McKinney: We support homebrew, HP engineers creating webOS Apps 44
HP CTO Phil McKinney just finished his speech at AlwaysOn and as expected, there were no major announcements to be had. McKinney did discuss some of the roadblocks between where we are and where we need to be with regard to mobile cloud computing - hitting on issues like the US falling behind in broadband infrastructure and companies intervening between app developers and users in oppressive ways.
McKinney also once again mentioned HP's thinking with regard to the future of devices with those flexible displays, though he went one step further and hypothetized about separating the display from the device - ex. your connection could be your watch and you display could be a flexible display, your phone, or heck, even your entire wall as in the slide above. Who wouldn't want a webOS Wall?
Q&A time brought a lot of questions about Palm. McKinney once again mentioned HP's size and scale, natch, but he also pointed out that that he has given phones as prizes to HP engineers who develop good webOS apps:
Inside of HP with the 47,000 engineers I issued a challenge [...] for the HP engineers to go create apps, consumer apps [...] I stopped counting at 750 apps and my mailbox has totally exploded.
Some of those apps, by the way, have popped up in Palm's Beta Apps feed.
McKinney pointed out that Palm does not get in the way of letting developers connect directly to their users. In fact, enterprises are free to create their own app distribution systems. McKinney also pointed out that HP supports homebrew:
We also support the homebrew guys. You hear about all the guys hacking phones and unlocking the phones, we actually encourage that. You can go out to PreCentral or any of the sites that support the Palm homebrew guys. they'll tell you how to unlock your phone and how you can download the homebrew sites. The homebrew guys have just done some phenomenal work from the standpoint of really unlocking the true power of webOS.
Lastly, McKinney reiterated some of the points we heard last week: "We are also restating that our focus is webOS and Windows 7," meaning that Android is on the outs with HP for sure as is Windows Phone 7. He also reiterated that the Windows 7 Slate is meant solely for enterprise, HP is most definitely working on a webOS Slate device, and finally that Rubinstein wasn't whistlin' dixie when he said webOS 2.0 is coming.
Want to show Phil McKinney the same love he's showing the community? He's looking for some help creating an 'audio brand / entrance theme' for when he heads out to give speeches. The person who creates the best theme will win $1,000 to boot. Check it out here.
Update: the presentation video is online now.
Source: AlwaysOn & ViVu livestream.
44 Comments
Cool.
McKinney just gets better each time I hear from him. He's combining the best of what's worked in the past (homebrew, working with users) with what he has to offer (money, tech resources, and great people) and is looking for help from anybody that wants to be part of the solution and trying to reward and recognize them along the way.
Great stuff. Go HP!
while it's in the carriers hands, I'd bet someone at HP/Palm has info as to why we don't have the updte yet. I'd really like to know.
Let's say that it is, as many of us presume, the carriers delaying the release. To point that out will make the carriers look bad, not what you want to do as a phone/OS manufacturer. Like Mama says, "If you can't say something nice...".
I suspect that although Palm had said they weren't going to delay the 1.4.5 release due to the PDK permission bug (see 1) the US carriers have said that they must delay the update. It doesn't seem all that likely that the US carriers are spending 2 more weeks testing than the international carriers.
I think the US will see 1.4.5.1 which will have fixed the PDK bug and not 1.4.5. Hopefully international users will get a 1.4.5.1 release too.
Edit: reworded for clarity.
1 - http://www.precentral.net/webos-145-bug-3d-gaming-pdk-apps
Want to show Phil McKinney the same love he's showing the community? He's looking for some help creating an 'audio brand / entrance theme' for when he heads out to give speeches.
'Cause every hero needs his theme music.
I continue to be impressed with the commentary from this guy. I am genuinely excited for the future of WebOS (and admittedly less concerned about Palm as a brand) and how the reach of HP is really going to do some terrific things.
Unlike the tsunami of other posts that will come after this, I am not so concerned about new hardware, either. I think they (HP) are doing the right things to stay relevant (e.g. getting out in front of people at these conferences), and am happy they are taking the right approach and not pushing out hardware just to please the fanboys. Build in the right functionality into the OS so that it can reap the benefits of gaining users off of other platforms. A smart approach that works for all of us in the long run.
Good on ya, HP.
I am very happy to hear comments like this from HP. Thanks Phil McKinney.
I'd be curious as to what those apps are ... and what the quality of them are as well.
Hoping for the best here, but assigning engineers to write apps doesn't sound like the recipe for inspired creations, unless it a basic utility. (Or unless they've hired Jason R)
I'm wondering if most of the 750 apps mentioned above developed by HP's developers will be released with either the new update or the next hardware.
I think within 3 months we'll have new hardware and a ton more apps.
Glad HP supports homebrew just like Palm!
Patient palm loyalists will be rewarded soon.
I like walls too, though would love to have a WebOS TV connected to slate, connected to palm pre, connected to a note pad on my fridge, plus everything connected to my audio speakers.... ok printer also!!
I love walls too. No pressure to utilize a holster and be "one of those guys". LOL
Connections would be awesome... Like adhoc bluetooth and wifi? I'd settle for a BT keyboard so I could edit a spreadshee...oh wait...
holy shit..... Phil is the man!
to mention HP support of pre central and homebrew is HUGE.
homebrew is one of the reasons I became a webOS loyalist.
the openness of palm community was surprising to me.
precentral 395000 members.... HP is watching and listening....
I have made donations to devs and will continue to do so....
HP should paypal 20k to webosinternals;-)
imagine what would come of that...
You can hear the sound of PreCentral raising their ad rates, and deservedly so! Way to go PreCentral and PreCentral members!
Now if they would just hire Jason!!!
The facebook group "Palm needs to hire Jason Robitaille" is up to 223 members last time I checked. Hopefully everyone that reads this article will join! As the group description says, "it worked for Betty White"...
+1 more. i didn't know about that until now!
Have you ever heard Jobs or Rubi speak with such insight and embrace outside resources like this? Its refreshing to have him share his enthusiasm, rather than following a very carefully and restricted script with clearly defined limits. Sure a lot of the stuff is a ways off, but he's not excluding any possibilities when he shares his thoughts with us.
projecting webOS on my wall is a great idea. I'm going to move some furniture around to find the perfect place for the gesture area.
Note to all the whiners, this is another article/speech that clearly tells us that HP is going to make webOS a success. Let's give them time to get it done!
750 Apps, thats almost a quarter of the current app catalog. I think I like HP's idea of scale.
heh, indeed.
only one word could sum up how this information makes me feel
~Skeet
...and?
THIS IS GRRRREEEAAT! with the capitol "G"
I'm liking this HP deal more and more every day.
+1
with that shout out to homebrew, I'm wondering 2 things: Do you think Phil Overclocks his Pre? And how many patches is he running?
I was about to ask the same, how does HP feel about overclocking? Would be nice not to void my warranty
I bet he has two Pre's:
1) One with an overclock and the nastiest best tweaks and as many paid apps as will fit.
2) A clean Pre, with the latest developmental o/s stuff before its ready to hit the carriers for testing.
Just guessing, but that's what I'd do if I were embracing Homebrew.
It would be great if an engineer would make a camera-to-pdf app for using you camera like a scanner. I haven't seen an app that does that for Webos
I think we'd need a better physical camera to enable that.
The current fixed focus camera can not capture a sharp enough image for OCR (optical character recognition) software to convert those images into a text document, be it a .doc, .pdf, .txt, etc.
That's the same reason barcode scanners perform awfully on the Pre. QR code readers do a little better due to the higher resiliency QR codes have to blurriness.
Let's hope we get that better camera on our next WebOS device.
The apps written by HP employees are likely not particularly useful, by and large, though I'm sure there are some gems in there.
The point of the program was to get HP employees familiar with and excited about WebOS. It seems to have been a major success.
I doubt they will be writing "fart" apps.
With all that homebrew love, can an official Patch Catalog be too far off?
That would be a HUGE differentiator to every other mobile platform and would just scream of openness.
Seriously?! Jon Rubenstein "wasn't just whistlin' dixie"?! Then, what was he "whistlin'", the music from those fight scenes on the original Star Trek series?!
I thought we were all nerds here!! Modern, up-to-date nerds, at that! I haven't heard that reference since I was converting my Betamax tapes of Gilligan's Island to DVD!
DVD? Don't you mean LaserDisc? ;-)
Perfect music: Gamesters of Triskelion music from Star Trek, often used in the simpsons.
Also... I think I may love this man. Why isn't he the CEO instead of CTO? The CEO constantly puts his own foot in his mouth.
He seems to know his tech and have a plan. Each time he speaks, I can speaks HP's integrated solutions growing and becoming more clearly defined. Every time Hurd speaks, it just feels like they're gonna retreat and become a software company with no exciting hardware, and start challenging Pitney Bowes and Honeywell for the honor of the world's dullest tech company.
About that future of flexible screens, I was just reading an article in Popular Science (OK I'm dating myself) that was talking about some displays that could be an adjunct to, or in some cases, replace primary phone displays. It has the display projected on your forearm (like the projecting laser keyboards if anyone remembers those) and a pickup to detect your gestures. Somehow (it wasn't real clear) there's some way of having haptic feedback.
The proto they were talking about would have something like a Bluetooth headset being the only "physical" part of the device. You want to dial a number, just tap your arm. Play a game? Tickle your arm. Sure, this isn't going to be hi-res anytime soon, but it sure has an interesting geek factor!
As you said, that's a ways off...
In the meantime, I'm hoping Palm (now that they've got HP backing them up) gets it together--e.g. Bluetooth profiles--to work with this watch: www.getinpulse.com
47,000 HP engineers?!!! Think about it, if each engineer wrote an app, we'd catch up to the number of apps that are available for Android. If they wrote two each, we can seriously start thinking about surpassing Apple! And quality apps, engineers are perfectionists! Gosh, I'm soooooo excited!!!
i want some jeans made of flex screen displays....wear those to the club lol!
+1 HAHAHA...My favorite use for the flex screen idea so far! Also, a great visualization this early in the morning. It woke my brain up, thanks.
This guy is making my inner fanboy want to go dance naked in the rain!!! I love this man!
my wishlist :
nixon solar watch running webOS
1.5 Ghz , 2 Gb ddr2
synced with 5 in flex display 1/4 in thick
synced with 11 in flex display
bluetooth micro ear piece
HTPC running webOS / win7
synced with 100 in flex display