On Palm

So with the big announcement of the Foleo yesterday I spent some time thinking about Palm. This is a company that I really loved and backed for years, the Treo 650 which I still use so far remains unchallenged and irreplaceable as far as I’m concerned. Sadly, the 650 seems to have been a last gasp of goodness.

Since then they’ve cut off the antenna a few times and released a couple win mob devices. They’ve sold their OS off and then bought the rights to it back. And now they’ve released an underpowered laptop. Through all of this in the face of all these problems and non-starts by the company I’ve held fast in my support of them - time would tell if they were making mistakes. Sadly, I think time just told and it turns out they really just shot themselves repeatedly in the foot.

My most recent thing that I was clinging to was that Hawkins was working on this third business for palm, this thing so innovative it was going to build its own market. I believed that Hawkins was a visionary - after all, he saved Palm twice already, most recently delivering to them the Treo on who’s momentum they were riding out without doing a lick more work. I thought that the Treos were coming out crappy because all the best and brightest were secluded in the dungeons hammering out this new revolutionary device.

Then he dropped the Foleo bomb. An underpowered, subnotebook with no latch. In the video Hawkins talks about how beautiful the machine is and how it’s simple, and by simple he means that where most laptops have only 2 buttons under the space bar, they’ve apparently added five and a scroll wheel. And by beautiful he means it looks like every other grey subnotebook you can find in all of history.

But I don’t mean to bash more on the Foleo, you can read my other post or you can just search for Foleo on the interwebs. My point is that I think the Foleo marks the end of Palm. With this device there can be no more excuses or doubts that the company simply lacks the vision to innovate even one more iota. Add on top of that their total disregard for their own user base (they will theoretically release the first patch to the grievously flawed 700P this week, after it’s been replaced by another model).

Look at what other handset makers are doing. Apple is making the iPhone, Helio is making the Ocean, RIMM is madly enhancing it’s consumer line with really interesting features and the hits go on, pretty much everyone big and small is doing something cool in the space. For the first time in a really long time, I’m excited to see what’s going on in the phone world and what does Palm do? Palm who has had a years long headstart on all of these companies? They release a crippled subnotebook. Sigh.

May 31st, 2007 · Comments RSS · · · · · Tags: palm