The launch of the Palm Pre is coming up soon, on June 6 (see Keith’s Blog posting “Palm Pre Debuts June 6“). This is a couple of days before Apple’s WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) where Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 3.0. Although I have used Palm products for years, and really wish Palm all the best with the launch of their new smartphone and the webOS, the thought of switching to the Palm Pre, or at least trying it has not even crossed my mind. There are a lot of technology experts studying it with interest and ready to jump in. Maybe if the Palm Pre wasn’t being released on Sprint first I would be more interested. Personally I have had one bad experience with Sprint which put me off them totally.

Palm does seem a bit touchy about their webOS though. Several months ago, TealPoint Software came out with a launcher for the Palm called TealOS. It mimicked the look and feel of the WebOS on the Palm Pre. So you could have a your old Treo 680 sporting what looked like a webOS interface.

Now TealPoint develop software almost exclusively for the Palm platform, and are likely to already have some applications in the works for the new WebOS. After a beta testing phase TealOS was released. I tried it and was interested enough to buy a copy. Several point releases later, Palm objected and forced TealPoint to withdraw the software. Now this launcher was basically giving users a taste of what the PalmPre interface could be like, and Palm appeared to get uppity and had it shutdown. Nice one Palm!