Welcome to Part II of the ongoing series, The webOS Revolution. If you missed Part I you can read it here. In this series we’re going to look at why webOS is truly revolutionary. Now bear in mind, I don’t work for palm nor do I get paid to write this. This is all from one webOS user to everyone. I’m just trying to promote some of the positive things that make webOS truly revolutionary versus focusing on just its flaws. To briefly recap what we’ve gone over so far, palm, like every other company has had its fair share of good times and bad. Palm was once falling but with webOS they’re making a huge comeback. How are they doing it? “Provide a stable platform for Palm to thrive and capture people’s attention with amazing hardware and unique features like its gesture area, multitasking, and Synergy.”Part II.
T.E.A.M: Together Everyone Achieves More.
This is history in the making and to fill you in on what’s happened so far, I’m going to give you a brief history lesson. Can I even call this history? It’s all from the past six months. I can assure you it will be considered history someday. Let’s take a look. On June 6th, 2009, palm releases the Pre on Sprint’s network. The Pre sees a modest release thanks to its wonderful CES 2009 presentation. Very shortly after, webOSInternals.org is opened allowing anyone in the webOS Community to share knowledge and soon to be methods of installing apps and patches. Within a matter of days after the release of the Pre, members of the webOS Community gained access to the inner workings of webOS and homebrew apps were born. Soon after that third party solutions make installing user made patches and apps easier than on any other device. Such solutions that emerged were PreWare, webOS Quick Install, and FileCoaster. Throughout all this, PreCentral.net’s forums grew and the community continued to form.
That wasn’t a bad history lesson right? Right to the point, interesting topic, and exciting! Let’s take a look at what the webOS Community has been up to since it started.
It’s growing! FAST. Everyday thousands of webOS user’s access Wiki articles, browse forums for discussion, help, and speculation and read blogs for the latest news on this exciting new platform. It’s growing more and more everyday and is an extremely valuable resource to any and all webOS users.
Most often when a community forms around a new mobile device, the community works well to provide support but most of these communities lack one essential thing. Support from the people who created it in the first place. The webOS Community has that and it shows. We actually have support from Sprint and palm and that coupled with the support you’d expect from users and developers, the community suddenly becomes more useful and more powerful. Having undenied access to the device and OS also helps out quite a bit and it’s helped developers provide webOS users a smoother, more feature rich experience.
How many electronic devices do you have that offer support from passionate users and developers? It’s a great feeling going on a forum and offering support to other users. You know you’re saving them time and possibly money. Developers should feel good too as they provide wonderful apps and patches that add so much functionality to our webOS powered devices. That’s what WE do together. This also shows palm and carriers that people care. We want more and they’re happy to see we’re reaching out to get it. Collectively helping out one another takes strain off palm and the various carriers and frees up resources for more updates that include new features, important security updates, and always welcome improvements. That’s what we do, together. But where will the community be tomorrow? Even stronger than it was yesterday and that’s good news for palm and users alike.
To conclude: Noticing anything revolutionary? The webOS Community has exploded ever since the release of the Pre and continues to grow everyday as more and more people use webOS and gain interest in it’s capabilities. It’s a community unlike any other and somewhat resembles the Linux community which constantly proves to be priceless to so many people. It’s an extremely powerful tool for all to use and I encourage each and every webOS user to take full advantage of it and allow it to continue to grow and thrive as it does today. If you’d rather wait for palm, fret not, as they’re quick to release patches. May tomorrow bring new and exciting things to us, palm, and webOS.
great article. Lets hope they keep the momentum going! They’ve got some stiff competition out there.
most of the reason I am still with webOS is because of the products of the community. I wonder if palm can survive with just the the cult-like following it has now or if it needs to expand. Thoughts?
As much support as we’re giving palm, it’s not enough to survive. They’re still a company right now thanks to a massive cash injection thanks to Elevation Partners so technically, they’re running on borrowed money. Since Elevation has invested in the company, Palm now must give them a certain portion of their earning for a certain period of time. If elevation saw platform growth become stagnant, they’d probably get upset.
It’s Palm’s goal now to continue evolving and innovating on the platform they’ve created and get it in as many hands as possible. I feel starting with Sprint was a good idea. The hardcore Palm fans and anyone looking for new tech switched giving Palm good feedback on their new device. Expansion started in other countries and now they’re moving to France and will be offering their devices on VZW and AT&T. This tells me they’re satisfied with the state of the platform (or where it will be when released on these other carriers soon). The preliminary state is over, it’s time for the real show to begin.