3 ms·

> WebOS—true multitasking when iOS and Android couldn't handle it Am I missing something?

by JKCalhoun 1y ago

f1shy 1y ago
I must be missing the same, because I had a Palm back in the day, and the OS was IMHO absolute crapware
- kayodelycaon 1y ago
  Palm didn’t have a WebOS product on market until 2009 and HP acquired them less than a year later. I don’t think HP was remotely interested in the previous operating system.
- RajT88 1y ago
  WebOS is not PalmOS based. Your experience is not applicable. I actually own a discount touchpad. It was snappy as hell, promised to at some point have the Android app store, and could easily be jail broken by design. The software ecosystem was not even bad - my basic needs were all met. The UI was slick feeling, like an Apple product, but the exterior finish was plasticy and more like an Android device. Battery life was incredible compared to Android devices of the time. All in all, I really liked it. What might have been!
- fredoralive 1y ago
  Are you perhaps thinking of the classic Palm OS on a PalmPilot or whatever, which was limited because it was designed in the '90s for '90s hardware? That was dead by the time HP bought Palm, they were onto Palm WebOS, a modern (for the day) Linux / web app based OS on the Palm Pré and Pixi devices.
- myvoiceismypass 1y ago
  I remember thinking it was awesome to be able to ssh from my palm treo on the go 20 years ago - not all the PalmOS (different from WebOS) apps were crap, especially for the time!
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
fredoralive 1y ago
3rd party apps couldn't do anything in the background until iOS 4, and it's always been a bit limited. I think he's wrong about Android, although AFAIK Palm had a nicer task switching UI at first.
- mikepavone 1y ago
  Yeah, Android had good support for multi-tasking from the start, though at least some early devices did not really have enough RAM for it to work well
- onli 1y ago
  It had apps as cards to easily switch between them, useful animations and a completely working gesture control. It was absolutely revolutionary and having to fall back to Android after that was a big step down, until Android incorporated everything from webOS a few years later. He is right in his analysis I think. The webos devices needed a price cut and time to build an app ecosystem, as evident by the hype around the fire sale and how many people really liked them then.
- myvoiceismypass 1y ago
  I thought proper Android task switching didn’t come until they released the first tablet version (Honeycomb, 2011). Interestingly enough this was after they hired away the webOS UX lead (Matias Duarte)
- ewoodrich 1y ago
  Yeah, I am pretty confident I was able to keep apps running in the background on my T-Mobile G1 and some old forum posts I found seem to confirm my memory. [1] Multitasking/keeping apps in background and copy/paste were the big differentiators I remember on the first Android phones compared to the iPhone. The app switcher UI for multitasking on Android didn't really exist yet though so WebOS was ahead there and I think that gave some people the illusion Android didn't support it at all. [1] https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/t-mobile-g1-android-phone-hands-on-review.227759/ https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/t-mobile-g1-android-pho...
dismalaf 1y ago
When WebOS was released, it had multitasking whereas iOS and Android froze background apps? Dunno, it's a pretty straightforward statement. WebOS was a legit Linux OS and had a lot of good features...
jerf 1y ago
Your question is unclear but I assume you are thinking that iOS has always supported "multitasking". This is not the case. iOS4 introduced it on the iPhone side, and this is how AnandTech [1] describes it: "To switch between apps on the iOS3 you hit the home button, which takes you home, and then select your next app. Your previous app, assuming it isn’t one of a very limited list of apps that have services that can run in the background (e.g. iPod, checking email), quits completely. Switching back to the previous app relaunches it." "In iOS 4 Apple promises app level multitasking without sacrificing performance or battery life. A single push of the home button still takes you home, but a double tap will bring up a list of recently used apps along the bottom of the screen. Scroll to find the one you want to switch to, select it and you’ve just “multitasked” in iOS 4." Even on the Palm Pilot, you could switch reasonably quickly between, say, the Memo Pad and the Calendar, and not lose context in either app because they restarted. The OS was structured around giving apps the ability to freeze their state easily and rapidly thaw it later. I believe Android had some stuff for that, but it wasn't as comprehensive as what Palm had, and I can't speak to iOS APIs at all. (In 2025, the "solution" to this is largely to just leave the apps running in the background like a desktop, now that cell phones are substantially more powerful today than the desktops of the WebOS era. Whether WebOS could have made a superior phone back in the day, we'd still be where we are today either way.) [1]: https://www.anandtech.com/show/3779/apples-ios-4-explored/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/3779/apples-ios-4-explored/2
- kayodelycaon 1y ago
  I think what’s confusing things is the underlying operating system is multitasking.
- kccqzy 1y ago
  Prior to true multitasking on iOS, Apple would tell you to tag view controllers for preservation so that when your app launches, the OS will restore the original view controllers, as if the app has been running the whole time. Old documentation here: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/featuredarticles/ViewControllerPGforiPhoneOS/PreservingandRestoringState.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/featuredarticles... (These days few apps bother to do this anymore. I switch away from an app in a minute and upon switching back I'm back at the app's home screen.)
potatolicious 1y ago
This is true - and WebOS was legitimately innovative here. At the time neither iOS nor Android could run more than one app at the same time. This was both an architectural matter and a UX matter. On iOS and Android at the time, all apps were full-screen. When you switched to another app, the previous app suspended execution entirely. The OS would keep the memory footprint of the app warm in RAM if possible, but back then RAM was in short enough supply that more often than not the memory state of the process was dumped to disk instead. There were lots of clever UX hacks to make this feel seamless - when an app was suspended it was also screenshotted, and the screenshot would be displayed to the user upon switching back, until the actual app could be restored and resume running. But the app executable was totally suspended during this time. Whereas on WebOS the UX was oriented around showing multiple "Cards"[1] at the same time, but each one represented a live running process that was able to interact to the user and render new UI. This was a pretty big deal at the time. Since then both iOS and Android gained a lot more capability and nuance around multitasking. [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/4508/hp-touchpad-review/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/4508/hp-touchpad-review/2
- jldugger 1y ago
  The Nokia N900, running Maemo, also supported multitasking in 2011. It was just toppled by a similarly dedicated team of executive fuckups.
  - wmf 1y ago
    The N900 battery could run down in 30 minutes due to true multitasking (especially when using the true desktop browser).
  - eloisant 1y ago
    To be honest there were a lot of mobile OSes at the time supporting multitasking, like Windows CE, because they were desktop OS (Linux for Maemo, Windows for CE) with little adaptation for mobile. That meant performances and battery life were not great. That's why those OS were mostly used by geeks and power users, and "regular" users were using feature phones that "just work". One of the strength of iOS and Android were to create a completely different userspace that what we had in desktop OS, more adapted to mobile. They combined the "just works" aspect of feature phones with the power of smartphones.
jldugger 1y ago
Early iOS would pause background apps. Limited multistasking was added in iOS 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_4#Multitasking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_4#Multitasking
strangattractor 1y ago
1. WebOS lives on (purchased from HP) or at least a version of it on LG TVs. 2. Matra: End users don't care about the OS. End users don't care the OS. (or most all the technical aspects Engineers value) End Users only care whether the product does something they want - make toast, listen to music, prevent stds etc. Jobs shipped products that solved actual problems - desktop publishing, listening to music, making a phone call. They solved other problems also but shipping a product that might one day solve a problem is not a product category.
nodamage 1y ago
I think the author of the article really misses the point here. While "true multitasking" might be a neat technical feature, it's not something that the end user really cares about or would base a buying decision on, especially if running multiple apps in the background at the same time came at the expense of battery life. Those early versions of iOS employed a lot of tricks to squeeze performance and battery life out of underpowered devices.

> WebOS—true multitasking when iOS and Android couldn't handle it Am I missing something?

f1shy 1y ago

I must be missing the same, because I had a Palm back in the day, and the OS was IMHO absolute crapware

kayodelycaon 1y ago
Palm didn’t have a WebOS product on market until 2009 and HP acquired them less than a year later. I don’t think HP was remotely interested in the previous operating system.
RajT88 1y ago
WebOS is not PalmOS based. Your experience is not applicable. I actually own a discount touchpad. It was snappy as hell, promised to at some point have the Android app store, and could easily be jail broken by design. The software ecosystem was not even bad - my basic needs were all met. The UI was slick feeling, like an Apple product, but the exterior finish was plasticy and more like an Android device. Battery life was incredible compared to Android devices of the time. All in all, I really liked it. What might have been!
fredoralive 1y ago
Are you perhaps thinking of the classic Palm OS on a PalmPilot or whatever, which was limited because it was designed in the '90s for '90s hardware? That was dead by the time HP bought Palm, they were onto Palm WebOS, a modern (for the day) Linux / web app based OS on the Palm Pré and Pixi devices.
myvoiceismypass 1y ago
I remember thinking it was awesome to be able to ssh from my palm treo on the go 20 years ago - not all the PalmOS (different from WebOS) apps were crap, especially for the time!

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

fredoralive 1y ago

3rd party apps couldn't do anything in the background until iOS 4, and it's always been a bit limited. I think he's wrong about Android, although AFAIK Palm had a nicer task switching UI at first.

mikepavone 1y ago
Yeah, Android had good support for multi-tasking from the start, though at least some early devices did not really have enough RAM for it to work well
onli 1y ago
It had apps as cards to easily switch between them, useful animations and a completely working gesture control. It was absolutely revolutionary and having to fall back to Android after that was a big step down, until Android incorporated everything from webOS a few years later. He is right in his analysis I think. The webos devices needed a price cut and time to build an app ecosystem, as evident by the hype around the fire sale and how many people really liked them then.
myvoiceismypass 1y ago
I thought proper Android task switching didn’t come until they released the first tablet version (Honeycomb, 2011). Interestingly enough this was after they hired away the webOS UX lead (Matias Duarte)
ewoodrich 1y ago
Yeah, I am pretty confident I was able to keep apps running in the background on my T-Mobile G1 and some old forum posts I found seem to confirm my memory. [1] Multitasking/keeping apps in background and copy/paste were the big differentiators I remember on the first Android phones compared to the iPhone. The app switcher UI for multitasking on Android didn't really exist yet though so WebOS was ahead there and I think that gave some people the illusion Android didn't support it at all. [1] https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/t-mobile-g1-android-phone-hands-on-review.227759/ https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/t-mobile-g1-android-pho...

dismalaf 1y ago

When WebOS was released, it had multitasking whereas iOS and Android froze background apps? Dunno, it's a pretty straightforward statement. WebOS was a legit Linux OS and had a lot of good features...

jerf 1y ago

Your question is unclear but I assume you are thinking that iOS has always supported "multitasking". This is not the case. iOS4 introduced it on the iPhone side, and this is how AnandTech [1] describes it: "To switch between apps on the iOS3 you hit the home button, which takes you home, and then select your next app. Your previous app, assuming it isn’t one of a very limited list of apps that have services that can run in the background (e.g. iPod, checking email), quits completely. Switching back to the previous app relaunches it." "In iOS 4 Apple promises app level multitasking without sacrificing performance or battery life. A single push of the home button still takes you home, but a double tap will bring up a list of recently used apps along the bottom of the screen. Scroll to find the one you want to switch to, select it and you’ve just “multitasked” in iOS 4." Even on the Palm Pilot, you could switch reasonably quickly between, say, the Memo Pad and the Calendar, and not lose context in either app because they restarted. The OS was structured around giving apps the ability to freeze their state easily and rapidly thaw it later. I believe Android had some stuff for that, but it wasn't as comprehensive as what Palm had, and I can't speak to iOS APIs at all. (In 2025, the "solution" to this is largely to just leave the apps running in the background like a desktop, now that cell phones are substantially more powerful today than the desktops of the WebOS era. Whether WebOS could have made a superior phone back in the day, we'd still be where we are today either way.) [1]: https://www.anandtech.com/show/3779/apples-ios-4-explored/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/3779/apples-ios-4-explored/2

kayodelycaon 1y ago
I think what’s confusing things is the underlying operating system is multitasking.
kccqzy 1y ago
Prior to true multitasking on iOS, Apple would tell you to tag view controllers for preservation so that when your app launches, the OS will restore the original view controllers, as if the app has been running the whole time. Old documentation here: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/featuredarticles/ViewControllerPGforiPhoneOS/PreservingandRestoringState.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/featuredarticles... (These days few apps bother to do this anymore. I switch away from an app in a minute and upon switching back I'm back at the app's home screen.)

potatolicious 1y ago

This is true - and WebOS was legitimately innovative here. At the time neither iOS nor Android could run more than one app at the same time. This was both an architectural matter and a UX matter. On iOS and Android at the time, all apps were full-screen. When you switched to another app, the previous app suspended execution entirely. The OS would keep the memory footprint of the app warm in RAM if possible, but back then RAM was in short enough supply that more often than not the memory state of the process was dumped to disk instead. There were lots of clever UX hacks to make this feel seamless - when an app was suspended it was also screenshotted, and the screenshot would be displayed to the user upon switching back, until the actual app could be restored and resume running. But the app executable was totally suspended during this time. Whereas on WebOS the UX was oriented around showing multiple "Cards"[1] at the same time, but each one represented a live running process that was able to interact to the user and render new UI. This was a pretty big deal at the time. Since then both iOS and Android gained a lot more capability and nuance around multitasking. [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/4508/hp-touchpad-review/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/4508/hp-touchpad-review/2

jldugger 1y ago
The Nokia N900, running Maemo, also supported multitasking in 2011. It was just toppled by a similarly dedicated team of executive fuckups.
- wmf 1y ago
  The N900 battery could run down in 30 minutes due to true multitasking (especially when using the true desktop browser).
- eloisant 1y ago
  To be honest there were a lot of mobile OSes at the time supporting multitasking, like Windows CE, because they were desktop OS (Linux for Maemo, Windows for CE) with little adaptation for mobile. That meant performances and battery life were not great. That's why those OS were mostly used by geeks and power users, and "regular" users were using feature phones that "just work". One of the strength of iOS and Android were to create a completely different userspace that what we had in desktop OS, more adapted to mobile. They combined the "just works" aspect of feature phones with the power of smartphones.

jldugger 1y ago

Early iOS would pause background apps. Limited multistasking was added in iOS 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_4#Multitasking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_4#Multitasking

strangattractor 1y ago

1. WebOS lives on (purchased from HP) or at least a version of it on LG TVs. 2. Matra: End users don't care about the OS. End users don't care the OS. (or most all the technical aspects Engineers value) End Users only care whether the product does something they want - make toast, listen to music, prevent stds etc. Jobs shipped products that solved actual problems - desktop publishing, listening to music, making a phone call. They solved other problems also but shipping a product that might one day solve a problem is not a product category.

nodamage 1y ago

I think the author of the article really misses the point here. While "true multitasking" might be a neat technical feature, it's not something that the end user really cares about or would base a buying decision on, especially if running multiple apps in the background at the same time came at the expense of battery life. Those early versions of iOS employed a lot of tricks to squeeze performance and battery life out of underpowered devices.