I believe the biggest thing holding WebOS back now is the hardware.  The hardware is limited to phones right now, is a year and a half old and is badly in need of a refresh.  Seeing as how the iPad is coming out this weekend, I have naturally been thinking about the tablet form factor in general.  I’m not a big fan of the iPad (obviously), but I believe the form factor has alot going for it and for the right features and price I would be all over it.

WebOS excels at it’s purpose, being a finger-friendly, multi-touch, multitasking operating system.  This would translate perfectly over to a tablet form factor.  Taking the iPad’s form factor, which is almost without flaw, Palm could make the software match the hardware for beauty and usability.  Enable a ‘touch bar’ around the entire border of the display.  Allow developers to enable or disable portions of the touch bar to enable different hand positions on the device.  Just like on the Palm Pre, having a gesture area that is not on the screen can be very useful and add valuable real estate to the device.

Also, and this is a big one, add a camera!  It appears that even Apple had a camera in the iPad but was removed before it’s debut for some unknown reason.  Adding a front-facing camera enables native Skype calling, picture/video capture and a new interactive level to games. This ran a close second to being the biggest reason why I don’t want to get an iPad(yet).

Update WebOS to be able to operate like Google’s Chrome OS by saving all your documents to the web.  If I could prop the tablet up and sync a keyboard to the device and work on any documents that I need without the hassle of dealing with copying them manually to another device, that could solve a huge hassle when you’re sitting on the couch decide to type a quick something up and sharing it with others.

Add USB ports (or even microUSB)!  Adding two little ports would expand the usability exponentially.  The ability to directly connect millions of peripherals to the tablet directly would greatly expand the capabilities of the device without the need to buy any special adapters or new accessories.

Till Next Time

I’m very happy with my Pre and only have a few small quibbles with it.  Occasionally the phone slows down, I’m assuming due to background apps, but I’m not sure.  I would like the app loading to be a little faster, for simple apps like the calculator it should be lightning quick to load.  I would also have liked a louder speaker on the phone when either using it as a speakerphone or playing music over the speaker, it’s just not quite powerful enough.

Now onto what I would love to find in the next Palm phone.

To really show that Palm is back, they need to show that they have both ends of the spectrum covered.  They wowed everyone last year with the introduction of the WebOS platform and now they need to knock everyone’s socks off with some new high-end hardware.  They need to be first (or at most, second) to market with a 4G handset.  It appears that the HTC Supersonic will be first with an integrated 4G modem, but if Palm comes out with a 4G radio I believe that will be the biggest sign that Palm is truly coming back.

Secondly, they need to up the screen specs.  Palm needs to increase the size to at least 3.7″, up the resolution to at least 800 x 480 and go AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic LED).  Since the Pre has the gesture area below the screen, it allows them to run a slightly smaller screen but new generation device screens are more than 20% larger and come with many more pixels.  OLED would help offset the larger display’s power consumption, but more importantly, it would at least match the screen quality of the current top-end phones available today.

Third, take a page from Google’s playbook and add voice-to-text for any text fields.  This is a fantastic evolution of speech recognition.  There have been countless times that I would have found that very convenient to be able to speak what I need typed.  In addition to this they need to get an on-screen keyboard; many times I have need to type something short and quick into my phone and I wanted to do it one-handed but that is not very feasible with the slide-out, physical keyboard.

While I don’t expect, yet still hope, that all of these changes are in store for the next Palm phone, I hope that they will soon start releasing information on the next device – my year is almost up and I need a new phone.  I believe they need to continue pushing the envelope if they want to stay relevant and carve out a niche for their future success.

Till Next Time

I’m glad the original Moses tablet was more revolutionary, cause this was just a disappointment.  I had been casually following the iPad rumors and was interested in what Steve Jobs was going to announce today.

Jobs’ track record over the years has been one of the best in the consumer electronics world.  You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who’s had a larger influence on the CE world than he has.  From all the rumors that have been floating around, this tablet was supposed to be IT.  The pinnacle of Jobs’ design life.  From a hardware point of view a case can be made for that claim.  But the software side of the iPad is what kills it.

Jobs has essentially blown up the iPhone OS and enlarged the size of the screen.  There doesn’t appear to be any major changes in how the OS works,  which is the downfall of the iPad.  What works for a 3.5″ screen does not necessarily translate to the same experience for a 9.7″ screen.  The biggest drawback to Jobs’ decisions on the iPad’s OS is the lack of multitasking.

A reasonable case can be made that a user doesn’t need to be able to multitask on a phone, but on a tablet there is no excuse to exclude this ability.  From everything I’ve read the iPad is extremely fast and responsive and I believe most people would gladly give up a slight boost in speed by allowing multiple applications to run simultaneously.  I use a Palm Pre and one of the main reasons I use that phone is for it’s multitasking abilities.  I have found the multitasking to be extremely convenient and time-saving by being able to have, for instance, Google Maps running alongside my email program or browser.

I’ll list a couple cons & pros of the iPad and then go into a little more depth.

Pros-

• OLED Display
• Hardware Design
• Battery Life – compared to notebooks

Cons-

• Battery Life – compared to Kindle
• Multitasking
• Camera
• Wireless Data
• USB Ports

On the plus side, the iPad is a beautiful device.  Jonathan Ive, Apple’s design guru, came through in flying colors with the hardware.  The choice, although not a hard one, to go with an OLED display was smart.  OLED is the current leader for small, affordable displays.  And the battery life, my jaw dropped when Jobs announced that it had 30 days standby time and 10 hours of video use on a charge.  Compared to notebooks this is exceptional in a device this slim.

On the negatives I won’t bother with multitasking again, but the choice to not include a camera is stupefying to me.  I cannot see any logic to not include a camera of some sort besides maintaining niches for each of Apple’s products.  The lack of USB ports I believe was based on the decision of form over function.  Apple would rather have a beautiful device even if it means losing some important functionality.  I wish Apple would have included at least one USB port just so that I could hook up my Clear USB modem and surf the web, that would be a mobile internet experience to fit the Apple ecosystem.

And battery life, yes I know it was on the pro list, but if you compare the iPad to the Kindle, it doesn’t compare.  Jobs seemed to try to position this device as a competitor to the Kindle with many added features, but one of the killer features of the Kindle, or any E-Ink display, is the outstanding battery life.  Most people could easily go a month without needing to charge their Kindle, not so with the iPad.

One major problem I see with the iPad is not inherent in the design or software, it’s in the choice that Jobs made.  His choice to use AT&T as the 3G wireless data provider.  From numerous studies across the US, AT&T is viewed as the largest deterrent for people who are considering buying the iPhone.  AT&T has notoriously bad 3G coverage.  Of the three major wireless carriers in the US, they have by far the worst 3G coverage.  It’s so bad they’ve  sued other companies for advertising their own horrible 3G coverage.

I believe the overriding reason Steve Jobs chose to stick with AT&T is because of a huge wad of cash they shoved in Apple’s pocket.  While that in itself is not such a dastardly thing, what is shocking is that Jobs always harps on user experience being king.  That’s why he doesn’t allow multitasking on the iPhone, that’s why Apple has a strict application approval process for the App Store, that’s why all Macbooks now have a unibodies with non-removable batteries.  It’s all in the endless goal of improving the user experience.  But he chooses to stick with AT&T when they are the largest cause for complaints on the iPhone?  I wonder how much his ideals cost him?  Maybe it’s time he does retire if his jesus-juice is running so low he has to compromise his ideals.

I hope that the disappointment that is being expressed about the iPad will cause Steve Jobs to reconsider a few of his design choices and release an updated design that includes multitasking, camera, USB port and different wireless data provider.  With those four changes I believe the iPad would receive much higher reviews and much higher sales numbers.

Disclaimer: I am a proud user of a Palm Pre on Sprint, I own a first gen iPod Touch, I have Clear WiMax Internet, I used to be an AT&T customer before I got my first smartphone.

Till Next Time

So, life.

Recently have split with my girlfriend of a few months.  Started my third job out of college in the span of 14 months.  Have started doing some web projects for other people, a little money on the side never hurt.  Am getting stoked about the new Palm Pre.  Am living in Decatur, GA, in a 3/1.5 house by myself, waiting for my fantastic sister-in-law to find someone to rent the house so I can move out.  

Current loves:

my car:  2006 VW Golf GLS

my job: web developer 

hometown: atlanta

Current non-loves:

my living situation: no cool roommate(s)

computing power:  need a new desktop bbbaaaadddd

friends:  they live too far away

So today I bought my first new computer in ~4 years.  A Dell Mini 9.  I saw on engadget that Dell was having a $199 sale on them and that hit my impulse buy price.  I added a integrated webcam and messenger bag for it and off my order went.  It sucks that the estimated ship date is St. Paddy’s day, but oh well, at least I got a great deal on my lappie.  In a few months I plan on completely overhauling my desktop computer.  It’s currently running something like single core 2.4 GHz, 512MB RAM, 32MB Video Card, all from ~4 years ago.  I plan upping the specs to Core i7 920 (2.66GHz quad core), 4-6GB RAM, 512MB Video card.  This should definitely improve my computing experience at home.  I’m also planning on installing the windows 7 beta.  I had installed it on my workhorse laptop, but with it being 4 years old, I don’t think 7 really agreed with it cause it started crashing more than it was running.  But anyway, onwards and upwards!

I am really looking forward to the new Palm Pre.  Before it was announced, I felt that Palm was starting it’s death rattle.  They hadn’t put anything exciting out in a few years and was having internal struggles which is indicative of a dying company.  But Palm surprised the entire tech community at CES 2009 when they introduced the Pre and webOS.  No one saw this coming, there weren’t any leaks or buzz surrounding Palm before their keynote.  After the keynote, Palm was all anybody could talk about.  As soon as I heard that there was going to be a development camp in Atlanta, I signed up for it and voluteered.  I figured it was time to get into the tech community in Atlanta and hopefully meet some new people down here.  There is not a date set for preDevCamp yet, but I’m hearing that it will be about a week after the Pre actually launches.

Last night I watched the hour long webcast that Palm’s Software CTO Mitch Allen put on.  He only provided general information about the Pre and webOS, but it was encouraging to see how simple it will be to create an app on the Pre.  I need to start brushing up/learning javascript now.  :-)

So I’m about out of info for this first post in a while.  Be back more often from now on.

Till Next Time