Palm Pre Challenge: Mobile Device Standards Initiative

Having spent so much time on my Palm Pre the last few days has made me think a lot about the future of mobile computing. And I’ve been asking myself some pretty important questions about what that future is going to look like. I have these grand visions of a world with free WiFi everywhere I go, websites that are fully touch compatible, and apps that fill every need imaginable.

That vision, I believe, isn’t really to far out there. And since it seems to be a global desire of the major population of smartphone users, I think it’s something we can achieve in just a few short years. But, there is still a lot of foundational work that needs to be started before we can really take those steps forward.

Right now, as far as I can tell, the mobile device market is very segregated. The iPhone is crowding out everyone else and forcing developers and businesses to treat it as the only competitive playing field around, much like Internet Explorer was in 2001. Sure, Android is ramping up quickly, and the new HP-Palm merger is sure to turn some heads in that direction, but it’s still pretty much a free-for-all.

The Past

Consider this, when Netscape and Internet Explorer were each fighting for the new market during the DotCom Boom, everyone lost. Standards were being ignored (and new ones created every day), technology was expanding in a thousand different directions with no real common goal, and there was this general sense of chaos amongst all of the development. Now, in 2010, we don’t have that problem so much anymore… unless we look at the mobile market.

Palm, Android, iPhone, Blackberry, Windows 7… They’re all great contenders and the competition is much needed to keep our technology advancing in the right direction. But when websites are developed for iPhone touch screens, while leaving other mobile browsers in the dust, we start circling back to the same problems that we had years ago.

The Future (hopefully)

In my humble opinion, Palm has had it right from the beginning of webOS. App development is easy for anyone with a basic understanding of HTML and design. The community of developers, and users, is the best that you can find in the world today (people really love these phones), and we’re definitely not afraid to admit mishaps that our company makes.

But while we work to make applications that everyone can use, modify and understand, the other devices are forcing their own standards and UIs down our throats, and keeping the innovation that happens on their platforms from spreading to the others (very greedy).

Like I said before, we need different OS’s and can use hundreds of different competing devices. What we don’t need are websites that work on one device beautifully, but not on others. We need a good idea of what it means to build apps for a multitude of devices, not just one or two, and we need companies and people who aren’t afraid to take the initiative to break the boundaries between the devices.

Let me be completely frank: The iPhone is not better than the Pre. The Blackberry line is not better than Android. And Palm, by far, is not better than any of the others. They’re all just different devices that fulfill different needs for different types of people. But, within those differences, there are areas that we need to start setting standards for.

Otherwise, we’ll just end up with another mess like before. It will end up getting fixed eventually, but why wait? Let’s start making changes to the whole infrastructure and concept of mobile device platforms now, for the betterment of us all.

Why am I saying this? ‘Cause I’m sick of new interfaces for websites being released for some devices but not for others. I’m tired of going to a website and not being able to use the menu cause it’s built with Flash. I’m sick of hearing the endless debates about this device being better because it uses some obscure standard that no one else really cares about. And I especially don’t want to have to develop applications or websites that behave differently in different browsers, simply because their maker’s didn’t want to work with the other companies.

But again, that’s just my humble opinion.

- Sent from my Palm Pre

The Palm Pre Challenge is a series of articles written by Tim Stiffler-Dean. For 30 days, he uses a Palm Pre exclusively for all of his computing needs. You can read all of the Palm Pre Challenge articles here.

Follow Tim Stiffler-Dean and his Palm Pre Challenge here on webOSroundup.com, or on Twitter: @anotherguy and #PalmPreChallenge. You can also see his personal blog AnotherGuy.us