I could see Amazon using the card metaphor as a custom multitasking Android launcher with full power of a pending patent application behind it while ditching the remainder of the OS. It's the one distinction webOS has had in UX and one that's generally garnered the most positive attention.

I could not, however, see Amazon hedging on Android by holding webOS in state. That would be a rather insane move given the audience the Kindle Fire will attract from Day One.

What about Dalvik and the on-going Oracle case? webOS has no Java, there is another distinction for you. It's the full stack in webOS that is unique, not just the UI.

That's partially true; webOS 3.0 has no Java as far as I'm aware, deferring to node.js for its services instead. webOS prior to that (e.g., Mojo era) contains an absolute trove of Java all over the damned place. I remember dissecting the media system looking for private APIs in parallel with developing a webOS application and many points led right back to Java-based services that assisted in doing a lot of perfunctory tasks.

In fact, I distinctly remember asking the Palm webOS developers when I discovered in their Java-based media services a particular call that instantly parsed SHOUTcast/Icecast-style playlists of many various formats with ease whether it'd become a public API call. It never did.

If HP races to finally reconcile the two sides as a promised a half-year ago a la Android's ICS, then there might be no obstacles to the Java argument. Until then, however...

> Amazon could take the patents and throw WebOS away.

...along with at least 1 million webOS users? Who are currently buying software from the webOS store, and are likely to buy future webOS hardware from Amazon (or whoever else how makes it)? Really?

There's no market for TouchPad software. Those customers just bought TouchPads because they were cheap, not because they want to use them regularly (like iPad and probably Kindle Fire). If TouchPad wasn't $99, they couldn't even sell 25,000 of them. They sold 1M by losing money and going out of business, not by creating an ecosystem which can 'trap' customers (and make them buy their future products just because their apps and music works only on that device) like what Apple and Amazon do.

Actually, I had just been waiting for the price to come down, but I am going to use my Touchpad for just about everything but development. I love WebOS, and I'm not saying there are many of us, but WebOS fans are pretty devoted. Kind of like Apple fanboys back in the day.

> There's no market for TouchPad software.

Tell that to this guy: http://twitter.com/#!/PalmFlashCards/status/1147168660978442...