Gadgetory

this is dieter bone with a verge at CES 2014 where apparently virtually dead operating systems can get a second life it's no understatement to say that webOS has had a weird history it started as a way for palm to save itself struggling the market got sold to HP and then HP killed its devices and sold the software to LG the next step in this crazy ride LG's webOS Smart TVs on the eve of LG's CES press conference we had a chance to sit down with level essence head of product management and design and type on check to find out more about this strange new chapter one of the main things that were trying to achieve is simplicity and there's nothing simpler than understanding a lot you have your pass things you have your present in the future and that really is the simplest thing that you can do this is how level s works on a TV by completely reimagining it for the big screen using LG's motion remote you can point it at what you want to watch and it's all put on a single line of content instead of a grid all of your inputs simply become cards and are all the same a single line of apps TV consoles and cable boxes apps are on the right and get big splashy intro screens while your most recent cards are available on the left we wanted unity everything is the same via your Xbox your source or some apps they're all the same if you're watching Netflix and you all want to switch to see what's happening on a game then go back to YouTube it should be obviously think there's no difference LG is also painfully aware that too many users don't set up their Smart TVs so it created a cartoon beam bird to encourage people to finish the process the bird might be overly cute but the overall interface is not at all it's refined snappy and there are animations that help you understand what's going on a lot of the challenge that comes with a sort of the flat design that it gets really boring and we're trying to look for something that makes our design always dynamic and you'll see that we have a lot of tension between different parts of the design there's strong lines and then they move sort of like jelly or in an unexpected way smart tvs typically have terrible interfaces grids of icons and mismatched uija balance so LG decided it wanted something that felt immediate and simple instead of flashy and overbearing the inspiration for for the interface the functionality comes from our perception that TVs used to be simpler you want it feeling simple again and it's not just the functionality or the information architecture it's also the visuals and you can see the strong colors and the lines really come from old TVs and how even the no signal used to look Smart TVs need apps and LG has the key ones Netflix Hulu Amazon and YouTube there's also a store coming to add more but LG isn't hanging its hopes on building and massive ecosystems yet TV right now is not about apps it's about content and we want to make sure we have all the content that people want to see I don't think that it's about competing about that you know the app catalog and also web voice is about the web at the end that you want everything to be accessible to everybody on the web and you're just gonna be the best TV over the web becoming just another Smart TV interface isn't what what was could have been but it is what it is fortunately for LG it looks like it's a relatively good interface and given the sad state of most of the competition relatively good actually feels pretty great can level s be more than that at this point it probably can't be and that's just going to have to be enough