The product that killed the operating system. (HP TouchPad/supplied)
Two reports have emerged just recently that the team inside HP that was responsible for the WebOS hated the two HP devices, the Veer and the TouchPad, and even went as far as testing the OS on the rival iPad 2 to compare it.
It ran twice as fast. Yes, you have read that correctly.
According to The Next Web, the team, known as the Personal Systems Group, had a particular dislike of the two products. They saw the products as killing the entire operating system and that the company did not tell even the head of WebOS about the shutting down of the hardware division.
Despite the hatred, the article says that people were still shocked as they had hoped that a new product could seek better hardware. There was even talk about producing a 7-inch TouchPad Go and was already in production before the announcement. It was said to have a better looking and nicer design than the TouchPad.
But instead, they killed the hardware.
Another report has claimed that the team felt constrained by the hardware chosen by HP and could not develop innovations for the OS or else it would run too slow (and hence the testing on the iPad 2, just to show how slow the current hardware is).
The main problem, according to the article, was that the technology chosen was already created. The buyout of Palm was only to acquire an operating system for it, as it viewed the open-source Android as “utterly crap” in terms of customer experience and interaction. In addition, it was designed for a Qualcomm chipset, and any changes to that would have required a reworking of it.