Adriano Chiaretta from iambic has answered some questions for PDA-247 regarding webOS and iambic’s potential development for this platform.
1/ What was your initial impression of webOS and the Palm Pre hardware?
I’ll admit that my feelings were mixed. There’s a lot to really like from a user interface (UI) standpoint. And from what I can tell, the out of the box (native apps) seem well-rounded and nicely tied together. Palm appears to have put together a formidable solution (especially with its touch optimization and the focus on ensuring user-friendliness) that should stand up nicely to the iPhone. In fact, it could truly be the strongest competitor to the iPhone yet. That being said, I am a bit disappointed by the decision to abandon backward compatibility with legacy Palm OS apps, but not surprised.
2/ Do you have plans to develop for this platform, and can we expect to see some of your existing titles ported over?
Chances are we’ll develop applications for the Pre. At this time we are sort of pondering and looking forward to getting our hands on the SDK.
3/ In your opinion, is Palm back in the game?
Only time will tell. For sure, they were the company that established the rules to the game many, many years ago. That means they are well versed in the care & feeding of developers. If they can rally the army of Palm OS developers to create for this new platform AND provide an experience that exceeds how developers are being dealt with for other platforms, they could truly be back. But it still takes a combination of things: Excellent, functional & flawless hardware/software + a committed developer community + wireless carrier support.
