Open webOS

It’s official. Sort Of. We’re still waiting for it to happen and then find out what can be done with it. Apparently HP will make new webOS tablets but not phones. Does that mean others can make webOS phones? Others can make other tablets? Will it be Google Open or open for real?

As a developer, all I want is a curated app store to outsource my billing to. If I have to “pick” a store like with Android and deal with multiple payment liaisons forget it. At most, I want one deposit per month from Apple, HP, and Microsoft. I’m not going to get into one check from each of 5 ad services, plus google checkout, plus amazon, etc etc. I don’t like stacking pennies.

I think Samsung will start making arm tablets with webOS. They might even be triple-bootable (webOS, Android, Win 8 ) with enough rooting, although I doubt you’ll see high capacity drives in them. Samsung seems to like making 16:9/16:10 tablets though and I don’t know how “flexible” he webOS GUI was designed. As a developer, I prefer Apple’s way of handling arbitrary frame sizes and I don’t really want to try to guess all the shapes a truly open webOS will end up at. CSS3 is starting to have better solutions for that though so we’ll see.