Palm Hosting webOS Developer Day

Ease of development only goes so far...

I'll take that bet anytime. Palm is dead and you know it.

FJH
The original releaser of HaCkMe

Palm is DEAD as an independent company.
Consumers buy based on:
1) aesthetics/what they think will impress others
2) what the see/read others are using (herd mentality)
3) what their job supports/mandates
4) price
5) features
6) applications

OS is irrelevant to the average Joe. Palm's problems are that their hardware is plasticky, unappealing junk, no one is actually using the Web OS devices in public, Blackberry and Windows Mobile leveraged corporate email to entrench their respective OSes in the hearts and minds of the IT nerds that make the corporate architecture decisions, the competition has been selling better quality phones for less money than Palm, the competition has been selling better featured phones than Palm, the competition has more applications than Palm andball this has created momentum for the competing platforms and inertia for Palm.

Palm's window of opportunity for Web OS closed the day Apple slashed the price of the base iPone in 2009 and that window was bolted shut when the 100 billion (so it seems) or so new Android phones with killer specs started coming out over the past 6 months.

Palm pissed off its only significant customers - Sprint and Verizon.
Verizon is about to get its own iPhone and almost no one is going to choose a Pre or Pixi over the ubiquitous iPhone
Sprint is getting the HTC EVO as its new flagship; the Pre was a disaster as Sprint's flagship device over the past year.
Palm's glacial design cycle and limited resources can't compete with Apple's yearly iPhone releases and the avalanche of feature-stuffed Android phones in a variety of form factors.
Apple has sold 35 million iPhones compared to Palm's less than 1.5 million Web OS phones sold; any intelligent developer - especially one already burned by Palm's/PalmSource's abandonment of PalmOS 5, Cobalt and Foleo OS - isn't going to waste time backing a platform that is moribund, lacks carrier support and is under attack by multiple other more intelligently managed companies.

Who and where exactly are Palm's customers? Hardware hungry geeks? Soccer MILFs? Sprint? Verizon? Old Palm OS fans? International carriers? The average Joe? Corporate email serfs? Hackers? Every major niche seems to be much better served by several other mobile OS right now. With Web OS still essentially in beta status and lacking any compelling hardware, it's not surprising to see that the carriers can't even give away Pre and Pixi. Pre "Touch" and a Web OS "Centro 2" should have been part of the hardware mix from Day 1. April 2010 finds Palm too far behind and lacking any momentum whatsoever for the Web OS platform. Neither an advertising blitz nor a price war can help Palm. What might save Web OS is for a company like Nokia to purchase Palm this quarter, finish the development + fix the Cobalt-style speed issues, and release half a dozen stylish, well-specced, well built Web OS phones before the end of 2010. Web OS has the potential to become a differentiator in a market glutted with generic Android, Window Mobile and Blackberry OS phones. Nokia has the resources to pull this off. Motorola was smart enough to dump its feeble Linux initiative and go "all in" with Android. Their main problem is that HTC can trump their hardware at any time, so sticking with Android is akin to making a deal with the devil. Too bad HTC didn't merge with Palm in 2009. An EVO running a fully developed Web OS would have been a worthy competitor to the iPhone.

FJH
PW-Patcher Overlord

I was there at the beginning, son and I'll see it through to the bitter end. At this stage in some ways it's almost like watching a car crash in slow motion. Impossible not to watch, yet nothing one can do to stop the carnage.

[personal attack removed]

it is amazing how much you can saw when facing a keyboard and posting anonymously. i couldn't care less about your attitude - just wasting space on a great site light PIC. it is a pity one cannot filter posts/messages from certain people; but you would just re-register with another fake nick.

regardless what you or i personally think - people are entitled to their opinion; even if you are a moron. instead of being an ass; why not do something to contribute to the community? you are a lost cause i guess.. oh well.
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Aaron Ardiri
PalmOS Certified Developer

What Android DOES have is everyone & their brother onboard as far as a hardware licensees (truly a double-edged sword), tons and tons of momentum + goodwill from both carriers, consumers & handset manufacturers, lotsa free/cheap apps, and the support ($ & otherwise) of the almighty Google.

Careful! Windows Mobile has had this for years and it hasn't done them much good.

This is how it functionally plays out when you walk around in circles for four years and leave the gate open to the "PC guys". When / If you get your act together (In many ways Palm has) you have so many enemies in the game that bullets are flying from every direction and your head is on a swivel.

If Palm waits a month, then Android will do a demo of movies in 3D and then a month later WP7 will release on the first hardware and the next month BB will show off the iPhone killing browser, then a month later Apple will ...

Had Palm pulled all this (or most of this) 2 years previous, they would be in a power position. But, that would have probably meant one less name change or merger for them. And after all, who wants to give up such milestones. Ugggh.
Pat Horne

you are 100% right - the thing is, the only reason why apple has success is because they are forcing users to access applications through a single portal. this drives an economy. palm and windows mobile (and even android); allow the user to download applications from anywhere and the developer then has to ask himself; how the hell do my users get the applications i write..

secondly; a more subtle issue is that unless you provide a restricted ecosystem where you can control the availability (big brother effect, yes - but, there are benefits) - you wont get the big players involved. for example; if developer X writes a clone of a very popular game and the copyright holders cannot enforce the removal of such games - why should people invest in brands and concepts for the device? i was on the short end of the stick in this case; i had some game and watch games that nintendo sent apple a request to remove them.. while nintendo wont ever do anything; just think about bigger brands that franchise their labels for developers.. if it is easy to copy and get away with it; why would they as a company bother.

closed ecosystem = important to making monkey.

i've been selling applications for years now and this is really the reason why apple is such a strong market place more than anything else. companies like handango/palmgear et al just eventually started ripping off developers but provided very little value. i hope palm keeps the distribution system closed or it will just end up like it was before.

windows phone 7 is going the same way as well.. which means there is a chance to make money as a developer on that platform as well. android is a lost cause; i have written enterprise apps for android; but i do not see any value doing shareware/commercial paid applications with the mentality that users have on that platform.

another thing to consider is that the apple platform is saturated. you have every dog and his cat doing fart apps and copying each other left right and center. palm currently has 2000+ applications; i have 10 applications already running with the PDK.. if i get them on the store; i'll make money. getting 10 applications in a store with 120000+ applications? i might as well be throwing away my effort.
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Aaron Ardiri
PalmOS Certified Developer

i will be going to the event; even if it is just for nostalgic purposes :) i'll be there to communicate to other developers how to port their stuff to the palm pre.. it didn't take long; which means it is a small investment of time in the worst case.. it may kick off; or palm stock may just fall beyond survival.. anyone got a dice? :)
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Aaron Ardiri
PalmOS Certified Developer

Mike, we've had fragmented stores and side-loading forever. Palm, Microsoft, Symbian, RIM, Android, etc etc. Apple is, by far, the most successful. You actually couldn't be any more wrong. Everything Apple does is with the intent that you will buy their hardware, then get stuck in a never-ending cycle of buying new software and upgrading to new hardware, all the while shoveling money in their direction. So far, it seems they've done it 125 million times. How is any of that remotely unsuccessful?

This is why war is such a bad consequence. War puts ones future at risk. War is a consequence not a choice. Children do not need to grow up in war, yet we send our children to battle and ask much of them. A sad dam consequence of other people's choices. We do not choose to send our future to war, as a consequence we have done that.

Children do have a say and their thoughts do matter.

E-T
e-tellurian

Completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
WiFi & BT? No strings attached
we_tellurian@canada.com

Fake Jeff Hawkins wrote:
Some of the stuff coming out from the conference is shocking. WebOS development has effectively been stalled for the past 6 months.

Can you elaborate a bit more on that? Am I to take this to mean that WebOS 1.x is at a standstill and Palm are putting all their energies and $ into WebOS 2.0 and/or new hardware? Or has WebOS IN ANY FORMS hit a wall?

Also, should we assume that development was dead for the past 6 months BUT is ramping up again on the heels of "Project Jumpstart"? Or was the "big" 1.4 update with video recording, speed optimizations etc. basically the end of the line? I mean, there is still SO MUCH that needs to be done to WebOS, even after the APIs covered at Palm's event are brought out.

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->Verizon Moto Droid + Verizon Palm Centro

So, the rumors being tossed around online about a "new" version of WebOS being optimized for 4G/WiMax seem to be true, eh? But I've read that the formfactor of the new device is going to be a "nicer, better" Pre and still have the portrait-style slider but with a larger screen. At any rate, the Evo 4G looks to have the lion's share of the buzz (and Sprint's marketing warchest as well). We ALL know what happened when the Droid beat the Pre Plus to Verizon (and the lame duck BB Storm 2 got absolutely crushed by the Droid juggernaut as well). If the C40 (or whatever it's called) hits Sprint any more than a few weeks after than the Evo then it won't matter how good Palm's hail mary effort is. And, regardless, we'll be back to the same shitty situation seen with the Pre last year---"Want our latest & greatest? Gotta jump to Sprint for it!" NO ONE in the industry commands that kind of respect other than Apple.

Alongside the Sprint launch, Palm needs to get a similar (but 3G of course) version of this Snapdragon-powered beast out ASAP for any carrier that will still give them the time of day (T-Mobile? AT&T? Just unlocked GSM sold from palm.com? Verizon's certainly out of the picture!)

I don't doubt one BIT that WebOS rocks with the oomph of a Snapdragon behind it, as the speed boost that an overclock to 800Mhz brings to a regular Pre.

P.S. Even in a non-4G area, the Evo looks like one helluva piece of hardware. Other than missing a d-pad/trackball (an unfathomable omission that make precise input & text navigation even harder but will also fragment the already scattered Android market even further) and an AMOLED screen, I cannot think of a single major shortcoming-at least on paper-of that device other than the usual battery life concerns. I'm spent extensive time with the HD2 and am absolutely amazed at the job HTC has done not only keeping the WinMob 6.x corpse alive but adding major functionality to it. These guys need to get their hands on WebOS in a major way!
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->Verizon Moto Droid + Verizon Palm Centro