HP Had WebOS Running on iPad Hardware?

Matt Brian, The Next Web, reporting that HP’s WebOS software team was stymied by slow hardware:

The hardware reportedly stopped the team from innovating beyond certain points because it was slow and imposed constraints, which was highlighted when webOS was loaded on to Apple’s iPad device and found to run the platform significantly faster than the device for which it was originally developed.

With a focus on web technologies, webOS could be deployed in the iPad’s Mobile Safari browser as a web-app; this produced similar results, with it running many times faster in the browser than it did on the TouchPad.

I’m deeply skeptical of this without seeing it in action. I don’t doubt that the iPad is better hardware, but if it’s that easy to get WebOS bootstrapped on iPad hardware, why haven’t indie hacker jailbreak types gotten, say, Android running on an iPad, too? And I simply can’t believe that WebOS or any subset thereof running within MobileSafari would be faster than running natively on the TouchPad. I don’t believe it. Show me.

★ Friday, 19 August 2011