I’ve been writing a lot about Palm lately. I picked up a Palm Pre Plus the week they came to Verizon in January. I like the phone, but I LOVE webOS. Lately I’ve been scared for the future of webOS as Palm circled the toilet bowl, seemingly on the way down forever.
So with all the rumors and all the speculation about what might happen to Palm, never, and I mean NEVER did I foresee Hewlett Packard being the one to swoop down and secure the future of webOS. It is absolutely the best possible news for anyone with any kind of interest in what happens to webOS.
Why webOS?
- It’s just another linux based mobile operating system, right? A closed, proprietary os to boot, whereas Android is open. Here’s the best analogy I can make: Comparing mobilespace to the desktop, if you want to run a unix inspired operating system at home you can choose from countless linux distros or one of the free BSDs, or you can pony up for Apple hardware and run OS X. The free unix variants all rely on X.org for their GUI desktop, and while this gives the user a certain amount of freedom, it also creates a user environment that is an ugly mess. Contrast that to OS X, which is well designed, elegantly rendered, and features quite a bit of commercial and proprietary software in addition to all the unix standards enjoyed by both systems. Android very much reminds me of the hot mess that is the linux desktop, whereas Palm’s webOS is simple and sophisticated and a joy to use.
- Android tablets are going to be all the rage this year as everyone scrambles to put tablet devices in the market. Android is a decent phone os, and will make a decent tablet os as well. If webOS is better on a phone than Android, it will be twice as good on a tablet. The card metaphor for multitasking that webOS provides will be even more used on a tablet device, where people are likely to be doing several net related tasks simultaneously.
In addition, with the Palm PDK, webOS developers have a means to port existing iPhone and iPad software that is relatively trivial. We’ve already seen how webOS does with 3D games meant for iPhone.
Like webOS notifications? I agree, they destroy how iPhone and Android handle notifications. Equally suited to a tablet device.
Why HP?
- Deep pockets. Let me tell you something. HP is not picking up Palm as a favor to all of us Palm enthusiasts. They mean business. 1 in 5 PCs sold is an HP. Their competitor Dell is entering mobilespace with Android and Windows Mobile phones. Dell has tablets on the way. Apple is already there. HP is in it to win it. They are going to throw a lot of money at webOS and webOS devices. I really don’t care if this hardware says Palm or HP on it, in fact they might as well just do away with the Palm name and start the next chapter. What we care about is webOS, and HP, with very deep pockets and a very big desire to enter the competitive mobilespace, is going to do what it takes to make devices people want. Palm never had the bank account to do this. In case you hadn’t noticed, HP couldn’t shut up about webOS tablets in the announcement day press conference, and here it is two days later and surprise, surprise: HP has announced the cancellation of their anticipated Windows 7 tablet.
So the questions that arise now are:
Does HP keep the Palm brand alive? I don’t think it really matters. The important property here is webOS, not the Palm name.
Does HP turn a blind eye to the webOS homebrew community, or do they shut it down? Palm actually embraced the homebrew community, but things were so dire I think it was one of the only things they had to feel good about. I mean, at least someone cared, right? HP may not feel the same way and it is very likely that the existing webOS homebrew community goes from being a pseudo-official development channel to underground.
Whatever the coming days bring, it has been a great week for webOS users. In the moment of darkest despair we now have reason to be excited about the future of our favorite mobile platform.
