Sam OliverRich Dellinger worked as the User Interface Design Architect at Palm for nearly 4 years. During his time there, he invented the WebOS notification system and co-developed the application framework used by the operating system found on Palm's Pre.
Dellinger was also the visual designer, interaction designer and engineer of WebOS, and he created the icon suite for Palm, Sprint and other partner applications.
Dellinger, who has more than 15 years of experience in the technology industry, was hired by Apple in May, according to his LinkedIn page. It will be his second stint with the Cupertino, Calif., company, as he worked there from 1999 to 2006 in a variety of roles, including tech support, Web design, and a 9 month stint as a user interface designer for Mac OS X, the iPod and iPhone.
"I've worked at two companies over the past 15 years," he wrote this week via Twitter, where he also wrote he was attending new employee orientation on June 1. "There are great people doing amazing work at both places."
Palm has seen an exodus of employees since it was announced in April that the struggling smartphone maker would be purchased by computer maker HP for $1.2 billion. HP has said it plans to leverage the technology in WebOS to create tablet-style devices to compete with Apple's iPad. Company officials have suggested they are less interested in the smartphone market.
"Delliger represents the latest in what could be called a minor brain drain at Palm," wrote Palm enthusiast site PrecCentral.net, "after (senior vice president) of software and services Mike Abbot left to join Twitter and the main designer for webOS, Matias Duarte, left to join up with Android. We wish Dellinger the best of luck at Apple."
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59 Comments
Hopefully this means Apple realized they've needed a MUCH better notification system for a while now, and this guy seems like he might be able to streamline it in very nicely. Having worked with Apple in the past doesn't hurt, either, since he already knows what will be expected.
Hopefully this means Apple realized they've needed a MUCH better notification system for a while now, and this guy seems like he might be able to streamline it in very nicely. Having worked with Apple in the past doesn't hurt, either, since he already knows what will be expected.
What the iOS interface needs is:
1) Improved notifications
2) Daily Events, Weather, etc. on the lock screen (as an option of course)
3) Quick access to turn on/off GPS/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/3G from the top bar instead of having to fish through pages and pages of settings.
Do that, and the OS would be damn near perfect IMHO.
A notification hub would be most welcome addition and it's kind of surprising it wasn't in 4.0 considering it's so fundamentally flawed.
It's odd to see the mass exodus of WebOS designers. I would figure HP would try to keep everyone since they've never been good at UI design and they'll need these same people to work on the WebOS tablet.
Hopefully this means Apple realized they've needed a MUCH better notification system for a while now, and this guy seems like he might be able to streamline it in very nicely. Having worked with Apple in the past doesn't hurt, either, since he already knows what will be expected.
Let me get this straight. Homey left Apple and went to Palm and now Apple has hired him back. He started at Apple first so be basically stole Apple's stuff and gave it to Palm. Yeah that is what happened.
Rubinstein and this guy took Apple's culture and gave it to the Palm's people to make a quick buck.
I'm not surprised. there are a lot of ideas at Apple that don't get out the door but they were developed there(even if they don't get made they still belong to the company). Webos has a lot of hypercard in it. Webos is nothing but the iphone OS and hypercard with a fully realized state of play. Period.
A notification hub would be most welcome addition and it's kind of surprising it wasn't in 4.0 considering it's so fundamentally flawed.
It's odd to see the mass exodus of WebOS designers. I would figure HP would try to keep everyone since they've never been good at UI design and they'll need these same people to work on the WebOS tablet.
It's actually quite typically when "smaller" companies getting acquired to have large employee shifts. Typically it's due to the new style of management the larger company employs. It's not unique to this deal.
With that being said, I think Apple knows that it needs to revise their notification system but there were other things that got prioritized. I mean, 1,500 new APIs for developers and all the other new stuff in 4.0 is no small feat.