Post date: 12-Jan-2009 07:09:50
This Slashdot article gives a good run-down on Palm's new iPhone (and G1) 'killer' - the Pre. Like the G1 it's a smartphone with a slide that reveals a QWERTY keyboard - the main differences are that it's a vertical slide, and seems more nicely built (brighter screen, etc.)
The 'completely new OS' is Linux with a Webkit-based browser in front of it - apparently regular developers will write their apps in HTML, CSS and JavaScript (and only 'special Palm partners' will be allowed access to the underlying system.) In a former life I was a Palm OS developer - it would be a little like time travel to return to this context with my current web developer skillset.
This is yet another 'new OS' which is actually a VM running on Linux - Android has Java, WebOS has JS, even the iPhone SDK forces you to write some objC. This is what frustrates me about these phones - each is still just a little too restrictive for me to really lust after one. At least with Nokia's Maemo (which I've had great fun developing Python/GTK apps for on my N800) you get a proper Linux stack and can write applications in anything, including C - but unfortunately none of Nokia's phones run Maemo, only their internet tablets. So out of the three platforms, I'd have to go for the Pre - the UI looks incredible, and I like JavaScript a lot more than Java or objC.