Guest Editorial by Adam Doud of Pocketnow.com
Last week, Twitter maven and webOS community leader @Teckiegirl teased that big news was afoot. On Sunday, April 28th, that news was revealed. Phoenix International Communications was partnering up with Open Mobile Worldwide to bring their Application Compatibility Layer to the HP Touchpad. They launched a kickstarter campaign to bring in necessary funding to finish off the project and bring it to your Touchpad just a hair over two years after it became available for purchase.
ACL (the software, not
the ligament) would allow Android apps to run natively in cards,
just like the dozens and dozens of still-maintained webOS apps
currently available in the catalog. This is very exciting news if you
still happen to own a Touchpad, and you haven't permanently booted it
into Jellybean, and you still want to invest money in a mobile device
that is virtually in the geriatric stage of a mobile lifespan.
Better Late Than Never?
This news would have
been fantastic and downright titillating a year ago, when webOS was
struggling to stay afloat and webOS users by the thousands were
desperately seeking some reason – any reason to continue flipping
cards and stacks and Glimpsing and Angry Birding.
It's almost a shame
considering that a year later when many, many users only consider
webOS a pleasant chapter in their mobile tech memoirs, PIC and OM
have already gained half of the $35,000 asked for as of this writing.
I can only imagine the funding that would have been possible back
when the Touchpad was the number 2 selling tablet just after the
iPad.
The problem was that
Open Mobile showed off their ACL back then and then told everyone,
“You can't have it.” They tried to get HP, then owner of webOS to
license ACL and distribute it on their tablets for the bargain price
of whatever dollars per unit. HP, having already cancelled and
firesaled their tablets, shockingly said, “No” - after they
stopped laughing that is. Open Mobile continued to employ this
winning strategy until PIC entered the picture.
PIC has made other
grand promises to the webOS community since their inception just over
a year ago (or under a year since they became officially official).
PIC brought forth the call for volunteers to come together and bring
a webOS smartphone back to the masses. Later on, they announced
another project to bring webOS to Android as a working app. Those
two projects are still going forward, but now they are bringing ACL
to the Touchpad and webOS 3.0.
Intrigue Inception
All this is very
intriguing news in the world of webOS, a.k.a. the operating system
that just doesn't quit. It's intriguing on many different levels –
so many levels, I'll probably miss one or two.
First, ACL offers the
promise of instantly solving the biggest problem webOS has faced from
the beginning – apps. ACL boasts the ability to bring 500,000 apps
to webOS which is insanely awesome. I toyed with the whole
dual-booting Android thing, but long ago, I pulled Android off and
went back to full time webOS. Put simply, booting from one OS to
another was a major pain in the gluteous. In the end, I opted for an
OS that I liked, rather than the apps. Plus, at the time, I had (and
still have) a Samsung GSIII, so that filled my Android void.
Second, ACL might cause
users to brush the dust off their Touchpads and bring them back into
the fold – insert evil laugh here. Don't get me wrong, I'm not
expecting a webOS revival southern baptist style, but it might be
nice to get some webOS folks out of the woodwork and get it back into
the conversation.
The Impossible Dream
The last level is
incredibly far fetched, and almost too optimistic to put into print,
but let's stroll down fantasy lane for a moment.
LG currently makes
Android phones, most notably the Optimus series and the Google Nexus
4. They are also rumored to be bringing the next iteration of Nexus
to market. Having said that, LG is facing two major competitors in the
Android space – Samsung and HTC, both with arguably far better
offerings than anything LG looks to bring to the table. LG hasn't
really dabbled around much in other spaces, but they find themselves
as the proud papa of an operating system that was once loved by
pretty much every tech writer that tapped a keyboard, and now has a
solution to it's biggest downfall.
LG is also planning to
bring webOS to market – in TV's, but still. They're interested in
the OS enough to pop it onto their TV's, maybe they can be coaxed
into giving it a look as a major league differentiator with a
relatively decent following, should new hardware ever come to bear.
Again, this is not
something I realistically see happening, but it's fun to think about.
Is it better to be third place in a first place operating system, or
first place in a third (ok, fine, fourth) place operating system? I'm
not sure. It probably amounts to about the same thing overall, but If
ACL can be made to work flawlessly on webOS 3.0 then it stands to
reason that it could work with future iterations (if any) of webOS.
Overall, it's really a
damn shame that this movement could not have been the first project
of PIC out of the gate. A year ago, this news would have been
extremely relevant as many webOS faithful were still wondering what
to do next. This may have given the Touchpad and the operating system
enough relevance to fuel a whole new level of interest in the
platform. Now, sadly, I think it's just too little too late.
Final Thoughts
Which is not to say
it's not exciting. It's just exciting to far, far fewer people. But
heck, I'm one of them, so yeah, I'm paying attention. This
kickstarter movement allows webOS faithful to quite literally put
their money where their mouth is. But before I go, allow me to leave
you with the words of a couple of other webOS people, far more
important than I.
In the words of Rod
Whitby of webOS Internals, regarding the Kickstarter campaign:
- It requires PIC to produce an end-user installable product which extends the usable lifetime of the TouchPad by allowing Android 2.3 applications to run on it. This is a make-or-break baptism of fire for PIC. If they pull this off, then they have a track record in place to allow the community to get more interested in their wider goal of producing new webOS devices.
- If (sic) requires OM to deliver on the promises that they have been making for many years, and to actually finish and deliver a product for end-customers. No more hiding behind OEMs - OEM's reputation (at least what is left of it) will be open and bared naked for all to see. If this project does not succeed, OM should throw in the towel and never been seen of again courting a mobile device end-user community.”
(Source: webOS Nation Forums)
And in the words of
Marc Edwards (via private interview):
“We are not just Kickstarting Android apps on the TP, but a lot more webOS development as well, so we're hopeful the community as a whole will embrace the effort and really help us move things forward.”
Adam Doud is a Contributing Editor at pocketnow.com and webOS enthusiast. Follow him on Twitter @DeadTechnology
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