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."

Comments

If it ain't broke, wait, it's broke

[dada21]

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.

Re:If it ain't broke, wait, it's broke

[mhollis]

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 have used Palm devices since the Palm Pilot Professional and have reveled in their simplicity. I have a Palm m505 and couldn't do without it. I regularly and routinely sync it into my Macintosh and everything works perfectly. In fact, since I use Apple's iSync, my .Mac calendar and address book are kept up with data I enter in on my m505 every time I synchronize, which means I can log onto my account from any web browser and retrieve information. This is the epitome of Gates' vision of "information at your fingertips."

So you're wrong.

My fiancée rarely takes her m505 anywhere. She used to have all of her contacts on it but lost all of the data in a divorce when her ex-husband kept the computer and she did not hot-sync her data to anything (he probably did it for her). When her m505 lost power, it lost everything (I think). I don't think she regularly hot-syncs. She has a Dell laptop and is minimally-functional in Microsoft Excel. She runs a home-based business on the side and understands the value of data entry in order to track clientele, but simply won't do the work. She would not know how to harness the power of a template in Microsoft Word unless someone set it up for her and also wrote most of the document for her (thus making her need the "consultant" as a permanent appendage). She has two paper calendars where she keeps numbers, addresses, contacts, schedules, appointments and so on and leads a busy life that is pretty disorganized -- all things that could be organized with a little more computer literacy and better use of her Palm m505.

So you're right.

The Palm was designed to do few things and do them extremely well. I use my m505 for my date book, appointment book, address book memo pad, and play solitaire and chess on it. That's pretty much it. I have a cell phone that works just fine as a cell phone. I have an iPod that works just fine as a music player. I totally understand the desire on the part of many to reduce these three personal electronic gadgets into one -- fewer cords to haul around, fewer adapters needed, fewer things to plug in every night and so on. The Palm devices I have used over the years have always had more than enough memory, more than enough speed and more than enough features to please me. And they do one thing perfectly: They sync with my Mac (it is my understanding that Windows CE devices won't).

I noted that there were a few specific things that the Palm folks wanted put into the Windows OS for the upcoming Treo, like clicking on someone's face in one's address book to initiate a call. Microsoft still doesn't have "ease of use" down -- even for handhelds.

Perhaps it's time I got another Palm device -- quickly because the new ones next year won't work with my Mac. There are lots of people who wrote code for the Palm OS who are probably really unhappy about this announcement.

Re:If it ain't broke, wait, it's broke

[plumby]

The main use of Blackberries at our place is to look important, as only senior people are given one, so they all wander around reading them wherever they go.

Their secondary use is to indicate boredom in meetings by starting to read their email in the middle of a conversation with you.

And their final use is to 'impress' people, and show how busy they are, by sending replies to your email while they're on the toilet.

What about successes?

[AKAImBatman]

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.

It's all the Internet Porn.

[gowen]

Wait... I've misunderstood what "Palm's slide" means, haven't I...

Doing their wants against customer wants

[Dark Paladin]

After reading the article, I agree with most of the points, but think it can really be summed up in one way: Palm did what they wanted, not what the customers wanted. All the way back when Palms first arrived in my previous job, people wanted to:

Sync their calendars/todos/contacts list.

Simple enough. But then it became:

Sync their calendars/todos/contacts with what their secretary put in for them.

What a mess! There were trade off of Palms, then came the network sync which never really worked right. And that was the key thing: even if Palm put it in, it just "didn't quite work right". Syncing with Outlook? Well, sure - though they prefer you use their Palm Desktop, and even then the Outlook sync just "didn't quite work right". Palm wanted the universe to revolve around them and their Palm Desktop software. Users just wanted to sync the damn this with their existing Notes/Exchange/Groupwise information. They offered some sort of server system, but it had no plugins - they expected users just to do it. When Blackberry came along, they Got It: people want to have the same calendar/contacts/todos/email information as on their existing clients - of which is most popular in Outlook. So they did that. Put it in the cradle, push a button, and done. If you want to get your email, have the IT geeks install a piece of software to talk to the Exchange server and you could get email wherever you were. It was simple. And it was what people wanted. I've liked Palm for some time. I have book readers for entertainment, knowledge, and scripture reading on mine. Palm is the only one out of the big three - Palm, RIM, and Microsoft - that let me sync fairly easily to my Mac box. If one of the other two let me do that without having to buy third party hardware, I'll do that. Heck, I'll probably switch to the Treo 700 anyway or its equivalent in a couple of years anyway when its time to retire my Treo 650. Because then, I'll have my email/contacts/todos/calendar all on one device in a simple manner. Anyway, that's why I think Palm lost out: their software became too difficult to use for too many users, while other people, even if their software wasn't as good in some ways, just made it work. Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

pioneered not failed

[BozoTheScary]

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.

The Palm Trilogy

[Luddite Slayer]

"Where Palm Went Wrong", "More of Palm's Great Mistakes", and "Who is this Palm Person ANyway?"

Re:Really did innovate- not recently

[AKAImBatman]

The Palm OS has stagnated. Windows Mobile for all its flaws is simply a better OS.

This really isn't true either. The truth is that both OSes and devices sucked, and that consumers are finally giving up on them. On one hand you had the Palm Pilot. It was a good device, sized perfectly for a satellite device, but failed to keep up with improvements in embedded technology, memory needs, and display resolutions. In the end, the device ended up being overpriced for too little power.

On the other hand you've got WinCE devices. They're far more powerful, have color screens, run Microsoft software, play multimedia, and they do it all for seemingly no reason what-so-ever. In the Real World(TM) it seems that no one really is looking to play movies on their tiny handheld screens, nor are they looking to wait five minutes for Excel CE to come up so they can do computations they could have done on the back of a napkin in less time.

So then along comes the Blackberry. The idea is seemingly stupid. It's a super-simple email reader with an analog coupler for a modem. It flops. Then they add wireless support. Suddenly, everyone loves the thing. It's the pager/personal organizer that everyone wanted. It does what they need and it does it simply. You have your email at all times, and you can even type a simple message without resorting to a stylus. So where are all the Palms and WinCE devices now? Replaced by BlackBerries. Funny how the world works, eh?

(Disclaimer: My wife uses her Palm everyday to manage our home and finances. She can't live without the thing.)