My further thoughts on Palm’s WebOS

I’ve been reading a lot about this new OS Palm’s got and the more I read, the more interesting it becomes. Palm’s whole approach to this seems to be copy the good of Apple and the iPhone and then improve on their weaknesses, technologically and procedurally – which, you have to admit is a pretty good strategy.

This strategy, apparently, includes being much more open and interested in what the developers and the community are looking for. This latest post by a Palm employee is looking for comments on what people would like to see in the SDK and the App Catalog. While he admits that things are pretty far along, there’s always room for tweaks but also some longer term direction could be gleaned from this. Also, he seems pretty engaged and posted several responses to the avalanche of comments that post has received. This is only the second time I’ve really felt positive about someone posting for Palm – Ben Combee’s efforts especially around the time of the Foleo were the first. So this is a very positive change. What I like about this is that it isn’t a committee or design by focus group, it’s we’ve got our ideas as to where we’re headed, but it doesn’t hurt to know what you’re looking for and if it makes sense maybe we’ll modify our direction. I believe in that.

The other very interesting piece I read was an interview with the CTO for Pandora who have already developed their client for WebOS. There’s a bunch of insight into the forthcoming SDK in the interview, a few of the bits that I found noteworthy…

As confirmation, although it was obvious, this SDK is a true SDK, not Apple’s original lame ass, “develop web2.0 apps! they’re great!”. Palm is providing a local database and file storage as well as access to the in phone services. So, if you were worried about that, worry no more. (NB That first piece also referred to applications as “binaries” so I wonder if it’s some fancy step to create an app or if it’s more or less just a zipped up version of all the files used) Also, he confirms that it is a Linux based OS, so there’s that too. Mobile Linux seems to be surging these days!

One odd thing was that he says that the Mojo SDK helps with managing the layout of the UI. Now, that seems very strange to me given that two of the three cited technologies used (CSS and html) do nothing but control layout/presentation, that’s their whole point. I wonder if they’ve built some sort of libraries on top of that to do things? I hope not, or if it is, it’s something like managing complex interactions like animation and what not. Also, I wonder if they’re using or it will be possible to use one of the frameworks like jQuery or YUI. Hmm…

In general, he seems quite positive about the development experience. Certainly, it will be more accessible than having to code in Objective-C (for the iPhone) and to some extent the developer base will be large. Although, I suspect the number of super skilled Objective-C developers will be similar to the number of super skilled Javascript devs, so the rest will be more novice developers. While he admits that their SDK may not be the best for all applications (i.e. intensive games probably won’t be coming), he also conjectures that they might do something like bring in Flash to handle things that might be too difficult in Javascipt. Makes a certain amount of sense.

What I also find very encouraging is that Palm eats its own dog food. He notes that Palm has developed all their standard applications using the Mojo SDK. This is at distinct odds from Apple who had nothing to do with any Web2.0 apps at the same time that they were touting how great a development platform it was. That shows confidence in the product and also highlights its real world usability.

All the rumors now point at a subsidized Pre coming in around $150-$200 which is good. Palm really can not afford to price this thing higher than an iPhone. For realz, even if it’s better, at this point they need to get their platform into people’s hands in a big way and that means being cheap. It’s over for them if they come in at the $250-$500 range that some have speculated. So are you getting excited for this? Or do you think Palm still has time to screw it up?

Robin

I've been using my iPhone for pretty serious work recently - beyond even typical PDA type stuff. I haven't missed classical multitasking as much as I have fast context switching. I think Apple could go a long way towards remedying that if they could just freeze processes in memory and let you switch between apps without having to restart them from cold every time. Obviously more memory in the phone would help with that a lot, but that 's a relatively simple thing for them to increase. Landon would be better placed to say whether there are technical barriers to that approach.

Palm may actually be doing something like this with the Javascript apps, which would not be that hard to implement given that they are in control of the VM. They only have to appear to be multitasking as a user-facing feature. They don't actually have to be fully preemptively scheduled in the way that desktop apps traditionally are.
felix

I completely agree - putting down the iPhone is just plain stupid. Without the iPhone they'd still be peddling palmOS and winMob all the way to bankruptcy. I'm just saying.

I think RIM has an extra in because of all the infrastructure they have at existing companies - I don't know nothing about it, but I have heard that the RIM solution for exchange integration is still more robust than what the iPhone and Pre offer. But who knows. And I hadn't thought at all about it but you're absolutely right - there will be free Android phones. That'll go a long way towards expanding that user base!!

We'll see about apps on the Pre, that's definitely a huge question mark on that platform. I just don't really understand how they can get away with all that they're doing (15-20 running apps and using javascript as a language), but if they've got the horsepower to do it, I guess more power to them! It will definitely be interesting to see what happens when you max out the Pre's ability to multitask. I'm looking forward to all this!
ronin

If the price came in at $250-350, I think they'll be ok. Possibly. Anything higher than that, forget it. It's definitely an interesting phone, but it's off my radar until they release a GSM version. I wonder why they went with Sprint as the initial network? I would've thought they'd get much more and better exposure going with Verizon if they really wanted to stick with CDMA.
Robin

I'd say I'm excited that we have competition again in the industry. I also think that on a technical level, Palm is doing everything right that they could do, given their position.

I think bad mouthing the iPhone or OSX is a serious mistake on their part. Their product appears to speak for itself for now, so it's unnecessary, and if Apple continues to innovate, Palm will only make themselves look stupid and lose sympathizers who were rooting for the underdog.

As far as the actual success of their platform goes, I still think they are positioned to displace RIM and compete with Android. RIM seem to be in the weakest position because the Pre appears to do everything a Blackberry does very well while extending the experience significantly. Android is a different matter because it seems as though anyone else who wants to make a smartphone will end up using android, so there will be a lot of cheap Androids around, and a lot of asian makers iterating on hardware. My guess is that Android phones will be free before very long.

I find it interesting to consider the alternative decisions to see how Palm would have looked had it taken them. Most significantly - what if they hadn't based their API around javascript and CSS? How would people have responded to yet another programming model? Wouldn't it have looked absurd? So perhaps we should be looking at it as the only reasonable path forward rather than a stroke of genius. Furthermore, let's not overlook the fact that webkit - which is enabling them to do this is actually developed by apple, and that the iPhone has the HTML5 database functionality too.

I have 60 applications on my iphone right now, and I've probably removed 2/3 of the apps I've every installed. Would the palm end up with 60 applications running? For all the complaints about springboard, it's not obvious that the card interface would work better. Most importantly, are users going to need to deal with a task manager of some sort to avoid having their batteries be killed by adverts running on the web apps or poor coding?

The one thing that Palm cannot rely on is that 3rd party developers will be well behaved. That's the driving force behind Apple's restrictive decisions, and certainly not an inability to implement features like multitasking. It will be very interesting if Palm have found strong technical solutions to these issues.

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