Is Palm’s webOS already a lost cause?
We all know the Palm Pre launch was a big success! I myself picked up the Pre on day one, along w/ a 2-year Sprint contract (weeping…). Merely less than 3 months after its launch, Palm webOS seems to have lost its momentum. Here I will use my own personal experience to write some of my thoughts on webOS in general, and why there’s an uphill battle for Palm to take on going forward.
Underneath webOS lies the embedded linux, much like Android, Nokia Maemo, etc. It’s reliable and proven in the smartphone OS market. On a higher level, Mojo SDK makes up all the high level APIs and frameworks. It mainly uses JavaScript to bridge the low level events/callbacks and high level API, such as GPS coordinates information, accelerometer readings, camera controls, etc. This approach is somewhat like those JavaScript frameworks, such as PhoneGap, http://sourceforge.net/projects/quickconnect/, and Rhodes, where they try to use the common framework built in JavaScript, and uses JavaScript to call underlying low level APIs in the devices, such as Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, etc. This architecture is very cool, but also brings down the performance, comparing to native SDK APIs found in iPhone and Android. For example, the Pre accelerometer is only at 4Hz (4 sample readings per second), comparing to about 100Hz in iPhone. This might be enough for casual usage, but certainly not enough for some serious gaming controls.
By the way, Palm opened Game Developer Cafe to try to lure some game developer on webOS. But without Open GL ES support on the API level (Pre’s hardware is comparable to iPhone, and is capable of running Open GL ES), it’s hard to find serious game developers who want to develop for webOS. You might say you can use canvas in webkit and build game on top of that. Well, canvas performance is still not up to the task, and plus, the current webOS webkit’s implementation of the canvas is not complete. Many essential features are missing, such as reading pixel data.
Mojo and webOS are based on HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. They are all web standards. That’s where the “web” in the webOS name comes from, right? However, I found this below sentiment troubling. It’s an email from Palm’s product manager:
- Have an appealing design and user interface aligned with Palm UI guidelines and optimized for webOS (i.e., not a “browser” app)
Not a browser app? Are you kidding me? Are you turning your back against your foundation? Apple can rightfully deploy such bind-your-UI-to-my-HIG ‘cuz it’s an Apple product. You Palm is NOT Apple, yet. This is not a way to distinguish yourself. What you should do is to attract as many web developers to your webOS platform as possible. Not creating yet another new system for them to learn. Honestly, there are plenty of guys who can create better UI widgets/elements than the built-in Mojo widgets/elements. Please, Palm, stay to your core value. webOS apps ARE browser apps.
I also heard Palm’s working on virtual on screen keyboard recently. It’s cool and all. But before you doing that, take a look at this article: Virtual Keyboards on iPhone and Android. Please remember, no matter what you do, a virtual keyboard on a 3.1″ screen is never going to match the virtual keyboard on a 3.5″ screen. You just can’t grow the physical screen size.
As to the Mojo framework, my biggest disappointment is the lack of built-in Map API. In order to use Map embedded in your own application, with your custom marker icons and all, you will need to include external AJAX Map APIs, such as Google Map API v2/v3. These APIs work well, but they are not optimized for mobile devices. A Map API is a must for modern mobile OS. Though Apple only recently in their iPhone SDK 3.0 have they included the much needed Map Kit framework. But it works beautifully!
My biggest concern for webOS, however, is its openness of app source codes. Anyone can download the public SDK, enable developer mode on their Pre by entering the classic magic Nintendo cheat code, hookup the Pre with the USB cable, and bang, you have root access on your Pre. There, you can find virtually everything, including source codes for ALL the apps pre-installed and downloaded. Back a few years ago, when most websites were still running on static HTML, I used teleport program to download every single link/page on a given site. It’s messy but it gets the job done. Nowadays, with all these dynamic page scripting and web 2.0 stuff, it’s virtually impossible to get the complete html/css/js codes from any website. With palm webOS, it’s just a click away. Download the app, and there you go, the WHOLE app source codes! In there, you might as well find API Keys used by developers, possibly login information if not coded carefully. I was shocked that Palm didn’t even bother to put in some handy JavaScript compressor and confiscator, such as JSLint and Stunnix JavaScript Obfuscator and Encoder.
This was my big concern before webOS/Pre launch. As a developer, unless my project is open source, I take very careful steps to protect my codes, codes that I write with sweat and blood. Now on webOS, anyone with minimal efforts, can see everything I code up there. This is very discomforting, and Palm MUST address this issue or many developers will unlikely to jump to the webOS bandwagon.
The launch of iPhone 3Gs back in July killed some of webOS/Pre’s momentum. Even though Apple added not many cool features comparing to iPhone 3G. But with a large existing user base and die-hard apple fans everywhere, iPhone 3Gs has been selling extremely well, even in Japan! Meanwhile, Android is on route to be on a bunch of handsets by end of this year. Samsung InstinctQ and HTC Hero on Sprint around October, Motorola Sholes on Verizon, HTC Click on AT&T, G2 myTouch and Motorola Morrison on T-mobile. If Palm cannot address the source code protection issues, if Palm does not launch their second webOS phone (EOS?) by October, we have plenty of reasons to believe the battle against Apple has long been lost. If webOS’s licensing model is not as open and/or flexible as Android so that other handset manufacturers can put it on their own handsets, webOS could very well become a niche mobile OS, a mobile OS we us geeks are fond of hacking and tweaking, but will never reach the status of mainstream modern mobile OS.
Please Palm, do whatever it takes to address these serious issues! I wish Palm webOS best luck, however, the time is not on their side…