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Palm's Mistakes
putko writes "Mike Singer has an article at ZDNet called Five reasons for Palm's slide which describes succinctly how Palm went from owning the palmtop platform -- OS and apps -- to getting chopped into pieces (some recently sold to a Japanese firm), using an OS from Microsoft and teaming up with Microsoft. The author claims, among other things, that Palm's stuff never worked well enough with Windows (while the RIM Blackberry did), which ultimately allowed Windows Mobile to eliminate them. A hard fall for a company that really did innovate."
The Palm OS has stagnated. Windows Mobile for all its flaws is simply a better OS.
I've owned PDA's since the original Newton MessagePad, including every Newton model, numerous Palm Pilots, tons of proprietary junk models, halting with the HP iPAQ h6315 PDA Phone (for now).
The Pilot was doomed from the start. As a basic contacts + calendar + to-do PDA, it was great. I guess that's why it failed: too basic.
In my experience, basic users tend toward basic devices. I'd say nearly 30% of my consulting income for 5 years was helping basic company managers getting their Palms to work. Once they worked (synced, etc), these basic users spent more time navigating the software than using it efficiently. The working install rarely worked for long. My corporate customers hated the software. "Just get it working" was common to hear.
I'd considered teaching users how to really achieve PDA efficiency, but the Pilots that were so plentiful were just not powerful enough and frustrated me. I can't handle spending 30 seconds finding information that took 5 seconds in a paper dayplanner.
Then I started to realize something: people were buying these in a fad fashion. Many used only the calculator or a simple name+phone contact list. Not a renewable market there.
My PDA Phone is great because it is easily customizable, has enough software to give me options, and it has the Internet. But in the hands of a basic user, I'd see them using only the phone part. These devices just don't scream "easy to use."
Apple can turn this market on its head. I don't see them doing it (again), but if there is any market that needs a unique interface, the PDA market is it.
I'm not a pro-Apple guy. My lady has an iPod, I have no Macs. Yet I loved my Newtons. I can still efficiently use them, and basic users loved mine.
The Palm's limited resolution, limited speed, amd limited memory killed it. The market wasn't ready. There were too few customers. The economy of spending millions on the ultimate interface is not there, yet.
The cell phone market will help, as the best interface models get combined with one another. SMS messaging will usher in the perfect mini keyboard someday.
It will take time.
PS The Blackberry has to be a fad fluke. It feels like a Speak 'N Spell.
"Synchronization between the Microsoft and Palm became a critical issue, particularly since Windows is already in 95 percent of corporate environments" And that's the crux of the whole problem. And indeed poor decision/timing were also palm's mistakes.
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
Mistakes? What about what Palm did right? e.g. Realizing that everyone didn't want to play movies/music on their handheld? Or their strong focus on using the Palm as a satellite device, and not as a REALLY SLOW desktop replacement. (I don't know what Microsoft was thinking with their Word and Excel CE versions... no wait, yes I do. They weren't thinking.) Not to mention their slowness to move to color screens when high quality grayscale provided a better experience and better battery life.
If anything, I think Palm's biggest "mistake" was their push for expensive networking features when no good infrastructure existed. Their devices kept going up in cost over useless features all while they stuck with that hideous dragonball processor and low-res screens. Thank God for Sony and their Clie series, or Palm never would have gotten their heads out of their rears. Sadly, it may have been too little, too late.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Pushing Palm? Palm fell on its rear, and got drug along. I owned a Palm, and it was the most frustrating device. Interoperability was horrible. I swore off PDA's at that point. Years later, I picked up an iPaq. Took me months to decide to bite the bullet after my prior experience. I still use the thing every day.
Bottom line: Palm would still be the leader had it supported better OS interoperability, and not been so anal about 3rd party developers back in the day.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
"Palm had a costly product-planning snafu that stalled its fast-growing sales. Palm announced its m500 and m505 products early in 2001, before they were ready, stalling sales of older devices, such as the Palm V. Then, to compensate, the company massively overproduced the m500 and m505. In 2001, it got stuck holding onto excess inventory when sales of the devices fell short of expectations.
Some of those devices still linger in inventories..."
They did not see that the Palm cost too much and delivers too little. I don't think anyone likes to write with a Palm stylus either, it was just too slow and difficult. Cell phones were being given away, Palm prices stayed high and could not communicate with each other easily. Innovate quickly or die seems to be the motto in this industry.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Wait... I've misunderstood what "Palm's slide" means, haven't I...
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
or it could be the 20mhz processors they used to use. God,when i first bought a PDA it was the $150 ipaq 1300 with a 266 mhz ARM processor and a huge screen and the only comparable palm was a fricking 20Mhz m100 with a tiny tiny screen. It also helps that pocket pcs are jsut that, they are like little hand held computers.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Well, I have to say that Microsoft deserved to win this one. Their OS was simply better than Palms. It gave so much more capability for multimedia and had better sync support and played better with Windows on the desktop.
It really was a more functional product, and obviously the marketplace agreed.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Although I was one of the only people who liked Graffiti. I thought it was really intuitive.
Palm helped pioneer the industry (following on previous work by Apple, etc.), then the leadership sold it and moved on. As such, it has been little more than a copyrighted name since then. It represented some visionary work and when the visionaries walked away, the copyright's value slowly disappeared. It wasn't a failure, even though the products that now are Palm are failures. Microsoft, et al, have picked up where Palm's visionaries left off, much as Palm did with its predecessors.
Windows Mobile/Pocket PC/whatever worked better with Outlook maybe, but PalmOS worked a whole lot better with Windows than WinCE ever did. The complete inability of ActiveSync to maintain a reliable backup of my Pocket PC is one major reason I returned to Palm. Finicky damn software.
Oh, and as for Jeff Hawkins... the best thing Palm could have done was keep him at arms length at Handspring, and do whatever it took to keep both Sony and Handspring happy as separate independent customers of the OS... regardless of what that did for their own handheld sales.
Obviously that analyst slept through the Zire phase of Palm's business. Getting that line out proved that people were still willing to buy a low-cost non-convergence device.
Have Keyboard, Will Travel
This is yet another reminder that no matter how dominant a company may seem there will someday be another company that comes along and replaces them. It's just a matter of when and how. Look at Novell, for example. Who that they would lose there dominance in local area networks? Yes, eventually even Microsoft will be replaced.
Bradley Holt
"Where Palm Went Wrong", "More of Palm's Great Mistakes", and "Who is this Palm Person ANyway?"
My personality is like a coupon, it's 10% off.
I seem to recall that 3 incarnations of Windows PC (Windows Pocket Computer) worked perfectly well with Windows and flopped big time. Then when Palm came out, Microsoft "innovated" again and "invented" the PalmPC which everybody knows was far superior to the Palm Pilot except that it required 10 times as much memory.
Palm got into Cellular phones BEFORE PalmPC did too.
Palm didn't flop so much as its purpose was absorbed into cellphones and laptops with instant wireless connections.
It was an calender/address book with some note taking capabilities. No one really uses snail mail anymore for "quick communication" so the phone directory in a cell phone is more than enough and if you need more than that, most people are carrying around their laptops or can access GMail or Yahoo where their address books are stored online.
That leaves the calendar function which these days is stored centrally on company servers. So it's just easier to access it via the laptop everyone has then carry around yet another electronic device.
That plus its confusion as Handspring/Palm/Trio its hardware missteps over the last few years, lack of a clearcut development vision of what a PalmPC should do (it's been almost 10 years and its main functions are still... calender/address book/notes) and the perception of not being a multimedia device.
But it died because it didn't hook up to Windows properly? Nah... I still use mine and it hooks up to Windows just fine.
Inovative? That would be the Psions, or the Newtons - Palm just brought the idea to the masses. After the initial success, Palm managed to pretty much introduce no innovation into the product line. Yes - Palms eventually went color, then had a TCP/IP stack, then BT stack. Too bad there is still no commercially-available native ARM PalmOS environment, or an environment that doesn't allow tasks to blow out each other and the OS.
``Analysts say Palm just couldn't nail down the formula for over-the-air synchronization with Microsoft Outlook, which business users demand and RIM nailed with its BlackBerry device.''
That's not Palm's fault. Microsoft keeps their protocols and file formats secret, so as to make it difficult for competitiors to develop products that interoperate with Microsoft's. One more instance of Microsoft driving competitors out of the market by using their desktop monopoly, and one more reason why we must demand open formats and protocols.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The biggest problem as I see it is that Palm licensed their base OS from somebody else. Ten years ago, all they had was a nifty little organizer with minimal CPU (8MHz?), so not having multitasking was no big deal. In order to cheaply license the base OS, Palm signed a license that forbid them from using the multitasking features.
Now, 10 years later, I have a 400MHz Palm that can only have one task running at a time. The only way around this is to rewrite the OS from scratch, thereby rendering useless 10 years of apps! At that point, why bother? Just license WinCE because it already has a huge user base, apps that work, and excellent Windows integration.
dom
Now it has to be said that PocketPCs stink as PDAs, but they great all-rounders. Whereas Palm Pilots are great PDAs but just awful for anything but PIM functionality. I guess that Palm's problem was that the world started expecting more than PIM functionality from their devices and they couldn't deliver.
One would hope that they would still follow through with their plans to run over Linux - it offers the opportunity to leapfrog CE - but somehow I doubt it. I wonder if MS didn't throw a lot of cash at them to throw the towel in on that front.
People have been saying Palm lost the market for years, but don't they still own as much of the market as any competitor? Isn't the Treo 600/650 a huge success?
I own a Win Mobile 2003 device, and I would never give it to one of my users. It's far too complicated. To the degree that most people want the basic address book, calendar/todo, and notes, the Palm is far superior: Endless battery life, far more stable, far easier UI.
US Robotics and then Palm had a great thing going for them. My first Palm was the Palm Pilot Professional back in the late 90's and it was a blast to use and it boasted a great feature set and unbeatable simplicity. Looking back at the introduction of Windows CE-based devices, I think this was Palm's primary advantage. Windows CE has a huge potential, but for many things, it's just too complex, at least in my opinion. Of course, for some power users, this complexity is welcome, but many people just want to hit a button and get their contacts and don't want to have to make 7 clicks to get there. Palm of course knew that they had a good OS that many people liked, but unfortunately, their platform has been stagnating for years.
Today I still can't believe that they never introduced proper handwriting recognition. Of course you can enter data faster and more precisely with their Graffiti system, but let's face it, nearly everyone would prefer using their own handwriting. Palm should have been releasing new API's and SDK's to extend the potential of their platform, but instead, they made incremental improvements to their hardware and software, hoping that their past dominance and legacy would keep them afloat.
The book isn't closed on Palm yet, but if they want to be around in five years, something has to change - fast.
It's a shame that more companies aren't like Sharp and putting Linux on their PDAs. OpenEmbedded projects frigging rock. Seriously. The OS on a Zaurus does more for me than the stuff from Microsoft.
The Palm slid for one simple inescapable reason.
:-)
Things change, times change.
I love my Palm, but I have to admit that I primarily use it to store phone numbers. Unfortunately, inexpensive cell phones came along that do a lot of the same things as my Palm (not to mention Palm built a cell phone IN a Palm).
IBM once ruled the computer market, then the desktop PC revolution happened, then clones happened.
This may seem hard to believe, but one day, MS will not rule the OS market. The question is, will Slashdot atrribute it to something they did wrong?
Ignore Alien Orders
Palms failure has to do with releasing the better product at a snails pace. how long could they continue to dangle the carrot for a better machine before we all got tired of chasing it.
Palm devices needed to be the tri-corder of the 21st century. Now Cell phones are playing that same game.
Crappy software also contributed to it's demise also.
I used to see all these silly devices all over the place now I am lucky if I see one in a months period.
So it's not only Palm but other companies as well
Palm made lots of mistakes. They always had screen resolutions which didn't quite make it, features spread over different models so that you couldn't get all the features you wanted in one package, slow processors and, of course, they didn't replace Palm OS with something capable and a bit more crash resistent. Open sourcing it, or just using Linux would probably have made all the difference.
I thought that they had finally seen the light with the Treo 600, but once having bought one, I found that it was slower and had poorer screen resolution than my Tungsten C. Of course, a couple of weeks after I got my '600 the '650 came out with better screen resolution and Bluetooth.
I was thinking of picking up whatever came after the Treo 650, but I already pay enough Microsoft taxes so I will probably look a bit harder at the Razor and its successors when I finally dump my Treo 600.
Overall my experience with Palm (dating from Palm III days) has been dissapointing. None of the devices really lived up to my expectations, and always missed some functionality.
I suspect that dealing with Microsoft is the last nail in the coffin for Palm. pity, they always showed promise, but just could never live up to it.
Our network is heavily FOSS-biased and run Windows only on the desktops, jumping through hoops to avoid giving Microsoft a cent more than I am legally obligated to. That being said, I won't let my users connect their Palms to our desktops. It's way to hard to get working with non-privilaged users. If they want a PDA, they have to go PocketPC. The software does what you expect it to do. Works regardless of privilage level, syncs with Outlook without clumsy and expensive 3rd party software, and did I mention that it actually works?
Palm, who buys PDAs? Business people. What software do business people use? Windows and Outlook. In most businesses that have a lot of people with PDAs, do they all have Administrative rights? I sure hope not, but that's what you designed your software for. You deserve to loose your market share, you bastards.
Why is the parent modded as a troll? Just because he said Microsoft's OS was better than Palm's? For a whole lot of things, like synching with Outlook, it was much better, and that's what the vast majority of Palm users wanted their Palm to do, and which it didn't do well for years. If your entire OS is built around providing PDA functionality, and you can't synch with the most widely used email and contacts program on the planet, your OS is lacking.
I think this has been addressed already in other comments, but I have to vent anyway. From what I can see, a major mistake on Palm's part has been shipping one flaky-assed operating system. Let me illustrate: I was in the market for a new PDA. It HAD to have 802.11 and decent Mac OS support. I settled on a Sony CLIE TJ-37 running PalmOS 5.x. This machine was GREAT! It could surf the web, get my email, monitor RSS feeds, take photos, play MP3s, act as a bookreader, AND sync with my Mac OS X addressbook and calendar. I was happy with this machine for about a week, until I got the first hard crash. While using wireless, the OS would grind to a halt with some crazy error in Datamanager.c line 9052 or something like that. Turns out the only way to recover from this is to hard reset the machine (ie Erase it) and restore from backup. Fine, whatever, it's like owning a really flaky pre-OSX Mac. Until the crash returns. And returns. And returns AGAIN. There is NO rhyme or reason to how this error comes about - not that one certain website, email address, RSS feed, wireless network, or anything. There is NO information about it on the web. Calls to Palm and Sony are equivalent to running into a brick wall. So, I have abandoned using networking functions on the damned thing because its TCP/IP stack is apparently less capable than WinSock. Brilliant move, guys.
I just had the battery in my Palm Vx replaced. The device does everything I need, so why treat it as a disposable object? I need a light and compact list holding machine (calendar, notes, addresses, etc.) and that's ALL. I have a phone for voice. I have a music player for audio. I've just never understood the appeal of integrated devices - one part breaks, and then you lose the whole device during repair/replacement. Also, I specifically don't want to deal with email and video on a handheld device. Almost no one else needs to either. You're not that important, seriously.
Not that I represent the kind of market that would keep a company going, but I just wanted to say that I think they created quality products. I've never had a problem with my Palm - the battery lasted several years and everything is fine.
If there ever were a textbook titled "10 examples of Bad, Unintuitive, Buggy, Horribly Designed UI, Takes Hours Of Fiddling, Praying and Teeth Nashing To Work Software", Palm Desktop would be numbers 1 through 5.
Right when I read that, I realized the article was ... well, if not nonsense, then at least half-way there.
I think Palm's biggest mistake was being idealistic. They had a great concept - zero start time, a low-power, very long-life device that works as a powerful memo book with some automagic features.
Their documentation is solid, the OS was great - simple, straightforward, and geared toward exactly the ideas that were a part of the hardware design. They even wrote a book - "The Zen of Palm" describing the guidelines and software design considerations that were to go into writing software for the platform. They said from the very beginning - this is not a palmtop notebook. It's a low-power digital memo pad/calendar.
Compare this with other PDA's - iPaq's, Dell's Axims, etc. - bulky, overpowered monstrosities. Oh yeah, great - I can read word documents on the PDA. Sweet. But someone better be running behind me with a diesel generator to power it. Axims have 5-10 hour battery lives. Palms could go for a month (sometimes more, depending on usage) on a pair of AA's.
But I guess the WinCE systems do have one advantage - you get to write windows code (oh joy) for them. Oh wait...there's something wrong with that statement.
So, palm in it's conception of the purpose of a PDA was just too naive - they thought people would realize that current technology doesn't let you have a portable workstation, and tried to get the best of what was available. But Joe Schmoe can't live without checking his email on his PDA - god forbid he should miss that all-important email from the President of the US. Basically, the windows devices got ahead on the whiz-bang factor, by pandering to people's sense of self-importance, and by counting on people to be stupid and not realize what they truly needed. How typical. So, to the extent that palm failed to recognize all this, they were too idealistic. What a pity.
I loved Graffiti. Once I learned it with my thumb it was awesome. I has the Kerosera smartphone (the original BW one). I really liked the interface, I liked the fact that it synced with Outlook. The only downside was the size, but 5 years ago what do you expect.
Now I use a Blackberry at work and I just installed the BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) for Groupwise. It's pretty damn cool, I never have to teather the device, it syncs wirelessly. I don't even have Blackberry software installed on my local workstation.
Palm's biggest problem now is that they went to Win Mobile. What made Palm unique for years was their innovative operating system.
What made Palm truly suck was their unwillingness to upgrade the OS and to make it easy to upgrade as it went along. There are no decent controls over the quality of products out there and everything you could even consider adding to the OS costs too much money for what we've already spent on the device.
There are two versions now of the PalmOS that have yet to really see the light of day, and now they probably never will. Sad. They restricted the OS, when they could have made it free to download and even easier for people to get rid of their old palms, recycle them and get into the newer models. Moving from old to new was a pain in the ass.
Last year I bought a Palm 650. Now I'm sad I did, despite using everything from the Contact Book, getting an instant messenging client (Agile's an ok client when it's not crashing), Web browsing all the time (why is it so difficult to find a new browser for palm? the one they have onboard stinks!) for a variety of important tasks, and Versamail for email checking.
The thing is, the power users DO want Video and Music on our handheld. We want to be able to customise it. We want to be able to use it as a checkbook register AND to track our finances when we're not in front of the computer (thank you PocketQuicken!).... But no matter what you do, the applications are painfully outdated and as the UI gets more and more frustrating to use...Why spend $500 to get into a PDA that just doesn't expand and doesn't really allow innovation?
For Palm, going to Windows is an easy out for them. Their phone/pda (which isn't that great. It's just a shell to most folks, they just want it to work) at least has a solid if not innovative platform for what will amount to serious inflexibility.
No amount of Windows goodness (blech, I hate saying that) will change the hardware limits, and let's face it, we're entering a time when the Sony PSP is a step away from becoming a phone, when Apple's iPod is a step away from becoming a PDA, and basically everything handheld wants to really be a Phone/PDA/Media Device combination. It's use and adapt the technology time or lose the battle, and instead of releasing what was going to be a really innovative new operating system (Cobalt's next generation) out into the wild as open source for people to work with, Palm sidles up to this to keep the hardware sold. Again, Sad.
Within the next few months, I'm going to go buy a new PDA, and it's going to be a Linux or Windows box, since the Palm Hardware with Windows on it is crippled at best and horrid at worst.
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
YES! I have been running Opie and Familiar Linux on my HP 3600 for years and it has been fantastic. There are a few areas it is lacking (a good spreadsheet for one - Opie Sheet just doesn't cut it) but overall I love it.
The only problem is I'd like to buy a new PDA but none of the really juicy ones seem to be supported by Familiar yet (or at least not well - built in wireless not working and so on).
I wish more people used this so the market would grow and there'd be more support. The calendar / contact / etc apps are first rate, easily as good as what I had with the original Windows that came on the thing.
That horrible crunching sound you're hearing, that's the sound of a monopoly leveraging its power into a monopoly in an adjacent market.
Quoth TFA, "There is also an old-time mind-set among many IT-purchasing departments that branded items work better together," Bhavnani said. "For example, an enterprise might buy HP PCs, and also HP printers and HP iPaqs, because they all have HP on them and thus 'work better together.' The same thing is happening with Windows-based PCs and Windows-based phones."
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
Why would moderaters mod this as Offtopic, where there is a post that is modded up to 5 talking about Internet porn??
Having Palm come out with their new line using Windows instead of PalmOS is *very* important and it is relates directly to the conversation.
sheesh!. The poster may as well talked about pr0n and he would have got +5 Informative. What is happening to Slashdot?!?
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
I'm a long time palm customer... but I'm not sure for how much longer. I've had palms since the palm III, but the quality seems to be getting worse.
Currently I have a palm Tunstem T3, It was impressive when I first got it though overpriced. Just a year and a half later I'm having a ton of problems with it. The digitizer is way off and recalibration doesn't seem to help. Also, sporadically it will decide it doesn't want to shut off and will burn out the battery. If I can get it to the charger... sometimes it will snap out of it but I've completely lost it's memory several times. And I suspect bluetooth never has worked correctly... I've only been able to exchange data with 1/3 of other peoples devices I've encountered.
I'm especially dissapointed because I usually hope to get at least 3 years out of a device before shelling out more cash for another one. Just out of curiosity I was looking at the new palms at Staples the other day... and believe it or not 3 out of 6 of their display models were either frozen or had an error message on the screen. At the same time, I don't want to be carrying Windows around in my pocket... so I guess for the time being I'm going to be stuck with the piece of junk I have.
Blender And Linux Fan
Like them or not, Palms that came out with 320x480 displays were gorgeous to view. Software slowly caught up with this display's capabilities (too little too late), but the displays were amazing. Everyone here is correct: Palm pulled a Lotus 123/Harvard Graphics/WordPerfect -- they didn't innovate fast enough. Cell phones are the future. All that matters is communication...
Isn't this a challenge many companies had to face, especially in the '90s before the antitrust suit? MS is notorious for making it difficult for 3rd parties to interface with Windows. Shouldn't all of the companies affected get together and form a class action lawsuit?
A few years ago, when Palm had a more dominant market share, the company was hemorrhaging money. Now, they're making a profit - in fact, they've had several profitable quarters in a row. So what was Palm's big mistake again?
-G
www.pixelstatic.com
Though the article goes through a some of palms mistakes, the summary should had been fantastically bad magagement. I don't think the article went through all the spinoffs, re-mergers, and name changes that the company go through.
...has sucked. The interface was hard to learn for new people, and too annoying to use for the experienced people. The first Palm didn't even have Exchange/Outlook support! No one wants to scrap their existing email/messaging/groupware app for Palm's lame desktop thing. So off you went to buy some 3rd party connector software for all your Palms. Mo money, mo problems. Not to mention that just the basic Palm syncing would inexplicably quit working for no reason.
And here's the worse part --> YOU COULD NEVER INSTALL THE PALM SOFTWARE SO IT WOULD WORK FOR "ALL USERS" (non-admins that is) IN WINDOWS!!! Even in later versions the software insisted on only working under the account by which it was orginally installed (or other admin accounts). It wrote all its crap to HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Smart folks don't let their users run as admins, sorry. Palm's official so-called "solution" to this? Make everyone admins long enough to install it then lower them back down. Do *seperate installs* for each user who may ever need to use it. WTF???
And to those who say WinCE is just fluff - movies and music and all that BS - I'm guessing you don't work in Engineering or Scientific fields. Windows CE devices have revolutionized many construction and civil engineering processes.
Because they couldn't get together a book killer.
After calander, phone book, notepad and music player got absorbed by the mobile phone there was only one application that people use paper for on the move that hadn't been succesfully ported to their platform - eBooks.
Sure there was software, but reading a book from a palm was a great way to get eye strain and frustrated. It needed to be better than a book. It was worse.
IMHO they dropped the ball on RSS too. I don't have to connect my newspaper to the internet once I've read the first paragraph. I shouldn't have to connect my palm either.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Typed on a Treo 650, so don't call me a Microsoft apologist.
Palm is, and always was, a crappy platform.
But, here's the thing: back in 1996, it didn't matter that it sucked. Back then, Palm still sucked, but Windows CE sucked more. Palms were cheaper, faster, and they got the PIM stuff done with ease.
But when Microsoft shipped Pocket PC, that all changed. Microsoft had a PDA operating system with multitasking. They had an OS with a real network stack, with real color, and with real networking. They had a real web browser, too, in the box.
More importantly, Microsoft now had devices with enough CPU power and memory to run their piggy Windows CE.
CE is a much, much better development platform than Palm. You don't have bullshit memory limitations to cope with. You don't have to store all of your data as 'databases'. There's an API for writing games (GAPI) that gives you quick access to the display.
Today, Palm OS is running on the same hardware as Windows Mobile. The Treo 650 is not significantly different from many Pocket PCs in terms of hardware capabilities. In many ways, it is even superior. But Palm OS has not kept up with the hardware. There is still no native API for writing ARM applications - YEARS after the shipment of ARM devices. There is still no multitasking. Bugs in applications still reboot the device.
Today, people expect more. They want a real web browser - but Palm OS doesn't have a good one. Why? Because it is easier to port to Windows Mobile than it is to port to Palm OS. Because it is hard to write a good web browser within the confines of device memory. Because the OS has no multithreading and no multitasking.
Palm's problem is that they never innovated. Every feature added to Palm OS since 1997 was added to Windows CE first. Microsoft and its partners added color first, they added expandable storage first, they added real audio first. Palm has been playing catch-up with Microsoft for the last 8 years.
Palm hardware is fine. The Treo is a nice device. I carry one. But Palm OS sucks.
I've been mulling a PDA for about 2 weeks (with me, anything over $100 gets the Deep Thought treatment) I didn't make my final selection until I was actually looking at them, drooling and fingering my credit card like the technophillic freak I am. However... I had already decided early on not to go with a Palm, and grabbed an HP pocket PC w/ windows mobile on it. I had my reasons.
Palms are better built than most PDA's (my old PalmPilot got dropped multiple times and never changed a bit - I'd be scared to drop most other brands even once). The software isn't as pretty as most of the competition, but is far superior in terms of functionality. Also, their handwriting recognition system is the best I've ever used (Graffiti is even ripped off on other systems, lately).
So why did I get a Windows Mobile-based Pocket PC? Because Palm has no future as far as I'm concerned. They went from being the Poster Child of our Bright and Shining PDA Future (tm), to the broken has-been getting drunk in a bar next to Compaq. Not because of any serious flaw in their product (at least nothing spectacular), not because the competition is just that much better, but mostly because of that whole OS issue that's been a guillotine for the computer industry for the past 20 years.
I will miss the old Palm.
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
"So you're wrong."
No he's not. The Mactinosh at best is 5% of all desktop PC's. In the corporate environment, that number is close to 0%. Regardless, if 95% of your corporate customers are using MS Exchange, you should sync perfectly with Outlook/Exchange.
Palm *still* can't sync properly with Outlook/Exchange.
Period, end of sentence.
If you check on their FAQ's, they tell you to try two or three things then they say "buy a 3rd party tool". The company must be run by morons.
Pen and paper don't crash.
After the first or second time I had to re-enter all of my data, resync, back-up, restore, convert, translate, delete duplicate entries, call home to get a file while on the road with a dead palm, etc., I just gave up. When something absolutely has to work without questions, it can't need to be reset every other day.
I spent WAY too many hours just managing data, not using data. Until someone comes out with a PDA that is as rock solid as my iPod (no crash, no data loss, immediate power-on, etc), then you've lost me. Palm lost me after about the ump-teenth billion reset/restore/reinstall sync problem.
There are probably three reaasons that Palm has faltered:
No commitment to backwards compatibility. SW for my PalmPilot Pro wouldn't run on my Visor, and the stuff for the Visor would not run on my smartphone, and the software for the smartphone would not run on my Treo.
No multiasking. Palm was a lot like a generation one Mac or PC that could sometimes switch from application to application but could not really multitask.
Too much nickel and dime.
-- $G
648748 telling 218671 that he must be new here.
Opie is an incredible environment. I don't have any experience with Familiar Linux, but I would imagine support would be added soon if it's anything like the OESF-type projects.
They may have heard the sound of their own demise coming.
Having followed and worked in the PDA industry for the last 5 years I've seen Palm slide quite spectacularly from the company everyone loved, simple but effective products, desktop sync software that just worked, great hardware and a generally decent company to deal with. Over the last 2 years or so they seem to have closed their eyes, turned of the lights and stopped listening to anyone, Wifi in Palms (Tungsten C/W aside) was so long in coming they pretty much forced any potential customers to Windows platforms, it took till the Lifedrive (iirc) before WiFi actually landed on a Palm PDA in any big way - and what a "revolution" the Lifedrive was, slow, buggy, unreliable. It wasn't very fast either. Not to mention colour screens, larger memeory, higer resolutions screens...
Hardware aside, their customer service is ABYSMAL, and that's being polite, want help with your device? Pay Us, want to ask a question? Pay us. Want to e-mail us? Well shit, pay up. Oh, we might not reply. You take your chances. After going for 4 years recommending nothing but Palm my recommendation now is simple: pick up a Dell Axim X50 (or X51), you won't go wrong.
For me, Palm has been a text book example of what will go wrong in your business when you treat your customers like crap and ignore their feedback.
Palm's real problem is that PalmOS is still stuck where it was when it first came out - no memory protection, no multitasking, memory/storage limitations, and on and on. I've been a Palm user from the Palm III through the Treo 650, and the whole way I've been happy with the hardware but frustrated with the OS and the software. There's nothing more aggravating than having your cell phone ring and then crash and reboot when you hit the answer button.
.NET compact framework (again, I'm an old-school Unix guy and a longtime C developer). I'm just tired of Microsoft-bashing when there's no reason for it.
Um, no thanks. I sold my 650 and bought a regular flip phone (Motorola V551) and a Windows Mobile PDA (Dell Axim x50v). I couldn't be happier - Windows Mobile has won the PDA war not because of Microsoft's stranglehold on the desktop market, but because they simply have a superior product (and I'm saying that as someone who has been using Linux on both the desktop and server side since before the kernel hit 1.0).
Windows Mobile is just better, end of story. It's much more stable (although not perfect - I still have to reboot my Axim from time to time, mostly due to Bluetooth quirkiness), much more usable (even the PIM functionality is more functional), and much more feature-rich. It's better from a development standpoint as well - instead of having to write in C with an outdated API and ridiculous memory constaints, you can write in C# using the
And I'm really looking forward to Windows Mobile 5, which should be released as an upgrade for my Axim real soon.
I like the idea of a cheap PDA, with an open, programmable platform. I like it to have long battery life, no boot time, fairly sturdy, and ideally, waterproof. This really necessitates a slow CPU, only nonvolitile RAM (so not much memory). Palm should have been producing these, and undercutting the MS market. Instead, they tried to go for kinda high end, but not really, and there was no great reason to buy them...
Windows devices cannot target the $100 market. Palm can. Palm never seriously did, since their devices there ate their higher-end market, so all the $100 devices were crippled in some way.
Oh well. If they ever ship a cheap, small, sturdy, aesthetic Palm, with basic 802.11b wireless, for about $100 (USB wireless adapters sell for $10 at Microcenter, so it can't cost that much to add), and give it good software, I'd buy it. Wireless would only turn on when I needed to use it, so it could have battery life of a month. It'd have a 33MHz CPU, and a black-and-white panel (maybe eInk, once prices fall), the battery would last forever (a month or so).
Oh and Sony, who bailed out ... and that wasn't until they had to go and implement a whole bunch of Sony only API's to support colour screens and higher resolutions because Palm didn't.
I had a Vx, it was great for the time, but now I'm a Windows Mobile person as I haven't seen the Palm camp innovate for a very long time.
In fact, I still consider them to be the classic case of a company that owned the market, dragged their feet and suddenly found that everyone else had overtaken them.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
If it's good enough for Nokia (Maemo), why not? It wouldn't be too dificult to hack a Palm OS-like UI for it. PalmSource are many, many months away from producing a usable next version of Palm OS. Open source could be Palm's escape from being just another Microsoft OEM.
I stopped using Palms for one simple reason: Those things were never really very durable. My first Palm died because of a simple static discharge. My second one died because I slept with it in my pocket once, causing the screen to break. Don't even think about dropping a Palm. At that point, I realized that the technology was not mature enough for me to have a true carry-anywhere device.
Compare this to my cell phones. My first cell phone was dropped countless times, and still works like a charm; the only reason I don't use it is because I changed cell phone service providers. My second cell phone (a cheap, "fragile" little Samson) survived over a year of being in my pocket all of the time, countless drops, etc., before finally giving out. My current cell phone (A Nokia) has been dropped a few times, and shows no damage for it. I can sleep with a cell phone in my pocket, have never had static discharge fry a cell phone, etc.
It's shit like this, and not Engineering curricula, that are driving students away from Engineering and Technology. What's the point of going through all the pain and effort of getting an Electrical or Computer Engineering degree when even when you and your company do the right thing and innovate, produce, and do good engineering, it all comes to naught.
You're left to the whims of the non-technical market and the board-room dealings of non-technical executives. Engineers are just pawns in thier games. What's the effing point? Engineering isn't engineering anymore. It's business , and anyone in Engineering school better understand that.
I wish someone had explained that to me long ago.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
I have used Palm devices for over 7 years, and have gotten really attached to some specific Palm-only apps and peripherals over the years which has made me resist even looking at PocketPC devices for my personal use. I have The Axim is provided by work, and I only use it for testing my web applications. (/BIAS)
Here are my issues with Palms and PocketPCs respectively:
- 1. Palm cannot seem to build (and support) a device that has everything I want without any of the crap I don't want:
PocketPC:a. Built-in Wi-Fi AND Bluetooth.
b. Smaller form factor (I *much* prefer the Tungsten slider that they no longer produce. I hope my T2 never breaks.)
c. No stupid thumb keyboard. I prefer the stylus, and the 5-way navigator button.
d. Good battery life w/ EASILY replaceable battery.
e. I have never needed or wanted a voice memo feature, but I won't complain too much since the headphone jack and expansion card lets me use my Palm as a pretty decent MP3 player (using PTunes.)
f. a standard connector than can easily connect to peripherals. For criminy sakes, STOP SCREWING WITH THE CONNECTION! I hate having to replace all my cables and cradles each time a new model comes out.
2. Palm seems to abandon all development and support for its penultimate model as soon as the newest one comes out. (Grr...No apparent hope of being able to get an add-on Wi-Fi card for my T2 even though one exists for the T3. They have since dropped the slider design entirely which totally pisses me off as well, etc.)
3. The windows compatibility issues others have mentioned, I don't see as nearly big an issue. Third party vendors like Chapura and DataViz seem to do pretty well. Perhaps making their own email client (VersaMail) a bit more intuitive to set up would be nice.
2. Application file sizes are WAY TOO BIG (especially vs. Palm apps.) This further perpetuates Microsofts reputation for bloatware. My T2 holds MANY more applications than I can install on the Axim X30.
3. I like the replaceable battery on the Axim and the ease of sychronization (even though sometimes the ActiveSync client can be a bit pesky.)
4. A minor nitpick, but the stylus on the Axim is a cheap, thin piece of crap that is uncomfortable to hold, let alone use for any length of time.
5. Battery life on the Axim sucks in comparison with the Palm.
I like my Palm being so versatile, and it only misses in a couple major areas (no Wi-Fi being the big one.) But Palm has totally screwed up the more recent versions, and I would be hard pressed to find one I can honestly say I like. If I have to upgrade, I will probably try to find a T3...after that, i don't know what I will do.
When Psion stopped making consumer hardware, it was like hearing the news about Concorde stopping flying. We'd taken a great step backwards: there was nothing out there which would come close to what a Psion would do routinely, in terms of stability, application support, usability, and preceived speed. I've used Palm and Wince before and after, but both are too unstable to trust completely. Wince these days is fast enough, at the expense of battery life, but Palm hardly seems to have changed. The closest equivalents to the Psion 5 now are the Nokia 9300 and 9500, which use a later version of the OS. Nice smartphones, but they have a fraction of the battery life, perhaps 20% of the speed, and my 9300 reset itself within a week of buying it. In a sense Psion deserved to fail in the consumer space. They spent very little on advertising, and never moved to support features we would now consider essential such as USB and Bluetooth. Still, they remain the only "real" PDAs in my entirely unbiased opinion.
I respectfully have to ask if you have had any extensive use with Palm and Windows Mobile devices to draw the conclusion that "they both suck".
I have an Audiovox SMT-5600 Windows Mobile smartphone and it has replaced all of my portable devices.
Here's a link to a review I wrote about my experiences using only a Windows Mobile smartphone for a week.
Review - SMT-5600 as a notebook replacement
I've only used one Palm, it's an m505, I have it for almost two years, and I must say that this is a very good device, and one of my most precious gadgets.
:-) [and yes, I forgot to backup my existing ROM]
:-) etc
Those of you who wrote that Palms are great as PIM-tools but they suck at everything else - you're wrong. If you take your time to learn the device's habits, you can become very efficient with it. I understand that some random person in the street might not have the skill needed to become a power-user, but I am absolutely sure that any slashdotter has what it takes.
I use my PDA for these things:
- book reading
- dictionary
- writing articles
- schedule/contacts/notes [but this is an obvious one]
- mathematical calculations [see EasyCalc on sourceforge]
- and as soon as I get a decent mobile, I'll add 'email and websurfing' to the list.
Maybe this is caused by the fact that I am getting along well with computers, but I had absolutely no problem with getting used to grafitti, or the Palm GUI - I just used the tool to do my work, rather than "a lot of work had to be done before the tool became usable".
IMHO, Palm is a perfect example of how mobile devices have to be built. So, did they go wrong from the technical point of view? NO.
Where did they go wrong? Well, I will not say that they weren't wise enough to anticipate the competirors' actions, yada yada... What disappointed me, a dedicated Palm-er, is their attitude towards some customers... The story is below:
Some time ago they announced that PalmOS 4.1 is available as an update, and I told myself that I had to go for it, as I needed to work with memory cards of a capacity which 4.0 couldn't handle properly. Their official updater only worked with English Palms, while I had a multilingual one.
I found a 4.1 ROM somewhere on the web, flashed it, everything worked fine... Until the moment the PDA started crashing out of the blue, when running various applications. I tried this and that, but everything failed. It happened many times that I was writing something for several hours.. and then the whole doc is gone after a crash..
Sure, the flasher told me that the ROM is not designed for the device I have, etc.. but what was I to do?
Then I decided to switch back to 4.0, screw the new features.. but get my stability back. Nope.. it never happened... I flashed the ROM, but now it keeps crashing anyway. It's not that bad anymore, it only crashes when I'm in DocsToGo, and only when I am editing a WordToGo document. [which still sucks, because this is the application I need most].
So, at the moment, the only explanation I can find is that I need to flash it with a multilingual 4.0 ROM [the 4.0 ROM I used was an English one]... That must be it, as I am very cautious with my devices, I never dropped my PDA, never got water on it, never hit it too hard with the stylus
I contacted Palm, via email asking them to provide me a ROM, or some troubleshooting tips - because I could not rely on my PDA anymore. But I got no reply. I used the feedback form on their site - nothing.
Now THAT is what makes Palm not attractive to me anymore. Sure, it could be my fault, but can't they at least explicitly state that, so that I will stop trying to find the non-existing solution and move on to a different device?
So, to summarize, there are two things I don't like about Palm:
1. they let me down from the tech point of view; by designing an instrument which is not entirely fail-safe.
2. and then there's the 'social factor' - their actions can be interpreted as "we don't give a damn about European users" and then they don't even reply to people's emails.
The only reason I am still that supportive, is because I know that it used to be a great company that did a lot of great things. There are many people who chose a Palm over a PocketPC after my 'intervention'... Palm, don't make me feel sorry for supporting you.
The truth is... that my next PDA is still going to be a Palm...
And since I'm here:
Could someone with an 'untouched' multilingual m505 please dump their ROM to a file and let me have it? Please?
The saddest poem
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Unless you are willing to commit to an expensive flukey online service your PDA will forever remain an appendage to your PC. I have used Palms for years, probably since 1997 and I've struggles with synch software, modems, compatibility and applications that weren't fully baked yet. Moreover it seemed for many years you practically needed to have proficiency with a soldering iron to upgrade your own hardware in the face of Palm's resolute refusal to help you or even comment on their own hardware upgrade plans. It became impossible, to me, to justify to myself spending 3-4-5 hundred dollars on the new and improved Palm as a result.
Then there were conduit problems with applications like Lotus Notes - not the friendliest app in the world, true, but Easy Synch just sucked in fact it sucked so bad it stopped running on my machine altogether. Amd with Avantgo - well for all it's possbilities the company couldn't even list a "what's new - who's new" tab on their website so that you'd know the new sources that were available. I think eventually there really weren't any new sources availablw and Avantgo was relegated to private distribution networks.
Then the OS itself seemed to stall out. They made a huge deal of color but they never even exploited it like making the calendar application utilize color coding for alerts and whatnot. The OS really isn't different under the covers than it was years ago and other than some basic auxilliary device support like Flash or CF it's stil the same old same old. All that hardware power and still no voice recognition for example.
So in the end, other than holding my password database which I'm too lazy to move, and a kludgey copy of my calendar, and some specialized calendars I use for personal purposes there isn't anything that I need a Palm for.
Now to be fair though, WTF how long does Spring and Samsung think people are going to enter their calendars into their phone by hand? Write some conduits and provide a cable that doesn't cost $50 bucks and they could put the PDA market out of business pretty quickly.
Another factor was their "MSN network like mistake". They tried to force people to use their own format and they failed.
We had a project based on a web service few years ago.
Wap was soon forgotten (plain text screen: ugly and slow). Only Palm and Windows CE (compaq Ipaq) were on the table.
We try both solutions and it ends up with Windows CE (500 licences)+ bluetooth enabled mobile phone (Nokia GSM phone, if I remind well...Used a modem).
Because of Palm required its own Hybrid HTML tags. Windows CE had Internet Explorer 4.x.
I find it funny you were modded as a troll as well. Guess the truth hurts and apparently no room for it here on /. when it shatters the tightly gripped delusions many of the zealots have of their precious Linux.
"What it ran Linux!!! how could teh evil M$ possibly be better?!?!? " Get a grip people and stop trying to silence people who clearly are NOT trolls.
Both usability and stability have the potential to become legendary if done by Apple, while Microsoft's development process just cannot deliver these. Ballmer just doesn't get it and Gates is overburden with the task of extracting juice from their staff without doing real innovation (he said that he "is forced, as 'chief architect' to require their staff to reuse stuff rather than to innovate"), which does not surprise me since he never had the skills to design operating systems from the ground up and yet, he calls himself "chief architect".
It seems obvious to me that in order for a platform to be successfull, you have to please the developers first. M$ isn't spending all that money on free .NET tools for nothing.
Palm developers had to work with the limited Palm API and use GCC without the standard libraries while Windows CE developers could drag and drop controls in a free VB GUI.
The biggest mistake of Palm is this one: They haven't bought HB++ handheldbasic.com and they haven't gave it for free to all willing developpers.
...although you could get a good start on one now. Five years ago it was "Netscape's mistakes". These are all companies that started something good, but stagnated because they got away from a culture of innovation. The only thing left is to figure out whether Google has learned from this or if their article is 5 years down the road. I'm still not clear on that looking at what they've done post-IPO.
Honestly, I've found Blackberries to be far more support intensive than any of the Palm-based stuff. Plus, 99% of the people that have Blackberries are micro-managing assholes that can't remember the simplist tasks and somehow expect them to survive a drop into the toilet.
"they didn't replace Palm OS with something capable and a bit more crash resistent."
;-)
;-) heh Palm may not be for everyone, but I found it to be the perfect device for my needs. PPCs are often just a bit too bloated (i.e. Microsoft), but I do see why some people need them.
:-O It is maybe the most stable OS I have ever dealt with!
Huh? From my experience, the Palm is terribly stable! I have barely seen a Palm crash and die. In all of my years of using Palm devices, I think I have only had maybe three crashes ever. How many crashes do you expect from a Windows based device?
I still maintain that the Palm OS was phenominal at what it was designed to do. It was very basic and very "zen." It did the job and did it with ease. I even got my boyfriend to understand how to use one... now he uses it constantly! He barely knows how to use the VCR!
By the way, I also have a Blackberry for my job and I can see how it is popular, but it needs some heavy improvements, IMHO. I can't wait to see it replaced by the next great thing.
My Palm is still my favorite gadget; I use it constantly and I know that I use it above and beyond what the average Palm user uses it for. (Heck, I even help moderate on a Palm/PDA message board for the past few years!) I just had to voice up because I was stunned to see that someone felt that the Palm OS wasn't stable enough.
~Kat ^_^
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
Hawkins' longtime wish was for Palm to be run by Palm. His frustration mounted under the wing of US Robotics and later 3Com, when his requests for a spin-off fell on deaf ears.
Read Piloting Palm by Butter & Pogue for that account.
The Interaction Design of Microsoft Windows CE
Evolution of Design
Handheld PC (H/PC)
Palm PC (P/PC)
Auto PC (A/PC)
The primary problem I had with a Palm Device (Treo 650) is that is was tremendously unstable.
It would reboot/freeze up several times a day. And from reading posts by other users, I wasn't alone by any means.
I ended up returning the Treo after a few days and sticking with my Nokia 6620 for now. The Treo was far better in theory, but I am unwilling to tolerate a phone/PDA that is not rock-solid.
Yes, there are many limitations in the treo.
Yes,the phone is not that great and the camera stinks.
My bigest beef is the delay when you activate it, it should just be ready to go.
But the form factor is nice and it allows me to have a single small device. And the keyboard is nice. And it has the traditional palm applications. It is really the first convergence piece IMHO.
Great. Whoever modded me troll, have fun jackass. Respond to my comment, don't just mod me down.
Ah, a fellow 6035 user?
I too have/had one. When I bought it, I never thought the flip pad would survive, but it lived 2 years being dropped, left powerless in the rain, until it finally stopped working, the Mic broke, and would only function in speakphone mode.
Then I traded to a 7035 because I figured with it's flipcase it'd survive living in my pockets better than a Treo.
Graffiti 2 SUCKS. That and some of the UI choices Kyocera made are pretty mindless.
1) Lack of an easy cheap / free development environment. If there had been "VB for PalmOS", the software market would have been 100 times what it was (and it wasn't tiny).
2) Poor planning in the SDK OS and APIs. Every new hardware feature meaned grafting on clumsy APIs. If they'd planned for hires, color and real sound from the beginning, it would have been easier. It's also hard to get a Palm app running on even just the current hardware variations.
3) Doesn't play well with Windows. I love how easy the Palm can handle contacts via VCF files. I can beam one to and from Windows or a PocketPC and it works. But it's impossible to beam a calendar appointment or todo item. Memos work as small text files. A basic Word and Excel viewer seems so critical that every Palm seems to bundle 3rd party apps for it.
4) Unstable / unrecoverable. If you don't hotsync regularly, you will lose your data. Even if you do, you'll lose something that hotsync doesn't handle properly. If it wasn't for Backup Buddy VFS doing scheduled nightly backups to the SD card, I would have lost a lot of data several times now.
5) Poor support for external memory. The VFS support for flash cards was slow coming and it's very difficult for the average user to get apps to run from the card or even just with their data on the card. If it weren't for ZLauncher and a lot of fiddling, I wouldn't have 80% of my apps on my Palm.
6) Just too "fiddly". I love my Palm Zire71, but it's only because I'm an elite hard-core geek and spent time getting it right with a bunch of 3rd party apps. My Palm's loaded with ebooks, mp3s, a DVD-length video for my kid, maps for half the state, 6 bible translations, family photos, a ton of games, ir remote control, alarm clock, etc. It's about as much of a computer as I can use without a net connection. I can't imagine business travel without it. But even among all the techies I know, nobody else with a Palm does 1/4th of that with it. They just don't have time to make it work.
When they palm bought BeOS I expected an ARM powered, BeOS-based PDA to be forthcoming, one that could run old palm legacy apps in emulation mode or something, and have the technical advantages of BeOS. No, instead BeOS was banished to a vault someplace, never to be heard from again. What a waste! And PalmOS seems hardly different from when it first came out. Where is the continued development?
And with the phones, I think there isn't a single palm phone available that uses the ARM processor. Where are the ARM based palm phones? Has palm been too busy to write the code to run a phone on a non-dragonball machine?
PalmOS be lame in certain ways, but at least joe programmer can develop an app for it, unlike most phones out there, which are locked down with DRM. There's a certain naive openness to the system that is being found less and less in the mainstream of handheld tech. It would be ironic if the last bastion of openness on a handheld was on a windows device.
So, where are the linux based phone PDAs? Does such a thing exist? And if so, does any major cell network support it? As much control as the cell network love to have, it seems unlikely.
"Palm announced its m500 and m505 products early in 2001, before they were ready, stalling sales of older devices, such as the Palm V." -- Osborne
Defectors starting their own Handspring, failing to see PDA/Mobile phone convergence and other strategic mistakes -- Commodore
Yeah, the trifecta seems like an oversimplification but it kinda fits together.
Unless you are willing to commit to an expensive flukey online service your PDA will forever remain an appendage to your PC.
With all due respect, even my little m105 with its stock PalmOS 3.5 can use standard PPP and a V.90 clipmodem to connect to my normal ISP, and I can use telnet to read my mail in Pine(!) via the unix shell and Xiino locally on the PDA to do web surfing.
No additional expense at all, and the software I use (pTelnet and Xiino) is actually pretty decent for what it does.
Since I have a pair of m105's and a pair of 8MB Northstar MemorySafe flash modules, I don't even back up my Palms to my PC anymore.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I really lost out when I bought my latest Palm a couple of years ago, an m130. It came with OS 4.1.2, whose whole claim to fame is that it "replaces Graffiti with Graffiti 2 on the same Palm OS 4.1 code base". Since the m130 is a ROM-based model, that also means I can't "backgrade" to Graffiti - I'm stuck with Jot forever. Yay.
I couldn't care less about Palm's Outlook integration or lack thereof. For me, it died whenever they destroyed the most important feature: its handwriting recognition. See ya, Palm. At least my DayRunner has a place to put a pen and pictures of the kids.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I worked at Apple in the 80's when they thought that their main competetor was IBM, it was really MS. I have done work for Palm an they thought that their competition was MS when it was Black Berry. Palm failed to come up with an solution for email for their phones (even to this day). The PDA market has come and gone and MS has never been a factor and will never be a factor in phones. The large wireless phone manufactures refuse to use CE because they do not want to be the next IBM and have to pay a MS tax. This is just an attempt to cashout and get MS to buy them.
Inovate? the newton already kicked the crap out every palm
then, to top that, they buy Be just to sit on top the the beOS code and developers
I've tried to use palm twice. simply sucks.
I just bought a near-new Palm m500 on eBay for $43 (to replace my ancient m105). New, it was 10x that. I'm a huge fan of the simplicity of Palm, but they somehow missed that usability was their #1 asset and their price point could only match the usable features they offered.
Palm was always a simple device that did all you needed to manage contacts, memos, calendar, and todos. But once telephone, wireless, music, media, games, etc. began to be demanded by customers, they couldn't figure out how to integrate them into their concept. The basic idea was good, but it wasn't extensible. It didn't match what was demanded by their customers. For example, I spent two days just trying to get their Palm Desktop installed on Windows XP. It works well on Windows 95, but it never became dead easy for XP, a complete failing on Palm's part to make their devices useful with the current generation of technology.
Palm failed to understand how to keep going. They tried to merely extend their current offerings instead of re-designing and growing them in scale to market demand. That included a more sophisticated operating system and better interface with desktop systems. This explains why I can be happy buying a legacy unit at 10:1 original cost and be happy while at the same time explaining why I will never buy a new Palm.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
At this point I see handheld computers having the potential of being resurrected by Nintendo and Sony.
Although not as powerful as the handheld computers, they're far cheaper, have much higher volume and work on the principle of being a gaming machine first with the ability to expand into more general handheld use.
Also I think sales of the DS & PSP combined are on track to quadruple or better total handheld computer sales.
Exchange also uses MAPI, which is the most important of the three in the corporate world. Nice try though.
I was an early palm adopter. I had a Palm, then a Palm III. At the time it was the best PDA avaiable with a lot of third party software available. Then color Windows CE devices started coming out. They came with Pocket Word and other apps that integrated easy with Windows. I really like how nice the integration was syncing with outlook. One of the nicer PDAs was an Ipaq. Had to get one. After that I never looked back to Palm. It got to the point where palm was behind technology wise (took a while for them to get color, wireless, bluetooth, faster processors) and eventually on the software side, they were getting more and more behind.
www.samuraidreams.com - My Blog
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But the real issues I see include:
What I want to see in my Treo 600 replacement (still a couple years off) is:
I think there are good reasons for the underlying OS to be linux, but that really doesn't matter if it has the above features out of the box and it's easy to write synchronization software and build new apps to run on the thing.
Anyway, that's my $0.02.
2) Email. They never had a good email program. Blackberry did it right, and stole a lot of the market. Even now it is difficult to integrate palms into corporate email.
3) More innovative products. There has only been two classes of palms: PDAs and cell phones. Lots of different models in those two categories, but there is nothing outside of those categories. The future of mobile devices is still evolving and there are lots of different mobile devices they still should make. They could have done better mp3 players, video players, miniPDAs.
4) Management. The original post was corrct on this one. i worked at palm when Jeff and Donna were not there, and the top management had no passion for PDAs. How could they lead such a company.
5) Fire me. I won't go into details
The first Palms were obviously designed by idealistic geeks, the devices were innovative, reasonably priced and very durable. Then, with the m-series, they made really cheap units with no flash memory and a lousy casing but lots of flaws (remember the USB connector problem). Next these geniouses split their products into an expensive business and an affordable consumer line, ignoring the fact that many business users would also like to have features like a camera. Last but not least they have missed every opportunity to improve the core applictions like schedule, address book, notepad and todo list. Oh, not to forget that they have crippled the mobile phone models with a keyboard for mice.
I use my Win 2003 IPAQ 2215 every day - I am constantly amazed at its flexibility and usefullness - Show me a Palm that I can Use as a contacts/Calender Great Picture Viewer Read the newspaper nd magazines on: isiloX Watch endless hours of TV/Movies on subway : Betaplayer and 1GB CF and SD Card Listen to music Podcasts:Gsplayer and 1GB Cf and 1GB SD Send and Read email: Outlook w/ Bluetooth to my Motorola phone Read pdfs - including subway maps etc... Use as GPS Navigator: TomTom plus bluetooth GPS Listen to FM Radio - FM CF Card adaptor (ok I hardly use it) Get full internet: Socket CF Wifi Card and NetFront Use as Skype Phone Balance Checkbook: Pocket Excel Loan Calculator Draw Floor Planss :Pocket PAinter
Stream Music: Gsplayer and Shoutcast or Rescoe Radio
Hold all passwords in encrypted format:Ewallet
Check TV listings: Pocket TV Listings
Use as TV Remote - Nevo
Control my home computer using Logmein Pocket
and Play amazing games including Age of Empires and Virtual Pool
All that and 5-7hrs battery life
Find me a Palm that - albeit w/ maybe a soft reset a day and I'm dropping MS
I've had a PilotPro, a V, a Vx, a Tungsten T, a Tungsten C, and now a Treo 600. Ever since the first version, I've been able to sync the thing with Outlook. Back in the early days, if you weren't careful, it would dupe everything with the sync. I haven't seen that in quite a long time, but then, I've been using Linux as my main desktop for about 6 or 7 years now. I don't understand people's complaints in this thread about problems sync'ing with Windows.
What I *do* have a problem with is the ability to sync the cotton-pickin' things with LINUX. This has been NOTHING BUT A NIGHTMARE SINCE DAY ONE. I'm sorry if the people who wrote pilot-link are listening. In the early days of Palm Linux sync'ing, I suppose it fit the bill quite nicely. However, since the invention of the USB cradle connection, all bets have been off. Just getting your kernel configured right was a major hassle. And when THAT settled down, I guess I missed the meeting where we all thought that "udev" was supposed to save everyone from their sins, and THIS became a whole NEW hassle to deal with.
When Evolution appeared, I believed the hype. I really thought it would be the Outlook killer it was billed as. I run the latest released version on Gentoo everyday, and I love it; don't get me wrong. But gnome-pilot -- the software underneath that sync's with a Palm device -- is HORRIBLY BUSTED. I managed to get a good first sync just the other day, but after that, look, just forget it. The evolution-data-server went into a loop, and started adding literally thousands of blank tasks in Evo before I killed it. The really stupid part of this is that this is a known problem that's been around SINCE IT BECAME POPULAR TO BUNDLE THIS CRAP WITH DISTROS.
Not only that, but you'll lose the category information from EVERYTHING in your Pilot. Note, too, that there's no "memo" functionality in Evolution. (Though there seems to be at least a one-way sync to get those memos to a flat files on your system.)
I realize that it's my right -- nay, DUTY, some here will inevitably argue -- to fix this myself. But I've got other projects I'm programming, thank you very much, and I don't have the time to hack on this, let alone get up to speed with what people on the development list admit is a very tough codebase to learn. (Yes, that means I've at least sized up the effort to do this.)
I really thought that Palms would be the one thing where we Linux users could keep away from Microsoft. With the open API's and dev kits, the start with pilot-link and the hope of Evolution, I really thought that it would eventually become better to sync with Linux instead of Windows. But it has totally failed to materialize, and I think that sucks. Sorry to rant. I suppose it doesn't matter if I do or don't complain about it, though, because I seem to be the only person that cares.
I still sync with JPilot. Thank goodness for JPilot. It's a decent Palm Desktop knockoff. Unfortunately, I've never cared for that either. But it's what I have, and it doesn't screw up the data. That, and DateBook, provide an OK system to use, regardless of desktop sync. But the contrast is very, very stark. We've had at least workable sync with Outlook for TEN YEARS now. We still have nothing comparable on Linux.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
Developers, developers, developers.
If you make it tough for developers to write code for your device, you are (I think the term is Scottish) -> füch'd
Apple did it, and has fixed it. IBM did it, and still hasn't recovered, and now Microsoft is doing it (read: MSDN subscription changes).
When I wanted to play with the SDK for the Palm, they made is so tough that I gave up.
"It's the Developers, stupid!"(c)(tm)
I started working on a Palm/PPC application about a year ago and after my very cursory preference for the PPC, I came to see how superior Palm OS is. Palm OS is designed from the ground up to serve requirements of handheld users. Windows Mobile is basically a hacked version of a desktop OS and after the initial comfort you feel from its familiarity, you start to see how unwieldy it is for want you'll typically want to do with it.
Palm has been making some attrocious business decisions/prioritizing. Support is terrible on their developer network for noobies, especially considering how small the field is. The decision to cripple wireless support in the Treo also comes to mind.
There will always be a market for pure PDAs (nurses, in-the-field workers, etc.), Palm just needs to understand what it is and target it like a laser. As for PDA phones, this was probably the greatest opportunity for Palm and the decision to move the Treo to Windows Mobile is probably a fatal error.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
In two sessions of Palm OS use you don't even have time to learn the graffiti language.
Why does your opinion matter??
Hey everybody! I used Rational Rose twice and it sucked.
In the 5 minutes it takes to start Rational Rose, I could have already sketched out a UML diagram on a cocktail napkin.
Palm is not quite out of the handheld market but it looks as if someone is fetching them their hat. I think their biggest problem has been their inability to move past the "basic user" market they ruled just a few years ago. When the Pilot was released in 1996 people were just beginning to replace their paper address books and calendars with software solutions on their PCs. The basic functionality of the original Pilot was plenty for these people, it was downright cutting edge. As these people started to do more Palm let them move onto the competition.
What I don't think Palm has ever realized is that deep down every geek wants a handheld computer. Such gadgets permeate science fiction and they've captured the geek imagination. Geeks however aren't going to settle for something that has the desired form factor with none of the desired functionality. PIM applications are not geeky. Reading web pages or running an SSH client over WiFi is geeky. Reading RSS feeds and connecting to Jabber servers over a built-in GPRS modem is geeky.
I just picked up a Tungsten T5 on the cheap. It lacks WiFi yet includes a web browser and e-mail client. I would not have bought it for full retail price. The T5 is replacing a Newton MessagePad 2000 for my PDA needs. I love my Newton but anymore it is a pain in the ass to connect it to anything and requires me hunting everywhere for old hardware to use with it. After using the T5 for a while and reading more reviews of PocketPC equipment I think I might hoc it for a PocketPC device. The T5 out of the box doesn't do the sort of geeky things I'd like and buying the extra equipment to do it is going to cost me what a more functional PDA would.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I have been emailing many people at Palm (including the CEO, etc.) about 64-bit support, primarily, Windows x64. It seems like they don't want to support it. Maybe they think it is a passing fad.
Here are some of the repsonses when I asked about supporting x64:
"Unfortunately, we do not support 64-bit Windows XP computers and will not for some time." -Raj Doshi
"I think it should work" -Ken Wirt
"I am not familiar with this issue, but I will look into it and see if we can get a better solution for you." -Jeff Hawkins
I guess maybe they haven't even heard of 64-bit? Maybe they missed how Microsoft came out with a 64-bit version of XP, and released to developers on how to support 64-bit drivers?
Kernel Krunch - Part of a Complete OS
The third party conduits for palm have always worked fine.
Yes, MS is BS with how they treat 3rd parties like palm, but companies focused on their business, such as Pumatech, managed to work with every version of outlook. In fact, Palm would recommend them.
So again, I say, Palm dropped the ball. They decided they weren't going to devote enough time to interoperate with what they considered their prime market: mobile professionals. Those professionals mostly used Outlook/Exchange, so it should have been job one for them to stay current. If Intellisync/Pumatech could do it, I expect Palm could have done it.
But they chose not to. So I put them into the "idiot" category.
Don't forget about Palm's shortlived Rosy model, it's revolutionary 'Bator stylus, and the new eJac charging system. Thought the stylus was designed for a better grip, it caused carpal tunnel in its heaviest users. It's ironic that amongst chronic 'bators the carpal tunnel was so severe that it prevented blindness from occuring. They got away with only having to wear glasses. A few users complained the eJac would suddenly discharge the Palm and they'd lose loads of data when they lost power.
I know it's bad, but I don't care.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
When my m505 died six months ago after only two years use I bought a Tungsten E off eBay. Six weeks later the power button stopped working and Palm told me they wouldn't fix it for free. Two devices over a year and a half totaling over $500 both worthless.
Contrast that with the two Palm III's I still have and still work. My wife uses one of them *every* day for at least an hour total and has for years. I used to put my III in my back pocket with nothing for protection but the flip cover. It still lives.
In short, their hardware is shit and has been for the last few years. That coupled with poor customer service and a sweeping failure to innovate and take chances:
* Palm should have had an OQO like device out years ago, say something around 6"x9" and 640x480 or more. They could have owned the "personal slate" market but probably never seriously considered the for factor.
* They have done fux-all in terms improving/expanding/innovating their included base apps. Useful yes, but seriously dated. Where are the handheld apps that are light-years ahead of the competition ala Apple on the desktop?
* Communications still suck. I can buy their proprietary wifi SD card for my Palm at twice the going price of other cards and I have the privilege of waiting months for it to come out. They should have been market leaders in this area.
I could go on here but I'll spare you. These things and more have caused me to start shopping for something, anything, else. Hopefully not Pocket PC but I don't see much other choice (but something I can at least put linux/Qtopia on).
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - BF
I think the invasion of .Net into the business world helped to kill Palm's advantage. Palms aren't really that difficult to program for... but .Net is much easier. With one IDE I can easily create .Net applications that will run for all my business devices (phones, pda's, servers, desktops) That's powerful in the business world. Plus all the applications will integrate seemlessly because of the underlying framework.
"The author claims, among other things, that Palm's stuff never worked well enough with Windows (while the RIM Blackberry did), which ultimately allowed Windows Mobile to eliminate them."
As a mostly Mac guy, I always assumed Palm just had it in for Mac users and that the grass was not only greener on the Windows side of the Palm lawn, but that nubile nymphs served PC users drinks and gave free massages. Whodathunk the ineptitude raged like a weed on both sides of the lawn...
The Splintered Mind - Overcoming
Mine have been reliable and simple and done everything I want done.
They allow my staff to share my diary and reduce double bookings.
I don't need other stuff from them, although making notes that go straight into a database or email has been useful.
As far as phones go, the only thing that makes SMS anything I want to use is the Bluetooth link from my Palm to my phone. ANd I don't use that much.
I think Palm/USR went down the tubes when it abandoned the crisp (relatively) scratch-proof glass screens. Compare the Vx (the high watermark of the genre, IMO) to any of the current Zires, Tungstens, etc., and you'll see the difference. Palm used to make solid, fetish-worthy hardware. Now crappy hardware and failing to recognize cross-platform differences have made them a has-been except for the Treo, which most users haven't a clue how to utilize to their full capacity.
Hi,
As a first time Palm customer I bought a Tungsten T2 the day it came out. Has a couple of drawbacks but generally a nice product.
However, they retired the T2 after just a few months, bringing out the T3. The resale value of the T2 went down the toilet, and there was no cheap upgrade offer from Palm for recent T2 owners.
Felt cheated by Palm.
IPAQ for me next time.
D.
I have experience developing on both Palm and Pocket PC. We received an order to port one of our applications into a handheld. So I had to evaluate the cheapest solution for development. I must say that I was very disapointed with Palm development environment. It looks like you can be really productive only working on Java; and it took me a pretty long time to gather all the available info, to download all the software, etc. On another hand I was able to make my first Pocket PC application work in an hour (with Visual studio dotnet). I do not like Microsoft, but Palm development environment sucks. They should have switched to some version of Linux long time ago. .
He may not be a troll, but you're a fucking idiot. the Palm did (and does) not run Linux...
While Palm owned the early market for PDA's -- I bought my palm V for $330 and showed it off to everyone I met, they killed off their own upgrade path by putting out crappy products. My Palm V and 505 are rock-solid, but the user reviews on everything newer says that the reliability is horrible.
Palm's devices were perfect for what they were, and they would probably have survived for years as a niche player with a fanatical following. Their downfall was they tried to offer people super-fancy machines with no reliablility. I loved the Palm V, and even the 505, but whenever I would research a newer device, all the reviews complained that basically the things would die at about the 3-month warranty expiration mark. There is even a class action lawsuit that the Treo is so shoddy that it should never have been put out. That reputation killed them for me -- I won't even consider buying any of their newer products, but I will probably buy about 5 of their older products to stock up on because I can't ever see myself stopping using them.
In the Real World(TM) it seems that no one really is looking to play movies on their tiny handheld screens[snip]
I do this all the time - and it's on my Windows Smartphone 2003 device (an Audiovox SMT5600).
+++ATH0
Yes indeed Blackberries are pretty horrible. (I have a combined phone/Blackberry 7100 and hate it with a passion).
... good eh? If you use it as a calendar - what Palms did so wonderfully - it will beep, but you cannot find out why until you type in that damned password (must include numbers AND letters ... so you need TWO hands to work the shift key). And then it usually loses the notification.
If you have a "Corporate" configuration, you cannot use them (except to answer the phone) until you type in a six digit password
The interface is pretty horrible, but IS usable, once you learn the shift key does weird things to the roller when you are editing. The keyboard is ok.
They are big. And clunky.
But you CAN program them to turn themselves OFF between certain times - and you get a different choice for weekdays and weekends, so that's something. But you don't have fine grained control. You can't just turn off email, for example.
In short, I hate mine.
And the games SUCK. No camera. Nothing nice.
"Cats like plain crisps"
There is a quote in the article:
"Nobody buys traditional handhelds anymore," said Sam Bhavnani, an analyst at research firm Current Analysis. "The entire market underwent a paradigm shift. The mass adoption of cell phones eliminated the need for basic PIM (personal information management) functionality from a Palm Pilot."
I do. I don't carry a PDA everywhere (it is too bulky) and I don't want a bulky phone. So I have a phone and a PDA. The phone don't not have the features to replace the PDA.
meh
I am a average man in Palm use and bought and upgraded a lot of years. Palm III, IIIxe, IIIc, Vx, m500 and Tungsten E - many. However, I just sad about Palm perspective. At least 4 years I wanted to have a small intellectual (database included !) notebook which replaces paper stickers (Hi-Note), unit conversion (YAUC) etc. And WiFi or any another cheap consumer way to connect my data to base system. Hot sync is great but not enough because I want to make queries in Starbacks and so on.
What I wanted:
1. small device 32MB, SD/SDIO for extension, WiFi (and may be Bluetooth) as communication capability.
3. Light touch screen - old Vx/m500 have a hard one, only Tungsten T/E have a good.
It is very sensitive to use stylus instead of keyboard, w/out that many people have a negative summary conclusion on usefullness of that kind of device.
What I got - the best is Tungsten E, no WiFi, memory 28MB etc. To my dismay Palm started some fight with Socket about WiFi software ownership which effectively killed SDIO WiFi for M500 and Tungsten E.
Finally I got tired and gives up - now I want Linux box. Most modern Linux boxes has CF slot and can use WiFi. Yes, we are back again in size dimension (they do not fit a pocket) but at least Linux boxes never miss WiFi connection capability and understand the memory requirements very well from the beginning. Palm lost it's shine in geeks eyes anymore and turns to WinCE...
Oh... I guess I must have been smoking crack when I was reading about PalmSource..l /
http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT6402459179.htm
Looks like you are the fucking idiot now..
In terms of portability, Psion's are about as portable as this phone. The trouble with some devices is that they can't decide if they'll be a phone, pda, or mini laptop. When something tries to 'do it all', they generally fail dismally. My old manager had a 'small' Psion and swore by it, but the thing was so damn clunky and awkward you rarely saw him actually using it. Palm did one thing (pda), did it well, and it remains to be seen IMO that they 'failed'.
working hard or hardly working?