Why necessarily limit it to a physical device? How about also putting it on some sort of web applet? To make this slick, you'd have to keep the virtual/emulated Palm Pre synced up with the physical one. But if the software on the Palm Pre can integrate all of my disparate social networking data, this would be very useful, maybe even a killer app. If you come up with a way to get GPS location data or the equivalent into the web app, then you turn any netbook into an interface for your "Mobile OS" and <i>netbooks in general become a selling point for your phone</i>. Heck, if you do it well, <i>every web browser connected to broadband becomes a selling point for your phone</i>.<p>Basically, you'd be going one better than MobileMe. Considering the weakness of that part of Apple's offerings, that seems like a good battle to pick.<p>Some would be afraid that the netbook would prevent the phone sale. If that were true, then people would be buying netbooks instead of phones. It's actually the other way around.<p><a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/half_of_all_iphone_usage_wifi.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/half_of_all_iphone_usag...</a>
From the article:<p>"Hopefully Palm will think about opening up their software to 3rd party manufactures so we can see it on some other devices"<p>People have been making this argument about OS X for years, and all have failed to realize the importance of hardware/software synergy.<p>Palm would be better off engineering this tablet device themselves. 3rd parties are nothing but trouble.