There’s been a terrible amount of confusion regarding HP’s statement regarding webOS on personal computers. Many eager to read between the lines, trying to find something there that wasn’t, thought HP was going to ship personal computers with webOS as the main operating system. The Seattle Times interviewed HP CTO Phil McKinney to find out what’s really going on and it turns out to be devastatingly simple. HP is planning to create a webOS type environment to create a seamless experience between mobile phone, tablet, and PC. HP loves Microsoft, and that’s not going to change. It makes sense when you think about it. To create a webOS application you need to write it in HTML, throw in some JavaScript, and if you’re lucky a brilliant user interface. When HP shows off how easy it is to write a webOS application they even show off the development environment in a browser tab. It isn’t a stretch then to imagine that HP will create a simple way for all your devices to hook up to your home WiFi network and when you type in a certain URL you’ll get access to all the content on your device in a browser window. That’s what the Palm Foleo was supposed to be.
With mobile phones getting dual and soon quad core processors, what exactly are they going to use all that power for? For years I’ve been advocating putting a web server on these puppies so that you don’t need to use some silly little web service to manage your calendar and your to-do list. Why should all that have to go through someone who is only looking to make money off page views?
This is all speculation, but I’m quite hopeful that HP isn’t going to mess this up. Smartphone design aside, it’s the software that’s important, and after playing with a Veer today I’m more than impressed.
[Via: Pre Central]