Comments on: Palm Cancels the Foleo

It's Good News. Duh.

OK, you didn't really see that coming.

http://foleocentral.blogspot.com

FoleoCentral is the news, opinions & review blog about the Palm Foleo Mobile Companion

Fooleo, We Hardly Knew Ye.

http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/8621/#136783

This thing was such a flop that even PALM knew it was going to flop. Do you know how horrendous a product has to be to make Palm, the industry leader in alpha Golden Master products, have to cancel it? Beyond belief.

And there will be no Foleo II. This thing was CANCELED, not pushed back. Everything about the initial reports suggested the market would overwhelmingly reject this device.

Just start making PDA's again, Palm.

-Bosco
NX80v + Wifi + BT + S710a

And that post you linked to? Was about how Engadget need to get over themselves. If you think Palm's decision was based solely on their editorial, you're nuts.

Anyhow, naturally I blogged at a little bit of length about it. :)

http://tinyurl.com/ys6og3

<http://comments.deasil.com/> that is my tech blog. There are many like it, but that one is mine.

And you believe it? Tell me, do you still believe in Santa Claus?

>May even jutify the $600 price tag.

One would hope that whatever they release does "jutify" oh wait, I mean *JUSTIFY* the price they put on it.

>Foleo's biggest problem was its limited software package

There were bigger problems - software was one, poor market research was another.

>This will give Palm time to develop a much more robust offering.
>And perhaps come up with a better marketing angle.

I'm sure if Palm could market smoke they would...nowadays you need a compelling product to market.

>It's Good News. Duh.

It's bittersweet news. Good in the sense that palm realizes there is no market this overpriced crap.

However bad news as it (again) demonstrates Palm's inability to execute on an *announced* product.

More worrisome is the software issues behind Foleo's cancellation.

>It's overpriced for the meagre hardware it runs on, I agree. But it's innovative in a way that most hardware-
>driven upgrades are not. I think it deserves more respect than it's been getting.

Freak, the quote is from you. You now say cancelling the Foleo is a "good thing" yet you were extolling Foleo's nonexistent virtues a few days ago.

Take off your blinders and stop being a Palm apologist.

That =was= a worry, I believe.

PALM has outsourced just about everything w.r.t. software development now. All they need to do (all, he says...) is get someone on board who has a handle on managing software development by outsource entities.

We're all aware of what became the defacto operating system standard [Windows] at the time. As a result there was no market whatsoever for hardware that didn't work within the framework of that operating system. As a defacto operating system did take over, all other operating system markets and competition failed one after the other and the hardware manufacturers found themselves marketing for an ever shrinking range of software rather than the other way around.

Hardware has since become subservient to the operating system. It started around 1994 and is just as true today 13 years later. Worse yet, all the hardware manufacturers slowly bought each other out, further shrinking the hardware choices. So now the hardware manufacturers just make faster and bigger versions of everything that has been done before. We're still plugging in faster CPUs, more RAM, bigger hard drives, faster graphics cards and sound cards just to service the operating system. Hardware driven innovation cannot be afforded by the market any more. There is no money in it. There will be no market for it. Computers are boring.

......

So Linux was created to service the home desktop personal computer, and the PC is here to stay. For those who were looking for some excitement and enjoyment in using their computer, the defacto operating system just doesn't cut it. We want to tinker, we want control, we want power over everything. Or alternatively we believe in some sort of freedom or some combination of the above. So we use Linux. That is certainly how I got involved in Linux; I wanted something to use on the home desktop PC.

However, the desktop PC is crap. It's rubbish. The experience is so bloated and slowed down in all the things that matter to us. We all own computers today that were considered supercomputers 10 years ago. 10 years ago we owned supercomputers of 20 years ago.. and so on. So why on earth is everything so slow? If they're exponentially faster why does it take longer than ever for our computers to start, for the applications to start and so on? Sure, when they get down to the pure number crunching they're amazing (just encode a video and be amazed). But in everything else they must be unbelievably slower than ever.

Computers of today may be 1,000 times faster than they were a decade ago, yet the things that matter are slower.

The standard argument people give me in response is 'but they do such more these days it isn't a fair comparison'. Well, they're 10 times slower despite being 1000 times faster, so they must be doing 10,000 times as many things. Clearly the 10,000 times more things they're doing are all in the wrong place.

I think he's dead on the money. Palm built, from the ground up, a customised implementation of Linux that was instant-on and instant-off. Applications opened instantly. No need to save documents etc. To my mind, this is very impressive. Certainly more so than "Hey, here's yet-another-laptop - but it has a 2.3 instead of 2.1 ghz processor! Wow, awesome!"

If Palm proved anything with the Foleo, it's that they indeed have the talent and the capability to create a modern OS with innovative features that no-one else is attempting. They simply don't have the resources to support seperate OS's for both the Foleo and their smartphones. That, and the extraordinarily negative reaction it received, led to the decision to cancel it. It's a smart business move for Palm.

Thus, this decision is good news. It means that Palm will be able to focus all their talents on one platform, instead of splitting their attention across two. It also means they'll be able to take their idea of applications that sync across devices much further than the puny email syncing we saw with the Foleo. And it also means that if there is a Foleo II, they're going to have had a lot more time to put in the software that the original should have included.

It's quite disappointing that they've had to cancel it. But if one examines the decision objectively, then one can only conclude that it was the right call. It's good news. It would have been bad news if the Foleo OS was what was going to appear on smartphones in '08 - it would have meant there were serious problems. But since they've now explained that these were two seperate platforms, cancelling the Foleo seems an eminently sensible idea, both from a business perspective and for Palm's customers.

But you're not really interested in a real discussion. You just want a flame war. Sorry, not taking the bait today.

Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650 ---> Crimson Treo 680

WTF? In one para you praise the Foleo, then you condemn it. Which is it?

On the other hand, if Foleo's OS was an entirely seperate project, then cancelling it makes sense: Palm is a small company with limited resources and supporting & developing two seperate operating systems is a lot to handle.

There's no contradiction here: Foleo's a great idea, but version 1.0 was a misfire. It's not that hard to see both sides of the coin.

For you, it's a terrible blow. Now you don't get that Happy Meal as payment for "Blow By Blow: 10 Reasons Why The Foleo Is Better Than All Other Notebooks."

the desktop PC is crap. It's rubbish. The experience is so bloated and slowed down in all the things that matter to us. We all own computers today that were considered supercomputers 10 years ago. 10 years ago we owned supercomputers of 20 years ago.. and so on. So why on earth is everything so slow? If they're exponentially faster why does it take longer than ever for our computers to start, for the applications to start and so on? Sure, when they get down to the pure number crunching they're amazing (just encode a video and be amazed). But in everything else they must be unbelievably slower than ever.

Tim's right: Palm needs to have a single, unified, Palm-branded software platform. If Palm has a better idea for how its smartphone OS needs to be done (for example, one that will better meet what the carriers are demanding today) then Foleo needed to be pulled from the market until it could be reloaded with that new OS. Otherwise, Palm would be saddled with three platforms, two of which were up to them to maintain and extend. Likewise third parties that wanted to support Palm products would be developing against three different SDKs, which takes a pretty big commitment and limits Palm's ecosystem.

There are a few other reasons why rushing the Foleo to market wasn't ideal for Palm. As people have pointed out, a lot of your initial expectations of a device that looks like the Foleo is that it has a big library of software. Even if it addresses a serious pain point with just a few apps it's naive to think people are going to "get" that in the immediate way you need to market the product. I expect that when the Foleo is relaunched there will already be a sizeable software library ready because apps that developers created for the new Treos will be easy to tweak to run on Foleo.

What else has been seriously missing in the build-up to release of Foleo? How about announcement of BlackBerry support? I'm not sure how serious Palm is about this, but if they really plan for Foleo to work with other smartphones they should have BlackBerry in their pocket at launch time. That would probably require partnering with RIM to develop a sync module that runs on the device and has access to BB's email store, but it would be huge if they can do it before the re-release. The buzz would be quite a bit more positive, I think.

There's one other thing to think about. The Foleo team really nailed a lot of things that no other mobile Linux project I know of has done. Their OS is so much snappier than Maemo or the Zaurus operating systems and it seems to have very good power management. These low-level traits are critical to Palm's smartphone platform as well. So here was Palm, whose primary business is smartphones, with most of its best Linux talent tied up on the Foleo team. That's a problem.

All this time I've been wondering why Foleo was being rushed to market. I assumed it was the marketing department thinking Palm desperately needed a new product. That still could be true, but I wonder if it wasn't also that Palm needed its smartest people like Ben Combee over on the smartphone project and had to wait for them to get the core functionality and APIs of the Foleo done before they could do that. When it looked like they weren't going to be able to get Foleo where it needed to be without those people and their internal smartphone development was at risk of slipping without them, they had to make a tough decision.

Anyway, I'm really disappointed, but not just because Foleo has been put on a back burner. It's because despite the factors just mentioned it really was a sweet little system. The team that developed it deserves some respect.

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

Let he who is without Shift cast the first stone.

Now STFU about it.

And you still haven't answered my question about the disposition of your Foleo. Do you get to keep it?

And now that it's dead, can you say what software you had planned for it? Anything for consumers, or just for business?

Freak, we have no idea how Foleo worked because it was cancelled. It's not impressive because it hasn't been released.

The idea of Foleo was interesting - however it was far from compelling.

>If Palm proved anything with the Foleo, it's that they indeed have the talent and
>the capability to create a modern OS with innovative features that no-one else is
>attempting. They simply don't have the resources to support seperate OS's for both
>the Foleo and their smartphones. That, and the extraordinarily negative reaction it
>received, led to the decision to cancel it. It's a smart business move for Palm.

If Palm proved anything with the Foleo, it's that they do not have the talent and
the capability to create a modern OS with innovative features.

>And it also means that if there is a Foleo II, they're going to have had a lot more
>time to put in the software that the original should have included.

Freak, now you change your story? Earlier you were crowing about Foleo II, now you've relegated to "if there is a Foleo II" - maybe there is hope for you.

>But since they've now explained that these were two seperate platforms, cancelling
>the Foleo seems an eminently sensible idea, both from a business perspective and for
>Palm's customers.

Likely they're making this up as they go along.

>But you're not really interested in a real discussion. You just want a flame war.
>Sorry, not taking the bait today.

No flame war, I'm just calling you out on your hypocrisy. Foleo was a bad idea before it was ever announced!

Huh? It was Linux. And even according to Beers, it was better than that crap Maemo Nokia shat out. (For an N800-kisser like him to admit that made an impression on me.)

Well, I better stop replying for now and get the hell to writing my blog stuff...

Let me rephrase, "They do not have the skill to customize a modern OS"

"They do not have the skill to customize a modern OS"

And you still haven't answered my question about the disposition of your Foleo. Do you get to keep it?

You asked about my software plans. My plan is to develop a "mind mapping" application: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_Mapping. I also was working on porting a Java SDK to the Foleo. I may still do this just for my own use.

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

It doesn't set a new standard for others to match because IT'S NEVER GOING TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY!

The hypocrisy that others have spoken of is this - for the past few months, I had to hear bullshit about how the Foleo is going to be so useful and will be a great compliment to the Treo. Now that Palm axed it, the same people are saying it was a wise move.

Know what that means? It means you don't form your own damn opinion. You take whatever Palm says as fact. If they say you need a smartphone companion, then you suppose your Treo really is lonely. If they say they're canceling the device a mere weeks from release, then you claim it's a smart business idea.

Wake up. This is why you guys are on the ass-end of every joke on this site. A few of you are so far beyond "fanboy" that "cultist" couldn't even do you justice. Palm is a shitty company. The quicker you move onto other platforms, the quicker you realize how disgustingly limited the Palm OS really is. It may have been useful a few years ago, but it is completely outdated today.

-Bosco
NX80v + Wifi + BT + S710a

As for the "forming your own opinion" comment, I can tell you that I personally have been talking to Palm for some time, urging them to get to a situation where the same code can run on both Treo and Foleo. I thought from the start that it was a mistake to fragment Palm's platforms and was actually working on porting a Java language SDK to address the issue. (I may still do that for my own use if they let me keep my Foleo.) In any case, there is no hypocracy in saying on the one hand that the Foleo addresses a real need in the market and is a nice piece of hardware and software, and on the other that it would have been a helluva lot better to have made the decision to consolidate the OS work before announcing the product. Now that Palm is saying that the two platforms are fundamentally different I think Foleo supporters would be foolish to say that Palm should try to support them both rather than committing to one. Saying it's a good decision to cut one of the OS projects doesn't mean that anyone thinks this was the time to make it. The time it should have been made was when Palm brought Paul Mercer in to help them rethink (or re-rethink) their smartphone OS work. I'd love to understand why this wasn't clear to Palm back then.

So thank God Palm didn't release the Foleo if they weren't committed to supporting its OS over the long haul. But damn them to hell for getting this far without knowing they weren't going to support it for the long haul.

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

BTW, did you ever try a Bluetooth mouse with the Foleo?!

But what does this have to do with the subject "RIP"? ;-) Don't tell me... no! Mike?

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

Didn't I read somewhere, maybe from Combee, that the Bluetooth was ONLY for syncing?

Er...maybe I'm thinking of this:

-- http://discussion.treocentral.com/showpost.php?p=1312861&postcount=86

Since when do subjects here NOT veer of course?!

Besides, you obviously didn't read this:
http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2007/09/03/ok-now-the-foleo-scares-me/

More Foleo posts tomorrow on my blog. If my time isn't swallowed like today.

Know what that means? It means you don't form your own damn opinion. You take whatever Palm says as fact. If they say you need a smartphone companion, then you suppose your Treo really is lonely. If they say they're canceling the device a mere weeks from release, then you claim it's a smart business idea.

No no no, you big silly. Originally, most people assumed that the Foleo OS was what we were going to see on Palm's smartphones next year. Since we now know that is not the case, Palm's cancelling the Foleo makes sense. It's certainly disappointing - I was really looking forward to trying one out - but it would seem to be the right call.

Wake up. This is why you guys are on the ass-end of every joke on this site. A few of you are so far beyond "fanboy" that "cultist" couldn't even do you justice. Palm is a shitty company. The quicker you move onto other platforms, the quicker you realize how disgustingly limited the Palm OS really is. It may have been useful a few years ago, but it is completely outdated today.

1) You erroneously assume that I (or nice, rational people like Beersie) actually give - to quote the immortal Spider Jerusalem - two tugs of a dead dog's cock what random wankers on the Internet think of my opinion. (I don't.)

2) The real cult is the "Palm is dead" cult. Everyone blathers the same old tired garbage about how the Treo is rubbish, Palm OS sucks etc. How boring to read it everywhere you go...

Are we hypocrites, die-hard traditionalists or.......something akin to Amiga users?

:-)

Remember, in the comments area of one particular story last year that I cannot recall, I was accused of being both a Palm apologist AND a paid Microsoft shill (by the good Dr. O)!!

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

WAITAMINUTE!

I still own two of those! (one an original "signed" 1000...whatta great computer (with amazingly bad marketing)).

The 1000 was (and is) classic...especially in the "signed" edition. It was just a pain to have to load Kickstart from floppy (did they ever release a ROM update card for the 1000 w/ the OS on it?). I actually had its little look-alike sibling in the Commodore line, the C128-D.

I personally always wanted a 2000 but it was just sooo pricey.

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

Are we hypocrites, die-hard traditionalists or.......something akin to Amiga users?

You, sir, are some kind of freakish, bizarre hybrid*! You need to be hunted down and quarantined, so scientists can dissect you and find out what makes you tick.

*Or possibly a Jedi. After all, only a Sith deals in absolutes. ;)

what about folks like me who say "Palm is Dead" and then in the same breath say "Long live Palm!". Are we hypocrites, die-hard traditionalists or.......something akin to Amiga users?

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

You haven't lived til you've tried to compile and run programs using Aztec C with nothing more than that internal and one external floppy drive. I think I managed a "Hello World" dialog box, maybe some sort of sound generator, that's about it before deep frustration set in. Got real good at swapping floppies, though!

> ...(did they ever release a ROM update card for the 1000 w/ the OS on it?)...

There WAS something, but the motherboard of the 1000 is, I believe, somewhat monolithic - unlike the expandable 2000.

Is that computer still ahead of its time? How's that Daphne chip doing these days?

A prime example of how great technology can get squeezed out of a contracting marketplace. (The Atari ST series got squeezed too, but it was just about crap. So I won't bother to mention that because I know the name JACK TRAMIEL raises hackles on the skin on Amiga Cuiltists. LMAO. Yeah, I owned a 1040ST. And I think it was my letter to Tramiel in a trade paper that got him to intro a laser printer for it. The world's *first* laser printer that used the host computer's CPU for image processing! Look at that: Tramiel listened to me. Maybe he should be running Palm.)

And really REALLY bad marketing - the infamous Guru Meditation Error could not have been...well...worse. Nothing like those words in BLINKING red staring you in the face when something went wrong. Sheesh.

The Video Toaster lasted well past the Amigas, remaining viable for years.

Good stuff.

July 24 - "and hasn't Palm cancelled this yet???"
http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/8837/#135438

and back on July 12 - "fire Hawkins, cancel the Foleo, and get the Linux Palm OS done"
http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/8936/#135126

My guess is that Palm has roughly 6 months to come up with something competitive before Apple's iPhone/iPod touch finishes them off.

No. Six WEEKS.

What a load of crap! Until Apple open up their iToys to third-party applications, they're not going to kill Palm

They sell to carriers, carriers sell to us, none based off of seasonality since phones don't tend to get bought especially heavy during said Season (their words).

See just about any quarterly or annual report out of PALM.

[of course, IF they get back into PDAs that might change...]

Typo. Should have been:

PALM mis-management has said

I repeat: Palm has SEX WEEKS.

No seasonality to phone sales? Wow, then Steve Jobs must have been seriously deluded when he mentioned people buying the iPhone as year-end gifts...

I'll take Steve Jobs word over yours. And over Ed "Let me publicly humiliate you, Hawkins" Colligan.

SEX WEEKS is probably what Palm HAS been having, hence their lack of urgency.

SIX weeks is what I meant and still stand by. Go on, mark your calendars. I'll wait.

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

Then you would be wrong.

Because I don't have a stance one way or anotoer about this other than what PALM has said repeatedly in their SEC filings:

== "...To date, we have not seen significant seasonal variations in
== customer demand for Treo smartphones..."

-- http://tinyurl.com/3bhuwh

Page 11.

Ah, this might explain their turn to Linux:

-- http://www.reallylinux.com/docs/linuxlovingmen.shtml

Yeah, did you ever think that's because they're CRAP?! I don't see anyone here endorsing them as gifts! I can't even endorse the LifeDrive with a CF in it!

I'm beginning to believe Gecko.

Crap.

Erm, did you read Colligan's post? (I know, I know, you don't make a habit of reading the stuff you comment on...) He specifically states that there will be a Foleo II and that it will be based on their new platform.

Here's what I really want to know: what's going to happen to the leftover Foleos that went out to developers? Is Palm just going to dump them in ladfill, ala` Atari 2600 E.T. cartridges? Why not sell one to me for half the price, Palm? :)

Really SV, do you think that Colligan "lied" when he said there would be a "Foleo II?" I faintly remember you accusing persons who did not take Colligan at his word believing such. :0))

Foleo's Linux OS was born at a time when Palm's founders were returning to the helm of a Palm that had divested itself of its own OS supplier. They looked at the risk of an independent PalmSource, and at Palm OS Cobalt, which had huge built-in risks because it was proprietary *everything*, and when they finished saying "Holy crap, the crown jewels are floating around out in the street!" they decided three things.

First, they needed to hedge their OS bets by talking to Microsoft; second they should keep a sharp eye on any acquisition activity directed at PalmSource and be ready to defend against it; and third, they should have a backup plan in case they were unable to keep control of Palm OS, so they wouldn't be forced to go completely over to WinMo. Working on Foleo may have been a way for Palm to implement a back-up OS plan that would fold into product development whether or not Palm lost PalmSource and was stuck developing its own Linux smartphone OS. If PalmSource was acquired and it's Palm Linux became part of some other company's plans, they probably reasoned that the work and in-house expertise developing Foleo could become the basis of a new Palm-controlled smartphone OS.

That's probably how I would have figured it, too. But Palm didn't have the luxury of being dealt their best-case scenario, did they? First they failed to keep PalmSource from being acquired when ACCESS made a whopping bid that Palm couldn't in good conscience toward their shareholders match. Now Plan B had to become Plan A because Palm needed to keep control of their OS destiny if they were to differentiate and survive.

The next problem was, well... we don't know, exactly. But I have ideas.

I think we can surmise that when Palm made a big deal about bringing in Paul Mercer, a guy whose company was famous for architecting the iPod OS as well as that of some of Samsung's mobile device products (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yepp) there was already some big change in the air. Mercer is the kind of guy you'd hire to lead a *new* OS project, not to join one mid-stream that had most of the big architectural issues settled. Palm has remained steady in saying their new smartphone platform will migrate Palm OS developers over to Linux, but I suspect now that the idea that a variant of the Foleo OS was what was needed to meet the needs of the new smartphone market had been rejected by the time Mercer joined the company. I've hinted about why this might be the case from looking at Palm's job postings and Mercer's public statements about mobile operating systems, which I think are in line with the way the wireless carriers look at mobile operating systems, and also with the rise of RIM in Palm's space.

Having used a Foleo for a short time, I can say that the Foleo team made some really important developments on Linux that I expect have already been shared back with smartphone OS team. Most people will probably never know how much they contributed, and as a fellow developer I feel bad for them about that.

I strongly suspect that the feedback that Palm received from their public beta was not the big reason for canceling Foleo 1.0, it was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I think the reasons Colligan just gave for holding off on Foleo until the new smartphone OS was complete were known to Palm when they hired Mercer early this year, but the Foleo was so close to release (and Palm so needed a new product) that for a time they convinced themselves they could support two new operating systems. Or maybe (heaven help them!) they thought they'd release the Foleo on an OS that they'd subsequently ditch in a year or two. If I'm right that Palm has known for several months that they were starting down a path that would force them to support two in-house Linux distros, then it was the decision to go down that path that was the big mistake. The hit should have been taken right then and there. Foleo should never have been announced in May and the Foleo team should have joined the smartphone developer team at the moment the new vision for the smartphone OS was settled.

Whether I'm right or wrong, it's a very sad day for Palm. Especially sad for Ben Combee and the Foleo team. They really did a great job on the Foleo OS.

For the developers reading this, ask yourself: if the email sync problems reported by Foleo beta testers only showed up after users sent and received hundreds of emails, what sort of problem does that sound like to you? Memory leak, right? Or maybe some kind of buffer overrun triggered by some weirdly configured "who-da thunk-it" email attachment? Fixable, certainly, but a common thing to crop up in C development. A reason to cancel a product release at the last minute? No way.

But supposed you had come to the conclusion that you needed to develop a platform that was not just open, but that would dramatically reduce the risk of those two kinds of bugs, which can live in third party applications, not just ones you control. What features would that platform need to have? (Automatic garbage collection. Strong typing. Having a compiler or runtime environment that checked the bounds of buffers instead of leaving this to the developer.) And what platform do you know that has these features? And what arch competitor of Palm has already made a transition to such a platform, and been extremely successful with it?

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

friggin Beersie. spinning 'til the very end.

But, your post here is 99.44% lame.

Actually, I'd like to hear your own wild-assed guess about what just happened. Do you think Colligan is being a duplicitous SOB and has no intention of delivering the promised Foleo II?

Seems to me, if Palm finally figured that PIC and Engadget understand their market better than Palm themselves, Colligan wouldn't have made such a promise. The only thing worse for Palm than canceling Foleo would be canceling Foleo *twice*. I'd say at this point that Colligan is releasing Foleo II within a year or he's releasing his job.

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

http://www.palminfocenter.com/feedback.asp

Or perhaps go and blog about it or something. Otherwise STFU 'cause I'm not going anywhere.

Love freakout

LOL - Foleo II is as much vapor as POS II is right now. We'll see what Palm cobbles together next year.

I don't reckon we'll see it again for another year at least - but he's right about it's raison d'etre: smartphones can do most everyday computing tasks, but sometimes you need the larger screen and keyboard. Full-blown laptops have several problems, but the main one is that they are compromised PCs rather than real mobile computers. The best PCs are ultra-capable do-anything machines and are bloated by necessity. The best mobile computers focus on fast access and simple interfaces.

Even if Palm don't have another tilt at it - which IMO is very unlikely - someone else will. The whole laptop category is long-overdue for some new ideas.

I think Hawkins "brainchild" was retarded in both implementation and execution.

>I don't reckon we'll see it again for another year at least - but he's right about it's raison d'etre: smartphones
>can do most everyday computing tasks, but sometimes you need the larger screen and keyboard. Full-blown
>laptops have several problems, but the main one is that they are compromised PCs rather than real mobile
>computers. The best PCs are ultra-capable do-anything machines and are bloated by necessity. The best
>mobile computers focus on fast access and simple interfaces.

Foleo has gone to that PDA graveyard in the sky. Just because the idea has some merit does not make Hawkins "brainfart" a marketable product.

Indeed, PALM only has smartphones and handhelds as subcategories on the home page of their website now. Anyone check out palmthing yet to see how it's changed? (I have not)

> ...But the Wind River deal has fallen through leaving Palm with nowhere to go....

Say what!?

I would think the WindRiver deal is very much in place now and, besides the obvious about the Fooleo, was THE sign that the Fooleo was in deep doo-doo.

I've read nothing yet about the WindRiver deal going sour.

Lol. Let's see... on the one hand, we have the opinion of Jeff Hawkins: very smart guy, self-made millionaire and inventor of two very successful devices, who thinks Foleo is "the best idea I've ever had."

On the other, we have jca666us: anonymous internet troll who thinks it's "retarded".

Who do you trust? Such a tough choice. Can we have some thinking music?

Working on Foleo may have been a way for Palm to implement a back-up OS plan that would fold into product development whether or not Palm lost PalmSource and was stuck developing its own Linux smartphone OS.

But that doesn't make sense on a few levels. The fundamental one was that if they were so worried about losing control of the OS, why did they spin it off in the first place? But more directly, in your best case scenario where PalmSource was not acquired they are now saddled with developing and maintaining a completely different OS and hardware platform. In Colligan's letter he doesn't say word one about taking this OS and using the bulk of it for a new smartphone OS, he says that the smartphone OS would be a separate platform. It doesn't seem like a hedge, just a bad idea.

Palm has remained steady in saying their new smartphone platform will migrate Palm OS developers over to Linux

Yes, they've remained steady for years with no sign of a linux based smartphone. They talk about it, but we never see it.

Something I read on another blog was that - if this was a planned cancelling, that is, if it was something that Colligan had been thinking of for awhile - how could they have just reaffirmed the ship date? If it was so close to happening, they should have just kept mum until a go/no-go decision was made.

I agree with you that it must be terrible for Ben, he was the one person that actually gave me any hope for the company at all.

But you close with your conclusion about the next platform. But, what about that wasn't needed and well known to be needed by Palm for the past several years? Palm has some serious problems and I suspect they all come from incompetence at the highest levels of management and it's not going to turn around until there's new leadership.

<http://comments.deasil.com/> that is my tech blog. There are many like it, but that one is mine.

NO ONE CARES what you say. You're a retard. You never make any sense and you have no credibility at all.

To the above poster: The uncoupling of the OS from Palm took place under different leadership (I use that term loosely!) and under a different marketplace. They really believed they could pull off what Apple failed to do: license an OS just like Microsoft. Trouble is, it was the wrong model to begin with. Microsoft never manufactured PCs and so could afford to be so promiscuous.

So it comes down to: either they're lying or they're incompetent, with the possibility that some people are lying while others are stupid. Will Foleo II come? No matter how you look at it, Palm has lost all credibility. That should extend to their "most faithful" developers that developed apps for the Foleo, their internal development team, their hardware producers (read Taiwanese ODMs), their customers and their shareholders. At least, I know how I feel as a past customer and hobbyist developper: I'm not holding my breath for Foleo II and I'm looking elsewhere for my technology fix.

Probably also more than that. At least you have some understanding of business.

>On the other, we have jca666us: anonymous internet troll who thinks it's "retarded".

Don't trust me, obviously Ed Colligan agrees with me - otherwise Foleo would be on store shelves.

Just because Hawkins is a millionaire doesn't mean he's flawless - even Steve Jobs and Bill Gates make mistakes.

Calling Foleo his "best idea ever" reeks of the "Emperor's New Clothes".

Luckily he got called out on it before it was too late!

They really believed they could pull off what Apple failed to do: license an OS just like Microsoft.

...if they were so worried about losing control of the OS, why did they spin it off in the first place?

In Colligan's letter he doesn't say word one about taking this OS and using the bulk of it for a new smartphone OS, he says that the smartphone OS would be a separate platform. It doesn't seem like a hedge, just a bad idea.

Yes, they've remained steady for years with no sign of a linux based smartphone. They talk about it, but we never see it.

Something I read on another blog was that - if this was a planned cancelling, that is, if it was something that Colligan had been thinking of for awhile - how could they have just reaffirmed the ship date?

But you close with your conclusion about the next platform. But, what about that wasn't needed and well known to be needed by Palm for the past several years? Palm has some serious problems and I suspect they all come from incompetence at the highest levels of management and it's not going to turn around until there's new leadership.

I don't credit anyone who says this announcement is because of some fatal flaw in the Foleo development team's work, which looks very good to me. Still less do I credit the idea that Colligan would talk about a Foleo II if was wasn't DAMN sure that Palm would be releasing one when the unified OS is ready. As I said before, he might be able to survive canceling the Foleo once, but not canceling it twice.

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

Oh, there's a conspiracy in all this. Just not over licensing the OS. That was a stupid move made years ago. The conspiracy is today over the Foleo.

Your complete lack of English comprehension skills isn't my problem, Mike. Perhaps you need an elementary school refresher course? Or maybe just one in manners. I'd say "I'm sure you've heard of them" - but I'm not.

BEGONE DEMON

Att Palm:
Foleo = Smartphone companion
T|X = Dumbphone companion
If you think a Foleo will sell and a PDA wont you're out of your mind.
SunGod aka Luigi(AusPUG)

I wonder if the cancellation of handheld java was the direct result of a spat between Sun and Palm?

IIIc -> M105 -> Zire 21 -> Tungsten T2 -> Treo 650

There's no Java spec for PDAs. One was in the works but it got canceled.

Also, check out the J2ME Connected Device Configuration (CDC) which has been shipping on Nokia Communicators for some time now. Very powerful stuff. Palm would be able to expose the vast majority of the power of a multitasking Linux kernel with a CDC-based Java runtime. Sun themselves are using CDC Java on top of Linux for their upcoming JavaFX Mobile platform.

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

There's no Java spec for PDAs

Then how am I running Opera in my T|X?
And why do all the games on my pfone have a Jave splash screen as they're loading up?

I wonder if the cancellation of handheld java was the direct result of a spat between Sun and Palm?

Palm's J2ME enviroment was made by IBM and was caned because IBM stoped making Palm OS devices.

Att Palm:
Foleo = Smartphone companion
T|X = Dumbphone companion
If you think a Foleo will sell and a PDA wont you're out of your mind.
SunGod aka Luigi(AusPUG)

phone not pfone

Att Palm:
Foleo = Smartphone companion
T|X = Dumbphone companion
If you think a Foleo will sell and a PDA wont you're out of your mind.
SunGod aka Luigi(AusPUG)

You know...like farming out all Windows and Linux work and dropping PalmOS entirely (just keeping whatever "look and feel" someone thinks they should keep - frankly, I don't see the need for THAT either - this is not 1990 or whenever THAT look and was born).

WAITAMINUTE!

That's EXACTLY what they're doing!

I actually LOLed when I saw your Subject headline at the bottom of the home page.

The Kidlet (spoiled rotten and using the faster computer a-GAIN) turns around with a quizzical look and asks "Why are you laughing?"...kinda hard to explain that one to her...

http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/04/the-fun-never-ends-another-dell-up-in-flames/

Seriously 6.9 lbs? My former PowerBook was 5.9 lbs, in 1999... And looked a a lot better. And with the OS' less bloated back then (SUSE-Linux & Mac OS 8.6), it propably ran a lot faster too.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_g3/stats/powerbook_g3_400.html

i'd consider an iphone. i'm no fan of Apple or Steve Jobs but I played extensively with a new iPhone the other day and i must say it was amazing. the for factor, display, OS, browser, GUI was spectacular. my treo felt like it was 25 years behind the iphone. like comparing an old 1983 Commodore 64 with a brand new top of the line 2007 Dell Notebook.

Replacing the battery would cost (as I remember) about $200.

Try $19.99 and a little of your time.
http://tinyurl.com/2bxx2l

This one even comes with a plug; no soldering required.


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/