Bloomberg Reports That Palm Is Up For Sale

leetrout writes with this excerpt from a story at Bloomberg News "Palm Inc., creator of the Pre smartphone, put itself up for sale and is seeking bids for the company as early as this week, according to three people familiar with the situation."

Comments

First bid

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd buy that for a dollar!

Re:First bid

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahaha, NICE Robocop reference! You're the first person other than myself that I've ever seen use that.

Re:First bid

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahaha, you're the same guy come back to explain your joke.

Re:First bid

[Anonymous Coward]

rofl youre the same guy come back to make an actually funny joke by pointing out yourself explaining your first joke

and you can tell im not the same guy because i dont use caps or punctuation

Re:First bid

[nacturation]

I'm all of the above people... I just forgot to login.

Re:First bid

[Arcady13]

I can offer 7 dollars, and a Casio.

Re:First bid

[commodore64_love]

What happened to Palm? I remember when their "PalmPilot" was like the iPhone today - people had to have it. Now it's fading away. Even my coworker who bought a new PalmPilot religiously ever year from circa 1998 to the present, no longer owns one.

Re:First bid

[JoeCommodore]

Mainly compatibility - Palm seems to have stagnated in some technologies and failed to work on implementing some standards and everyone else seems has passed them by.

Re:First bid

[mdwh2]

What happened to Palm? I remember when their "PalmPilot" was like the iPhone today - people had to have it.

You mean, not many people had either? Except whilst smartphones were rare back then, today almost every phone does these things. There are many products that do these things, and given that companies like Nokia, Motorola, LG, Samsung, RIM all sell more, the "had to have it" factor is clearly not unique to Apple, I'm afraid.

Re:First bid

[digitalgiblet]

I use that reference occassionally. I find it hysterically funny, but people rarely get it. Bravo!

One of the best running gags in a movie ever. Should have caught on like "Show me the money" or "You can't HANDLE the truth"...

Re:First bid

[Govno]

And here I thought it was a Groucho Marx quote.

Re:First bid

[davester666]

> I can offer 7 dollars, and a Casio.

Well, is it a Casio watch or cassette player? Which one will vary the value of your bid by up to 4 dollars!

Re:First bid

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung and LG don't have "had to have it" factor, Samsung and LG have "they ran out of iPhones so I got this" factor.

Re:First bid

[nacturation]

Thanks to my sockpuppet account above for the hilarious tongue-in-cheek banter.

Re:First bid

[Phoghat]

What happened to Palm?

Where have you been, under a rock?

Everything happened. Windows Mobile, RIM, even Linux, then smart phones of every stripe That's what happened.

I started out with a Palm OS device, made by Handspring, went to a couple of Sony devices and saw the writing on the wall and went to a Pocket PC.

Now I have an IPhone. Easy to use, does what I want, no damn graffiti. That's what happened to palm.

BeOS!

[Fallingcow]

AFAIK, Palm still owns BeOS.

Hopefully whoever buys them does something with it, or sells it to someone who will.

Re:BeOS!

[cameljockey91]

Is that really a feasible or even necessary move? BeOS hasn't been developed in over a decade by the original programmers; what relevance does it have now? Palm failed to utilize the OS, and Be Inc. even changed direction away from BeOS before they were bought.

Re:BeOS!

[Fallingcow]

Well, open-sourcing it would qualify as "something" :)

I'm sure that'd help the folks working on Haiku.

Re:BeOS!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Palm sold BeOS when they sold Palmsource. Besides, BeOS is dead. Everyone will just have to accept that.

Re:BeOS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that we finally all have multi-processor machines in the form of multi-core, BeOS would be more relevant than ever. But it's true that having to catch up on those 10 years would take a lot of resources.

Re:BeOS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah!

Now we can have a viable competitor to Hurd!

Re:BeOS!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, they are finally close to being done with recreating BeOS as it was before it all ended. It would be kind of a cruel joke to have it open-sourced now. (not that I think it's likely to happen)

Re:BeOS!

[BikeHelmet]

what relevance does it have now?

The only OS to ever do GUI responsiveness properly?

Re:BeOS!

[blind biker]

I think BeOS stil has a relevance today, as it beats the pants off any current OS in respnsiveness to The User: any command/mouseclick has the highest priority, file copy be damned. I have tested with many current OSes (even OS X fails this test) start copying a huge file, and see if responsiveness is affected at all. With BeOS, it wasn't - not even the slightest. The file would get copied a few secconds later, if I interact a lot with the UI, but so fucking what?

What a pleasure it was to use BeOS. For whatever reason, programmers just refuse to create such pleasant-to-use operating systems.

(I won't relay the often mentioned smoothness of displaying videos and playing MP3s. It's not that important. But it sure is impressive when you can play 30 MP3s at the same time, and some even backwards. Is there ever been an OS that dominated all the others so blatantly? The things BeOS was able to do were simply ridiculous.)

Re:BeOS!

[DrXym]

BeOS is dead as a dodo. Use instead.

It would be nice if companies opened up their dead operating systems, but often times they would be infected with licenced code, or involve patents and simply it's easier and less effort to keep it closed.

Re:BeOS!

[Anonymous Coward]

My understanding was that while BeOS had many advantages such as the one you cited, the companies like Apple that looked at it decided it was going to be harder to hone the OS down into a practical and consumer-friendly operating system, in terms of refining or seamlessly adding on all the services that needed to be there. And we take an incredible amount of services for granted now, such as being able to render everything from HTML to streaming video in many different apps. But if they were missing, they would be missed, and apparently they were missing and not all that easy to hook up in BeOS, which was conceived back when computers were far more isolated islands than they are now.

Maybe BeOS did a few things like performance really well, but the demands on an OS for extensibility, scalability, security, hardware compatibility, etc. are much higher today compared to when BeOS was conceived. An OS today must be holistic - good at everything, including a very long list of features that programmers and alpha geeks either don't care about or don't want but are essential to acceptance by consumers and enterprise.

Feel free to correct me as I know I'm generalizing the hell out of what I've read.

Re:BeOS!

[Anonymous Coward]

PalmSource was bought out by the Japanese company Access, which has managed to produce absolutely nothing useful with their Access Linux Platform over the last four years or so.

Meanwhile, the core BeOS/PalmSource developers left to develop Android.

Re:BeOS!

[ducky101]

AFAIK, Palm still owns BeOS.

No, they don't own it anymore. PalmSource, the owner of PalmOS and BeOS was sold to ACCESS Co. in 2005.
Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS#History

Re:BeOS!

[ledow]

I do think that current OS's really suffer from the "give me my damn mouse back, let me click that button, don't make me wait for seven thousand services to start up before you let me click the start button that appeared in the first second" syndrome. But that doesn't make an OS, that makes a GUI on top of an OS. The problem is "easily" solved (for a definition of easily) by queueing user events and handling mouse motion / keyboard input in a separate thread (not at all a performance problem with modern machines).

User reponsiveness is vital, that much I can agree on. I can't wait for the OS that can properly remember and queue user events from the first second so that I can send a list of keystrokes and have it get on with them - I hate when Windows chugs and your button clicks are completely ignored (programmatically, graphically, etc.) and then there's a burst of activity once it's idle again. Ideally, such interaction would be per-application (so non-busy apps would still respond as fast no matter what else was chugging away) - incidentally, window-focus-steals are the worst idea ever invented, whether by the OS or the applications themselves.

But that's a GUI issue, for the most part. Yes, the OS shouldn't chug that badly in the first place but when it does, the underlying GUI still has millions of cycles in which to respond. It doesn't, because of deep-level order dependencies and other things. The main problem, though, is programs and OS's drawing themselves before they are actually able to respond - I've seen Windows desktop, start bar, etc. appear sometimes MINUTES before the start button can actually be clicked in any useful manner, and that's *completely* pointless and just makes me think that the computer is much slower than it actually is. It's a pain in the arse and all programs should be made to draw to a back-buffer until they are actually ready to respond to user input, and any that don't within 0.5 of a second should be terminated in the style of Windows' "This program has stopped responding".

The problem is not the OS (though some OS queueing techniques can help desktop interactivity), it's mainly the application side... programs that draw too early, set themselves up piece-meal and serially, draw the user into clicking them before they can respond (what's wrong with greying out any buttons/menus until you *are* ready to respond to them?), don't queue events properly and aren't allocated a high-enough event priority when they are the main-focus app.

That's not worth an obsolete (sorry, but it is) OS, when it can be fixed by a simple event model and some slightly stricter application requirements. You can't hold an OS responsible if the programs draw themselves, then go through a serial setup and ignore all button presses in between, or when they are busy, etc. Proper multithread use is the main factor. The OS is not.

Re:BeOS!

[edittard]

set themselves up piece-meal

Don't spell piecemeal in a piecemeal way.

Re:BeOS!

[Anonymous Coward]

(I won't relay the often mentioned smoothness of displaying videos and playing MP3s. It's not that important. But it sure is impressive when you can play 30 MP3s at the same time, and some even backwards. Is there ever been an OS that dominated all the others so blatantly? The things BeOS was able to do were simply ridiculous.)

Ah yes.. the first time I ever tried it I managed to open _all_ my MP3s at once (I wasn't very smart back then) and sat there for several minutes - jaw dropped to the floor as all of them (or most, I couln't really make out individual sounds) played at once, my desktop piled up with windows each playing one file.

And I could still navigate around without getting stuck somewhere... one of the more amazing moments of my (probably too boring) life..

Re:BeOS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, it was missing a lot of the bloat that's forced down our throats with other OSes and that's why it was so fast and elegant.

But what was really missing was better driver support and applications.

Off course, it didn't help that the Be Inc never had the balls to try and compete with Microsoft. First they wanted to make computers (BeBox) then they thought they were going to be bought by Apple. After that, they tried the niche market of audio. In Japan they managed to get BeOS pre-installed on a few machines but Microsoft quickly reacted and made sure those manufacturers "reconsidered their decision".

The only thing that might have saved BeOS at this point would have been to open source it, but apparently they couldn't due to some licensed code.

Re:BeOS!

[mwvdlee]

It's ALWAYS easier and less effort to do nothing and leave a product behind dead.

Re:BeOS!

[dangitman]

AFAIK, Palm still owns BeOS.

Pfffft. Big deal. I still own BeOS, it even came with a nice book. You don't see me trying to sell myself for millions of dollars.

Re:BeOS!

[Anonymous Coward]

I would sell myself for way less, if only someone would pay...

Re:BeOS!

[Machtyn]

When Palm sold Palmsource is when Palm signed its death certificate. Or maybe there were some previous decisions for that as well. I know that I'd prefer a phone with no keyboard, but to use a stylus with one stroke letter recognition (not the two stroke abomination that was Grafitti 2).

Re:BeOS!

[dave420]

Actually, ACCESS Co. owns BeOS, after they bought PalmSource.

Re:BeOS!

[TheRaven64]

Does anyone care at this point? Haiku has pretty much caught up with BeOS 5 in all areas, and passed it in others. It's like when the UNIX Version 7 code was released a couple of years back - academically interesting, but no one in their right mind will actually run it in preference to *BSD/Solaris/Linux.

Re:BeOS!

[TheRaven64]

BeOS came with video playback and web browsing apps - remember that back then the web was really primitive and writing a web browser wasn't a massively complicated undertaking. Apple turned down Be because they thought the company was worth less than Be did - and it turned out that they were right, Be turned down a $50m offer from Apple and ended up taking a $20m offer from Palm. I can't say I'm too disappointed by this - it meant that a load more people got exposed to OpenStep than had been before - but BeOS did have a few nice features.

Re:BeOS!

[Majik Sheff]

You're missing the reason for that responsiveness, which is the real reason BeOS is now more relevant than ever. The entire system was built from the ground up with deeply pervasive multithreading. A hello world app had two or three threads! In the current trend of higher and higher core counts the wisdom of this design philosophy becomes more and more apparent.

On a side-note: Will the BeOS IP become like the Commodore IP? Will every company that owns it ultimately bankrupt?

Re:BeOS!

[Threni]

> any command/mouseclick has the highest priority, file copy be damned. I have tested with many current OSes (even OS X fails this test) start copying a huge file, and see if responsiveness is
> affected at all. With BeOS, it wasn't - not even the slightest. The file would get copied a few secconds later, if I interact a lot with the UI, but so fucking what?

You need to buy a new PC, mate. I don't have that problem at all.

Re:BeOS!

[Yamata no Orochi]

I know that I'd prefer a phone with no keyboard

I think you might be on your own there. People that hate writing are often still pretty okay with typing.

Re:BeOS!

[Anonymous Coward]

On a side-note: Will the BeOS IP become like the Commodore IP? Will every company that owns it ultimately bankrupt?

Probably, given your attitude and many other peoples attitude towards the quality of the OS. A company will be convinced to buy and develop it, spend millions in R&D to get it "modernized," fail and go bankrupt. In Slashdot terms:

1) Acquire "awesome" product
2) ???
3) Bankrupt!

Yes, we all have fond memories, but the product stagnated and died. Now everyone want to prop it up with a house of cards.

Re:BeOS!

[mdwh2]

Funny, I don't remember Apple going bankrupt when they did the same thing.

Re:BeOS!

[timeOday]

I won't relay the often mentioned smoothness of displaying videos and playing MP3s. It's not that important.

Sure it is! It turns out getting a PVR to display frame-accurate video to a TV is almost impossible with a multitasking OS. Watch a channel with a stock ticker / other scrolling banner, and you will see, it jumps at times. Go ahead and crank up the priority on X and mplayer (or whatever player you use); it can't do it.

Re:BeOS!

[Svartalf]

Heh... Palm bought that OS because they were looking for better answers than they had at the time- and BeOS was flogging itself as an IA (set top internet appliance...) OS at that time. And, for that application, it actually made raftloads of sense- light and lithe, to the point that using goofball chips like the National Semiconductor Geode GX wasn't so much of a disadvantage. Unfortunately for BeOS, the floor fell out of that market (because it wasn't modeled right, coupled with the dot-com bust...) and they had nowhere else to go.

Palm buying them salvaged the investor money, but left Palm with something that they ultimately couldn't use.

Re:BeOS!

[AvitarX]

At a time when in Windows you could only get one playing at a time, due to the sound system.

It was truly an awesome OS.

But it was also archaic in others (e.g. single user).

Re:BeOS!

[dontgetshocked]

Actually I believe it is now called Haiku.They even have a beta.

Re:BeOS!

[DJRumpy]

It's far more likely that someone didn't do a proper inverse telecine on their NTSC material in an attempt to deinterlace it, or they just chopped a frame to reduce the frame count, usually using a poor "find the two closest matching frames and remove one" method. Neither of which works out very well 100% of the time.

If you were watching the stream directly on your TV via a tuner, then I'd say the tuner software was doing one of the above as well.

This type of mistake is VERY evident when watching a video source with a ticker at the bottom of the screen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_telecine#Reverse_telecine_.28a.k.a._IVTC.2Finverse_telecine.29

Re:BeOS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Palm would fail to utilize oxygen if it required conscious action.

Re:BeOS!

[powelly]

AFAIK ACCESS Co. Ltd. own the BeOS intellectual property.

As referenced in this Haiku news posting.

Re:BeOS!

[NiteMair]

Nope, it's owned by ACCESS now, and previous PalmSource. Palm hasn't owned it since PalmSource split off.

Re:BeOS!

[glwtta]

even OS X fails this test

Wait, "even" OS X? OS X has some of the worst multitasking of any modern OS. It has an honest to god busy cursor that indicates that the entire system is locked up, no less. Seriously, the entire system goes away because of a user action. In 2010.

I know, I know: (-100, Not an Apple Fanboy)

Re:BeOS!

[jaavaaguru]

Wasn't that QNX?

Re:BeOS!

[Martin Blank]

Is that the spinning rainbow disc that was used in a Family Guy episode? It appeared, and all discussion of the topic at hand stopped, and Peter said that they just had to wait until it went away before they could do anything else.

I've never seen it on a real Mac, but I've not spent a lot of time on one, either.

Re:BeOS!

[Fallingcow]

Both were very good at it. Only operating systems you could run on an original Pentium and expect to be able to play back an MP3 while doing other stuff without it skipping and without the slightest hint of UI slowdown (Linux and Windows certainly couldn't pull it off)

Re:BeOS!

[slapout]

When was the last time "the original programmers" did any work on OS/2? Isn't it still running ATMs today?

Re:BeOS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh I agree..time to move on and focus on the return of OS/2!

Re:BeOS!

[Amorya]

It's not the entire system, it's on a per-app basis. It means the app whose window is under the cursor hasn't responded to events in a few seconds. You can still switch apps and continue working elsewhere.

Re:BeOS!

[timeOday]

Hard to say. Most of what I replay now is either DVD images or mpeg transport streams captured directly from broadcast TV, with no re-encoding and no inverse telecine applied by me.

I have even seen cases where the network was running a ticker, and the local station was superimposing a scrolling weather alert, and the network ticker was scrolling more smoothly than the weather alert. Seems even the pros can't get it right.

Re:BeOS!

[glwtta]

It's not the entire system, it's on a per-app basis. It means the app whose window is under the cursor hasn't responded to events in a few seconds. You can still switch apps and continue working elsewhere.

Yeah, that's how it's supposed to work, but that's not always the case in real life. And hey, I don't even have a Mac of my own, so the fact that I've seen this more than once (on different machines) is somewhat troubling.

Re:BeOS!

[KZigurs]

Ish, at the expense of quite a few hacks and low-level mongering.
But yeah, it was brilliant. Teapot on a VESA card (sniffs at the memories) :)

Google should buy them

[Anonymous Coward]

cause what the heck, why not.

Re:Google should buy them

[eparker05]

To expand on your point; Google lacks a great deal of intellectual property that puts them at legal risk from competitors such as RIM and Apple when it comes to their Android OS. A Google acquisition would spell a quick end to the HTC vs. Apple suit. On the other hand, if RIM, Apple, or Nokia acquires Palm, we can say hello to a torrent of lawsuits directed at every aspect of their respective smartphone manufacturing competitors.

As an aside, I don't think it would be bad if Microsoft purchased Palm, since Microsoft's smartphone IP is shallow at best. I would be happy to see a real Windows Mobile OS pop up that could cut it with iPhone OS or Android, and I don't think that WM 7 is going to do it.

Re:Google should buy them

[i ate my neighbour]

I would be happy to see a real Windows Mobile OS pop up

No thanks, I had enough with the pop ups on their desktop OS.

Re:Google should buy them

[miffo.swe]

The problem is there is nothing Google really needs at Palm. The patents would just be used for defense against really crappy patents that should never have been issued in the first place to Apple. As for Android, i personally prefer it over both iPhone, Symbian and WebOS. Palm wouldnt bring anything to the table.

Nokia on the other hand, they would benefit greatly.

Re:Google should buy them

[ihavnoid]

Even if the patents that Google need to defend against are really crappy, it may worth having some ammo because bogus patents still can be used for suing, while zero patents can be used for nothing.

Moreover, invalidating bogus patents is quite expensive, risky, and time-consuming.

OTOH, how many patents does Palm have, and how many of them are valid ones?

Re:Google should buy them

[Hadlock]

The other problem is that there is nothing anyone needs at Palm. Palm is the only one using WebOS, and anyone can order up a million devices from a manufacturer using reference designs from Symbian or HTC (using either Windows CE/Phone7 or Android) and market them under their own brand name with almost zero licencing fees. By building a phone around the Palm platform you're doomed to vendor lock-in from the beginning, on a mostly-dead platform to boot. From a development standpoint Palm is a terrible choice in the long run, unless you've got some killer licencing deal from Palm from the get go.

Re:Google should buy them

[EnglishTim]

...since Microsoft's smartphone IP is shallow at best.

What makes you think this? Microsoft has been in the smartphone market for much longer than Apple, and they've also got R&D departments in a lot of related fields - multitouch computing and the like. I'd be shocked if they didn't have a large number of patents that cover smartphones.

Re:Google should buy them

[confused one]

Whoever buys them, it will be for the brand and the patents portfolio. The products... are ok but there are a lot of other good products out there that they have to compete with; and, Palm is not winning market share...

Re:Google should buy them

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has been in the smartphone market for much longer than Apple, and they've also got R&D departments in a lot of related fields

No doubt, but why is everything they have ever released for smartphones been complete unadulterated trash?

Re:Google should buy them

[Seq]

I would be happy to see a real Windows Mobile OS pop up that could cut it with iPhone OS or Android, and I don't think that WM 7 is going to do it.

I would be happy to see a real Windows Mobile OS based on Linux and Webkit.

Re:Google should buy them

[slapout]

Hmmm...If Google bought Palm, they could release an "Official Palm Emulator" for Android phones.

Re:Google should buy them

[Anonymous Coward]

the mojo from the palm employees, the patent portfolio, and webOS would be useful into its own right.
an android core with a webOS ui= an incredible device.

plus apple will have to officially stfu when it comes to patents

No surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

The pre is 'ok', but not a godsend. and the loose battery debacle is a joke, and now the OS's gets slower and slower.....

They just aren't making #s, and their products are not compelling enough to get someone to switch... My god the ads are CRAP.

But when your company forces everyone to carry sprint phones.... well... at least the exchange integration is AWESOME..

Re:No surprise.

[Tokerat]

Of all the carriers I've had (and I've had all the big ones), I've liked Sprint the best. I always have service, I never get screwed on my bill for no reason, the network seems as fast (or usually faster) and AT&T and Verizon. Why does everyone seem to hate them so much?

Re:No surprise.

[Macrat]

Of all the carriers I've had (and I've had all the big ones), I've liked T-Mobile the best. I always have service, I never get screwed on my bill for no reason, the network seems as fast (or usually faster) and AT&T and Verizon. Why does everyone seem to hate them so much?

Re:No surprise.

[spmkk]

Not compelling enough? Quick: name two smartphones that have a touchscreen AND a physical keyboard on one surface, with no (other) moving parts. The Pre may not be a godsend, but the Pixi certainly is.

I have the Pixi Plus with Verizon service. Other than battery life (which is a well-documented issue that has several acceptable solutions), I cannot find a SINGLE thing I don't love about it.

It's a shame the app store isn't on par with Apple's. As devices go, it's not only one of the most technically capable phones on the market, it's also the ONLY real smartphone that fits in the pocket of a pair of jeans. For someone who doesn't carry a purse, that is a huge factor.

One of the problems is that in all the side-by-side reviews, the Pre always beats out the Pixi because...wait for it...it can't run as many apps at once. (Note: the iPhone presently can't run more than one, and reviewers worship it.) So people buy the Pre, and then aren't happy with it because the form factor is annoying and the keyboard is unusable (and because they expect their battery to last three days while they watch videos over Wi-Fi). And Palm gets a bad rap, even though they make a device that people would fall in love en masse with if they weren't talked out of giving it half a chance.

To each his own, but for me Palm offers a product that nothing else today can compete with. I really hope the market gives them a fair shake before letting their technology fade away.

Re:No surprise.

[shutdown -p now]

As devices go, it's not only one of the most technically capable phones on the market, it's also the ONLY real smartphone that fits in the pocket of a pair of jeans.

I guess that depends on the size of your jeans, and depth of your pockets. My N1 fits rather nicely in mine, and I've seen people do that to their iPhones.

Quick: name two smartphones that have a touchscreen AND a physical keyboard on one surface, with no (other) moving parts ...

... and a tiny screen (2.63" @ 320x400) in comparison to all competing smartphones?

Re:No surprise.

[itsme1234]

It's a shame the app store isn't on par with Apple's.

BINGO! They're great smartphones except that ... they're aren't smart because they don't run the apps you want! The hardware itself isn't _that_ bad (although Palm as usual is 1-3 years behind and had some poor choices like 8GB internal flash and no card slot) but the fact that you can't do much with it really hurts and as expected will kill the platform. As I was saying the day Palm Pre was announced (and especially after knowing it won't be GSM for a long while): good riddance, Palm.

Re:No surprise.

[Anarki2004]

the ONLY smartphone that fits in the pocket of a pair of jeans

pretty sure my nokia E71 is a smartphone, and I put it in my jeans pocket every day. At the time of its release it was considered the thinnest smartphone on the market.

Re:No surprise.

[tacarat]

No feedback to give. I just saw all the *rats and had to say hi.

Re:No surprise.

[Vectormatic]

now i dont know jack about the palm-pre of web-os, but since when do you NEED an app store on a proper smartphone? The iphone might have triggered android in hopping onto the "app-store" bandwagon, and with all the ipad-hoopla, the media might make you think that without an app-store you cant do anything, but a proper smart-phone should be able to have software installed which isnt given the official X seal of approval.

My 3 year old nokia doesnt have an app-store (come to think of it, it has the n-gage thing for games), but i still managed to get opera installed... or just about any piece of java code i write.

I thought the entire point of smart-phones was that they grew closer and closer to a general purpose computer, not being a walled-garden

Re:No surprise.

[spmkk]

The N1 is an inch shorter, but almost exactly twice as thick. That's probably a better combination for some people, but it doesn't work for me. Also, no keyboard.

As far as the display, 320 x 400 at 2.63" is apparently enough to comfortably read /. and post this comment :-) But like I said, to each his own. I just hope the technology sticks around so we continue to have this opyion, too.

Re:No surprise.

[maeka]

I thought the entire point of smart-phones was that they grew closer and closer to a general purpose computer, not being a walled-garden

Just because Apple's App Store = walled garden does not mean app store = walled garden.

Re:No surprise.

[clickety6]

I guess that depends on the size of your jeans, and depth of your pockets. My N1 fits rather nicely in mine, and I've seen people do that to their iPhones.

That's nothing. In the US, I've seen people do that with their iPads! They've got some wide butts out there ;-)

Re:No surprise.

[Vectormatic]

i know, but itsme posted like the palm-pre is worthless because its app-store isnt up to par, my point is that the app-store shouldnt be the only means to get apps

Re:No surprise.

[c]

> To each his own, but for me Palm offers a
> product that nothing else today can compete with.

The problem, historically, is that Palm will continue to offer this same product with minor cosmetic tweaks for a few years after their competitors have adequately competed and the entire market has subtly changed to the point that Palm's products don't really fit in. Palm will respond to this by changing their branding.

Palm's had some real hits over the years, but between hits they stagnate like no other major company I can think of...

c.

Re:No surprise.

[damn_registrars]

Of all the carriers I've had (and I've had all the big ones), I've liked T-Mobile the best. I always have service, I never get screwed on my bill for no reason, the network seems as fast (or usually faster) and AT&T and Verizon. Why does everyone seem to hate them so much?

Probably because their coverage is crap if you don't live in at least a medium-sized city. They know their coverage is crap, and they don't do crap to fix it, either. The T-Mobile approach to dead spots is to list them as "low signal" on their online maps and then ignore consumer complaints about dropped calls in that area.

Re:No surprise.

[Octorian]

The RIM BlackBerry doesn't need an app store either. They created one in the same me-too fashion as everyone else, of course. But MobiHand also has an app store that can run on the device.

Having an official app-store (and/or a 3rd party one) is important because without it, many users seem to think "it doesn't have apps". But, not requiring you to go through said app store is also important.

I find the Droid commercials quite amusing, actually. Not because they advertise anything special and unique, but because they've managed to turn "iPhone deficiencies" into "Droid features" (even if many other platforms also have those features).

Re:No surprise.

[TheRaven64]

This sounds like the punchline of a 'where's the most expensive place you've ever say down' joke.

Re:No surprise.

[d3ac0n]

And it isn't. Palm already has a vibrant non-official app ecosystem. Because it is so dead-easy to program for, many iPhone and Android programmers have ported their apps to WebOS, and they are in the unofficial "catalogs" (Such as PreWare) already.

Very sad to see this happen to Palm. I have a Pre and absolutely love it. Hopefully they will get picked up by HTC or another handset maker and be turned into an OS company. Let's be honest: While WebOS is without a doubt the very best smartphone OS yet made, (Yes, Google Fanboys, it is better than Android in almost every way possible.) it has been crippled by inadequate hardware since launch.

This is clear when you get a Palm Pre Plus from Verizon and use one of the custom patches that are out there to overclock the processor to a level equal to that of an iPhone or Android handset. WebOS becomes WAY more responsive and is such a dream to use you want to weep for joy.

So with luck we will see WebOS on HTC or some other great handset within a year.

Re:No surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not - Preware is a (practically Palm-sanctioned) homebrew alternative for all one's tweaking needs, with tons of OS patches and homebrew apps. However, even Preware is well behind what, say, Cydia on the iPhone offers.

Re:No surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that a Pixi in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Re:No surprise.

[aitikin]

I have good coverage in an area where T-mobile has shit, AT&T has shit, everything but Sprint and Verizon has shit for coverage. Sprint has had coverage here for 10 years and Verizon for about 6, with Sprint improving over the course of the past 10 years as well. I often use my Pre in elevators and never run into a problem, even in the basement. There's one place that's a dead zone for me and that's almost a complete Faraday Cage. I can hardly get wifi out of that room with the door open and the router 20 feet away.

Re:No surprise.

[aitikin]

But like I said, to each his own. I just hope the technology sticks around so we continue to have this opyion, too.

How's that keyboard working out for ya?

Re:No surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

surely this is enough to watch porn in the school bathroom ;-)

Re:No surprise.

[Enigma23]

The problem, historically, is that Palm will continue to offer this same product with minor cosmetic tweaks for a few years...

You mean exactly like Apple have done for years?

Re:No surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not. Android market is simply one choice among many repositories. Although it's a hella-convenient place to get just about everything.

Re:No surprise.

[itsme1234]

The point was that palm sucks for apps, app-store or not. Of course the manufacturers/carriers don't HAVE to use the app-store to lock in users but they usually do it:
- really aggressively in Apple's case
- somehow inefficiently and without a compass for Palm (but they still do it), see http://www.weboshelp.net/all-webos-news-articles/490-palm-webos-104-released-closes-e-mail-install-loophole-on-pre
- mixed bag with symbian, it usually depends on the carrier
- quite rarely but still Android lock-out happened already (with some Australian carrier if I remember correctly).

Re:No surprise.

[confused one]

My T-Mobile phone rolls right over to AT&T's network when I leave T-Mobile's coverage zone in Hampton Roads. When I get far enough into the country that AT&T doesn't work, nobody has coverage. At that point your only options is a Verizon land-line.

Re:No surprise.

[c]

No, Apple usually does major cosmetic tweaks. Even if they didn't, they have the marketing savvy to actually get people excited in a way that Palm just doesn't. WebOS is the first major thing to come out of Palm in ages, and it arrived about 3 years too late.

c.

Re:No surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

Herp derp, I don't know how the quote function works.

Re:No surprise.

[d3ac0n]

Umm.. you really haven't been following Palm at all have you?

That e-mail exploit was closed back during the initial months after launch, and hasn't been needed to install software for AGES. If you read my post above you might notice Preware mentioned. There is also WebOS Quick Install available, Which many people use to initially install Preware with.

When I open Preware on my Pre I show (as of 04/12/10) over 2000 apps available. Admittedly, that's not as many as the iPhone or even Android. But the app availability has been growing steadily.

One notable item is that Palm has been uniquely open and forthcoming with the home brew community, even going so far as to integrate some of their improvements into WebOS. Palm has also made their programming staff available to some high profile community developers to assist them in fully integrating apps that they were developing. So in all the ways that count, Palm has been much friendlier and easier to work with for developers than either Apple or Google.

I just hope that whoever buys them continues that tradition.

Re:No surprise.

[mdwh2]

As devices go, it's not only one of the most technically capable phones on the market, it's also the ONLY real smartphone that fits in the pocket of a pair of jeans.

My 5800 fits nicely, it has a slightly slimmer "candybar" form, compared with the wider smartphones. Not that I disagree with your post in general, just pointing this out.

One of the problems is that in all the side-by-side reviews, the Pre always beats out the Pixi because...wait for it...it can't run as many apps at once. (Note: the iPhone presently can't run more than one, and reviewers worship it.) So people buy the Pre, and then aren't happy with it because the form factor is annoying and the keyboard is unusable (and because they expect their battery to last three days while they watch videos over Wi-Fi). And Palm gets a bad rap, even though they make a device that people would fall in love en masse with if they weren't talked out of giving it half a chance.

Indeed. The rule is that if Apple miss out a fundamental feature, the media rave about it anyway and it gets spun as unimportant, or even an advantage. If another company does this, it's seen as a bad thing.

Re:No surprise.

[itsme1234]

2000 apps might be a lot (never used that many on all platforms) or nothing at all (my old Sony C702 had at some point more than 3500 apps available and it wasn't even really a smartphone). Let me ask you for example if there is any application similar to Garmin Mobile XT or iGo/Amigo with nice (off-line) routable vector maps from most of the world? Or some chess program that can compete at least with a 5-8 years old Pocket Fritz 2 ? What about fring or skype? Or something similar to Pocket Stars?
Or to put it simply: how many apps from those 2000 are as far as complexity goes above iFart or similar?

Re:No surprise.

[Hydian]

The lack of a card slot is a bad design choice, but it doesn't have the memory limitations that the other smart phones have either. It has twice the RAM of the iPhone 3GS and Droid. The 16GB of storage can be limiting, but that is still quite a bit. On the positive side, the mobile hotspot feature is really awesome and no other phone can do it right now and the OS is much friendlier.

As far as there being no GSM version for a long time...The iPhone has been exclusive with a carrier for a while now too. That's common practice...Blackberry does the same thing with their devices. AT&T will have their hardware available in a couple of weeks and GSM versions have been available in Europe for quite a while now.

The Palm does have fewer native WebOS apps right now (if you include PalmOS apps, it is up there with the iPhone except with a higher ratio of useful apps, but classic is a clunky way to run apps), but the iPhone didn't have its current 10,000 fart simulation apps in its first year either. Palm is missing some WebOS apps that it needs to get in order to be a top contender, but the iPhone and Android don't have all of the apps that people need either, if you can even find them after wading through all of the garbage. If Palm (or whoever buys them) can keep the platform above water long enough to get it onto all of the carriers and they start to market it, the apps will come.

Re:No surprise.

[COMON$]

Umm the market gave palm a fair shake, well over a decade. The Palm Pixi and Pre, while great devices are too little too late. Palm was the bad ass in the market that thought if they didnt change what was selling then they would stay the bad ass. Luckily, markets quickly make mince meat of the lack of ingenuity in a company. Palm should be dominating the marketplace but they underestimated the value of eyecandy and the importance of multimedia capabilities in their devices.

Re:No surprise.

[damn_registrars]

My T-Mobile phone rolls right over to AT&T's network when I leave T-Mobile's coverage zone in Hampton Roads

Where I live the AT&T coverage is marginally better, however I have yet to own a phone that can handle the switch during a call.

Re:No surprise.

[UnknowingFool]

There's a difference between need and want. Technically speaking you and other customers don't need an app store. However most consumers want one. Look at the iPod. Really it didn't need a music store. But Apple realized its customers wanted one so that they could get their music easier. It is all about catering to your customers. Now most iPhone consumers can't write their own java code. And they don't want to learn coding. They want to go to a UI pick what they want, pay, their money and get it.

Re:No surprise.

[AvitarX]

Good for voice, but expensive if you use it for data.

Re:No surprise.

[confused one]

Well that's true. When I have transitioned from T-Mobile to AT&T the phones drop the call. They all try to hang onto the T-Mobile network until all contact is lost with the tower, which happens after voice communication is no longer possible. Fortunately for me (based on my typical routes) I have a 4 mile wide river that tends to delineate the area where there's coverage or not. The only time I seem to have problems is when I'm close to the shore and the phone can still "see" towers across the river.

Re:No surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

WebOS may not have an app store that rivals the iPhone's, but it is a linux-based mobile platform with a respectably-sized homebrew community with it's own software repositories for the Pre and the Pixie.

Re:No surprise.

[jpcarter]

The app-store makes things dead simple.

I don't think the target audience of the iPhone has never seen a piece of java code.

The change from WinMo 6.5 to Windows Phone 7 seems to indicate the walled-garden being where manufacturers are going (for better or worse).

Re:No surprise.

[Hatta]

General purpose computers do have app-stores. Or as they're more generally called, repositories. They're fantastic. Apt-get on a phone would be beautiful.

Re:No surprise.

[Late Adopter]

You don't need an app store, but you need people to write software for it. There's too many platforms out there, and for non-enterprise consumer cell-phones, Palm is a third-run in the market for apps, at best.

It would be nice if we could standardize on something a la the web, so it didn't have to be "android apps vs. ipod-os apps vs. web-os apps"... but here we are right now, and that's killing the Pre.

Re:No surprise.

[Martin Blank]

There is a lack of some types of apps, but it's not as if the entire app store has no merit. Most of the content of all of the app stores is trivial. It's possible that the overwhelming majority is like that. But there are definitely exceptions to that, and some of them are available on WebOS. Here are a few examples:
  - X-Plane (flight simulator series with several forms of it)
  - Need for Speed
  - Epocrates (Medical reference program)
  - TimeTracker (project-coordinated time tracking by GPS location and/or SSID)
  - Graphing Calculator

There are also several good fitness tracking apps, some apps for geocaching, and some reasonably good sudoku and crossword apps. I couldn't tell you how good the chess apps are, as I'm not very good at the game.

I haven't seen any stand-alone GPS navigation apps, though it wouldn't be hard to put one together, I think. Google Maps does not (yet) have turn-by-turn, though Sprint's Navigation app is fairly decent and well-integrated (though requires a data connection).

Re:No surprise.

[Foolhardy]

The Nokia N900's OS, Maemo 5, is based on Debian and uses apt as its package manager. You can add http://repository.maemo.org/extras/ and related repositories right in the application manager UI (which is just a fancy interface for apt). The OS updates can even be done with apt-get dist-upgrade. You can even install a chrooted real Debian environment and pull random packages from the Debian repositories. And yes, pulling stuff off of apt-get is beautiful.

Re:No surprise.

[X0563511]

This.
Also this.

That is why I love my Pre so much. Fuck Apple.

Re:No surprise.

[Macrat]

Greetings fellowRat.

Re:No surprise.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

i was going to say, Egghead, CompUSA, and Babbages, but we all know what happened to THOSE...

Too bad.

[saihung]

I owned four different Palm machines and was looking forward to a GSM version of the Pre. Now that they finally have something worth saving again, hopefully they'll live to fight another day.

Re:Too bad.

[davidbrit2]

Same here. I am/was seriously considering a Pre Plus when it lands on AT&T, allegedly in a few months. The OS looks fantastic.

Sad

[jsse]

One of their original flagship 'Pilot 5000' is my first PDA, and people can see the immense potential in it - a lightweight programmable widget. Few months after its first launch a guy called Adams set up a website to share homebrew Pilot's applications and games around the world, the era of Palm had since begun. (Regardless of million hits daily, Adams fold his website after marriage, by his wife's order. He should really regret it by now)

Palm was actually doing good until one day some pinheads in the management decided that sales is more important than technology advancement. It's amazing to see history repeated itself over and over again in tech world.

Another good line of products ruined by great management decision. Sad, really sad.

Re:Sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Good business can carry crap tech, even the best tech can't correct for even mediocre business.

Sad, but that's how it rolls

Re:Sad

[conark]

i completely agree with your sentiments on management ruining great products. i think technologists need to step up to the plate more often and take complete ownership of technology rather than let business people push them around.

Re:Sad

[Phat_Tony]

It's always sad to see a once-great company die, but it's especially sad with Palm right now because they came so close to turning things back around at the last minute, which is rarely the case for long-dying companies. The writing had been on the wall for Palm since before the iPhone even came out, and the mere existence of the iPhone looked like the last nail in the coffin for Palm. Then, stunningly, when it seemed like they'd lost their pulse, Palm come out with an entirely new operating system with some really compelling aspects on a brand new competitive hardware platform. If they'd had a little more capital left to keep up a few rounds of hardware and software revisions, maybe they could still make it. Also, the Pre alone might have saved them if they weren't in one of the fastest-evolving, most competitive consumer electronics markets there's ever been, with the iPhone, Android OS, HTC Hero, Motorola Droid, Blackberry Storm2, etc.

I still use a Sony Clie PEG-N710C running PalmOS for word-processing on the go. No current smartphone can compete with its docking and folding Stowaway keyboard, its reflective color TFT screen that I can see in direct sunlight at the park or on the beach, Documents to Go to seamlessly sync any word processing documents back and forth with my computer, and the ability to mount its Memory Stick as an external drive via a USB cable with any computer so I can copy my files to others on the go. Of course, it would get killed by modern devices on nearly any other task, but for ultra-portable word processing, it still kills anything else I've found.

Re:Sad

[phantomfive]

Another good line of products ruined by great management decision. Sad, really sad.

Remember that next time anyone complains that CxOs are overpaid. Good ones really are worth their money (yeah, the bad ones really aren't, but you can say the same about engineers).

Re:Sad

[DrVxD]

That's worth a +1 Insightful if ever a post was...

Re:Sad

[timeOday]

Glad you should mention the Clie, since it brings in both Sony and Palm, maybe the two biggest should-have-beens of this decade. In 2004 or so I got this Clie TH55. It had the same slate design the iPhone would later use to storm the market. The Clie had a big, high-res screen (relatively); had wifi, a camera. Everything you needed to get really creative making apps. (It wasn't a cellphone, then again neither is the iPhone touch).

Sadly, the whole thing was let down terrible by the outdated Palm OS. All the advanced hardware was only (poorly) supported by Sony extensions IIRC. I tried to get into developing for it but couldn't get the tools. Finally, my workplace banned PalmOS devices alltogether because they didn't have sufficient built-in security features. And we had been buying a lot of Palms just 5 or so years previous.

Re:Sad

[fermion]

I replaced my newton with a Palm V. Good machine. I don't really know why I did not replace it with the m500, except I just got tired of the stand alone PDA concept. I suppose if they had released a Treo a few years earlier and managed to work with a major carrier, I would have bought one.

To think of it, the problem might be interoperability. Every one wants their proprietary standard for lock in. This works until the fickle consumer wants to buy the latest thing, or needs a specific feature. If a phone is not Exchange compatible, people don't want it. Or people are so scared of being not compatible with their other stuff, if it does not have the right brand on it they won't use it. Google does mostly use open standards, so it will work with most stuff, but people will still buy a google phone thinking the others will not work with gmail. Palm has a hard time competing in this environment, even if their stuff is better.

only a matter of time

[heatharensen]

Lots of great memories Palm, though none recently

Re:only a matter of time

[v1]

Lots of great memories Palm, though none recently

Just another case of a manufacturer that failed to keep innovating. Blackberries and iPod touches took them out of the handheld data market, and there are currently way too many equal and better smartphones out there today. Palm became irrelevant about 2 years ago. The only angle they could possibly have used at this point was customer service, and unfortunately for Palm, they actually started at the bottom of that pile and stayed there. On that note I'd say "good riddance". Complete lack of product support made me a one-unit-customer.

I certainly won't miss them. They neither offered a good product nor pushed the industry in the right direction.

Damn it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just picked up a Palm Pre for Verizon *yesterday*. I was wondering why Verizon was basically giving these away... Now I know.

I (speculate/hope/hope-not) Apple might scoop in and buy them under HTC at the last minute. Palm has a nice portfolio of mobile technology patents, and letting HTC have them (besides making Apple-HTC lawsuit difficult) could be very damaging for them.

Re:Damn it!

[webheaded]

So you think Apple SHOULD be able to sue HTC into the ground for ridiculous patents? Really? I'd think it was actually a GOOD thing if HTC could get a leg up on all of that. To have a patent portfolio to fire right back at Apple would work out well for everyone. I don't want to see HTC sued over a bunch of stupid patents and I don't think HTC having their own to keep Apple at bay is going to damage anyone. Apple is bad enough about these things as it is...they don't need more patents to get sue happy with.

I honestly can't believe I just read that. What is wrong with you?

Re:Damn it!

[metamatic]

Yeah, I'd like to see Google or HTC buy Palm in order to get a patent portfolio capable of fending off Apple...

WebOS actually looks great

[melted]

I'd say it looks better than iPhone OS, and that says something. I hope HTC (or Lenovo, or someone else competent) buys them (and their substantial patent portfolio) and makes an iPad competitor based on WebOS, just to piss off Apple. Steve Jobs will be livid -- any lawsuit will only bring an equal and opposite countersuit, and the software is Apple quality (indeed, much of it was written by ex-Apple engineers and designed by ex-Apple designers), which makes it twice as painful.

Re:WebOS actually looks great

[failedlogic]

The tentativeness of this 'news' seems important. Goes up on a Sunday before markets open. I'd hate to say it, I wouldn't put it past a competitor to drop a rumor like this as a kick in the nuts.

The iPad competitor based on WebOS has me chuckling and dreaming of the possibilities. Steve will be so livid to see this happen I'll be LOL'ing.

Its too bad some cell phones are locked down so much. If price for WebOS wouldn't be so bloody high, would make a really nice project to open source.

Re:WebOS actually looks great

[SpeedyG5]

Sounds like you have Apple issues, teenaged windows angst or something Let me get this straight, you want them to make and iPad competitor "just to piss off Apple"? I'd imagine that any company that would do this would be out of business in short order, falling to keep their focus about where its going and what's its producing. Your eagerness sounds almost giddy, like a child that is gonna show your daddy how life is really done, before he has a clue. Why this is marked '4 interesting' is astonishing, is it that it brings up the genius idea that HTC or Lenovo should by them?

Re:WebOS actually looks great

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, he's like totally serious. You're just jealous because you didn't think of if first, you petulant child. Now grow up already! ;-p

Re:WebOS actually looks great

[ProppaT]

WebOS is by far the best mobile OS on the market. It's still young and still has its problems, but the GUI is as beautiful as it is useful. The "type anything anywhere" concept is beautiful. You want to set an alarm and can't remember that you do that in the clock ap and you don't remember where it is? That's fine...type in alarm from anywhere in the UI and it'll show you the clock icon. It handles multitasking well, looks miles better than anything else on the market, and the best part....there's a backdoor purposely left in for us nerd types to install unapproved apps, overclock the processor, etc. Palm did everything right with WebOS except the marketing.

My first choice for a purchaser would be HTC. They could take their form factors they were designing for Windows Mobile phones, dump WebOS on it, and have market penetration nearly over night. They're going to have to have new designs/concepts for WM7 soon anyway. Either way, there's going to be a bidding war for Palm because of all the patents they hold. The WORST possible thing that could happen would be Apple buying them for the patents and dissolving the software.

Re:WebOS actually looks great

[TheRaven64]

You know what's really depressing about your post? These 'amazing' features that you describe were present on the Newton 15 years ago. Unfortunately, Apple takes NIH to extremes and won't use something invented here but in a different building, so the iPhone lacks them all.

Re:WebOS actually looks great

[ProppaT]

Yeah, but you're talking about Apple, not Apple. Two distinctly different companies. Apple was a fantastic company that looked to do interesting new things and push concepts and technology. Apple is a company that is so in love with their own vision that they purposely leave out important features if they get in the way of this vision. Palm is/was a great company because they've always had a vision and always pushed the vision, but they've always been realistic about their limitations and mixed a little bit of Apple A with a little bit of Apple B.

But you're absolutely right, Job's has a major NIH issue and it's honestly a shame.

Re:WebOS actually looks great

[quadrox]

There is no reason why good business and pissing off apple should not go hand in hand. Would be killing two birds with one stone, and I'd be all for it.

Not that I hate apple per se, I like their goal oriented non-compromising approach to developing a product and wish more companies would adopt it. I just don't like their goals very much.

Re:WebOS actually looks great

[Anonymous Coward]

You want to set an alarm and can't remember that you do that in the clock ap and you don't remember where it is? That's fine...type in alarm from anywhere in the UI and it'll show you the clock icon

I must not understand the type of device this runs on, because that sounds great for a toy and horrible for a portable computer (e.g., iPhone). Unless your explanation is inaccurate. Is there a persistent search bar area in it, and you mean you can type in to that regardless of what application or part of the OS display that you're in?

Re:WebOS actually looks great

[pauljlucas]

Job's [sic] has a major NIH issue and it's honestly a shame.

Yeah, it's a shame he never borrowed ideas from Xerox.

Re:WebOS actually looks great

[Anonymous Coward]

But you're absolutely right, Job's has a major NIH issue and it's honestly a shame.

Doesn't what happen with that is anything not invented at Apple is claimed to be invented at Apple when a device using it gets released?

Re:WebOS actually looks great

[Anonymous Coward]

http://opensource.palm.com/packages.html

WebOS is open source

Re:WebOS actually looks great

[snowwrestler]

Yeah, it's a shame he never borrowed ideas from Xerox.

Or Konqueror, or Unix, or Adobe, or Macromedia, or SoundJam, or Tony Fadell, or Fingerworks. And it's too bad Apple never thought to outsource their manufacturing to leverage the PC components designed and built by other companies like Samsung, Seagate, Western Digital, Nvidia, ATI, Intel, etc.

Yeah, it's a shame Apple has insisted on inventing everything themselves.

Re:WebOS actually looks great

[metamatic]

Palm did everything right with WebOS except the marketing.

They failed to make a GSM version of their phones available. That's a bit more than a mere marketing failure. It meant that they limited their customer base to the US only; and worse, to those prepared to use the bottom-ranked (for customer satisfaction) mobile network in the US.

If they'd just sold unlocked GSM Pres from day 1, there's a good chance I'd have considered buying one; but at this stage, the platform is starting to smell funny and has vultures circling overhead.

Re:WebOS actually looks great

[Anonymous Coward]

Jef Raskin was the visionary behind Apple's GUI. Jobs took over the Macintosh project when the Lisa people told him he can't play. So yeah, Jobs never borrowed ideas from Xerox. (For that matter, Raskin's publications on ergonomic user interfaces predate PARC's founding, so it's hard to say what was explicitly copied and what was just similar.)

Too bad

[frist]

That's a shame, the Palm Pre really is a nice phone, I prefer it to the iPhone. WebOS is nicer, and the native SDK is out now. The browsing experience was comparable when I compared iphone to pre. And it has a real keyboard that pops out. They totally blew the ads though, those horrible TV ads w/the weird chick going "oh wait, I just did that" - most likely alienated many potential customers. I know the freaked me out.

Re:Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

And it has a real keyboard that pops out.

Yeah, I heard they had some hardware problems.

Re:Too bad

[Orange Crush]

Conceptually, yes, it was a great phone. In the real world, the build quality was terrible and had a very high failure rate. This is why I'm in love with the idea of HTC + Palm. HTC made some of the best Palms of old, and I'd love to see the next iteration of Palm Pre built by HTC.

more than 3 is chaos

[nohumor]

buy out of palm will be great move if it leads to consolidation of mobile OSes. as of now, we have OS X, android, symbian, winmo, blackberry, webOS, etc... typically most industry have 3 big guys, that is the case for desktop too - win, mac, linux. i think blackberry should buy out palm. blackberry makes solid devices but lack the gee-whiz factor which webOS and ex-apple employees at palm can bring. nokia in turn should buy out blackberry to create a platform which is solid, functional and cool.

Re:more than 3 is chaos

[SpeedyDX]

Then HTC should buy out Nokia to combine great touchscreen hardware with a solid/cool/functional platform, and then LG should buy out HTC and put cool blinking lights and win back the teenage girl market. But by then the phone would have lost their business market so they would have to spin off their business-oriented smart phone division (formerly Blackberry). Of course, former Nokia employees would be pissed that LG is creating flip phones and using touchscreens so they all rage quit and form their own phone company that focuses on simple-to-use candy-bar and slider phones. Also because of the flip phone format, touchscreen user-friendliness would be rendered nearly useless, so LG would spin off their touch division (formerly HTC).

Are we done speculating now?

Re:more than 3 is chaos

[frist]

Blackberry just bought QNX, they don't need WebOS.

All of my Palm is up for sale too!

[hacker]

What a coincidence... 10+ years of my collected Palm gadgets are up for sale too.. make me an offer :)

Re:All of my Palm is up for sale too!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a sweet couch man, I'll give you £35 for it!

the one in the /. icon

[perryizgr8]

i have it with me. kept in my old drawer. even though its b/w touchscreen is old, and the cpu is 21Mhz, it was still very good. it had all the customizability my e71 has and had a very painless ui. indeed, it was better than the s60 ui in 5800.
i have never used the pre because its cdma, there's no decent cdma network here. and of course palm did not launch it outside the us.

Palm don't want my money

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in a rich country in Europe. Palm will not take my money to buy a Pre, over a year after its introduction.

I hope Palm will serve as an example to companies: If you introduce a product whose sales are uncertain, you need to sell it worldwide as soon as possible, otherwise you are just turning down peoples money.

Palm: Great Engineers, Rubbish Marketeers.

Re:Palm don't want my money

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in a rich country in Europe

What sort of idiot talks like this?

Re:Palm don't want my money

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in a rich country in Europe. Palm will not take my money to buy a Pre, over a year after its introduction.

Agreed, that's an absurd!
I'm unable no find Pre anywhere in Greece. It seems that there are no signs of it neither in Portugal nor in Ireland.

Re:Palm don't want my money

[0ld_d0g]

Apparently a rich idiot ! :P

Re:Palm don't want my money

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in a European country where people have a high disposable income to spend on trivial things like smartphones.
I stated that to support my argument.

Your post, however, contains no argument, nothing.

Idiot.

Re:Palm don't want my money

[fishthegeek]

I am a T-Mobile subscriber in the U.S. and Palm wouldn't take my money either. I decided shortly after getting a G1 that I'd keep it until there was an unlocked Pre-Plus that supported T-Mobile 3G freqs. That magical device never appeared so I purchased an N1.

Re:Palm don't want my money

[Anonymous Coward]

His argument was that it's a pretty hoity-toity thing to say.

It was, and you looked dumb for saying it. There isn't really any debate there.

Re:Palm don't want my money

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me apologize for some of the people here in the US. There is a segment of our population that has a very small world view. They view anything outside of the US as 3rd world almost. Europe as being some sort of socialist nightmare and so on and so forth.

Some of us are doing our best to fight this very narrow and quite possibly damaging effects to our society but with the right wing propaganda machine going at full blast it's an uphill battle.

Re:Palm don't want my money

[Anonymous Coward]

The GSM versions are set for release later this year on AT&T

Re:Palm don't want my money

[Anonymous Coward]

I made a point relevant to TFA. As an inherent part of making my point, I stated the fact that my country is rich.

You, on the other hand, are an idiot troll with nothing to say.

Result: +5 for me, 0 for you. No debate there.

Re:Palm don't want my money

[Anonymous Coward]

Europeans are too stupid to understand subtle English humor.

HTC

[anarche]

So HTC could pick up Palm, have their own (decent) OS and stop manufacturing for Android?

Android could be in trouble without HTC, especially down here in Oz, since AFAIK the only android phones atm are the Magic and Desire (coming soon)...

Re:HTC

[shutdown -p now]

Why would HTC want to drop the (free) Android, which already has a strong following in its application store, in favor of WebOS?

Re:HTC

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think Android is at any risk of being "in trouble" anytime soon, and I don't think HTC would stop making Android devices if they came out with a WebOS phone. They'd probably want to hedge their bets in case Android becomes too much of a commodity, or on the off chance that WebOS actually takes off.

Re:HTC

[Hognoxious]

Hedging their bets? I get the impression[1] Android is a bit of a moving target and Google aren't doing a great deal to standardize it. That kind of thing makes developers nervous.

[1] which may or not be reliable. I read slashdot, after all.

Re:HTC

[RMH101]

HTC would own Palm's IP, which appears to be strong enough to ward off Apple - as Apple are suing HTC for features in Android (huh?) currently, this would both strengthen their hand with Apple, and with Google and the Open Handset Alliance, and also give them a choice of going HTC-WebOS, using Android, or Windows Phone 7 (which now you can't skin it removes HTC's Sense UI)

Re:HTC

[Anonymous Coward]

Doubtful. If anything, I'd see HTC possibly replacing WinMo with WebOS, while hedging by keeping Android handsets.

Re:HTC

[brock bitumen]

the value in palm is more in their existing relationships to us cell companies than anything else. How many hardware companies are there that can boast a foothold in the market? Seriously you can count them on one hand.

Re:HTC

[Hadlock]

That's assuming HTC thinks they can do a better job of selling WebOS/the Palm brand better than Palm has been able to do. Palm has managed to keep their head above water far longer than anyone thought they would, but as a managed brand name, I doubt HTC would/could give Palm the love it needs to extract the value the paid for the brand. In the long run, buying the Palm brand is going to the the albatross around the neck of whoever buys them, much like TimeWarner buying AOL, or Yahoo buying Broadcast.com.
 
That's not to say a venture capitalist company like the one who bought Chrysler will come along with some sort of pump-n-dump strategy to float the brand another couple of years. This is likely what Palm is hoping for at this point.

Re:HTC

[RMH101]

YOu're kidding, right? At, what, a billion dollars, it'd make sense for HTC to buy Palm, bin WebOS, and acquire all their IP. Patent law is patent war - Apple has noticeably *not* gone after Palm about multitouch etc - they've gone after Google/HTC/Android. Apple knows that Palm has enough patents to tie Apple up in mutually-assured destruction for years.
HTC could buy Palm, licence certain IP to Google / the OHSA and so free Android from any legal mither from Apple.
Personally, I'd love to see WebOS get extended - I think it's great, however I doubt there's room for 3 big app-store ecosystems in the market, soon to be 4 with Windows Phone 7. I think it more likely that HTC might buy them for the reason above, and then skin Android using WebOS stuff, thus differentiating their product from the other OHSA Android phones.

Re:HTC

[Hadlock]

You can buy a heck of a lot of lawyers and corporate blackmail artists for a billion dollars! No, let me rephrase that. A BILLION DOLLARS! A BILLION!
 
You can hire almost 2000 IP lawyers at $250/hr full time for a year for that amount of money. You could employ the entire Dominican Republic for a year with that kind of money! And you're saying A BILLION DOLLARS is the best way to fight, at most, a $100 million dollar ($100 million stretched over a period of 10 years) lawsuit battle? The WebOS licencing revenue isn't worth hardly anything. They'd be a niche player, at best, under HTC.

Re:HTC

[RMH101]

Sure, you can buy lawyers, but you can't as readily buy a particular verdict. Palm's portfolio of patents is very, very strong. See http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/09/editorial-htc-and-palm-should-get-hitched-and-make-beautiful-ba/ for Engadget's take on it. At $870m, they'd be getting a lot for their money.

Re:HTC

[Hadlock]

I will eat my hat (signed by Cowboy Neal!) if HTC buys them for anywhere near the asking price of $870 million dollars mentioned in that article.

Re:HTC

[mjwx]

So HTC could pick up Palm, have their own (decent) OS and stop manufacturing for Android?

But that would never happen. HTC is heavily invested in Android as it is in WinMo. If anything Web OS would become a third offering.

But what is likely to happen is that HTC will kill off WebOS. A lot of people don't want to admit that WebOS was stillborn. It was a series of bad design decisions tied together with a pretty front end and covered up with a lot of hype and marketing. I predicted that WebOS would be the disappointment of the year when it was released and I'm certain all 300 people in the UK who bought the Pre would disagree with me. WebOS needs to die, HTC is going to continue with Android and WinMo which are actually advancing.

Besides this, I think Lenovo is in a better position to snap Palm up. Whilst HTC are making a profit, they haven't exactly had a smashing last few quarters thanks to the GFC.

Android could be in trouble without HTC, especially down here in Oz, since AFAIK the only android phones atm are the Magic and Desire (coming soon)...

Opt-arse are selling the low end Motorola's, the Dext and the Backflip. With Helstra selling the Desire and VHA looking at the Nexus One it looks like all Aussie carriers will get decent Android phones although why no-one has looked at the Milestone is beyond me.

It's dead for a reason.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think BeOS stil has a relevance today, as it beats the pants off any current OS in respnsiveness to The User: any command/mouseclick has the highest priority, file copy be damned. I have tested with many current OSes (even OS X fails this test) start copying a huge file, and see if responsiveness is affected at all. With BeOS, it wasn't - not even the slightest. The file would get copied a few secconds later, if I interact a lot with the UI, but so fucking what?

That's it? So what?

How many applications are available for it?

And how many jobs are out there for it?

Any proprietary software on it that can't be moved to OSX or something?

And hardware support? Does it support modern hardware?

The to all the above is 'no'.

BeOS is dead for a reason.

Re:It's dead for a reason.

[Stormwatch]

BeOS is dead for a reason.

Yes, and the reason is: Microsoft bullied PC makers so they would not sell computers with any other OS. See here.

People hate Microsoft for a reason.

Re:It's dead for a reason.

[aitikin]

Any proprietary software on it that can't be moved to OSX or something?

The to all the above is 'no'.

Yeah, RADAR.

And if it's so easy to port proprietary software from Be to OS X or something as you say, than wouldn't that make it reasonably easy to do the opposite?

Re:It's dead for a reason.

[mdwh2]

OS X was new, not too long ago, too. Good thing for you that people didn't have the same attitude there. (It's funny how Apple fans love to say how they're being different, but look down upon anything that's different to them - just look at the vile that gets spouted every once in a blue moon there's an Amiga story.)

If the worst happens, they could just stick the BeOS name on a new OS, which is what happened to Mac, anyway.

Re:It's dead for a reason.

[Nimey]

No, it's because the BeOS management got greedy when Apple offered to buy the company out. AIUI, Apple gave a fairly generous offer, but at the last minute Be mgt wanted another 20 million, so Apple told them to fuck off & bought NeXT instead.

NeXT, helmed by Steve Jobs, had a Unix-like operating system that became Mac OS X.

Re:It's dead for a reason.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac OS X essentially IS NeXT. Ever notice all the NS* prefixes on Cocoa API's?

Re:It's dead for a reason.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and the reason is: Microsoft bullied PC makers so they would not sell computers with any other OS. See here. [theregister.co.uk]

Yes, for the same reason that Linux is dead.
Oh wait...

Re:It's dead for a reason.

[mdwh2]

Slagging off alternative operating systems - insightful.

Pointing out the same applies to Apple - flamebait. Yep, that says it all about this place these days.

Nintendo?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Nintendo should be looking into the mobile space and this would be a fantastic time to jump in!

With the iPhone and Android devices starting to gain the possibility (and backing) of good handheld games Nintendo might be in trouble in a couple of years. Nintendo does have a different market, but I wonder how much of that market will pass up a little bit of extra gaming features in return for a fully functioning phone as well.

Anyone up for a Nintendo 3G3DS?

Chris

Re:Nintendo?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Why!? Nintendo makes games and consoles, not cell phones. I'm not sure how well a Nintendo cell phone would do in Nintendo's corporate culture.

(However, if they DO, I'm buying one and replacing my iPhone. If it's any good I'm buying two.)

I thought U2 had a stake

[cyberzephyr]

I thought the band U2 had a stake in Palm?

Re:I thought U2 had a stake

[santax]

Don't know why you are being mod funny. The investment firm of Bono (elevation -something) actually has put a lot of money in Palm. http://www.benzinga.com/general/193399/bono-named-worst-investor-palm. Seems that elevation is quite relative!

Re:I thought U2 had a stake

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, you just signed off a bunch of sales there.
Anything that U2 or Bono is attached to is obvious trash, just by association.

Re:I thought U2 had a stake

[KZigurs]

Just a quick slip of a sign. Of securities grading.
Nothing to worry about, just a bloody sunday.

Re:I thought U2 had a stake

[santax]

Wheels still spinning but upside down? :')

Insider Trading ?

[BlueTrin]

The stock started to rise last week on Wednesday. Luck or insider trading ?

Re:Insider Trading ?

[RMH101]

They publicised their earnings projections, it was pretty bloody obvious that they were ripe for purchase

Re:Insider Trading ?

[BlueTrin]

I am not sure, people have been saying this for quite a long time now.

By the way, is there any website publishing calendars of such events (publication of projections, board meetings and decisions, ...)

Obituary for BeOS

[DNS-and-BIND]

"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it."
-- Jean-Louis Gassée, CEO Be, Inc.

Yes but...

[tjstork]

They were still managing to sell quite a few copies. Be could have made a business out of distributing and selling operating systems online. Indeed, that's really the only way Linux got distributed. I thought they were doing a good job of it too.

Re:Yes but...

[Stormwatch]

Quite different situations, especially the timing.

BeOS was aimed at the home desktop, and it was a boxed product. I recall great reviews, it could have carved a niche for itself if it wasn't for Microsoft's sabotage.

Linux, on the other hand, found a home in servers and appliances, where Microsoft was irrelevant, before coming for the desktop market. Also, it was freely distributable. Of course, if you manage a server, you have a pretty good connection; if Be had tried to do the same, home users had dial-up back then... it'd take ages to download a whole OS this way, and CD burners were not widely deployed.

The flipside of the coin.

[tjstork]

The problem with BeOS was that that which made it sweet also made it difficult to program. In Windows and other STA modelled applications, you don't have to worry about your application being pre-empted within the context of a message. BeOS would do that, which is why it was so responsive and so scalable. If you did the cheesy thing and put a locking mechanism around the body of your message handlers, you would effectively cripple what the OS could do with your application and essentially "Windowsify" it.

Palm doesn't own it anymore.

[bornagainpenguin]

AFAIK, Palm still owns BeOS.

No, that would be ACCESS who own the BeOS code base and who have already blessed the Haiku developers with permission to distribute the BeBook and other assorted documentation. The BeOS code is safe. The Haiku clean room implementation will make it easier to modernize the base for R2 once full BeOS compatibility is reached.

--bornagainpenguin

Troll!? Crap, was expecting the funny mod :(

[Anonymous Coward]

..Alas, a cold hearted mod dashed those hopes. *goes and cries*

Understatement of the week

[damn_registrars]

From the summary:

Palm Inc., creator of the Pre smartphone

A few (million) people own devices that Palm made prior to the Pre...

Re:Understatement of the week

[confused one]

Yes, but, it's the main product, currently on the market, that people can associate with them.

Re:Understatement of the week

[Chysn]

"Palm, Inc., creator of the Palm VII PDA" would have been better?

Re:Understatement of the week

[Yamata no Orochi]

I'm not sure you know what 'understatement' means.

Not an application problem

[Anonymous Coward]

You are wrong.

The problem is that the disk I/O priority in Windows is done in a (presumably) FIFO kind of way, regardless of which application and thread is performing the request. So when Explorer requests 5 x 10 KB files (the icons for the start menu items) from disk, it has to wait 5-10 seconds before Windows finally delivers because 10 other services currently booting are loading DLLs.

Suggesting that Explorer should instead have already loaded the icons into memory will not work simply because the user STILL has to wait 10 seconds extra before he can click his start menu. Not to mention the problem of how deep you want to load icons in the start menu tree. Even if it loaded them all it would still not help you because when you then selected your application to boot, that process would now need to load 10 megabytes of executable data and that too would be delayed by the other processes doing disk I/O.

Sadly when faced with this problem Microsoft chose to first ignore it for 10 years. Then they made the hack called Superfetch in Windows Vista. It attempts to solve the problem by actively loading all DLLs into memory and thereby reducing the amount of I/O requests that require actual disk access, hiding the problem somewhat in certain situations. Unfortunately that tactic still doesn't work when you start your file copy or when Windows Search decides to start scanning your disk in the background or if you do a simple file copy.

I have an USB disk that can stall Windows 7's I/O so badly that if I start copying large movie files to it, any other I/O request can end up being delayed for over 30 seconds! And these other requests were not even intended for the USB drive but my primary Velociraptor SATA disk. Clearly there is something in kernel space that could benefit from some serious improvements. But hey, at least we got ribbons in MS Paint in this release. ;)

I do agree that resurrecting BeOS for this feature alone is fairly pointless when one could simply just improve the I/O code in the kernels used today. Too bad it requires someone at Microsoft to do it.

Re:Not an application problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad it requires someone at Microsoft to do it.

La la la... (fingers in ears)... No other OS on earth exists but Windows... la la la...

What a pathetic little world you live in.

Kinda sorta sad

[flaptrap]

Palm had a niche market in PDAs and always the genius gap in technology; there are other CTOs whose knowledge of engineering is second-hand at best, but at least they make sure the products have no apparent flaws. With Palm, it kinda sorta works, it ships.

This approach does not kinda sorta work when you're in competition with the entire world trying to make money off of cell phones - or when you design in a slide out keyboard that's way too small because it kinda sorta looks like the earlier models.

Plus I don't need a cell phone for a little while yet and my PalmOS PDAs still work okay and I don't feel like learning another set of APIs just right now. But hang in there, Palm.

So its their fault!

[mrwolf007]

You put stakes into VAMPIRES, not Palm.
Poor Palm.

I moved to the Droid

[Dr. Manhattan]

I've been a Palm user for close to a decade (Palm IIIxe, Handera 330, Treo 650), and it's sad to see Palm go. The IIIxe has 8MB RAM and a 16MHz CPU, but it's still responsive and usable (and the batteries last for no trace of weeks). Palm knew what the heck they were doing, technically. The Treo didn't have true multitasking, but the actual UI layout was very carefully thought out and usable. But I got a Droid a couple weeks ago and I'm not looking back. Migrating my data to either Android or WebOS would be about the same, and the Droid had better specs from my perspective and it just seems like

My bid...

[Anonymous Coward]

$5 and series 1-6 of Garbage Pail Kids.

the GUI /is/ the OS

[Anonymous Coward]

But that doesn't make an OS, that makes a GUI on top of an OS.

From my aunt's perspective, the GUI is the OS. No one gives a flying fuck about anything else except the geeks.

It's the same reason why people type "facebook login" in the search box, and do not put "facebook.com" in the address bar.

Re:the GUI /is/ the OS

[ledow]

And if you read my post, you'll find we agree... the original comment was about whether BeOS did this any better than any other OS. Nobody cares what the OS is so long as they can click their damn icons when they see them on the screen.

Re:the GUI /is/ the OS

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried this with a 2 GB file over a wireless connection, and I see no delay in OS X. How does one reproduce this issue in OS X?

Motorola should buy them.

[Old97]

Motorola has always made crappy software for cell phones. If they bought Palm they'd have some first rate software development they could leverage. Somebody whose big in hardware but struggling with software should buy them. Android is not going to be a good differentiator by itself. You still need to have good software skills. Compare HTC's Android UI with the Droid. I'll take HTC's work over Motorola's any day. Apparently Apple agrees which is why they are suing them.

Re:Motorola should buy them.

[StayFrosty]

Compare HTC's Android UI with the Droid. I'll take HTC's work over Motorola's any day. Apparently Apple agrees which is why they are suing them.

Actually, the Droid is running the stock Android UI without any modification. Motorola's other Android phones (The Cliq, etc..) use Motorola's MOTOBLUR UI extensions. HTC's phones use the Coverflow UI extensions.

You are correct though in that Motorola's software is generally terrible.

Re:Motorola should buy them.

[WiiVault]

Amen. Non-Android Motorola's like the have the worst GUI ever imagined, laggy and ugly. Oh and don't get me started with "Motoblur". I think Nokia could learn a thing or two about UI from Palm too. Symbian is very outdated in its look and feel. And their other OS's whose name seems in flux is nice, but DOA against a better known product like Android.

Apple ignoring flash (no pun intended)

[DJRumpy]

You seem to equate {something_new = assumed_goodness} without reasoning that sometimes you don't have to put something new in just because it's 'new'. Apple has actually been good about adding useful features, while ignoring flash (no pun intended). If a new idea make sense, or offers potential, then yes, but just tossing something in because it's the latest fad doesn't make much sense. I would also argue that the changes Apple has done to the iPhone are a bit more than cosmetic. The app store wasn't available until v2.0. Wireless-G wasn't available on the 1st gen. Copy/Paste. MMS. These were lacking on the initial hardware or software. Enough folks clamored for them that Apple included them. Same with Multitasking outside of the core apps, which will show up in v4.0.

A cosmetic change is just for show with no real world usefulness. These are not cosmetic as they are meaningful and useful to some portions of the iPhone population.

Re:I moved to the Droid

[perryizgr8]

i looked at my old palm. Actually its not palm. Its a handspring visor. It does not have wireless. Only connections are the dock and irda. I remember it was quite a marvel when i got it. I used to think 'OMG! 20 million operations per second! In my hand!'. I have an app loaded on it that even overclocks the cpu to 24mhz. I don't think you can do that on any of today's device

I've been waiting for this deal

[No2Gates]

Ok, here's my offer:

I'll pony up an Atari 2600 with a bunch of games and $95.26

WebOS is really great...

[coolate]

I have had a Pre for months, and love it. I have had an iPhone and worked with Blackberries and WIndows Mobile phones a lot, and it blows them all away. I also as far as developing for webos goes, its a dream. I love it, way better then development for the iPhone was when I did that. I really was hoping they would licence the OS to a few good hardware developers, but I hope whoever buys them keeps the OS and the same ideals the developers of it have.

Re:WebOS is really great...

[WiiVault]

It's a really cool OS I agree. But Palm is pretty stupid and their list of retarded decisions make Apple in the 90's look biz savvy. Launching the Pre with Sprint, not having the native SDK at launch, and the relativly shitty Pre keyboard did it in. The Pixi really was the final straw though, a phone that had less features, a sluggish UI and a retail price nearly the same (7 months later) as the far more capable Pre. Palm tried the Apple route of shoehorning everyone into a couple headsets (Pre/Pixi, 3G/3GS) but they forgot that they lack the rabbid fanbase of Apple. Actually they instead had a lot of pissed off customers former customers (mostly post 2002), or people who didn't realize that WebOS wasn't the same outdated OS they had on their last Pilot device. The fuckup of Palm "Garnnet" (sp?) and their failure to modernize suggest to me that this point was inevitable. The only thing that bothers me is that Steve Jobs gets to gloat that he beat his old staff who left for Palm and proceded to threaten his baby. Though perhaps that is fair game too. Either way losing a competitor is always too bad, especially one like Palm who isn't a massive mega-corp.

Apple fanboy alert

[melted]

Frankly, I think tablet-like appliances with touch input are going to be far more important within three years than they are today. HTC is uniquely positioned to take advantage of that opportunity.

Now, an obvious thing to do for HTC would be to make a tablet based on Android. But that would only bring another Apple lawsuit. Now, if they buy Palm, Apple will even withdraw the lawsuit they've already filed, because Palm has a patent portfolio Apple can't win against. WebOS is a superior OS, IMO. Pissing off Steve Jobs by using it would be just icing on the cake.

Re:I moved to the Droid

[Dr. Manhattan]

I've got a TRG Pro as a backup now. It's basically a Palm IIIxe with a CF slot. I've got a 128MB CF card for it, which is practically infinite storage for Palm apps. And I can even stick an 802.11b Wifi card in it! Crazy what people squeezed into Palms back in the day.

But actually, you can overclock the Droid if you root (jailbreak) it. I've heard of people clocking it up past a GHz (from the stock 550MHz): http://gizmodo.com/5457672/how-to-overclock-your-droid-possibly-to-death

How 'bout HTC

[jseale]

Along with Google, they could make the Pre into an alternate version of the Google Nexus. Not so sure about the Pixi though.