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Comment by philthy | Hacker News Reader

HP needs to completely open up the application and extension aspect of webOS. As a pre HP Verizon Palm Pre phone user, I find the app store to be extremely lacking. You don't have anywhere near the number or quality of apps available on other platforms to choose from. There needs to be a substantial developer base for webOS to really take off. I have used the Palm SDK, and I think it could use some work as well especially in the area of device hardware support.

The buyout of Palm shocked the system a little and the wheels are looking like they are starting to roll. Hopefully HP decides to leave their devices as 'open' as the Linux based webOS is.

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Bingo. The most open device is going to win this race, and it won't be any vendor that locks developers into an "app store" or any specific language/runtime.

Most people forget that the reason the PC took off like it did was because a developer could do whatever they wanted with the machine. It was a blank slate that could run multiple operating systems be used with many different languages. Many vendors today are purposefully taking a very open architecture and locking it down tight, which is a very anti-developer stance to take, and contrary to (what history shows as) the path to success.

> The most open device is going to win this race [...]

The above is very far from clear at this point. In case you didn't notice it, the App Store just hit 10 billion downloads [1]. I'd say that's a pretty relevant bit of history. Also note the amazing 60 apps per idevice [2]. And don't conflate openness with developer profitability -- in one case, Microsoft had both, but it's not clear that the latter leads to the former. Right now, I'd guess there's easily one or two magnitudes more developers supporting themselves with iOS apps than with android apps.

The fact that my gf and mom's iphone and ipad can't run random executables is, IMO, a feature not a bug. I got so tired of telling them, "No, do NOT click yes on any dialog box. Do not install anything. Do not agree to anything. etc" And yet somehow, spyware / crap always ended up on their damn computers. Apple's vision of utility computing, where the computer is a tablet or a phone that just bloody works is one of the best things that can happen to computing intended for widespread adoption. Further, curation of apps similarly is awesome for them. I'm not as stoked about it for myself, but I'm very clearly a distinct minority.

[1] http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/22/apples-app-store-hits-10-...

[2] http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2011/01/more-than-60-apps...

I guess you like to be told what you can do and what you can like on your device. Nothing wrong with that...

He said "I'm not as stoked about it for myself", so I would wager that he does not like to be told what he can do and what he can like.

The question is this: have we seen a truly open device on the market yet ? If not, then none of the stats that you quote really mean much, at least at this point.

They need to make this easy as possible. As someone who has developed for iPhone, BB, Android and Palm, they need to make it as easy as installing one program, as you do for the iPhone. All you need to do with the iPhone is install xcode, and you can start making iOs apps straight away, and get them running on the simulator.

BB and Android are a huge pain in the ass, and turn of people just wanting to get started, not fool around with setting up annoying tools.

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