[lavrishevo]

This is just great. What a bunch of wankers... No wonder it was such a failure.

HP's startling disclosure yesterday that it is looking into a sale or spinoff of its PC business and is discontinuing its webOS-based hardware program has sent shock waves through the industry. One of the more curious aspects of the move is HP's plans for webOS, the company's mobile operating system that it obtained with last year's $1.2 billion purchase of Palm and relaunched on new Pre smartphones and the TouchPad tablet just months ago.

According to This is my next..., HP informed its webOS team during an all-hands meeting yesterday that it remains committed to the platform, although it is unclear exactly how the company will look to capitalize on it, whether through potential licensing or other means.

In the meeting, webOS GBU VP Stephen DeWitt made it clear that HP intends to continue to work on webOS and likely intends to license it. DeWitt was adamant, saying several times �We are not walking away from webOS.� He detailed a plan to try to determine what the platform�s future will look like within the next two weeks, although he admitted that �Clearly, we don�t have all the answers today.�
HP executive Todd Bradley noted that with webOS currently designed to work only on Qualcomm-based hardware, potential licensees would most likely be interested in seeing webOS modified to run on other chipsets if HP were to pursue that route.

But many have questioned whether HP will even be able to license webOS to third parties, given that neither Palm nor HP has been able to gain consumer traction with the platform. For its part, HP claims that it sees promise in the software that has been hampered by poor hardware.


On that note, The Next Web reports that HP engineers had gone as far as to test webOS running on an iPad, finding that the operating system ran "over twice as fast" on the iPad 2 as it did on the TouchPad for which it had been designed. Even running as a web app within the iPad 2's Safari browser yielded substantially better performance than on the TouchPad.

The hardware reportedly stopped the team from innovating beyond certain points because it was slow and imposed constraints, which was highlighted when webOS was loaded on to Apple�s iPad device and found to run the platform significantly faster than the device for which it was originally developed.

With a focus on web technologies, webOS could be deployed in the iPad�s Mobile Safari browser as a web-app; this produced similar results, with it running many times faster in the browser than it did on the TouchPad.
The report notes that the TouchPad hardware had essentially already been designed when HP acquired Palm last year, with the engineers tasked with getting webOS running on the existing design. The resulting handicap of outdated hardware reportedly crippled the webOS team's ability to innovate for the tablet platform and ultimately led to the poor market reception.

Regardless of the reasons, the TouchPad clearly did not take off as HP had hoped, and the company quickly pulled the plug on the project as part of its dramatic shift in business focus. The shift leaves the future of webOS unsettled, and while speculation has centered around whether a company like Amazon might be interested in acquiring it for its own use, others have suggested that HP might be better off simply selling off the patent portfolio associated with web OS, a move that could actually result in a profit relative to the company's $1.2 billion acquisition price for Palm.

- From MacRumors

[chiefbroski]

If this is true, shame on HP's hardware...

Or maybe, good job Apple! You made a better Touchpad than HP without even trying.

EDIT: Bahahahaha!

[Fubaz]

kinda weird to see, but i did notice it was bad on the touchpad, it locked up a few times with testing it at best buy

[samab]

The two CPU's have the same DMIPS ratings and the TouchPad has double the RAM.

The only thing that can run twice as fast on the Ipad2 is the GPU.

So unless that they were just comparing 3D games on the two platform, the article is complete garbage.

[lnichols]

So now here is the question if WebOS is licensed and I don't know too much about the platform:

Would it be worth it for RIM to license it as a Player, and run it like the Android Player in QNX for more apps? Or is Android Player going to give everything that WebOS could and free?


Also I wonder how all those companies that got apps out for WebOS before TabletOS feel now?

[s219]

The two CPU's have the same DMIPS ratings and the TouchPad has double the RAM.

The only thing that can run twice as fast on the Ipad2 is the GPU.

So unless that they were just comparing 3D games on the two platform, the article is complete garbage.

You're assuming HP didn't botch the hardware design and artificially constrain the CPU. Given how slow/clunky the devices were in real world use, it clearly wasn't living up to the expected performance. Something wasn't right.

[lawguyman]

Yeah and it could run Windows, Android and iPad apps too!

This is all a post-failure stab-in-the-back myth that is being woven.

[Blacklac]

So now here is the question if WebOS is licensed and I don't know too much about the platform:

Would it be worth it for RIM to license it as a Player, and run it like the Android Player in QNX for more apps? Or is Android Player going to give everything that WebOS could and free?


Also I wonder how all those companies that got apps out for WebOS before TabletOS feel now?

this actually intrigued me. (Just quoted for reference)

So I know nothing about WebOS or programming or software/OS in general. If WebOS is based off Linux (Wikipedia says so) couldnt WebOS Apps be ported just as easily as Android Apps?

[samab]

You're assuming HP didn't botch the hardware design and artificially constrain the CPU. Given how slow/clunky the devices were in real world use, it clearly wasn't living up to the expected performance. Something wasn't right.

Touchpad is built like a tank of a PC --- they may be almost twice as thick as the ipad2 --- but that has nothing to do with making it fast or slow.

[lavrishevo]

HP�s WebOS team almost certainly had an idea that the company�s new tablet, the TouchPad, had very little chance of challenging Apple�s dominance in the tablet market, as the company�s webOS operating system was running �over twice as fast� on its rival�s iPad 2 tablet, a source close to the subject revealed to The Next Web.

With HP announcing it is to cease*development of its webOS devices, we learned that before the HP�s TouchPad tablet and Pre smartphones were even released, everyone within the webOS team �wanted them gone�.

The hardware reportedly stopped the team from innovating beyond certain points because it was slow and imposed constraints, which was highlighted when webOS was loaded on to Apple�s iPad device and found to run the platform significantly faster than the device for which it was originally developed.

With a focus on web technologies, webOS could be deployed in the iPad�s Mobile Safari browser as a web-app; this produced similar results, with it running many times faster in the browser than it did on the TouchPad.

When HP announced its acquisition of Palm, the computing giant had already built the TouchPad hardware that sits on the shelves today. Basically, the TouchPad was a two-year old piece of hardware that the webOS team equipped with their tablet-friendly platform.

Our source also indicated that HP also had plans to release a 7-inch version of the TouchPad, the TouchPad Go. This was already in production and before yesterday was expected to launch in the coming months. It is unknown whether it will ever see a public launch now.*The TouchPad Go was seen as a better looking and nicer feeling device that had the potential to sell, with it believed that sales of the device would outpace the TouchPad�s if it had been released before its larger cousin.

We�ve also heard that HP in fact already had the next generation of TouchPad in the works. The details are very fuzzy here but we believe that it would be a lighter model with a higher-resolution �retina� display and a metal body. Nothing out of the ordinary if HP truly wanted to make a splash with its next potential offering.

Because webOS is limited to working on the Qualcomm chipset, potential hardware partners would need to have a special version of webOS written for their hardware. This makes it hard to determine a likely licensee, but we know that HP has already been working on porting webOS to other architectures, including Apple�s A5 SoC.

With development stopping on future HP webOS devices, the webOS team face an uncertain future. HP has said it will license the platform, prompting suggestions that smartphone vendors including HTC and Samsung could look to the operating system given the recent developments between Google and Motorola.

If you are interested in reading how HP came to the decision to kill off its webOS devices and how different teams came to learn of the news, we suggest you look at our inside look at what happened.

HP tested webOS on an iPad. It ran over twice as fast. - TNW Apple

[lavrishevo]

Another interesting read:


Neither Palm devices, nor the HP TouchPad were ever going to be able to showcase webOS properly. That�s why yesterday�s news that HP was shutting down its webOS hardware development should have been welcomed by the company�s Personal Systems Group, a source familiar with the matter has told The Next Web. Update below.

Instead, the announcement was handled poorly, producing confusion about the future of webOS that may hurt its chances to survive.

HP made the announcement that it was ceasing to make webOS hardware, but neglected to get a hardware licensing deal in place before doing so. This seemed to drive home the point that webOS was dead in the water, when in fact it is very much alive and was never the issue. It was the hardware that was killing HP�s OS.

If HP had announced a licensing deal before the discontinuation of the hardware, the news would have gone much differently today. There would be no stories about the �death of webOS�, an OS that many of us thought was just starting to get good.

But HP did not secure licensing and now the most popular byline*is about the death of webOS. But the whole inside story of the shuttering of HP�s webOS hardware division is far more interesting than the way it appeared from the outside and things might not be as grim for webOS as they first appear.

How it went down

Almost everyone at HP found out about the death of the TouchPad and Pre hardware as the public did, in the press release. Only the top executives knew anything about this decision and even senior staff as high as Ari Jaaksi, the Vice President of webOS software, didn�t know about the shuttering of hardware before it happened.

After the press release came out, there was a company wide meeting filled with a bunch of �corporate speak�, in which staff were told that they were going to be in limbo for 3-4 weeks.

The Next Web has also learned that way that the shuttering was announced shocked many inside the company because they knew that eventually HP was going to have to seek better hardware, ditching the current TouchPad and Pre in the process. Perhaps in a year, maybe longer, but only after HP had deals set to license the OS to a manufacturer that would make next-gen devices.

Although the rumors were that webOS was going to be licensed to a manufacturer like Samsung or HTC, no announcement was made at the meeting. Company-wide, however, the message has been, and continues to be, that webOS is going to be licensed to another hardware manufacturer, not completely trashed and not sold off.

What is the future of webOS?

Currently, the party line internally to the company is 100% licensing to another hardware manufacturer. There are no talks of selling whatsoever. This is something that most of the employees working with webOS would welcome as the current hardware was not showing off webOS well at all. There have been some indications that this is the case, although HP CEO Leo Apotheker is keeping mum on the exact future of webOS, at least publicly.

Because of the way that the hardware cancellation was announced, the future of webOS was made to look incredibly uncertain, which it very well could be unless a licensing deal is struck. Because HP didn�t announce a licensing deal up front, many employees working on webOS are unsure that they will have a job and HP stands to lose a lot of talent as employees get restless and begin looking for opportunities elsewhere.

We�re sure that at least some of the employees at HP�s Personal Systems Group have already begun receiving a lot of calls from recruiters working for other large Silicon Valley companies like Facebook, Google or Apple. There is a lot of talent at HP and they would be silly not to.

From what we were told, most HP employees are incredibly proud of webOS. They feel that they were building an OS with better design and interaction than Apple because they were more agile. Apple is seen as locked in to its design, unable to make drastic changes without affecting hundreds of developers and confusing customers. HP felt that this was its chance to shine against Apple by being more flexible and creating a unique experience with the interface of webOS.

HP saw Apple as its only close competitor in terms of design and software. Android was considered �utterly crap� as far as customer experience and interaction and Apple was clearly the one to beat. People working on the project are apparently devastated by the fact that they might not get to continue their work and most at HP want a hardware partner that it can use to finish what it started with webOS.

What now?

Despite the uncertainty, the mood at HP was described to TNW as light and hopeful. These are incredibly dedicated and talented engineers who helped to create what many believe to be the one real potential contender with a fraction of the polish and presence of iOS. All they want is for the OS they�ve created to shine on hardware that is worthy.

HP�s hardware division is obviously taking the brunt of the hit, and an entire building of hardware and industrial engineers has been let go already. Some of these hardware engineers were most likely responsible for the 2-year old TouchPad hardware that caused HP to pull the plug. But these were also the same engineers working to make the next generation of webOS hardware better. They will never get the chance now.

The media made the situation far worse by pounding away at the �Death of webOS� headlines, when the fact of the matter is that the true future of webOS is, at least as of now, undecided. The hardware is dead, but webOS very well may live on, if, and only if, it can find a new home.

Update. From what we�re hearing, the employees losing their job have not yet been detailed, this differs from the information we first heard. This means that, although it is not unusual to think that the hardware staff will be let go, they have not been told of it yet.


http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/0...lly-went-down/

[samab]

The article is basically talking about the javascript showdown --- where the TouchPad is twice as slow as the Playbook, ipad2, and Xoom.

HTML5 on the HP TouchPad Found Lacking, What App Developers Should Know : allWebOS

[Economist101]

Touchpad is built like a tank of a PC --- they may be almost twice as thick as the ipad2 --- but that has nothing to do with making it fast or slow.

When he uses the term "hardware design," he's not referring to the TouchPad's casing.

[samab]

When he uses the term "hardware design," he's not referring to the TouchPad's casing.

But we are also talking about everything reside in a single silicon chip. The CPU, GPU and the RAM are in the same silicon. There is no hardware design.

[peter9477]

The CPU, GPU and the RAM are in the same silicon.

Unlikely. CPU and GPU, yes. RAM, probably not.

[samab]

So you are telling me that if they put the RAM on a different chip, it would slow down the tablet by half?

[s219]

Touchpad is built like a tank of a PC --- they may be almost twice as thick as the ipad2 --- but that has nothing to do with making it fast or slow.

????? What the heck are you talking about? I am saying that if they botched the hardware architecture design (ie, the internals) then it could easily explain why the TouchPad was so slow. Hardware screwups like that happen all the time (just ask MOBO vendors in the PC space).

[samab]

There is no hardware architecture design when all the important stuff --- the CPU, the GPU and maybe the RAM reside in the same chip. The Playbook has all three things in the same chip.

There are only 2 things that would even fit the article's argument:

(1) if they are only talking about GPU performance or
(2) webos' slow javascript performance.

Even the Playbook would be twice as slow as the ipad2 if you only talked about the GPU performance in terms of polygon counts.

The site I linked did a comparison, webos' javascript performance is twice as slow as the Playbook, the ipad2 and the xoom. Since the whole concept of webos is using HTML5 technology, their slow javascript performance affects the whole OS. If a "pure" webos app is a pure web technology only app --- it would be like Playbook's webworks app. And if you put that "pure" webos app into the Playbook --- it would run maybe twice as fast on the Playbook because the Playbook's javascript performance is twice as fast as the TouchPad's javascript performance.

[s219]

Is it so hard to consider a defect on a board? Or a component? HP had to do some level of design to make the device work and integrate all the components. You don't just get the main CPU/GPU/etc chip from Qualcomm and then slap an HP logo on it and call it a tablet.

I am not saying this rumor is true (sounds far fetched to me) but the TouchPad was abnormally slow considering what hardware it had under the hood. It seemed hobbled to me.

By the way, that site you linked to used the wrong benchmark for javascript. They should be using 0.9, not 0.9.1 (it lets certain devices cheat by accident, including PlayBook). The PlayBook is 2-5X slower than iPad 2 on the 0.9 javascript benchmarks when it is able to run the complete suite. The PlayBook and TouchPad benchmark closer together on 0.9. Here's how the devices all fare on 0.9:


(source: Anandtech)

Note iPad 2 at top, iPad 1 in middle, and PlayBook and TouchPad at bottom.

I can tell you that the real world performance of the TouchPad was far slower than the PlayBook, so I really think something other than javascript is the issue, given that these two are pretty similar in that regard.

[lavrishevo]

If may mention the whole ram argument is really inaccurate. Yes, more ram is a plus technically but if the system manages the ram correctly then it's not like it actually speeds anything up. For instance, on my jailbroken iPad and iPhone I can see how much free ram I have via a program called sbsettings and it is never lower then 30 to 40 megs. No matter what I open or have in the background the the OS manages the ram without a hitch. Even if I kill all the processes and free up about 340 mb's of ram there is zero difference in performance.

[Blacklac]

weird. on 0.9.1, I just got 2441. OT, but...

[samab]

I can tell you that the real world performance of the TouchPad was far slower than the PlayBook, so I really think something other than javascript is the issue, given that these two are pretty similar in that regard.

That's because the whole point of webos is the apps being web apps --- so if javascript is slow, then the whole OS is slow.

[peter9477]

So you are telling me that if they put the RAM on a different chip, it would slow down the tablet by half?

I wasn't telling you any such thing. I was merely correcting an incorrect claim that you stated as fact.

It is, however, conceivable that putting the RAM on a separate chip could significant affect the performance of the tablet relative to what it would be like if it were integrated right into the CPU. Since nothing of any relevance to this discussion ever integrates things that tightly, however, it's a moot point.

[samab]

The Playbook has the CPU, the GPU and the RAM in the same chip.

[peter9477]

The Playbook has the CPU, the GPU and the RAM in the same chip.

Are you on drugs? This stuff is so easy to check out it's odd you'd attempt that claim again without at least researching it so you could provide a source.

Here: BlackBerry PlayBook Teardown - iFixit

Edit: That shows there's an 8Gb DRAM chip from Elpida, clearly integrated with the CPU. (It's a good thing I included a link, unlike others, which let samab point out I'd misinterpreted it and we could get this onto a factual basis. Originally I said this was proof that the chips were separate, but obviously I'd misinterpreted the notes and image. Sigh...)