Palm Pre vs iPhone: Pre Emerges Bloodied but Victorious

You'd be better off with a low-end iPod Touch. Even a used/refurb one, if you don't want to spend much $.

I got excited and was expecting some huge app store/content partner announcement/a Fooleo successor running WebOS

Instead he showed us the TOuchstone. A great little gadget, sure, but nothing that defines an "ecosystem" in the Apple sense of the word.

And while RIM's ecossytem is less glamorous and less consumer-oriented, they've built up enough of a user/developer base and enough critical mass & presence in the market that they can sort of accomplish stuff via brute force (look at the sales numbers, despite the rumored 30+% return rate of the Storm).

Long-time POS users may remember those cool little booklets/brochures that Palm used to include in the box with their new handhelds. This was back in the Pilot/PalmPilot/III/V days. I believe they stopped shipping them after the last OS4 models arrived. It was a little book full of not only Palm's own branded accessories, but 3rd party accessories like the Kodak PalmPix, "small" software solutions like PrintBoy alongside "big" killer apps like DocsToGo . Crude as it was, that little catalog nicely summarized the fledgling Palm OS ecosystem of the mid-late 90s for all new handheld buyers. Just delivering those apps to the customers' devices was the problem back then. That's why with the magic of wireless, it's crucial Palm have a fantastic OOBE (out of box experience) for the user as far as the app/media store tightly integrted with the device. If it's buried amidst a sea of Sprint bloatware/trialware (Nuance voice control, NFL mobile, Sprint TV etc, Sprint app store etc)

Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->?

If the Pre is a lot seller, and the Touchstone isn't too terribly priced, then I do see a relatively high attach rate for Palm. Then the inevitable cheap knock-off type chargers from the usual Chinese peripheral firms like Brando etc will follow. Same as the old days of the Palm Hotsync cradles.

The Touchstone IS a really nifty little device and I'd love to have one on my desk. In fact, I'd like to see Palm make all of their future devices Touchstone-capable with the proper back cover installed. It'd make a nice way of unifying the line and not having to worry about FF diffferences or the locator of the microUSB port etc.

But one innovative accessory (Touchstone), a leather case, and a few chargers and a headset or two does not make a thriving ecosystem. I was surprising that Rubinstein, known by many as the "podfather" would use the "ecosystem" term to introduce an accessory instead of some kind of app/media store.

Another cool concept woulbe someone like Altec Lansing doing a music dock that was like the Touchstone but had built-in speakers that played via BT A2DP.

Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->?

My point pointedly was, as much as I enjoy your writing and read everything I see from you, you thoroughly got caught up in The Gush along with scads of other Me-Too Media-droids and are only now coming off the high.

most infamous quotes in palm history

1. "yes this really is a gold threaded suit." - carl yankowski
2. "we're prepared for whichever way the market goes." - carl yankowski
3. "look at the shadow on the second hand, cobalt really is amazing." - david nagel
4. "PC guys are not going to just walk in." - ed colligan
5. "no, foleo can't do youtube but i wish it has a faster processor." - jeff hawkins
6. "why would we want to charge the same or less for a better product?" - ed colligan
7. "i'm a huge proponent of ecosystems. check out this new charger." - ruby

It may turn out that the Pre's "multitasking" turns into a detriment. Leave a web page with some crappy JavaScript open on some off-screen card and it may drag performance to a crawl.

Seems to me that it was the Apple Newton before the Palm... and the Sharp portables in the late '80s (yeah, had one of them, too...)

(And there were *many* pundits who wondered if the iPhone would really go on sale in June back then too!)

What is going to be delivered and what was demoed are going to be DIFFERENT, imho.

I would BET the delivered Pre will be MUCH thicker to accommodate a much bigger battery (in fact, I believe the paradigm for using the Pre will to ALWAYS keep it on a charging dock if not "on the move"!).

I would bet the delivered Pre will have a more robust movable part.

I have to wonder if they'll get rid of that lip around the keyboard that at least one person has complained about already.

We'll see how fast the delivered Pre is hacked and virus-infected. If Apple says they didn't want to do certain things for "security" reasons, it'll be very interesting to watch as the Bad Guys show Palm exactly what Apple was talking about!

Oh please. If mobiles were going to become virus havens thanks to open architectures WinMob and PalmOS would have been targeted long, long ago. Apple simply used "security" as an excuse for the things they didn't want to deliver. Remember when Steve said "no third-party apps, we don't want them bringing down AT&T's network?" Far as I know, it's withstood the onslaught just fine so far...

To your question, I didn't compare the original MacOS to DOS. I compared it to AmigaOS. In that comparison, Macs came out as underpowered, boring machines for dullards who hoped to be hip by association.

A Mac was my primary computer between the death of the Amiga and the release of Windows 95. Apple had a compelling product for those few years, but Windows 95 was far better than Apple's OS6 (remember having to adjust the memory partions for each running program? Having to reboot with all extensions off to burn a CD?).

> Apple should hire the same accountants every other CE company uses, since they can release upgrades for free.

And do those accountants use accounting methods which continuously show those other CE companies as more profitable than Apple? Apple's accountant's picked Apple's revenue recognition methods for a reason. And that method has legal consequences as a side effect, given SOX.

.