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TealOS: great Palm software you are prohibited from buying (continued)
Using TealOS makes me want to buy a Pre. Watching the Palm corporation in action does the opposite.
About TealOS
I'm going to give you a brief review of TealOS. TealPoint is honoring its agreement with Palm and no longer sells the software, but I did manage to find it for sale online at a source where it's no longer available. Regardless, I think it's an important program and worthy of notice, and perhaps Palm will be smart enough to reconsider.
"I used to be a Palm advocate, but in the last few years their odd decisions have weakened my faith in the company, and I know I'm not alone in this"
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Figure A shows the main start-up screen of TealOS. At the bottom is the Quick Launch bar, a five-item button bar for frequently used applications. I like the rounded corners and the sleekness of the layout, and I also like that the color scheme is fully customizable.
FIGURE A
 
You can see the TealOS main screen. Roll over picture for a larger image.
One of the main features of Palm's webOS is the card metaphor, in which your various applications can be sorted and shuffled as if they were cards [HyperCard (from the 80s) anyone? -Ed.]. While current Palms cannot do the multi-tasking that will be part of the Pre, TealOS does incorporate the cards, as shown in Figure B.
FIGURE B
 
The card metaphor in TealOS is purely for selecting a program to run, but it works well. Roll over picture for a larger image.
You can choose how many cards are kept (up to twenty) and you can shuffle through them, delete them (by flicking them up to the top of the screen, which is insanely fun), and click on one to start the application in question. There is also a swipe mode for moving between cards while in another application.
The most exciting part of TealOS, though, is the Wave Launcher. My screen shot software was unfortunately not able to capture this in action on my Treo, so I have borrowed Figure C's screen shot from the TealOS documentation. The Wave Launcher opens with an upward stroke from the bottom of the screen in any application, and gives you access to another five commonly used applications. The sleekly curving Wave Launcher is unlike anything I've seen on a Palm before, and it's hugely functional as well.
FIGURE C
 
The Wave Launcher lets you easily access one of five applications. Roll over picture for a larger image.
If you've been keeping count, you've got ten applications easily accessed through the Quick Launch bar and Wave Launcher, and another twenty available as cards. All of the hardware buttons are still active, of course, so you can set even more applications to run from those buttons.
But if all those applications aren't quite enough, there's also a more traditional launcher screen, as shown in Figure D, from which you can choose any of your other applications. If you look closely, you can see the same background (a picture of my mother's golden retriever puppies) from Figure A; the launcher screen is translucent by default, giving the launcher a very modern appearance.
FIGURE D
 
The launcher screen gives you access to the rest of your applications with a clean and modern style. Roll over picture for a larger image.
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