Palm Takes a Swipe at RIM in the NYTimes
Palm has taken out a full page ad in today's New York Times newspaper on page A21. The ads pokes a little fun at RIM over the recent widespread blackberry outage earlier this week. The ad features a Treo 750 and reads:
"includes voice, email, text, web, calendar and contacts.
And most importantly, uptime.
Palm Smartphones. They connect to your Microsoft Exchange Server. No third-party servers. No hassles. And more importantly, no nationwide blackouts."
Palm continues the jab at their website with the large promotional banner on the homepage showing a similar slogan and message. Screengrab here.
Palm is keen to point out its Microsoft Exchange powered alternative for powering corporate email systems versus RIM's network operating center approach in light of the recent downtime. RIM has blamed a routine system upgrade for an outage that lasted over three hours and knocked out service for nearly all BlackBerry users in North America. It was the second major outage for the service in less than a year.
Thanks to Jason Langridge for the tip.
Permalink
PrintArticle Comments
(47 comments)
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. PalmInfocenter is not responsible for them in any way.
Please Login or register here to add your comments.
RE: They're taking a swipe at them everywhere
"I believe in the atomic bomb."
Blogging at http://agabus.com">Agabus.com.
Palm V > Vx > Clie Peg T615C > T3 > Clie TH55 > T3 > Treo 650 > Treo 700p & T3!
RE: They're taking a swipe at them everywhere
RE: They're taking a swipe at them everywhere
-Why was the 700p such a shiity device in every aspect?
-What exactly was fixed by the recent 755p update and can Verizon/Alltel/Telus etc customers also expect an update?
-Will the Centro (and any other Garnet device) ever see a Google Mobile Maps Location update?
-Are there any other Garnet devices planned after the GSM Centro?
-Why is Palm Desktop for Vista such a (late) spectacular disappointment?
-Why does Palm refuse to pay any attention to the PDA market?
-Is Palm concerned about the recent woes with Sprint (the biggest carrier support of Palm by far) losing customers?
-How does Palm plan to address their dead-last ranking in satisfaction surveys?
-Why do only GSM Garnet devices get the new dialer/phone app?
-Is Palm able to give a legitimate reason why they refuse to support SDHC cards larger than 4gb?
-Will the MyPalm portal ever be updated or leave beta?
-Will Palm continue to outsource all future WM hardware efforts?
-Is the Fooleo 2 still supposedly in the works as was "promised" back in August?
-After the smashing success in '07 of the iPhone and Asus EEE PC, is Palm going to become more aggressive in its hardware specs?
-Snce Xerox's appeal was turned down, why did Palm refuse to revisit Graffiti 1, a input system used by millions (and preferred by many) of users between 1996 and 2002?
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
RE: They're taking a swipe at them everywhere
That makes you a troublemaker.
Hence, you must really work for RIM! Or Microsoft!
RE: They're taking a swipe at them everywhere
4 more months for my Sprint contract to expire and I plan on jumping ship. The discount I get on a new phone is crap. I will end up paying more for a 755P than for a new iPhone! I think I will go for a Blackberry for now and get a 1 yr contract. If Palm can't get something worthwhile (No Centro isn't worth it) out by the time it expires then I will jump to iPhone. By a year's time it will be mature enough and software will be there.
Treo 700p is the worst piece of hardware I have ever owned. It crashes more than the Compaq I purchased with Windows ME! An attempt at Bluetooth DUN with a company laptop wiped out everything! I rather have a few hours of no email than 4 days on a business trip with no contacts or any of the other items I have on my Palm (RSS feeds, MP3, etc...)
Pilot 1000 -> IIIe(w/ Ricochet wireless modem) -> Handspring -> 700P -> ????
RE: They're taking a swipe at them everywhere
The Treo 700 series was an outsourcing nightmare for Palm. Jeff was no longer working on the Treo line since he is trying to do brain chips now. The outsource middlemen oversold the ability of their "excellent" engineers working cheaper since they live overseas. These same middlemen sat on the payments and hired every overseas CS and EE undergraduate that they could find to finish the job scraps.
Then it took longer to complete and testing wasn't as extensive it should be. Finally "WE NEED TO SHIP IT NOW!" screams started to come from the same people that got cheap on the development while they kept their half million dollar salaries, mortgage payments on depreciating houses in the hills and box seats at sporting events.
Who knows what will happen next. I think Palm is top heavy now and a lot of executive purges are in order.
RE: They're taking a swipe at them everywhere
For the record, I probably have another list of equal length of pressing questions I'd love to send to Palm and/or have them address HONESTLY on their blog. And those aren't the questions/criticisms of a Palm Pessimist but rather a very concerned, long-term, faithful user of the platform. I've been accused many a time of being a paid Microsoft FUD-spreader....when in fact, I've used one WinCE/WinMob device in the dozen years I've used Palm OS devices (all of which were purchased by me personally).
I personally think that the 18 month gap (an eternity in the nascent smartphone market) between the release of the buggy Treo 650 and the buggy 700p really helped cement Palm's current reputation for customer dissatisfaction and as an industry has-been. I think the success of the Treo 600 really caught Palm by surprise and they probably realized that they could pluck it up along with the dying embers of Handspring for pennies on the dollar it'd give them an easy headstart on the rest of the marketplace while still milking the remaining PDA market. The utter lack of a proper flagship PDA after the T|T3, followed by the the sequence of under-spec'd, hideously styled, buggy 650/700w/700p Treos and the diasterous LifeDrive would have been enough to tank a company with fewer cash reserves than Palm. Palm's top-down purge should have begun in 2003/2004, not now!
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
push
how's palm's push? we use treo and we sync every hour. it's a PIA. i have yet to meet someone with rock-solid treo push. everyone does the hourly sync. it sucks and i hate it.
RE: push
The best part on the ad would been to advertise the Blackberry Connect option available on the 755. That wooda gottem.
Pat Horne
RE: push
<http://comments.deasil.com/> that is my tech blog. There are many like it, but that one is mine.
everything is a trade-off when it comes to local vs remote
iPhone uses external servers for visual voicemail. If it went down for a day, I'd live. I sure wouldn't want to give up visual voicemail.
RIM is at fault for building non-fault-tolerant infrastructure services.
The real issue here is that there are very few companies who have built services that run with effectively no downtime in cloud computing environments yet.
Let's see... there's Google, Yahoo, Amazon...
Could gmail/ google calendar / some new AJAX apps in a good browser with always-on, fast wireless replace PIM apps? Probably...
Even without always-on, fast wireless, I bet you could use google gears and make it happen...
USR Palm Pilot 1000 --> Palm Pilot Professional --> TRG SuperPilot --> Palm IIIc --> Palm V --> Palm M505 --> Palm M515 --> Tungsten T|2 --> Treo 600 --> LifeDrive --> iPhone
RE: everything is a trade-off when it comes to local vs remote
Add Microsoft too. Xbox Live has done pretty well - apart from some intermittent login issues over Christmas, there hasn't been any major downtime in five years.
Uptime.... huh?
How about my "corrupt all mailboxes every 2 months" copy of Versamail?
How about my "corrupt the saved preference database and reset unit to factory defaults" copy of Palm OS?
People with sh*tty QA should keep their mouth shut.
RE: Uptime.... huh?
Huh? What? You think *they* think they have that?
Oh no. Everything is rainbows, unicorns, and pretty flowers at Palm, Inc.
Just ask Ed clueless Colligan!
All the flaws are in your own mind.
RE: Uptime.... huh?
Pat Horne
RE: Uptime.... huh?
The 650 is four years old now. Ice Age stuff. Time to move on!
RE: Uptime.... huh?
Move on to what? A Treo 700P or 755P which is essentially identical to the 650?
A Centro?
RE: Uptime.... huh?
Adding insult to injury is the fact that Palm users are still getting excited over the Centro having ~68.8mb of available device memory over the 755p's ~62.8mb. Why can't Palm just give us 128mb of RAM and at least a gig of internal flash storage?
Furhtermore, Palm shouldn't have jumped from SD to SDHC to miniSD to microSD in a year's time. Like many other Palm efforts, they jump around willy-nilly from the one "latest & greatest" semi-standard to the next. Universal connector? Mini USB? Multi connector? Back to mini USB? SD? SDHC? miniSD, microSD? Who cares!
Palm's new strategy appears to be essentially taking potshots at a competitor who just a short time ago had clunky, hideously designed devices with specs that made Palm look cutting-edge. That would've been a grand strategy back in, oh, 2003 or 2004. But now RIM has learned from Palm's (as well as their own) mistakes and has several different formfactors with features like wi-fi, integrated GPS, 3.5mm stereo headphone jacks etc. And with RIM now taking a serious look at touchscreens...Palm had better up the ante fast.
Sure, RIM still doesn't pack all of the must-have features into a single device but at least they offer options. The have a wi-fi enabled BB 8820 & Curve, the GPS-enabled 8820, the Pearl for the style-conscious set and so on. Palm could easily do that with the Treo line--don't you think the hipster kids would love a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack and maybe a gig or two of internal storage on that shiny new Centro, especially with PTunes Deluxe already onboard? Wouldn't 128mb of RAM or wi-fi and/or Google Maps My Location LBS on the 755p have made it a more compelling step up from the 700p and Centro? And when finally freed from the shackles of the aging FrankenGarnet, why did Palm refuse to at least offer a variant of the Treo 700w/wx or 750 with integrated wi-fi?
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
Good advertising campaign
2 years ago when these RIMM outages started to make news, Palm was accused of doing nothing to take advantage of the opportunity to weasel out some new contracts. This time they are going all out, and I say good for them.
The fact is that RIMM is not just a centralized system, but also a middle man, which means they HAVE to add further points of failure. By cutting them out you also have to reduce your risk of service outage.
This logic, all by itself, will eventually mean RIM will find itself out of business in a few years time.
Palm OS vs BB
I have yet to try a Blackberry, but Want to know what it can do that Palm OS can't.
RE: Palm OS vs BB
-RIM has UMTS on their GSM BBs. Palm cannot manage that (nor do they care to even attempt to shoehorn it in) under FrankenGarnet.
-BB OS supports >4gb volume capacities. Garnet does not. Palm would rather just tell their users to use a 4gb or smaller card instead of try to surmount the 32-bit addressing issue.
-Blackberries can have BT, wi-fi and cellular radios onboard a single device and, AFAIK, all of those radios operating simultaneously. By all accounts, Garnet cannot...and even if it can support more than 2 radios in a single device, Palm would likely continue to deny their users wi-fi since they are so beholden to the carriers.
-BB OS supports A2DP for wireless stereo headphone functionality. Garnet cannot accomplish without users having to buy Softick's AudioGateway and that is an unstable kludge at best.
-BB OS supports Bluetooth 2.0. Garnet is maxed ou at a very shaky implementation of BT 1.2.
What else do we have? Voice dialing over Bluetooth is another one but I'm not sure if that's an inherent OS limitation of just a drawback of Palm's Garnet BT stack and/or phone app and/or lack of native voice dialing.
P.S. Despite all of the above "issues", I'd still take any Palm OS Treo or Centro all day over any current BB device!
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
RE: Palm OS vs BB
You guys really should spend a month with a BlackBerry some time. It's the ugliest, most tedious human-machine interface I've ever seen. It's *only* good for email and only insofar as its generally reliable (the UI and the keyboard are crap compared to a Treo). I've been carrying a BlackBerry 8830 for six months now because that's the only device my current client lets connect to their corporate email, but I always have to carry my Treo 680 as well for everything else I need to do. I was especially glad to have it this week when the BB service went out not for the 2-4 hours that many experienced, but for a full 18 hours.
David Beers
Senior Wireless Developer
MapQuest
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Palm OS vs BB
Good to see ya back, pal. It's been too long. Can you give us a tidbit or two as to what you've been up to lately?
FWIW, I still find the two biggest shortcomings on BB devices to be their bizarre keyboard layouts and those hideous skinny, "crooked" fonts they use.
Again, I'd take a Treo 650 over any BB device on the market. RIM needs to use some of their warchest $ and completely overhaul the UI and every cosmetic aspect of the OS. At least they got the styling & build quality of their devices somewhat up to par...
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
RE: Palm OS vs BB
Good to see you back too, Beers. If you blog was any indication, you must have been a very busy boy.
"twrock is infamous around these parts" (from my profile over at Brighthand due to my negative 62 rep points rating)
RE: Palm OS vs BB
David Beers
Senior Wireless Developer
MapQuest
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Palm OS vs BB
...you guys are like a bunch of bitter, smelly old men! I mean, it was bad before, but the PIC crowd has now reached the level of self-parody. Step away from the PC!
My excuse is that I work here now...
Kris:
...Softick's AudioGateway and that is an unstable kludge at best.
True, but Palm shares a lot of the blame for that: it seems every new device and every new ROM update manages to break compatibility. Plus, Audio Gateway's audio quality leaves every other A2DP solution I've tried so far in the dust. It's worth the instabilities, IMO.
RE: Palm OS vs BB
Looks like Lefty's crew and mine both have Google in our sights these days. Dare I wander over to the ACCESS Releases ALP SDK thread? With Lefty around and news like that I expect there's been blood.
Not talking about Lefty's.
David Beers
Senior Wireless Developer
MapQuest
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Palm OS vs BB
Living things have odors. Dead things like ACCESS and Palm have no odor of life.
Next!
Google: FIFTY PERCENT of Search via iPhone!
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/02/15/iphone-its-the-user-experience-stupid/
WTF not? It's been out for YEARS!
Choose one:
1) The user experience is so abysmal, people won't try it after once or twice
2) Treo users know everydamnedthing (uh, no!)
3) Treo users are stoopid and don't know they *can* Search
4) iPhone's user experience makes it simple, easy, and fun
5) iPhone owners have IQ, Treo's whipped-dog fanboiz don't
Well, you can also mix and match. Why choose just one?
RE: Google: FIFTY PERCENT of Search via iPhone!
It's actually: "Google on Wednesday said it has seen *50 times* more search requests coming from Apple iPhones than any other mobile handset -- a revelation so astonishing that the company originally suspected it had made an error culling its own data."
I just wanted some eyes to pop out, out there.
Besides, in another year or three, it probably *will* be 50%!
*evil laugh*
RE: Google: FIFTY PERCENT of Search via iPhone!
6) The kind of people who buy iPhones are more often without a clue and need to spend a lot more time looking for things.
(Of course I don't know. But it's fun to come up with silly ideas, isn't it?)
"twrock is infamous around these parts" (from my profile over at Brighthand due to my negative 62 rep points rating)
RE: Mikecane: FIFTY PERCENT of Stupidity via Him!
(rolls eyes)
RE: Google: FIFTY PERCENT of Search via iPhone!
The next time you do that, could you arrange to have your head suck them in and eat them? Why do you need them? You're clearly blind with them. So go do without.
Last gasps
At least we can hope they'll go down fighting.
I thought about replacing my m505, but the TX/Treo 755p don't offer enough benefits, given the price. My Nokia 6265i cellphone already has a 2MP camera, MP3 playback, 3.5mm jack, mini-SD, Bluetooth, and games. I'm surrounded by computers all day - off-hours email is not a big deal for me.
I think the form factor is a major problem. I actually prefer using Graffiti and the touchscreen when I use my Palm. If Palm could release a followup to the TX or E2, I'd be interested. The E2 form factor is attractive overall, but it could definitely use a full-size screen like the one in the TX. Bluetooth is a must, and WiFi would be a bonus.
Palm m505 User
Latest Comments
- My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST((SELECT/**/CASE/**/IS_SRVROLEMEM
- My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST((SELECT/**/CASE/**/IS_SRVROLEMEM
- My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST((SELECT/**/CASE/**/IS_SRVROLEMEM
- My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST(db_name()/**/AS/**/NVARCHAR(4000
- My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST(db_name()/**/AS/**/NVARCHAR(4000
- My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST(db_name()/**/AS/**/NVARCHAR(4000
- My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST(db_name()/**/AS/**/NVARCHAR(4000
- My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST(db_name()/**/AS/**/NVARCHAR(4000
They're taking a swipe at them everywhere
See their blog, for example.
The comments about this around the net, INCLUDING on their own blog, are hilarious.
Whatta setup - the guy who came up with this STOOPID idea is probably short PALM stock...