2010 Palm Pixi Plus running webOS
I've always admired Palm's take on the smartphone with webOS and the Palm Pre and Pixi. While it was a commercial failure (the hardware itself was rather underpowered), the software and its design patterns were ahead of its time. People forget how influential Palm webOS was... lots of modern iOS uses similar patterns:
- horizontal app card multitasking w/ flick up to quit
- edge swipe gesture navigation for back navigation and quick app switching
- swipe away banner notifications
- swipe down system tray (like Control Center)
- "Just type..." global search bar
- threaded messaging
- magnetic charging puck called Touchstone (like MagSafe)
Palm was also basically the OpenAI of their time and had such talent density that Steve Jobs had to threaten them to stop poaching Apple employees.
Playing around with webOS
The Palm Pre and Pixi originally launched in 2009. I was looking for a good condition Palm Pre, but eventually landed on this Pixi Plus—a model that was released in 2010.
