MPieters.com

After all of yesterday's hooplah about the iPhone 3.0 OS, it is quite impossible not to make comparisons to the Palm Pre. I feel the same about the Palm Pre as when the iPhone was announced - even if it is not perfect, it will stimulate competition on all other platform. Since the iPhone's release, every other brand has been playing catch up. But only one has properly stepped up to the challenge. Palm - the very same company who have been making simple Palm OS devices all these years. Their platform was dying, and they were dying as well. So this was their very last chance to make something decent. And even after all of yesterday's announcements, they are still lurking in the background with a significant device.

I got this comment from compl33t after yesterday's iPhone OS preview. While I would not completely agree with all his comments, he makes a few very interesting points nonetheless. So I decided to post it right here on the main page:

Here's my take on the release...

All the features are, in my opinion, things that should have been present from the start. I'm sure that, as an iPhone user (that has to live with the thing every day), this is going to push up "productivity" something awful and make the phone much more pleasant to use. As a first-gen iPod touch owner...I couldn't really care less about the new features.

And...still no true multitasking, no background processes. You mentioned that the Pre now has some pretty stiff competition. I beg to differ. In my mind the only thing the two devices have in common is that they can make phone calls.

The Pre's WebOS is a massive paradigm shift. The fact that "apps" will consist of HTML 5.0/CSS/JavaScript means that true multitasking won't chew through the battery. It means that developers won't be bound to Cocoa. If it supports the canvas tag, it'll even be able to do 3D. However, I don't think they're slating the Pre as the end-all and be-all of mobile devices (as Apple are). I think the Pre will do what the first Palms were best at: super effective Personal Information Management, but now with extra intarwebs thrown in! It also brings a fresh new look to the table (from what I've seen I like it more than Cocoa).

Lastly, it's not an iPhone. I think that alone will be a major selling point to many people.

As engadget so beautifully put it after they announce copy and paste: "Crowd is cheering for a feature that is on every other smartphone on earth. Go figure.

Your opinion?