New Treo Announcement on Sept 12th?
Reuters is carrying an article with a quote from an unnamed Palm spokeswoman that states a new Treo smartphone announcement will be made in the UK on September 12th. It is likely this will be the official unveiling of the next generation Treo due out in Europe. The Windows Mobile powered 3G/UTMS Treo is expected to debut on Vodafone in Europe before the end of the year.
Palm previously announced this new Treo smartphone will be available first to Vodafone customers in multiple European countries, including the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy and Netherlands, before the end of the calendar year. However at the time no details or specs of the device were made public.
Images of a antenna-less Treo model running Windows Mobile were previously leaked as far back as April. There has also been a number of rumors that state this same model is due to be released in the US on the Cingular network sometime in October.
The latest round of leaked pictures seems to indicate this model will be called the Treo 750.
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Sprint Treo 700wx Spec Sheet
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/cellphones/leaked-sprint-treo-700wx-spec-sheet-195639.php
Nitro as well?
Show me a new GSM Palm OS Treo and I'll buy it, show me a WM one and I won't!
RE: yeah...
Maybe the T|X is the last palmos pda. Let's hope for the linux variant.
--------------------------
Hey Admin: Why do we have to keep two profiles?
RE: yeah...
-cnegrad
RE: yeah...
-Add a charge LED.
-Add a voice recorder or at least a built-in mic
-Add BT 1.2 support like the 700p
-Add the larger DBheap/DBcache from the 700p
-Bring back CDMA BT phone DUN functionality
128mb of prgram memory is the limit of OS 5.x anyway. 312mhz CPU is fine considering the price point. An internal storage drive of 512mb-2gb would be lovely (ala T5) but that's not likely to happen.
I'd actually like to see in addition to the TX2, an E3 (T|E2 with new branding and 2x the RAM + updated OS/apps) and a Z33 (SD slot + headphone jack added to Z22).
That would give Palm three solid models at the crucial $99, $199, and $299 price points. THEN let those be their final trio of PDAs. A Z33 like I desribe above could solder on for years with minor tweaks made to the packaging and pricing. Look how you can still buy those 128k Royal/Casio/Sharp organizers at retail and they are relatively unchanged in the past 20 years!
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
RE: yeah...
How long have they been promissing new software for the Palm?
Greg in
Jax, FL
Does Palm treat it's customers fair???
"...The company is hoping the move to the Windows Mobile will help alleviate the concerns of Treo users who have long complained of Palm's own operating system crashing the handsets on a regular basis.
In June, the company stopped shipping its Treo 650 model in Europe because it was not compatible with a newly introduced phone technology standard".
Didn't Palm state the they stopped shipping 650's to Europe because of new European environmental laws?????? Didn't they ship large quantities before the new laws went into action?????
What Reuters is saying is that when it's up to Palm... PalmOS isn't a good platform for the Treo.
RE: Does Palm treat it's customers fair???
This is the kind of attitude that angers me.
>palmato @ 8/19/2006 12:15:25 PM #
>Unfortunately lack of leaked pictures / info probably means there >will be no TX|2, at least for this year. Keep in mind that >projected revenues from pure PDA's for this fiscal year should >drop to 15%, as Mr. Colligan said.
If Colligan would not have abused the handheld line at the expense of the Treo, he would'nt be in the situation where he has to announce the irrelevancy of handhelds. Colligan was, is and always will be a Treo wh**e. I would not be surprised if he said the 15% with glee; like "Yay! We finally canabalized the handheld market! We got everybody to switch to Treos! And those who cannot or do not want to... well F THEM!"
It is unforgivable that Palm inc pack the Treo with tons of features (cam, mic, big batt, keyb, etc), while leaving them out of the TX. The LD is a disaster because of the hd, so that does not count.
15%... maybe... but just seems to me that Palm is wishing for that.
And this ALP business = bs. It will fail. No one is going to go for a Palm OS ghost emulator. That is retarded. No one at the ALP conference appeared interested and rightfully so. They all realized that Palm OS was dead and they are in shock.
If Palm OS dies, WM will takeover.
Linux might have a future on mobile devices, but only if it pretty much runs native Linux programs. I doubt ALP does that.
Appears too difficult for Palm to make a handheld with OLED, a more complete suite of software, Cobalt, wifi, bt, wimax, twin front speakers, a stand (plastic piece in the back), a better keyboard (like Wordlogic.com), a better stylus, etc. Too difficult. They rather pretend that the market is simply fed up of PDAs and only Treos have a future. I hate slackers.
Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I xpct
Palm TX|2 wish list:
- Built in 4-6-8 GB flash ROM drive.
- Pointier stylus. (Like on the T3 if I recall correctly).
- Textured, plastic stylus like on the HP hx2750 model. The current metal one is too slipery.
- Onscreen keyboard that has both numbers and letters on same panel. This toggling stuff is too time consuming.
- 416 mhz (because some 320x480 movies at 30 fps are just a tiny little bit underpowered at 312mhz - and overclocking is not for the masses).
- Put a little flip plastic thing on the back to stand the Palm up while we watch movies. Like a picture frame stands up. People like to put the Palm standing up on their desks and watch shows and movies while they use their laptops. Why hasnt Palm thought of this before?
- OS 6 Cobalt. I don't feel like waiting 2 to 3 more years for Linux thank you very much.
- Twin front stereo speakers (I listen to radio shows, movies, games; and having the speaker in the back cuts the noise). When there is noise in the room, I can barely hear the Palm. Headphones are annoying.
- 4 GB+ compatible SD slot (that new SD standard thing that will allow up to 32 GB SDs).
- Put back the Home button like on the T5.
- Put back the Drive Mode from the T5.
- Put back the Files manager from the T5. Actually, make a new better one and steal the ideas from Microsoft WM file manager. Tap-hold-copy-paste, etc. They stole Palm's NVFS technology, so why the hell not.
- Put back the vibrating alarm from the T3. (more or less important)
- Put back the mic from the T3.
- Polyphonic alarms and precise volume control.
- Build in a camera. Treo people have them so why can't we?! Are we handheld buyers trash? *insulted*
- If the technology even exists, screens that respond easily to flat finger presses. Ex. to make those full screen keyboards useful and not having to tap with your nail instead of a comfortable flat press by your full finger.
- Graffiti 2 is great but please add single stroke Ts and Ks on top of their 2 stroke version? Please?
And most importantly...
-------> OLED screen <--------- or some other screen technology that offers very wide viewing angles, richer colors and a natural visual experience. I AM FED UP watching my movies by holding my TX at a weird angle and not being able to move it a milimeter for fear of losing the image. This has got to be addressed. If Palm just ignores this, PALMS WILL NEVER BE ADOPTED AS MULTIMEDIA MOVIE PLAYING (OR PICTURE VIEWING) MACHINES BY CONSUMERS. ------> PERIOD <-------
Sony added OLED to the latest Clie, and so can Palm Inc. At least put 1 model out there as an experiment for the American and Canadian markets. Or offer the TX in 2 models and charge a premium for OLED. Palm is saving $$$ by keeping the TX mold and design, let them convert that into a better screen and boost sales.
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I
I am Canadian but Ah do I miss the days when American companies were warriors and leading innovators. Now we have to watch the Japanese make the OLED Clie in only Japanese, and instead settle here for sidegrades, incremental upgrades, designs going backwards (e.g, HP), confusion as to what OS will be used, negative false interpretations of the marketplace, slacking, on and on and on and on.
The USA is declining people and it has to stop. Palm has to be whipped into shape. Wake up Colligan.
15% sheeshh...
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I
Palm will never release a device that will kill the rest of their handheld lineup with a allinone $800 device that no one will but exept the maybe %1 of the priviledged consumer.
Thinking within compromises is the key.
With that in mind cut 80% of your demand list or better yet grab some ice, sit on it, chill. Grow up maybe.
TX is perfect as it is.
When I grow up, there will be a day, when every Palm will be as I say.
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I
When I grow up, there will be a day, when every Palm will be as I say.
The PIC prayer!
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog
Did Palm kill PDAs ON PURPOSE so they could sell more Treos? Hmmm
Beersy, S T F U. While Little Frenchie Lestat may be a tad "ambitious" in his wishlist, Palm's strategy of hopelessly feeble incremental upgrades has resulted in the death of the traditional PDA market. People aren't buying Palm's PDAs because Palm doesn't make any PDAs worth buying. Period. Build devices with a solid set of features in an attractive design and sell it at a fair price and suddenly PDAs will sell well again. Market them as an MP3 player/photo displayer/video viewer/email reader/Internet browser/PIM device/digital camera/digital camcorder that simply WORKS right out of the box with minimal configuration required. (If Palm expects the average user is going to track down TCPMP, DVD ripping software, MP3 management/ripping software, etc they are out of their minds.)
In one of the above threads hkklife listed some simple, incremental upgrades that are LONG overdue from Palm:
"(In addition to an improved battery):
-Add a charge LED.
-Add a voice recorder or at least a built-in mic
-Add BT 1.2 support like the 700p
-Add the larger DBheap/DBcache from the 700p
-Bring back CDMA BT phone DUN functionality
128mb of prgram memory is the limit of OS 5.x anyway. 312mhz CPU is fine considering the price point. An internal storage drive of 512mb-2gb would be lovely (ala T5) but that's not likely to happen.
I'd actually like to see in addition to the TX2, an E3 (T|E2 with new branding and 2x the RAM + updated OS/apps) and a Z33 (SD slot + headphone jack added to Z22).
That would give Palm three solid models at the crucial $99, $199, and $299 price points. THEN let those be their final trio of PDAs. A Z33 like I desribe above could solder on for years with minor tweaks made to the packaging and pricing. Look how you can still buy those 128k Royal/Casio/Sharp organizers at retail and they are relatively unchanged in the past 20 years!
Palm's stubborn failure to put these kinds of features on its PDAs is suffocating the PDA market. A cynic would say that Palm's abandonment of the PDA market is entirely by design, in an effort to force current customers to "upgrade" to Palm's expensive (high profit) smartphones. Unfortunately, the small screens on smartphones limit their usefulness. Wi-Fi enabled tablets are destined to become an important device in the world of consumer electronics, and Palm was uniquely placed to take advantage of this boom. But - exactly as Palm did with the opportunities to cash in on mobile email, MP3 and personal video player market - Palm has thrown away the potential for MASSIVE profits that was handed to them on a silver platter. Pathetic.
TVoR
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I
(Hmmm, how do I go about changing my tagline again?)
It might not be the "mythical color HandEra", but I'm liking my TX anyway.
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I xpct
I think the reason Palm's wanting to push the Treos is two-fold:
1. Naturally, the higher profit margins & the associated periperal sales from selling new cases, chargers, batteries, styli etc.
2. The smartphone world has always lagged the "pure" PDA world in hardware oomph. Palm is delighted to pursue this path since can milk their aging OS of choice using the same cheap hardware that their PDAs used years ago. Why blaze a new trail when you can revisit an old one in a new set of shoes? A natural followup to the TX & the LifeDrive would have been a hybrid device combining the best features of the TX & the LD in a slim, flash-based tablet style device. Instead, Palm retreats to the safe waters of high-margin, relatively low-tech smartphones with underwhelming specs.
A Treo 700P is basicaly little changed from a 3.5 year old T|C when you remove the Treo-specfic radio/antennae/removable battery/OS tweaks. The Treo has smaller screen of same resolution, same amount of RAM but cheaper/slower NVRAM vs. SDRAM on the T|C, and a slower CPU.
Also, keep in mind that I've not been pleading with Palm to release a 1ghz model with a gig of RAM and a 3d graphics chip mated to an OLED screen. I always keep a "very" realistic list of desired features (cost, batter life, Palm's ''zen'' philosophy). Heck, 99% of the things I'd like to see have appeared on various Palms over the years. I just want something that combines the best features of the T3, T5, LD and TX in a *single* device that's reliable, solidly build, and pocketable.
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I
In one of the above threads hkklife listed some simple, incremental upgrades that are LONG overdue from Palm.... Palm's stubborn failure to put these kinds of features on its PDAs is suffocating the PDA market.
It's a fine enhancement list. All reasonable stuff and perhaps even things that could put a little energy back into the PDA market. But the question right now is one of opportunity cost, not technical cost or bill-of-materials cost. If Palm expects to compete in the smartphone space (which as you have pointed out is getting a lot more competitive) then resources they dedicate to designing, developing and marketing new PDA models are resources they don't have to fight the smartphone fight. We'd all like to fold our hands and wish that this wasn't the world we live in, but that's not going to change the economic reality that Palm must come to grips with.
Palm should be concentrating on what its new OS situation is going to be and how they can improve on the Treo. That's not what I would like them to do--I'd prefer that they continue improving their PDA line as much as anyone here. It would be better for me as a user and in some ways maybe better for my business, too. But I'd rather see Palm suffocate the PDA market than suffocate the whole company, and that may very well be the choice they have right now.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I xpct
There's no reason that Palm couldn't continue to own nearly all of the declining but still profitable PDA market for the next several years with very minor tweaks & updates to their 3 core models...and FrankenGarnet is still very much a servicable OS for the needs of those users. The T|E formfactor tooling & design was paid off long, long ago. The cost of adding a cutout + a 2 cent internal mic on the front panel and a transparent power button with an internal green/red LED is miniscule.
I mean, Dell's completely thrown in the towel for the Axim line. HP has essentially abandoned R&D for their iPaq PDAs and is just churning out the same old stuff over and over. So Palm really is the ONLY game left in town.
On another topic:
If Palm truly wants to let everyone get on the Treo bandwagon then they need to do something VERY rogue-ish that flies in the face of the carriers--release an a new GSM Treo and sell it on Palm's web site unlocked for ~$250. Then for the price of a midrange PDA someone could dip a toe into the smartphone waters.
Remember, a Treo 700 with a 2/year contract at Verizon retail stores is $500. Full retail for a 700P w/ no contract is $700. That pricing is beyond insane. Until contract-free Treo pricing arrives that's roughly on par with a TX, there will be many, many users who refuse to become entangled in a cell provider contract and will either stick to Palm's PDAs or jump ship to a lesser-known Asian WinMob PDA maker (Asus etc).
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I
Sure, but you have to admit that removing features that have already been completely researched and designed and manufactured in previous hardware starts to look like someone really is out to kill the PDA prematurely. The complaints about the T3 to T5 (and TX) "dumb-down" are valid.
It might not be the "mythical color HandEra", but I'm liking my TX anyway.
That's a pile of Palm Apologist Manure [PAM], Beersy
In one of the above threads hkklife listed some simple, incremental upgrades that are LONG overdue from Palm.... Palm's stubborn failure to put these kinds of features on its PDAs is suffocating the PDA market.
Beersy PALM APOLOGIZED:
It's a fine enhancement list. All reasonable stuff and perhaps even things that could put a little energy back into the PDA market. But the question right now is one of opportunity cost, not technical cost or bill-of-materials cost. If Palm expects to compete in the smartphone space (which as you have pointed out is getting a lot more competitive) then resources they dedicate to designing, developing and marketing new PDA models are resources they don't have to fight the smartphone fight. We'd all like to fold our hands and wish that this wasn't the world we live in, but that's not going to change the economic reality that Palm must come to grips with.
Beersy, don't make me laugh. First of all, almost ALL of the important features Palm is lacking in its PDAs have been included in other PDAs - INCLUDING ONES AVAILABLE FROM PALM YEARS AGO. Secondly, the cost of the missing parts is trivial, yet omitting these parts truly cripples the usefulness of what are rapidly becoming (compared to say, budget laptops) expensive TOYS. How much do you think it costs to include a microphone, modern implementations of Bluetooth/Wi-Fi, a charging light or 128 MB of RealRAM™? Or how about fixing buggy software? Or including a suite of apps that allow users to take advantage of Palm's multimedia capability? Or a CD with categorized trial versions + screen shots of the top 1000 Palm apps? Or a 30 minute introductory MPEG video explaining the basics of Palm computing? This isn't rocket science, Bubba. Unless Palm is purposely trying to sabotage its own PDA sales, their failure to implement common sense CHEAP measures makes no sense for a company desperately fighting for their lives. Why is a 3 year old CLIE TH55 leagues better than any Palm-branded device you can buy in 2006? Totally unacceptable.
Palm should be concentrating on what its new OS situation is going to be and how they can improve on the Treo.
Well they need to concentrate a LOT harder, since in the 3 YEARS since Palm was handed the Treo franchaise on a silver platter they have done next-to-nothing to improve the Treo - despite the fact that the Treo is both the company's marquee product and main profit maker. Let's be honest and list what was added to the follow up models to the Treo 600:
Treo 650:
- less usable memory
- Bluetooth
- removable battery
- pathetic NAND Flash/CrapRAM™
- 320 x 320 screen
- slightly better camera
- worse keyboard/D-pad
- faster processor (312 MHz Vs. 144 MHz)
Treo 700
- slightly more usable memory
- EVDO capability
- slightly better camera
- worse keyboard/D-pad
- more heap
Did I miss anything? Not a lot to show for 3 years of concentrating, is it Beersy? Do you think maybe they just need a little more time and then they'll be able to DESTROY Nokia, Motorola and Sony Ericsson? Yeah. Riiiiiiiight.
And Palm's current OS nightmare is ENTIRELY thier own fault. They tried to get cute by playing corporate Enron-style games with their various spinoffs, etc. and it came back to bite them in the a$$. They can concentrate all they want about their OS choices, but it won't chnge the fact that their options are limited:
1) Fully embrace Windows Mobile and risk becoming JAWL (Just Another WinMob Licensee)
2) Try to customize Windows Mobile with Palm-like PIM, ease of use and possibly a StyleTap Platform-like PalmOS emulator
3) Buy/license the rights to further develop PalmOS into a next-generation OS
4) Keep licensing PalmOS 5 until it implodes from the weight of all the hacking that has been inflicted upon this ancient piece of shi*
5) Create their own Linux-based OS
6) Wait for certain death with ALP-OS
1, 2 and 3 are possible ways to survive; 4 is what Palm has done for years and this status quo has lead to the company's current precarious situation; 5 is a longshot given Palm's severe lack of codemonkey talent; 6 is a sure-fire way to invite lawsuits from investors who have lost their shirts playing Russian Roulette with Palm's stock.
That's not what I would like them to do--I'd prefer that they continue improving their PDA line as much as anyone here. It would be better for me as a user and in some ways maybe better for my business, too. But I'd rather see Palm suffocate the PDA market than suffocate the whole company, and that may very well be the choice they have right now.
Beersy, what you fail to understand is how fickle a mistess the carriers are. By throwing everything into Treos and completely turning their backs on the Palm Faithful - who have kept Palm alive for over 10 years - the company is shooting itself in the foot. What happens if say, the Motorola Q and Nokia N61/62 become smash hits for the carriers that pick them up in 2006? Herd mentality takes over and ALL of the carriers begin to push what sells (just look at the way carriers hype that horrid little pile of dung called the Motorola RAZR). Suddenly Sprint, Verizon, Cingular, etc aren't pushing Big, Bulky Treos anymore. Suddenly individuals and businesses aren't buying Treos by the Truckload™ anymore. Suddenly Palm's profits are tanking. Suddenly it sure would be nice if Palm had a vibrant second revenue stream (traditional PDAs) to fall back on. But they don't, having suffocated the PDA baby while it slept in it's crib, oblivious to the deranged Treo-only plans of Cult-leader Colligan et. al. With the N61, Nokia has made a higher quality device than the Treos. Sure, it would be nice if it could run PalmOS apps (imagine StyleTap for Symbian!), but since most users don't have a significant investment in PalmOS software and the N61 ships with a fairly complete suite of apps, I doubt the Big Bad PalmOS library will affect Nokia's N61 sales one bit. I expect sales of Treo competitors to snowball throughout 2006, with price and or features from now on putting the Treo franchaise to shame. Motorola's Q and the Nokia N61 were merely opening shots across Palm's bow. Expect the big boys (Nokia et. al.) to start dropping the NUKES in 2007. Sorry, but Palm replying with a water pistol (Treo 750p sporting a 2 megapixel camera and 512 MB NVRAM) just ain't gonna cut it in 2007, Bubba. Nokia et. al. win 3-6 3-6 6-0 6-0 6-0. Game over.
TVoR
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I xpct
Only problem is that now that Nokia et. al. have FINALLY started to get serious about these devices (they waited until Moore's Law etc. made it feasible to offer a decent, relatively inexpensive smartphone and they learned from both the good ideas (keyboard, form factor) and blunders of the Treo 600) the technology offered by smartphones will blow anything Palm can put together out of the water.
For years Palm was a big fish in a little pond (PDAs). Palm then had three years relatively unopposed to make its mark as a little fish in a big ocean (cellphones). Unfortunately, the sharks (Nokia et. al.) are back and Guppy Palm is looking more and more like a tasty little Shark Snack™.
TVoR
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I xpct
It also could be argued that smartphones didn't make much sense until high speed cellphone data networks were rolled out to any significant degree (i.e. 2006).
TVoR
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I
Anyway, you're all preaching to the choir (not converting an "apologist"). I haven't seen a Palm PDA that interested me since the Tungsten T3, and my 3 year old T3 is still the only device from Palm that I have ever carried for personal use.
I'm sure the reason Palm stopped improving on the T3 was that they made too much money from it. We all know that power users like ourselves constitute the overwhelming majority of PDA consumers and that it's impossible to cut costs and remove any features without alienating that huge customer base and seeing collapsing revenues. So, to give the CFO a break from counting those overwhelming piles of money that were pouring in, Palm did just that.
There's my explanation for the decline of the Palm PDA from its 2003 high water mark. From what I've read here on PIC it sounds like it's the only explanation that makes sense. ;-)
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I
Why certain death? It seems to be making much more rapid progress than PalmSource's previous attempts and Access themselves make quite a decent program with NetFront, so there doesn't seem to be any reason to doubt their programming talent - vast differences between making a browser and making an OS notwithstanding.
Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650
Smartphone appeal: it's all about the apps...
Why certain death? It seems to be making much more rapid progress than PalmSource's previous attempts and Access themselves make quite a decent program with NetFront, so there doesn't seem to be any reason to doubt their programming talent - vast differences between making a browser and making an OS notwithstanding.
What advantage do you see in hitching Palm's busted-up wagon to a BRAND NEW, UNTESTED platform with NO DEVELOPERS and NO THIRD PARTY APPLICATIONS instead of going with a proven OS like Wimdows Mobile or Symbian? Palm needs to settle on a single OS for all of its devices ASAP.
TVoR
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I
China is.
May You Live in Interesting Times
Access is betting the house on a LONGSHOT. (With a broken leg)
China is.
Perhaps, but don't forget the DoCoMo connection. And unfortunately for Access:
1) They are NOT a Chinese company (despite their attempts to buy their way in with the China MobileSoft purchase).
2) China (and China telecom cos.) like free or nearly free. Why buy an OS from a Japanese company when they can use the lure of the apocryphal "1 Billion Chinamen" market to get another company to give them an OS for next to nothing? All they have to do is promise to buy support in return for a free OS and then turn around and internalize support once they have sucked all of the useful IP out of their naive victim. Most foreign companies (including Big, Bad Microsoft) trying to do business in China eventually get somomized.
3) Time is of the essense. ALP-OS/NetFrontLinux is a modular KludgeOS and it just take problems with a single module to force slippage of the date it's expected to go gold. Telcos and handset manufacturers can smell B.S. a mile away and are unlikely to give ALP-OS the second (and THIRD!) chances that Palm gave to Cobalt.
4) Windows Mobile, Symbian, LinuxOS du jour™, maemo (expect telephony in a few months), etc are REAL OSes. ALP-OS exists only in theory. As far as I know, when playing Cellphone OS Roshambo "Real OS" beats "Vaporware OS". Every. Single. Time.
5) Access does not have infinitely deep pockets. They are a small company that simply needed to reinvent themselves, much the way Handspring did. Unfortunately, the market for their future core product could evaporate as fast as you can say "Open Source". (Or is that "Open Sesame"?)
TVoR
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I
They've got plenty of cash flow from Netfront to fall back on, and even in the platform space, the cellphone is only part of their play.
May You Live in Interesting Times
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I
I asked Dave (can I call you Dave, David?) almost exactly the same question in the ACCESS Developer Network thread a coupla weeks ago - "Apart from the Ghost emulation, is there any real incentive for PalmOS developers to move onto ALP as opposed to a more proven OS like, say, WinMob or Symbian?" The response:
WinMob is attractive because of the great .NET developer tools and the large variety of cool devices, but I've spoken to various developers who agree that .NET is a huge disappointment from a performance and memory standpoint. One prominent long-time Palm developer (whose name I won't mention) spent 9 months on a .NET port only to find that the performance of his application was unusably poor and the memory requirement too great to run reliably on most devices. He's serving WM customers by shipping his Palm OS product with StyleTap now and getting better results.
Symbian has not been very attractive, except to Java developers. The native application development tools are incredibly painful to use. You can spend days getting your first "Hello World" application to work. And despite the large number of devices there is a very small percentage of users who even know that they *can* install software on the their Symbian phone.
Initially the incentive to develop for ALP will be based on "does it look like ALP is going to sell well" and "does this look like a fun platform to develop for."...
I figure the same will apply to users too. If ALP sells reasonably well, and if it's as effortless and dare I say it, fun, to navigate as PalmOS, then I'll be very willing to give it a shot and so would other people. And having purchased quite a few useful PalmOS apps and some great games over the last year, the PalmOS emulation is an attraction too. (The same goes for WinMob with Styletap, I know)
A future where the incumbent always wins? Never! I refuse to believe in it.
Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I
> developers. The native application development tools are
> incredibly painful to use. You can spend days getting your first
> "Hello World" application to work..
Then it looks like there is an excellent niche a good developer could aim at, given the huge Symbian presence throughout the world.
Tool maker, anyone?...
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I xpct
They've got plenty of cash flow from Netfront to fall back on, and even in the platform space, the cellphone is only part of their play.
I believe Access' future income from NetFront is not quite as rosy as you believe. Ever heard of a little outfit called "Opera"?
I haven't looked at their financial status recently, but last time I checked they were not as cash-rich as you seem to think they are.
RE: Here is a more specific answer to your question about what I
May You Live in Interesting Times
Mossberg: E62 not as 'fast or slick' as 700p
I didn't realize that the E62 ditches not only the E61's WiFi radio but also the 3G radio. That's quite an interesting backward step. Makes you wonder what this says about Cingular and the other US wireless carriers doesn't it? Do they think price is becoming a lot more important than function and speed for the US consumer?
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Mossberg: E62 not as 'fast or slick' as 700p
I mean, imagine something like the ungainly 700P/W being sold for $500ish in Europe or Asis...it'd never fly, regardless of OS.
I think that's why you've seen a rather consistent stream of handsets on Cingular that still support just EDGE alongside plenty of 1x handsets on Verizon & Sprint.
I think $100 (which is what the RAZR is now-or less-with all carriers IIRC) is the magical price point for what the "average" joe is willling to pay for a dumbphone. And with the arrival of the Q, $200 is going to be the new smartphone pricing paradigm (all prices quoted w/ contract of course).
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
RE: Mossberg: E62 not as 'fast or slick' as 700p
> E61's WiFi radio but also the 3G radio...
Mossberg is comparing a CDMA TREO to the GSM Nokia. Thus the CDMA phone is faster as a matter of course.
I did not see anything in that review that suggested the GSM Nokia had been castrated.
And if the price is LESS than the Q, Nokia has a winner.
RE: Mossberg states the obvious :P
I think it says more about what the U.S. carriers can get away with. Is the E62 significantly cheaper than the E61?
Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650
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Reuters. :-D
Pat Horne