Birthday wish: Please get webOS into the right hands 65
Mon, 10 Oct 2011 2:28 pm EDT 
Today is my birthday. It’s also my friend and fellow PreCentral writer Tim Stiffler-Dean’s birthday, as well as HP VP of Worldwide Developer Relations Richard Kerris’. I point this out not to draw attention to our birthdays (though this coincidence is pretty awesome), but instead to ask HP for a birthday present: Get webOS into the right hands.
It’s only been six weeks since HP pulled the plug on webOS hardware development, but it feels like it’s been an eternity. In that time we’ve seen the webOS Global Business Unit get split in two, the hardware teams get laid off, and HP dump a floundering CEO in favor of one aiming high and fast. We’ve heard nothing new from the webOS GBU, nothing about what HP intends to do with the OS, with the IP, and with the people.
I know that the nature of inter-corporate negotiations mean that HP and any other parties potentially involved can’t say anything. We all knew Palm was for sale when they ended up getting bought by HP, but in the end we didn’t know who it was going to be and who all was bidding. This kind of secrecy is necessary in the corporate world, but it’s simply maddening to those waiting with anticipation and anxiety on the outside: the fans.
So while I know you can’t say anything, I’m going to implore you anyway to make sure webOS gets into the hands of a company that can do right by the platform.
webOS needs to be owned by a company that is capable of long-term commitments. It needs to be a company that’s capable of cutting-edge hardware design, has a strong software development background, and can secure content deals that’ll help ensure the success of webOS. webOS has only died twice, and Palm once before that.
I don’t know who that company is. I may have guessed that HP would be the one to buy Palm, but I didn’t actually expect it to happen. There are a number of potential contenders for webOS –Amazon, Facebook, Google – that could do well by webOS.
Time is running out. There’s only so much even a company like HP can do to sustain webOS as a platform in the months that will have to pass before any new hardware is created. The longer it takes to get webOS into new hands, the longer it’s going to take for that new hardware, and the more the world, webOS fans included, is going to move on. For all of its forward thinking user interfaces and frameworks, webOS and HP are behind the curve in a number of ways. webOS needs someone who can bring it up to speed before it’s too late. Please, make that happen.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go blow out some candles.
65 Comments
cool to know i share BD's with 3 other webOS'ers
Check it out famous people birthday today: Celebrity born today
Meg, HP, even Netflix changed it's position on separating and streamlining it's business, why can't you?
Because they just officially completed buying Autonomy, and only have a few billion left in cash on hand, so wasting it trying to seed WebOS as a loss leader would somehow be the worst business decision possible (and that's saying a lot).
Happy B-Day gents. I'm sending over a cake shaped like a huge Pre, and Leo will sing the singing telegram. It's his new job, though I doubt he'll last.
Is it an Oreo Cake? ;)
Happy B-day
mine is in 13 days.. All i want is my 32 gb touchpad delivered.
telling us what your wish is??? now it will never happen!
Enjoy your birthday's guys. Mine is in 5 days and I have the same wish as you; please have someone committed to the platform buy it.
I just don't see it happening anymore. HP has just screwed up everything, I'd be surprised if they didn't **** this up too.... :-(
Happy Birthday !
However ... I am giving up ... I am just going to finish off my last little app and then I will look somewhere else
In the coming months, I hope to be working on Android
Ask @hedami (on Twitter) about the economics of developing for Android vs. webOS. He makes far more money off the webOS version of his Music Player Remix than Android, believe it or not.
i would believe it, but i dont charge for my little apps, but i would like to work on an OS with a long term future, and i dont really see that
Yeah, for now, but until something is announced, webOS is a dead end and not worth starting to develop new apps.
Happy Birthday! It's mine today too!
Tell them open source mojo and enyo if they're just gonna sit on it. For me I've jumped to android. Enjoy easypulse and whats -shaking beta in the android app catalog (redeveloped on phone gap).
Happy Brithday to All!
Ms. Whitman:
It's a mobile world, a mobile economy, and mobile devices are the future, right now the only future. Your company has foolishly opted out of the future but you can just as well opt back in. You've got webOS and all you have to do is use it. Here's how:
1. Release Pre3. Immeadiately negotiate with every carrier and get it out there. I have one and it's an awesome phone.
2. Flood the market with at cost TouchPad's. You've already got the #2 spot so keep it. I love my TouchPad and I'll buy more.
3. Hire a team of developers to build apps for webOS. A sub part of that team can specialize in helping developers migrate their apps over to webOS.
4. Get a slab phone out there. I don't want one but lots and lots of folks do.
5. Get webOS onto every printer, laptop, and desktop you sell. Apple has a beautiful ecosystem although closed. Coyp that but keep it open.
6. Develop the cloud for all it's worth. Make it so all my data is available to me through any of my devices, printers or my desktop, seamless and smooth.
You can do this, you really can. Or you can fade away as one of those big companies who just couldn't move into the mobile future.
Guys....they bought Autonomy for the vast majority of cash on hand they possessed. That deal is signed, sealed, official, and done.
Even if you possessed Meg Whitman and the Board of Directors and executed this plan to the letter, they'd run out of the few billion in operating cash left in 4 quarters or so.
It's over Wade. Enjoy your phone. Enjoy WebOS. But there is no saving it, no one wants it, no one gets it.
Happy Birthday Derek. I hope someone gets you a TouchPad Go as a present.
It all makes a lot of sense. Unfortuantely, I don't think anybody is listening.
I'm sure you guys are right. HP has made every wrong move they could, but I can still wish...
Happy B'day.
The longer it takes, the worst it looks for any possible new webOS devices :-(
so, I took the time to register after being a silent addict of webos and this site -- even still rockin the original palm pre. with a heavy heart I pre ordered the iphone4s on sprint the other day. i'd come back to y'all tho if there was something to come back to... sad day for me, and sadder to visit this site full of my webos brethren clinging to the cliff and surviving on damn near nothing now....
Here here sixtoe999. I did the same thing (though I have been using a Pre2 since May).
I feel the same way - sad.
My original Pre was becoming too unreliable. The screen was starting to freeze. To "fix it", I had to remove the battery. After I put the battery back in the screen was just black. I had to then put the phone on the charger to get it to reboot. This has happened several times.
I finally decided to get a new phone. I went with the Motorola Photon with Andriod 2.3 on Sprint. I do like the microphone/voice to text feature a lot. I can see it's a capable phone.
But I really miss the intuitive nature of WebOS. I assume I'll get the hang of Android, but what a loss.
At least I have my Touchpad!
Might as well be singing the Sound of Music good-bye song to webOS right along with Happy Birthday. Siri is looking pretty good on iphone.
Um, please don't assume that this webOS crowd are up on their musical theater trivia! We only know the songs from South Park Bigger, Longer & Uncut. M'kay?
Excuse me? I will once again proudly state my love for musical theatre. I was, after all, majoring in that for a performance degree at one time. :P
Lisa Brewster also knows her theatre. http://about.me/lisabrewster
Don't underestimate us webOS-folk. ;)
OK, so that makes four of us who know that Spiderman's superpowers were useless against Broadway...
BTW, we're not all dupes... And also BTW, it's
~ "So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night" ~
Happy birthday to all! But what's up with 10/10? I have 2 ex girlfriends whose birthday is today. :) It seems to be a popular day for popping babies out.
It's all part of the New Years Eve conceptions!
I blame Valentines Day, which is 34 weeks ago. Just about the right timeframe, if you know what I mean.
but the human gestation period [no pun intended] is 39 weeks is it not? give or take a week. Sure there are some premies... but
Ref: http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/baby_due_...
Happy Birthday Derek, Tim and Richard!
Well Said Derek. With each passing day the Pre community shinks. Hardware breaks, software acts up, and with each new smartphone released, the lure to move on gets stronger and stronger. I myself tried out the Epic Galaxy S II for 2 weeks. If Sprint had a stronger signal, and I had another few days to tweak the device, I'd probably be fully transitioned to Android by now. I say that as an ardent, webOS user, fully committed to the platform. There's simply nowhere for me to go except 'Somewhere else' in the coming weeks and months.
My screen is cracked, the side of my launch day Pre -, (USB port side) is missing large chunks of plastic and the interface fails to respond to my touch at times, so for me, there are very few gains of sand left in the hourglass to fall.
I can only hold my breath for so long.
That is indeed a nice coincidence. Happy Birthday to Tim and Derek.
All three born on 10/10? 'Tis a sign, I'd wager! A sign of the ancient prophesy that ends, in the common tongue: Three nerds to rule them.
Unless, of course, your midi-chlorians are the highest concentration ever seen by the Council.
Or you have a lightening shaped scar on all three of your foreheads...
veer - check
pre 2 - check
pre 3 - check
tp 64gb - check
loyalty - check
All good but the last one is the most valuable.
Happy Birthday I'll be here same time next year
Happy birthday to all of you !
I will wait until my next birthday (Dec. 24). If by this time there are no signs of new webOS.phones, I will buy me a present (christmas and birthday combined), probably running Mango.
I'm a Dec 18th baby: please don't give yourself a combo gift!! Do you know how many of my friends and relatives did that to me growing?! You must have had it as bad!
We deserve the same number of gifts as some kid born on June 25! Nobody combo gift-ed him/her!
No lie, in the second grade, my mother gave me the "walkie" on the Dec 18th, and then the "taklie" on Christmas.
But, I'm completely over those permanent emotional scars now....
I combo gift everyone - I just don't buy anything. That way it's always fair. :P
I'm 12-12, and I hate combo gifts. When I get one then the one who did it gets one from me their following birthday, it goes like this:
July 20th. "Here's your birthday gift, oh and by the way, it's also your christmas gift from last year."
I don't say it with any tone or anger, and usually it' a christmas gift that I held back so the point is pretty strong. Sometimes it's still in it's christmas wrapping.
Just sayin'...
Ditto! When someone tries to pull that on me, I ask them to give me back the birthday present I gave them earlier, so that I can now wrap it in Christmas paper. They get it the point.
But, I'm all better: Dr. Drew has helped a lot.
Sadly, there are no companies that could "do right" by WebOS.
Amazon is full in on Android, and if they got WebOS, it'd be an unrecognizable, Homebrew-UNfriendly, content machine.
Facebook doesn't need an OS. It already has content deals with plenty of services through its website, and is all over every mobile OS already.
Google...wow....not sure what Derek was thinking there. No major Android manufacturers are jumping ship, and what alternative room they have is being consumed by Windows Phone 7.
It's over.
And on the apple 4s launch day, people were already saying they can't support apple, android, and blackberry. Why another os?
Yes, webOS is better.
Yes, I REALLY like the form factor of the veer and pre's better than a slab phone. (Who wants another computer in my pocket?)
But what I need is apps. Not even 200000 dumb, silly apps. A solid word processor and spreadsheet. Flash. Skype. God, and I'd really like to be able use the apps my bank and NPR and every other company makes too.
On a global phone.
In other words, I need the Pre3 with decent app support.
Unless they release it, I have to jump ship and buy one of those stupid slab phones. I'm waiting for my next overseas trip. But then, the purity of the perfect operating system is going to give in to practicality.
Dude, you can get a Pre3 on ebay right now. AT&T packaging and all.
I'm not a fan of Ebay, by the way. Actually I hate them the way they nickel and dime us at every point, but they do have their uses.
I understand this thinking if you're WebOS Uber Alles or whatever, but then again, buying any WebOS product now is like playing craps.
And if you're reading the forums, you see lots of TP owners are getting "snake eyes" in the forms of crack, screen, and speaker problems. Compounding the problem is the fact that you would have to send in your shiny new Pre 3 for repair, and it may or may NOT come back repaired at all.
You just "pays your dues and takes your chances". You're gambling enough with the dire future the OS is facing if you already own a handset.
Happy Birthday to one and all of you born on 10/10.
I am happily using my launch day Verizon Pre Plus and loving it. I also have a new Pre Plus and a new Pre 2 in the box standing buy if my current Pre Plus quits. I will give up on webOS when they shut down the cloud service and I can no longer access my Palm Profile.
Come on HP. If you can shell out $10.3 billion for Autonomy, a company that generated only $870 million in revenues last year, You can surely figure out some way of throwing enough money at webOS to get it into the hands of a competent mobile development company.
iPhone 4S + iPad 2.
I'd love to come back if you ever get anything together, but I'm no longer holding my breath.
It is well and truly over.
I'm really surprised more people aren't jumping to Windows Phone 7... it's been a pretty natural and exciting transition for me.
It does much of the same contact integration, and takes it further with all the built-in Facebook stuff.
Really responsive and well designed.
The voice integration in Mango has been incredible. I get texts read to me over my car's speaker, and can respond wihtout ever touching the phone. Very cool.
Not as may apps as iPhone or Android, but seems like a lot for someone coming from WebOS, so that wasn't painful at all.
After using the interface for a while, I'm convinced that when Windows 8 comes out (sharing a very similar interface) Win Phone is going to be BIG. In other words, when people get exposed to it, it will be very natural for them to pickup a Windows Phone. And unlike Windows Mobile, this interface scales beautifully, from Phone to Xbox to Desktop (I hope at least).
Anyway, if anyone is looking for a solid recommendation, I'll gladly t for WP7. I have a Trophy on Verizon.
Had I not been able to get a Pre3 on the internet I was going to jump to a Mango phone. Enjoy, it looks pretty cool.
Hopefully Sprint will get a decent Mango device. I'll make the switch then.
Good advice! I was thinking the same, until I got a Pre 3 :p
But... I'm using my Pre3 on H2O Wireless, without a contract, so that I can easily switch to Win 8 when it's ready!! :D
Unless, of course, the Pre 4 is out by then, in which case I'll flip a coin or something.... :p
Happy Birthday Derek et al!
But what you're asking for is a reboot of the reboot? Another 18 months of nothing-ness? As much as we love it, Webos can't survive it.
I want a new Webos phone and it is not going to happen. It's done. They done killed it, Pa! There's very cold water coming up to my knees and the deck is sloping precariously and the band is getting hard to hear and some guy named Leo (rhymes with mayo) just hit me with an ice/snow ball.
webOS isn't going to be sold. HP bought it for enterprise and still intends to use it that way. Sure they'd like to sell licenses to manufactures and get some free money but it doesn't look like that will happen.
From another loyalist, Happy Birthday Derek! And thanks for being the voice of the community! I think HP should spin off webOS back into Palm and put you, Dieter, and Josh Topolsky in charge... :D
Whoa! Slow down there fella! We're nerds, we don' know nuthin' 'bout runnin' no company!
Can you see the excessive lifestyles these guys would fall into if they became officers of a multi-billion dollar corporation?? Even AIG would be shocked! (I know, 'cause I work there)
Happy BDay to you & Tim. Pity there's no good news for WebOS.... I guess a bit of wishful thinking can't hurt either. Happy Thanksgiving (Can) & Columbus day (USA) too.
Wow, a busy month with birthdays :o. Happy birthday!
May your life be filled with sweet things on your birthday and always! Happy Birthday
Derek, strange that your birthday is today and mine was yesterday. I enjoyed your thoughts and everyone's about a birthday wish for WebOS. Yet, it appears to me that unless some miracle occurs, WebOS will go the route of betamax and other wonderful, but never fulfilled products. I finally gave up on the phone to get an Android. I wish the Pre, but the Nexus S does the basic work for me. I did get two TouchPads and I really think that these devices would have done well if priced properly.
As for HP, I have taught strategic management at the university level. I have contacted one of the authors of a widely used text book on the subject. He agreed that HP will be a case study of what not to do. He is (based on the reports in the media) baffled as to how or why HP is taking the direction it did. If there is a clear strategic direction then it is not apparent to either of us or to many analysts.
Take a perfectly functional company and do what the board did. Good grief.
Respect to you and your optimism but I think it's over - webOS is dying.
Android is #1, IOS is #2, WindowsPhone will be #3 and QNX Blackberry will be #4 - there is no room for a number 5. Four mobile OSes is already one too many and I actually predict Blackberry will eventually adopt Android as they lose market share.
Who in their right mind is going to invest billions in a game they can't win? HP seemed a good bet because they made a compelling case to deploy webOS across a range of devices i.e. de-risking the billions they would be investing by generating returns across multiple businesses. A decent idea but HP got cold feet.
One hope is that Amazon hit massive IP problems through their use of Android and need an alternative - but even then Amazon don't actually make a phone (yet?).
I really do hope I'm wrong because webOS is a great concept but it's been chasing it's tail and in constant catch up since day one. It needs a fully funded reboot - nothing else will do, and that's the problem.
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I have two TPs thanks to the firesale. Apps pause when "multi-tasking" just like competition. Maybe some apps do and some dont? But my angry birds froze till I returned to that card. So no more about "full multi-taking" (like I give a carp so long as end result is the same).
webOS is dead. It's had two lives. The best to hope for is that your number two OS gets the part(s) of webOS you like the most (doing a Riverdance with your fingers seems popular-- cards).
I have two sorta-nice web browsers/email clients thanks to the firesale (on-screen board and touch accuracy suck).
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