Report Claims AT&T webOS Launch Possibly Delayed

No telling what is on McNamee's hands. That guy is creepy on > 1 level.

But, you have to treat those two like a relief pitcher who comes into the game in the 5th inning down 7-2. The odds looked loooong before Eddie C took booked that Priceline flight to Ruby's Mexico beach bungalow.

The loss (as it appears) has to be pinned on those in the hall of shame identified a few articles b4.

Nevertheless, I put zero confidence in Barrons with their vested interest in Palm's collapse.
Pat Horne

as CEO you can't just say - "sorry it didn't work. but i just got here - it's the guys before me's fault." it was his game plan and his missteps and his comedy of errors that result in where they are now. this was his caper. using the Pre for a few hours - i knew it was garbage - he should have too - well before it went to market. he signed off on the creepy advertising. the dumb names. cheap build quality. the lack of features and specs. the list goes on and on. i'd say it was a comedy of errors but it wasn't funny and these weren't accidents. these were deliberate decisions by a bad CEO that bet the company and lost. he might be a good engineer but he's a bad CEO. as noted - Apple hasn't skipped a beat since he left.

Gekko, I humbly disagree.

Though the jury for SURE is still out on whether or not Rubinstein is CEO-qualified, I think he was given an extremely bad situation not when he became CEO - by then it was disastrous, but when he joined Palm as CoB. Others have posted opinions that the whole "plan" was to sell Palm quickly but, due to the extreme exuberance (high-beta) of the stock, the stock price went into the stratosphere making Palm unsellable.

Meaning Palm actually had to get healthy.

And hasn't.

IMHO, all Palm needs to do is become the company that IS sellable - something with a stock price MUCH cheaper than now and a MUCH reduced "footprint" in the industry.

Maybe then they can get sold or...gasp...even continue on!

But I can't see laying any of this (other than the TOO good show at CES a year ago) in Rubinstein's lap.

How about a Palm webOS device that doesn't need a carrier deal? Locking the hardware and the OS being dependent on existence of a carrier deal is a big strategic mistake.

While I'm no fan boy of Apple, they definitely have it right offering carrier and no-carrier versions of the same product design. The iPhone / iPod Touch is going great. There is a buyer pattern of an iPod Touch user moving to an iPhone after their carrier license expires. They are even doing this with the iPad first offering a no-carrier option and a carrier option a month or so later.

This discrimination of WiFi due to carrier kickbacks, IMO, is hurting Palm more than they think. While you can complain about AT&T a lot, they took the deal Apple / Jobs wanted instead of Apple bowing to other wireless carrier baronies that currently exist.

Palm needs to look back at their roots to see where they made it big and work from there. That was a good priced hand-held device that was open ended that ran native (abet 68K but native) code. Everything else (running script languages, embedded carrier support, accessory hardware and third party applications) as an add on option.

IMO, it is a shame that such a brilliant piece of code that is webOS may be held back by some MBA that hasn't written a line of code in their career with myopic market visions.

good points.
Pat Horne

You have that right. Talking about Dodge, in the south whenever the inevitable "Ford or Chevy?" question comes from a sweet young thing I would two step with at a honky tonk, I would tell her, I'm third generation Dodge truck owner.

That would either have her leave the dance floor without me or want to see the back bed of my Dodge truck. Either way, we wouldn't continue dancing. However, with the quality of Dodge truck bodies going to crap in the last ten years, I have moved to a Ford F-150 with a rebuilt engine running the show.

308? who are you, Magnum PI???

As long as we are totally off subject... I looked up my old Corvette club on the web and they are still using the logo I designed about 35 years ago!
Tech Center Labs

Nice work.

E-T

I haven't seen/heard anything relating to production stoppages since, y'know, the LAST production stoppage during the Chinese New Year hoopla.

SV, that is superb advice. Palm needs to go into something akin to hibernation for the next two quarter or two. While in ultra cash-conservation mode they can work on their next-gen Hail Mary device and WebOS 2.0. Meanwhile, they need to try to dump all of that current inventory however possible (and I humbly recommend revisiting my idea from the other day to sell them as commodity devices unlocked/sans contract for $299ish on their website). Meanwhile, look for ONE (max two) good hardware companies (ala HTC) to partner with as WebOS licensees. Work closely with them to adhere to some baseline specs. Drop 320x400 ASAP once the rest of the Pixi stocks are liquidated.
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

Burn the opium fields then build solar fields in place of the opium. This energy grid will employ Afghanistan citizens and the military will have helped the Afghanistan citizens build a solution to training terrorists, financing terrorists and offering something that will sustain the peace while reducing harm caused by the opium trade.

E-T

hkk,

I've been extremely critical of Palm bc I thought (based on what I'd seen) that their efforts were doomed to fail.

I've owned seven different palm os devices, and have always liked Palm - however for the last 2.5 years I've owned different models of iphone.

What you're considering a "high end" device would most likely be considered mid-range by the time such a device can be released.

For a high-end device, I'd like to see Palm use something like a cortex A9, running at a slow enough speed to guarantee at least eight hours of battery life on a single charge.

I think they'd be better off dropping 320 x 480 altogether and bumping up the resolution (along with the physical screen size).

Gekko;

Want me to check the Bloomberg stream on my Droid with this app for ya?

:-(lol) talk about taking advantage. An offer to test one turns into multiples. Patience is a good virtue.

E-T

Would that compliment apply to you too? Based on your concern about people "taking advantage".

E-T

e-t what is your native language? it certainly isn't English!

and you know i'll give you guys all the poop on the Supersonic if/when i get this mythical device!!!

Please, don't bring up the T5. We're still trying to forget!

E-T;

I highly, HIGHLY recommend you read the book "Piloting Palm". Read it, then peruse the PIC archives back to, oh, 2002 or 2003 or so to see the various missteps of Palm since the publication of that book. Then weep at what coulda been!

http://www.amazon.com/Piloting-Palm-Handspring-Handheld-Industry/dp/0471089656

It's a superb read (though I wish it had been published, say, 3 years later than it orginally was) and offers superb insight into the TRUE visionaries that made Palm an early darling of the industry in those go-go mid/late 90s days when the sky seemed to be the limit.
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