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Moto kills Webtop

Disappointed but not surprised.

I've heard that it is in ICS for Bionic at least. I've got the lapdock and the HD dock, so I want to keep it for now. I'm guessing that it won't be in Jellybean if they do indeed put that on the Bionic.

It does seem odd to me that they bought the intellectual property of Motorola but didn't get the personnel as well. I wonder how that works?
 
Is webtop separate from just using HDMI for mirror mode? Because if so I'm fine with that. I'm getting a lot more use out of the 3 dollar HDMI cable I bought to connect the phone to my TV than I ever did with the Lapdock.

It was a nice idea and I applaud them for trying to run with something new. But it just didn't pan out. Carrying around a separate device that does nothing on its own until you plug the phone into it isn't fun. Easier just to have a tablet or a laptop in your bag, something that works on its own.
 
billd said:
Disappointed but not surprised.

I've heard that it is in ICS for Bionic at least. I've got the lapdock and the HD dock, so I want to keep it for now. I'm guessing that it won't be in Jellybean if they do indeed put that on the Bionic.

It does seem odd to me that they bought the intellectual property of Motorola but didn't get the personnel as well. I wonder how that works?
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I have also heard that they are not going to develop Webtop past 3.0 but that it will remain in JB at that level. Hope that is true or I have a very useless Lapdock 500 for the future. :(
Lew
 
lewwill said:
I have also heard that they are not going to develop Webtop past 3.0 but that it will remain in JB at that level. Hope that is true or I have a very useless Lapdock 500 for the future. :(
Lew
Click to expand...

I hope they don't remove webtop all together if and when JB comes to the Bionic. It's kinda sad that they did away with Webtop. I found it useful.
 
This could be used as a excuse for Bionic not to get JB, they're not going to include it because it's not supported and the lack of it would break Bionic webtop devices. Just speculation, I wouldn't be surprised.
 
My guess is that webtop is being dropped because it has been unsuccessful and Moto would rather focus on making phones. Also, Google already has a web-based laptop strategy (Chrome OS), so there's little need to have another one.
 
Webtop was Motorola's attempt to bridge the gap between smartphones and laptops by attempting to create a truly mobile PC. The idea is that while the phone is docked in the HD station, you can have it connected to a monitor via the HDMI cable and also hook up a USB keyboard and mouse. The Webtop mode featured a full version of Firefox and resembled a full PC desktop. The big plus here was quick navigation between apps running on the phone (as they were now shown in a tabbed format) which helped to increase productivity, so you could sit down at your desk and hammer out a document, do research, spreadsheets, etc., and then undock the phone and take it all with you. The downside of it is that Motorola never allowed Webtop to act like a full featured desktop - meaning that you could not download or install applications, upgrade Firefox (stuck at 3.6), and customization options were limited and poorly supported.
 
Not to mention that the last I checked, they had not released an SDK for it, so nobody could develop for it.
 
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