Comments on: Sprint Already Training Employees on the Pre?

Or do people think accessing 479 different web services, each with their own data formats, logins, etc, and combining the results is a trivial thing?

get it out quick and get it out right.

if palm keeps dicking around i'll just stick with my centro and be happy. it does the job.

There are many people out there that see the Apple logo with the slick white, black and chrome products and get totally turned off. Some call it "over chic." The Pre is going right after those folks that would love to see Cupertino in burn in flames. What the exact numbers are is a good question.

IMO, the iPhone is not going to be the hardest hit from this. Devices like the Sidekick and Blackberry users are going to mostly migrate to this platform. I think this is mostly due to the hardware keyboard and the web usage, text and email apps that don't work through a central server in Canada.

Also, another prediction of mine is that there will be a special ROM for Federal employee use. This will cause Obama to drop his Blackberry because you can run a secure kernal on the Pre since it is Linux.

i come back from the bar x hours later and i get nothing??????????????

they need mass appeal and they need to steal market share from EVERYBODY in order to survive.

and you're right. They'll do it easily though, 'cause Pre is shaping up to be the "social networking" phone. Here's an interesting blog from way back on iDay 2007, when iPhone first came out:

http://petersmagnusson.com/2007/07/01/iphones-missing-killer-app-social-networking/
(courtesy of Cane's PrePoint blog)

Magnusson makes the argument that sticking to the old paradigms of mobile computers - i.e. being an extension of your desktop, rather than the cloud - iPhone didn't light the way for the mobile market in the same way that iPod did for the music-player market and missed a massive opportunity to surf the latest technological wave. (And oh boy, is web integration gonna be a big wave. to quote myself from my Facebook for PalmOS review: "Communication is the core of what has made social networks so popular, and building them into our phones is an obvious step in their evolution." Palm obviously had the same thought and ran with it. Ran very, very far...)

In some areas, he predicts what we've seen from webOS nearly dead-on, from the online calendars to the mega-messaging. Other ideas that are in there are going to be super-easy to implement, thanks to webOS's use of web languages for app building and allowing them access to PIM and notifications.

For once, Palm are way ahead of the curve. Pre and webOS will do just fine, even if we do have to wait till June. What they've done is not going to be so simple for others to clone. They will be cloned eventually, but I reckon it won't be till next year at the earliest. Android will probably be first, given Google's such a big web player. From what we've seen and heard of WinMob 7, Microsoft are firmly focussed on cloning iPhone and will be forced to play catch-up again.

And Apple? Apple are too arrogant. Too controlling. Too domineering. They haven't played nice with developers and they don't really like the idea of you being a part of anyone else's ecosystem. iPhone will continue to be successful, but will eventually be relegated to the same niche in the mobile market as Macs are on the desktop: mainly for people who just have to make fashion statements with their technology.

The wheels ain't gonna fall off Palm again for a long time.

1. the web contacts feed etc. is nothing special and hardly a killer app and can be easily done by others including apple if not already.
2. winmob and BB own the corporate enterprise market. i don't see IT managers switching platforms to webOS/Pre any time soon.
3. i think given the choice between the iphone and the Pre, 99% of the masses will choose the iphone. why? because it's better?* not necessarily. but apple has the brand and the cachet and the ecosystem and the momentum and the inertia. and they make a nice product which people are passionate about. and everybody and their brother has an itunes music collection they want to play on their smartphone.

it might be too little too late for palm.

*"We're better than you are. We have better stuff."

"You don't get it, Steve. That doesn't matter!"

(yes hungover)

ROFL. The least you could do is be consistent from post to post, SV. (You are the same SV that asked "do people think accessing 479 different web services, each with their own data formats, logins, etc, and combining the results is a trivial thing?" in this post? http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/7121/#149592 )

Gekko:
1. the web contacts feed etc. is nothing special and hardly a killer app and can be easily done by others including apple if not already.

Copy and paste could also be easily done by Apple, but two years later and it's still nowhere in sight...

2. winmob and BB own the corporate enterprise market. i don't see IT managers switching platforms to webOS/Pre any time soon.

Good thing Palm sell WinMob phones then. :P Theirs might also have the huge advantage of a webOS environment available to them, if Beersie's rampant (but fun) speculation on the potential universal porting of webOS proves accurate.

3. i think given the choice between the iphone and the Pre, 99% of the masses will choose the iphone. why? because it's better?* not necessarily. but apple has the brand and the cachet and the ecosystem and the momentum and the inertia. and they make a nice product which people are passionate about. and everybody and their brother has an itunes music collection they want to play on their smartphone.

Since iTunes is now (in the process of becoming) DRM-free, that last bit's a moot point. Hell, even I might buy an iTunes track or two now.

Look, my opinion of the iPhone is well-known by now so it's pointless to go over it again. But I think you overestimate its appeal and its foothold. It's successful, it'll continue to be successful. But Palm's focus has always been PIM and functional mobile computing, which are universal needs, even for those who don't use their phones as media players.

(I stupidly said myself PIM wasn't a killer app anymore: http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9664/light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-7-things-we-need-from-nova/ That was before I saw Pre and realised myself just how many different places I have PIM data now. I said Palm needed "superior sync" without really thinking about it very deeply... now I'm convinced that's what's going to help them claw back their own cachet.)

abosco:
Has cloud computing suddenly taken off while I was asleep? As far as I can tell, it's solving a problem that does not exist. I fail to see why this is going to be the wave of the future. I don't want all of my information remotely stored.

Dude, at least some of your information is already remotely stored. You're on Facebook, right? Use a web email service at all? Aside from that, though, it's not just about having your info in the cloud... Read this again if you didn't before:

http://petersmagnusson.com/2007/07/01/iphones-missing-killer-app-social-networking/

Magnusson's clearly a big iPhone fan, but even he sees the potential in a phone focused on the web generation.

By provding a real web application environment Palm are already one step ahead. iPhone's original "web apps" were laughed at because they were all just custom web pages that had to be accessed via the browser, couldn't make use of your own locally stored information, couldn't give you notifications, couldn't run in the background. Heck, they couldn't even install their own icon in the launcher. Pre's are going to be a different kettle of fish.

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

Silly person.

Palm doesn't do that.

That's why I made THAT post.

And the post you responded to asks "Is what Palm REALLY does difficult?".

Don't get confused with McNamee pure...imagination...with reality.

Bosco... I have to somewhat agree with you, but at the same time there's an argument to be made. I use Gmail/GTalk, Blogger, and Facebook, just off the top of my head, and I'm sure there are people who use a lot more than that. Flickr, Twitter, Myspace...

I suppose it comes down to what you define as "cloud computing." In terms of having your "smart"phone as a dumb portal to online services, you're right, it's a solution in search of a problem. But there are legitimate uses for having something which hooks up to common online services like those.

Of course, that's not an excuse to reducing the other capabilities of a given platform: you can just as easily interface to online services from a device that also includes robust PC sync and native C applications.

http://www.ninjapirate.com/lets-be-apes.html

Hubba hubba! A young chick! Post a pic!

get it out right and get it out now. time is running out.