That is the phrase that I am beginning to associate WebOS with; anyone who has followed the platform since its launch in 2009 will have noted the same comments floating around now in 2011 regarding the TouchPad and WebOS 3.0 as back then when the original Palm Pre was presented: “It [whatever feature/improvement/device/update] is coming soon” (or in Rubenstein jargon: “in the coming months”); “WebOS has great potential but needs refinement”; “There is always a small lag present”; “There are a few bugs that need to ironed out”…
Now, I am aware that version 3.0 is based on Enyo and a complete re-write from the earlier Mojo, but that is no consolation for buying customers – at 3.0 there should not be any talk about “potential” but rather that “potential” should have materialized by now and all that should be left is to get that fulfilled “potential” out to those customers. But when you read Precentral’s latest article about the TouchPad, with the author claiming to have a love/hate relationship with the TouchPad, that means that for a casual (=non-geek) user who is not enamored with WebOS itself (as any author of Precentral would logically be) there will mostly be hate involved and consequently a poor purchase decision.
Remembering how Sony pushed the limits of Palm OS with their Clié devices back when it was a licensee of the platform, often including many features that Palm themselves did not provide and thus forcing Palm to innovate in their devices in order to keep up, that rumored licensing of WebOS can’t come soon enough not only for us potential buyers that would love to see WebOS take off but also for HP themselves if they are serious about being a contender in the smartphone arena.
