Ok, I know I need another coffee, so I apologise in advance for being the Grinch here, but...<p>This is pure CEO puffery. When will these guys get it? When will they start looking up to Steve Jobs instead of treating him like a guy who just happened to get lucky eight times (Apple II, Macintosh, Pixar, Macintosh again, iPod, iTMS, iPhone, App Store, iPad)?<p>Steve does not talk about what will ship on every Macintosh next year. He might talk about what will ship in the next sixty days if there is an SDK he is shipping to developers today. Steve does not talk about Apple investing in R&D. Steve invests in R&D.<p>Talking about the future is the action of a person interested in how he looks and sounds, rather than the actions of a person interested in how the company performs.<p>Steve ships. Leo had better spend less time with his PR people and more time with his engineers. I have nothing against shipping WebOS on every HP PC next year. But please, Leo, just fucking do it. Talk to your engineers, not to me.
I believe it means the PC's would run _BOTH_.<p>> every HP PC being able to run WebOS and MIcrosoft Windows as an integrated experience in 2012<p>I have an HP touch screen laptop/tablet. It has a mode where you can boot into a "light" OS that just has a web browser.<p>BTW, I've never used it.<p>> Instant Web is an instant on software solution that allows users to quickly and easily get to a browser, an IM client, and their media in a secure, fast booting environment.<p>I believe its based on Splashtop: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splashtop" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splashtop</a>
I'll be blown away if HP is actually the first company to put their mobile os on a full desktop computer. I always imagined I would love running something like Android on a desktop; easy to use for everyone, no worries about viruses or software updates, nice modern UI design...really, it's a wonder that these machines don't work like that already.<p>I can't believe I'm rooting for HP on this one, but I sure hope this works and I hope it kicks ass.
First thing: Don't assume that this means they're going to replace Windows! :-)<p>Besides the guts of the OS which talks to the hardware (a very slick Linux build) on webOS phones, the platform is basically just HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It has always been easy to run and debug applications in Chromium.<p>You can download the SDK today and run an x86 build of webOS in VirtualBox. If you haven't played with webOS before, I urge you to try it.<p>Web developers who care about mobile will go absolutely bananas for it, and their new framework 'Enyo' is an even better experience for developers.<p>Here's a blog post about webOS I wrote quite a while back:
<a href="http://bethesignal.org/blog/2010/06/07/why-im-excited-about-palms-webos/" rel="nofollow">http://bethesignal.org/blog/2010/06/07/why-im-excited-about-...</a>
It will be so great if HP gets its groove back. It's really sad to see one of the great American companies flounder for so long. Ever since Carly merged it with Compaq they've been basically stagnant, IMHO, I think WebOS might really set them up for a big power play against Apple over the next few years.
This is a stupid idea, imho. If you want Windows as the OS, get a PC with Windows. If you want WebOs, get a PC with WebOs. But getting one with both, is just an annoying thing and most users won't really care.<p>I'm not buying a powerful machine with GBs of RAM and a dual-core processor, to just run that WebOs thing. It works well with a tablet, but a PC is a computer and not a tablet.<p>It'll be a good idea, though, to install WebOs on Free DOS machines.
A shame that HP are coupling webOS with HP PCs, instead of putting webOS on the Web, where it might better thrive and spread.<p>With webOS on the Web, Pre3 and TouchPad owners could log in at webos.me (or similar) from any WebKit browser and see their apps and data pre-synced; isn't that a better vision for a company that 'believes the Web is the future'?<p>HP's new Enyo SDK already allows developers to build apps for WebKit-based browsers that resize for desktop, tablet, and mobile screens[1]; it is a joy to use and targeting multiple screen sizes works great, so it feels like a missed opportunity that webOS developers will spend their time building apps in a WebKit browser, but be unable to publish them for others to use in a WebKit browser too.<p>If they're trying to attract developers -- the Web offers a much larger userbase than HP machines ever will. I think it worth sacrificing desktop and laptop sales to build mobile sales and create a healthy future for webOS.<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.precentral.net/hp-posts-enyo-development-walkthrough" rel="nofollow">http://www.precentral.net/hp-posts-enyo-development-walkthro...</a>
I think WebOS will be like Steam is on PCs or like the Apple App store is on Mac based computers. In this case the purchasing and updating of apps will be consistent and easy to maintain, however they will still run side by side Photoshop and Games.<p>WebOS apps will run on WebTops to compete with ChromeTops on the netbook side, but those apps will also run on the desktop.<p>A key difference between WebTops and WebOS apps and Chrome apps will be the "Touch to Share" feature that will allow you to wirelessly share data between paired devices. This will make it really easy to have a phone, watch, TV, netbook, tablet and PC and share data between them.<p>I bet you will even be able to configure a home network by using some sort of "Touch to Share" configuration stone.<p>Only WebOS apps will have this feature and you may need special HP hardware to allow that functionality to work. With 100 million devices using "Touch To Share" next year, I hope we have a click-wheel level UX experiance to Rival Apple.
So that's why they were porting that to Windows. I just hope this won't end up killing WebOS. It was great on the Pre, I think it will do great on a tablet, but porting it to a PC might require HP to take WeBOS in a direction that will be worse for the platforms it was originally designed for.
There are two ways this could go, using WebOS as an instant-on OS.
Or some form of framework running within Windows to allow WebOS applications to be run, with notifications being forwarded over Wi-Fi from WebOS devices. Remember the new Enyo framework was actually demonstrated running within Google Chrome.
Either way this could be a boast to the developer eco-system, and reduce the cost per HP PC.
The great thing about webOS is that it's all HTML5 and CSS based, even the apps. For their mobile devices they choose to run a Linux kernel on the hardware but in principle it doesn't matter what the kernel is, as long as they have some way to show the apps.
This is crazy! Say goodbye to HP. Who will be their client base. Google will beat them at the simple platform of straight to the internet! I have the Google Chrome CR-48 and its my first choice to surf the internet.<p>When there is now an Android phone running Linux when connected to a laptop shell, HP is doing the opposite!