back

by rbanffy·17y ago·view on hn ↗
"And if webOS is basically web-based, that means that all of Palm's apps will be available on the iPhone, but none of the iPhone's apps will be available on the Palm Pre"

You are counting on webOS being nothing more than a WebKit browser. I am sure that's not the case.

I am also sure the iPhone is not the primary target the Pre is aimed at. There is a host of Windows Mobile, RIM and Symbian slightlycleverphones (it takes more than a qwerty keyboard to be a smartphone) that are pretty much in Palm's crosshairs.

And, sorry to say, you sound like an Apple fanboy ;-) I know. I sound like one very frequently.

2 comments
"You are counting on webOS being nothing more than a WebKit browser. I am sure that's not the case."

Even if it's not, the fact remains that apps written in HTML+CSS+javascript (what's more, HTML+CSS+JS tweaked to run on WebKit) will be trivial to port to the iPhone -- not just because the iPhone has a fantastic webkit browser, but because the apps themselves will be trivial.

The Pre, at best, will be a phone of widgets (I like your "slightly clever phone" moniker). I've made my share of widgets, and I know they can be both fun and useful. But after three months of game development on the iPhone, I would hang myself if I didn't have Cocoa. The Pre is going to see twenty versions of Lights Out, but you'll never see a Cro Mag or a Crayon Physics.

When people go on about the iPhone being a "computer in your pocket" they're talking about Cocoa its OS X underpinnings. Mojo and WebOS, at best, put safari in your pocket, and the iPhone already does that for cheaper.

Maybe you're right, and the Palm doesn't have the iPhone in its crosshairs. But I'm not sure how that helps them.

Unless you have hooks for deeper functionality inside the JavaScript interpreter used to run the application logic. And I somewhat doubt Palm will refrain to release a full SDK for the native OS.
How many hooks do you really need to get a developer up-and-running? File system access? Ability to play sounds?

AIR has a very limited set of extra javascript commands, but it is enough to give the developer the feeling they are definitely delivering a client-side app.

"Unless you have hooks for deeper functionality"

Functionality like what? Will it let you import physics libraries written in C? Give you access to OpenGL in javascript? What about networking stacks? What if I need OpenSSL? At a certain point you end up reinventing an awful lot of wheels even if the hooks are all there.

I think the mini-revolution Palm's pulled off isn't being understood. They've implemented a full SDK in HTML/CSS/JS. Unlike the helpless widgets of the apple-side, Palm's presenting their entire API as a set of extensions to a pretty forward-looking HTML stack.

From what I've seen:

- Graphics: HTML5 canvas. No word yet on if it's got the 3D support that's been planned for that canvas. But 2D access for graphics is pretty certain.

- Other than that, HTML5 local storage for your app data. They even have javascript access to old palm .pdb files.

- Javascript access to the contacts, calendar, phone, etc. APIs

- The app is stored locally, and can run without network access.

- As for networking/ssl... it's a web app written in HTML/AJAX, think about it :-)

Wonderful! I always dreamed of programming phones in HTML/CSS/JS. This is a great step forward from C/C++/ObjC. Joking, of course... but this seems to me the way for trivial apps, given the constraint in a phone-sized OS. I hope to be wrong. Palm has been my first (useful) PDA...
While it'd be way more difficult to write the next office clone in this stack, the vast majority of apps we see on mobile devices are frontends to web data, calculators, or databases of some sort. In those cases, I think these APIs might be just about perfect.

Perhaps they'll provide ways to extend out the javascript APIs (e.g. native code modules) later.

The vast majority of apps we saw on mobile devices, you mean. Then the iPhone and Android-based phones came along. If simple frontends are what the Pre plans to focus on, then Palm is still fighting the last war.
Um, I hate to break it to you, but none of that is Palm-specific. In fact, it's all available on the iPhone already. It all comes out of WebKit, which is mostly developed by Apple. Going back further, the canvas was developed by Apple for Dashboard before it was ever standardized.

I agree that it's neat--in fact, I expected that in the way of an iPhone SDK long before the native one existed (and given the number of ex-Apple employees on the team maybe that's where the idea came from)--but I wouldn't call it a mini-revolution. It's just an SDK built on an existing open source platform.

what it's gonna come down to is the price of the phone. if the Pre can not compete in terms of price, it will not fair well. this is the same thing that happened to the ipod. there were a lot of competitors, who essentially had a very similar product, but just could not compete in terms of price. also, the fact that iphone has a running start in the app development market, just makes it more unlikely for the pre to complete effectively. also, from what i hear inside palm, they are still trying to make webOS "smoother".

by the time Pre comes to the market in a few months, apple will have the iphone 2.0 to announce. i'm just really glad, we are finally seeing some competition in this market space. this will drive the service providers to compete for my data plan purchase.

I bet RIM is a tasty target for the Pre.

The inductive charger/stand accessory is really nice, along with the act-like-a-phone and automatic speakerphone functions, this could easily get much love from the business world.

For those who haven't seen it, the video with said functions is: http://www.kyte.tv/ch/147499-fast-company-live/308668-mobile...