webOS 2.0 Easter Egg Uncovered: Supercowpowers 84
by Dieter Bohn Wed, 08 Dec 2010 5:46 pm EST
Long-time PalmOS fans remember the Taxi easter egg - whereby you can get a taxi to randomly tootle its way across your screen. Similarly amusing easter eggs have been sadly missing from webOS - or at least we didn't know about them.
Enter cwgtex, who discovered that when you receive an email with the subject line "supercowpowers" (no quotes), then open it on a Pre (running at least webOS 2.0), suddenly your phone is all Hallelujah it's raining cows.
Useful? No. Fun? Yes, and a lot friendlier than the mind-crushing insanity that's hidden inside Android's source code.
via @webosinternals
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84 Comments
This is fascinating.
Doesn't work on my Pre running 1.4.5, and WebOS Internals says that it's only on 2.0.
Same for me, no cows on 1.4.5
I think its because we all have patches on our pre. Dangit.
I had read in the logs that it worked on 1.4.5. My mistake, fixing article
If my wife says we are going to have sex "in the coming months", I would be elated!!! lol (just kidding dear) Now I'm in trouble! lol
But just be patient! All the good stuff is "coming" ;)
I'm really starting to hate the term "In the coming months". I think Palm/HP uses that term to really mean "In the coming quarters".
You're only starting to hate it because everyone here mindlessly repeats it...
And they have the patience of 5 yr olds.
Hey, this is the world of high tech, not fine wine or balsamic vinegar. Time does not enhance the product.
awesome! :))
HP isn't your momma and isn't going to give you whatever you want just because you're crying like a little girl.
HP will release new devices when they are ready (and WebOS 2.0 when the carriers approve it).
they haven't said whether they have even given it to carriers yet! In the past they've always announced when carriers got it, so looks like this is a no.
you're right (reading btwn the lines) 2.0 isn't ready.
They pushed the update out to non-carrier devices. It seems reasonable to presume they've released it to carriers. Not a guarantee, but a reasonable logical step.
However, as we noticed with 1.4.5, it's impossible to tell how long it will take for the carriers to approve it. In the case of 1.4.5 it was a matter of months. This seems typical for many Android updates as well.
yea... Especially HPalm..
I loathe the term HPalm. Precisely cause people keep saying it.
I don't see HPalm coming here and peppering the comments with "in the coming months" on EVERY article.
Yea, I tried it on the Verizon Pre Plus running 1.45 to no avail :(
Is there a word missing from the first sentence of the 2nd paragraph? Perhaps the word "when" afte the word 'that'
This make me want even more WebOS 2.0 :( haha
I don't know about you guys, but I consider the Konami code an easter egg.
For sure!
That was no easter egg. That was a xmas gift.
...I'll see it in the coming months
I say that we should have a contest to come up with a WebOs mascot. I'm getting Android envy of that little wanna be cute green R2/D2 wanna be. He has a Santa hat on over at Android Central. We just have an image of an almost 2 year old phone...
Jon Rubenstein is the WebOS Mascot. LOL!!
Some people might think a zombie would be a good mascot at this point.
Or a coffin with a load of nails named for each of palm's failures with another one being nailed.
What about a pale, creepy cyborg woman?
How about a toaster?
didnt Phil McKinney(sp) request this a while back...now let me see if i can find that article...i think he also wanted a theme song for events when he came on stage and when he exited or something....
The milk will turn sour from these cows by the time we see 2.0. ;)
Then I will make sour cream from it, and eat tacos!
More than rot.........fizzle out, evaporated, and drinkin by flies.
this is cute.. But why cows? Lol
Isn't it obvious? Cows make milk. Milk is rich in vitamin D. "D" is the fourth letter of the alphabet. 4 x 4 (the number of letters in cows) is 16. "P" is the 16th letter of the alphabet. PALM and PIXI and PRE start with "P"!
Actually Milk isn't rich in vitamin D, the vitamin is actually added.
Nice try though
Actually vitamin D occurs naturally in milk. It is removed from some milk along with fat and then added back in.
If you watch south park/inception you'll understand haha
@craigwann
Trouble right here in River City...
Because the pigs are busy hiding from angry birds.
it would be if webOS 2.0 was available to more than 0.5% of the user base.
I can't wait till I get Webos 2.0 Everything I dreamed of.
hey that is awesome! NOT
This is named after a Linux easter egg. :)
http://www.eeggs.com/items/37085.html
So glad to see that HPalm developers have time to focus on complete B.S. Like this instead of reall apps or functionality!!
Whoever developed this should be fired!! Oh wait, when webOS goes done in flames because developers are focusing on crap like this they will be out of a job anyway...
Now we know the real reason why webOS 2.0 is so damn late.
Are you being sarcastic? I hope so!
Kind of sarcastic/kind of not...
To me this is the same as a football player scoring a touchdown and strutting around like they are hot stuff and the best player in the world, yet their team is still down 83 - 6.
HPalm has **SO MUCH** ground to make up with webOS, even if this did only take 5 minutes to do, it should not appear in the public release.
Come on, if they get to a marketshare of 10%, then they can "strut their stuff". Until then? Heads down development to make your platform better.
Your "logic" would make sense if Palm were made up of about ten people.
Unfortunately for you, things like this take a miniscule amounts of time, so it has no effect on webOS 2.0 development at all.
If you're just being sarcastic, then hat off to you, and next time, use a /sarcasm tag to avoid the possibility of looking like a troll/idiot.
It's also the sort of fun little task that might get worked on during a lunch break and make the coder feel a little less insane after debugging code endlessly.
So much for the big announcement at CES. Now that the secret of the easter egg is out what will they have to talk about.
In case no one has seen this yet -> http://tinyurl.com/2bcu6qk
"Rubinstein ( ... ) said that in the next 12 months, HP will launch several
I'd say the Pre2 is intended to be a developper phone..
how do developers use this vaporware CDMA (e.g. Vz) pre2 that you say is intended for them?
yeaaaa about that...
mikey should chill . This easter egg doesn't work on my phone but it's pretty damn cute.
I'm not too sure about this one... excuse my lack of a sense of humour here, but I think that's not cool. They had time to code this but no time to fix more bugs?
I'm somewhat sure that something like this wouldn't take enough time to actually matter.
Until I know, for SURE, that Sprint is going to upgrade my ol' Pre Minus to WebOS 2, please don't tell me about any fancy features or Easter eggs. Grrrrumphhh!
How about making that as an animated background for the OS :)
Does anyone else wonder if Dieter is going to be bombarded by emails titled "supercowpowers"?
dunno, you should send him an email to ask...
always curious how exactly one discovers something like this.. Must be from lookin @ the code cuz I doubt many ppl would send an email with a title like that ;]
Anyone else notice the link to Android Central at the bottom that had the android "Easter egg"?
That post was from 2 days ago and has 14 comments, 34 FB likes and 93 tweets.
Our Easter egg post is from...today...and has 47 comments, 1 FB like, and 7 tweets.
Boy are we an anti-social yet vocal bunch! And I though I was the only one who didn't use those things.
That's one creepy "easter egg" they have there..
That's because we are embarrassed of our PREs, when everybody has droids and iphones.
Gave me a little chuckle at the end of the day (on the Pre2). Now go get Epocrates back on board HP!
Oh, the flying cows? Simple... It's the developer's way of indicating that "in the coming months" really means "when cows fly" or "when our management gets supercowpowers to make better decisions on hardware offerings and carrier partnerships". I saw this using grep buried in the Linux code.
yeah.
that.
What a teaser! Show us this then "only for 2.0". Doh!
So glad they spent time on that vs. properly designing the email app. And something that others can do to you. Otherwise known as an exploit. Nice. What about this stuff, Palm?
- borked text/plain
- auto-linkifying things, even stuff you do not want to be a URL, with no way out (your signature, for example)
- no option to send just text/plain vs sending both text/plain and text/html (the former borked, see first bullet)
- alerts are only on INBOX on IMAP servers. Really? WTF, palm? The whole point of IMAP is to be able to MANAGE OUR MAIL IN ONE PLACE. Not checking any other folders pretty much makes the mail app useless without forwarding copies to a dummy account instead of syncing to the real one.
In short, the mail app really sucks and is far away from something an enterprise would use, let alone most real IMAP users.
When Palm dies, I wonder, will it dream?
Totally willing to hold out until the next Palm just because of this. Love PALM.
The mascot should be a calendar. (; I'll work on it in the coming months.
apt-get help
apt 0.7.9ubuntu17.2 for i386 compiled on Apr 17 2009 16:29:24
Usage: apt-get [options] command
apt-get [options] install|remove pkg1 [pkg2 ...]
apt-get [options] source pkg1 [pkg2 ...]
(cut)
This APT has Super Cow Powers.
apt-get moo
(__)
(oo)
/------\/
/ | ||
* /\---/\
~~ ~~
...."Have you mooed today?"...
Instead of cows, it should be tumbleweeds. It would be fitting.
"I gotta go Julia, we got cows!" --from what movie, anybody?
Maybe we could get an endorsement from Chik-fil-a for promoting webOS 2.0? They could give a free OS upgrade with each kids meal!
Twister
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4a35U3VU1w
One thing that stands out to ME regarding Rubenstein's interview at the Dive Into Mobile conference: His reply regarding the uncertainty of the Palm brand moving forward.
He made it seem like they are not sure yet if they are going to use the legacy name of PALM moving forward; they are STILL researching this. Personally - I DO NOT CARE if they use Palm in the branding moving forward..but I'm more concerned because many of us are eagerly waiting for new products at CES. The fact that we are in the 2nd week of December with CES 3 weeks away and they are STILL not sure if the Palm name will used during a product launch- demonstrates to me that the company is not as far along as we had hope in terms of product announcements. To me - it appears to be a red flag that they are not ready to do anything significant at CES. And yes, I'm a day one PRE owner like many others - is eagerly waiting for CES for something big to be announced - or else I have to consider different options in terms of operating systems (IOS or Android).
The brand situation should not be up in the air - at this point of the game!
It's not that hard to change the branding on something. On the physical phone, it's just the backplate, a $.15 piece of plastic. $.50 if it's touchstone compatible.
I see that this has become a chatroom for the diehards or the ignorant and overly optimistic. I'm the latter...
My point is this: we are all hoping that - within the next 3 weeks - there will be a major product launch at CES and the basic brand stuff hasn't been ironed out yet!
It Makes me think that the company isn't as far along as we had all hoped in terms of launch at CES
Even if they HAD to have that decided for CES, which they don't, it's a really simple thing.
They just have backplates with both logos made for CES. Any power point or signage is going to have both. WebOS is going to be HP branded.
This REALLY is not a big deal. The name that goes on the back of the phone is an easy change and something that can be changed late in the game. Frankly waiting as long as possible is a good thing as it allows HP to do more market research.
And that's assuming Rubinstein is correct/being honest. Personally, I don't see the Palm brand being used, it hasn't been relevant in years. HP is relevant now.