Any time a new thing comes out with the notion that it’s going to “kill” the existing market dominator, it is almost certainly doomed to fail, and fail spectacularly. Nowhere is this truer than when competing with Apple. Because of this, my natural response to the Palm Pre is to mock it derisively, but let’s give it a fair chance. After all, it’s not even out yet.

The big deal about the Pre is that it’s not tied to any specific ‘main’ computer, and that all your data is wirelessly synced with various accounts online. It presents this to you using a WebKit-based interface they are calling “webOS” (no word yet on the actual underlying OS) It’s Linux. Also, right now Palm is claiming all third-party development (which will be presented to the user through the Palm “App Catalog”) will be based on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This is what Apple originally claimed about the iPhone, except that it was a lie to make the big SDK/App Store reveal much more impressive. It just wasn’t ready yet at the time. Palm could have a similar secret, or they may change their minds later, but for now we have to take them at their word. It’s doubtful that very many interesting apps could be creating given those limitations.

Physically, the screen is much smaller than the iPhone, which makes the UI do some interesting things to cope. Lots of elements are represented as full screen windows that zoom out slightly, then slide off the screen temporarily while something else comes into view. It also has a fairly fluid (at least in the demos) multitouch capacitive screen.

The sliding keyboard is where Palm sharply disagrees with Apple on design. In the original iPhone announcement, Steve Jobs began by explaining why it would not have a physical keyboard. He made a very strong case for a dynamic, virtual touchscreen. In addition to not being tied to particular buttons for the life of the device, there are also fewer parts to manufacture, assemble, and potentially fail. Making the device slide open also knocks a point off the design of the thing. Having one, singular shape makes the design iconic and memorable. The division among users over the physical/virtual keyboard argument may never end. I had to use my iPhone’s keyboard for a few weeks before it finally clicked with me and I didn’t have any typing trouble. But it doesn’t look like Apple is going to budge on this no matter how many users complain. And if Palm chooses to serve those people, well then good for them.

The Pre doesn’t look nearly as much like a turd as all the other clearly intentional iPhone wannabes from major players. By all accounts so far (keeping in mind it is not even available yet), it seems to be a very good smartphone. But I suspect the majority of the hype is coming from people who have never used an iPhone, or very intensely value one of the features the iPhone lacks and the Pre has.

In other words, if the scale of smartphone quality was measured on a scale from 1-10, with 10 being the magical Tricorder all nerds fantasize about, the vast majority of products out there are hovering around 2-3, the iPhone is sitting at 9, and the Pre is around a 6. It’s not bad compared to the rest of the spread, but it’s no iPhone.