dchoung

Palm's latest conference call was somewhat dismal. Sales are down, inventory is up, and nobody at 950 w. Maude is too ecstatic about the current situation. Hell, it even prompted Engadget to post a second 'intervention' with Palm. God bless those guys, they give so much of a damn it might even be a bit undeserving that a corporation should get such fans. But that's all beside the point, the main point is, why aren't more people 'getting' the benefits of webOS? Begging the question, 'What does webOS have that the others don't?'

Multitasking and the Card Concept

Palm's ideas of multitasking are pretty innovative for the mobile space. A lot of fans will point to multitasking itself as a selling point, but ultimately it's not just that, it's the card concept that goes hand-in-hand with it. It's simple enough, you open an app, then another, then you go back and forth between apps by sliding left and right, how cool is that? To close an app just slide it upward, simple enough isn't it? What does this all mean to the customer? You can do 3 or 4 things at the same time!

Developer Ease

For developers Palm seems to have bent over backwards in offering the easiest dev environment in mobile OS' to date. It's based off of HTML, CSS, and Javascript of all things. How can devs not want to run to this platform, even just to try it and pump out a quick XML parsing app of their favorite blog or news source. Release it for $.99 and who's going to pass it up?

There's also Ares, Palm's online GUI dev environment. When it was announced I was thinking, 'They really didn't have to do that', but it's very telling how much they're trying to encourage developers, or prospective developers to at least give webOS a look. These guys want developers, bad, and you can tell they're willing to go the extra mile to get as many as they can.

Sprint

The network itself. Sorry nay sayers, it actually doesn't suck! Their data plans offer the most bang for the buck, and their 3G network delivers. Being on a GSM network for most of my time as a cell phone user I was somewhat hesitant at first, but honestly the differences won't matter (Unless you're an international traveller).

So then, the combination of cards-based multitasking, developer ease, and the sprint network offer one hell of a package for anyone looking to get a smartphone. So why don't they 'get' it?