this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
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That was one thing that was wild about the Palm WebOS devices. It was just plain old linux. Games? They were just Linux games using SDL. Porting WebOS applications to desktop linux would have been nearly trivial. It would have just been amazing if Palm had pulled it off (alas, they chased a single design, Blackberry-style with small form factor, which missed just so much of the market). The users were utterly oblivious to all this (which is good) and it was just the best combination of capable of great things easily with a power user and able to run whatever the casual user would have needed.
It was still before Android was pretty much a sealed deal in the market (2009 Android was still horribly rough) so it had a shot, but Palm just couldn't pull it off.
Oh man... What a great phone. Awesome multi tasking. Wifi charging standard. A back button that actually worked. A slide out keyboard. They just could spool up an app ecosystem quickly enough to gain traction...
The apps may have been a bit anemic, but it was early enough that all the app stores were not great. They were certainly hurt by their initial "JavaScript only" stance.
Really painful was that they had exclusivity with Sprint of all carriers. That was a really limiting decision.
I think ultimately the singularly fatal issue was the HP debacle. The initial circumstances of the acquisition might not have been ok for the platform. Thanks to some leaked material HP under Hurd actually seemed to have some vision for reinvigorating their consumer brand including an emphasis on former products. But Hurd was ousted and that whole initiative was canned and the new leadership killed the product line that they had just bought. Which was the most baffling call, they didn't make room for some other smartphone or tablet platform, they just shrugged and killed off a product that was their only shot at relevance for a clearly exploding new consumer market.