[Android Software/Hacking General [Developers Only]] rschenck:
**Reposted from the Galaxy S i9000 General Thread**

Yes I know this is a forum dealing with Android...however there are some moments that need to be commemorated.

As most of you know by now, HP has responded to the humiliating failure of their webOS based TouchPad tablet by ending all production of webOS devices (and seem to be about to do the same to their PC line as well). They are saying they are open to someone purchasing the operating system, or licensing it for other devices...but rational voices are rightfully declaring webOS dead once and for all...the final end of Jeff Hawkin's Palm Computing.

webOS is the descendant of the classic Palm OS developed by Hawkins which basically created the market for mobile computing devices for consumers. It was purchased a bit more than a year ago by HP who had intended to use it as the cornerstone for a panoply of mobile products...which never came to be. It is open to debate if the cause of that failure was market realities, or HP corporate chaos, or brand mismanagement, the rise of Android, or Apple being Apple...to be fair the "why" doesn't really matter.

I first entered the mobile computing world with a Palm Tungsten E. I adored it and went on to own 6 Palm OS devices. I still have my favorite Palm device, a Tungsten C, lovingly displayed on my desk like a relic. Palm OS seemed to me at the time to be the perfect compromise between portability and computing power, a simple architecture with thousands and thousands of apps. Back then, Palm and Microsoft's PocketPC were locked in a battle to see who would rule mobile computing from then on...how naive that seems now.

Palm should have been Apple. They really should have been. They had a totally unique niche, and thousands of loyal developers. They had positive buzz in the market and were well liked by the tech press. Their name was synonymous with handheld computers and a powerful brand. They were poised to go beyond PDAs when the Treo was the premier smartphone on the market. Then however, for many sad, inexplicable legal, financial and creative reasons...Palm OS development just stopped and some horrible mistakes were made.

After Palm had been bought and sold by such likes as US Robotics and 3M, Palm was spun out into an independent company again and chose the opposite road that Apple would one day take, splitting into PalmOne for hardware, and PalmSource for software. Palm had lost control of their own OS, with PalmOne licensing the software from PalmSource. From 2002 to 2007 Palm OS 5, codenamed Garnet, was the only offering from PalmSource. They kept promising a next generation OS, to be called Cobalt, but after numerous delays and a half baked attempt at offering both Garnet and Cobalt at once, no devices were ever created using Cobalt. and the Palm OS went into development hell, and PalmSource was bought by ACCESS in a scheme to create the first consumer oriented Linux mobile OS. No devices have ever used the Access Linus OS, either. When it was clear ACCESS had no clue what they were doing, PalmOne renamed themselves Palm again and chose not to license their own OS back and instead created webOS. The Palm Pre was supposed to be the great iPhone killer...but wasn't. Then HP bought Palm and the rest is history...or tragedy.

If Palm had made use of the years between 2005 and 2010 to innovate and make use of their army of developers, Apple's iPhone could very well have found themselves struggling to enter a marklet dominated by the Treo 3G. Instead, Steve Jobs just swept the bones of the Palm OS out of the way and claimed many of the revolutionary features of Palm OS among his own inventions.

What can Google learn from all of this to help Android? First of all, keep control of the OS at ALL COSTS. Hardware may come, hardware may go, but the OS is the key. Next, keep momentum at all times. If a mobile OS stops developing and innovating, it dies.

Lastly, never assume that the status quo will remain static. Ten years ago the companies to watch in the mobile space were Palm and Microsoft...now one is gone and the other is a minor force in mobile. 5 years ago Blackberry ruled. Now, the question is who will buy them for patents and customer base. Currently Apple and Google are titans which fanbois will tell you will reign forever...but either one could be sent back to being an also-ran and a trivia question by just a few serious mis-steps.

The mobile market is a volatile, ever changing thing...for now, we all love our Android phones...in a year, will we still say the same, or will my SGS sit next to my Tungsten C as I write about how great Android was back in the day? For those of you who say that could never happen...just look at Palm.