Palm Pre

Before I begin, I spent some time recently checking out the new mod for the original Deus Ex named 'the nameless mod'-google it-. Full seven years in the making with complete voice-overs and over 30 hours of playtime, I've seen commercial games released this year that's not as good as this. If you are interested in the Deus Ex franchise at all (and no, for the last time you're not supposed to play it like unreal! The game's not FPS) you should really check it out. The whole file clocks in at about one gigabyte, so I suggest you use the torrent available on the official site. This mod's so amazing I think I might even do a full review once I find the time to finish the darned thing... Which will be something of a challenge if it weren't for the fact that I've been dragging my thinkpad everywhere with me... Some of the cool things in the game so far include awesome voice acting (by the mod community members no less, some of them sound better than so-called professionals in some other commercial games), built in IRC client within the computers in game levels, the cool computer hacking minigame of sorts at the elevator out of DXI, and whole host of other things I can't write here since this isn't a gaming post :) Granted, I haven't had this much fun in playing a computer game in long time.
 
So, Palm Pre. As is usual with me I'm down with any interesting new gadget that comes along. I and the other millions who are following the industry trends really expected Palm to die out sometime in the year 2004, and they probably will if this new Pre device doesn't work out. I've been something of an off-and-on palm user for a while now. While I've never used their Treo line of smartphones I certainly went through some of their PDAs, using them as small digital note-takers and e-readers using the plucker utility. The old palm certainly had (have?) a loyal userbase. Some of the applications on the classic palm OS are of such utility and imagination that I still can't find the equivalent app on any other platform. The old Palm Tungsten that I used to carry around doubled as a programming environment of sorts as well, capable of interpreting the scheme/lisp and brain#uck language through add-on applications developed by users. I'd say the wealth of amount and variety of applications available for Palm predates that of Apple by a large margin, the only (but significant) innovation on part of Apple being introduction of app store and over the air delivery of chosen applications.
 
While I do admire what Palm had done, I was significantly disappointed with the Palm corporate's steady decline into obscurity mostly due to lack of innovation, and I moved on after the whole Foleo fiasco. Well, the history is going the way of spiral this time, and people are holding their breath to see if the once-mighty Palm can get its act together this time with introduction of a new handset and new (and improved, though not compatible) operating system.
 
I've had the pleasure of seeing one of the handsets up close by the virtue of mooching of one of my friends. And I must say, the design and general build quality of the device is gorgeous. It's very zen-like, looking like one of those small-ish, round stones you can see in Buddhist ponds in Japan and elsewhere. It's both cute and classy at the same time, and the device as a whole feels solid in my hands, which was surprising given my bad experiences with sliders before. I actually prefer this design over the standard iPhone design that seem to revolve around slab of glass/aluminum mantra (while I love their operating system I'm not too hot with their design, especially the back that feels a little cheap for some reason). The keyboard isn't as comfortable to type on as my blackberry (I'm writing this one on my blackberry) given the small-ish form factor, but then it's something you can get used to. I've read reports of people getting decent wordcount on those keyboards only after hours of use, decent in this case meaning about ~30 wpm, which is better than what some people get with full sized keyboards on desktops (I'm talking about people who aren't technically oriented of course). And no. Please don't compare wpm on handheld device keyboard to how much you can do in front of your 3+ years old desktops, unless the said desktops fit snugly in your pocket and is capable of ubiquitous internet connection.
 
Of course, in this day age the physical shell of a device don't count for much on it's own. We're all about operating systems here. Without a good operating system the smartphones on the market would be glorified texting devices without much real world utility. A good smartphone operating system would be composed of two things.
 
1:Good interface so users can get things done without straining their eyes/fingers or flipping through ten pull up menus to get anything done.
2:The guts of the operating system itself, how well it's organized and how easy it is to program new apps for the operating system. They both go hand-in-hand with each other, as it turns out.
 
I'll give Palm pre a huge thumbs up for the category one. I loved their operating system interface. Sure, there were a few kinks to be ironed out later like the not-so-universal universal search and the delay when starting applications but they are both things that can be improved with future patch. The touch based gestures felt natural to me, and on the whole the experience felt pleasurable to both my hands and my eyes.
 
I'm not sure what to say about the second category though. The Palm Pre just came out so there aren't a whole lot of applications for use. I don't think there's even a dedicated twitter client for the Pre yet, though people will be quick to remedy that :)
The extensibility of the operating system (webOS) at the moment remains to be seen. From what I hear the webOS is designed to be heavily dependent on the web-based programming languages and interfaces, using CSS to construct the basic interface for the apps and etc. Will such an approach be enough for people to develop emulators and lisp compilers for the device? Average users might not be interested in such applications, but those types of obscure applications usually do better to push the capability of the hardware and software better than any twitter client or pull my finger apps. Granted I'll be keeping a close eye on how this thing works out.
 
The web browsing experience on this device is on par with that of iPhone. And throughout my brief time with the device I was under constant impression that I could see more in the same page compared to iPhones browser, despite the smaller screen. Triumph of interface design? I didn't have enough time to uncover the specific reason for that. With the whole multitasking capabilities of the operating system itself I can see this becoming a very useful research aid for our pubmed browsing medschool friends.
 
One thing I'm noticing with the newer generation of mobile operating systems is how they seem to ship with built in web browsers that might or might not follow the web standards. This will definitely work to kill the market for third party web browser manufacturers like the Opera, unless they can get their act together and find some sort of solution.
 
The mobile operating system market is about to heat up even more (hopefully) with the introduction of the webOS into the marketplace. And unlike how it turned out with the desktop operating systems market, I don't think any single flavor of operating system will gain a decisive and nigh-permanent control of the market like MS does with their 90~% hold on the desktop OS world...
 
Am I the only one beginning to see some need for interoperability within the mobile operating systems market?
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