5 ms·

I had a Palm Pré and I miss webOS more than any mobile OS I have ever used.

by tbassetto 9y ago

madez 9y ago
With free software and properly documented hardware, you would never need to miss an OS; you could just use it.
- wpietri 9y ago
  I think that's highly, highly unlikely in this case.What you also need is a supply of skill and labor sufficient to keep things running. There is a lot of new hardware out there. Most manufacturers don't even do real updates for their own phones; I can't imagine what it would take to get WebOS running on the variety of hardware in circulation today. And in this case, having a 2009 v 1.0 phone OS running on new hardware surely isn't sufficient. Our ideas of what a phone should do have expanded significantly. So we're really talking a large development effort. One estimate I see says Apple has 1000-2000 people working on iOS. Given Android's much larger hardware ecosystem, I'd bet the number of people working on Android one way or another is larger. Matching that with an open source effort seems implausible to me.
  - madez 9y ago
    > Matching that with an open source effort seems implausible to me. You don't have to because it is an inadequate comparison. You don't need much effort to continue using old software. There are people who still use SNES with the original OS. Where are the people maintaining that? There are none, because none are needed. If you think an "old" OS isn't sufficient because we now demand things of an OS the old one doesn't deliver, then you would rapidly stop missing it after using it for a while. So, not much development needed either.
    - wpietri 9y ago
      We're talking about a phone OS here. If they just wanted to haul out a 2009 phone out and use it, they could do that just fine, with no open sourcing. You can still buy them off eBay. Since they haven't done that, you might consider that they want something else. I also disagree that using one of those today would make somebody not miss it. What they could reasonably miss is what it could have been. That's certainly what I'd love to see: a WebOS grown up, with a decade's investment along the lines of the original.
agscala 9y ago
How come? My understanding is that the thing people loved the most was the "cards", but ios and android both have something similar with their app switcher now.
- tbassetto 9y ago
  It’s similar but not exactly the same feeling. It’s hard to describe. I don’t have an iPhone X though (which now has indeed a similar gesture to display the running apps carousel). Another good idea in webOS was to display notifications at the bottom of the screen, I have relatively small hands and they were easily accessible: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zplVSI0M93o/hqdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zplVSI0M93o/hqdefault.jpg
wpietri 9y ago
Ah, Palm. I had a few of their Treo series and loved them. In 2002 I had the Internet on my phone! I had email! I had apps! The user experience was clunky compared to what came later, but it was amazing for its day. WebOS was a good try, but too little and too late. They had a 6-year lead on Apple and they blew it. I happened to run across some former Palm people years later and I was told that PalmOS had stacked up so much technical debt that innovation was very slow. It's funny how much people today believe that the iPhone was the first smartphone.
- beamatronic 9y ago
  Same here. I wanted to add that even in 2000 with a Handspring Visor PDA running Palm OS you could sync with the Internet (news, maps, etc ) when it was in the cradle attached to your pc. There was an app where you could manually tell it your location (street intersection) and it would show you restaurants near you. A coworker had a “Ricochet” cellular modem for his Palm device and he would send emails from the Caltrain. This was in 1999-2000. For me, we had versatile computers with apps in our pocket 18 years ago, the difference now is high-bandwidth, cheap, ubiquitous wireless data everywhere you go.
xeeeeeeeeeeenu 9y ago
My experience with Prē 2 was horrible. I have never used a worse performing phone, and that includes cheap chinese Android devices. I guess basing their GUI on HTML5+js running under WebKit1 wasn't the best choice for 2010 hardware.
skinnymuch 9y ago
I had a Palm Pre and Touchpad. I miss them so much. WebOS was so good. Windows Phone 7 and 8 come next.

I had a Palm Pré and I miss webOS more than any mobile OS I have ever used.

madez 9y ago

With free software and properly documented hardware, you would never need to miss an OS; you could just use it.

wpietri 9y ago
I think that's highly, highly unlikely in this case.What you also need is a supply of skill and labor sufficient to keep things running. There is a lot of new hardware out there. Most manufacturers don't even do real updates for their own phones; I can't imagine what it would take to get WebOS running on the variety of hardware in circulation today. And in this case, having a 2009 v 1.0 phone OS running on new hardware surely isn't sufficient. Our ideas of what a phone should do have expanded significantly. So we're really talking a large development effort. One estimate I see says Apple has 1000-2000 people working on iOS. Given Android's much larger hardware ecosystem, I'd bet the number of people working on Android one way or another is larger. Matching that with an open source effort seems implausible to me.
- madez 9y ago
  > Matching that with an open source effort seems implausible to me. You don't have to because it is an inadequate comparison. You don't need much effort to continue using old software. There are people who still use SNES with the original OS. Where are the people maintaining that? There are none, because none are needed. If you think an "old" OS isn't sufficient because we now demand things of an OS the old one doesn't deliver, then you would rapidly stop missing it after using it for a while. So, not much development needed either.
  - wpietri 9y ago
    We're talking about a phone OS here. If they just wanted to haul out a 2009 phone out and use it, they could do that just fine, with no open sourcing. You can still buy them off eBay. Since they haven't done that, you might consider that they want something else. I also disagree that using one of those today would make somebody not miss it. What they could reasonably miss is what it could have been. That's certainly what I'd love to see: a WebOS grown up, with a decade's investment along the lines of the original.

agscala 9y ago

How come? My understanding is that the thing people loved the most was the "cards", but ios and android both have something similar with their app switcher now.

tbassetto 9y ago
It’s similar but not exactly the same feeling. It’s hard to describe. I don’t have an iPhone X though (which now has indeed a similar gesture to display the running apps carousel). Another good idea in webOS was to display notifications at the bottom of the screen, I have relatively small hands and they were easily accessible: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zplVSI0M93o/hqdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zplVSI0M93o/hqdefault.jpg

wpietri 9y ago

Ah, Palm. I had a few of their Treo series and loved them. In 2002 I had the Internet on my phone! I had email! I had apps! The user experience was clunky compared to what came later, but it was amazing for its day. WebOS was a good try, but too little and too late. They had a 6-year lead on Apple and they blew it. I happened to run across some former Palm people years later and I was told that PalmOS had stacked up so much technical debt that innovation was very slow. It's funny how much people today believe that the iPhone was the first smartphone.

beamatronic 9y ago
Same here. I wanted to add that even in 2000 with a Handspring Visor PDA running Palm OS you could sync with the Internet (news, maps, etc ) when it was in the cradle attached to your pc. There was an app where you could manually tell it your location (street intersection) and it would show you restaurants near you. A coworker had a “Ricochet” cellular modem for his Palm device and he would send emails from the Caltrain. This was in 1999-2000. For me, we had versatile computers with apps in our pocket 18 years ago, the difference now is high-bandwidth, cheap, ubiquitous wireless data everywhere you go.

xeeeeeeeeeeenu 9y ago

My experience with Prē 2 was horrible. I have never used a worse performing phone, and that includes cheap chinese Android devices. I guess basing their GUI on HTML5+js running under WebKit1 wasn't the best choice for 2010 hardware.

skinnymuch 9y ago

I had a Palm Pre and Touchpad. I miss them so much. WebOS was so good. Windows Phone 7 and 8 come next.