Samsung buying WebOS? I wish they would. It's great. | Hacker News Reader

Samsung buying WebOS? I wish they would. It's great.

fabcapo.com

28 pointsEGreg8 comments

webOS still has no developers, which is the reason they did not make it.

WTF! As a webOS developer I'll be damned if someone says that the developers were the reason the platform didn't thrive. Between the official channels and preware there was plenty of development going on. Probably not in iOS or Android numbers. Here it is: Palm transitioned from Mojo to Enyo. Developers are writing applications in Enyo since that is where the future of the platform lies. The only device that used Enyo was the Touchpad. Once Apotheker shitcanned that product a lot of webOS developers were left holding the bag.

Samsung would have to build support on it, make it really cool and attractive for developers.

They would have to do no such thing. Steady improvements and a real commitment is all we ask. The platform is good on its own but if it has no rudder the community isn't going to steer it for you.

They added an App Store late and it never really took off

This will come as surprise to a lot of v1 Sprint Pre owners. "Hey what's this icon do? It says App Catalog but that can't be right because according to this blog they haven't created it yet. Must be some sort of trick!"

As a mobile developer I've put my project on the shelf because I don't know what HP is going to do with it and there are so many other mobile platforms that are still kicking. Under the current CEO I have no confidence that webOS is going to survive in any useful form.

I would say WebOS actually had outsized development support given its anemic support from its parents.

The CEO of Samsung denied it: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-02/samsung-electronics...

But HTC could be interested: http://focustaiwan.tw/ShowNews/WebNews_Detail.aspx?Type=aALL...

I remember seeing the Palm Pre 3 at the HP WebOS event and thinking it was going to be huge. A lot of people were comparing it the Droid Bionic at the time.

I think the OS has a lot of potential in the right hands - but I can't think of any company who would want it. HTC has already had great success in running Android on their handsets, and really has no need to spend a ton of money to get it tested and implemented on some future handset.

Maybe they'd pick it for a tablet line??

Samsung already owns a smartphone OS - Bada. Why would they want another one?

They don't need to buy an operating system, because operating systems and native applications are becoming obsolete.

Everything is going web, whether people like it or not. Apple's success with IOS has tricked a lot of other companies, like Microsoft and RIM, into believing they need to compete directly on. I think Samsung is a lot smarter than people think. Really all they need is a phone with a good web browser because the underlying system is becoming only a support system to access the web.

Isn't WebOS basically like that already? From what I understand, it uses most of the same tooling as regular HTML apps, just with some OS hooks. But then I don't know much.

If that's the case, then it's the closest to what you describe out of the mobile OSes out there.

WebOS is still a native platform, you happen to build native apps using html and js. I mean native apps themselves are going to largely be phased out in the coming years. Samaung should be building something more like Google's ChromeOS.

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