Palm has already stated that the Pre is the first in a line of devices. Whether the Pre is successful will largely determine whether we get to see any of those other devices. But think about this one: Netbooks are taking off, helping push Acer's shipments of computers up 55% in the fourth quarter of 2008 while almost every other manufacturer saw a drop during that same period. With hotspots popping up almost everywhere, people are looking for lighter, more convenient ways of taking the web and email with them, and let's face it, netbooks are just a stopgap. Come on--having to boot up Windows Vista just so you can surf the net while you drink a cup of coffee? What a waste of resources.
Enter webOS. With its current "card-based" app-switching paradigm and its off-screen gesture area it would be perfect for a netbook with little to no changes. And with the sexy-but-abandoned Palm Foleo on their resume, what's to stop them from trying again with a new-and-improved webOS Foleo 2?
Throw in a GPU to push around the extra pixels, add a keyboard and a gesture area near the spacebar; you're done. Instant-on, touchscreen web surfing, emailing personal information manager. And with the mobile CPU it probably wouldn't take much to power it with an 8-hour battery.
There is definitely demand for a webOS netbook. another recent article stresses the benefits of the platform; the Linux-based OS and hardware flexibility put Palm in the perfect position to make a Foleo II.
Now let's look at the iPhone's OS. Apple has said it's not interested in developing a netbook, although they are "watching" the space. Granted, Apple is not known to cater to the "lower-end" market, but in these economic times who knows what level they may need to stoop to? Now, Apple has said that the iPhone runs a modified version of OSX. That's all well and good, but if you were to take the iPhone's OSX and shove it into a netbook form factor you'd have to make huge changes. For one - returning to the home screen to change apps? That won't fly on a netbook. Second, with no gesture area off-screen, all of the controls are rendered on-screen. That means buttons and controls on every corner of the interface. Having to touch the screen for everything except typing would make for an unpleasant netbook experience as your hands would have to constantly move between the keyboard and screen. Both of these are major redesigns that Apple would have to make to create a netbook based on the iPhone OS. They could also go the other way and modify their desktop OS for a netbook, but then they'd have to strip out a lot of functionality to avoid over-burdening the CPU or graphics capabilities of a netbook, not to mention boot up times. And then there's the whole issue of cannibalizing their higher-end laptop sales.
Now, being the juggernaut they are, there's nothing stopping Apple from designing the perfect netbook, and even throwing in an off-screen, visually responsive gesture area (but Palm must have patented that, right)? But the genius of webOS is that dropping it into a host of other form factors should easy as pie and not require teams of engineers for months. Any way you slice it, with webOS Palm is in a better position to capitalize on the netbook "craze" than Apple, or anyone else right now for that matter. Hopefully they can muster the resources to move on this opportunity before somebody else comes out with "the next big thing".
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