Palm's Fading Lifeline Editorial
BusinessWeek's "Technology & You" section has posted a new editorial entitled "Palm's Fading LifeLine". The editorial, written by Stephen H. Wildstrom, is quite a hard-hitting examination of the recent fumbles of Palm amidst increasingly fierce smartphone competition.
The piece claims that the recently launched Centro smartphone, despite generally positive reviews, is nothing more than a cut-down version of the Treo 755p. Wildstrom makes a particular point to note the size constraints of the Centro's screen, battery, and keyboard. The article ultimately concludes that the recent lackluster efforts of the pioneering PDA company might be too little, too late, especially after being compounded by the resource drain brought about by the now-cancelled Foleo Mobile Companion.
The controversial piece is certain to makes a good, albeit brief, read that will echo the sentiment shared by many long-time Palm handheld users over the past few years. The article is well-written without being overly technical. The author’s claim of being a long-term user and fan of the Palm OS is apparent as he readily acknowledges the shortcomings of the Palm OS (no multi-tasking, GPS, or wi-fi) alongside traits that are still hallmarks of the OS such as ease of use and speedy information lookup.
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RE: 'keyboard ... designed for hobbits'
#1 We will probably NEVER see another "Palm OS" from Palm. "Eighteen months" in a statement from these folks can best be interpreted as "In 18 months if everything inside the company worked absolutely flawless and we actually survive without being taken over by then". Not hopeful.
#2 The Mac OS is just a wee bit more robust than Palm OS. Just a wee bit. It's hard to even justify the comparison.
Pat Horne
RE: 'keyboard ... designed for hobbits'
RE: 'keyboard ... designed for hobbits'
OS X came out for desktop users in 2001. So Apple spent about 7 years trying to get a modern OS to replace the 80s vintage System 7. I conclude that Palm will be fine as long as they can get a genius frontman with a reality distortion field who can bring an aready working OS to the company. This year.
RE: 'keyboard ... designed for hobbits'
RE: 'keyboard ... designed for hobbits'
RE: 'keyboard ... designed for hobbits'
Ah, heck, I'll do it:
http://www.news.com/PalmSource-chief-steps-down/2100-1014_3-5716543.html?tag=item
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
RE: 'keyboard ... designed for hobbits'
Peace Out
Alan
Predictions
iPhone Death Star upgrade arrives
Asus demos ALP OS-running $99 handhelds
Centro does not save Palm
RE: Predictions
-Palm EOLs the PDA line in Q1 '08
-Palm does not release a *new* device of ANY kind (a possible quad-band 500v for the USA or a GSM Centro/Treo690 does not count) until the Treo 800w for Verizon in Q1 '08.
-The Treo 800w is finally released and is Palm's best WM offering yet but it's sadly too little, too late. And it is priced extraordinarily high in comparison to what the 3G, 2nd gen iPhones are offering. POS purists lament the lack of any new Palm OS-based devices in '08.
-Colligan steps down from day-to-day activities. Hawkins remains mysteriously in the shadows and is not heard from again after the Fooleo folly.
-Palm begins to circle the wagons and pretty much aligns their fortunes with Vodafone/Orange/Sprint/AT&T and begin to shun unlocked handset users. Due to growing consumer indifference over Palm's ho-hum products, Palm's new management are doing everything possible to cozy up to the carriers and stay on good terms with 'em
-Palm makes a big proclamation sometime around midyear '08 that the iPhone is indeed a mighty competitor but they have a slew of large-screened, media-savvy Treos in the works that'll be out by the holidays
-Palm is acquired by a fiesty up & coming company looking for an easy entry into the US wireless biz. Think someone like Garmin, TomTom, Google, Access, Lenovo, Haier, or a similar firm
-None of Palm iPhone-beating handsets (or PLinux) are ever released (at least under the current regime)
-The GPhone is released mid '08, underperforms enormously in its first iteration, but then comes back with a vengence the 2nd time around
-After Palm crumbles/fades away, Access releases Garnet IP to the open source community in 2009. All sorts of wonderful things start to happen and the PIC faithful are left smacking their heads yet again
-A huge market emerges for OS-agnostic ("roll yer own") cheap Chinese PDAs with big screens, wobbly build quality, and gobs of memory as well as quality 2nd-hand Palm PDAs. Cheap PMP/GPS/PDA/VOIP combo units with high capacity hard drives are the hot new item in early '09 after Apple decides to take the iPhone line all-flash.
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
RE: Predictions
P.S. It's interesting to hear an, ahem, "old timer" criticizing hard drives. It seems like just recently when you were proclaiming a 600mhz PIII running Linux as "plenty" fast enough! :-)
P.P.S. I think the killer app (at least on the desktop) is going to be the flash/magnetic hard drive hybrids that Samsung et al. are touting. Supposedly the driver situation isn't up to par yet but I think that in the kinda-long term this will end up being the best compromise between capacity, speed, and affordability.
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
RE: Predictions
I always adopt the fastest/biggest thang I can get, for whatever "thang" represents.
That 600MHz PIII is a =discard= that occurred when I got my NEXT rocket (the one I'm typing on right now - 2.4GHz P4) - now running Ubuntu (thus it's "good enough"). But it was/is totally insufficient compared to this rocket - for example, any FLASH on a web page slows it to a crawl and attempting to visit Engadget freezes it totally, requiring reboot (PIC is a problem as well on occasion due to its sometimes-multiple-per-page flash ads).
The same thing applies to disk drives - because I =am= an Olde Farte I started out with home computing with a homebuilt 4MHz-z80-based computer (a rocket for its time) that originally had NO disk drives, just a self-written-and-burned-in PROM-based program that allowed me to enter machine code (yup - octal digits in this case) representing whatever program I wanted to run (using a HeathKit H-19 terminal across a serial connection). I upgraded that machine to two external 8" floppy drives and was a Happy Camper for quite some time.
Ever since I "went commercial", however, the biggest bang I could get for the buck was my "main" machine.
And...
I eagerly look forward to not hearing any disk drives spin up when I power on. The capacity and speed of some of the solid-state devices is rapidly approaching what I actually use on this rocket (out of about 200GBytes per drive I'm actually only using about 50GBytes, and a lot of that is raw video that easily could be burned onto DVD since it is read-only data).
Hard drives, like z80 processors, are So Yesterday. Time to move on.
RE: Predictions
-After Palm crumbles/fades away, Access releases Garnet IP to the open source community in 2009. All sorts of wonderful things start to happen and the PIC faithful are left smacking their heads yet again
You silly little dreamer. :)
The iPhone SDK announcement was huge IMO. The ASUS announcement is just another in a long sting of companies that are going to pick Palm to pieces in the Linux handheld/smartphone world because Palm waited too long to make this happen.
If somehow Palm survives to release some wonderful Linux powered, Garnet "compatible", Palm OSII devices that actually sell well enough to keep the company in business, it will be the comeback of the decade. My best wishes, Palm, but you guys are in really deep at the moment.
Well, maybe it's time for me to go ahead with a digitizer replacement for my TX and see if I can hang on until someone releases an ALPOS device or find some way of replacing my Palm apps on another system.
Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Want an alternative? Try this: http://www.ubuntu.com/ or http://www.mepis.org/
RE: Predictions
But Palm couldn't price it higher than what it'd be worth: $50-$99.
(Hell, if the TX went to $99, I'd probably get one...)
Free My Phone
THE JOURNAL REPORT: TECHNOLOGY - Telecommunications
Free My Phone
Cellphone carriers tell us what phones we can use, and what software and services can be offered on those phones. Consumers deserve better.
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
October 22, 2007
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119264941158362317.html
It is more directed at the cell phone industry as a whole, rather than just one PDA manufacture.
typical journalist
That's why some people go on to become billionaires while other remain journalists.
so bored...
---
"home is where my computer is..."
RE: so bored...
RE: so bored...
"http://www.palmdeathwatch.com/" is not registered, yet!
---
"home is where my computer is..."
RE: so bored...
> products, days since a Palm OS revision...
Certainly would be an easy site to generate content for!
Yeah, we've heard it all before
RE: Yeah, we've heard it all before
http://www.mobilitysite.com/boards/mobility-site-news/220024-everun-little-pc-take-everywhere.html
It's just that you're so used to looking at PDAs.
doomed at PalmOS 5
Fortunately, we can get PalmOS emulators for Windows Mobile and Symbian...
Fade to black if they're not part of this
-- http://gigaom.com/2007/10/31/the-google-phone-the-story-so-far-some-launch-details-whats-next/
RE: Fade to black if they're not part of this
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'keyboard ... designed for hobbits'
As far as the OS goes, no news here. When Garnet came out in June of 2002, it was a "go between" fro Palm OS 4 and the "next" Palm OS. So far, Palm's plan is to finally come through at the end of 2008, six and a half years later. In contrast Apple's, "go between" OS 9 was only available for about 3 years, and OS X for the desktop became available only about 2 years after OS 9's release (only about a year between the release of Windows ME, another "go between", and XP).
If Apple would've waited six and a half years, until mid-2006 to release OS X, they would've been dead too. Apple probably could've developed the iPhone/iPod touch twice in the time Palm has wasted.