Word: pre
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...When I add a new friend on Facebook, for instance, a few moments later, he appears as a contact on my Pre. If he is already there, WebOS is smart enough to just add anything that is missing - his birthday, say - to the existing contact...
Mashing up all those feeds in one place could be confusing. But the Pre handles it intelligently via something it calls Universal Search. The Pre is a slide phone - a touchscreen on its face gives way to a keyboard below. Simply start typing, and WebOS pulls up a pane that searches your contacts and also gives you the option to search via Google, Wikipedia or Twitter. You can type, "How fast does a zebra run," hit a Google button and get the answer. Pretty sweet...
...bigger idea here is that WebOS is designed to simulate the Web itself. In fact, anyone who can build a website can write applications for this platform, which is why Rubinstein expects a flood of Pre apps shortly. "The user environment in WebOS is a website," Rubinstein says. That's a powerful hook, especially if you believe that the Web will continue to grow relentlessly...
...Pre does have issues. I've used two for the past few weeks and run into a couple of early glitches. One was an operating-system bug that caused my first Pre to crash. Fixed, says the company. The other was a hardware issue that drained my battery in five hours. Palm says that's an anomaly but is investigating. The other things I disliked are pretty minor and easily corrected. Cut and paste is very limited and clumsy to use; there are only a dozen applications available at launch, and your IT guys can't remotely wipe...
Apple is taking a "Pre who?" approach so far. But it's doubtless ticked off that the Pre cheekily syncs with Apple's proprietary iTunes software. (Rubinstein claims he's doing Apple a favor by making it easier for Pre owners to buy music from the iTunes store.) Needless to say, Apple is hardly standing still. New iPhones are rumored - perhaps they'll be unveiled at an Apple developers' conference on June 8 - and its operating system will get an upgrade...