I do wonder if WebOS had a chance. There was so much overhead in the UI I’m not sure it would have gotten to the point where performance was good enough before it failed anyway.

Today it wouldn’t be an issue, but in ‘09 or ‘10 it was non-trivial.

Great UI design though. I’m still amazed how long it took for others to steal the card metaphor and some of the other great features. Like the Touchstone. We’re finally living in that world most of a decade later.