Too many rounded corners! There's no law against right angles, and rounded corners on top of rounded corners make for "soft" boundaries.
For example, look at the first screenshot. Large round buttons. Above that, large round header (or something). Above that? Small round tab (title bar?). Those elements are all so confusing that Palm is forced to use colors and gradients to distinguish them (the awkward hard grey fill on the header and the "fade into nothingness" alpha of the title bar).
Worse? Look at what happens when you scroll that form up a little in screenshot #2. What is going on here? It turns out it's not the header that has the round corners. Those corners are some sort of mask we're viewing the form through. Not only is this effect completely divorced from any physical metaphor we may be familiar with, but also ensures anything that's just below the title bar gets rounded. If it happens to be the rounded frameset containing rounded buttons and round switches that we see a little lower in the screenshot... well, that's going to be a tiring interface to mentally parse.
They aped the glitz of the iPhone's design, but forgot to look for (or perhaps discounted the existence of) any reason behind it. The result is a beautifully shaded mess.
Looks pretty enough, but... why are some of the labels and fields the opposite order from the convention (screenshot 2 - labels on the right, fields on the left) and the other way around in other screenshots?
I don't take that as a good sign of the overall quality and polish of the end product.
So much of this UI looks like it was ripped right from the iPhone... I'm all for innovation, and as they say "A rising tide floats all boats". Just PLEASE don't brag about WebOS UI innovation when the WebOS developers have had 2+ years to study Apples interface designs.
I agree with the initial post completely, but given Palm's position, if you can't make something better, you could do worse than basing your design on the best of class available.
I think a more accurate automotive analogy would be comparing a Hyundai to a Honda.
I agree - however, it does look REALLY nice. It's sort of how a Toyota sedan looks a lot like a Honda sedan - at some point user interface design tends to all point to the same "holy grail" of ease if use, so it's not a surprise that WebOS looks like this. I'd wager a bet too that Microsoft's next Mobile OS release has a lot of similarities with the iPhone interface as well, since it is simply good design.
It doesn't remind me of the iPhone so much as OS X. I'm uncertain why they would want to associate their new product with Apple's visual branding. I read the thing twice thinking I'd made some mistake and this was an Apple-led joint venture. Maybe it was a 'because we can' thing, but if I was Palm's head of marketing I'd be ripping someone a new one right now.
For example, look at the first screenshot. Large round buttons. Above that, large round header (or something). Above that? Small round tab (title bar?). Those elements are all so confusing that Palm is forced to use colors and gradients to distinguish them (the awkward hard grey fill on the header and the "fade into nothingness" alpha of the title bar).
Worse? Look at what happens when you scroll that form up a little in screenshot #2. What is going on here? It turns out it's not the header that has the round corners. Those corners are some sort of mask we're viewing the form through. Not only is this effect completely divorced from any physical metaphor we may be familiar with, but also ensures anything that's just below the title bar gets rounded. If it happens to be the rounded frameset containing rounded buttons and round switches that we see a little lower in the screenshot... well, that's going to be a tiring interface to mentally parse.
They aped the glitz of the iPhone's design, but forgot to look for (or perhaps discounted the existence of) any reason behind it. The result is a beautifully shaded mess.