Once again, HP proves that the collective vision of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard is so long-dead that the tombstone has crumbled to dust.
I'm gutted. Genuinely.
When I was younger, before Fiorina stepped up to be the first to rape the corpses of the founders, I was a massive fan of HP. My first graphing calculator was an HP48G, which taught me the joys of Lisp... well, Psil, because it came with Reverse Polish Lisp.
WebOS could have been the resurrection of that culture -- fully JavaScript development environment, app development across multiple mobile and tablet platforms with a single environment... just genius. It's sad to see that vision evaporate, along with some of the novel telephony and interactive features that made WebOS a joy to work with.
I can't help but think of MS in this situation. It reminds me of MS breaking into the video game console market and fighting really hard to stay in it. Even after a major hardware snafu that cost them an estimated 3 billion dollars they kept fighting. After six years of work, it's finally doing well.
WebOS was worth fighting for and it was in better shape than the 1st and 2nd Xbox IMO. What a waste.
Was it worth it for Microsoft, though? Their entertainment unit made 32 million dollars in profit last quarter – a quarter which they considered an immense success. With that kind of income, the project will never break even, never mind turn an overall profit. Even if you consider intangibles like strengthening the Windows platform, it's hard for me to believe that those billions were best invested into Xbox.
Actually, what you describe is illegal in most developed countries. Microsoft knows this better than anyone. They've been strung up for "bundling" and "predatory pricing" many times. Also, their position in their "monopoly" markets are weakening by the day.
Enyo let you write HTML5 apps in Chrome, Firefox or whatever, and essentially (to simplify) add a few WebOS hints and you have a fully functional native app. More than anything else, I hope Enyo becomes completely open source so we can write html5 cross-os apps that are as snappy as those on WebOS with a framework that lets you create reuseable parts.
I was just on a Virgin America flight where they were lending out Chromebooks to try and part of me thought why aren't they lending out tablets on a plane instead?
And porting some of those chromeOS apps would've been pretty easy...
After developing for iPhone/iPad I was excited to port apps to WebOS. Trying out my officemate's TouchPad was a great experience. I bet Apple is letting out a sigh of relief... the HP TouchPad was imo on par with the iPad.
So, why wasn't it as appealing to the broader base of consumers?
I played with one for a bit at Best Buy, but it felt clunky and didn't look as good as the ipad. OTOH I didn't buy an iPad either, as tablets just don't work for me.
The OS is on par with the iPad but the hardware is not. An iPad is thinner and lighter and made of glass and metal (as opposed to plastic) but they both cost $500. If you can't match Apple's aesthetics then you shouldn't charge the same price. Either take the loss for market share or figure out how to produce something that feels higher quality or go home.
I won't deny it it was. Like android they had the capability to have the GUI hardware accelerated but never implemented it. Where it did excel was the multitasking. I would normally start 3-4 processes (for example, mail, twitter, music player, browser) let them spool up. By the time you got to the last one task the first would be ready to go.
WebOS 3.0 finally implemented GUI HW acceleration because if it was bad on the smartphone it would be unusable at tablet resolutions.
When people say that android is slow this what they mean, the interface doesn't flow it jerks.
Why is this answer so downvoted? People around me constantly rationalize how they made the best phone/tablet purchases, where in reality it's just fanboyism without admitting the product's faults.
An article that hit the home a few days back explains it: many consider this observation as a personal attack. It's not that prople who buy iPads are fashion victims - it really is great product. It's just not the perfect product for everyone. That and what we perceive as rational choices usually aren't. Our brains contain a whole lot of mammal under its thin layer of Homo Sapiens.
HP was really stupid launching the "Ouchpad" at prices similar to the iPad because the sum of iOS and its application support make it a better product. With a lower price, it could win some market share. WebOS deserved better management.
It's a facile dismissal - exactly the kind of fanboy behaviour you're accusing others of engaging in. "Oh, it's just the brand" claims imply that the speaker a) either doesn't understand or is ignoring the relationship between correlation and causation and b) appears to think complex decisions are binary.
> a) either doesn't understand or is ignoring the relationship between correlation and causation
I do understand. The iPod is an excellent product and is priced very competitively. It's not, however, the best choice for everyone and you cannot neglect brand plays an important role in how consumers pick products. I would love to use a Macbook (and I could - a nice, shiny one has always been one intranet form away from me) but then I would have to struggle like my fellow colleagues do to tailor it to my rather specific tastes. For me, it's just not worth it. That's not to say I wouldn't love to have one - my heart wants it. My brain denies it to me because it's not the best choice.
And therefore, being unable to run iTunes (unless under a VM running Windows or a hackintosh) an iPad as useful to me as a brick.
> b) appears to think complex decisions are binary.
Have you ever seen a teen shopping for clothes? Why do you think shopping for a tablet is any different? Why do you think most people (who don't understand the differences between tablets) turn this into a complex decision? iPads are cool, Touchpads aren't (and they really lack appealing applications) and Androids are clunky (they really are, but they have other things to offer)
I think you just proved my point: your specific reasons for not buying Apple products aren't universal. Other people who don't have your particular software requirements (probably 90% of people in the web-centric era) aren't going to weigh those downsides so highly when comparing price, battery life, hardware quality, available software, etc. - all areas where Android, et al. are struggling to keep up.
Saying "it's about the brand" is too simple because it could mean "Buzz / clinging to past glory" (i.e. the Sony strategy) or "well earned reputation for producing products people like" and heavily papering over the reasons in the latter case.
> Other people who don't have your particular software requirements (probably 90% of people in the web-centric era) aren't going to weigh those downsides so highly
If you think 90% of people really weight pros and cons of a mostly technical decision, you are an optimist. I am not sure most people who buy iPads know every other tablet available (and that includes things like the Nook) can browse the web, use e-mail, watch videos, run Flash thingies and play Angry Birds. Apple enjoys a powerful reputation and it's often a good enough decision to go with an iPad when you are confused by a lot of slightly different offerings.
The Touchpad appears to have been rushed out before it was ready and its software has a great deal of problems, but I am quite sure those problems would have been fixed relatively soon. It's been on the market for only 45 days, after all.
Time for Nintendo to buy WebOS and start up their iPhone competitor devices. Such could be a real serious competitor to Apple and Nintendo is losing market share.
They know how to do hardware and know how to market hand held IP devices. Why shouldn't they jump head first and give Apple/Android significant competition?
Nintendo has disregarded non-gaming software, especially software aimed at connectivity, or at software as a service, pretty consistently. The WiiU and the 3DS don't seem to have made any advances in that department. While the WiiU won't use the insane friend code system, 2010's 3DS still does. Ever since the Wii debuted with an integrated (but simple) OS, I have hoped that Nintendo will get on board with that stuff.
Microsoft really pushed having an integrated console dashboard and operating system, and Sony has slowly caught up with the big pieces over the life of the PlayStation 3, but whenever it's mentioned to Nitnendo, they seem to take pity on the questioner for seeing any importance in it, giving online, connectivity, and software as service a grimace-ridden "that's nice, dear," before going back to putting more gyroscopes and polarized displays in their disconnected, single player peripherals.
I just don't think it's in their culture, and they don't seem ready to make a shift.
That's a great vision, but I think it's highly unlikely to happen.
A scenario I can see developing itself would be one where Samsung, LG, or HTC buys WebOS. Either, to have an edge in this patent mess, and/or in response to Motorola acquisition by Google.
Nintendo is the closest company to Apple. It would be interesting to see what they do if both 3DS and Wii U fail. Who knows maybe it is time for them to do another major transition like they did around the 70s.
Nintendo will have to have a string of spectacular failures before it starts share cropping. Remember n64? Remember GameCube? Both were pretty lackluster compared to Super NES. VirtualBoy? Disaster.
The Wii U and 3DS might be disappointing, but Nintendo is a survivor. It has the internal support to last through dry spells on the strength of first party titles alone.
It would be very difficult for a company as resilient and conservative as Nintendo to sink itself in such a short time frame. Remember, too, this company also started off making playing cards 100 years ago.
The only bad end I could see in Nintendo's immediate future would be an aggressive if not hostile takeover. I believe its market cap is only $20 billion, and supposedly half of that is in cash. If Apple or Microsoft wanted to pay a premium for the ultimate maker of killer apps this is the time to make a move. In another cycle it will be too late: the mobile wars will be decided and/or Nintendo will likely have recovered. Who knows how well the company would survive a takeover though.
I think the Wii, in retrospect, is the writing on the wall for Nintendo's hardware. They couldn't keep up on graphics or CPU, so they went sideways into new controller technologies. The problem with that, as demonstrated by Kinect, is that it's easier to add a new controller technology to an existing console than it is to improve the horsepower of a weak console with a novel controller scheme.
I disagree pretty strongly. All of the major game consoles are an IBM PowerPC CPU with nVidia/ATI graphics. Everything is off the shelf. The Xbox 360, GameCube, Wii, and Playstation 3 are pretty much all based on those same designs (although the PS3's CPU has crazy after-market modifications which really didn't work out so well).
The same can be said about phones and portable video game systems. It's all ARM CPUs with Imagine GPUs. Android, iOS, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry, webOS, Nintendo GBA/DS/3DS, Sony Vita all use the exact same chips from the same design firms.
The big hardware differentiator is what cost/performance balance you want to strike. Newer architectures with newer manufacturing processes cost more plain and simple. And there is a spectrum of other off the shelf components to round out the package.
There can be some play in getting more out of a design with engineering tricks or getting better components at the same cost with economies of scale. Or you can corner the market by buying out the entire manufacturing capacity of the best components to deny your competitors (or vice versa). But it's pretty much you get what you pay for.
Nintendo builds hardware two to three generations behind to save a lot on costs. Not because it doesn't know how to get something faster and better. The upcoming Wii U is basically an older PowerPC CPU with an older ATI GPU. If Nintendo wanted, it could create a crazy powerful console with a $1000 CPU and dual $600 GPUs that nobody would buy. All it needed to do was tell IBM and ATI what it wanted. It wasn't a matter of engineering that steered them away, but a matter of economics. Which if you remember right worked great in the short term for the Wii. But as everyone already knew wasn't a long term play. Hence the earlier-than-everyone-else release of the Wii U.
It also ignores what Nintendo is. Nintendo is vertically integrated. It makes game machines, games, and game characters (i.e. Mario). It doesn't make money by making a better FPS machine. It makes money by making a cheap machine with some wacky creative edge (i.e. a new type of controller). Then its game division creates the best games, with their internal know-how. Then they leverage the Mario brand, and sell they can sell the whole package (along with the sequels they crank out) with a massive margin.
If it flops, who cares? They didn't spend huge amounts on loss-leading hardware, and they didn't need to make a huge investment in a cutting edge FPS only to be told it's not as good as Halo.
Apple (along with the Angry Birds developers) stole their lunch, with another cheap game machine, with an even cooler new control system. Eventually, that market will start to mature, and you will need 100 developers to make a good iOS game. And Nintendo won't want to touch that market with a barge pole, because it becomes a winner-takes-all bloodbath with huge entry costs.
The question is, is iOS an existential threat to the gaming market as a whole? If so, Nintendo will lose. If not, Nintendo will come up with some other wacky control system, and build a few fun (but simple) games staring Mario. People will buy it, because they want a bit of a change from their familiar, mature, and eventually boring touch games. Apple won't hurt them this cycle, because they are busy consolidating their monopoly on tables. Apple doesn't want to take over the gaming market - the 3DS was just a piece of collateral damage. Apple wants to sell a boring mature platform (with simple updates to performance, but no fundamental changes), not novelties that will need to be redesigned every 5 years. But the iPad just happens to be new enough to still be a novelty, and thus devastate Nintendo.
> They couldn't keep up on graphics or CPU, so they went sideways into new controller technologies.
It's not about ability, it's a cogent choice to step back and not play into the arms race. They did the exact same thing with the DS, and outsold the (very significantly) more powerful PSP almost 3:1. And a few years earlier, the GameBoy brutalized the Game Gear.
In terms of raw power, the GC was the most powerful console of its generation (or tied with the Xbox). So was the N64. Neither panned out (though neither lost N money either), so Nintendo went into a different direction. And — at least for a time — struck gold.
I'm not saying Nintendo is going out of business, I'm saying gaming consoles are about to become the 201x's version of the mp3 player: a huge product category that gets eaten by converged devices.
You could argue that Nintendo will sell that converged home device but Wii U sure ain't it. No it will probably be the big app platforms (Windows, iOS/OS X, Android/linux) that win the home.
Nintendo harbors great will with consumers like Apple. WebOS seems to be a great mobile operating system.
To witness some true, fierce competition, Nintendo should mix their branding/games into WebOS & then allow developers to create games for their platform. WebOS already has 1,000s of apps created for it now.
Everyone currently in the market (RIM & Windows) are stale brands and do not harbor excitement amongst many demographics. Nintendo's brand loyalty stretches many demographics. From 16 to 24, 24 to 35 to 35 to 50.
How many iOS and Android users have searched for a mario game for their devices? HOw many people own Wii just so they can play these games?
I wonder if one of those nervous Android licensees will pick up the WebOS assets as a hedge.
It's a shame Nokia didn't have the balls/foresight to buy Palm, they could have been shipping gorgeous Nokia crafted WebOS phones for the last couple quarters instead of getting slaughtered by Android et al.
HP is not developing hardware for WebOS. They will probably try and license the software. Spinning off the PC division might actually allow their consumer products to get the right focus and agility to compete against Apple on something other than price. Trying to fight Apple and IBM (and Cisco, and Dell, etc.) as one giant company is bad for HP's shareholders and HP's customers.
I'm gutted. Genuinely.
When I was younger, before Fiorina stepped up to be the first to rape the corpses of the founders, I was a massive fan of HP. My first graphing calculator was an HP48G, which taught me the joys of Lisp... well, Psil, because it came with Reverse Polish Lisp.
WebOS could have been the resurrection of that culture -- fully JavaScript development environment, app development across multiple mobile and tablet platforms with a single environment... just genius. It's sad to see that vision evaporate, along with some of the novel telephony and interactive features that made WebOS a joy to work with.