The webOS Features Other OSes Should Steal 142
New submitter egparedes points out a post dissecting webOS and highlighting the things it did right, in the hopes that developers for other mobile operating systems will use them as inspiration. Quoting:
"webOS isn't quite dead yet. It's just being open-sourced, which, when it happens to commercial software, often turns out to be the digital equivalent of being reanimated as a walking corpse in a George Romero movie. ... Of course, it's not assured that this is the end of webOS. Maybe open-sourcing it will be the best thing that ever happened to webOS. But maybe it just means that HP doesn't care anymore, and that webOS won't receive much attention anymore. This would be unfortunate, because webOS is one of the few current mobile operating systems that are actually a joy to use. It's been hurt by HP's incompetent management, rather than any egregious faults of its own. The least we can do now is to keep its best ideas alive, even if webOS itself won't make it."
Steal. (Score:4, Insightful)
Best idea? (Score:5, Insightful)
The $99 pricetag.
Must be honest (Score:5, Insightful)
I've used iOS for years, and have dabbled with Android. webOS beats them both hands down (for me!). iOS isn't so bad to run, but only if I want to run the way Apple decided was best, so it's a pain to get it the way *I* want it, in typical Linux user fashion. Android is just a confusing mess of non-intuitive menus and settings.
webOS just _gets out of the way_! It's a doggone shame it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, because there's no way I'd trade my Touchpad for an iOS or Android tablet.
All HPs fault? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's been hurt by HP's incompetent management, rather than any egregious faults of its own.
Palm had it for a whole year and a half before HP.. they released Palm Pre and Palm Pixi using it -- both phones DOA. The Palm Pre had 0.2% market share after nearly a year on the market (source [gigaom.com]).
HP didn't do it any favors.. but it's hard to say everyone would have loved WebOS if it wasn't for HP. No one wanted it from the very beginning.
Re:WebOS is quite nice actually (Score:5, Insightful)
I totally agree with you on WebOS. I really liked it and at first thought it would be a stiff competitor to iOS. Sadly too late did I realize "Stiff" meant dead.
However on iOS, they have solved the problem you mentioned - you can buy an iOS device now and never have it touch a computer. Even backups are done on iCloud. Far better for all.
Return of the Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
After I got over the paragraph about how certainly things "constantly happen" to the poor guy who deletes emails right before replying to them, I calmed down and read. And it turns out webOS really did invent something: the uninvented the crippled "it's not a desktop" desktop. It really looks like they got over some of the stupid bullshit that makes phones/tablets suck so much. Look at the features this guy is excited about.
The uninvented getting rid of windows. That's what the cards and screens and task-switching and (part of) the notifications points are about. When you have windows, all the problems that arise from taking away windows, go away.
The uninvented not-using-filesystems. (Drastically oversimplifying) This guy mounts whatever network filesystems he wants to, and the apps can save to and load from them.
They didn't uninvent not-having-a-keyboard or uninvent counter-productive auto-correction, but the webOS team tried the hardest of all, to have a keyboard despite the lack of having a keyboard, and to make autocorrection the least destructive to entering what you want. Of course, it "works best with a hardware keyboard" (that's a verbatim quota from TFA).
If this sounds mocking, I don't mean it that way (at least not completely -- the TFA's style makes it hard to not mock). This is serious. It sounds like webOS is the least phone/tablet-like phone/tablet OS, which really is why it sucks the least -- it has thrown away the fewest proven ideas replacing them with Jobsian reality distortion.
So you've never used an iPad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ipads dont have rotation lock like the Galaxy Tab.
If you ever get a chance to use a real tablet, check the sides. That's where the iPad keeps the rotation lock. It'll probably be really easy for you to find as I'm sure Samsung just put it in exactly the same place.
Re:Must be honest (Score:5, Insightful)
Running android on the touchpad is not the point. the point is running webOS on other HW.