Parting questions for PalmHP
To be clear, I LIKE webOS and want it to succeed. :/
Steven Frank, 2011 July 1
One of my first memories of Palm’s new “New Palm” thing was when they were in the papers every month for making their first webOS device pretend to be an iPod. For USB syncing purposes. Clever way to get some free advertising from MacRumors, but you know what? I hate what iTunes has become and loved being able to just drag and drop MP3 files onto my Palm Pre 2.
Anyone wanna buy a Palm Pre 2?
I tried to love it, just like how for years I’d been trying to love the heavy, bulky reel mower I also bought online. It’s good for the ecosystem, it’s got some very very nice qualities designed into it…
I’ve decided I don’t like either the lawnmower or the smartphone. And while I don’t need perfect landscaping in an efficient amount of time or energy, with greater responsibility at work comes greater need to join the same technological century as the rest of the world. Even though I’ve owned a Palm Pre 2 since last December, it’s never felt okay nor have I had room for it on my person. Thus it was not until this week that I became a cellphone person.
More honestly: I am now an iPhone people. It seems like such a silly insignificant change to go from having an iPod touch always in my pocket to an iPhone always in my pocket, but for me it is a defeat.
When something fails I wanna know why. So here are some poignant, probing questions that will magically make Palm/HP awesome again:Good questions are hard please read the following rants instead:
Buying an iPhone was a defeat because now i’mStuck with iCloud instead of a Synergy plugin that could talk to data on a server I control. Now i’mStuck with iStore monopolies instead of your fun official instructions for owning the device I bought. Now i’mStuck with the same iPhone that everyone else and their soccer mothers all sport like a luxury item because a truly useful phone still is — and it’s cheaper than yours!
But the saddest thing about it all is that this sticks me with an even better web browser — w00t! — than I got on a platform called webOS. So even while Apple keeps shoving native adults into a sandbox, they’ve also been pushing web technologies up towards where I suspect native vs. web will meet: the same amount of power, but on the latter: the freedom to innovate that only a real platform can provide.
The web is the only tool developers have left. I feel defeated because it’s not thriving as or even on anyone else’s operating system and I don’t know what that means.