Tuesday, April 10, 2007

WebOS Companies Will Suck, Forever

The WebOS. Great elevator pitch: "We're going to be like, Windows, but on the intertubes!"

So what the hell's a WebOS, and why do they all suck anyway?

A WebOS, as far as I can tell, is basically a desktop environment, on the web. They have APIs and widget toolkits that you can use to build applications for the six people on their platform to not use. With a WebOS, you can even do amazings things like go to your real desktop, launch your browser, then go to your WebOS desktop in your browser on your desktop, then launch your WebOS browser on your WebOS desktop in your browser on your desktop - and surf the web. Yeah, I'd use that.

"We're trying to build a single place from which you can access your data and run a multitude of applications, written by anyone in the YouOS network," Jeff Mellen, one of the co-founders wrote on the company blog. "Ultimately, we want the data and apps on YouOS to be accessible not only through any browser, but from any number of devices."


Hey, I've heard of something like that. I think we call it the world wide web. You know, the stuff that lets me go to any browser and access all my data from anywhere in the world, and use applications written by anybody with an idea and an internet hookup? That thing.

People, please stop funding these things. The web doesn't need your custom WebOS apps. The web has applications already and you "launch" them with the bookmarks menu. The web doesn't need your platform and GUI toolkits. The web has them already and they're called XHTML and CSS and Javascript.

The web especially doesn't need your operating system. We just call it Firefox.

5 comments:

ThriveSmart said...

What about protected data, or data you just want to share with a specific group?

Siqi said...

What about it? None of that requires a desktop.

Mikael Bergkvist said...

The webos for us, http://www.xindesk.com, is a developer platform for webapps.
Period!

The difference is that with this platform, you have a suit of apps already that you can draw from when creating new ones, and the rest is just 'window dressing'.

Elad said...

I absolutely agree.
Remember a few years back when the big thing was portals? How is a WebOS different? (and I mean really different)

Wes said...

Wow, is this Siqi, the creator? Thanks for commenting on my blog. You have taken hours of my life away from me, and I am so thankful. I'd love to help you out in any way, as best I could, because Mafia is awesome!

cheers,

Wes