CNET Interview with Jeff Hawkins

Isn't it an oddball situation when the slave device is far, far more advanced than the host device upon which it is critically dependent?

That's strange. So you consider your PC to be a "slave device" to your Treo? Master/slave doesn't apply in any meaningful sense I can find here. Neither does client/server. The relationship between the Foleo and Treo seems to be peer to peer in every respect except for one: that synchronization seems to be initiated from the Foleo (at least that's all we've seen). You can initiate, flag or file an email from either device and its contents and status are synched to the other. Should work the same with other apps.

One new thing about this synchronization: they said it is optionally a continuous operation. I'm wondering if they really mean that. Could I be typing away on a document, hit save, grab the phone and leave the house and just have the document on my phone without any special action being taken? Continuous sync seems to suggest we're not talking about HotSync, but some new protocol more akin to ActiveSync.

If the sync protocol is new, what capabilities does it have? Could I sync over an IP network? Could I in fact initiate the sync from the phone? Say I didn't want to eat up my batteries and tempt Bluetooth fate with continuous BT sync: could I instead initiate a sync from my smartphone over a VPN to grab the latest version of a document that's back on my WiFi-connected Foleo at the office? (This is how Seven and some other PIM and doc sync products work today, but with Palm now controlling both sides of the sync it could be an integrated built-in feature.)

Thinking about the implications that Hawkins identified for how Palm might change the Treo now that Foleo is on the scene. If I can sync over the Internet, think about how nice it would be to have a Treo with drive mode: I never have to remember to sync up my stuff to my flashdrive before I leave for a trip now because I can do it anytime, anywhere. And I don't need the IT department to sign off on this or to have my personal data on some Google server somewhere to accomplish this. It's totally peer to peer.

Don't know if this is where they are going, but in any case I think it's interesting to realize that Palm has some extremely interesting options they can explore now that they own both the pocketable device OS and the new "personal computer" OS. That's an advantage that Microsoft has always had over them, and now the gap is being closed.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog

hkklife, I agree.

I am impressed that he doesn't seem as oblivious as the initial idea behind the Foleo makes him seem. Basically - hew comes out and says that he intends to use the 'smart phone companion' thing as a way to get a new class of personal computers in the market. And i think a *true* appliance type of device (i cringe when i think of my grand mother struggling with a window box) is needed and has been overdue for a while. and I dont mean a mac.

I actually thought Hawkins had said "I don't think so" instead of "I don't know". Yes, that is not the same meaning at all. Thanks for pointing that out.

Remind me, does the iPhone have Bluetooth? Will that allow for keyboard "connectivity"? I know that there will be an on-screen keyboard, but I also know from my use of Scott's very nice Thumbboard app, it isn't that easy to use an on-screen keyboard no matter how well the software is implemented (visual and audio feedback at this point). In another sense, it really doesn't matter that the first iPhone doesn't have an integrated keyboard. This is Apple's first smartphone product. If they think there is a good market for a smartphone with a keyboard and they can make money from it, they will be making one.

But I still think that Palm has been foolish for not delivering a large screen, keyboardless Treo. There has got to be enough market for that device to make it worth the development. Apple believes so. Palm left the door wide open for Apple to come along and establish themselves in the smartphone arena. The iPhone could have been seen as following Palm's lead. Now if/when Palm finally delivers that type of product, it is they who will be following Apple, trying to play catch up.


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Want an alternative? Try this: http://www.ubuntu.com/ or http://www.mepis.org/

Now Palm has the perfect excuse not to to include wifi in their future devices. Clever Palm marketing dept: outfoxing the competition. :-)

When the foleo is available on ebay for 100$, it will be nice to get one, remove Palm DOS Linux and install something like Damn Small Linux (aka DSL): now that can be an interesting device.

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Hey Admin: Why do we have to keep two profiles?

Yeah, and maybe he's not.

Maybe he's someone who's simply living off a decade-old reputation and STILL getting away with it.

Maybe LifeDrive II really IS as bad as first impressions say it is, without thousands of "But it's GOTTA be!"s (or MUCH more correctly labeled "But it CAN'T be that bad!"s) dreaming up amazing projections of where it MIGHT be sometime down the road - EVEN including Mr-Closed-Down-Brain-Institute Hisself!

What was that quote? Paraphrased:

== "...where our thinking is leaning..."

!!!

Yeah, THAT'S ready for prime time, alrightee!

Giggle.

For sure.

But that is neither a TREO nor FOLEO.

A LONG time ago somewhere I posed a question something like:

== When is a TREO no longer a TREO?

in the context of "How much functionality can be removed before you have something other than TREO?".

Taking away the QWERTY keyboard, removing the ability to expand the device, whatever.

Is it a TREO?

[we already have the 1984-ish Marketing doublespeak of the Fooleo being somehow better than the TREOs at composing email on the road (or the equivalent of "two devices needed while typing on the road" (!!!)) , etc...what's next?]

Yes, your Thumbboard app is well implemented, and even visually attractive. Your comments on what form-factor you would like to see for a smartphone are exactly what a number of us are hoping for as well. So far, hope is all we have. And you even like trackpoints too! It really would be cool to have a folding BT keyboard with a trackpoint for navigation.

In this initial implementation, the Foleo is being marketed as a companion to your smartphone to basically do two things: keyboard and screen. The keyboard issue is already resolvable via any number of add-on keyboards, most being almost as small and portable as the handheld itself. I'm curious about what might be possible to resolve the screen issue. Why not some kind of video out from the handheld where the power-hungry large screen has its own power source? And maybe some kind of "dual-mode" video chip in the handheld that has significant power reduction in "standard" mode (small internal screen), but that jumps up to be a higher-end graphics chip when paired with the larger screen or even a projector (and can get additional power from the screen's power source). I don't really know what might be possible, but I'm curious about other options.

Since I've got your attention, one more "out there" idea to attempt to implement for the Thumbboard. This comes from a discussion over at David Beers site a while back. Since the Zodiac has a vibrating alarm, might there be any way to implement kinetic feedback for key "clicks"? Maybe there is too much lag in the activation of the vibration or maybe it can't be short enough in time, but it would be kind of cool to see what can be done. Another possible problem might be a significant reduction in battery life. I have no idea what kind of current that little vibrator pulls.

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/

He's basically ceding the FAR-FROM-PERFECTED PDA market to Appls' iPod....it doesn't even have a touchscreen, removable memory, built-in networking or user editable PIM data!

He then thinks the Treo line is undeserving of IMMEDIATE big-time R&D expenditure and updating.

So he creates a device devoid of most of the hallmarks that have defined Palm Computing--no touchscreen, not pocket-sized, and completely derivative design (mini notebook formfactor with a tired old IBM Trackpoint cursor nub).

I figure Hawkins and Palm's engineers determined it was too difficult to try to cram a decent sized battery, a fullsize SD slot and a larger-than-320x320 screen into something the size of a Treo or a TX. So they gave up and went with the relatively 'large' subnotebook chasis filled with...absolutely nothing.

How sick is it that the four year old Tungsten T3 has more built-in functionality (and better multimedia capabilities out of the box) than the Foleo? And let's not even mention the Zodiac.

Had Palm been smart they'd have snatched up the remnants of Tapwave several years ago and relaunched it as a web browsing multimedia tablet. All Palm would've had to do was graft the superior Palmified PIM apps and Athena connector onto a Zodiac 2 and beef up the battery. And of course, churn out a solid set of drivers/init strings to ensure compatibility with BT DUN on a wide variety of mobile handsets. There's your real "mobile manager" device! Perfect form factor--larger than a standard Palm PDA but still pocketable. Larger screen, dual expansion slots, 3.5mm headphone jack etc etc. Then after a year or two of pushing Garnet to its limits with such a device, drop in PLinux and an EVDO modem. Bingo!

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

It would have been revolutionary if they came up with a PDA 75% of the size of the Foleo (or 125% of a Lifedrive, just approximating here, maybe the size of a Nokia N800?) with an included, but nicely integrated, detachable keyboard, the PDA would attach in landscape mode. The keyboard could be placed in your briefcase or laptop case and the PDA carried around with you. The unit would automagically switch between portrait and landscape a la the iPhone. Return to the original Graffiti. Then have all the features of the Foleo for those who want the Treo sync. Then you have that market and the market I want to be in, a simple cell phone with a PDA (with lots of cool software).

Palm Pilot Pro --> Palm Pilot III --> Zire 71 --> Franklin Covey Planner

Ken

If the Palm PDA has reached this stage, and I believe it has, with the exception of some technological improvements. Then we must all realize that development effort on these products will be cut drastically.

Jeff is right to imply the end/decline of the pda, but he has not many declarations about Palm ceasing to work on the product entirely.

A new version of the TX with Palm Linux OS, and incremental improvements to wifi etc. is probably about all I would expect. But only time will tell, we will have to wait and see.

It is too early to rant.

There is no motivation for developers to support this when most developers want to support something they want to use themselves...

Developers are business people. Like all business people, the successful ones are more concerned about what their customers need than what they need for their personal use. A transcript of the last few days on the Palm Entrepreneurs Forum would thoroughly disprove your statement. I don't have results of a survey to back this up, but if the activity and tone on PEF is any indication, most of us who sell software to the masses (and understand their mindset) are realizing that the Foleo represents a very interesting new business opportunity.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog

There are about 300 comments there, which says something in itself. Most are positive or at least show interest in the idea.

Of course, SlashDot really *is* the group that want a Foleo for themselves. They've been craving a cheap, lightweight, Linux PC for so long that they've even cast glances at Negroponte's OLPC. Now that's desperation!

Some samples:

When the Palm handhelds came out, everyone said the same thing. "Why do I need this?" "This will be a complete flop." "No one will buy it." And today, handhelds are an established market.
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I think Palm have been quite smart on the market for this: email is the niche that will pull some discretionary business users (the sort who buy their own phone or other gizmos if not too expensive) that travel a LOT and don't need a full laptop - mostly execs, meaning it's critical that Palm connects the Foleo to Blackberry very quickly. The Linux base and openness are what will pull in the geek community to provide open source apps and make the platform more capable. And commercial developers from the Palm world will see this as a good way to expand their market, covering a number of different smartphone platforms.

One other interesting thing: Palm recently bought the developers of Chatteremail, a great push email app for Palm OS that uses IMAP IDLE to enable instant email delivery from most IMAP servers. This is great for people who want Blackberry style instant email delivery, without the cost of a Blackberry subscription and the clunky Blackberry OS and hardware.

Another smart decision is to work with all types of smartphone - the smartphone market is very fragmented so this could be a great way to maximise market.

Bottom line: Real road warriors hate the weight of "real laptops" and the delay in getting email, waking up the laptop, poor battery life, etc. Given a light power brick (apparently more like a phone charger than a laptop's), I think the Foleo is a real winner.
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This is much more like what an OLPC should be. ARM == low power & cost relative to an x86. I think OPLC got it wrong when they went x86 - which looks like it was done solely to support Windows.
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The most compelling features are instant on/off, e-mail sync, long battery life, and VGA out for presentations.
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I expect the Foleo to be very good at what it does. What remains to be seen is if it is good enough that people will want the supplement for their smartphone, or the replacement for the large laptop. However, as a standalone device for people lacking a small laptop and a smartphone, it will still probably be good given the price.

There are plenty of cheap laptops on the market nowadays. Not too many at $500, but plenty at $700+. The problem is that those machines are often crap, and are seldom truly portable. The Foleo seems to be taking the approach of not pretending to be a desktop replacement, and instead focusing on being really mobile. So, while there are laptops that can match the Foleo in portability, they can't approach it in price.
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[In response to a guy who says his Powerbook is far more capable:]
1) Sleep is not instant. A palm is instant.
2) You push ONE button on your powerbook, and up pops the email client from your treo right there on the powerbook screen? And you can edit all your email and any attachments right there? And the email stays on the treo?
3) When you send email from your powerbook, it sends it from the treo using the cellular network so you don't have to be logged in a local wi-fi network (if any) for it to work?

I have dozens of wi-fi setups on my laptop as I travel all over the world. The ability to do my email wherever there is cell phone coverage, on a big screen with a real keyboard and zero hassle is *very* compelling...throw in some presentations on a CF card and I can leave the laptop behind...

Sounds like the Foleo is FAR more capable than your powerbook for business travelers, you know people who already have treo's, blackberry's etc.
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For your basic word processing, spreadsheeting, emailing and (sans flash) web surfing a multi-gigahertz laptop with 720i widescreen, DVD RW and about 30 minutes battery life is overkill. Laptop makers have been constantly upgrading the laptop into a full-blown PC and leaving the laptop ethos behind.

This is a solution to a very current problem. Smartphones are too small to be used for serious work, and laptops are too big, heavy and powerful to be lugged around everywhere.
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Actually if the price gets down around the $300 range and it has enough memory I can think of a lot of uses for it.
The company I work for has a vertical product and we sell a good number of laptops. If we could bundle it with this device and if it could run for say 8 hours on a battery it would be great.
No more mucking about with multiple versions of Windows, no more virus's and malware. Just what we used to call in the industry a "toaster".
I could see a lot if uses besides sales reps. Frankly if they can get an Internet link then they don't even need Act. Salesperson.com could be your CMS. And if your company did things right you could use a VPN from it and use Web based apps for a lot of you industry specific work like placing orders.
Police officers could use it. Place a Wifi/WAN bridge in the police car and then use the wifi in the this device.
There are a lot of uses for this device. Yes a sub notebook could do but they tend to be more expensive than this device and more power hungry.
I still see the ideal price point as around $299 but it may sell even at $500.
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Most decent subnotebooks are around $2000, and they have a boot-up time.

I kind of like the idea of pressing a button and it's just running, rather than waiting a minute or two for a notebook to boot up.
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etc.

There are more, and of course there are plenty of disparaging comments too: jokes about the Audrey, comparisons to old Win CE devices, complaints that it's underpowered and won't stream video, complaints that it should be smaller. Overall, though, it's had a very respectful and interested reception within the Linux-oriented Slashdot crowd, I'd say. Especially when you consider what a rough crowd that can be!

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog