Earlier today (well, technically yesterday, since it’s gone midnight here), I said HP should stick it out alone, create great hardware and software, not licence webOS  and attempt to out-Apple Apple. Turns out HP doesn’t have the stomach for that; instead, it’s killing the TouchPad and, judging by the other changes to its business, is instead going to attempt to out-IBM IBM. Yeah, good luck with that—I hear IBM has quite a head start.

Still, Apple had a head start, too, but then most people who’d used webOS thought HP could nonetheless make a mark. On Twitter, Lukas Mathis said:

Tablets will make up a huge part of the future PC market. HP had one of the best horses in that race. This will be known as HP’s worst move.

It’s certainly bad for HP, regardless of where it goes next; James Kendrick says why:

HP in one day tanked any trust it had built up with customers for years. I wouldn’t even buy a printer cartridge from them now.

I’m sure James won’t be the only one. And yoinking an entire platform that’s barely bedded in? Eddie Smith has some wise words on that:

The indirect message sent by HP today: If you buy a non-iPad, you might be buying abandonware.

I was hoping for more of a fight from HP. And with Microsoft nowhere, maybe commentators claiming we’ll eventually end up in an Mac OS/Windows-style result in tablets, but with Google’s Android in place of Microsoft, aren’t quite so far off—although the numbers and balance, clearly, won’t be terribly similar, unless Apple makes the iPad 3 out of papier mache and twigs.

Unless Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky is a big fat liar, it looks like he’s just confirmed a Windows 8 app store in his post about the many teams involved in the project. If you look in the bullet-pointed list, it’s somewhere between ‘App Compatibility and Device Compatibility’ and ‘Blimey, We Have Quite a Lot of Teams, Don’t We?’

As is often the case, Apple leads and Microsoft goes “woof” before pissing up a tree and eventually following, but I’m glad it’s doing so in this case. Although I have some problems with the Mac App Store (very passive update alerts, slightly too strict entry requirements, odd bugs when it comes to upgrading from beta software), the general experience of using the store is excellent.

On Windows, installing software isn’t quite the nightmare that some people make it out to be, but it’s rarely better than the ‘mount DMG/drag to /Applications’ dance Mac users put up with, and it’s certainly more hassle than clicking ‘install’ and twiddling your thumbs for a bit. The question is whether Microsoft can ape Apple’s user-experience rather than just the concept. I can’t imagine Microsoft would have a great deal of trouble populating its app store, but it might have problems in focussing and in saying ‘no’ (say, to large companies who want options for install numbers and so on, versus Apple’s ‘take it or leave it’ approach). Time will tell, but of all the things mentioned in Sinofsky’s list, the app store is the most exciting for me.

It’s Matt Rosoff’s turn to fire some crazy juice into your brain. For Business Insider, he says:

The only way WebOS will survive is if HP licenses it to the big handset makers who are suddenly stuck between Microsoft-Nokia and Google-Motorola.

I remember people arguing the same about Apple in the 1990s, and look where that got the company during the short period where Mac clones did exist.

Of course, the mobile market is very different to PCs, but it’s arguable success is coming either for players who release really tight software/hardware integration (well, player; well, Apple), and whoever can fire their wares over the widest area (currently, Android). The problem with the second of those things is it usually results in gaining the low-profit area of the market, which really isn’t where HP needs to be scrapping. Instead, having found itself in an Apple-like position, HP should be pushing that all the more. It should make WebOS devices better than Apple’s equivalents, and the only chance it has to do that is if it keeps hold of everything itself. Licensing WebOS would just be a bag of hurt for the company.

With most media, there comes a time when people kind of stop dead, refusing to consider anything past a certain point ‘proper’. This is particularly common in music, where every generation loves the music it grows up with and then, once adult, considers contemporary music inane, tuneless drivel.

Videogaming’s much younger than music, but similar issues are becoming commonplace. I once thought I’d already hit one such bump, with the move to seemingly enforced 3D during the era of the PSX, although I’d argue that wasn’t just my then-nostalgic inclinations, but also the argument by game developers that everything had to be in 3D—an idea handhelds like the GBA, DS and iOS devices have since consigned to oblivion. However, I’ve now definitely hit one ‘I don’t get it’ bump, and I’m not alone.

Citing a Flurry report that claims a stunning 68 per cent of iOS game revenue is now from ‘consumable’ rather than ‘durable’ purchases, Ben Brooks says:

This is astonishing to me and being that I am not in the group that plays these types of games, I just can’t see the motivation to buy in-app currency to use — especially knowing that I will have to buy it again at some point.

Again, no judgment — I just don’t “get” it.

Same here. I get sequels and unlockable content. I get ‘demo’ freemium games where you play a few levels and then pay for the rest. But I don’t get the appeal of grind-oriented games were you pay for currency to spend on things, run out of virtual cash, and then pay for more currency to spend on things. It’s not about challenge or skill—it’s about how deep your pockets are. It’s the videogaming equivalent of bling, and I don’t understand the appeal at all.

What’s that, every tech blog on the internet? The iPad 3 has been delayed, possibly due to “Retina display issues”? Would this be the iPad 3 that Apple hasn’t bloody announced yet, let alone offered a release date for? The one that DigiTimes and other papers with an accuracy rate just shy of a golfer using a loaf of bread instead of clubs said would arrive in September? Or maybe November? Or maybe whatever month they hit on their calendar with a dartboard, to get you to report on their story that carries no weight whatsobloodyever?

How about the iPad 4? Has that been delayed too? What about the iPhone 7? The only thing that’s been delayed is the tech industry’s return to common sense and reporting on news rather than rumours.