I recently was fortunate enough to pick up one of the last available HP Touchpads in New York City. Late afternoon, I figured the tablets HP was basically giving away would have been long sold out in the Best Buy on 5th avenue — but there happened to be a couple left.
After HP announced that it would be discontinuing the Touchpad and dropped the price to $99 and $149 respectively for the 16gb and 32gb versions, people flocked to the HP website to buy one. I’m sure that many like me bought one in hopes of running Android instead of the dying OS in the near future (btw, the folks over at CyanogenMod (which I currently run on my Samsung Galaxy 
) are making good headway on that)
But after getting one, there was a bit of tugging at my heart for Palm. After using its long outdated PalmOS for years, they developed WebOS. To be honest, I’ve really developed an appreciation for the platform. Struggling against the massively popular Android and Apple devices, the late-to-the-game player with sub-par devices couldn’t remain standing. I really think that if Palm had made their devices nearly perfect at first, the situation would be starkly different from today. The Pre, although nice, just couldn’t really match the iPhone in build and polish. The same goes for the HP Touchpad. It’s nice, but even as HP found out, the hardware is just too limiting. WebOS runs nearly twice as fast on an iPad 2. HP bought up a fantastic company, but with some execution issues (both Palm’s fault and HP’s) now it’s left with a falling community of users.
WebOS is really nicely suited for a tablet interface. I liked it on a smartphone (though laggy at times), but I love it on the large screen of the Touchpad. The multitasking implementation is easy to use and intuitive, but again, the hardware lags behind the software. Boot time is way too long and things just lag all around. It seems just that HP was in a hurry to get the Touchpad onto the market.
Although Microsoft’s Windows Phone was a late player as well, I feel the combination of quality hardware and a larger selection of devices made the difference for the software giant. WP7 is sure to be a huge player in the mobile market and with the introduction of Windows 8, we’re sure to see some shiny tablets running ARM-based Windows soon too.
Although HP is going to license out WebOS for third party hardware developers, it’s probably too late for any major companies to pick up the OS given the strong alternatives available now.
At the same time, Blackberry is riding on a shaky bridge as well. The Playbook is pretty bad in my opinion, designed as a “complement” to a Blackberry smartphone. Although not terrible, I feel the Blackberry new touch-based OS is too deeply rooted in the older Blackberry OS and as a result, feels clunky.
In some ways, I feel HP might have pulled the plug a bit early on the TouchPad. Better hardware and a clear advertising campaign could have turned it around. But then again, focusing on core business instead has its merits as well.
As many wait for Honeycomb on the TouchPad, I think a lot of people will come to realize the potential WebOS had to shake up the mobile computing market. Maybe HP’s hope is that some major software developers will recognize and bring more quality apps to WebOS. But to these people, first building better Android apps is probably much higher on their to-do list.
Palm, rest well, you’ll be remembered in many people’s hearts. The contributions you’ve made to mobile computing are extraordinary.
Overall, I’m really glad I got a TouchPad. There are a couple really nice apps (WordPress for Touchpad!) and hey you never know, maybe WebOS will make a come back…. throwing so many devices into consumer hands has to have some effect.
UPDATE: Thought I’d mention some cool pluses. You get 50GB of free cloud storage through Box.net — for life. The other thing is that messing with the Touchpad is ridiculously easy: you enable Developer Mode (though a code that you type into the search box) and install Preware (basically Cydia for WebOS). I have to say that I’ve significantly reduced lagging with some patches and installing an overclocked kernel.
I believe HP should’ve open sourced WebOS, rather that license them, in order to capably compete with Android. Making the OS completely available to tinker with allows third-party vendors and homebrew communities to develop a better ecosystem than what HP has made so far. More people will start using WebOS, because it’s free. With improved user base, HP could’ve tried to monetize by taking a portion of sales from their Application Marketplace.
Although I never touched or seen a WebOS device, it sounds like a good OS. I’d wish I had the chance to get my hands on one, but as you said, not many vendors are willing to develop a device that has an OS with a port ecosystem installed. Hopefully, HP will still keep developing their OS to foster a healthy competition and promote good smartphones to emerge from the market.
P.S. My opinion, but Android, as far as I’ve seen on commercial devices, are clunky and unaesthetic. Shutting off applications via a task manager is a pain, and doesn’t achieve multitasking optimized for limited resources on a smartphone. In term of UI, the user wouldn’t know if the app is completely shut off, because the app still runs even when he returns to the home screen.