has some nice DRM implementations! xD
It would be cool if HP became like Apple. But, I think Apple is aiming towards the low-end (iPod,iPhone,iPad) anyways.They’re doing this because the saw a trend of consumers moving towards these type of devices.
They may first spin-off embedded devices tailored for jobs like Movie, Photo and Music editing. After that’s done, it’s not unlikely that Apple could out-right close their Desktop/Laptop production.
The problem I have with Linux based OS is that on printing. If HP will develop native drivers with GUI on desktop Linux it would be great for consumers. I know there is hpijs and HP has already excellent driver support in Linux, but that is not enough and not on par with their support for Windows. Applications will follow in addition to the existing applications available in Linux. It would be easy for HP to let the existing applications run on WebOS I believe.
do you *like* the extra programs that Hp provides on windows to go with the drivers? I pretty much just avoid them as much as possible. Even gong as far as to not run their setup, but have windows find the drivers it needs on the driver cd and install them itself. No tray icons, no bloatware.
Although, that may have changed I haven’t been in windows for a while
>do you *like* the extra programs that Hp provides on
>windows to go with the drivers?
Yes and No.
Yes, because:
You know we have existing HP printers, and that HP must support them with webOS if they are going to load it on their PCs, even if their target market is home users. I only need the UI to configure the printers right and integrate it nicely with existing Linux applications like LibreOffice and other productivity suites. So that printing in Linux will be easier than ever. No, no CLI configs anymore.
And No. Not those extra spywares. I will go for an HP repository for this purpose to add the optional extras like print monitoring etc., etc. So you see, sometimes,
we need more in addition to drivers, and for home users need _NOT_ to goto: /var/log/.
>I pretty much just avoid them as much as possible.
>Even gong as far as to not run their setup, but have
>windows find the drivers it needs on the driver cd and
>install them itself. No tray icons, no bloatware.
See above. In Linux, no need for a driver CD if you’ve got your PC online, since a driver CD for Linux isn’t feasible if HP will distribute them across distros, but, if for webOS driver specific, then a driver CD is fine.
I actually much prefer printer drivers on linux…
HP seem to support all their printers (or at least, all the ones i have tried) under linux, and all the hp printers or scanners i have tried worked out of the box on ubuntu without needing to touch the cli.
I have seen the drivers hp supplies for windows and osx, and the bloat is ridiculous… Huge installs, and lots of completely unwanted applications… It seems as if every printer or scanner manufacturer installs their own pile of cruft to load at startup, and has their own printer control panel and scanning tool, all of which are different to each other and look pretty crude in their own right.
I would rather just have drivers, and let the os supply a standard interface to configuring/using the devices. Printers all do largely the same thing, there is really no need for additional applications..
Actually, when I forced to install HP drivers I find myself longing for the Linux hpijs.
For me, hpijs under Fedora simply work out of the box. (Under Fedora with 4 different models of HP printers).
HP drivers / Windows, are complex to install and full of junk I don’t really need.
Trying to find the admin-only version drivers (that ones that doesn’t include all the junk) is not always possible.
– Gilboa
Pretty easy to fix, install the driver manually … If it wants to install other stuff you can always edit the inf file.
You know, what I tell people to fix issues they have with Linux by editing grub/xorg.conf/etc I usually get shouted at…
The HP Windows driver is super bloated and far too fragile.
For once, Linux wins on ease of use – let us enjoy it.
– Gilboa
The amount of hand editing you have to do in Linux is far greater than Windows, in my experience.
However if you are installing a Printer as a sysadmin, editing install scripts shouldn’t be a big deal.
You can usually get by without doing any…
The difference is that hand editing or using the cli is often the most efficient way of doing something, so most long term linux users will choose this method even when a gui based option exists.
Also if you are trying to explain to someone else how to do things, typically via a text based online forum, or verbally over the phone, a cli is much easier because the cli has more in common with the medium used to convey the instructions.
As an example, i was helping a guy how install ntop on a ubuntu box a few weeks ago, i could have walked him through using the gui tools to find and install ntop, but it was much easier to walk him through opening a terminal and then typing “sudo apt-get install ntop”…
If using a textual medium such as a forum or irc, you can even just give people a block of text they can paste in… Can’t do that with a gui.
This is also why i _HATE_ video howtos online, i’m not always in a position to listen to the sound (eg at work), i might not have access to a graphical browser or might be on a very slow link (often gprs, because 3g is not ubiquitous everywhere i have to travel to), and you cant cut+paste commands or configuration details from a video – you have to type them all back in which is not only a hassle but also extremely error prone.
There has never been a Linux Distro that I didn’t have to do something on the command line to get something working, I have pretty standard hardware, all Intel (not Sandy Bridge).
Furthermore, most sysadmin graphical tools are just frontends for the backend tools and most of the time in my experience, are either buggy or flat out don’t work.
The only Linux installer I trust is the Anaconda installer, since that has been working for about 10 years now.
And it makes it pretty simple for someone to trash a user’s system.
For example I have seen stuff like this, to be run as root on a Linux forum …
dd if=/home/username/cdimage.iso of=/dev/sda
I am pretty sure something like that would trash most people’s systems if they were to run it as root.
I wish there was a good point and click interface for my PC that doesn’t involved the price and complexity of Windows or the bugs and instability of X.org. I wish I could run some polished GUI Linux-based OS like Android or WebOS on my PC right now.
I personally feel that this is HP’s strategy to counter Google’s Chrome OS. They did not want to end up with another Windows kind-of situation, where their product is commoditized with low differentiation against competition & razor thin profit margins.
webOS will be reserved for a new product lines positioned as consumption devices to counter iPad-like tablets & ChromeOS based devices. I do not see them offering webOS on regular desktops & laptops focusing on producing content & other stuff. Instead, they’ll continue to come with Windows/Linux.
I think in couple of years, traditional desktop OS like Windows 7 for consumer devices will move towards becoming irrelevant. They’ll survive probably only in niche areas. Indie content producers will use OS X, developers & the likes will use Linux/Windows. Enterprises are the only ones that might continue to use the traditional desktop OS.
We saw revenues of Windows division going down for Microsoft in the previous quarter. I think Windows may cease to be a cash cow for Microsoft by end of 2012.
Edited 2011-02-10 06:47 UTC
You named it : just about anyone who wants to produce content, and not only to consume it, needs something more than the current incarnation of tablets.
Now, of course, all it would take to make them suck less in this area is an optional stylus with precise input, these kinds of things which Wacom has been making for years…
Think about it : people are ready to pay $500 for something which is basically a small web browser and a few mobile apps. For how much do you think someone could sell a tablet which can actually be useful at more than that, by simply including a $50 Bamboo-like digitizer ? Knowing that the stylus would be optional and sold at a premium price too…
Apple would call it… the iPad Pro !
Edited 2011-02-10 07:45 UTC
I think the end of the world is more likely. Their revenue will drop at some point but Windows will be a cash cow for years to come. They could lose all consumer revenue and only sell to businesses and still be a highly profitable company.
As for Chrome OS it will bomb. It’s too early for a web only system and Google doesn’t have a good plan for printing.
What HP can do though is put WebOS on top of their Win7 laptops and people will use it for surfing if there are significant power savings. It would be seen as a value-added bonus instead of a restriction like Chrome OS. HP also has a better plan for printing which is to guarantee compatibility with their own line.
Wow this is huge news. I wonder whether this is the beginning of the end for Microsoft! Seems about time. We have opensource browsers giving MS some serious competition. Its about time desktop Windows got some serious competition from open source software. The approach of using existing Linux distros like ubuntu didn’t work for Dell. It looks like you have to create your own distro like HP is doing.
For several years, there have been many ‘Windows vs Linux on the desktop’ debates on this site. As time goes on though, it seems that little by little, both of these platforms are becoming increasingly irrelevant insofar as how much attention we give to them. Not Linux in general (since it runs on everything from toasters to vibrators), but the desktop variants specifically.
… Well, not the traditional desktop. But a very very very significant new market – smart phones and tablets – are becoming the client devices/computers that more and more people are spending their time on.
And guess what? It’s all either iOS (unix/BSD based, on iTouch, iPhone, iPad), or Android (fully Linux based).
… and now WebOS (fully Linux based). I have no doubt that with HPs huge market reach and marketing muscle, these new WebOS based devices will be successful, particularly with the great early reviews. Plus, HP is saying it’s going to feature PCs and Laptops with WebOS.
Nope, these are not traditional Desktop Linux Distros, which are essentially fragmented silos not appropriate for a consumer oriented eco-system.
I always figured that traditional Linux Desktop Distros would always be relegated to the geek/power user/developer/hobbyist niche, and that has more or less remained so. It was always too technical, and too fragmented, and too economically unfriendly to OEMs or Software companies to succeed in the mass consumer market.
I always figured that for Linux to succeed on the client/consumer side, it would have to be fully productized by a large corporation, with it becoming a platform.
Enter Google with Android. Enter HP with acquiring WebOS and putting out smart phones and tablets.
Linux is now succeeding on the client side. Full stop.
It’s not in the form of desktop distros. It’s in the form of products based on Android and WebOS.
HP the company that brought the world the first mass produced personal computer has started to roll the dice again and flex it’s muscles.
Since the new CEO came from SAP he has stated to regain HP’s “lost business” and hinted software will be a priority.
WebOS can work for the same reason Ubuntu does, money, but it give it that extra dimension of being a hardware producer.
It would not make a lot of sense to use WebOS as purely instant on Windows precursor, since windows loading speed is already so much faster with SSD’s and OS changes in itself.
Question is will we start to resent the fact that WebOS might only be tied in to HP’s own hardware? Will that hinder or help WebOS mass adoption?
WebOS could work for these three reasons.
1. Hardware vendor being able to cut a pc’s price by about $50 just by using its own OS will bring it the sales in especially the third world where $50 can be a month’s salary.
2. Linux rich variety of third party applications.
3. Cloud services.
So in essence cloud services or/and Linux base of third party software and more affordability computers can help WebOS where others has failed.
I was reading an article on Information Week and it had this to say about webOS on PC’s:
“McKinney, pressed for more details by a small, impromptu group of journalists, indicated that WebOS would run on top of Windows. But he also said there could be dedicated laptops, or clamshell-like devices similar to the ChromeOS notebooks that Google has prototyped and distributed for early testing. If the tablet is, essentially, a well heeled Web terminal with local resources for processing rich media, there’s no reason to take the same approach as with larger form factors.”
(emphasis mine)
So it seems that webOS could be nothing more than a shell for windows.
Read the original article here:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal-tech/tablets/showArtic…
All of you are acting like WebOS is complete and that there are only going to be bug fixes and so forth.
HP is an ENGINEERING company. They, and with IBM, another great engineering firm, made some of the best hardware outside of Apple.
Not only do their have hardware engineers but they also have software engineers living under the same ideology of the hardware people.
FINALLY they have an OS to engineer. Look back at Windows 3.1 and where Windows has come since then. WebOS will change a lot too. I fully expect the WebOS OS to fork inside of HP over time. One version for small devices and limited use desktop/laptop computers. I expect a lot more robust version for medium to power users.
HP is not going to show all their cards. They would be fools to do so. At the same time, we can’t or shouldn’t believe that what you see, a 1.0 product, is going to be the “full” version. I just can’t.
HP bought Palm who bought Be. Why not just bring Be back … it would kick butt on modern hardware.
Unfortunately the remains of BeOS went to PalmSource, not Palm the hardware company. PalmSource supposedly actually used some of the BeOS internals in PalmOS 6, but Palm the hardware company didn’t use it and so it died. The current home of the BeOS IP is actually Access:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_Co.