In 1992, Jeff Hawking founded Palm. Palm's first PDA was the Zoomer in 1993, Palm then began making Windows Mobile smartphones and PDAs. In 2008, Palm announced their own WebOS operating system for their smartphones. In 2010, HP purchased Palm for $1.2 billion and still releases smartphones and now tablets running WebOS. Read on for the latest Palm news, reviews and videos:
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by Michael Fisher | May 23, 2012 5:08 PMWe've recently run a series of articles discussing the awesome features of certain mobile platforms, and how those highlights drive users to love them. We've covered Windows Phone, iOS, and Android, the platforms with the best combination of mindshare and potential, and today I thought I'd give a shoutout to a lesser-known (but immensely influential) player in the mobile space: webOS. If the details are hazy with the passage of time, here's a brief refresher. webOS was Palm's replacement for its legacy PalmOS, the platform that helped launch the smartphone and PDA revolution via the Palm Pi...
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by Michael Fisher | May 22, 2012 3:42 PMThose of you who've followed my writing for a while know that I'm a refugee from the Great webOS Collapse of 2011, and there's still a lot I miss and love about the platform. While I try to write about it as often as I can, the sad truth is there's not a lot of news about the "little OS that couldn't" these days - things are pretty quiet as it marches toward open source. So I'm kind of waiting along with everyone else for that to wrap up this fall. Until then, though, I'm still using webOS somewhat often via my HP TouchPad. Sometimes I even pull the tiny HP Veer out of storage and relive th...
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by Michael Fisher | May 10, 2012 11:47 AMBefore the release of Apple's newest tablet, when we were all still calling it the "iPad 3," there was the usual tempest of rumor and speculation regarding the new device. Some of this scuttlebutt, like the Retina display, proved to be true. Other unverified claims, like quad-core processors and an 8MP camera, didn't. My favorite rumor at the time, because I didn't care much about either tablet cameras or CPU core count, was that Apple would be eliminating the home button on its new iPad, leaving a clean uninterrupted bezel all the way around the screen. It wasn't the first time we'd heard ...
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by Michael Fisher | May 10, 2012 9:02 AMDevotees of the webOS ecosystem learned long ago not to underestimate the power of a motivated homebrew community. It was grassroots efforts like webOS-Internals that unlocked the potential of the platform and earned the respect and endorsement of Palm, and later HP. It should come as no surprise, then, that a group of similarly talented but differently motivated developers have come together for the common goal of altering yet another webOS device: the diminutive HP Veer. This time, though, their goal isn't to modify webOS, but to replace it- with Android. Fortunately, some of these sha...
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by Michael Fisher | March 23, 2012 12:53 PMI'd like 2012 to know something: I'm fine without Back to the Future's hover-skateboard, or the Jetsons' flying car. I can even survive with the knowledge that the "Human Bird Wings" video is a fake. As I may have mentioned before, I grew up watching Star Trek. The moment I was able to start carrying a communicator and a tricorder wherever I went, "the future" became "the present," and my life was basically complete. Aim high, kids. What I can not brook, however, is the tech world's continued insistence that wires play a part in our wireless world. As personal media players, smartphones,...
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by Michael Fisher | March 11, 2012 3:51 AMWhen HP dumped the TouchPad in spectacular fashion with a bargain-basement firesale last fall, hobbyists flocked to eBay, Amazon, and Best Buy to snag their piece of heavily-discounted tablet hardware. Some of these buyers were just looking for a cheap tablet; others were webOS fans hoping to stock up on some long-term backups for their favorite platform; and still others had a different dream. They wanted a cheap but well-specced tablet on which to run Android. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of the CyanogenMod Team, that dream has finally been willed into reality. And while there are a ho...
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by Anton D. Nagy | January 28, 2012 8:59 AMJon Rubinstein left Apple to take over Palm and after HP's acquisition of the company he was on board with Hewlett-Packard. He left the company after completing his commitment to stay 12-to 24-months. "Jon has fulfilled his commitment and we wish him well", said HP's Mylene Mangalindan. "I am going to take a well-deserved break after four and a half years of developing webOS", Rubinstein said. He worked hard on the iPod team over at Apple until he joined Roger McNamee in 2006 as the two created Elevation Partners. Jon Rubinstein became CEO of Palm in 2009 replacing Ed Colligan, where he hel...
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by Anton D. Nagy | January 3, 2012 2:42 AM$1.2 billion was the amount HP spent on acquiring Palm, together with webOS, back in April 2010 and allegedly it's the same amount the company asked for when it tried to sell before killing webOS and turning it open source. According to Paul Mercer, former senior director of software at Palm, there was little hope for webOS from the very beginning. "Palm was ahead of its time in trying to build a phone software platform using Web technology, and we just weren't able to execute such an ambitious and breakthrough design", he added, before saying that "perhaps it never could have been execute...
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by Anton D. Nagy | December 29, 2011 3:53 AMHP bought Palm for $1.2 billion at the end of April 2010 and it apparently tried to sell for the exact same amount, before making webOS open source. According to recent reports HP didn't want to lose anything from the Palm deal but officials declined to comment. The fact is that Palm's value was decreasing fast despite new products like the Pre3, Veer and Touchpad, making it simply impossible to sell at the same price. $500 million would have made it more likely to sell according to reports, but HP wasn't allegedly willing to go that low. At one point, Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckenberg was rep...
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by Anton D. Nagy | December 22, 2011 1:58 AMDespite what HP has done to webOS in the past month, those of you out there rocking an HP Pre3 will be lucky to find out that there is an update rolling out to your devices over-the-air. The new webOS 2.2.4 refresh weighs anywhere between 29MB to 9MB, depending on whether your phone is on AT&T, Verizon or in Europe. So what's in the package? A "variety of software improvements", as described by HP themselves, meaning the refresh will likely fix a couple of issues users were having; it's a general bugfix release but nonetheless welcome. Source: webOS Nation
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by Stephen Schenck | November 8, 2011 8:10 PMWhat will HP end up doing with webOS and its Palm holdings? After announcing intents to essentially abandon the platform (excluding the possibility of its use in embedded systems, or licensing it out), there's been a lot of speculation over what would become of it. We may be about to find out, as HP is reportedly holding a meeting tonight to make up its mind about webOS. Things kicked-off about half an hour ago, and while we haven't heard of any big decisions being made just yet, CEO Meg Whitman has been quoted discussing the uncertainty HP feels over how to proceed. She cited the need for ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | October 16, 2011 9:11 AMThis is a rather sad moment not only for (HP-)Palm fans but for those who live in our world as HP has decided to close Palm stores for good. They will not open anymore. The decision came after HP pulled the plug on webOS and now the company stores are displaying the above sign (and some more at the source link). The closing day was marked by insanely cheap and deep discounted prices for devices and accessories which went as low as $50 for the HP Veer, $25 for Pixi units or even $15 if someone got four devices, and $2.50 for the Palm Touchstone. End of chapter! Source: MobileMag Via: pre...
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by Anton D. Nagy | August 20, 2011 9:25 AMEven though we intended it to be an April's fool joke last year -- when we said Microsoft was going to buy Palm and rebrand webOS to Windows Phone 7 -- this is as close as it gets. Microsoft is offering free Windows Phone developer devices and tools for former webOS developers, after HP has pulled the plug on the mobile platform. The information comes from Microsoft's Senior Director of Windows Phone 7 development, Brandon Watson's Twitter account. With recent webOS being dumped news and the upcoming Windows Phone Mango release, Microsoft might want to take advantage of HP's move and tu...
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by Stephen Schenck | August 18, 2011 8:37 PMToday's news from HP marks what looks like the end of an era, with the company deciding to throw in the towel on webOS-based smartphones. The platform has only been around for about a couple years, starting with rumors of something called "Nova" that Palm was working on. We got a proper name for the project with Palm announcing webOS and the Palm Pre at CES 2009. By summer, Palm had launched the original Pre QWERTY slider. The Pixi gave users an option with a non-slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Early 2010 brought news of upgrades to the Palm and Pixi, both getting Plus designations as part ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | July 9, 2011 1:35 AMWhile the HP Pre 3 is on pre-order in Europe and shipping mid-July it should also be making its entrance on the U.S. market sometime this month. According to recent rumors though, it appears that it will not come to Sprint! According to an un-named source, the HP Pre 3 is not coming to Sprint at all and, for what it's worth, there are no planned future HP devices headed to the carrier yet. There's no information on which of the two parties took the final decision -- or whether it was a mutual consent -- but HP didn't see the sales numbers it expected from Sprint and the carrier itself made ...
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