Emblaze First Else Officially Shelved

Waitaminute---why didn't Palm just stay whole in 2003? 2003 was the one year that Palm released hardware that was basically cutting-edge, (Zire 71, T|C, T3) and not overpriced. It was also the last year Palm was still "Palm" and Garnet was still competitive and not yet antiquated. ost pundits still maintain that the secret for smartphone success nowdays is to roll yer own hardware, OS, app store and overall ecosystem (RIM & Apple and, to a far lesser extent, MeeGo & WebOS). An intact Palm could have been in a perfect position to blaze that trail YEARS ago. Someone (a former Palm V & Zire user who is a current BB user) asked me yesterday "Did Apple invent mobile apps? Why didn't people talk about apps before the iPhone?" I told him that his damn Palm V had apps ten years ago and he said "Really? Well, why was it so hard to get 'em?"

Had Palm & PalmSource not been so mind-bogglingly incompetent and shipped a device--ANY device (phone, PDA etc) with Cobalt sometime in the 2004/2005 timeframe (idealy 6.1 in time for the 2004 holiday season) with "modern" features such as large 320x480 touchscreen smartphones, multitasking, protected memory, modern wi-fi protocols (G, WPA/WPA2 security), support for >128mb RAM & >4GB storage volumes, simultaneous cellular/wi-fi/BT radios, etc, they could have anticipated and even stolen some of the preliminary thunder from RIM & Apple in the critical 2006-2007 period when smartphones began becoming mainstream devices. I didn't own a smartphone until June 2006 and only did so after seeing scores of friends & colleagues happily using Crackberries and the occaisonal WinMob device. Of course, staying on the Palm OS bandwagon by that point pretty much necessitated jumping from a PDA to a Treo.

Instead of innovating, Access/PalmSource has lived off of dwindling Netfront dumbphone browser royalties and Palm played smoke 'n mirror shell games with shareholders' money until the HP acquisition. Both companies piddled around and accomplished little of note over the past half-decade + and are in the final stages of the concluding chapters in their long, strange sagas. Sad, sad, sad.

Looking around the mobile landscape nowadays, everything is web/cloud/flash/HTML5/media/social networking. Very little focus is shown towards PIM, one-handed usability, coherent UI elements or integrating all aspects of a device's functionality. Basically, the kind of stuff Palm and PalmSource could've done better than anyone else. Apple leads in this regard and still, IMHO, falls short in many areas from what Palm was doing years ago.

Sorry for the rant. It's just tragic to see another dismal turn for a former 'Palm company'. I almost feel ashamed wasting the past 6 years clinging to Palm OS and my precious PIM data hoping for some kind of turnaround or renaissance by those guys. Maybe Gekko really struck a nerve!?!
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->Verizon Moto Droid + Verizon Palm Centro

I love the part @ apps. You have to give Apple some props here. They have shown the capability to look at where tech is, see the weakness, produce an elegant solution, market that solution until the masses believe it's cool, then keep improving the $olution while the masses marvel at what they "invented". Palm had the smartphone world at it's feet when the Treo 600 rocked the world. Ohhh how you, I, and a host of others who have left, begged for them to do basically what Apple finally did. The utter internal confusion never allowed it and the Apple seized the moment.

One thing you did not touch on much was Micro$oft. They were the "Google" of the last decade that Palm struggled with. They haven't exactly blazed a trail lately either and look destined to mediocrity with their 2 pronged attack to me.

Disagree with the Apple OS superiority over WebOS. I see it the other way. iOS 4 on my son's 3GS looks long in the tooth and a step behind my Pre Plus with WebOS 1.4x. He marvels at it almost daily. But Palm dug itself such a massive hole that "coming close" to the iPhone won't cut it now.

Still, that was as accurate as I've seen.
Pat Horne

Next!

You call everyone psycho that you do not understand.

E+T

Stop crying you'll be fine. Its only one post. I'll check for the author more carefully.

E-T

E-T

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MeeGo? Puhleeze. Non-starter.

Hey, the guy ASKED for it, unzipping his fly and wagging NOTHING all over the place. Where is his ACCESS god today?

Yea. I remember how he really went for my throat when I stated ALP was (is?) vapourware.

Google's Android achieved in two years what Access failed to do in five with Cobalt and ALP - get incorporated onto products which people actually use.

Google with its free linux-based Android didn't so much put the nail in the coffin of ALP but rather cremated it and dumped the ashes into a black hole.

Now that we have Google's Android, Apple's iOS, HP's WebOS, RIM et al, it's time for ACCESS to follow Michael Dell's advice whilst they still have the shirts on their backs:

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-203937.html

Perhaps Google may purchase ACCESS and incorporate elements of ALP into Android 3.0?

Google can afford to throw a bunch of cash at smart developers to get them to create a good mobile OS, and release it for free. There are only a few companies with wildly successful core product lines that can afford to pay for mo ey-losing secondary ventures with the hope that it will soon become profitable.

There is no way to know, but my guess is that Android has not yet turned a profit for Google. A few years of development, zero royalties, and cost of legal defense versus the increased mobile web search traffic. It's hard to quantify, but if Google sees this being huge in five years, they are so profitable right now, it doesn't really matter. They're the Microsoft of the new millennium.

The pixels in the nanoresonator displays are about ten times smaller than those on a typical computer screen, and about eight times smaller than the pixels on the iPhone 4, which are about 78 microns, according to Guo.

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/University-of-Michigan-nanoresonators/

http://www.boygeniusreport.com/gallery/?gallery=44&pid=644

i really think MSFT has lost its way.

mikecane wrote:
webOS on that hardware would be KILLER. Android? Eh, ew, no.

You're just lucky I didn't have my frikkin eyes ruined by seeing a Retina Display today. You can thank the ongoing incompetency of RatShack for that. What a rotten store layout. Since they put all the phones near the entrance, they're afraid people will run in and steal them. So people who want to TRY them have to look at stupid non-functioning dummies. And they wonder why their stores are always empty?