The parallels between Palm's plight and Commodore Amiga are too close for comfort.
Can you expand on that thought a bit?
As far as I can tell most platforms are doomed to obscurity in the end, and a large and loyal fanbase usually doesnt stand the test of time unless the product remains compelling. So I suppose its not hard to compare Palm and Amiga because its the usual story that could also be applied to many others. Exceptions include Microsoft, who have made windows last much longer without such love, by sheer volume of users and apps, with a dominant share thats not going to happen very often. Apple were exceedingly lucky to get a second go at greatness after many years of looking like they were going to be the usual story of a slow painful fall from grace.
I dont sense that webOS has anything like the love that AmigaOS had back in the day. Indeed Im amused to see that the more recent legal twists in the AmigaOS story appear to have been sorted and that development on that OS continues. Clearly there are things quite a lot of people really like about webOS, and people who really wanted it to succeed, but due to past failings Palm probably only had one chance to get this right and they didnt do enough right to deliver a good enough experience to people. Expressing a desire to go back to webOS if they improve their UK operation or the hardware or whatever is not enough. And for all the hope that was expressed when the Pre was announced, and all the positive reviews and good things about the OS, I think an underlying sense that Palm may already have had its day was present even before the product came out, and this perception made it even harder to succeed.
From a developers point of view the lack of buzz & sales obviously harmed things from the start, there were some delays in getting the dev tools out, and they made the same mistake as Apple first made by only offering javascript as the language to use. Like Apple did when it allowed native apps, they are rectifying that problem but unlike Apple it may be too late.
Thinking about it the iphone really didnt have too many spectacular apps for quite some time after it first came out (not quite so noticable in UK due to later launch), Apple were lucky that at the time that it was not just 'all about the apps'. I would assume that apps are far more important now which makes it harder for everyone that follows Apple, although I think the extent to which app availability matters may be overstated at the moment - most of the iphone competitors have fallen down in some way with the hardware, core os functionality, marketing or price. If they got those things right from the get go then app/developer issues wouldnt have mattered so much or would have been overcome due to overall success and buzz, the momentum.
Im not sure we will learn much more about the state of things from watching Palm this year. Im more interested in how the steady rise of Android progresses, and how Windows Phone 7 fares.
