The smart TV scene may be increasingly the preserve of affordable set-top boxes like Chromecast and Fire TV, but LG isn't giving up on its webOS plans, pushing out the tools it hopes will encourage developers to get onboard. Freshly released, the webOS TV SDK will allow developers to cook up apps for LG's sets, test them on a TV emulator, and then package them up for distribution to the new app store.
The legacy of Palm is almost all but gone but bits and pieces still live here and there. Now the team behind WebOS has just released Mochi, a software design language meant for the mobile platform that unfortunately didn't see the light of day. Until now.
The saga of WebOS has been running for years now. Palm was the first to roll out the OS as an attempt to compete with Apple and Google in the smartphone wars. Eventually Palm failed and HP bought the OS and Palm as a whole. That purchase of Palm and WebOS turned out to be very bad for HP with the company losing money in major fashion when its aspirations failed and it too sold off WebOS to another firm.
With the newest implementation of webOS, LG is aiming for ultimate simplicity in their smart TVs across the board. What we’re seeing in this first iteration - ready for the market this year, mind you - is just that. Moving forward with a simple line of boxes which you’re able to select by moving back and forth with a cursor makes webOS as easy to use as it’s ever been.
In a press conference for the full LG spread of devices this week at CES 2014, the company made clear their intentions on pushing the full range throughout the year. They’ve brought on the formerly HP-owned webOS system for a variety of televisions, and they’re pushing Gallery OLED TV, curved model Ultra HD machines, and a variety of smart sets throughout the course of this event and to the market later this year.
Word has been circulating since about mid-December that LG is planning to unveil a new smart TV powered by webOS at CES 2014. The webOS operating system hasn’t exactly found a successful niche in the tech world so far and LG thinks that niche may be in the smart TV market.
Hewlett-Packard may or may not release two brand new smartphones by the end of 2013, reported The Information today by way of The Verge. That gives the computing company eight days to make rumors come true. The phones -- for which no leaked or officially sanctioned images exist to our knowledge -- are expected to be a 6-inch "phablet" and a 7-inch phablet.
LG will bring its first webOS smart TV to CES next month, with the former Palm platform making its living room debut. The new TV will run webOS - which LG acquired from HP earlier this year - on a 2.2GHz dualcore processor, LG researcher Hong Sung-pyo confirmed this week, ZDNet Korea reports, though most other details are unknown.
HP continues to work on its re-entry into the smartphone market, but is still yet to commit to a public roadmap after the painful and expensive webOS debacle left the firm with cellular egg on its face. "HP has to be in the game," Senior Director of Consumer PCs and Tablets for Asia-Pacific, Yam Su Yin, told the Indian Express, echoing comments made by HP CEO Meg Whitman last year.
This week former CEO of Palm Jon Rubinstein spoke up on Palm and the software and user interface elements the company created that are now being adopted industry-wide. For those that knew the mobile operating system webOS as created by the former company called Palm, the release of iOS 7 - as well as many other updates to OS' both mobile and desktop - the similarities to certain unique elements cannot be dismissed.
It's not every day you hear of a smartphone technology getting its own massive 22,000 word, 55-page write up. But that's just what's been announced this week as the article known as "Palm: I'm Ready to Wallow Now" is offered up on the back of the decades-long history of the operating system. Writer Thom Holwerda speaks of the death of the mobile operating system and the long - surprisingly long - life it had before its demise.