Comments on: Palm Pre Wins CNET Best of CES Awards
In another positive sign that Palm's resurrection is at hand, the Pre has just been awarded CNET's "Best of CES 2009" award, for "Best in show" as well as the "People‘s Voice Award". The Pre beat out the Motorola Surf A3100 (rather unimpressive) and the LG Watch Phone (a very stunning device, I must admit) in the Cell Phonjes and Smartphomnes Category.
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RE: turnaround?
Happier, perhaps..?
Pilot Pro, III, IIIe, Nino (yeah...oops!), IIIc, VIIx, m505, NR70V, NZ90, NX60, T3, Zire 72s, NX80V, Treo 90, Treo 650
RE: turnaround?
RE: turnaround?
RE: turnaround?
RE: turnaround?
we'll see how the pre pans out.
hopefully palm doesn't continue having the software and hardware bugs they've had for years with the treo line.
sucks to have palm's reputation.
I hope the pre pans out - if it fizzles like the blackberry storm, palm is toast.
RE: turnaround?
It looks to me like an arms race. Clearly, Apple took some cues from Palm in creating the iPhone, while upping the multimedia ante. Now, Palm has turned the tables, taking cues from the iPhone UI (e.g., with multi-touch), but have upped the ante themselves with better hardware and a more robust OS.
I'm actually not sold on the Pre yet. I think you lose some functionality by not having it stylus-capable. There should at least be the capability to do jotting and simple drawings, even if you expect all text input to be done through the keyboard. And I think you limit the UI unaccpetably, as well. You just can't manipulate small objects the same way with your finger as you could with a stylus. It's bad enough that Palm ditched good styli in favor of the toothpick that the Centro uses. To abandon styli altogether makes no sense to me.
I'm also wondering how well a JS/CCS/HTML OS will handle I/O tasks. I was happy to see that DataViz is one of the partners on the Pre, but does that mean that you'll be able to edit documents with Docs to Go? Will you be able to create documents, as well? (Yes, the Pre isn't really suited to type long documents with that small keyboard, but I don't see anything stopping you from using a Bluetooth keyboard with it.
In general, the Pre looks like a huge leap forward for Palm. I just wonder how much of their strong software legacy they'll end up leaving behind, and how long it will take to make up that ground...
RE: turnaround?
> capability of iPhone's OS...
Nah, Apple has some reason - I personally don't know if they've stated it - for not including it. Temporarily changing the "mode" of finger stuff so selection can be done seems like a fairly trivial thing to do even with virtual rather than hard buttons.
Maybe a very very small subset of their customer set is interested in copy-n-paste thus implementing something "out of character" was rejected?
But,as we know, the folks at Apple ain't stupid so they probably had their reasons for saying "Nah"...
RE: turnaround?
The UI, pretty much all that was demoed, is indeed a huge step forward for Palm. It's an incremental step forward for phones, however and the competition out there isn't just laying around saying "Oh, we're beat!".
iPhone Nano anyone, with hard keyboard?
RE: turnaround?
> interested in copy-n-paste thus implementing something "out of
> character" was rejected?...
BTW, as Mossberg noted in that podcast, a very very small subset of phone owners carry around 2nd batteries, thus "removable batteries" is not necessarily even a meaningful feature of a phone and totally explains Apple's stance on same.
RE: turnaround?
Both of which were just completely leap-frogged by Palm. Sucks to be them!
What the hell are you talking about? Did Palm suddenly sell 10 million of these while I wasn't looking?
Palm has an uphill battle. You STILL need to stop being such a fanboy. Palm did a good job with the software, but to claim it's some breakthrough that all competitors will copy? Bullshit. How many iPhone clones have we seen in the past two years? Eight? Twelve? This is just one more device that people will ask, "Oh, is that an iPhone??"
-Bosco
m105 -> NX70v -> NX80v -> iPhone -> iPhone 3G
RE: turnaround?
What more could you want from a trade show appearance?
RE: turnaround?
RE: turnaround?
> capability of iPhone's OS...
According to my source, the iPhone is running the same OSX that's on Mac's desktop. But Apple has crippled a lot of the functionality, for various reasons. I understand there are vulnerabilities that open up when they allow cut-and-paste and multitasking of third party programs, and they are taking the conservative route to security. You can test this by doing a jailbreak - once done you have access to cut-and-paste and other features.
This won't fix the iPhone's stupidity of no expandable flash or removable battery or hardware keyboard. However, if Palm's move does anything it'll create the space to awaken some damn fine competition in the smartphone field for everyone.
You know that when people were putting up with AT&T's pricing and getting excited about the iPhone despite all the negatives - there's a competitive hole to drive a truck through.
RE: turnaround?
I didn't know that. Is there a jailbreak prog/util that enables universal C/C/P?
Is suddenyly thinking a low-end iPod Touch might be good training wheels. With jailbreak.
RE: turnaround?
What the hell are you talking about?
Let's see. Every hardware complaint about the iPhone - non-removable battery, no physical keyboard, no camera flash - has been solved. And the OS looks to be far more intelligent, with universal find-as-you-type, built-in web integration, mega-messaging and a new multitasking method that doesn't require constantly flicking back to the launcher but in fact offers three different ways to get around - the cards, the wave, or the launcher. Oh, and MMS, which Apple just couldn't be bothered with.
That's what I'm talking about. But you knew that. Poor ol' iPhone's looking just a bit decrepit now, eh? (Don't worry, you don't have to admit it - I know what's in your heart. I can see it eating away at you.)
Oh, and just for fun: Gizmodo ranked the Pre vs. the iPhone. Score was 10-5, Pre's way. Glad they did it and saved me the hassle: http://i.gizmodo.com/5126870/in-a-nutshell-palm-pre-vs-iphone-vs-g1?skyline=true&s=x
SV:
Nah, Apple has some reason - I personally don't know if they've stated it - for not including it.[in regards to copy-and-paste]
Yes. It's called arrogance. Or maybe Steve knows best.
Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 -> Treo 650 -> Treo 680 -> Centro
RE: turnaround?
Nah, that's just an Apple-hater's idea.
I was talking about REAL reasons.
[I since read - here? - that there are some sort of security issues with same or some such]
RE: turnaround?
One of Palm's greatest strengths was that the Pilot was totally open to development. I think the Mojo environment will be very useful for quick development, but I hope they plan on offering a lower-level APIs and access to the OS at some point.
RE: turnaround?
I hate the Apple thing. It's a "cultural problem". More specifically, the turtlenecked, Steve Jobs, thumb-up-the-ass, liberal-with-too-much-money "cultural problem".
RE: turnaround?
Then that's just stupidity and poor design. (Oh, how I love bold!) Every other operating system on the face of the Earth can do copy-and-paste, but mobile OS X can't without exposing a gaping, puckered security hole? Oh dear.
Drew and Gekko: yup.
RE: turnaround?
Nah, that's just an Apple-hater's idea.
And since you're a "Palm-hater", you would know.
Your view of Palm is as seriously unrealistic as the gushing fanboys, something like an "anti-fanboy". But I guess if hanging out at a Palm website and attempting to spread poorly devised FUD is your thing....
freakout is on with this one. The Pre ups the ante, beating the iPhone in quite a number of areas. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it hasn't shipped yet. But "not having shipped yet" didn't stop all the iPhone fans from talking about how awesome that product was.
BTW, what Palm device are you using at the moment?
"twrock is infamous around these parts" (from my profile over at Brighthand due to my negative 62 rep points rating)
RE: turnaround?
Don't forget we're still dealing with Palm here. The company that invented corporate malaise.
And by the way, Tim. Since when has Apple gotten sales because of out-featuring other device? Apple has a better integration and user experience than all other available devices. That's why they sell. You still don't get it.
Also, this Palm Pre crap has gotten you so worked up, that you're finally admitting what a rancid piece of shit Garnet and its Treo hardware was. But you only admit that after Palm announces their new hardware. And then suddenly, you're all over it, hailing it as "leapfrogging" the iPhone.
Again, did they suddenly sell 10 million of these while I wasn't looking? Don't get ahead of yourself. This thing still has to go through 6 months of CDMA-only Sprint bullshit, and a blitzkrieg of garnering IT support for an alien OS, requirement of consumer appeal (not just nerds who watch CES webcasts), and a wave of new smartphones, including what Apple has up its sleeve for its third iPhone iteration.
-Bosco
m105 -> NX70v -> NX80v -> iPhone -> iPhone 3G
Well Deserved
Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 -> Treo 650 -> Treo 680 -> Centro
RE: Well Deserved
RE: Well Deserved
This phone is Palm's "hail mary" and I truly hope that it signals a change from their patterns of the past 10 years or so. If they FINALLY prioritize quality control, innovation, and customer service - they may have a chance.
RE: Well Deserved
competition is a beautiful thing. we can thank Steve Jobs and the iphone for the Pre. without them, we'd still be on Garnet 5.999999999999999999, 32MB RAM, 320x320, no wifi, no gps, etc.
"A strategic inflection point is a time in the life of a business when its fundamentals are about to change. That change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights. But it may just as likely signal the beginning of the end. Strategic inflection points can be caused by technological change but they are more than technological change. They can be caused by competitors but they are more than just competition. They are full-scale changes in the way business is conducted, so that simply adopting new technology or fighting the competition as you used to may be insufficient. They build up force so insidiously that you may have a hard time even putting a finger on what has changed, yet you know that something has. Let's not mince words: A strategic inflection point can be deadly when unattended to. Companies that begin a decline as a result of its changes rarely recover their previous greatness. But strategic inflection points do not always lead to disaster. When the way business is being conducted changes, it creates opportunities for players who are adept at operating in the new way. This can apply to newcomers or to incumbents, for whom a strategic inflection point may mean an opportunity for a new period of growth." - Andy Grove
"We live in an age in which the pace of technological change is pulsating ever faster, causing waves that spread outward toward all industries. This increased rate of change will have an impact on you, no matter what you do for a living. It will bring new competition from new ways of doing things, from corners that you don't expect. It doesn't matter where you live. Long distances used to be a moat that both insulated and isolated people from workers on the other side of the world. But every day, technology narrows that moat inch by inch. Every person in the world is on the verge of becoming both a coworker and a competitor to every one of us, much the same as our colleagues down the hall of the same office building are. Technological change is going to reach out and sooner or later change something fundamental in your business world." – Andy Grove
RE: Well Deserved
that's not what it's about
This isn't a race about who can cram more features into a phone.
The thing that makes the iPhone successful isn't its features, it's iTunes and the iTunes store, Mobile Me, plus desktop integration. It took Apple a decade to build up towards this. Palm is starting out from nearly zero.
"For one thing, you've got the removable battery, [...] stylus [...]"
Given that Apple isn't budging on those, it's a safe bet that it isn't affecting their sales.
"By using Web standard development technologies, Palm has created a phone which anyone can program for,"
Web development with JavaScript and HTML is hard; many programmers can't even do it. And you can't build many of the apps that have made iPhone successful: games, music and video software, imaging.
Macheads will keep buying iPhones anyway, and Microsoft will continue failing because... well, they are Microsoft.
The real competitors to Pre (worldwide) are Nokia and Android, and both of them are much further along in terms of music, online experience, developer base, and openness. Oh, and they both are actually shipping products.
RE: that's not what it's about
The thing that makes the iPhone successful isn't its features, it's iTunes and the iTunes store, Mobile Me, plus desktop integration. It took Apple a decade to build up towards this. Palm is starting out from nearly zero.
You might be right about what makes the iPhone successful, but that's got zero to do with what makes for a successful phone. There's a big difference between those two things. There are people who won't buy an iPhone specifically because it fails as a phone. compare RIM's smartphone sales to Apple's. Apple is definitely a player in the space - and certainly a larger player than Palm, at this point - but the iPhone is not the phone to beat in anything other than the coolness factor - which certainly includes the UI.
And where did you get the idea that Palm is "starting from nearly zero"? Palm's been involved in desktop integration, synchronization, and the whole mobile space before the iPod was even a gleam in Steve Job's eye. Palm has lots of experience with what works and what doesn't in the mobile space. The problem Palm has had is resting on its laurels with the Treo devices and OS5. The Pre is the device they should've launched when they announced the Foleo. Of course, a lot of the services that the Pre will hook into either didn't exist or weren't as powerful when the Foleo was announced.
Given that Apple isn't budging on those, it's a safe bet that it isn't affecting their sales.
Have you looked at the sales figures lately? Apple has ~ 5% market share, whereas RIM has ~ 54%. Now, what was that you were saying about not affecting sales?
Web development with JavaScript and HTML is hard; many programmers can't even do it. And you can't build many of the apps that have made iPhone successful: games, music and video software, imaging.
Web development w/ Javascript and HTML isn't that hard. There are many thousands of people who use these every day who've never compiled a program from C source code in their lives. Of course, it somewhat depends on what level of Javascript expertise is required for the Pre environment. But the number of people who can code in HTML and Javascript far outnumber those who code Objective C. And to add to that, the iPhone environment limits you to coding on a Mac. (Well, at least, officially. I've read where you can install VMWare on a PC and run the SDK, but I haven't been able to confirm that.) And to that, add the fact that Apple treats their development platform as a walled garden, with them being the sole distributor of apps (outside of corporate environments, at least). It all adds up to developers having a much easier time with the Pre than the iPhone. HTML and Javascript come with their own limitations, of course, but the difficulty programming them isn't part of that.
Now, the kind of software you can develop with the Pre environment may be limited, but it might not be as limited as you imagine. Palm is giving developers access to the Pre hardware in ways that Apple isn't with the iPhone (e.g., with the calendar and video/music functions). And the inclusion of DataViz as one of the partners likely means that Docs to Go will be part of the equation, which should give Pre users the ability to create documents (presumably at least Excel and Word) on the phone. To my knowledge, the iPhone's document viewing ability, such as it is, is limited to the browser or e-mail, and creating documents isn't even a consideration.
The real competitors to Pre (worldwide) are Nokia and Android, and both of them are much further along in terms of music, online experience, developer base, and openness. Oh, and they both are actually shipping products.
This part I agree with, although I wouldn't necessarily say that Nokia is competing for the same customers. On the high end, Nokia is mostly known for their Internet tablets, I think, and the Pre isn't going anywhere near that space, from what I can see.
RE: that's not what it's about
Have you looked at the sales figures lately? Apple has ~ 5% market share, whereas RIM has ~ 54%. Now, what was that you were saying about not affecting sales?
Where did you get those figures from?
The latest figures have Apple ahead of RIM, behind only Nokia for worldwide smartphone shipments.
-Bosco
m105 -> NX70v -> NX80v -> iPhone -> iPhone 3G
RE: that's not what it's about
Another, more recent article from December tells a similar tale, though:
Apple is still far behind Nokia, and lagging behind RIM.
And it's because iPhones are not seen as work devices.
It's a big mistake to think that Apple is the company to beat, merely because they have the flashiest phone. It's probably even a mistake to call an iPhone a smartphone, given all the things that iPhones can't handle (document editing and copy and paste, to name two things).
My main point is that pointing to iPhone sales as proof that they're necessarily what customers want, in terms of features in a smartphone, is a mistake. And attributing iPhone's success as a smartphone to its media handling ability is even more of a stretch.
RE: that's not what it's about
No they aren't. Apple has paved the way and all they have to do now is "Ooh, me too!" (which is sooo cute when you watch one of the demo vids here and the Palm guy states - as if it never frikkin existed before! - "and when you reach the top [of the scroll], it bounces!").
That said, as someone else pointed out above, Palm had desktop syncing slam-dunked. (Do they *still* have that, though, or is that now Property of ACCESS?)
Palm upped the ante with the card multitasking metaphor, which I love. The off-screen gesture stuff, eh, that's OK, and innovate too. They've just shown Nokia, at least, htf to get *rid* of buttons, instead of adding adding adding them.
It's clear Palm now has some kick-ass killer code talent, so I can only expect more out of them, should they survive.
Nokia and RIM should both be worried. (I don't mention MS because, really, who cares anymore?)
Apple will continue on its merry way.
RE: that's not what it's about
watch new sales growth, not market share. who's growing the fastest?
And why would you watch that? Growth doesn't tell you who the dominant player is. All growth tells you is who the Flavor of the Month (or quarter) is. If I sell 10,000 smartphones one quarter, and then 100,000 the next quarter, my growth has increased tenfold, but I'm still getting my ass kicked if the biggest player in the space is selling a steady 500,000 per quarter. By the "growth" standard, Linux is besting Windows in the marketplace. But that's not how such things are really measured.
RE: that's not what it's about
It's not that growth is irrelevant, but superior growth doesn't mean you're winning. Do Nokia and RIM need to watch Apple carefully? Of course. If Apple starts to sell a lot more units than Nokia does, or if Nokia experiences negative growth, that's a problem. But growth itself doesn't tell the tale. Apple has a good distance to go before they really start to challenge Nokia. And the reason for that is that Apple hasn't listened to negative feedback on the iPhone at all. They seem content to be a pop sensation. rather than the dominant player in their space. There are a lot of improvements Apple could make to the iPhone, if they wanted to, to make it a better phone. But that's not the direction they want to go in, so they don't.
It's no different than what they're doing with OSX. Imagine where they'd be today if they allowed PCs to run OSX. They'd sell lots of copies of OSX, and they'd have more "switchers" who, having used OSX, would realize that they would get a better experience on Apple hardware. It's Apple's control mania that prevents that from happening.
RE: that's not what it's about
And please, Nokia isn't even a factor anymore. Most of their sales are from bottom-feeding phones like the one I have:
http://mikecane.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/dl2007066.jpg
-and I bet mine is also a frikkin *refurb*, so no money there to begin with!
RE: that's not what it's about
The decisions Apple has made regarding OSX far predated Jobs' health concerns, by all indications.
And please, Nokia isn't even a factor anymore. Most of their sales are from bottom-feeding phones like the one I have
The phone I had before the Centro was exactly that kind of "bottom-feeder". But that's not a smartphone, by any measure, so how does that have anything to do with Nokia's smartphone sales?
The fact of the matter is, Apple is a force in the smartphone world, and they get lots of press for the innovative UI, but the sales don't approach that of the big players.
Company 3Q08 Market Share (%)
Nokia 42.4
Research In Motion 15.9
Apple 12.9
Part of that is pricing, and part of that is also the fact that traditional smartphones do things that the iPhone can't do. (Whether it can't do them because Steve Jobs doesn't want the iPhone to do them is irrrelevant.)
RE: that's not what it's about
Gekko, I use Outlook, but sparingly. I rely more on the phone for PIM than the desktop. Apple's Calendar is not as good as Palm's old Datebook, but it's suitable for me. I could enter appointments into the Palm quicker than the iPhone. And honestly, that's the only advantage my old NX had over the iPhone. Oh, and I could use that as an IR remote. That's really it, honest.
-Bosco
m105 -> NX70v -> NX80v -> iPhone -> iPhone 3G
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turnaround?
I would have given them "Best of Show": the Pre looks like it has some nice ideas, and it's a good form factor. But that's not the same as a turnaround. If the Pre's ideas turn out to be good ones, you can bet that iPhone, Android, and Windows Mobile have most of them cloned within a few months (Android already has a similar architecture anyway).