The lost secrets of Palm webOS (2014)
19 comments
·April 26, 2025FlyingSnake
I bought an HP Touchpad in the $99 fire sale and I still have it. The UX was so far ahead of its time that I was blown away by it. It’s still chugging along without hiccups. I miss the days of such lovely and unique devices.
supportengineer
I loved my Handspring Visor and PalmOS Treo phones - they had every smartphone feature, back in 2004.
transpute
A decade later, LG's version of webOS continues to ship on TVs, based on OpenEmbedded/Yocto, https://www.webosose.org
classichasclass
My Prē 2 and Veer are still going strong, and I still really love the Veer's size.
damnitbuilds
They rather ridiculously discuss an OS as if all that mattered was the UI.
jeroenhd
It's discussing and product, and that's all the customer actually cares about. When tech news outlets discuss Google Android versus MIUI versus OneUI versus iOS versus iPadOS, they don't care about the way the kernel implements multithreading or what interrupt mechanisms the USB drivers use.
Given its similarity, webOS and Android could be considered the same OS if you're looking at it from an OS designer point of view, but that's meaningless to the readers of this article.
nottorp
It matters a lot, it's one of the reasons we're still waiting for the year of Linux on the desktop?
And on small screen devices with the sole input a fat finger it matters even more if you ask me.
damnitbuilds
UI is a layer on top of the OS.
It is not the OS.
pjmlp
Only on the UNIX world.
On the desktop world, the UI is a component of the OS, and is responsible of the whole OS experience.
Hence why the successful OSes that happen to have UNIX internals, those internals are not exposed to the users, and are not optional for most development scenarios.
Hence why GNU/Linux on the desktop failed, while Linux kernel on the mobile and TVs with prescribed user and developer experience has succeed.
marklubi
It's too bad that nobody's figured out notifications as great as the Pre had
mosdl
The entire experience (other than the peed issues you sometimes got) was so much better, but it did also much less(which is not a negative thing)
michalpleban
I still miss my HP Pre3, it was a great phone for that time...
dredmorbius
Likewise for the Centro.
krackers
You can sort of see some of the motifs in the original material design.
AStonesThrow
The best thing about Palm Prē [for non owners] was their Tamara Hope spokeslady/ad campaign by Modernista!
null
https://archive.is/RPoAn