Remember HP’s New Wave? Here We Go Again!
Posted by Bob Warfield on February 15, 2011
Sam Diaz has gotten clarification on the future of Windows in the light of their Web OS announcements. It should come as no surprise that Windows isn’t going anywhere, and certainly won’t be replaced by Web OS any time soon. Instead, HP is saying:
HP will integrate the WebOS experience into Windows, but not through virtualization. He said: “…it will be a combination of taking the existing operating systems and bringing WebOS onto those platforms and making it universal across all of our footprint.”
Sounds great. Been done before. Remember HP’s New Wave? It was a new object-oriented UI shell and mini-platform (we looked at possibly using it for our Windows apps at Borland but declined–not enough value add for the trouble) that HP launched way back in 1989. They’ve been down this road before of trying to enhance Windows.
It’ll be interesting to see whether it works any better this time around. Personally, I’m betting against. The little things it adds that have been demoed so far are all obvious things Microsoft should be building into Windows and in fact will have to build if they want to make their Nokia partnership perform as it should.
This is more or less what happened to New Wave. It introduced some cool stuff that Redmond promptly scooped up and marginalized through various releases of their own. It’s good news for Microsoft though. Their engine is not particularly innovative, but if someone else can show them what to do that’s in a format not too far removed from what they’re familiar with they will grind that stuff out like nobody else. They’ve needed some of that help, though frankly it has been out there lately and Microsoft hasn’t bitten (Xobni, anyone?).
Perhaps this will get their attention.
Brad Fallon said
Will they stop their bitter ambitions and go on with their life?:)
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LeeGarverick said
I can’t believe I stumbled across this post. But regarding the content… I think we are dealing with a very different cast of characters by now.
Bob Warfield said
Lee, it’s good to hear from you.
While the characters are certainly different, corporate aspirations and cultures haven’t changed much.
Cheers,
BW
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Mark W Palasits said
A trip down memory lane.. I was a co-owner of a small business years ago and installed New Wave on the office machines for use by people with minimal computer skills of which I was one. This was in the days of Windows 3.1. In any event, it was far superior to Windows as far as the GUI went but only Lotus took full advantage of it with their AMI-Pro word processor. It soon became an orphan child at HP and was regrettably dumped. HP’s Dashboard was a pretty nifty utility back then as well.
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[…] top of Windows for a long time now, and many people have questioned the value of doing so. Others, such as Bob Warfield, have suggested that HP could add some real value to Windows by providing features, such as those […]