4 ms·

I liked PalmOS, but I want to give a shoutout specifically to WebOS, which I felt was ahead of its time, both in concept and execution, in terms of what it coul

I liked PalmOS, but I want to give a shoutout specifically to WebOS, which I felt was ahead of its time, both in concept and execution, in terms of what it could do and its potential. An entire OS built around web technologies, has not only proven to be something people would have gravitated toward (given the prevalence of React Native, NativeScript, Ionic et. al.), I also felt it looked beautiful and for its time, it was very snappy. Unfortunately, it took them too long to acknowledge and figure out touchscreens, and by then they had dwindled their capital to such a point that a buyout was their only hope of surviving at any rate, and their touch screen phone never shipped. HP buying them out was the worst thing that could have happened, they had no resolve to sustain the phone market, which was and is incredibly competitive. I do feel though, with sustained investment and prioritization, that WebOS could have supplanted Android, particularly if they licensed it (which I think was ultimately what Palm needed to do. Their hardware was never the secret sauce). FireFox OS was also a valiant attempt at something similar, but Mozilla couldn't quite get it where it needed to be, unfortunately. disclosure: this is a very biased take, very much my opinions, but I look forward to discussion! EDIT: To clarify, what I mean by 'figuring out touchscreens' is using one as the primary modality of interaction, sans any hardware inputs (like a hardware keyboard). For instance, the Pre had a touch screen, but no onscreen keyboard, so to type anything into it, you had to slide up the screen.

pavlov 3y ago
> "their touch screen phone never shipped" You're perhaps misremembering Palm's webOS hardware. Touch was always part of the platform. The first device, Palm Pre launched in 2009, had a multitouch screen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Pre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Pre
- no_wizard 3y ago
  I edited my comment to clarify, however to do so here: what I mean is they didn't adopt the touchscreen paradigms, such as onscreen keyboards. The Pre required you to use the hardware keyboard, and had no virtual keyboard functionality built in. It lead to some odd interaction patterns. My recollection - which could be wrong - is that Palm did pivot to pure multi-touch interactions but it was never released, as HP largely gave up on the phone market by that time.
- supportengineer 3y ago
  My Handspring Visor from the year 2000 also had a touchscreen (with a stylus)
- wifipunk 3y ago
  The touch was pretty good too. I had a Palm Pre Plus that I picked up for $30 in 2010. Thing booted in seconds, had multi-tasking that looked like magic to iphone users, and had a swappable battery that got a lot of hate at the time for only lasting 1 day of prolonged use (with up to 2 weeks of standby). I could bring a couple spare batteries on a trip and never need to charge my phone.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    Not only did it have a swappable battery, it also had wireless charging eight years before the iPhone.
    - skyyler 3y ago
      Magnetically aligned wireless charging, at that! Something that the iPhone only got a few years ago.
ckz 3y ago
I'll second this. WebOS was conceptually way ahead of its time compared to contemporary versions of iOS, etc. A lot of its UI paradigms (switching apps as cards, etc.) ended up being adopted later by the big names as well. Just not ready to pivot that hard as a company and carrying a ton of legacy baggage as a brand at that point. Windows Phone was similar. Superior product (not just technically--in usability testing too), but late to the party and lacking cultural caché considering its parent company. I'm also biased though. :)
- Aloha 3y ago
  Windows Phone had the best UX of any of the mobile operating systems, it was something I could hand to a user who'd never had a smart phone before, and it was much more intuitive for them - they could figure it out without help. Sadly they never got enough market share (or perhaps investment by MS to pay for third party apps to get developed) to get the pool of Applications needed to attract users, which is unfortunate. The one side effect of the 'easy to newcomers' UX, was experienced users had to forget a bit about what they knew about how a mobile device was supposed to work to use it - thats not a huge barrier, but I suspect it also made adoption by existing power users a little slower.
  - ckz 3y ago
    IMO your last line there really hits the nail on the head with what I saw both on the ground and in the data. Windows Phone was absolutely crushing it with first-time smartphone adopters, but for folks switching it was tougher, because WP didn't use depend on the whole "grid of siloed apps" concept as much. If you'd already used an iPhone, it took a second to unlearn. And considering anyone making smartphone apps in 2010 was still on the early-adopter side of the curve--they'd already experienced that way of using a phone. There were still a lot of first-timers in the following 5 years, but the folks at the agencies and companies making the software weren't them.
  - tsunamifury 3y ago
    No this... was not true. I did extensive usability testing on MetroUI and it confused users as it lacked visual cues, had massive homogeny issues between functions, and lacked visual differentiation enough to let me remember where anything was. Hate it or love it, skumorphism educated billions on how to use a smartphone -- no one else even came close.
gunapologist99 3y ago
I agree that WebOS was cool, but the article is entirely about Palm's much earlier OS with its earliest history actually beginning in the late 80's.
- j45 3y ago
  PalmOS is worth it's own focus for sure. It was a more usable, and actually usable NewtonOS. Lots that can be learned from it today still. When horsepower wasn't cheap, the device and OS had to focus on something and that was actually assisting with productivity.
j45 3y ago
One of the key people of Palm and WebOS Matias Duarte [1] [2] [3] used to head up Android and Google Material design from what I remember, and a lot of the WebOS concepts are in Android now. WebOS still might be ahead of it's time depending on how it's looked at. An entire mobile, responsive, offline first operating system which was almost entirely HTML/Javascript based. Running a phone and a tablet. In 2009. [2] It was too bad they missed the window when iPhone launched, a good case study in missing the timing when the product was actually pretty good. Palm had the headstart on touch screens. In 2012, the open version of webOS ran as an Android. [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mat%C3%ADas_Duarte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mat%C3%ADas_Duarte [2] https://www.fastcompany.com/1653488/palms-lead-webos-designer-migrates-google-android-team https://www.fastcompany.com/1653488/palms-lead-webos-designe... [3] https://www.linkedin.com/in/matiasduarte/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/matiasduarte/ [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS [5] https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/141855-open-webos-can-now-run-as-an-android-app-ios-needs-to-watch-its-back https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/141855-open-webos-can-now...
myvoiceismypass 3y ago
IMHO The notification experience on WebOS was still way better than we get from android or iOS today. It was an absolute blast to write apps for as well.
- Yhippa 3y ago
  I love how it prioritized the bottom of the screen as the place to interact with the phone. It still doesn't make sense to have all of that stuff anchored to the top of the screen like in all the modern phones. They really thought through things and I am really bummed it all ended up dead.

pavlov 3y ago

> "their touch screen phone never shipped" You're perhaps misremembering Palm's webOS hardware. Touch was always part of the platform. The first device, Palm Pre launched in 2009, had a multitouch screen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Pre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Pre

no_wizard 3y ago
I edited my comment to clarify, however to do so here: what I mean is they didn't adopt the touchscreen paradigms, such as onscreen keyboards. The Pre required you to use the hardware keyboard, and had no virtual keyboard functionality built in. It lead to some odd interaction patterns. My recollection - which could be wrong - is that Palm did pivot to pure multi-touch interactions but it was never released, as HP largely gave up on the phone market by that time.
supportengineer 3y ago
My Handspring Visor from the year 2000 also had a touchscreen (with a stylus)
wifipunk 3y ago
The touch was pretty good too. I had a Palm Pre Plus that I picked up for $30 in 2010. Thing booted in seconds, had multi-tasking that looked like magic to iphone users, and had a swappable battery that got a lot of hate at the time for only lasting 1 day of prolonged use (with up to 2 weeks of standby). I could bring a couple spare batteries on a trip and never need to charge my phone.
- vel0city 3y ago
  Not only did it have a swappable battery, it also had wireless charging eight years before the iPhone.
  - skyyler 3y ago
    Magnetically aligned wireless charging, at that! Something that the iPhone only got a few years ago.

ckz 3y ago

I'll second this. WebOS was conceptually way ahead of its time compared to contemporary versions of iOS, etc. A lot of its UI paradigms (switching apps as cards, etc.) ended up being adopted later by the big names as well. Just not ready to pivot that hard as a company and carrying a ton of legacy baggage as a brand at that point. Windows Phone was similar. Superior product (not just technically--in usability testing too), but late to the party and lacking cultural caché considering its parent company. I'm also biased though. :)

Aloha 3y ago
Windows Phone had the best UX of any of the mobile operating systems, it was something I could hand to a user who'd never had a smart phone before, and it was much more intuitive for them - they could figure it out without help. Sadly they never got enough market share (or perhaps investment by MS to pay for third party apps to get developed) to get the pool of Applications needed to attract users, which is unfortunate. The one side effect of the 'easy to newcomers' UX, was experienced users had to forget a bit about what they knew about how a mobile device was supposed to work to use it - thats not a huge barrier, but I suspect it also made adoption by existing power users a little slower.
- ckz 3y ago
  IMO your last line there really hits the nail on the head with what I saw both on the ground and in the data. Windows Phone was absolutely crushing it with first-time smartphone adopters, but for folks switching it was tougher, because WP didn't use depend on the whole "grid of siloed apps" concept as much. If you'd already used an iPhone, it took a second to unlearn. And considering anyone making smartphone apps in 2010 was still on the early-adopter side of the curve--they'd already experienced that way of using a phone. There were still a lot of first-timers in the following 5 years, but the folks at the agencies and companies making the software weren't them.
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  No this... was not true. I did extensive usability testing on MetroUI and it confused users as it lacked visual cues, had massive homogeny issues between functions, and lacked visual differentiation enough to let me remember where anything was. Hate it or love it, skumorphism educated billions on how to use a smartphone -- no one else even came close.

gunapologist99 3y ago

I agree that WebOS was cool, but the article is entirely about Palm's much earlier OS with its earliest history actually beginning in the late 80's.

j45 3y ago
PalmOS is worth it's own focus for sure. It was a more usable, and actually usable NewtonOS. Lots that can be learned from it today still. When horsepower wasn't cheap, the device and OS had to focus on something and that was actually assisting with productivity.

j45 3y ago

One of the key people of Palm and WebOS Matias Duarte [1] [2] [3] used to head up Android and Google Material design from what I remember, and a lot of the WebOS concepts are in Android now. WebOS still might be ahead of it's time depending on how it's looked at. An entire mobile, responsive, offline first operating system which was almost entirely HTML/Javascript based. Running a phone and a tablet. In 2009. [2] It was too bad they missed the window when iPhone launched, a good case study in missing the timing when the product was actually pretty good. Palm had the headstart on touch screens. In 2012, the open version of webOS ran as an Android. [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mat%C3%ADas_Duarte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mat%C3%ADas_Duarte [2] https://www.fastcompany.com/1653488/palms-lead-webos-designer-migrates-google-android-team https://www.fastcompany.com/1653488/palms-lead-webos-designe... [3] https://www.linkedin.com/in/matiasduarte/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/matiasduarte/ [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS [5] https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/141855-open-webos-can-now-run-as-an-android-app-ios-needs-to-watch-its-back https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/141855-open-webos-can-now...

myvoiceismypass 3y ago

IMHO The notification experience on WebOS was still way better than we get from android or iOS today. It was an absolute blast to write apps for as well.

Yhippa 3y ago
I love how it prioritized the bottom of the screen as the place to interact with the phone. It still doesn't make sense to have all of that stuff anchored to the top of the screen like in all the modern phones. They really thought through things and I am really bummed it all ended up dead.