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

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.

Comments

This idea *isn't* brand new?!?!??!

[exomondo]

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.

Re: Apple & Amiga

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Apple & Amiga

[hajile]

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.