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Is Apple Copying Palm's WebOS? (salon.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the almost-forgotten dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Salon: Released in 2009 by Palm -- the same company that popularized the PDA in the 1990s -- WebOS pioneered a number of innovations, including multiple synchronized calendars, unified social media and contact management, curved displays, wireless charging, integrated text and Web messaging, and unintrusive notifications [that have all been copied by the mobile operating systems that defeated it on the marketplace]. The operating system, built on top of a Linux kernel, was also legendary for how easily it could be upgraded by users with programming skills. WebOS was also special in that it used native internet technologies like JavaScript for local applications. That was a huge part of why it was able to do so much integration with Web services, something its competitors at the time simply couldn't match.

Apple's upcoming iOS 11 once again demonstrates how far ahead of its time WebOS really was. The yet-to-be-released Apple mobile system has essentially copied the WebOS model for switching apps by having the user swipe upward from the bottom to reveal several "cards" that represent background applications. While Apple's decision to remove its massively overworked Home button is an improvement, it is still an inferior way of switching apps, compared to what you could do on WebOS eight years ago.

12 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Apple & Amiga by Zobeid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Same old story. Am I the only one who noticed how long it took for Macintosh to support multiple full-screen programs and easy switching between them, which Amiga had already done starting in 1985?

    1. Re:Apple & Amiga by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Informative

      This is a non-story. iOS has supported switching between background apps via cards for several years already, and supported it via a slightly different interface prior to that. I think it's been around since iOS 4 in some form or fashion.

      The only thing that's different now is that they once again tweaked the UI slightly and made it so that it appears via a different gesture than before (right now, you can either double-tap the Home button or four-finger pinch to bring up the app switcher, depending on how your settings are configured and which iOS device you're on).

    2. Re: Apple & Amiga by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That wasn't the only thing Apple was suing Samsung over, and that specific item was certainly a reach, but at the time Samsung had done almost no UI development on their own, taking instead the route of copying just about everything from iOS upon entry. Apple lit up every gun they had and good for them. If you're going to whine about it, look at how a handful of the leaders of Samsung, as well as the President of South Korea, just went to jail for corruption and embezzlement. Those are the people Apple was fighting with. Anyone who argued for Samsung in that case must also argue for Zynga every time they mercilessly cloned Indie games and flooded the markets with them.

    3. Re:Apple & Amiga by hajile · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's a fundamental priority difference between webOS and iOS/Android.

      Let's first take a look at macOS (this basically applies to Windows as well). How do you open an app? First, you check the dock for commonly-used applications. If they aren't there, you search the applications folder (or launchpad in newer versions) or use +Space to search for it. Notice that dock offers direct access, but other apps require extra steps.

      Window managing is what a desktop OS is all about -- NOT opening apps. You have Spaces/Mission Control to group apps (because positional memorization is important to humans -- I suspect 2D spaces were superior in that regard to the 1D mission control desktops). You can drag windows around, resize them, put them side-by-side, etc. Closing Apps is also first-class with with just a +Q. Notifications are unobtrusive popups. Minor settings are available in the tray and major settings in Preferences (accessible by icon).

      webOS follows that paradigm closely. Common apps go in the launcher. Less common apps are either in the app drawer or JustType to search for it. Launcher offers direct access, but everything else takes extra steps.

      The primary view for webOS is for window managing. You have a 1D set of apps that you can move into Groups. Closing apps is a simple swipe up. There exists room to add things like side-by-side apps, but most of the devices were never big enough. Notifications are unobtrusive popups. Minor settings are available by clicking on the tray. Major settings are available in the settings view and accessible by icon.

      The reason the webOS UI is so good is because webOS is the desktop paradigm you've been using for years.

      Android and iOS have adopted many of these patterns, but they still feel foreign. Why? because launching apps reigns supreme. Instead of multi-tasking being the default view, their default is showing apps on the home screen. To change tasks, you have to switch into another, secondary mode and then back out of it. Android's and iOS's UI paradigm is upside down. First-class app opening with second-class task managing is bad UI.

      In webOS, users tend to close uncommon apps and leave their common ones running which makes freeing resources the default (good for constrained systems). In iOS or Android, users simply cannot be bothered to use an out-of-the-way, second-class task switcher and don't even realize there are dozens of open apps. Instead iOS/Android app icons become a poor, ad-hoc task manager that is ill-equipped to manage apps and completely unable to kill them.

    4. Re:Apple & Amiga by DrXym · · Score: 3, Informative

      Even Blackberry did this in the playbook and that's getting on a bit. Swipe from the edges, the screen turned into sliding set of cards and you could flip to another app or flick one away to close it.

    5. Re:Apple & Amiga by CODiNE · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not to mention all those ridiculous "Stop quitting your apps!" articles going around lately chastising users for force quitting apps.

      Yeah sure in iOS 3.0 or whatever the default was to immediately quit all apps when exiting to the home screen, always freeing the memory up for the next app. Not anymore, many apps like Trulia, Facebook, Twitter abuse backgrounding APIs to keep their apps always active even if you kill them and turn off their background update permissions. They may be using scheduled events to relaunch themselves and keep a constant presence in your device memory. It is no longer possible to tell which apps are truly closed and ejected from memory.

      Users sense this in slow app load times and general sluggishness, which reboots temporarily fix. Whether it's Apple or app makers faults, the end result is user hostile and increasing frustration. But yeah, lets chastise the users for killing apps when they can see the speed differences themselves.

      --
      Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
    6. Re: Apple & Amiga by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 3, Informative

      Apple copied LG Prada and other phones

      Which where only released after the iPhone was announced. Cool trick.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  2. I kinda miss by bobstreo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Grafitti.

    I was so used to it, I caught myself using it on a whiteboard one time.

  3. Palm, what a great company. by DatbeDank · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Man, talk about a burst of nostalgia.

    My last Palm device was a Treo 650. Before that, I was firmly a PDA user because I didn't want to pay extra for unlimited data when I could use bluetooth and have it billed against my voice plan on Verizon. Boy, those were the days!

    This was all through school. While I was of a nerdier persuasion, between gameboy, nes, and SNES emulators and an assortment of movies on my get this: 1GB SD card that I paid $60 for, people thought I was cool in a sort of Ferris Bueller type of way.

    Handheld devices were so exciting, new, unique, and not an everyday gadget that most people had. I started with a Sony Cleo, migrated to a Tungsten E, fell in love with a Tapwave Zodiac, and then was seduced by the ever more and more compelling hardware devices on the Windows Mobile side.

    Dell's Axim x50v was my first, followed by an x51v that I got Dell to replace for free out of warranty (hehe). Had a Treo 650 for a long time and then I got the nifty HTC xv6700 followed by the even more powerful xv6800. Tried another Windows Mobile phone and got fed up with it.

    I went to a Blackberry after that and held out for as long as I could until Moto's Droid 4 got me into Android. Switched back to Blackberry and i've been using a Keyone ever since.

    I had a really bad warranty experience with Blackberry and I think it's time I just go out and find a no name, keyboardless, boring candy bar smartphone off of ebay for $200. It was hard to justify the expense on my Keyone and the level of BS I went through to get it serviced wasn't worth being Blackberry's CS b!tch again.

    Sigh, those were the days. This must be what car enthusiasts must have felt when cars started becoming computerized monstrosities. Yeah, technology marches on, things become streamlined,and cheaper but you lose the excitement and enthusiasm.

    A lament of a bored hardware nerd.

  4. This idea *isn't* brand new?!?!??! by exomondo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Everybody in this industry copies ideas from everybody else, we already know this and it has been the case for forever. Apple is not some great inventor of ideas to be called out when they have the audacity to implement a concept that somebody else already implemented. Their original idea of what multitasking should be like was rubbish, so they copied the way that Windows Phone did it and that's a good thing. The control center was a copy of what Android was doing and that's a good thing otherwise you end up with shitty implementations purely as a result of NIH syndrome. Likewise these products copied concepts that Apple came up with.

    Are people really surprised to find out that many of the features being introduced in this industry have been done before? Yes webOS was a decent operating system (and so was Maemo and Meego and Windows Phone and FirefoxOS, etc) but it wasn't successful because the things that made them good weren't disruptive and compelling enough to make people abandon their existing platform. "Oooh you close an app by swiping up on its 'card' instead of pressing the little 'x' on its app icon"...it's nice to have but it isn't going to convince people to switch.

  5. Re:Yes by sit1963nz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    WebOS copied from PalmOS.
    PalmOS copied from the Newton.

    The Newton was the first PDA, so all roads eventually lead back to Apple.

  6. No, your logic doesn't hold by Dr_Marvin_Monroe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Break down story paragraphs like so:

    WebOS was a really cool OS, that had lots of neat features and ran JavaScript apps.

    WebOS was built on Linux, and if you're knowledgeable, you can update it.

    WebOS had a feature that permitted the user to switch apps by swiping up from the bottom of the screen to see the backgrounded apps. (Note: Android already has a similar feature, accessed by the square icon at screen bottom)

    Apple is going to do something similar, so they must be copying from WebOS, and that validates how advanced WebOS was.

    If Apple were going to start supporting js apps, you might have a case, otherwise not... There are only 4 sides to the screen too, top is notifications, sides for switching desktop screens, so that only leaves the bottom...which they picked... Coincidence?