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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.
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. :)
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.
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.
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