I followed along with Engadget's coverage of the Palm Pre announcement, and I have to say that I'm initially impressed by the screen shots and interface descriptions. I'll reserve judgment, however, until I get a chance to actually play with one in a Sprint store.
I'm not at all feeling a desire to abandon my Apple-shaped ship, but I'd like to see strong competition to the iPhone and its operating system. Only stiff competitive pressure can drive Apple to continue improving and innovating (in my mind), so the more the merrier. At the least, it's nice to see another serious phone OS that has the potential to continue burying the abysmal Windows Mobile.
UPDATE: I'm not an interface designer or a patent attorney, but a LOT of the interface idioms from the OS on the Palm Pre seem straight-up copied from the iPhone OS. I don't know how many ways there are to gesture/display/etc, nor what could be considered "obvious" to the patent office, but check out this demo clip to see for yourself, if you're at all familiar with the iPhone interface first hand.
I'm not at all feeling a desire to abandon my Apple-shaped ship, but I'd like to see strong competition to the iPhone and its operating system. Only stiff competitive pressure can drive Apple to continue improving and innovating (in my mind), so the more the merrier. At the least, it's nice to see another serious phone OS that has the potential to continue burying the abysmal Windows Mobile.
UPDATE: I'm not an interface designer or a patent attorney, but a LOT of the interface idioms from the OS on the Palm Pre seem straight-up copied from the iPhone OS. I don't know how many ways there are to gesture/display/etc, nor what could be considered "obvious" to the patent office, but check out this demo clip to see for yourself, if you're at all familiar with the iPhone interface first hand.