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Palm's Software Chief Quits
alphadogg writes "Michael Abbott, the head of Palm's software and services team, will leave the company at the end of next week, according to a regulatory filing Palm made on Friday to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He submitted his resignation on Monday and will leave the company on April 23, Palm said. The resignation came as reports surface that the struggling handset maker is seeking a buyer. Last month Palm reported disappointing results for the quarter that ended Feb. 26. Its Pre and Pixi smartphone lines, which run the WebOS operating system, are up against a growing number of smartphones using Google's Android platform as well as Apple's popular iPhone."
Access owns PalmOS, Access owns BeOS, WebOS was a failure, and it's a damn shame, but Palm hasn't done anything worthwhile since the Treo 650. I loved my Treos, and I loved the Kyocera 6035 I had before them, but the only value Palm provides these days is nostalgia.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
So Palm offers 250k in stock, over 2 yrs for the other principal management to stay. Not the most convincing of offers, and what's that Palm stock going to be worth in 2 years? Anything?
Bye bye Palm. It's been nice knowin' ya.
Ocean is land, covered with water.
Personally, I would be happy if more people would just think....
I started with the Palm Pilot 5000, and over the past 10 years I've never been without a Palm OS PDA. Just to prove that I am as familiar with Palm OS devices, here's a short list of the ones I've owned for at least a few months at a time: Palm Pilot 5000, Palm Vx, Clie SJ30, Palm m505, four Palm TX, Clie NR70, two Clie NX70 and three Clie TH55. The reason there are so many duplicates on the list is because I was buying and selling them at a small profit.
For the most part the hardware was reliable, but the ONLY devices to completely fail on me were the Palm ones. The battery died on my Vx, and replacing it was impossible without butchering it (disassembly instructions involved using a heat gun to melt the glue) or spending a lot of money to have it replaced by Palm with a refurbished unit. The touch screen on one TX stopped responding, and another TX stopped charging. Every Clie I've ever owned on the other hand was still running, no matter how abused it was. I bought a Clie NX73 off Ebay, and when it arrived, the hinge was completely worn out, the casing was beaten up everywhere, the screen was scratched BUT it was working perfectly. In terms of features the Clies were also far ahead of any Palm device. They had high resolution color screens, memory card slots, wifi, BT before anything from Palm, and they had MUCH better build quality and materials to boot.
When Palm announced the Pre I was really excited, because WebOS looked amazing and the hardware had great specs. Backwards compatibility with PalmOS apps was also a HUGE bonus. But the anticipation lasted precisely until I got to actually hold a Pre in my hand. I absolutely, positively hated it! The shiny plastic shell was cheap and scratch prone (just like the TX). The sliding keyboard was awkward, cramped and had a raised lip around it that feelt unfinished. Overall the Pre was a big disappointment. Not a bad device, but worth half what Palm was charging for it.
At this point I was really hoping someone will license the WebOS and design a GOOD smartphone to run it. That never happened and probably never will, since all manufacturers went with Android. In the meantime I picked up a Nokia N900 and I'm not sorry I did. I can still run my PalmOS apps through Garnett, and having a full Linux computer at my fingertips is simply amazing.
So that's my take on it. :)
Seriously, their past decade has been nothing but fail - uninspired me too phones, horrible battery life, and totally missing the smartphone boat through lack of vision despite having the killer device factor (m500. m505) and OS model more than a decade ago.
What executive or consultant realistically thought the Pre was any competition for the iPhone? What market were they trying to target?
Or better yet, where do I get one of those consultancy jobs?
..don't panic
I used to work for Palm about 8 or 9 years ago. I was one of their higher level tech support agents and had direct contact with their software engineers. Their corporate people, like Mr Abott were a joke. The real programmers we all in Asia as well as all their hardware manufacturing. They just had a corporate staff in the US... they all had their heads so far up their butts that Palm was never going to go anywhere. They started the market, and could have come up with an iPhone/Blackberry like device years before anyone else did. That's what their customers were screaming for... that's what we kept telling them. But they wanted a more closed OS and had little interest in allowing any really interesting apps unless the developer was working in direct partnership with them. Their OS updates were, for the most part, not backwards compatible. Lots of software would work on one model but not another even though they had the same OS on them. It was all just silly. I'm really surprised it took this long for them to tank.
I think I need more coffee - when the title caught my eye, I honestly thought it said "Palin's Software Chief Quits". I had a few seconds of confusion where I tried to think of a reason Sarah would have a software chief. Worse still, I kept seeing "Palin" through the first part of the summary.
Funny thing is, if you replace "Palm" with "Palin", some peoples' comments here are still strangely relevant...
#DeleteChrome
That way they will stop having good phones is absolutely abysmal sofware. It isn't even limited to their smartphones - their flip/slide phones are buggy as hell too.
It's a shame really... Samsung phones are some of best phones physically, but their software can really use a boost. WebOS on the original Instinct might have actually produced a decent phone.
Anybody notice that Abbot was formerly the general manager for .NET online services @ Microsoft before webOS?
http://www.neowin.net/news/palm039s-head-of-software-resigns?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+neowin-forum+(Neowin.net+Forums)
Seems to be a biochemist by education too:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelabbott
So not sure if his leaving is a huge loss for Palm. May be just cutting the fat.
Making a good phone isn't rocket science. Give it the same form factor as the MyTouch/iPhone, and then give it:
A) Good battery life
B) Good call quality
C) A front facing camera
And why not use the free and excellent Android Operating System, and then put money into some really killer apps, rather than duplicating effort trying to reinvent the wheel with YET ANOTHER phone OS? I'd like to see a Skype alternative that worked on free and open codecs like speex and theora, in particular. If I had that on a phone that was less than $100, why would I buy anything else? I'm really surprised at the lack of innovation in the phone market. I STILL don't have a video phone, which is ludicrous given a 640x480 webcam can't cost more than $5 to install on the front side of a phone.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I think there is a bit of "not dead yet" for Palm. Things do look pretty dismal for them right now, but I really want for them to pull through. WebOS is vastly more open than the iPhone's OS, and the HW is pretty decent. WebOS is a truly great phone OS.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
While sure there "were" apps, they were all crap and free. They didn't even have a proper billing system in place. Hell, it came out WITHOUT any native code or 3D support. Why the hell have a phone with a 3D chip and NOT be able to use it.
The idea that you could build apps out of AJAX is all well and good, but it blows for performance apps.
If Palm released the phone with the software as it is NOW, then they would of had a killer. Instead they dragged their feet on the API and development tools.
Kind of reminds me of the war between Nvidia and 3dfx. If Palm had just licensed their software to other phones and forgot about the hardware, they could of been in a better position. I am getting a Nexus when it comes out for sprint BECAUSE it has fast hardware and good software. I got the Palm just because of the software:P
1) Crappy Hardware. They countered this with even crappier?
2) Too slow getting real development kit out. The App store is a huge advantage for Apple, and Android is closing fast.
3) Lame marketing from TV ads to Sprint exclusivity.
4) Sending another companies USB identifier from your device, and then whining about it to the USB consortium. And they expected what to happen?
Jon may be great at software, but a great CEO he is not.
I'm going home.
I'm sorry but I just can't buy another product from Palm.
The TX has some pretty good hardware but there hasn't been any kind of software update or improvement in features since it was released.
Yay me! ^^
In fact, now that I think about it, if they made a WebOS upgrade for all existing Palm OS devices (that could run it) the adoption would be huge.
Not only would it signal to customers that yes, Palm will support its hardware into the future, but it would also give developers a huge base to sell applications too.
Yay me! ^^
They just sold off (and later reacquired) the rights to use the Palm name.
The sad thing is that Palm TX (a 5-yr-old product) can do more than the majority of today's phones, and specially iPhone. I still have mine working, and I can watch DIVX videos (I can just copy the full 700mb video to the memory card and play there without hiccups), play MP3, run any J2ME program using an emulator, etc, etc. And I can, for example, listen to music while I do other tasks. It have Bluetooth, WIFI, and with a downloaded software I have a very neat interface (the original one is ugly in today's terms). Yes, I know that the processor is slower than today's, that the battery autonomy is very short, etc, but it's a 5 YR OLD product.
My point is: Palm could be one of the big players today, if they haven't stopped in time. They were almost alone for too long in the market, and forgot how to evolve. This is why I admire Google: they are the top of the top in several things, but still they keep evolving, adding funcionalities that we didn't think of in GMail for example, way before someone else's do.
Like the first poster said: Palm today is nostalgia. And this is from someone who loves Palm...
--- Illogical Spock
WebOS was a good piece of software. Let down by poor marketing, average hardware and waiting too long to release an SDK.
What bugs me most is that I'm on my third Tungsten|E2 and it's already older than the previous two and I need to be ready when it fails, but I haven't found anything to replace it.
I was among the first buyers of the original USR Palm Pilot and I've been using the Palm Desktop and Palm (or Handspring) devices ever since. That's a big investment. The PDA and Desktop are loaded with information, Cloak (er--Turbo Passwords) manages my passwords, and I can write graffiti as fast as I can write on paper. I shudder to think of the training involved if I have to switch to the bad to horrid handwriting recognition on a "more advanced" product. Switching also means switching to Outlook from the Palm Desktop; what moral transgression deserves that kind of Hell?
To make life more difficult, I have no interest in a PDA that thinks it's a phone.
Am I annoyed with Palm for making the best device of its kind, hooking me on it and then "Oh look! A butterfly!" abandoning it to make mediocre devices for an already crowded market? Yes.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.