Jon Rubinstein, the ex Palm CEO who joined Hewlett Packard after the company acquired Palm back in April 2010, has left the company. No reason for the executive’s departure has been given, though according to AllThingsD Rubinstein leaves HP effective today; “Jon has fulfilled his commitment and we wish him well,” HP spokeswoman Mylene Mangalindan said of the news. Rubinstein had been chief of the webOS division within HP, but was subsequently moved to a more generic “product innovation role.”
This year the artists formerly known as Palm had quite a rough few months with HP dumping the hardware side of their own webOS mobile computing platform – their most recent move, having been announced just last month, is live today: open sourced webOS for all. While the actual main product which will be known as Open webOS 1.0 will not be released until September, they’ve already got the Enyo piece of the pie available today. This is the application framework that was first shown off on the HP TouchPad and is being released today with developer tools that work with it as Enyo 2.0.
Angry ex-webOS team members have blamed poor code decisions by software-naive execs for the platform's demise, as well as power struggles amid the OS' adoption by HP. Jon Rubinstein - at the time CEO of Palm - opted for WebKit as the underlying engine on which webOS apps would run, something Paul Mercer, former senior director of software at Palm, tells the NYTimes was a huge mistake. "We just weren’t able to execute such an ambitious and breakthrough design" the ex-software chief argued, suggesting that WebKit simply wasn't up to running applications at the same speed as users experienced on, say, the iPhone.
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This week HP announced that their mobile operating system webOS will be contributed to the open source community. While HP assures us that they will be active in the development and support of webOS in the future, they’re now offering the operating system up to the “development power” of the open source community where they’re sure both applications and web services will be developed en masse for the next generation of mobile devices. HP assures developers that webOS offers a number of benefits backed up by an easy to work with set of standard web technologies – in short, here you go world, have fun!
HP is still quietly shopping webOS around among with other Palm assets, according to sources, but insisting that potential buyers of the platform agree to license it back for use in future HP printers. Intel has just entered discussions with HP, a source close to the negotiations spilled to VentureBeat, while Qualcomm - despite sidestepping any suggestions of interest in webOS - is also said to be still in the running.
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Even though you've been told over and over again that there are absolutely and positively no more HP TouchPad devices out there on the market, you can always trust a group like TigerDirect to wrangle up the rest of the stragglers, this week selling the infamous tablets out for $149.99 after a $150 rebate. Of course you'll have to lie down $299.99 to get the tablet, then will get the rebate cash back eventually, but look! It's a TouchPad and you can buy it!
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It has become fashionable to praise Apple’s serene iPhone ads and rail against its competitors advertising, with Verizon Wireless’ obnoxious DROID and LTE ads drawing particular ire. In case you don’t watch any television or live outside the U.S., the Verizon Wireless ads include women battling cyborgs (this has to do with smartphones how, exactly?), people skydiving and firebombing cities with lightning balls (shouldn’t Homeland Security be intervening?), and unidentified objects slicing through cities (not an ad for a disaster movie, but a visual pun for the DROID RAZR). Meanwhile, Apple’s ads calmly explain the latest features and apps, sometimes with bold adjectives (“magical,” much?) but an even tone and methodical manner.
Ever since HP announced back in August that it was discontinuing WebOS hardware, the platform has been left hanging with an uncertain future. However, new rumors have surfaced that the company could decide the fate of WebOS sometime this week. According to people familiar with the situation, HP is set to hold an all-hands meeting tomorrow to finally iron things out.
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Amazon has been tipped as the latest potential suitor for what remains of Palm, with insider sources at HP claiming the mega-retailer is close to finalizing a deal. HP is reportedly looking to rid itself of Palm as soon as it can, VentureBeat‘s tipster tells them, and while there are apparently “a handful of contenders” interested, it’s Amazon that’s closest to handing over the cash. However, it’s unclear from the leaks whether Amazon would be buying Palm’s hardware business, the webOS platform, or both.
HP is shedding as many as 525 people from its webOS team, with the staff cull expected to begin sometime this week. The company confirmed to AllThingsD that the job cuts were taking place - though refused to specify an actual number or any other details of the losses - though reiterated its intent to explore "ways to leverage webOS software."
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HP apparently intends to split the webOS Global Business Unit into two, pushing the webOS software side over to the Office of Strategy and Technology while the ex-Palm hardware arm stays a part of the Personal Systems Group. The division, leaked by two internal HP emails passed to PreCentral, will leave HP free to license off webOS to other companies without the competition of the same group developing devices with it. Alternatively, it could be a simpler way for HP to close the door on its webOS hardware altogether.
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As you may have already heard, that being if you do not live under a rock on the moon of course, that HP recently announced they'd be discontinuing production of their webOS-related products, including the TouchPad tablet, as well as looking to take an alternate path with webOS - more than likely attempting to keep the platform alive by licensing it out to alternate hardware manufacturers in the near future. While it seemed to some that announcing they'd be giving up on the hardware end of webOS in the first place sounded the death bell for the mobile OS, HP has taken a seemingly well conceived gamble and made the HP TouchPad webOS tablet cost between $99 and $149, resulting in monster sales and sold-out stores all across the USA. What they're doing today is taking major advantage of the situation by offering up a handful of otherwise pay-to-own apps as completely free downloads.
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