Palm has been working a LONG time to produce a next-generation operating systems. First, we heard about Palm 5. It was originally going to be a revolutionary upgrade to the PalmOS but wound up being a simple evolutionary change called Garnet. Then we heard about Palm 6... but that fizzled out without making it onto a single device. Then we heard about the new Linux-based OS called ACCESS... but eventually Palm passed on that entirely. Now, finally, Palm has announced their "real" Next Geneation O/S called "webOS" and actually has a product that runs it, called the Palm PRE. The new webOS is webkit based (same as Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome) and is based around the idea of building Apps using web tools like HTML, JavaScript, and XML. The built-in apps are made to automatically and wirelessly sync with Facebook, Google, etc. to keep your contacts always in sync.
One interesting omissions, sure to raise the ire of Palm's few remaining supporters, appears to be PalmOS backwards compatibility. It appears from the press release that existing PalmOS apps do not work with the new system. This was probably necessary to bring about the radical changes needed for webOS (and probably why it is NOT called PalmOS 6 or 7). But if I had invested hundreeds or thousands of dollars in Palm software, I'd be put out to learn it was all throw-away.
Here is hoping this gives Palm a chance to survive in a future where Apple's iPhone and Google's Android increasingly dominate the landscape.
I'm really excited about this. I'm a big fan of Palm - I still use a Treo 650 - so to see them start to innovate like this is really nice. I can't wait until my next upgrade cycle comes about just so that I can seriously look at one of these devices.
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