Comments on: Palm's SVP of Engineering Leaves the Company

"wow - what a loss for Palm. what an innovator."

LOL... But seriously, you can't necessarily blame him, he was only there a few years (if that). The culture of ineptitude within Palm's engineering and upper management is far more than one person could possibly have overcome.

"Death can come swiftly to a market leader. By the time you have lost the positive-feedback cycle it's often too late to change what you've been doing, and all of the elements of a negative spiral come into play." - Bill Gates, "The Road Ahead", Chapter 3

Palm isn't going belly up. It is all FUD. Just be patient.

Here. Read this while you are waiting.

http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/3626/editorial-why-the-palm-os-is-the-inevitable-winner/

"Microsoft has missed the boat. Palm was asleep at the wheel, just coasting along for a couple of years. This was Microsoft's only hope to take over the market. But that time is over. PalmSource is aggressively improving the Palm OS. It already has 87% of retail sales in the United States and sells about twice as many handhelds in the Enterprise market as Microsoft does. Expect PPC's share to drop back to single figures. Especially during the burst of sales caused by Palm users upgrading to the new operating system.

The PPC won't go away. Microsoft has tons of money to pour into it and hates to admit it has failed at anything. But any other company would see the writing on the wall and drop it.

There are still plenty of "experts" who are predicting that the Pocket PC will take over the lead from the Palm OS in a few years. Keep in mind, though, these are the same people who have been predicting the same thing for years. Every year, they move back the year that Microsoft will take over. "

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Fast-forward 5 years:

1. Palm is STILL asleep at the wheel, still coasting with retread products

2. No one (Access, Palm) is improving any "Palm" OS. And even if they are, it has to be released in an actual device. And THEN the carriers have to buy it and offer it for sale.

3. Palm has no more retail sales since they sold their souls to the carrier devils and Microsoft & RIM have wrapped up the enterprise market.

4. Microsoft still has tons of money to pour into whatever they want to.

5. Really, Microsoft "took over" in 2003, when Palm released their T3 and never gave it a proper followup device. If you want to cut them some slack, for all intents and purposes we'll give 'em another 12-16 months. That's when Palm entered 2005 riding on the coattails of the good-but-not-great Treo 650 but with NO new Treos in the pipeline, NO new OS, NO compelling new handhelds and NO direction other than start flailing around as a "me too" WinMob licensee.

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

No she isn't there, and hasn't been for well over a year.