McNamee Expects iPhone Users to Switch to Pre

Perhaps I should have added a smilie...I'm looking forward to seeing the Pre "in action" against the iPhone...

iPhone? Yes, I considered it among a cast of thousands of other devices, including Treos, BTW (I think the Treo Pro is the best device Palm has ever made - that opinion probably also includes the Pre, BTW).

However, once stung, twice shy - a long time ago in a different lifetime I bought my spouse and I some outrageously expensive (~$400 each, I think) Palm PDAs and found that it was a TOTALLY useless device for my lifestyle. Within a remarkably short period of time mine was in a plastic bag on a bookshelf, never to be used again - I almost typed "never to be seriously used again" but the fact of the matter is I never used it seriously, period, which is why it ended up "on the shelf"...sorta like "out in the cornfield" for you Twilightzone fans.

So, buy an iPhone or other somewhat equivalent smartphone? Nah - I'll wait til ALL phones are smartphones (soon! Relatively speaking). I have no need for what they offer. ALL phones can do address book stuff right now, including the phones we have right now on our $70-for-two-lines service. Don't need anything else on a phone at this time for my lifestyle. At home, on assignment, I'm SURROUNDED by high-power desktops. In a car, I don't use anything other than phone. On the road - which rarely happens, I use laptops or "business center" computers.

[as I've touted in the past, I never really bought into the idea of a "converged device" and mocked Colligan/Hawkins often about it when they mentioned that was the way to go AND especially when they suddenly changed their tune and said diverged "converged" devices was the way to go:

http://discussion.treocentral.com/palm-general-chat/33796-thoughts-new-communicator.html?highlight=communicator

I remain faithful to that belief]

BTW - McNamee really DID say the Pre would be minimally 300% faster than the iPhone when you "do the web". At first he said "millions of time faster" but cautiously changed that to "a few times faster".

ROFL. Did I hit a nerve?

I'm not afraid to look stupid SV. Especially on the Internet, where stupid is the status quo. In this case, though, I think I have little to fear.

(BTW, you accused me of "telling lies" in another thread - not to mention "making stuff up" in the Pandora interview comments - but both times when I asked for an example you stayed conspicuously silent. Baseless slander... hang on, that wouldn't be poster-bashing, now would it?)

Hey, can you explain to me how that copy-and-paste security exploit on the iPhone works again? :)

^^ Oh, that stings. Especially coming from the troll who was willing to bet money that Apple were going to sue Palm "within weeks".

Over a month ago.

whoops!

BTW freak,

Who was the person who chided Apple when they released the iphone without a proper SDK - and pushed webapps?

It's the same person fawning over the Pre's reliance on webapps - you.

Wunnerful - forgot the link to the "XXX" comment:

http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/7044/#150466

Kettle/pot - my bad for calling what the Pre has "applications" (as noted in the aside in my comment).

Palm has filed a major retraction of, among other things, the original topic of this particular comment thread.

Awwwww...gee whiz....

- http://tinyurl.com/palmretraction

And...

Giggle.

^^ iPhone being announced in January certainly didn't hurt its launch in June...

SeldomVisitor wrote:
Perhaps I should have added a smilie...I'm looking forward to seeing the Pre "in action" against the iPhone...

(This was probably a better spot to put the link.)
Your wish is granted:
http://jkontherun.com/2009/03/12/palm-pre-webcast-tidbit-browser-nearly-4x-faster/

"twrock is infamous around these parts" (from my profile over at Brighthand due to my negative 62 rep points rating)

BTW - it took my rocket desktop 6 seconds to render the same page - gosh, the Pre is as fast as a 3.4GHz desktop!

I thought the Flux Capacitor was a $59.95 add-on!

^^ #1 is the reason why I am being especially cautious about any decision to get a smartphone. I'd been waiting for the new Palm OS, both to see if it really was something I wanted to upgrade to and I expected that they would at least include an emulator for Garnet apps so the migration could happen slowly. But now that I am seeing what they are really offering, and there is no Garnet option (yet), I'm not at all convinced it's what I want. But if I'm jumping to a new platform, I don't want to end up in the same boat down the road.

We all know that Apple is going to do everything in their power to lock their users into their platform only, and that includes only using it the way they choose for us to use their devices. That's a given. So I'm not very inclined to buy an iPhone either.

So I'm still "window shopping" (but definitely not "Windows" shopping).

"twrock is infamous around these parts" (from my profile over at Brighthand due to my negative 62 rep points rating)

> ...only using it the way they choose for us to use their devices. That's a
> given. So I'm not very inclined to buy XXX either...

What phone is up there under "XXX"?

From http://tinyurl.com/affpyg :

Jason Mackenzie, vice president of sales and marketing for HTC America, told FierceWireless that the user experience [of the HTC Magic] would be very similar to that of the G1. He also said that HTC's strategy for Android was the same as its strategy for Windows Mobile, even though the emphasis with HTC's WinMo launches Monday focused on how people communicate, and much of Android remains application-centric.

"Application-centric": music to my ears.

I find myself spending an increasing percentage of my "window shopping" time looking at Android. Can you say "open"?

Maybe a second TX would hold me over until Android has reached critical mass and a really nice ecosystem of third-party apps to replace all of my Garnet apps. Or, you think there's any chance those StyleTap guys are going to get it ported to Android?

"twrock is infamous around these parts" (from my profile over at Brighthand due to my negative 62 rep points rating)

(Firstly, way to reply to the wrong thread, doofus.)

No misinformation. I know that Apple have corrected a lot of the limitations I listed since launch. But you were trying to equate what I said about iPhone when it was launched with what I'm saying about Pre now. You were wrong.

By the way, you throw around the term "web app" like it's a dirty word, like they're some lower-class of apps. Facebook? Gmail? Pandora? Hulu? Flickr? Maybe you haven't noticed, but a lot of the stuff you can make with web languages nowadays is virtually indistinguishable from compiled software. Graphically-intensive games are the biggest stumbling block.

You're wildly inconsistent here - it's smart when Palm does it, yet horrible when Apple did it.

Again: Apple's approach at launch was completely laughable, and to this day they still place draconian restrictions on developers. Palm has come out stating their intentions to support and attract third-party devs from day one. Developers who I've personally interviewed both on and off the record have stated that they're digging the SDK and don't really feel limited by it. Palm are writing a book on development and releasing it as it gets written. They're hosting developer webcasts. They've started a developer blog. They recently hired a community manager for development. Colligan said at that recent investor conference that they intended to allow distribution outside the Palm App Store.

If you can't see the difference between the two companies initial approaches to development, you're blind.

>Graphically-intensive games are the biggest stumbling block.

But not the only stumbling block - just the only glaring limitation you're willing to admit.

You're wildly inconsistent here - it's smart when Palm does it, yet horrible when Apple did it.

>Again: Apple's approach at launch was completely laughable.

Well, when you consider there was nothing quite like the iphone before it was released, Apple's attitude at launch was understandable. They had no real competition and could take their time getting the sdk out.

Nowadays there is more competition (iphone, android), so Palm has to have an open development environment - to accelerate development.

>Palm has come out stating their intentions to support and attract
>third-party devs from day one.

That should be their intention - as more *available* apps. will actually make the Pre more acceptable to purchase.

>Developers who I've personally interviewed both on and off the record
>have stated that they're digging the SDK and don't really feel limited by
>it.

So then why have some developers said they want C? Have you ever done any software development freak, or are you still working in a restaurant? If you have, you would see that while webapps are fine for a certain class of applications, they are also a stopgap until a proper SDK can be released.

>Palm are writing a book on development and releasing it as it gets
>written. They're hosting developer webcasts. They've started a developer
>blog. They recently hired a community manager for development.
>Colligan said at that recent investor conference that they intended to
>allow distribution outside the Palm App Store.

Again freak, these are all things they need to do *now* because the market is rife with competition - from Apple, Google with Android, and eventually, Windows Mobile 7.

Also, Palm isn't the most financially stable company. They cannot afford to have one or two bad quarters while/if the Pre gains marketshare.

McNamee *is* dreaming if he thinks iphone users will convert to the Pre in droves.

When Apple released the iphone they had no real competition - so they did take their time to stabilize the iphone OS, release the SDK, produce the app store, etc.

As it stands now, the iphone is the yardstick against which the market will judge the Pre - when it is released. So it's good that Palm is doing all of these things, however, as I have stated before, their execution must be perfect, or they're sunk.

>If you can't see the difference between the two companies initial
>approaches to development, you're blind.

I would say the same about you, as you don't understand how the different market conditions from when the iphone was released and what the pre is being released into, affect both companies decisions.