Yesterday, Ryan St. Andrie, of webOSNation.com, posted an article on installing the webOS Tasks application from a Pre or Pixi smartphone on your TouchPad tablet. Tasks, unbelievably, is an application that never made it into webOS 3.0. You can read the full story over on webOSNation.com.
The steps outlined in the article work well enough. I did run into some *minor* problems while packing up the Tasks app for installation on my TouchPad. The first issue was how to deal with the .jar webOS Doctor file that contains the Tasks application that I wanted to install. The second issue was where do a copy the Task application to once I got it on my TouchPad.
Issue 1: Working with the .jar webOS Doctor file
webOS Doctor files, shipped as Java .jar files, are essentially hard reset files that allow you to reset and reload a clean copy of webOS on your device. The article calls for opening the .jar file with a PC compression utility like WinRAR. I’ve used WinRAR before…on my PC. As I said, I’m using a Mac now.
Without thinking, I loaded up Parallels, launched my Windows 7 virtual machine, and was off to the races as they say. But what if you don’t have Paralles, VMware Fusion, or a copy of Windows hanging around? The solution turns out to be very simple; rename the .jar file to .zip! (I didn’t come up with that myself. I found the solution here. Thanks, cazlar!) I did go back and test the rename-the-file trick and it does work. Sweet!!
Also, once you get the .jar-now-a-.zip file open, here is the path you have to navigate to find the Tasks folder. I am going to assume that you are using the unlocked Pre2 webOS 2.2.4 Doctor file.
webosdoctorp224pre2wr.jar > resources > webOS.tar > .\nova-cust-image-roadrunner.rootfs.tar.gz > .\usr > palm > applications > com.palm.app.tasks
Issue 2: Moving the Tasks app
Once you have installed the repackaged Tasks .IPK file on your TouchPad, you have to move it to the Linux partition for Palm’s built-in webOS applications because Tasks is a system application and not a third-party application.
If you are reading the webOSNations article carefully, you will know that you will need to move the Tasks app folder from the path:
/media/cryptofs/apps/usr/palm/applications/com.palm.tasks
to:
/usr/palm/applications/com.palm.tasks
The thing that tripped me up was the screen shot that was provided was of the first path, not the second. Just be aware of that when you go to move the com.palm.tasks folder.
After rebooting my TouchPad, Tasks was up and running in the webOS smartphone emulator on my tablet!
The entire process took about an hour for me to complete. Times will vary depending on how much software needs to be downloaded, updated, or installed on your Mac, PC, and TouchPad.
[Via webOSNation.com…]