Palm CEO To Guest On Inaugural Engadget Show

Posted By: Tim Carroll Thursday, September 10, 2009 9:04:56 AM

What fortuitous timing. Hot on the heels of Palm's biggest announcement since the unveiling of the Pre, Engadget has announced that the debut episode of their filmed-live Engadget Show will feature Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein as their special guest. If Engadget are anything like us, they'll be asking some pointed questions asked about Palm's pretty new Pixi, webOS 1.2, Pre sales and (of course) the ongoing cat-and-mouse battle between Apple and Palm and the controversial webOS iTunes syncing.

The show premieres this weekend in New York City on Sunday, September 13th, at Tishman Auditorium at Parsons The New School for Design. You can catch all the details at Engadget.

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According to a live blogger...

SeldomVisitor @ 9/13/2009 3:23:45 PM #

...about 200-300 showed up (room for 450+) and Rubinstein actually asked without knowing the answer beforehand "How many Pres out there!?" and three people raised their hands.

There was/is a loveblog on the Precentral forums:

http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pre/202857-jon-rubinstein-speaks.html

RE: According to a live blogger...

SeldomVisitor @ 9/13/2009 3:25:48 PM #

Interesting typo...anywho, it for SURE was NOT a "loveblog"...

RE: According to a live blogger...

abosco @ 9/13/2009 7:13:56 PM #

Well from the early estimates and what we've seen in the real world so far, I think it's clear that the Pre has done as well as the launch of the Storm or G1. It's definitely a success for a small company (compared to Apple, RIM, or HTC), but it's plainly obvious that it hasn't been the runaway success that McNamee or Engadget would have you believe.

I see space for growth, but if they hope to break away from the pack, they're going to have to do a better job of differentiating the platform.

RE: According to a live blogger...

hkklife @ 9/13/2009 7:36:00 PM #

...And differentiating between their entry-level & flagship products as well. Other than the distressing loss of 80 vertical pixels on the Pixi, it comes quite close to the Pre in most key aspects and will likely cannibalize a good number of Pre sales. I hope it doesn't up as a "success" like the Centro (i.e. huge volumes but no real margins).
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->?

RE: According to a live blogger...

Tim Carroll @ 9/13/2009 8:07:49 PM #

^^ I think Palm would've learned their lesson from the Centro. Colligan said at that investor conference early this year that they wanted to get their margins back up, so one would imagine that Pixi is being fairly heavily subsidized - possibly even more so than the Pre?. Without wifi, carriers might be more willing to do so since they'll make more back on data (although I don't know how that works for Sprint, who offer cheap unlimited plans).

I think they are reasonably differentiated though. The chassis makes the difference clear (which was distinctly not the case with the Treo and the Centro, where you'd have thought the cheaper Centro was simply the latest, smallest model), with the exposed QWERTY saying "Hey, I'm a messenger." Pre's hidden keyboard and larger screen say "Hey, I'm a web browser/media player".

Hardware-wise I don't think it would be especially wise for Palm to make the innards radically different. The similarities need to be enough that apps can be developed for both devices with a minimum of hassle. So long as they look significantly different, they'll be okay. After all, it's only folks like us who pay close attention to the guts of these things anyways.

As for the liveblog, interesting. but personally i'm waiting for the footage before I write a post about it. Shame it wasn't streamed live!
Sometime PIC blogger
Treo 270 --> Treo 650 --> Treo 680 --> Centro
I apologise for any and all emoticons in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.

RE: According to a live blogger...

abosco @ 9/13/2009 8:20:44 PM #

The similarities need to be enough that apps can be developed for both devices with a minimum of hassle.

I would have thought the same thing, but their second webOS device has a different screen resolution from their first model. I understand the opinion that HTML & CSS coding will allow it to scale well, but let's not kid ourselves. This will complicate things.

Also, I think it's time for Palm to start increasing the storage space. Palm has never been a company to be on the bleeding edge of raw specs (thanks to their traditionally glacial pace of development, 1999-2007), but this is important if you don't have any external storage options and you want to push your multimedia capabilities and burgeoning application catalog.

-Bosco
m105 -> NX70v -> NX80v -> iPhone -> iPhone 3G

RE: According to a live blogger...

hkklife @ 9/13/2009 9:49:37 PM #

I could absolutely see Palm/Sprint including FREE storage space with new devices. Like "8GB Internal + NEW FREE 2GB External Storage". The 2GB of extra space, of courser, would be some silly cloud-based "my stuff" repository where your older apps reside and are swapped on and off your device as your needs change. Asus has been trying to do something similar lame with their "EEE Storage" thing to try and circumvent the Microsoft-mandated 160GB HDD limit on XP-based netbooks. It's pretty lame.

I honestly think that WebOS currently has no ability to see an external storage volume. And I doubt Palm intends to add it. They much prefer to mimic the Apple model of fixed storage and expedited obsolesence due to no flash memory card slot.
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->?

RE: According to a live blogger...

Tim Carroll @ 9/13/2009 10:53:09 PM #

Bosco:

I would have thought the same thing, but their second webOS device has a different screen resolution from their first model. I understand the opinion that HTML & CSS coding will allow it to scale well, but let's not kid ourselves. This will complicate things.

True, but Palm have said from the outset that webOS was going to be running on devices with different screen resolutions, so it's not like devs shouldn't have been prepared for this. And it's better that they're releasing Pixi early on, before they have a large stockpile of apps that require re-jigging.

A guy from Keen Studios (who make Checkers) told me that it's not too hard to fix things. Enabling scrolling in app requires only one line of Javascript on each card's code (disableSceneScroller: false). But if need be there's also a method to use JS to check the screen size, which will then dynamically adjust the size of any hard images that might be cut off by the smaller screen.

The other thing is that webOS apps already have to take into consideration that the available vertical screen space is going to dynamically change as new notifications pop up on the bottom of the screen. (i think it was jason robitaille on precentral who noted that)

If DarthRepublican or bhartman34 is reading: I know you guys have Pres. what happens now when you're playing a game or watching a video and notifications come in? I'd test it out on the emulator but I can't be bothered right now...
Sometime PIC blogger
Treo 270 --> Treo 650 --> Treo 680 --> Centro
I apologise for any and all emoticons in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.

RE: According to a live blogger...

Tim Carroll @ 9/13/2009 11:18:37 PM #

There's a Precentral thread that goes into more detail on the screen sizes: http://forums.precentral.net/web-os-development/202141-building-applications-webos-not-pre.html#post1879567

Kris:

I honestly think that WebOS currently has no ability to see an external storage volume.

If it doesn't, it will soon. Someone on webos-internals is working on getting the microUSB port to recognize external mass storage devices (i.e. usb thumb drives)

RE: According to a live blogger...

DarthRepublican @ 9/14/2009 9:52:44 PM #

If DarthRepublican or bhartman34 is reading: I know you guys have Pres. what happens now when you're playing a game or watching a video and notifications come in? I'd test it out on the emulator but I can't be bothered right now...

I usually just play games on the subway when I can't get a signal so I rarely get email or sms. But when I do, they just pop up along the bottom of the screen when I'm playing games since I mostly play simple board games.

I think I do hear a buzz when notifications come in when I'm watching a video but the video continues to play at full screen. Even with video playing I can see the Dashboard ever so briefly when I press the volume keys. And of course the video stops and goes into card mode when I press the center button or swipe up from the gesture area.
Screw convergence
Palm III->Visor Deluxe->Visor Platinum->Visor Prism->Tungsten E->Palm LifeDrive->Palm TX->Palm Pre
Visor Pro+VisorPhone->Treo 180g->Treo 270->Treo 600->Treo 680->T-Mobile G1->Palm Pre
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