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HP shows off MetaWatch concept (video)
Give yourself a cookie if you can still remember as far back as August 29th of last year. That was the day when HP's Phil McKinney teased the world with images of three new prototypes being developed in his company's labs -- there was a tablet, now known as the HP TouchPad, a smartphone that's since taken on the name of Pre 3, and something snaked around his wrist that looked suspiciously like a watch. Today, we learn more about this MetaWatch, as HP calls. It's a continuation of the company's overarching theme of mobile interconnectedness, however unlike its webOS devices, this connected watch is nowhere near ready for prime time (or maybe it's just like them since none are actually shipping yet!). The new Meta fella is still a research project as much as anything else, but it's seen as a key part of our future, acting as an easy-to-use information aggregator. It looks just like any old watch to us, but why not jump past the break and let HP's CTO enlighten you on what makes it special? [Thanks, Obstacle-Man] Update: Turns out this concept device is actually called MetaWatch, not Metal Watch. We've updated the post accordingly, but hey, Metal Watch doesn't sound too bad, either.
webOS on PCs will be an 'integrated experience'
HP closed its recent "Think Beyond" event with a remarkable announcement that webOS would be coming to PCs. How, exactly, the company planned on doing that has been a mystery. The Seattle Times just interviewed HP's CTO, Phil McKinney, who helped put to rest some premature speculation that HP would be dumping Microsoft Windows in favor of webOS while adding some clarity (though not much) to its webOS on everything strategy. According to Phil, people still want an OS appropriate to PCs, tablets, and smartphones with webOS pulling it all together by "taking the existing operating systems and bringing WebOS onto those platforms and making it universal across all of our footprint." That doesn't mean that webOS will run as a virtualized instance within Windows. Phil says, "it's not virtualization. It's an integrated WebOS experience we're looking to bring." He then adds, "We're working with Microsoft on the future of Windows and we're very optimistic on what that future is, but what we think is we can bring an enhancement to that." The goal is to create a large device footprint that makes webOS a very attractive platform to developers -- "you can develop your WebOS app that'll run on your phone, your slate and your PC," according to McKinney. Hmm, apparently HP didn't get the Elopcalypse memo about the "three-horse race" that considers HP's and RIM's ecosystems irrelevant.
HP's Phil McKinney teases three mystery prototypes on Twitter
Well, this is certainly interesting -- that's HP CTO Phil McKinney pictured above in a pair of redacted shots that were posted to Twitter by HP's Mark Budgell. Described only as "early protos" by McKinney himself, the pictures show what appears to be phone-sized device, a tablet-sized device and, perhaps most curiously, something on McKinney's wrist (all mysteriously blacked out). Before you get your hopes up too much about a new wave of webOS devices, however, you might want to take a look at the second part of Budgell's tweet, which encourages folks to vote for McKinney's SXSW 2011 panel -- a panel in which McKinney promises to make some "bold predictions for the future - backed up with a number of breakthrough prototypes," and specifically talk about what the future will look like in "5 to 10 years." Now, we can't be certain of course, but that doesn't exactly suggest these are right around the corner. Head on past the break for a slightly bigger image.
HP's in-house webOS competition yields about 500 apps, says CTO
A little backstory: HP has an annual in-house event for its employees called TechCon, and this year a challenge was issued to the engineers to make the best webOS app (free phones were offered as incentive). Got that? Good. This week, HP CTO Phil McKinney had a brief chat with Pre Central over Twitter, where he revealed that the contest culminated in about 500 produced apps, and that "[they] are in the final stage of selecting 'best app' winners." Does that mean we should expect a large bump to the current catalog of programs? We can't say for sure, but we wouldn't be surprised if many of these are already available to download. Additionally, we can't say anything as for the overall quality of submissions. Edging closer to the 4,000-app milestone is great and all but not if it includes 250 different Angry Birds clones. Still, we're ever-hopeful and can't wait to see what exactly it was that came from the internal coding challenge.
HP's McKinney hints that a flexible display Palm device could happen
Speaking at MobileBeat in San Francisco today, HP's Phil McKinney chatted up the company's flexible display tech, which uses rugged Mylar-infused sheets similar to those found in solar panels and can display video while still being bistable the same way E Ink is -- in other words, it'll hold an image without power. Thankfully, this seems to be more than a pipe dream sitting in a lab somewhere, because McKinney went on to say that "these are the kinds of display technologies that will change what we think of in form factors, both in products from Palm with flexible displays, and with HP." In other words, it's entirely within the realm of reason to imagine a bendy webOS device that gingerly sips battery juice -- or stops sipping it altogether -- while you're reading the morning news. We wouldn't expect it any time soon, of course, but it's encouraging to hear a conservative industry behemoth like HP start to talk like this. In the meantime, can we just get a new Pre, guys?%Gallery-97337%
What's going on with the HP Slate?
Interesting post by our friend Harry McCracken at Technologizer today, pointing out that HP's gone dead silent about the Slate ever since it announced plans to acquire Palm. Harry was at The Big Money's Untethered conference today, and HP CTO Phil McKinney was on stage, where he "talked about the downsides of using existing operating systems for new types of devices" and "extolled the virtues of webOS." Interesting topic, since the Slate very prominently ran Windows 7. When pressed, Phil said he couldn't talk about unreleased products, which is a big change: it's been six months since Steve Ballmer first showed the Slate at CES, and since then HP's produced several rah-rah videos, one of them featuring none other than Phil McKinney himself. Harry takes this new silence to mean that the HP Slate is dead, and we're beginning to think he's right: although we haven't heard anything concrete, we definitely noticed HP's absence at tablet-heavy Computex, and at this rate, the Slate's rumored 1.6GHz Atom Z530 will be hopelessly out of date by the time it launches -- Intel's now showing off Moorestown Atom Z600 tablets and it's got the Windows-tablet focused Oak Trail Atom planned for early next year. The window's closing a little more with every passing day -- at this point, HP needs to come clean just so we can all move on to waiting for the Hurricane.
HP Slate teases us with another video appearance
The HP Slate -- has there ever been a more iconic, more groundbreaking, more life-altering device? Oh, there has? Well anyway, HP CTO Phil McKinney has been friendly enough to share some of the history behind the development of his company's newly announced tablet, which is set for a release at some point later this year. Starting with e-reader prototypes five years ago, he tells us, HP steadily built up an idea of the sort of "rich media experience" modern consumers are lusting after. It's only now, however, in a "perfect storm" of innovation, that HP finds itself capable of pairing the right hardware with the mainstream-friendly price point it was shooting for. Join us after the break for the full dose of education on this multitouch Windows 7 machine.
