Palm has reportedly leaked an early edition of an update to the operating system run by the Palm Pre. According to reports by Pre users who say they’ve received the update, called webOS 1.2., there are two particularly interesting changes.
One likely change is that LEDs built into the Pre will now notify users of new emails, and other events.
“With this feature, the LEDs that are on both sides of the Gesture Area will blink to notify users of events. Users will have the option to turn this on or off,” reports Brighthand.com, which offers a video demonstration said to be made by one of the recipients of the “leaked” OS update.
The other new feature is less likely to be as universally welcome as the first. It’s the ability for Palm – somewhat like Amazon reaching into those Kindles to remove, ironically, copies of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984” – to remove applications from a user’s device. Presumably, the feature is intended for Palm to protect users from malware or bugs.
According to the Palm Info Center, when this happens, users will receive a notice stating: “Palm had to delete this application from the App Catalog and your device. If you paid for this app, your money will be refunded.”
The Palm Pre, the first device to use webOS, arrived on June 6, and by July 23 Palm had already pushed out webOS 1.1, which offered several enterprise-friendly enhancements, as well as the ability for the Pre to sync with iTunes, Apple’s proprietary music app. On July 15, Apple had updated iTunes to block this functionality. The cat-and-mouse game has since resulted in Palm filing a complaint against Apple to the USB Implementers Forum.
When Palm will release webOS 1.2, which Palm Info Center reports will additionally offer 9,000 other modifications, is still unknown.