Comments on: Editorial: iPhone or iClone?

The "marketing analysis" theory that certain carrier does not want Wi-FI support in favor of data plans fell on its own face as of Yesterday.

That "analysis" or "theory" (more accurately BS) was always debunked... all the US carriers have always had at least a couple of phones that had Wi-Fi. Unfortunately for me they were all running Macroshaft's winDOHs mobile_bloatware.

No gimme my keyboard. No getta my Treo.

Actually I don't feel that the keyboard is that critical... or maybe it is because every now and then I find myself writing on paper with Grafitti 1 strokes.

LiveFaith wrote:
... Treo 800 please!!!!

LiveFaith -
Do you have a picture of your "mythical" Treo 800 posted somewhere? From reading the PIC board I think it is a TX based phone. Would love to see a pic.

Brent

Palm Vx -----> LONG WAIT -----> Palm T|X

Don't let Apple's glossy graphics blind you to the fact that apart from the web browser and (admittedly quite cool) sensors, there's really nothing new in the iPhone. Given that the Treo 680 is $300 cheaper than the iPhone I'd hardly call it "severely compromised" - you can do pretty much anything that you could do on an iPhone on a Treo with the bonus of real, physical buttons. It may not be as pretty but Palm have long been saying they're after substance, not style.

Plus, there's still a big question mark hanging over the iPhone battery life. Such a thin device running three different radios and a huge screen... 5 hours seems laughably optimistic.

If Palm wanted to outdo the iPhone, give the LifeDrive a phone unit, a large hard drive (>60gb), and decent software.

I agree, although we might want to pick a product a little less loathed by Palm fans than the Lifedrive. ;)

That's where Apple excels - great, easy-to-use, intuitive software that wasn't designed for the ease of the engineer making it.

Actually, this is where Palm excels as well. PalmOS has survived all these years not on the strength of its features or its looks, but rather that it is just so damn easy to learn and use. PalmOS routinely tops user satisfaction surveys and they're market leaders for a reason.

I think the real force behind iPhone will be the iTunes syncing - as Jobs pointed out, people have gotten used to doing it with the iPod. It's familiar and looks nice. I know I've become addicted to having all my phone information available on my PC.

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

Hey, I've got an idea, Palm. How about you stop worrying about style AND substance, and get your act together with STABILITY. Then try style and/or substance.

I just got a Treo 700p. The iPhone isn't /quite/ hot enough to make me drop the Treo in June, but I'm pretty confident the 2nd gen iPhone will be even better.

I figure Palm has right about a year to get their ship in order, or I'll drop them and never look back. Looking at their track record for the last three years, I have a pretty good guess as to what's going to happen.

The iPhone doesn't need a 40 gb hard drive or a 3g data connection to kill everything else in its market. It just needs to work elegantly. The Treo works. Sorta. Unless your bluetooth headset is on the other side of your body from the phone, or you need to look in your notes database to get an account number and fumble back to the phone app to type it in, or find the one feature that you really really CAN'T access without digging the stylus out of the sheath.

The visual voice mail feature should have been standard with every mobile phone ever. Linear, audio-based voice mail is stupid. Why did it take Apple to force this change?

I don't believe for a second that Apple is going to lock developers out of the phone. I would ABSOLUTELY believe that Cingular would lock developers out of the phone. That, right there, is the one big question left in my mind. How much of a screwing am I going to have to take from Cingular?

(Unlimited data? How much? Phone as modem? How much?)

We'll see. Palm needs to get moving.

I do think that style points was what made the Treo 600 (and subsequent Treos) successful. Treos, apart from the keyboard and cellular access differ very little from current Palm PDAs, such as the LifeDrive or the T/X, which sometimes even have additional features than Treos (such as a hard drive or Wi-Fi). Treos are very easy to handle, enable one-handed navigation, and offer (unintentionally) a higher res screen than Palm PDAs due to the tighter pixellation. Everything else is pretty much the same as a Tungsten X/Lifedrive except for a smaller body and cellular radio.

If:
- the Mac OS X implementation on the iPhone isn't crash prone,
- the iPhone provides average to above average battery life
- the Safari browser can support plug-ins
- and if everything else works the way it should...

...every other cell phone manufacturer is in some real trouble. If the iPhone works the way it should, the implementation of a robust OS in a mobile device with a stunning GUI makes other devices look like toys, and it will make UMPCs look clunky and overpriced.

I personally don't think the iPhone is overpriced, when Treo 650s are still being sold at $400+ unlocked (and $400+ for unlocked 680s - the supposed 'budget Treo'). What you get is a real OS, a real iPod video/audio player and most of all, a near-desktop computing experience in a 3.5 inch device. This is what the Zaurus could have been.

Then again, buggy execution will destroy this dream.

Treo 680 $199
Wi-Fi Sled $150
4 GB SD $100
------------------
Total $449

For what you get in the iPhone, the price is competitive.

That feature of the "iPhone" is actually a feature of the iPhone's service from Cingular - they "collaborated" on that, among other things (like "triangulation" - cell-based GPS-like location tracking).

See the very well done keynote presentation (I'd recommend everyone watch that not only to see what is shown but to see what isn't shown - like applications - maybe not enough time? Uh huh...) on Apple's site.

>Not when you add a 2 megapixel to compensate for the Treo 680's VGA camera.

And a larger screen, and iTunes out of the box, and a new updated OS, and the cost of the backpack you would need to carry such brick (treo+sled) and accessories together... I think that would make the Treo over $700 in Palm dollars.

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/13/1746234

"We know that Steve Jobs has said the iPhone won't accept third-party apps.
The iPhone looks to be running on a Samsung provided ARM core processor. That means it's not running on an Intel (or PPC) core. That means it's not running OS X in any meaningful sense (Apple can brand toilet paper as running OS X if they like). Darwin, the BSD based operating system that underlies what Apple has previously been calling OS X, does not run on ARM processors. The Darwin / Apple Public Source licensing agreement says the source would have to be made available if it is modified and sold (paraphrased; read it yourself). A Cingular rep has said the iPhone version of the OS source will not be made available. It will be closed, like the iPod OS and not like Darwin. So if it ain't Darwin, it ain't OS X (in any meaningful way). An InfoWorld article on an FBR Research report breaks down iPhone component providers and lists Samsung as the chip maker for the main application / video cpu. So, that leaves the question... What OS is this phone really running? Not Linux or the source would need to be open."

Could it happen again? The economics look similar at $499 & $599 w/contract price points.

Pat Horne

"Apple shares jumped $7.10 to close at $92.57 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The stock has traded in a 52-week range of $50.16 to $93.16. Nearly 120 million Apple shares were traded on Tuesday, more than four times the average daily volume. Meanwhile, shares of other smart-phone makers slid: Treo-maker Palm dropped 5.7 percent, BlackBerry's Research In Motion Ltd. lost 7.9 percent and Motorola Inc. shed 1.8 percent."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/10/ap/business/mainD8MI3JRO0.shtml

Basically, if you add a Bluetooth keyboard to the iPhone, you theoretically get a laptop/UMPC. If you add a keyboard to a Palm device, you get a word processor at best.

But these are just assumptions on my part on a device which hasn't been tested yet. I could be wrong.

I'm not familiar with the Newton debacle, but if anyone could provide any parallels or insight into a comparison between the iPhone and Newton, it would be appreciated.

E-T

e-tellurian

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

But only superficially. Watching the keynote it really is quite striking how similar Apple's call management and Contacts look to Palm's implementation.

And as I noted in the editorial, I'm very skeptical of Apple's battery life claims. You've noted yourself that the Nokia Linux tablet was a pitiful performer in battery life Mike. iPhone will have an even smaller battery, yet needs to hold up three radios, a big screen, three different sensors, and a complex OS. Only 11.6mm thick... there's got to be some compromises in there.

Apple's power management is either the best ever, or they're exaggerating when they claim 5 hours of talk/video/web. I don't recall any mention of the standby time either, but I'd hazard a guess it's not even going to come close to the Treo 680, which has a barely acceptable battery life.

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

Apple's call management looks like a screen with a bunch of buttons of different things you can do with a phone call, kinda like Palm's screen. Apple's Contacts looks like a list of contacts, like Palm's contacts list. Whoa. Copycats.

My point isn't that Apple are thieves (although I'm certain they've been studying the Treo - ringer switch, threaded messaging, easy call conferencing...), it's that all this talk of "revolutionising" the phone is just that. Talk. The reality is that Palm have been doing all the phone features that Apple are now arrogantly claiming as their own for years.

WTF?! You're hallucinating. I never mentioned its battery life. In fact, I should have as the one thing I could *not* complain about. 4 hours of WiFi is damned good in my book. (It's just that it's so effin *slow* that with a *real* device you could do everything in a *half* hour that it'd take a 770 to do in *four*!)

Gekko, I'll be explaining why a LifeDrive at my place. Pop over. But wash first. You remember how to do that, right?

Game over for Palm. As someone else wrote, watch smartphone sales be as flat as a desert floor for the next six months. At least where the iPhone will be available.

My email address is already on the Cingular list.

I really do want Palm's to have a third business and to put out something I *want*. (Other than a 8GB flash-based LifeDrive 2 -- with the OS on a *separate chip*.)

The LD has not yet arrived. Still days off.

This afternoon at 16:00 East Coast time they have their first chance to do so in a public forum - the CFO is at an "analyst" presentation:

-- http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Business_%26_Finance/Investments/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_P/threadview?bn=13738&tid=271350&mid=271350

Might not be interesting.

Might be.

There is no support for third party applications on the iPhone, not even widgets, as far as some people in the know, say. I think this puts a huge plus to real smartphones rather than the feature-phone iphone that it really is.

In addition to Tim's misgivings about the lack of tactile feedback from an interface with no physical buttons, the fact that the iPhone is emphatically closed is the biggest problem by far. There was no hint that Apple would ever care about anyone adding software to this handset besides Apple. If it were otherwise it would have been awfully strange not to mention it some time during a 2 1/2 hr presentation.

Hard to say which is worse for Palm: an open iPhone would compete more directly with the Treo; but a closed iPhone will send the generation of new smartphone users that Palm and its imitators have been cultivating right back into feature phones. Beautiful, exciting feature phones, but feature phones all the same. I was really hoping that Apple would do for mobile applications what they did for mobile music and introduce the idea of mobile computing to the masses. No one but Palm seems to be seriously interested in the idea that applications are the ultimate form of personalization, which is a damn shame.

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

Ahem. Sorry. Now I'm wondering where I got that from. It has sunk into my head somewhere - almost every thread I read about it winds up mentioning the battery... (wanders off, muttering and scaring passers-by)

I completely agree about the need to add built-in video support and we need a much better media syncing solution. And for the love of god, we need a 3.5mm audio jack.

I would love to have a direct line to Palm, but time zones mean I have to be up before 8am to catch them during business hours. Also, the only contact number I have available is for the PR people, and we pretty much already know what they're gonna say.

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

Please stop drinking the Apple Kool-Aid. iPhone's price point and Cingular exclusivity virtually guarantees it won't be able to dominate right out of the gate.

Yes, the Treo looks ancient by comparison, but it's important to note this ancient $200 device can still do almost everything the $500 iPhone can do. Wifi is indeed becoming more important, and I'm certain Palm are going to be pushing harder for wifi Treos now that Cingular has opened the wifi gate with iPhone.

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

This could be good news in the end. iPhone is priced out of most people's reach yet is going to generate fresh interest in all-in-one phones, something that Palm have as yet been unable to do - more out of limited marketing resources than anything else.

We can't say that Apple have gotten the platform right until we've actually used the thing. What you said applies to Palm as well: as LiveFaith mentioned, the 680 is the Treo perfected. It's very stable, has great phone and Bluetooth performance and a huge range of applications available. Apple will have a hard time catching up there. Palm now have a solid base on which to diversify, which Colligan made a big point of talking about in the recent earnings call. Palm already do 3G with the 700 series and 750; granted, the 700p has been plagued with issues related to the 3G EVDO radio (poor call quality, big battery drain, skipping and lag) but that can only be improved on, and the 700wx and 750 have received high praise.

I'm not kidding myself that Apple aren't going to rob a huge chunk of mindshare from Palm, but Palm do have a lot of experience making phones now. If they can bring us a wi-fi Treo in '07, or a larger-screened version (or even better, both) then they will be able to compete.

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

No offense but the 680 is NOT the Treo perfected.

It's still critically lacking in several areas:

screen size/resolution, wi-fi, a decent quality camera, pitiful battery life etc.

No, the Treo "perfected" would be something along the lines of Pat Horne's 800g mockup if not an outright "open" iPhone clone w/ removable media slot, capability to load 3rd party apps, and CDMA & GSM 3G variants....and the availability of it unlocked from the get-go.

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

I'll to OS X before I go WinMob and the 700p just needs to be put out pasture ASAP because I have a feeling Palm will never get around to patching it and/or patching it successfully.

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

THEN Apple will effectively have their mythical widescreen iPod (albeit not with a hard drive), the mythical follow-up to the Newton/Apple's take on the conventional PDA, AND their hypeworthy cell phone all from basically the same source.

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

I like it. Think they got the balance between form and function just right. Especially with the red ones. :D

Now we need some landscape ones.

I guess beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. Its glamorous qualities are lost on me. In my eyes it's just a big fat slab of metal with a bizarre looking ring around the d-pad. "You've got ring around the D-pad!!!" Sorry, I'm waxing nostalgic.

-------------------------------
PocketFactory, www.pocketfactory.com
The iPhone Blog, www.theiphoneblog.com

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

Incidentally, after using the Zod with its two slots, I do think it is a good idea (my HandEra had dual slots too). One slot holds your "standard" card which includes you backup, reference materials, favorite MP3's collection, etc. The other slot is for more temporary data like more music, videos, photo collection, etc. I don't like swapping cards in my TX, particularly because of the automated backup issue.

I'm still waiting for the mythical color HandEra.
Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

But, expecting the sloths at Palm to move toward this would be wasted thought. They still don't see the need (or room) for repositioning the headset mic or adding a 3.5mm plug for audio. Apparently they have their engineers focusing on moving around hardware button functionality and *cutting* battery capacity on new models - 2 things I somehow missed as problems we were clamoring for Palm to address...

Maybe Palm will eventually self destruct to the point Apple can pick them up cheap. Imagine the Treo with Apple's input...

Look, the 680's rather ordinary battery performance is part of the reason I doubt Apple's battery claims. Simply put: battery technology hasn't made any considerable advancements for some time now. iPhone will be running three different radios, a multitude of sensors and a big screen, yet it will be the thinnest device on the market when it comes out. (Provided one of the phone giants doesn't use these intervening six months to steal Apple's thunder and put out a thinner device for a lower price.) Jobs neglected to mention standby time, possibly a telling sign.

I thought what people wanted out of a smartphone was versatility, ease-of-use and a lower price. Any company that wants a good smartphone should put "Coolness factor" and form factor behind those. (You could also say that any company that wants market share should reverse that, but I don't really give a crap whether Palm's market share goes up or down, so long as they continue to design what I consider to be the best smartphone currently available. And probably come June, too. :P)

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

Was there any indication that there wouldn't be?

I'd be pretty surprised if it was locked down. Jobs kept saying OS X, and it's hard to get a lot more developer-friendly than OS X.

I could be wrong, or I could be right. At this point, it's all making stuff up. We'll see in June.

[Steve Jobs] “We define everything that is on the phone,” he said. “You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers.”

The iPhone, he insisted, would not look like the rest of the wireless industry.

“These are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any software on them,” he said. “That doesn’t mean there’s not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn’t mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment.”

Ok, so maybe it will be able to have "some" third-party apps, but this is not going to have a few thousand apps written for it. Sounds like a very closed system to me.

Now, put something like OpenMoKo (or even PalmOS) in that hardware and I'd be taking a much more serious look.

I'm still waiting for the mythical color HandEra.
Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

When even a fanboy puts...like...MAYBE...10 extra apps on their whatever the existence of "thousands" (tens of thousands?) is irrelevant.

Ok, ok, so I used a little hyperbole. At least I didn't add that "tens of..." in front of it. :-)

But let me ask this, are the extra 5-10 apps you might choose the same 5-10 I might choose? With the iPhone it's gonna be the 5-10 that Steve chooses. From my minimal use of an iBook back in the day, I came to the conclusion that Steve and I don't always see eye to eye. That's ok when there are at least a few decent alternatives, but somehow I don't think you are going to have a choice of (for example) five decent launchers for the iPhone.

I'm still waiting for the mythical color HandEra.
Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

For instance, I have used Palm's built-in launcher, LauncherX, and ZLauncher for a significant time each. I use the KDIC dictionary heavily. I think iSilo is one of the greatest apps since sliced bread. What abour MyBible? We might have DateBk5 in common, but how about mobileClock? There are plenty of lesser used but important apps as well, like Unit Converter Pro and SecureIt. And I haven't even touched games or system enhancements, things that are just nice for making my experience feel more the way I want it to.

Even being able to choose between two very similar apps with only slight differences is something I enjoy having the option of doing. Is the iPhone experience going to deliver that to me like the Palm experience has? Having a significant number of choices is of high value to my mobile operating experience. I might be in the minority, but it is important to me none-the-less.

Incidentally, I rarely use DocsToGo or VersaMail, two built-in apps that I would guess many people would find "essential". Different strokes....

I'm still waiting for the mythical color HandEra.
Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

1) pTunes 4
2) coreplayer
3) TagEditor
4) PalmRevolt
5) FontSmoother
6) TomTom Navigator
7) FileZ
8) PdaReach
9) LibertyControl
10) Google Maps, mainly just to show off. ;)

Quite possibly true. Also possible, albeit unlikely, is the reverse effect: people look at this expensive device with all these impressive features and wonder "Why can't it do X?"

I reckon the key to making consumers embrace the idea of mobile computing is making it easy to download, try and buy software without having to scour the net or a bunch of different online software stores. What Palm really needs is an iTunes-style online store, except for software. Round up every single one of those thousands of applications they so often refer to in press statements and throw them all in. Turn the Palm Desktop into a sync center for not just PIM stuff, but media and software too. They're already halfway there for media with some fairly decent photo & video management software. Trouble is it all looks terribly outdated and doesn't support nearly enough formats or music. And why can't you manage your device and the applications installed on it from your PC?

HotSync could use a shower and a shave as well. It's always been superbly reliable for me, but it definitely needs a more intuitive UI, especially in regards to custom conduit settings.

iTunes is Apple's secret weapon that no one has yet been able to neutralise. That's where I'd hit 'em first, if I was Palm.

Palm Desktop was perfect in 1995 or so when they relabeled it from Clarisworks, and it's one of the few software programs that has stood the test of time and still works perfectly with a few minor tweaks over the years... (Oh, if you don't count the 4K memos, the DataMangler preventing syncing, Outlook glitches and a few other "minor" issues). Colligan was right - Palm has nothing to fear from those chumps over at Apple - what do they know about anything...

With minimal use, it will be less stressful to type on the iPhone than the Treo.

Nokia thinks they will. But then... ahem.

G-

Long Live Visor Prism

Not exactly. One of the reasons carriers love dual processor phones is that by seperating the radio software from the rest of the software, you get to do far fewer certification runs. Also, for non-radio software, there is typically a negotiation between the carrier and the software maker over how extensively updates are changed before they are released.

May You Live in Interesting Times

i'm no fan of jobs or apple - but all of these issues are much more easily fixable than trying to modify the treo to make it on par with the iPhone in terms of hardware/software innovation. at palm's historical glacial speed, the treo could catch the iPhone in about 20 years. apple can/will fix the issues you list above very quickly and easily. don't get it twisted and don't confuse the possible with the impossible.

the iphone is a ferrari and the treo is a vw bug. you can create add-ons to the ferrari very quickly and it becomes an even better ferrari. a vw bug will always be a vw bug and it's very hard to make it a ferrari.

And just like a Ferrari, the iPhone is priced well out of ordinary people's reach. ;)

That's a little unfair; last year they put out four new devices, three of which are 3G, two of which run an entirely new OS and two with a new form factor. For a small company like Palm I think that's fairly impressive.

From what I remember of the latest earnings call Palm does spend as fair bit of cash on R&D. And there's always the Secret Third Business that's meant to make an appearance this year...

It is good to read the comments of people pointing out the things that the iPhone lacks compared to our beloved Treo's. Those are the reasons we will not be buying the iPhone. But still, someting seemingly as sleek and integrated as that makes us wonder.

Will continue lurking.......

It is kinda sad that one of the biggest threads on the site in ages was spurred by another company's product...

Palm need to be exciting again and stop playing it so safe, I completely agree. I just meant to point out that they haven't been twiddling their thumbs for the past year, even if none of their new devices have been heart-poundingly exciting. :)

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

- contact and other lists on iPhone has an A to Z index at the side so you can tap on a letter and quickly go there.

- the virtual keyboard's keys are bigger and more spaced than the real keyboards on Treos so it may be easier to type with. There is also visual feedback--I'm not sure it'll have audio feedback but I can't see why not.

- price: for $499, you're getting iPod 4gig nano (w video capability), a cellphone, camera, wifi, bluetooth, internet. I think the price is reasonable.

Palm could have come up with the perfect phone--current Palm 680 + wifi + standard jack + stable OS but they chose not to. Everyone should rejoice in the launching of the iPhone. It might actually spur Palm into doing what its customers have been clamoring for.

The more "general purpose" the iphone is, the more enticing it'll be to those of us impervious to the hype of Cingular drones tugging at us in the malls and ghetto neighborhoods.

I like greater screen area - who doesn't? But sacrificing hardware keys to gain it is about as stupid as cutting battery capacity by 1/3rd in order to gain a millimeter or two of "thinness" in a cell phone. Those crazy designers...

Or from a slightly more correct perspective, now that Al gore is on board, Apple enabled the Internet.

(...)