RIM taking a page out of webOS' PlayBook with tablet interface 89
Our colleagues at CrackBerry.com have posted the above video from the Meet the BlackBerry Playbook developer sessions in NYC, and linked to another video from BGR posted a new video showing what purports to be a hands-on with the upcoming BlackBerry Playbook tablet from RIM. CrackBerry points out a few highlights of the "new" interface:
- The entire bezel is used for navigating. Swipe the sides to get around system-wide. The top is available for specific actions within applications
- There are "views" much like BlackBerry 6 for navigating that can be swiped through
- Swipe to move between views and apps, flick up to exit an app
- Looks like you can open the keyboard by swiping up from the bottom left on the bezel
We put "new" in quotes because, obviously, we've seen most or all of these features before, as integral or homebrew elements in webOS. Navigation swipes, gesture areas, live apps even in minimized (card) mode, the list goes on and on. The PlayBook's interface is startlingly, or perhaps frighteningly, similar to webOS, and while we are pleased to see how good it looks on a tablet (hurry up with that PalmPad!), we're not so happy to see it on an actual, working, competing device from a rather well-funded and strong competitor like RIM. (The comment near the end of the video that developers whose apps are accepted for the PlayBook's marketplace will get a free PlayBook serves to emphasize the power of RIM's resources.)
We don't know whether HP intends to take any legal action against RIM for this "faithful reproduction" of webOS, or whether it might even have the necessary patents to do so. For that matter, RIM is known for its own aggressive patent cases (both offense and defense). Even if HP thought it could and should bring an infringement case, it might decide against to avoid getting countersued by RIM, or because it might then seem like it had to compete in the courts rather than the marketplace.
We're with you, webOS faithful: it's painful to watch the competition, especially when it looks so much like our own favorite OS. We, like you, are more than ready to be blown away by whatever Palm/HP is going to announce whenever it is going to do so. Meanwhile, let's try to imagine that the BGR video was actually a sneak peak of a webOS tablet...but that it's going to be even cooler.
Source: CrackBerry.com; BGR
89 Comments
AAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaa WTFFFFF I am losing my patience with HP/Palm, slow with every step..
Well, HP is good at one thing... killing everything they buy... sometimes slowly...
Name one thing dead because of HP. Come on, name it.
Palm Pre.
Yeah, really, that's the best you got?
Of course HP would want to move beyond the Palm Pre, and make new phones/tablets.
I wouldn't call them dead but Compaq. Apollo computers. Although Compaq was well on it's way to going down the drain when they bought it. And they do still use the brand on some products but it seems that that was a bad acquisition. Apollo is dead though i think.
VooDooPC.. Is Snapfish still around? Screw it just look up the other 114+ aqusitions HP has made since 1958 and see which ones they killed. Lol
What, you expected all those brands to survive to the present day? Even the Palm brand will probably be a forgotten memory soon, doesn't mean HP won't use Palm's technology, and that doesn't make Palm dead.
Compaq. You said one right? There are more. The first thing to go is support. Just wait and see, support would not work for Palm products. Next the brand, next no one would remember it existed. I wish Nokia or Apple would bought Palm instead.
That must be why they're such a failure as a company.... Wait, sorry, HP is the largest tech company in the world.
Nice to see we've moved down from trolls to retarded trolls.
When one has nothing intelligent to say one can throw names as you do. I'm, for one, hoping I'm wrong and Palm or at least webOS would survive as it is the best OS on the market right now even if not too many people know about it. Does that sound like a troll to you?
what's the old saying? Palm will be late to their own funeral? Or has the funeral already happened and they are so late they don't even realize it's happened?
ya they are a huge... slow moving elephant. i use hp in the enterprise space with many blades and it's only gotten worse (support). they couldn't integrate 3com properly and now they have 3par/ibrix/lefthand to figure out. granted it's a different space and they have different divisions with lots of people but it's just too many moving parts and it's customers are left with mediocrity. it's all mergers & acquisitions nowadays with internal r&d is slim to none!
sadly, i hate bb but i think this iteration of the device will blow away anything hp/palm releases for a long time coming. i don't know what will resurrect the hype they once had but i'm "crossing fingers"
+1
This device is making the rounds and wowing everyone who is not familiar with webOS and lets be honest here not a whole lot of people are. Why can't HP do the same??? Don't they need to have developer support behind their products? Are they well established like Sony which has its hardware in the hands of developers months sometimes a year in advance so that at launch they have software available or are they going to be like Palm which offered an SDK at launch essentially creating the "more people need to buy it" and "more apps need to be on it for it to be a reasonable purchase" paradigm.
A TABLET is a different beast than a phone, A phone will be purchased if the phone elements are working correctly and people can live with "it will be delivered later" promises. A tablet NEEDS to have apps from the get go. IPAD was successful because it had access to 200,000 apps for iphone (and you did not need to repurchase them). It also came with several thousand apps of its own at launch. With webOS languishing at 5000 apps TOTAL why are we not seeing more effort from HP???? I sure hope it is happening behind the scenes but we just need to keep in mind that one reason Apple succeeds is because it is in the news all the time. Either with leaks of updates or actual updates. It is a brand that is very much entrenched in everyone's mind when they go shopping.
With every release these other manufacturers are stealing the wow factor away from PalmPAD. They are also stealing all the ideas and in a layman's mind HP will be the copier not these other manufacturers.
If you like the webOS UI and feel a need to actually buy this, then get the Playbook. Why would this upset anyone? WebOS users should celebrate.
Palm isn't palm anymore. Even Ruby said he doesn't feel an attachment to the Palm name. This is HP that seemingly is focused on any number of things..and supposedly smart devices too. Heck, according to Ruby, HP had no mobility focus.
At least you know where RIM is focused. They've got a good start on apps. They're actually showing off future products. And they're focused on courting devs. Their tablet OS will be in smartphones when dual cores come out.
If Ruby said that ten it probably means little more than that the Palm name will be the Datsun to HP's Nissan.
(i.e.) They will hold onto it just long enough to complete the mindshare transition.
You can imitate the UI, but ultimately you can't imitate the underpinnings, architecture, or framework so easily. And when you need to add more client side code to add features to a mobile os, you are going down a very kludgey path (as Palm itself once went down...the same one that Windows Mobile went down, and it's the same path Android is heading down right now).
Finally a WebOS tablet!
Yea, at this point I don't care what company is running with this style of OS. I just want it better. HP/Palm have done so little in the last 2 years to it, that I wonder if they can compete anyway.
How another company can look at their OS and nearly duplicate it in the time for HP/Palm to add basic features really makes me question their dedication.
HP/Palm are a roadblock to any improvements into this interactive style to the OS at this point.
this is old news. Saw this on webosroundup.com like 3 or 4 weeks ago. Still pisses me off though.
HP is moving so slowly, that other companies are completing HP's "products" and keeping consumers informed, so we can only assume Palm is a long way from having a viable product.
But, HP is excited to release printers. Printers = Paper. Isn't the point of high tech to get rid of paper?
At first glance of the title I didn't think this would bother me but once I saw the video, I can't help but feel ripped off. The beauty of web os is its graphical interface; RIM realized it, copied and pasted. The essence of webos is its stability. If RIM came even close to getting that right... It's sad to say, but they might have a winner. So sad to know that so few know the true beauty within.
very smart of RIM - may be a bit late though. WebOS dreams aside, businesses which have high security issues and are currently exclusively using BES dependent blackberries are feeling high pressure from all level of staff to bring the iPad on board. The IT testing has begun in earnest. If the technology is implemented to allow the iPad than the iPhone will also find its way in as a sanctioned device to receive e-mail.
It will be interesting to see whether this will stem the rush.
Playbook is using QNX if I remember correctly. This OS should be enterprise ready since while RIM hasn't used this OS before it is not new. The apps will be new but the way RIM has been trying to generate interest in the tablet it is very likely that they will have plenty at launch. RIM has been showing this tablet to all of their business partners as well which should help in adaptability. The price and features that have been rumored so far also make it more appealing than an iPAD for business users (and home users).
Cue all the Chicken Littles warning the sky is falling on the PalmPad if it doesn't release now...
Does this thing even have a release date yet?
Playbook is expected to be out around April.
HP still has time then. The big thing with the Playbook is RIM had to adapt their OS, which used to run on old, outdated phones, to a modern-looking tablet. Rubinstein has stated that webOS scales pretty well to tablet size, so that should cut development time.
Some of life's most important lessons were learned in Kindergarten: you snooze you lose.
herp derp hp is fuckin patehtic as you guies r
GO ANDROID!!!
GO ANDROID!!!
GO ANDROID!!!
I didn't know I'd walked under a bridge. Thanks for telling me, troll. :D
WEBOS is dead. I will be very surprised to see HP pull anything out there ass to be strong enough to compete with IOS, ANDROID, WP7, and now RIM. Are you kidding me? As soon as WP7 adds multitasking to their OS, I'm switching out this WEBos shit. I'm done with PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALM..... And, I am one of who could be called a true "die hard!" But, this waiting is for the birds!!!
Don't kid urself. Die hards don't mind waiting. Die hards don't care what the competition is doing. Die hards don't wine like little bitches. Why don't you stop threatening to leave and just leave already, and on ur way out go pick up a whamburger and some french cries.
+1 to most of what you said :D
The wait is over. Angry Birds already hit webOS.
And die hard? Really?
funny Hp patent the palm pad back in july http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/07/19/palm.patents.palmpad.name....
so I wounder if RIM did their homework before trying to get themselves sueded.
RIM has their own patents to countersue.
meh... the animations and transitions are off.. I much prefer that of webos... like I've said before, webos wannabe.
HP should sue them unless by doing so they slow down webos' advancement...
nope as it turns out hp will be copying RIM. Because RIM did it first...
Oh yea all the samefag pretards that say android is ugly or w/e are DELUSIONAL besides palms ui dude is at google now!!
u jelly?
Have you even listened to yourself? I suspect you would feel like punching yourself in the face too if you did...
I pity you...
Also, punctuation. Learn it, love it...
Doesn't the fact that Google hired "palms ui dude" just reinforce that Android is ugly?
So all palm needs to do is release early :)
Grabs popcorn.. This will be good
The RIM PalmPad looks amazing. I'll take two.
Honestly, just happy to see webOS alive and kicking somewhere. It warms the heart. Thanks RIM for making our dreams come true!
Its not WebOS... its QNX... READ DAS ARTICLE!
Sarcasm, moron.
This is crock, this is a complete rip of WebOS...WTF, they don't even mention it in the video. I hope other review sites mention it.
You should make a video showing a standard Palm Pre and this thing side-by-side and post it on YouTube, maybe under the title "Look! The Playbook was here two years ago!"
double post...
The Playbook is a sad attempt at 'pretty.' Imagine how fast the PalmPad must be to pull off its beautiful and lovely UI. If it's that hard to do on a 3-inch screen (i.e. Palm Pre), to make transitions seamless, scrolling without jitterbugging, app launching hiccups, etc., how are they going pull it off with twice as many pixels to compensate for? AND keep it under $500 dollars? Ouch.
WebOS 1.0 did not support hardware acceleration of UI elements. That is why the UI is slower it is running completely off of the CPU. Palm PAD is going to be running on dual core A9 processor just like Playbook. Considering the fact that the CPU on 4430 is running at 1GHz and there are 2 of them the palmPAD would be 4 times as fast WITHOUT any other changes. However, 4430 has PowerVR SGX540 which is 4 times as powerful as SGX530 in the original PRE that should speed things up even more.
On top of that webOS 2.0 does have hardware acceleration os "some' UI elements which is going to improve as time goes by. On the PRE2 itself reviewers have noted that the device is pretty fast with no lag.
Unlike Android with its myriad of CPUs HPalm knows exactly what will be running webOS and can thus optimize it much more. Just think about what a PS3 and xbox360 can do despite being much lower spec'd than regular PCs.
Whoa, dude, where did you hear that spec on the PalmPad?
This is an educated guess on my part but I believe it is a valid hypothesis based on a lot of information least of which is Ruby's assertion that they are always ahead of the curve.
Palm has historically been a Ti shop and OMAP 4430 is probably the most likely of the dual core A9 choices. I wish they can have 4440 instead (enhanced version of 4430 which scales to 1.5GHz and has a higher clocked SGX540) but can not be sure. Sticking with TI results in faster optimizations as the architecture is well understood and webOS already runs on it. Moving to Qualcomm or Samsung would result in fragmented phone/tablet teams and will not be good for the devices or the consumers as it will introduce delays.
It would be suicidal for Palm to have a tablet released in 2011 with a single core since there will be a LOT of devices including "phones" that will be shipping with dual cores in the first half/quarter of 2011 i.e. by the time PalmPad ships.
LG star and Motorolla Olympus have already been leaked on the phone front. On the tablet front Viewsonic Gtablet is already out. It runs on Tegra 2 and is priced at $399.99. There are other tablets which are either shipping or will be shipped by CES that have tegra 2. On a side note Tegra 2 is actually less powerful than OMAP 4430 but with Nvidia's expertise with optimization they are confident that it will be able to outperform many non tegra 2 devices. The optimization thing applies to other vendors too so I am sure this will be short lived and nVidia will release tegra 3 as soon as they can but I digress :).
OHHH I get it... So RIM is HP's R&D department... got it.
There's so much more to webOS than Cards. Every little nuance reminds me of how I feel whenever I turn on my Mac. Funny, because iOS doesn't really impress me :P
+1 ... iOS does not impress me any more. Again, if I'm choosing between iOS and Android, I go with iOS any day. Wish that what I think of HP and Plam's future is not true...
yeah. It was palm's idea first.
but honestly, good idea should benefit users, rather than get buried by HPalm.
the flicking of cards was their idea. but palm didn't invent the idea of having a task switcher. it was in windows long before palm. That's really all alt-tab is, a card view without flickin to close and swiping.
Both playbook and palmpad may be obselete at launch.
Rueters is already reporting Ipad 2 early 2011. With two cameras, one front facing for video chat. A better screen.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6B90PW20101210
http://gizmodo.com/5711204/ipad-2-details-emerge-two-cameras-better-reso...
accoring to Engadget it's scheduled for april launch
http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/10/ipad-2-will-have-rear-and-front-facin...
Anything that launches anywhere anytime will be obsolete in the eyes of an iFanboy.
that's a rather narrow opinion. the market is bigger then fanboys. I don't particularly care about what fan boys think, palmfanboys, apple fanboys or whatever. But i care what consumers in general think. And i'd bet if it has new screens and cameras and facetime it's gonna look behind the times. to anyone.
Here's a 10 minutes hands on of the Playbook by BGR.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYZDl4RNEVE
I can't stop laughing at all the upset wOS users out there who are OUTRAGED at RIM. I guess you have a small taste of how iPhone users felt when wOS appeared on the scene, and blatantly stealing iTunes at that. Karma is a bitch!
PAlm had NOT stolen anything, they had allowed the phone to sync with a software that is NOT IOS. iTunes "should" sync with every mp3 player that you have it imposes artificial limitations by checking whether or not it is connected to an idevice.
Anyway, Off topic, I am glad that it didn't workout all that well. I personally dislike itunes as it is a resource hog on PCs. I am really in favor of more people using doubletwist or windows media player instead as those in my opinion are actually much better.
If you feel this strongly about Apple I am not sure what you are doing at a site that caters exclusively to a competitors product. Do you really feel the need to tell everyone (people whom you don't know or don't know you) why you bought your iDevice???
You're right, they did not steal anything, they just made their devices in bootlegged iPods (using Apples internal codes to make it look like it was an iPod). That is as close to stealing as you can get...but you're right, it is more like forgery.
This is what I hear: "RAWR, a non-Applehead wants into our ecosystem. Get out of here, we don't allow choice."
That's because you don't really understand technology.
they pretty much stole cards from cover flow.
wonder if there's grounds for a lawsuit anywhere.. doesn't palm hold patents on a lot of those concepts?
you can't patent the idea of switching programs. Not only that it's been done before on computers long before webos existed. There can be copyright on some of the gestures i'd guess like the flick to close. But, i can't see a court trying to prevent an operating system from showing a screen shot image in a horizontal scrolling row as a method of multitasking cause whether webos users like it or not that is not unique. It is exactly what alt-tab has done for a long time on windows: give you a screenshot, in a scrolling horizontal row as a task switcher. It's the flicking to close that is unqique in webos and i'd bet that would be the aspects that may get some protection. But i'm not sure how much. Courts apparently don't like constraining user interfaces where there aren't a ton of different ways to do stuff.
like for example what if apple said "whoa whoa whoa, You can't have sliding pages of rows of icons as your launcher page because we've already done that with our launcher page?" That would be a little ridiculous because it's something for which there aren't a ton of different ways to do. like you could have a text list more like windows phone 7. Or what if they said, "nope you can't have icons on the bottom of your phone as a launcher window cause we have copyrighted icons on the bottom of a screen?" That sort of design aspect of user interfaces is probably not unique enough to get protection.
I was talking higher-level stuff like the use of gestures & especially off-screen gesture areas. Gestures have been the base of a large number of apple lawsuits, with mixed outcome, but still. This simply seems.. too close for comfort. At worst it's ip theft, and at best it's a huge cop-out on RIM's part (not that that surprises me one bit).
I wonder how people feel about what Palm...uhm...borrowed? Pinch to zoom. Double tap to zoom, company-controlled app store (down to the 70-30 split), etc. There was a big fuss made about whether Apple would go after Palm in '09. Now people are upset that another OS did something similar.
{insert statement about a goose and gander here}
those points are valid, however i'm inclined to agree with what the other above commenter was saying about there not being many ways to do such things in a practical manner. Those are all very base-level things that weren't necessarily unique to apple ideas. The similarities are further compounded by both browsers being based on the same underlying technology (webkit). In this case however, there isn't just a similarity of underlying functionality, it goes all the way up to higher level things, and not just in terms of ui look & feel. Hardware pairing with software incorporating gesture recognition in the exact same way.. come on. I honestly don't feel like rim is any kind of threat (bbos6 is crap & there is no scalability/inter-compatibility of apps between platforms, so I don't see this taking off). I'm just a little taken aback by their.. lack of ingenuity. RIM is a company on it's way out, it's very clear, and this sort of move is a very telling sign of that. I think hp has their market-share in their sites & hopes to cannibalize a good portion of their users through a reborn palm.
It's not surprisingly considering the Creative Director of UX at RIM was the Creative Design Manager at Palm http://www.linkedin.com/in/wesyun
There are also some tweets in reference to this 'similarity' in UX of the playbook and webOS between Wes, and some current and ex-Palm people
@chrismckillop Chris McKillop
@nuysew Imitation is the best form of flattery. :)
@chrismckillop good artist borrow, great artist steal and if you're gonna steal, steal from the best. http://twitter.com/#!/nuysew/status/25818257213
@girlie_mac Tomomi Imura
@nuysew LOL. Daring Fireball guy thinks its UI aesthetic is a "cross between iOS and WebOS".
@nuysew Wes Yun
Finding it very amusing how many comments there are comparing BlackBerry Tablet OS to webOS.
At least the Playbook will ship. Hey and then in a few years HP can release a me-too version themselves.
Wasn't the PalmPad supposed to ship Q1 2011? If that's still the case, it will beat the Playbook by at least a month. And the iPad 2 making everything else obsolete because it added features that should've been there on the original? Don't think so, technically speaking. Just because they add a couple cameras doesn't mean it'll make up for the 10 other things they left off so they could market the iPad 3 and 4 as being "revolutionary, again". I'm quietly hoping that the 4G tablet mentioned by Sprint is the PalmPad, because I haven't heard anything about BB making the Playbook 4G. I also haven't heard anything about a WP7 tablet, let alone a 4G version. If I had an extra $5, I'd put it on webOS being the first 4 tablet.
Doesn't Palm have patents on this "new" interface features that RIM is claiming??? and can't Palm sue them for it???
At first I was mad, but then I realized, they are prepping the masses on how to use webOS, so when HP Palm Pad comes out and says we did it first and sues RIM, everybody will already be used to gestures. Look at the brightside people!
HMM earlier videos of the playbook showed them swiping up the "cards" (and they called it cards). In this video it shows them closing "cards" with the x button. Me thinks they are trying to avoid a complete rip off. Does that mean they are scared of a patent war?
The x button has always been there; look at the real early videos about the Playbook. Earlier I posted a link to a 10 minutes hands on of the Playbook by BGR. In that video the RIM guy said you can close an application by taping the x button OR by swiping up.
Now about the video where the word "cards" was said. I've seen that video many times and NONE of the RIM guys called what they were doing closing "cards". It was the guy asking the question that said the word "cards".
Edit: Here's the link to the 10 minutes video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYZDl4RNEVE
Hey if HP isn't going to use the UI, why shouldn't some like RIM? I think this could be a case of "abandonment", or "found by the side of the road dead".
But seriously, just wait. You have to realize that 99% of consumers are not technophiles like most of the people that hang out around here. That vast, vast majority of the buying public will think that HP is ripping off RIM's UI.
Someone suggested making a youtube video of a Pre side by side with the Playbook to show that they are "copies". That's a great idea -- all the people here will view it and just get enraged yet again, but no one out in the "real world" will see it, or even care.
It was done with Vista vs Max OSX. Not sure it had any effect, but whatever. Here it is on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaIUkwPybtM
That's so funny!!
wtf that's completely webos I'm getting upset just by looking at it and hp should so something about it...that's what I've ben waiting for the palm pad
HPalm should sues RIM and make them pay much much money for copying WebOS UI!
The reason webOS's gestures are so great is the same reason Mac's file menu bar is better than Windows' in terms of productivity and ease of use. Use the edges of the screen! If you throw your mouse to the top of the window to get a menu, you have a higher chance to over-shoot. On mac, the menus are at the border of the screen. You will get it every time.
WebOS got this right with gestures. You can't miss when you run your finger along the entire device. This is why people swipe for the menu and find that launcher button useless.
The same can be said for the back gesture vs iOS's hunt-and-peck way of building a Back button into applications.
And the same is said for a 'Close' button. You have to hit it so exact to get the effect, that it's inefficient.
Tossing a card away is infinitely more efficient and user-friendly.
I can't stand seeing a fully touch interface that forces you to so often use the device as if you had a mouse hooked up, when gestures are the natural way our hands and minds work.
HP Palm needs to utilize what RIM is doing right with the implementation of their ideas and fix what needs improvement (as RIM has presumably done).
This is a neat idea and will have some sales for their sport coverage applications. Some of the coding and animations are also neat. As for purchase for productivity on something like this I doubt it.
To this point, blogs as well as social networking is full web based. Blackberry devices fit all available features within a compact devices with good integration. With a mobile device this large, why would people use most of your applications when they could download a full featured application on a windows tablet or simply use the web browser in any device. This is where Apple stands apart at the moment with proprietary programs that really differentiate between using applications on their own or through their own services.
This device could be nice if it falls around the 300-350 dollar range and it accommodates a Blackberry device nicely. Overall this really shows how much weight Apple holds. Companies such as Blackberry and even Android are really going to have to market the real meaningful differences that can be obtained from using their devices over an Apple device. As for Palm, Palm will again need heavy development. Palm could have something if they could get to Par throughout the spectrum of applications. I still suggest Desktop software for appointments, syncing, etc. as a first endeavor.
A Web Conferencing client will be a huge boost for this device. Again, I believe we are curious to see what unique features Blackberry will place within this device.