New drool-worthy WebOS screenshots emerge
boygeniusreport.com
boygeniusreport.com
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.
I don't take that as a good sign of the overall quality and polish of the end product.
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.