In Response To: gdgt roundtable – Palm Pre (gdgt is currently hiding their permalinks so… sorry)

Some things to consider…

With the G1 on T-Mobile and the Pre on Sprint, I think both carriers now have something comparable to what AT&T offers its subscribers with the iPhone. Verizon has the Blackberry Storm too, but I’m not really going to talk about Blackberry accept for saying that they had better step it up.

The problem with Sprint is its underdog status… But more importantly, many people are locked into their carriers because of coverage issues Etc.  When I lived in NYC, Sprint was awesome.  Here in the boonies outside of Sebastopol, CA, AT&T is the only choice for reliable service.

The G1 runs Android, a Linux distro that Google is promoting.  The Palm Pre runs WebOS, a Linux Distro thaty Palm is promoting.  The iPhone runs some sort of bastard version of OSX which is a version of Unix (a proprietary version of Linux basically).

One of the main attractions of the iPhone is the availability of add-on apps.

I wonder which systems(s) will prevail once all of these devices are available on all carriers.  

The best apps will probably be available on all three systems with development for the Linux-based ones probably being easier and cheaper than for than Apple OS, since it’s proprietary.

Another thing that doesn’t seem to be addressed by the good folks at gdgt or anywhere else:

Unlike other mobile OS’s or basically anything we’ve ever seen before in mainstream computing, Linux itself is an Open-Source project. Linux distros are community-driven.  They are inherently democratic in their evolution.  For this reason, I don’t think Android and WebOS are competitors. I think they are both contributions to Linux that we should thank Palm and Google for.  And there’s no reason in my opinion that Android can’t look like WebOS and vice versa.  Perhaps the best of Android and the best of WebOS will come together in the coming years.

Also, I have to say that I don’t believe there’s any sustainable reason for UI design standards to be different from system to system or from OS to Web.  At the end of day, WebOS is one of the smartest things ever, given that it’s based on HTML, CSS and Javascript.  Add Flash and Silverlight (or whatever) and there’s very little you can’t do, while your development efforts scale across OS’s… I think this kind of change is inevitable as we move toward a cloud computing world.  I’m glad to see someone stepping up to make it happen.  Good job, Palm.