HP to Stick a Fork in webOS, Preps Complete Shutdown of Services on January 15, 2015

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

Somebody start playing Taps

Palm had a potential winner in webOS, the mobile operating system that truly could have been awesome. Unfortunately, a series of missteps led to webOS falling out of relevance as Android and iOS raced to the front of the pack, so now all we can do is look back at what might have been. Oh, and make no mistake, webOS is pretty much history at this point -- so much so that HP announced plans to shut down its App Catalog and cloud services support for remaining webOS devices effective January 15, 2015. For the three or four of you who this affects, mark your calendars.
"We appreciate your loyalty to the webOS platform," HP said in a succinct statement accompanying the announcement. There's also an FAQ that sheds more light on HP's decision to call it a night.
HP explains that it's part of an ordelry end of life program, noting that it announced the end of webOS devices (phones and tablets) over three years ago. The company kept its services running as a courtesy to its customers, but now that the "user count has dwindled," HP says it's no longer viable to keep doing so.
For those of you who still own a webOS device, it will continue to work beyond January 15, 2015, though you won't be able to download new apps or updates, backup or restore from the cloud, setup new devices, or recover lost passwords. If you purchased an app but have yet to download it, now is a good time to snag it -- the HP App Catalog will be unavailable after the shutdown.
Image Credit: Flickr (Lisa Brewster)
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