The recently announced iPad from Apple got me to thinking about user interfaces on mobile devices such as tablets and touch screen smartphones. Hands down the WebOS operating system that Palm has created for their new generation of devices (the Palm Pre and Pixie only so far) is heads and shoulders above anything else on the market today. It just works, and works well.
To recap, the UI of WebOS is "card" based in that multi-tasking apps appear in their own card when minimized from full-screen. While in this minimized card state the apps are still running, not just hidden in the background. When you want to switch between apps it's a matter of going to card view, swiping around to the open app you want to bring to the front and just tap it. Want to rearrange the order of cards? Just hold your finger on a card and move it. When you are done using an app you just swipe it up and off the screen. It's that easy.
Further, WebOS brings two things that I have come to rely on almost daily. The first is Synergy which brings in all your contact information from various sources (Gmail contact, Yahoo! contacts, Facebook contact information for your friends, and more) and unifies them under one easy to use contact management solution. This is where the other thing I use all the time comes into play, Universal Search. When you start typing on the keyboard Universal Search starts bringing up information from your device as well as options to search Google, Wikipedia, or Twitter for outside information. For instance, if you start typing "Blue" WebOS will list any application or contacts on your phone that have "Blue" as part of its name (Bluetooth app for instance) as well as buttons to tap for an outside search. I use Universal Search if I'm looking for a business phone number which is very handy considering it's also integrated with the built in A-GPS features of the device which means if I tap the Google option I get the phone numbers for the closest locations as well as mapping options. If I'm looking for a contact I can tap the name of the person and am presented with options to call (mobile, home, work, etc), SMS or MMS, email, and instant messaging options. Other platforms are starting to do this but Palm did it right first.
Now that the iPad is announced I'm already planning to buy one, it's just a matter of waiting a couple of months and deciding which options I want (3g or no 3g, 16GB or 32GB).
One thing would make me stop in my tracks and possibly reconsider this and that would be a tablet from Palm running WebOS. The beauty of a WebOS running tablet would me the minimum programming changes needed to run on a larger touch screen. Being based on web programming standards there would be no "upscaling" required as on the iPad and the interface itself is just begging for a larger screened device.
I have to wonder if somewhere in Sunnyvale at Palm HQ if someone, somewhere isn't already working on such a device. It's a no-brainer!
Saturday, September 3, 2011 at 9:33AM 
Yesterday MG Siegler of Tech Crunch posted a hands on account of the upcoming 7 inch tablet computer coming from Amazon later this year and it provides an interesting insight into how any company can compete with the iPad from Apple. It's becoming obvious that Android still has a ways to go before it can seriously hope to eat into the iPad dominance that Apple has established. Whether it is fragmentation from the various manufacturers customizing their offerings or shortfalls in the end user experience no one has yet come up with a formula that shouts out "iPad Killer". HP formally threw in the towel a few weeks ago and now there are indications that the RIM Playbook may be heading down a similar path. What will it take to dethrone the iPad and does Amazon have the secret sauce to pull it off?
