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Palm's new Pre cellphone is about to be available and the early reviews are mostly positive. In terms of checklist features, like many "iPhone killers," the Pre sounds great: it's got all the hardware of the iPhone plus a physical keyboard and removable battery the iPhone lacks. The design is stylish, and the operating system sounds like it's actually got a handful of innovative features. But I still can't figure out the appeal.

Basically the Pre is as close to a clone of Apple's iPhone as you can get. Palm has borrowed (stolen?) much of the iPhone's gesture user interface and design: with the keyboard drawer closed the thing looks like an iPhone, and many of the screens are nearly identical (like the Pre's "launcher" screen which has a grid of colorful app icons and four favorite apps on the bottom). Even the pricing is almost exactly the same.

So where's the innovation?