Late last week, HP announced that it was exiting the WebOS hardware business, little more than a month after the TouchPad tablet was launched. Since the operating system’s early days as a smartphone OS I have long admired its graphical style and adherence to quality. Of course, given the choice between iOS devices (the iPhone and iPad) and these admittedly high-quality imitators, there was no doubt as to where my dollars would go.

I finally had an opportunity to play with a couple of the recent arrivals in the tablet space: the RIM Blackberry Playbook and the Motorola Xoom. Having read the reviews and evaluated the specs, I was looking to compare my Internet-provided conceptions with actual experience. The results were surprising. Given the market superiority of the iPad, a potential competitor must carefully tailor their product offering to not merely match, but exceed the capabilities of the incumbent.

You couldn’t say the warning signs weren’t there. But I doubt anyone would have guessed that the end would come so abruptly. Twitter did it today: they killed my app. It’s kind of a joke among developers to say that you’re working on a Twitter client. Let’s face it, there’s no shortage, right? Well now there’s probably gonna be. Go read the article for the details, but the nut is this: Twitter really only wants you using their apps to access the service.

Revolutions don’t happen without spilling a lot of blood. And if I sound overly blasé about it, that’s because I’m holding a bag of popcorn rather than a gun. Plenty of people are up in arms about Apple’s recent decision to charge 30% for all subscription- and content-based offerings on the iOS App Store. And they should be: for these people, Apple is literally taking away their profit margin, and sometimes even more.

I’m working on a new Mac app. At this stage in the game, I’m too embarrassed to tell you much about it. But in my long, agonizing quest to become a Cocoa Master, this is another stage in the journey, one I hope brings me measurably closer to my goal. This past weekend, I had the opportunity to give that app my full attention. I took the lovely @erinlthomas for a writing retreat in the middle of winter-locked Prince Edward County, where we had nothing to do but focus on our projects.