Comments on: Rumor: Video of a Treo 670 Running Windows Mobile

So in '06 you'll have :

High-end devices: Cobalt
Mid and low end devices:Garnet

in '07:

High-end: PoL
Midrange: Cobalt (carryover models mostly)
Low-end: Garnet (think a Zire 33 type $100 job)

What licensees? Palm is the last consumer focussed license (and one of the last PERIOD) PalmSource licensee offering PalmOS devices. If Cobalt does appear from "other" licensees, it will have no impact on us because it won't be available here in the US or Europe. Perhaps one of the Asian vendors will pick it up, but there is no one left.

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Editor, http://Pocketfactory.com
Contributing Editor, http://digitalmediathoughts.com

Palm is far and away the largest consumer focused license today, but there are plenty of other consumer licensees. Most of them sell in the larger (and cheaper) Asian market but that will change as the US catches up in its smartphone adoption, which is happening quickly now. LG is the big one to watch since they're the new one on board, of course, but GSPDA has announced it will release a Cobalt phone in Q4, as has Oswin. There are a handful of other licensees that keep renewing and I have to think that some of them have plans: Kyocera, Samsung, Lenovo. Kyocera did very well with the 7135. FWIW, you can add up all the Microsoft Smartphones sold to date and they still won't touch the sales of the Kyocera 7135.

I know none of these account for a lot of revenue to PalmSource right now, but my statement was that I think we will see a few Cobalt devices from some of them before Palm OS for Linux comes out, not that we see them now. How successful they will be, I really have no idea. Obviously, PalmSource is banking on Linux right now, not Cobalt.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com

I find this seriously hard to believe.

Surur

Fortunately "you're an n = 1," so we can discount whatever you have to say. But that other guy! Wow, he's like an n = ..., you know an n = ..., well, ... what I mean is ... , his n = 1 is WAY bigger than your n = 1!

Enjoy.

I'm still waiting for the mythical "color HandEra."

Except you tried to do an industry analysis without taking into account what the competition are doing.

Why don't you apply the same reasoning to poor old HP?

The message would be something like this - HP is faced with cost-cutting pressures and declining sales, in the meantime, Palm relentlessly produces popular devices which consistently undercut HP's pricing. If HP tries to focus on high-end devices, will it have sufficient R&D to 'keep up with the Joneses' in terms of the latest feature set? Who knows (but it seems unlikely to me). If they try to produce less feature-rich devices, they run into little old Palm, who will undercut them every time.

Sony faced this same dilemma.

Frankly it sounded like a stretch to me when I heard it in one of the DevCon presentations. But bear in mind they were probably talking about MS "Smartphone OS" not "Pocket PC Phone Edition".

If you knew it was B.S. why even say it? Were you that desperate to try to give creedence to your argument that you're willing to post blatant lies? How sad.

Anyway I don't have any great inside information about upcoming Cobalt phones, but I did talk with John Cook, PSRC's Director of Product Marketing last week and heard him refer yet again to "several" Cobalt devices that are in the pipeline. So if you don't like the odds that Kyocera or Samsung or whoever are producing these I'll leave it up to you who the licensees might be. PalmSource has already been seriously burned by vendors who made enthusiastic promises and then changed their plans so I don't personally believe he would say this now if he weren't pretty damned sure it's really happening. Groan if you want, but for my part I believe him.

I think (at least) one of you is taking liberties with the truth. Unless "in the pipeline" can refer to someone in the company having once made a sketch of a Cobalt phone on a c0cktail napkin. It's partly because of B.S. like this (along with rapidly declining QA) that the Palm companies have lost their reputation in the industry.

And don't misrepresent me: I have no idea what Cobalt is going to be like on a real device. The Oswin phone at DevCon was very beta. I didn't notice any problem with it in the 5 minutes I messed around with it but I've heard others say it is slow. Garnet ran slow on beta and lab hardware, too, so who knows at this point? All I know is that it looks very good in the simulator and on paper and that there were engineers that I respect a lot working on it. I'll withhold judgement until I see it on a real device along with the rest of you.

"All I know is that it looks very good in the simulator and on paper and that there were engineers that I respect a lot working on it." Wow. In that case it must be good. Beersy, that's the most pathetic defense of Cobalt I've seen in a while. I think you left out "and 'Cobalt' is a really kewl name" . I've spoken to a few engineers with extensive experience with Cobalt running on REAL devices. They all say it is pure crap. Of course, you can Palm Apologize this away by saying that's because the Oswin phone is "very beta". And I suppose the Tungsten 3 sleds running Cobalt were also "very beta". You've become as predictable as Kirvin, Beersy. You disappoint me.

What PalmSource does admit, is that PalmSource and the Cobalt licensees have had a bad time with developing drivers in a timely manner--all the software that interfaces the hardware elements to the system. Time to market is really critical for phone development to be successful and they are fairly up-front now that they didn't have the engineering resources of MS or Symbian to develop phone systems top to bottom (including the drivers) in the timeline they hoped, leaving the licensees with a lot to do. Having a killer proprietary kernel with the most incredible framework and application stack on it does not get a phone to market until you have drivers for the chipsets, modems, screens... all the hardware that works with your proprietary system. That's a big part of why PalmSource has turned to Linux: so they don't have to develop and maintain the whole kernel and all the drivers and they can concentrate on the middleware framework and applications that are what make Palm OS what it is. (The demand for an open platform with more flexibility than Symbian or WM is the other big reason.)

You don't have to cast about for explanations for why Cobalt has been slow to market like TVoR tries to do. They've been telling us in various ways ever since the Linux announcement in December. But there's also a difference between "slow to market" and "no to market". I don't think I'm reading into things or being really speculative to say that there will be Cobalt devices coming on the market, whether they come from Palm Inc or some other licensee(s).

Beersy, I've been saying for years that Cobalt was a bad decision and that a Unix-based kernel should have been used (for reasons obvious to everyone except PalmSource/Palm). I've also posted why Cobalt was delayed (when PalmSource was being less than honest about its state of development). I've also said why Cobalt was rejected, what its weaknesses are and how it can NEVER do what was needed from a next-generation OS. In my posts I've "encouraged" PalmSource employees like the wonderful (really) Ms. Hackborn to try to be truthful with readers about what was wrong with Cobalt. In a roundabout way, eventually many of the problems I have spoken of have been admitted. Finally, people using Cobalt on a daily basis have ALL said it's Not Ready For Prime Time. Do you really believe we're soon suddenly going to see a flood of Cobalt smartphones being released over the next few months? Please. Try to THINK before you post next time. And enough with the parrotting* of Palm/PalmSource employees, already. They've proved repeatedly that what they say can't be trusted. (*I think the B.S. you quoted was from one of the speeches on Tuesday at DevCon a few months ago.)

TVoR

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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
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The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

Gawd, I'm sooo tired of dumba$$es that are too clueless to read between the lines. Company X licenses PalmOS for 5 years. After two or three years they cease production of PalmOS devices. PalmOS is now in turmoil, is relatively primitive compared to its competition, and will not be able to fix these deficiencies for at least two YEARS.

The logical conclusion is:
a) Company X is no longer interested in PalmOS
b) Company X is no longer interested in PDAs
c) Company X is planning to make a dramatic, triumphant return to the market with a powerful new lineup of fully developed, bug free, high quality devices Real Soon Now.

Guess which is the dumba$$ answer?

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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

I choose "a".

Thanks for contributing, though.


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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

1. You seem to have a very keen interest in a WinCE Treo (at least you were pushing this idea in one of your articles recently on pocketfactory.com); and

2. You have a demonstrated ability to produce convincing videos of pdas in use (remember the famous LifeDrive videos?).

Putting 1 and 2 together, is it possible that you were behind the creation of these videos? Please confirm or deny.

By the way, has anyone checked the FCC's website for this Treo 670/700/whatever?

(Pun intended).

Where is MC? MC...you OK?

Unfortunately, Cobalt's failure ultimately has triggered the demise of the PalmOS platform. Sony understandably left (they were expected to have debuted a couple of Cobalt-powered multimedia powerhouses in 2005), and now the inability of Cobalt to delive on its promise to provide a STABLE, "pseudomultitasking" environment means Palm has no other alternative but to get in bed with Microsoft. And we all know what happens to everyone that gets into bed with Microsoft... Get the lube out, Sonny!

It's sad to see that in the end, Windows didn't beat Palm - Palm beat Palm.

TVoR


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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

Anyway, what keeps getting lost in the number of discussions going on at various sites right now is the second half of the rumor: They're also going to release a Cobalt model. If the WM Treo is real, the Cobalt Treo may very well be too.

This is a win/win for Palm. They can sell to Palm AND MS users. The simple math: it means more sales.

For Palm Source, it's probably neglible. My guess is that few WM users buy the Treo because they've just got to have the hardware. If anything, it might even point out the failings of the WM OS versus something like Cobalt (assuming it delivers). And if it doesn't, who cares. I'd love an EV-DO, Cobalt powered, new model Treo.

Right...

If you were in charge of Palm what other option would you choose? There is none. Windows Mobile is hot, Treo is hot, most of your profits come from Treo sales, and your current OS is already obsolete with no replacement expected for a couple years.

Palm is wise to "take the money and run". Sure, once other Windows Mobile licensees start producing better hardware than the Treo, Palm is totally fcuked, but Palm should be able to milk at least another year out of profits out of the current Treo design.

Then they can gradually fade away, Netscape-style, only to cash in by suing Microsoft in 5 years. Ka-Ching!

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

Can't trust FrankenGarnet.

I have to disagree with you regarding WM and important information. I've been using my Axim full time for almost a year now and I've never lost any kind of information, or missed any alarms. The whole WM "problem" has been overexaggerated by many.

With the addition of 3rd party apps such as Pocket Breeze, the WM platform is just as useable as Palm.

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

Build it and they will cum™.

- Multitasking
- "Free" push email
- Runs buth WinMob apps AND PalmOS apps (with StyleTap Platform)
- Has REAL browsers available (Opera + NetFront)
- IT managers just LOVE the Windows name

Right now I'm finding a hard time coming up with reasons the WinMob Treo isn't going to CRUSH the PalmOs Treo.

Nagging questions:

- How buggy is NVFS support in WM5?
- Is build quality better than the (shoddy) Treo 650 and 600?
- Pricing?
- Will StyleTap be sued out of existence before they finish STP development?
- Specs?
- Still need extra software to replicate intuitive PalmOS UI? Will Microsoft EVER get the UI right?

TVoR


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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

For example, I was pleasantly surprised to find - on my iPAQ Pocket PC - that I could have multiple addresses for each person in my address book (err - I mean Contacts ). I actually have a considerable number of contacts - mostly friends or relatives - where I have a home address and a work address (usually for shipping say flowers to Mom on Mother's Day at work, home for everything else, friends that I send computer stuff to at work so it doesn't have to sit at their home address or reside at the Delivery station forcing them to pick up after hours, blah blah). On the Palm I had gotten around this by creating duplicate entries for the same person for the extra addresses. But once you get them, you realize how utterly ridiculous it was for Palm to not offer this until the...what, T5? And PalmSource STILL doesn't offer it, it's a Palm add on! So that reason alone blew Palm's Address Book away (not to mention the ability to store meeting attendees, among other bits. And this is the built in, run of the mill Contacts app, NOT any add on's which do add even more features.

For the Calendar, I find the Palm hands down to be easier to add a new appt - *provided the appt begins on the hour*. Fewer taps required on the Palm. IF it begins on the half hour then it gets more difficult to compare (and of course I have since found the option on both to show the half hour marks). :-) I still miss the Palm's incredibly elegant way to set the start and end times with the incredibly easy to use pop up list of 0-9 for each number in the time - the Pocket PC is throoughly annoying in this respect as you instead have a pop up list of specific times (hour and half hour only). Any odd times and you have to manually edit them, which although not the chore I'm making it out to be, nevertheless is easier on the Palm. I do, however, find meetings that require more than just the basic info and on-the-hour start times to require roughly equal numbers of taps - in fact, meeting forms requiring lots of info actually require less taps the more info required on the PPC (if that makes sense). So for overall points, I prefer Palm's Calendar method.

For Tasks, I find both platforms lacking, but more or less equal.

For email, the PPC wins - in fact, I find it unbelievable that email was not even included on some low end Palms (especially the old m series targeted at students, because Palm found students didn't use email???). But to keep the comparison to recent models, I do prefer the standard Inbox to VersaMail. I found VersaMail to be a major pain to setup for what should be very easy items (such as simply synching to Outlook's Inbox) though the most recent update seems to have corrected some of these issues. Anyway, the PPC's ability to handle attachments natively and to be able to attach files easily from the PPC (which I guess may be more of a PPC File System plus than the Inbox app itself), and the ability to handle incoming attachments just like on the desktop is a real plus (again, I realize what I'm listing here has more to do with the capabilities of the OS rather then limitations of VersaMail or Inbox, but either way you look at it, I find the PPC email solution easier and more powerful. And I can NEVER stress enough how nice it is to be able to read and respond to emails while I'm downloading/ActiveSynching in the background!!! The main thing I was looking forward to in Cobalt was true Multitasking as it really is the sort of thing that's just got to be there for any device targeted at Professionals (or impatient end users). It's geat to be able to open an attachment or follow a web link, read that and send your response all in the same session without having to wait on anything. Much more efficient. And this is something I didn't even realize how nice it was to have *until* I tried the dark side...but once you get used to having it, there's no going back. Call me Anakin I guess. :-)
Anyway, I am NOT trying to start the ubiquitous mud slinging battles that unfortunately seem so common to PIC these days; instead, I am genuinely interested in what Wannitnow (or others) finds better in the Palm PIM apps (and I do like hearing from people who use both - and actively so, noyt played with a PPC in a store for a half hour and now consider yourself "informed" on how a PPC works in real life, same goes for the reverse for PPC Fanboys who don't truly know anything about the Palm in real life useage scenarios). Though my primary device is now an iPAQ 4700, I do actively support both Palms and Pocket PC's at work and do my best to remain open minded and not hostile to either platform (I have seen support staff - both Palm and PPC - react somewhat..."biased" to users of the opposite platform, which I feel accomplishes nothing - they should address the issue at hand, offer more efficient ways to work with that platform and not throw a sales pitch for s a new device (EXCEPT when the person asks for advice when they are in the market for an upgrade, in which case I give truthful advice for both - and NO, the PPC is NOT always what I recommend, depending on the situation).

Wow, it's gotten so nasty around that I feel like I have to spend a half hour qualifying my position on platforms and other areas in an attempt to get true life experience-based posts on *recent* models (not based on Palm V's and Cassiopeia e10's) rather than get attacked. In the "good old days", of course, such responses would have simply been the standard and understood. How did we all turn into such nasty, bitter people constantly at each other's throats?

There was a time when we just wanted a HandEra 330 with a color screen. We all thought it was the "holy grail" of handheld computing. (Want proof? Just look at how many views this thread has gotten: http://palminfocenter.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24449) But those prototypes are now "a long time ago, in a place far, far away."

Quite honestly, I'd probably be a lot less cynical about the Palm platform if that is exactly what I had gotten my hands on. I'd probably still be using it with a high level of satisfaction. But since it never got into the hands of us mere mortals, it became a myth.

And you know how it is with myth. It continues to change and grow, until eventually no one is sure what it is anymore. So it becomes a fantasy machine, different for everyone who imagines it.

For me it is a unit with the features of the HandEra 330, but upgraded to a high powered CPU with at least 128mb RAM, WiFi & BT, minimum half-VGA screen. And it still has the PalmOS. There were so many great/innovative features on the 330, you just "knew" they could produce such a unit in color. (Honestly, the Zodiac2 came the closest to being that machine for me, but the writing was already on the wall, and I wasn't going to go through the pain once again.)

And if this rumor is true, it's all a moot point. It's likely we'll all be running WinMob anyway.

Oh well, it's water under the bridge now. But until someone finally builds it,...

I'm still waiting for the mythical "color HandEra."

I think it may be possible that Verizon Wireless is testing out a Windows Mobile-powered Treo right now as we speak. If possible, I'm guessing that this Windows Mobile Treo's likely going to be sold exclusively through business channels. Maybe Nextel might be able to grab it if the Windows Mobile Treo qualifies for an iDEN License.

I think Verizon's allegiance with Microsoft might have caused this IMO.

Powered by Palm OS since March 2002

I also think that Microsoft assumed that people wanted to use Internet Explorer, Word, and Excel on the go, but it's just me, thinking about the old days--Things have changed and people's handheld expectations change overtime, so I'm just gonna go ahead and assume that people everywhere want Office Productivity, but I think that in what I call a "last laugh basis", Microsoft ends up listening to customers, knowing what people want in their handhelds, and bundling what is to be more critical, I don't think that the Microsoft Tax matters anymore since Microsoft generally has all of their licensees listen to what the customers want, especially business professionals.

Because Microsoft has been bundling Word and Excel with the Windows Mobile suite, I think it only makes sense that Palm follow suit by bundling Documents To Go mainly with their Tungsten and LifeDrive handhelds. Generally, DataViz allows Palm to specify which handhelds will have Documents To Go included with a handheld, but Microsoft requires all of their licensees to include Word and Excel nonetheless, therefore Palm can keep entry-level handhelds simple to use.

Powered by Palm OS since March 2002

Precisely. Whether this is an exclusive arrangement with Verizon or not (what a coup that would be for Verizon), you can bet there are "other" test models elsewhere circulating among carrier testing labs.

In any case, screw the carriers. I'll buy the unlocked GSM model just as I did with the 650. Getting screwed over by Palm is one thing. Getting screwed by carriers holds even less charm.

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Editor, http://Pocketfactory.com
Contributing Editor, http://digitalmediathoughts.com

I don't see how this move can be anything but a win - win solution for Palm. As for the knee-jerk reactionaries within the Palm community threatening to burn their PDAs (why not themselves as well?) if Palm adopts WM, who gives a rat's lower torso. Heck, I'll provide the lighter fluid and matches. Seriously, do any of these clowns actually believe their juvenile rantings are going to effect Palm's decision? As if Ed Colligan is hinging his future strategies on responses from this community?

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Editor, http://Pocketfactory.com
Contributing Editor, http://digitalmediathoughts.com

"Let's see here now... Press the power button... Oh, what the hell is that? *Verizon Wireless* Oh, that's Windows, isn't it? Mmm, hmm."

Comedy.

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Editor, http://Pocketfactory.com
Contributing Editor, http://digitalmediathoughts.com

Bah, other licensees toyed with it years back.

If you're right however, it does make things interesting. Garnet is supposedly "good enough" and yet Palm takes bits and pieces of Cobalt out in piecemeal fashion and incorporates it back into Garnet? That just further proves that something is dreadfully wrong with Cobalt that Palm could only utilize some of its features but not the OS itself.

-------------------------------
Editor, http://Pocketfactory.com
Contributing Editor, http://digitalmediathoughts.com

Correct. Too bad Palm's code monkeys are so incompetent. They're almost as bad as the WinMob Monkees.


------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

I suspect you need better contacts at PalmSource, then.

I never claimed to be certain, but I remember someone I spoke to at PalmSource saying they had worked on the NVFS chop job. I also remember being "corrected" by someone (Hackborn?) when I had the temerity to blame PalmSource for the buggy implementation.

But if this quote from Gavin's PUG forum is accurate, much (but not all) of the blame for the NVFS crap can be placed on the ever-incompetent PalmSource. (Gavin also spilled the beans about LG being the new licensee in this thread from MAY, by the way!) At DevCon and I believe also on one of his blogs, Palm's Ben Combee admitted Palm's initial implementation of NVFS was horrible:

http://www.auspug.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=31756

"I returned from San Jose on Saturday from the 2005 PalmSource Mobile Summit and DevCon which ran from Tuesday through to Thursday.

Probably the most 'entertaining' session was from palmOne engineer Ben Combee talking about NVFS and the issues around its early implementation (ie T5). Ben clarified a number of the reasons why they chose to do things as they did - an apologised for screwing it up. Ben also outlined a new version of NVFS support that Palmsource are working on which will improve things in a large number of areas.

The GSM and Sprint 650's along with the TE2 and LifeDrive's all contain later versions of NVFS that fix certain bugs. The LD is newer so obviously has the latest software. Patches for other various devices are in the works from what I hear. So if you're worried about the LD having the same probs as the T5 don't worry - it's been a long time in engineering terms between the T5 and the LD - and the lessons learnt have been put to good affect.

FWIW Palmsource did most of the work on NVFS (that included Ben when he was a Palmsource employee)."

http://palmos.combee.net/blog/TheNVFSFilesHowSyncsCanFa.html

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

I said last year the Wimdows Treos were coming and guess what? I was right again. I'm batting around 950 these days and my on base percentage is equally stellar.

[TVoR pats themself on the back...]


------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

In case you missed it:

PenguinPowered = Marty Fouts = a PalmSource Linux engineer

His post's make a lot more sense if you know what he does for a living, don't you think!

;-O

I was planning to drive to Los Gatos on Monday, so I decided to drop by PalmSource and give Fouts a little "present" (a square of artificial "turf"!) on Monday. Unfortunately, traffic was horrible and we cancelled our trip. Should I mail it to him?

;-O


------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

I guess they will have to drop one of those OS's then. Will it be Cobalt or Garnet?

Surur

Kept silent until I could get proof; still dont have nothing in my hands, but I 'knew' that it was on point.

Like I said above, it would be great for Palm (maybe not for PIC) but would be a heck of a blow to PalmSource (or whatever the new name) unless a Cobalt version is released first.

If other posters are right in saying that a WM Treo is not on the next model turn, it could be that this is under testing for a release whenever Palm deems that they need a WM Treo more than they need the fine sales of a PalmOS one.

mobileministrymagazine.blogspot.com
antoinerjwright.com

On the other hand the costs of developing this device are probably close to 0. They just shipped the casing design and specs to HTC (or similar) and they took a couple of days to come up with a prototype. After all they have being this all along, and they can do it quickly and cheaply.

As far as support is concerned, I don't think it's a major issue: it's already absent for POS devices, so no problem here. :-)
Seriously, it will depend on the level of customization. If it is kept down to a minimum they probably can outsource firmware updates to the manufacturer and let the carriers do the rest.
Anyone noticed the lack of a Palm(one) logo?

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Waiting for a TT successor

Hello darkness, my old friend

http://tinyurl.com/cc9hx

I say, drop Garnet. If you're going to invest so much time and effort into hacking the OS, do it on Cobalt. That way, you can get the added benefits of a more modern OS. Hopefully, the ancillary rumor of a Cobalt based Treo coming up alongside the Windows one is true.

On that very subject, does anyone remember the original Treo 670 photos from TreoCentral's "dnt"? I recall that in the photos that showed the two units side by side, they had different button arrangements. On one, the two top buttons were blank, as is appropriate for the "soft" buttons on WM5. On the other, the top buttons had a home icon, and some sort of menu. I suddenly have to wonder whether this is the hardware differentiation for the Windows and Cobalt models. Well, I can dream, anyway.

JarJar, it's true that Palm could never compete on price-to-performance with Dell, but they don't neccessarily have to. Nobody, whether Windows, Symbian, Linux, or Palm, has successfully cloned the Treo. There have been attempts to build something similar, some reasonably successful (Samsung i730) and some not (BenQ P50). But nobody has ever outright cloned the Treo form-factor. If Palm beat them to the punch, and delivered the Windows hardware themselves, it would give them a huge sales boost, and prevent other companies from potentially eroding sales of the PalmOS Treo.

Palmato, many IT departments prefer to standardize on Windows-based machines (less support hassle, single supplier). Plus, WM5 has push email without the need for a new server from Good or anyone else, as long as a company already has Exchange. Besides which, being on both sides of the market allows Palm to make Treo synonymous with smartphone. And it allows for multi-tasking, integration of advanced applications like GPS personell tracking, etcetera.

http://www.1src.com/?m=show&id=982 (about minute 17)

Newbie: I want to sync all my categories on my POS Treo
Forum: You should have gotten a WM Treo

or

Newbie: I want to view PDF's I receive as an attachment or download over evdo
Forum: There is this hacked picsel viewer from Malaysia. Be sure to apply the UDMA hack too, and the language hack OR
Forum:You should have gotten a WM Treo

or

Newbie: I want to use WIFI
Forum: There is this gigantic enfora sledge, or this hacked driver which stops evdo from working OR
Forum:You should have gotten a WM Treo and use a SDIO card

or

Newbie: I want to play Midtown Madness on my POS Treo.
Forum: You should have gotten a WM Treo. And when are you going to stop bothering us?

When identical devices are placed side by side with different OS's the advantages/disadvantages will really be obvious. In the end only the POS fanatics will buy the POS Treo, and thats not really a large enough market.

Surur

http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=120505

Regarding games, WM is widely accepted to have better games, and WM5 will have a version of DirectX built-in.

The grass IS actually greener on the other side.

Surur

Regarding the need for advanced features, many people need one "advanced feature", the more advanced features you need, the geekier you are. The problem is that everybody needs a different advanced feature, which means an advanced general purpose device is the only thing that would serve everybodies needs.

I'm probably not sounding very clear, so I'll give some examples.

1) some-one wanted to use their web mail, and of course the mobile browsers do frames and javascript poorly. Its a simple task, but may require an advanced browser.
2) As you said, some-one has a relative overseas, who may be geekish and suggest they use VOIP to speak to their children.
3) a business person would almost certainly receive pdf's in e-mail, and to him this would not be an advanced feature, but on the palm platform it is.

I really question whether the people in the low end need or want smartphone at all. I do not think PIM is the killer app anymore, else PDA's would have taken off. Its something else, probably connected to the Internet, but we are still finding it.

Surur

I agree that PIM is not the killer app for the average Joe, but that's not why PDAs didn't take off. The average Joe does not want to carry something as big as a PDA all the time. They WILL carry a small cellphone though, and by putting PalmOS onto something small enough to be carried by "normal" people, Palm could have given them something (access to thousands of apps + games, better PIM, more flexibility, expandability) for nothing (no weight/size penalty). Given a choice between a closed OS on a Sony Ericsson T630 and the same phone running PalmOS and allowing users to run Bejeweled, HandyShopper, DateBk 5, Vexed, etc, I think most people would opt for PalmOS. Even if it added $10 or $20 to the price of the phone. By selling to MILLIONS of casual users, Palm would help developers sell more software, promote their OS (attracting some people to upgrade to a separate PDA for bigger screens/advanced functions), and fight off the Microsoft Windows Everywhere™ hegemony. Without a low end "loss leader" (actually it would bring in profits, just at lower markups than the Treos) the platform's popularity (and ergo PROFITABILITY) is limited, now that everyone realizes that PDAs may only ever be a niche product.

The "killer app[s]" are already here, they just aren't yet fully developed:

1) Internet - everywhere, all the time
2) Email - everywhere, all the time
3) Multimedia - MP3, TV, videos
4) Digital camera/camcorder

Size will always limit what's acceptable to include on a phone but once bandwidth increases in the next two years, streaming content to phones is going to be HUGE.

PDAs need to reinvent themselves by taking advantage of Wi-Fi Max, OLED screens, improved batteries and increased storage capacity to become the ultimate in personal entertainment and communication devices. If you want the average Joe to carry a 5 ounce PDA, it damn well better give them TV, videos, their entire music collection, easy to view high speed Internet browsing, email with Microsoft Office file handling, 5 MP or higher digital camera and camcorder. With that kind of functionality (and with the OLED screen taking up the majority of the device), "PDAs" can be worthy of consideration for the "cell phone only" crowd. Since no one can yet put out an affordable PDA with specs like that (Sony's CLIE TH55 was getting close), for now Palm needs to concentrate on a realistic goal: leveraging PalmOS to turn Palm into a significant cellphone supplier.

By concentrating exclusively on the (lucrative) high end of the smartphone market, Palm leaves themselves extremely vulnerable. If the Treo 650 is suddenly found to have a catastrophic flaw or if (when?) WinMob manufacturers finally clone the Treo design, Palm is fcuked. Instantly. After 10 years of inventing, defining and driving the PDA market, Palm could disappear almost overnight simply because their execs made poor product planning decisions.

The WinMob Treo should be a huge success, but at what cost to the PalmOS platform? And does Palm have ANYTHING else up its sleeve?

TVoR


------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

How about this:

A phone like the Sony Ericsson T630 (or even one of Sony Ericsson's cheaper phones) with the Treo 600 version of PalmOS. Sell it with just a sync cable (no accessories) for $199.

Wow. That was hard.

I think Palm doesn't want to sell a low end Treeo because it feels this would dilute the value of their (high profit) brand. They may be waiting until they've saturated the high end with WinMob and PalmOS Treo 650 - 670 - 700 before introducing the Treo 200 and 170 in 2006. We'll see soon enough if this strategy is a mistake.


------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

TextMaker preserves Word formatting for WinCE/PPC/WinMob/whatever users . I'm not sure if the current version can do it for emailed documents, though.

http://www.softmaker.com/english/tmp_en.htm

Be careful what you boast about. Sometimes it may blow up in your face, leaving you with many tragic scars and ruining your life. Then you will be a 65 year old short, unmarried man living in New York and spending 8 hours a day in CompUSA PDA aisles playing with hardware you can't afford on your $5/hour job. In other words, you might end up like M.C.


------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

> Wow. That was hard.

Yes. Hard. Also lacking any of the advanced features you were requesting, or enough memory to support them.

Yes, and Documents to Go does this too. The difference is that Documents to Go comes bundled with every palmpilot (and often it is pre-installed as part of the ROM).

Contrast that with WinCE/PPC/WinMob/whatever devices - it says right on the box that you can work with Word and XL documents. But you have to buy TextMaker just so that you can do so without destroying the formatting of your files.

But, silly me, I forgot that you can do more with a PPC!!!

Surur, you should mention to the poor Newbie that, if he swallows the WinMob marking spin, he will end up with a poor-excuse-for-an-organiser.

Here is what Bruce Keener has to say:

http://www.dkeener.com/keenstuff/index.html

Notice that Bruce says that for a WinCE/PPC/WinMob/whatever device, it's 'almost essential' to buy additional software to do time management. Whereas for a palmpilot, Bruce says that the stock standard apps 'work great' and additional software is useful for additional functionality (if you want it).

You might also mention to the Newbie about the unreliable ActiveSync application and warn him that he will never quite know whether his data has synchronised properly to Outlook.

Contrast this with any palmpilot - you can synchronise to the Palm Desktop or directly to Outlook at your choice - and it just works, everytime.

But, I forgot, you can do more with a PPC.

uh... Maybe you mean it USED to work nearly everytime since 1996 (occasionally you'd get duplicates, but the fix tools worked back then).

Now with the new 'DataMangler' patch introduced with the newer devices we can sync SOME of the PIMs on SOME hosts SOME times. Additionally, we lose MUCH valuable real RAM because the device needs to carry around the original PIM database as well as the "improved" (slightly) databases.

Although I have my issues with Activesync, it was MUCH more reliable for synching than the present DataMangler implementation. After synching with my desktop successfully since 1997, I'm stuck having to turn off Calendar and ToDo conduits in order to make it through Hotsync now. Hardly can call that "...it just works, everytime."

No one bashed the T630. I merely pointed out that it doesn't have the features you were asking for and couldn't support them.

> You want details? Hire me you cheap little ******. Oy.

Ah, I see. You're one of those people who become abusive rather than simply admit error? How boring.

Love the irony of your user name, though. Most amusing.

Ah. You need to have it slowed down farther. OK. "A Phone like the Sony Ericsson T630" does not have the advanced features on your wishlist."

> PalmOS hardware has to be designed from the ground up to
> support the OS.

Not really, no. It has to have certain kinds of hardware, and someone has to port PalmOS to it; but PalmOS is know to run on hardware that it wasn't designed from the ground up to support it.

> The point is that Palm could create a small, inexpensive
> phone-centric PalmOS phone if they chose to.

Yes. That is your point. But you went on to list a collection of features. My point, which seems to have escaped you, is that phones like the T630 won't support that list of features, no matter who makes them.

> They chose not to. We'll soon see if that was a mistake.

I guess that depends on your definition of 'soon'.

picture http://tinyurl.com/c6v2v

http://www.coolsmartphone.com/

Surur

A total of 11 jobs were found
JOB TITLE LOCATION

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Software Engineer Sunnyvale, CA
Duties/Responsibilities: Work on porting, debugging and maintaining our U...

Software Engineer Sunnyvale, CA
Duties/Responsibilities: Help PalmSource to develop Linux Network applicat...

Software Engineer Sunnyvale, CA
Duties/Responsibilities: Help PalmSource to develop Linux Network applicat...

Software Engineer Sunnyvale, CA
Duties/Responsibilities: Lead engineer responsible for internationalization...

IT MIS / Finance Intern Sunnyvale, CA
IT MIS or Finance Intern - 20 hours/week PalmSource seeks a student inte...

Linux Security Specialist Sunnyvale, CA
Duties/Responsibilities: Working as part of the team architecting and imple...

Linux System Architect Sunnyvale, CA
Duties/Responsibilities: Taking a leading role in architecting the ongoing ...

Linux Kernel Development Sunnyvale, CA
Duties/Responsibilities: Assisting with board bring-up using Linux on a var...

Executive Assistant to the CEO Sunnyvale, CA
Duties/Responsibilities: Support the office of the CEO and CFO. This inclu...

Product Manager, Multimedia Sunnyvale, CA
Duties/Responsibilities: As a key part of the Product Marketing team, you w...

Director of Product Marketing Sunnyvale, CA
Duties/Responsibilities: As the Director for Product Marketing, you will l...

Snivelling Sycophant Sunnyvale, CA
Duties/Responsibilities: As the Snivelling Sycophant, you will blog repeat...

I HOPE PALMSOURCE IS ABLE TO FILL THAT VACANCY FOR "Linux System Architect" SOON! PalmLinux is on a tight schedule, you know...

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

You get feature set, compact size, low price. Pick two.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. You say regarding putting out a small, inexpensive PalmOS phone "The MBA types call this 'death by defocusing"? I call it "saving your a$$ by covering your bases, improving brand recognition and marketshare, and helping your developers by invigorating the imploding "Palm Economy" by bringing in millions of new PalmOS users". You say POTÆTO, I say POTATO, Dan Quayle says POTATOE. Who's right?

[I am.]

The WinMob Treos will come out and sell well, but within a year or so, other WinMob licensees will perfect the formula (or just call HTC!) and then undercut Palm on price for a few quarters until the company goes bankrupt. Meanwhile, Palm embracing the Microsoft Collective severely undermines PalmOS ("Look, Bubba: even Palm's switched to Windows!") and will hasten its demise. Given a choice between a $500 Treo 670/700 running WinMob that can multitask, can run Skype etc, can hook up with MS Exchange for "free" push email, and can even run PalmOS apps via StyleTap Platform Vs. a $500 Treo 650 that can only run PalmOS apps, which do you feel companies and individuals will choose? As PalmOS marketshare plummets, hysteria will rise and developers will flee, leaving no one waiting for PalmOS' triumphant return in the form of PalmLinux in 2007. Imagine a debutante ball where no one shows up. It's inevitable - assuming PalmLinux doesn't end up getting cancelled outright next year.

HTC could easily have put together a very basic phone-centric PalmOS phone a year ago and given Palm the one-two punch it's sorely lacking. Feel free to bet against me, but most people are finally starting to see the writing on the wall. Palm lacked leadership brave enough to change the company from being primarily a PDA company into being primarily a smartphone company. There were several people within Palm that actually were against absorbing Handspring. Many of those people are no longer with Palm for some strange reason. No doubt these were some of your "MBA types" that would "call this 'death by defocusing'". Had Palm not "defocused" on PDAs and "refocused" on smartphones, they would probably no longer still be in business as an independent company today. So pardon me for saying I think your argument is utter crap.

Take care.

TVoR

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

[Leave it to Surur to crystallize the points that make Palm look bad!]

You're hilarious. Surur posts that Orange has a "free" Windows phone with these specs and you think it would only make a "ho-hum" entry level phone for Palm?

Integrated Digital Camera
Bluetooth™ wireless technology
MP3 Player
Polyphonic Ringtones
WAP over GPRS
Email
Java™ capable

SPECIFICATIONS:
64MB RAM
32MB ROM
Processor TI OMAP, 200 MHz
176 x 220 transflective TFT (35 x 45mm)
Mini SD
Bluetooth
infrared
USB 2 interface
tri-band phone
GPRS class 8
5hrs' maximum talk time
four days' maximum standby time
Orange Backup, Pocket Outlook, Internet Explorer, File Manager; Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition.
Dimensions: 46 x 16 x 108mm (WDH).
Weight: 100g.

If Palm made a low end phone with the same specs as that "free" Orange phone I would buy one the minute they were released. As - I suspect - would a LOT of other people for whom a bulky, expensive Treo is simply unacceptable.

Let's just compare the specs of that "free" Orange phone to those of the $600 Treo 600:

Display: Backlit, 160 x 160 pixel color CSTN display with 3375 colors (that equals 11.5 bit color, but is compatible with 16 bit color apps). Adjustable brightness and contrast).

Performance: 144 MHz Texas Instruments OMAP ARM processor. 32 megs of RAM with 24 available to the user. Palm OS 5.2.1H.

Size: 4.4 x 2.4 x 0.9 inches. 6.2 oz.(CDMA version), 5.9 oz. (GSM version).

Audio: Built in speaker. 16-channel MIDI polyphonic ring tones. Supports alarm sounds, LED alert and vibrating alerts.Can use standard 3.5mm headphone jacks on the 2.5'' jack with an adapter that's not included.

Expansion: 1 MMC/SD slot supporting SDIO.

Battery: Rechargeable Lithium Ion battery. Not user replaceable.

Software: Palm OS 5.2.1H. Includes the usual suite of Palm applications, including Address Book, Date Book, Clock, To Do List, Memo Pad and Advanced Calculator. Blazer web browser included. SMS, MMS/Picture Mail, CityTime world clock, for email you get a POP3 email client (GSM/GPRS) and PCS Business Connection for the CDMA Sprint version. 3rd party software includes Documents To Go, SplashID, SplashMoney, SplashShopper, Klondike, Zap! 2016.

Network: Either: CDMA (Sprint): 800/1900 MHz, supporting CDMA 2000 1xRTT for high speed data
or GSM/GPRS (AT&T Wireless, Cingular Wireless, T-Mobile
and others): 850/900/1800/1900 MHz world phone. Class 10 GPRS.

Camera: VGA 640 x 480 camera (.3 megapixels).

http://www.mobiletechreview.com/treo_600.htm

Or compare the Treo 650's specs:

Display: Transflective TFT color LCD, 64K colors. Screen size diag: 2.75", resolution: 320 x 320.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1800 mA.

Performance: Intel XScale PXA270 312 MHz processor. Approx. 23 MB available memory for storage, using non-volatile flash ROM.

Size: 4.4 x 2.3 x 0.9 inches. Weight: 6.3 ounces.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 2.5mm stereo headphone jack. Supports ring tones and alarms as well as vibration. Real Player included for your MP3 pleasure. Can use standard stereo headphones with optional adapter.

Networking: Sprint: CDMA digital 800/1900MHz bands for Sprint version. 1xRTT (Vision) for data. Integrated Bluetooth. GSM (Cingular, AT&T Wireless and unlocked versions): quad band world phone, 850/900/1800/1900MHz bands with GPRS and EDGE for data.

Camera: VGA CMOS camera capable of shooting photos up to 640 x 480 resolution. 2x digital zoom. Can shoot video with audio.

Software: The device runs Palm OS 5.4.5. Palm Desktop for Windows and Mac included. Windows only conduits to sync to Outlook rather than Palm Desktop if you prefer. Documents To Go 7, RealPlayer, Blazer 4.0 web browser, VersaMail 3.0, Camera, Camcorder, Pictures & Videos, Card Info, Security, Memos, calculator, eReader, Bluetooth, Handmark Solitaire, Zap!2016 and Tetris.

Expansion: 1 SD (Secure Digital) supporting SDIO.

Come on, Bubba - at least have the cojones to admit when you've been beaten (badly) in a debate.

Note to Surur: I somehow feel unclean accepting your help in a debate. Am I now on Bill's payroll? When is he flying us out to the compound in Redmond? ;-O


------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

I cant comment too much on business reasons however. The current spv c550 is a third try at the market, and are going to have great difficulty competing against a "pretty" phone such as the Razr. For the people who value utility over style a non-keyboard non-touchscreen smartphone may not have utility enough. In that I can agree with PenguinPowered that there is no proven market for a small smartphone vs a PDA-phone (such as the Treo).

However the Motorola Q will actually address the two problems I alluded to, in that it will be stylish (or at least fashionable), and by using a full Qwerty keyboard will address the functionality concerns of a device with only a keypad.

However MS's strategy is to make these phones compelling to the carriers by increasing ARPU. The c550 is has got dedicated music keys (play, FF Rev etc) and makes it easy to download music from the carrier at £1.50 (about $2.60) per track. Of course it also has server activesync and e-mail. If these facilities get used even a little it can dramatically increase the amount of money the carriers earn from each customer, which will make them eager to promote these devices.

I'm not sure POS can play in this market, but either way, due to the limited input options, they could not sell it upon the legacy apps, but on the benefits the OS provide to the carriers.

This is the specs of the current generation SPV c550. The SPV c600 is already in the works, with pics leaked.

Orange SPV (Sound Photo Video) C550 review.
http://www.mobile-review.com/pda/review/htc-hurricane-en.shtml
http://www.coolsmartphone.com/article451.html
Class: Windows Mobile smartphone
Form-factor: candy bar
Body materials: anodized aluminum and plastic
Position in the line: above HTC Typhoon
OS: Windows Mobile 2003 for Smartphone SE
CPU: Texas Instruments OMAP730 220 MHz
RAM: 64 MB (51.61 MB available to a user)
Flash: 64 MB (26.97 MB available to a user)
Interfaces: miniSD, IrDA (SIR), Bluetooth 1.2, USB for recharging and synchronization
GSM 900/1800/1900, GPRS class B, multi-slot class 10
Screen: TFT 2.2" with the resolution of 240x320 pixels, 65K
Camera: CMOS 1.3 MP without flash, records video
Note: four extra buttons for playing music
Battery: removable Li-Ion capacious of 1150 mAh. Battery life announced:
Talk time - 4 hours
Standby time - 6 days
Dimensions: 108x46x17.5 mm
Weight: 107 g

Surur

"Palm's a niche player. It's not a mass producer. It's not positioned to compete with the mass producers. Either it finds a way to keep its niche fresh or it falls on its face. Switching from PDAs to high end PDA phones was a niche freshener. Entering the mass phone market is a suicide play. Boutique brands should not try to get into commodity markets.

Stop confusing what you want with what works for the business."

Dude, Palm has become a 'niche player', it didn't start out that way. It has realised that PDA/phones are the future of the higher-end market. Low price PDAs are having their dinner eaten by mobile phones. Only place left is going to be phones.

For a company like Palm a niche is the end of the line, starting with a majority of the market and gradually lossing market share to others. Palm has a serious problem, people expect more than a PIM on their PDA, they want to do multimedia stuff. They also don't want that doc file they had to become a pdb in their PDA.

If they are going to survive they need a proper OS, they ain't got one at the moment. PalmOne are going to have a plan B, just in case PalmSource doesn't wake up soon.

What we have here is very much like Apple and PPC, they had MacOS on intel as a backup for a long time, and went intel when they found that they couldn't get competitive PPC CPUs. PalmOne doesn't have a 21st century OS for their hardware, if PalmSource can't supply one then they will get one that is.

The problem for PalmOne is that Windows Mobile has lots of licencees, many with hardware that is better than the Treo range. They will have to improve their game to survive and there has been little evidence of that over the last 5 years.

Fish

Yes, Surur, whatever Ed Hansberry says must be right. (NOT)

But, then again, what is more basic than opening a Word document (without destroying formatting)? Or how about quickly setting up an appointment (with an alarm that works)?

The problem is that WinCE/PPC/WinMob/whatever is so weak that it can't even do the basic stuff properly.

What do you expect? M$ took an obselete desktop OS and hacked it to run on handhelds 5 or 6 years ago. Since then the 'development' has consisted of nothing more than tooling around with the icons and eyecandy. Of course, the M$ marketing guys will change the name every few years, change the color scheme and tell us that this means 'advancing the platform', etc, etc.

Then the marketing guys try to cover up the anemic performance of WinCE/PPC/WinMob/whatever by constantly telling us that 'you can do more'.

Perhaps they should fix the basic problems first before boring us all with the 'you can do more' garbage.

Surur

Yup

> It has realised that PDA/phones are the future of the higher-
> end market. Low price PDAs are having their dinner eaten by
> mobile phones. Only place left is going to be phones.

Yup.

> For a company like Palm a niche is the end of the line,
> starting with a majority of the market and gradually lossing
> market share to others.

Maybe. It's certainly how Intel has slowly killed off the other players in the CPU market place. But most industries have niche players that manage to do well.

> If they are going to survive they need a proper OS, they
> ain't got one at the moment. PalmOne are going to have a plan
> B, just in case PalmSource doesn't wake up soon.

If I were a Palm stockholder, I would certainly hope so.

But 'resell WinMobo on commodity hardware built by a third party' isn't a plan, it's a formula for suicide.

The alarm problem was fixed a year and a half ago. The Word issue is fixed in WM5. Pointing out problems with PocketPC is fine, but you seem unable to look at PalmOS the same way. I'm sure you'll respond with some devastatingly boring comment about how long it took to get full Word compatibility, never noting the irony of how long we've waited for multitasking on Palm.

Get back to me when it has a decent digital camera rather than a lame vga camera, a decent amount of storage rather than 64mb, availability outside of a limited part of Europe, a keyboard rather than a keypad, et cetera.

Um, the current flagship smartphone from Palm has less than half as much memory, a lame VGA camera, and on a small phone a number pad is more elegant than a keyboard. Do you even think before you talk? You seem to be arguing that Palm has higher system requirements than Windows, although other times you're arguing that Windows is a resource hog. Make up your mind. Personally, I think that if they could stuff a touchscreen into that Orange smartphone, it would make an admirable Palm OS phone.

You have misunderstood. I'm simply trying to respond to the M$ sponsored Whiners by noting that their own house is not in order. I think palmpilots are good, but they are not perfect - there is always room for improvement. I apologise if you find my comments boring. Then again, I'm sure you also find it tiresome to read all the negative comments posted here by the Whiners.

But I do enjoy the irony, prevelant on the intar-web, of people posting under aliases being the first to demand that others don't.

Thanks again for bringing humor to my day.

BTW, a good friend of mine has created a hoax video of his Loox running Cobalt in just a few minutes by displaying a sequence of screenshots. I can upload it for you people

http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93691&page=3&pp=15&highlight=fake+video

Can we stop this foolishness now?

BTW: The Treo ALWAYS has a white border on screen. There is no white border in the WM video or screen shots.

Surur

Surur

All this uncertainty is discouraging developers and it HAS TO STOP!
We need some sort of official statement from Palm Inc. or PalmSource regarding all these matters. What the HELL should developers be focusing on right now? Garnet? Cobalt? Linux?

All that matters now are stock prices, bulk carrier purchases of Treos, and, as always, how many Zires & T|Es Joe six-pack buys at retail.

Also, PalmSource had no choice but to sell the "Palm" name to PalmOne for some much needed cash to keep the boat afloat until the inevitable acquisition is made...PalmSource shouldn't be lambasted for selling a limb for $30 mil----after all, you only need ONE arm, right? Instead PalmOne should be flogged for spending so much on a name that they should NEVER have let get away in the first place and then spinning their wheels & burning through time & $ with a new logo/branding when they should be putting all of their eggs into shoring up their quality and doing something--anything--to get FrankenGarnet off their devices and replace it with something more robust.

I feel that my analogies are closer to reality than yours.

I understand that Palm's goal is and should be to make profits. However, the argument I put forth earlier is that by selling a Treo 670, they risk giving an extra incentive to developers to abandon Palm OS and migrate to WM. With no good programs, consumers will abandon Palm OS and Palm Inc. will be left with a PPC market that it has to share with HP, Dell, Toshiba, ASUS, Fujitsu and the myriad of smartphone makers; as opposed to the near monopoly they have now with millions of loyal Palm OS fans. How does that make any economic sense? Palm Inc. appears willing to bet that Palm OS users will migrate en masse to the Treo 670 with WM. I estimate that will not occur and Palm Inc. will lose it's gamble.

I will continue to purchase devices based on what meets my needs. However, if Palm Inc. goes ahead with the Treo 670, I will remind myself to give my first purchase consideration to LG and others. And I will stop buying replacement parts and accessories from Palm Inc. and I will turn to their accessory competitors instead for my needs.

Or, I could simply move to PPC like others, abandon all efforts to program for Palm OS, leave the Palm community behind and when comes time to purchase any new PPC, give first consideration to HP, Dell and others before Palm Inc. Why? Because I am angry and I will remember them as being unreliable losers who don't have the guts to stand behind their product and who contributed to the demize of a great OS that millions of people have put their money and trust in (all their data is in Palm Desktop, developers spents years of their lives learning Palm OS programming, etc).

Finally, I tried StyleTap on my hx2750 and it does not offer the same user friendly experience as on an original Palm. My T5 is far more fun to use than StyleTap.

To not go off topic, I still maintain that anything WinMob-powered will be the ruination of Palm/PalmSource in the long run but in the SHORT TERM, Palm is going to sell oodles of WinTreos in '06 just like GM's doing now with their lineup of watered down Saabs. The longtime Palm faithful such as Voice, myself and plenty of others will be left to fend for ourselves with stockpiled old units and/or whatever legacy FrankenGarnet models Palm leaves in prouction.

By the time those nifty Sprint 2-year contract signed in spring '06 to get a cheaper Treo 670 have expired, everyone will have moved on to something else (next-gen Blackberry, something by Samsung etc). Then the Palm platform as we've come to know it will be in its final stages of dissolution amidst a flurry of lawsuits, cries of panic from the user base, and IP squabbling.

By the time those nifty Sprint 2-year contract signed in spring '06 to get a cheaper Treo 670 have expired, everyone will have moved on to something else (next-gen Blackberry, something by Samsung etc). Then the Palm platform as we've come to know it will be in its final stages of dissolution amidst a flurry of lawsuits, cries of panic from the user base, and IP squabbling.

Well said, hkklife.

Funny how you mentioned Saab - I was just talking to a friend about their new lineup a couple days ago. I'm a longtime Saab aficionado and for me the company died when the 900 was killed off. Rebranded/restyled Opels and Subarus just don't cut it for those of us who appreciated the iconoclasm of The Old Saab. In the same vein, I hope the hideous BMWs designed by that pathetic hack, Chris "New Coke" Bangle blow up in BMW's face. The company deserves to go bankrupt for spewing out crap like the Z4 and the 7 Series.

After thinking about things a little more, I have to admit I owe VampireLestat an apology - I'm just as guilty of throwing silly tantrums as he is. I've always liked the Porsche 911 and had promised myself "Someday...". Then a couple years ago, Porsche rebadged the Volkswagen Touareg - a hideous, bloated SUV - added a Porsche engine, and doubled the price. A Porsche/VW SUV? Get serious. The Porsche Cayenne is probably the most cynical vehicle released since the all-time champ: the despicable Cadillac Cimarron (née Chevrolet Citation).

My reaction: "Porsche selling a SUV? W T F??? Are they so desperate for money that they'll jump on any bandwagon??? Pathetic! I'll never buy ANYTHING from Porsche!" Then I start seeing dozens of Abominable Cayennes puttering around the Bay Area with Soccer Moms driving. Then I remember: Porsche doesn't care if it's selling 911s to SCCA racers or Cayennes to Soccer Moms. Profit is profit. But since I still feel "personally wronged" ;-O by their sellout and (on principle) would never buy a Porsche in the future. Rational decision? Nope. Does it hurt Porsche? Nope. Do they care about my N = 1 boycott? Nope. But I'm not budging!

So stick to your guns, Lestat. Vote with your wallet and let everyone know if you'e pi$$ed off. The world needs another Angry Young Vamp.

hkklife: Palm is going down the drain. Cashing in while they still have a pulse is a good idea. Why keep propping up PalmOS when it won't have any significant market share in 2 or 3 years. It's obvious that Palm has made the decision to cut off a diseased limb to prevent blood poisoning. Wise strategy.


------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

"Whether you’re an experienced Flash developer interested in creating mobile content, someone who’s just starting out or a mobile developer who’s never used Flash, Flash Professional 8 is packed with many new features to assist you when creating mobile content.

Device Settings
Flash Professional 8 will ship with nearly 90 mobile device profiles, and we will continue to update profiles with every new device that supports Flash Lite. Items that are specific to individual devices, such as screen size, available memory, navigation models, and button configurations will be simulated exactly as they work on all supported phones."
http://www.macromedia.com/mobile/manufacturers/

Note - Symbian and PocketPC devices, but NO POS at all. 90 devices, but no Treo.

So no PDF, No flash, no directX. A slow death by a 1000 cuts. The only thing saving Palm now is that most POS users do not know these things are available on the WM side.

Surur

What developments will occur that will make Palm OS regain the interests of developers and companies such as Macromedia and Skype. As Palm users said 5 years ago, its all about the applications.

Which "announcements over the past several months" have we misinterpreted? Was it Tapwave going bankrupt, or Cobalt development being shelved, or Palm buying back the Palm name so it could be in safer hands than PalmSource, and so they can do with it what they want (e.g. make a Palm Powered WM Treo)?

We await your profound insight.

Surur

http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS4669946597.html

Surur

Dont you get the feeling that we are coming to the end game? The opening moves are long over, POS is showing its age, and like an aged Deer its now in danger of being culled. (do I get a prize for mixing metaphors?) Like a chess player who knows its at a disadvantage its making desperate moves, but with every round hope is fading. At some point POS will have to concede.

So you see, I do find it very entertaining. Its theatre of the highest order.

Surur

The only reason people post about what they see as lack of strategy/products/direction/information/updates is because they care about Palm and don't want to see it depart and be left with a choice of WinMob or WinMob.

PalmS/PalmO is following the classic downward arc of a company lost. When was the last wow product? What was the last sector leader? [Do I hear you say Treo, well Handspring did a decent but flawed job, and PalmO bought it. When was the last PalmO wow product?]

Two more years with an country bumkin OS that married it's sister. It's a long time. Maybe too long...

Fish

That's _the_ question. If PalmSource can execute, the answer has to be 'because of the value add that results from the PalmOS feature set'. Either they get that right, or they are out of options.

Being late to the party is no guarentee of losing. Remember beta-max? It was first, and technically superior. VHS won. HP insiders used to joke that "the time for HP to start into a market was when we could see the taillights of the competitors fading into the distance." That worked for them for a long time.

At this point, only time and the market can tell if PalmSource can produce a better-accepted product that the other LinuxPhone players.

I assume this means the PIM apps. The value of these in two years will be negligible. It will be as quaint as a Commodore 64 emulator.

SanDisk Chooses Treo Smartphones with GoodLink for Select Employees Worldwide
Turns out only 225 were ordered. Will Palm be announcing every individual purchase next?

Next weeks headline:
Legodude chooses Treo Smartphone

Surur

You're right that this is the big question. There is a fair amount of competition out there with MontaVista, TrollTech, and vendors that roll their own. But there's also a lot of demand and the vendors need choices so they can differentiate. Motorola has already been criticized for overusing QTopia. The name of the game is to keep your product from being commoditized and Palm OS is pretty attractive way to differentiate. Hell, it comes out of the box with this huge loyal following.

Mobile Linux is off to an incredible start this year: it's now on 14% of the smartphones sold worldwide, up over 400% from last year. I'm looking for the numbers, but I'm guessing that's already roughly equal to all of the Windows Mobile phones. Other than Nokia and Sony Ericsson (both in bed with Symbian) I can't think of a single major phone vendor that hasn't announced, released, or sold a Linux phone this year: Motorola, Samsung, LG, NEC, Panasonic, Qualcomm, plus a bunch of smaller ones like E28 and Datang. OK, maybe not Siemens. Wait, even Siemens had a Linux concept phone with a built-in TV receiver at CEBit this year.

The big attraction is that Linux doesn't constrain the phone makers the way the proprietary OSes do. They can run it across their whole phone line because its modular (unlike the MS and Symbian monoliths), they can use a wider range of silicon, displays, etc., they can modify it as they please, and as with Linux on the server they get access to fixes and innovations faster than if they have to wait for major releases from Microsoft or Symbian.

For Linux to keep making inroads against MS and Symbian though it needs apps. (Note the failure of Linux to succeed on the desktop without lot of apps.) That's where Palm OS really makes the biggest contribution, IMO. When you take 30,000 existing apps and provide a familiar API for developers to make the kind of new ones that you can only do well with a really modern OS, well, that's a pretty big deal. Call me an apologist, but if they do their job well I wouldn't be surprised if PalmSource turns out to be the hottest girl at the mobile Linux ball in 2006.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com

I really want to go Palm for my Treo replacement, I've been a Palm user for many years but, where's the new Palm stuff that gives you wood? I just ain't seeing the sexy hardware from Palm. Where is something like the MDA IV, high end and hot? Where is the low end but pretty cool stuff either?

Come on Palm, raise your game.

fish

P.S. Why does the Treo line have a big sticking out aerial? Why? It's so like 1990s.

We shall just have to see how this plays out.

Thx for the support. I did not really say anything that controversial.

Here it is.
I started by responding to Jeff's article, basically saying that he's exaggerating the attractiveness of PDA's, that they need even better utility, and that they have not caught on yet.

Regarding whether PDA's are dead or not, at this stage its clear that a PDA that does not include a cellular radio has to be compelling in a very different way to succeed (e.g. very cheap, very thin, small, light, huge storage, great screen with very high resolution etc). Not all of them, but at least one or two. It would have to justify why one should go for a two device solution instead of a convergent device.

PDA's have not transitioned yet into being compelling for the general population, but with its move into cellphones hopefully they can justify their existence as communication devices (e.g. great e-mail, great chat) and entertainment devices (e.g good video and sound). For business adoption good manageability, robustness and a killer app like push e-mail is more important.

Its clear that what we call a PDA in 1996 (Palm pilot) will not bear a great resemblance to the PDA of 2006 (like the HTC Universal). The devices need to continue to evolve to justify their place in people's pockets.

Lastly, a traditional dig at POS. The rise in the numbers of PDA's shipped is completely on the back of Win Mobile success. POS shipments have only declined, and Win Mob only risen since 2001. Maybe POS should have learned a few lessons from WM, instead of denigrating it by saying it was just adding bloat and giving people what they did not need (e.g. multi-tasking, multi-media etc). Maybe MS knew better from the start?

I then mentioned pocketpc discribes best what Jeff is talking about (handheld computer)

You said "PDA's should be called handhelds, handheld computers, or some other catchy name at this point because they are so much more than simple organizers.", and I said PocketPC's encompass what you are describing, and seemed catchy enough.

Then some-one said my ideas were interesting, but MS still produces buggy code. I responded by saying if the foundation is right, bugs will get fixed eventually, while if the foundation is wrong its often impossible to fix something (reference frankengarnet)

Of course MS does not produce bug free code, and the close button still irritates most people, but they had the philosophy right from the start ( a PC in your Palm) vs the Zen of Palm (as simple and focussed as possible). When your philosophy is right the rest is just implementation. In fact the thing that irritates most PocketPC users currently is not the bloat of the OS, but the way they limited the OS, e.g. only 32 processes at one time, no task bar to make taskswitching easier and no proper close button. In general though they have produced a pocket sized general purpose computer, which the market appears to appeciate.

And then I finally responded to Jeff's most outrageous statement, that things never looked better for POS, by saying other major companies have done stranger things than e.g. Palm dropping POS. I think this was the straw that broke the camel's back

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff Kirvin
The fact is that Palm's future has never looked brighter.
If the Treo 670 is coming, this can not be true. I do not think its impossible that Palm could abandon POS. AOL owns Netscape and ships an IE browser, Apple is giving up the engine of Apple computers, the PowerPC, the originator of the Symbian OS, Psion, ships Win CE only. Even the paragon of Symbian, Nokia, appears to be transitioning to Linux.

Its not impossible that Palm could drop POS, stranger things have happened.

It sounds a bit like a rant, but its 4 separate posts, and the posts in between are not here, so there's no context. Its certainly not abusive, a personal attack or insulting. I find the original topic quite interesting however, especially coming from Jeff. Maybe he's coming around to accepting Win Mobile? (he will have to if he wants to continue in his role as Palm pundit and Palm starts using win mobile).

Surur

Reggie
1src Founder
Tam,

You have no idea how hard it has been! LOL. No, really, it has just been hard for us. You know me, I am quite partial, but when push comes to shove, I would rather not take this matter on my own hands but rather share it with the community.

By deleting my posts most people will think I did or said something truly horrible, and feel Reggie et al is fully justified in their actions. I wonder what Reggie thinks he's protecting the 1src's from by his tireless policing. Maybe the uncomfortable truth?

Surur

So whatever did you do before to get banned in the first place? I guess I missed that whole "exchange" too.

Jeff contributes boat-loads to the 1src community. Whether or not he directly asked that your posts get deleted and you get banned is not something that we will probably ever find out. However, he will be protected.

I'm still waiting for the mythical "color HandEra."

I believe this is the kind of thing Reggie wants to keep off 1Src. If you want personal attacks, PIC is the place for them.

As for Surur, VOR, and co., if you want to rant about what Palm has done wrong, PIC is a perfect place for that as well. 1Src has a different tone, and while you might feel that it's an apologist's site, the fact is that it's not even in the "is Palm crappy or not" debate. It's a Palm users site for Palm users exchanging info. If you want to rant about how gifted you are at predicting business model efficacy, PIC is for you. If you want to talk about using a Palm, 1Src is your site.

Today, 05:49 AM
  #16
jjesusfreak01
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Raleigh, NC
Posts: 3,321

Originally Posted by Tam Hanna
Cookie??
That would be a no-miss way to track Surur-if he always is using one PC. Just place a cookie for every user with an unique ID, and log ID vs IP. Then, if you IP-Blocik, you also block the Cookie ID...

No, the best way would be to infect his computer with a virus which pulled a unique ID off of the system and sent it to the site, which could completely block him from using that computer on 1src again. Cookies can be deleted, not that I would support sending Surur a virus.
__________________
Brad Green, associate writer, TamsPalm

Maybe I should just join a debating team. But where would I find a place that debates my PDA interests all the time?

Surur

Old Today, 09:39 AM #22
Reggie

We have a simple set of rules. What is so difficult following them? If this community doesn't meet your expectations or if it disappoints you that it won't let you bash and attack other members, move on and find other free communities that will let you.

Either way, here is the meat of the problem. They do not want to expose Jeff and/or his ideas to criticism. If you want to be a tall tree you should expect some wind.

Surur

Fair enough. My point is: exactly when did Surur post a comment like this to 1src?? Answer - he didn't. At least not from what I read. And I have asked repeatedly to deaf ears for someone over there to produce evidence of such a post on Surur's part.

So without that evidence, I'm left to believe Reggie is only censoring his bud Kirvin to protect JK's pathetic insecurity.

Adrenochrome: "As for Surur, VOR, and co., if you want to rant about what Palm has done wrong...etc, etc, etc."

As to this, as I pointed out on 1src, I don't think lumping Surur and TVoR is accurate. Not that I am offended by TVoR, by the way. I could give a ****, as I expect could TVoR. But I think it's fair to say that their styles differ, which should be obvious to anyone who frequents these sites. I agree that TVoR's style has no place on 1src, but censoring Surur's reasonable participation in 1src's 'debates' is flat bull****.

Anyway - like I said earlier, when it comes down to it all of this is pretty damn unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Especially when you consider that these Palm boards aren't going to be interesting for very much longer anyway. No offense.

Delete the bit about driving (he doesn't know how) and change the Date of Last Lay (DLL) to early 50's and you could be talking about Mike Cane!


------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

Ouch. And who's fault is that? Perhaps if the Pollyannas hadn't pretended everything was OK and had raised their expectations of Palm, we would not be in that position in 2005.


------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

Hmmm, I like that one almost as my "PALMconomy" from Monday. Maybe I'll trademark them both or at least make 'em my coined terms.

Brilliant. What is your royalty rate charged for people using the words?

PIC is the ONLY site in all of Palmdom worth reading on a regular basis nowadays. I mean, the BH gang are standing complacent alongside Ed's over the LifeDrive's inadequacies and Palm's utter failure to patch their flagship device in a timely manner. In a few years when all of the smoke has cleared and the "other" sites have either retreated to PPC-only coverage or just pulled a Palmstation.com and vanished into the ether, I imagine PIC to be going strong. Hopefully it'll have users with stockpiles of T3s & TH55s trading tips/parts and be something like the Nuon or Newton communities are nowadays.

Didn't Cliesouce disappear overnight a while back only to become that new Palm site? When the WinMob Treos show up, I expect those sites will quickly jump on the bandwagon and go where the money is. And does ANYONE take anything said on Brighthand seriously?

PalmStation actually may be the poster child for these sites. Remember "back in the day" when PalmStation's Hal scooped everyone with the photos of the i705? The energy and excitement within the PalmOS community seems to be vanishing as quickly as the VAPORware Palm hardware and the Palmconomy will be the first casualty. Even the PalmWarez group has been MIA (but this may have more to do with someone's fear of jail time...)

My bunker's stocked with CLIE parts and accessories [thank God for eBay!] and I've started archiving versions of applications in case developers start disappearing.

TVoR

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

The Poster Formerly Known As Surur was banned. sr4 seems to be a COMPLETELY SEPARATE poster, much as Palm and PalmSource are COMPLETELY SEPARATE companies. You have NO beef here.

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

Either way though, my posts at 1src did not violate the stated rules except to rile Jeff, who complained of "It's possible to be a snarky troll without being in-your-face VoR offensive. A lot of it is intent and subtext." He was obviously reading personal attacks in my criticisms of his opinions. If you cant stand to have your ideas critically analyzed you should not stand on a pulpit and shout them out.
http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94825&page=3&pp=15

BTW my deleted posts above are not self-censored. The italicized text explains the text that follows, it does not replace any removed text. There is actually nothing else there.

Surur

2. Click the squirrel ('mp3s')

3. Click 'Version 2.0'

4. Click 'Euros and Dollars'

That's a puckin' good tong.