FierceWireless Editor Phil Goldstein spoke with Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm and a former executive at Apple, about what he’s doing these days, the influence webOS has had on other mobile platforms, and whether he would have done anything differently.
A few snippets:
FierceWireless: It seems like iOS 7 is taking lots of multitasking cues from webOS. How do you think that platform, webOS, influenced other mobile platforms?
Rubinstein: It’s not just mobile platforms. If you look at the notifications on Mac OS X, it looks just like webOS, too. We did a lot of things that were very, very innovative. Obviously, multitasking, notifications, Synergy, how we handled the multiple cards. There’s a long list of stuff we did that has been adopted by Microsoft, Apple and Android. Our over-the-air updates and mechanism has been updated by everybody. Our whole Synergy concept is now becoming much more common. I don’t think anyone has implemented it as well as we did yet, but clearly they’re all heading down that direction.
FierceWireless: Looking back, if you could do things over again with the rollout of webOS, would you do anything differently?
Rubinstein: Well, I’m not sure I would have sold the company to HP [Hewlett-Packard]. That’s for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don’t get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight… Palm was dying when I got there. It wasn’t like we had the pick of the litter. Everybody forgets that Palm was pretty much dead when we did the recapitalization. It had no future at the time.
Read more in the full interview, complete with Rubinstein’s usual attempts at revisionist history, here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’ve forgotten nothing, BS-shoveler. We told you that you were the walking dead the day you unveled webOS and that the HP sale was the final nail in the coffin the day you inked the deal:
Here’s what we wrote just after beleaguered Palm unveiled their Palm Pre and webOS: Palm’s Pre dog and pony show is nothing more than takeover bait. They simply do not have the resources necessary to create another mobile platform, especially one that is superfluous. If Palm’s Pre is not a ruse, then those responsible are kidding themselves. — MacDailyNews Take, January 21, 2009
Here’s what we wrote the day HP bought Palm: Okay, so who’s salivating over an HP webOS phone and/or slate PC with no ecosystem of which to speak? That’s right, no one who doesn’t look forward to spending at least 24 hours cooped up alone inside the server room. iPaq.
Buh-bye, Palm. — MacDailyNews Take, April 28, 2010
It doesn’t get much clearer than that. Neither does this:
Steve Jobs shifted the paradigm. Not you, you footnote (if you’re even that lucky).
Final question: Who has bigger delusions of grandeur, Jon Rubinstein or Kanye West?
[Attribution: InformationWeek. Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz,” “Dan K.” and “Jamie N.” for the heads up.]