Comments on: My thoughts on the Palm Pre Smartphone

By: Robin

Robin — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:53:14 +0000

Heh – well you know my view on the AppleTV app-store. I too would like a
Mac app store, and I'm sure they're thinking about it. However I think they
need to do some work on it while it's still on the iPhone. I'd hate to see
the Mac become the domain of thousands of $0.99 fart apps!

By: felix

felix — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:13:21 +0000

Nothing in particular, although now that I'm thinking about it, some of the small games would be fun to have for a quick diversion, or the things like KICKMap , or some other minor apps that behave a lot like dashboard widgets anyway… I guess the Google Mobile App just got some experimental love for the Mac, which I haven't checked out yet.

What I really want is simply an App Store for OSX. How awesome would that be, for the desktop, for the iPhone and… dare I say it… for AppleTV. :)

By: felix

felix — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:12:04 +0000

Lol, I have no comment on this! I continue to question your sanity, though.

By: On the Smartphone Race

On the Smartphone Race — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:34:03 +0000

[...] so all this Palm Pre business got me thinking about the state of the smartphone industry, again. There’s been a [...]

By: Robin

Robin — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:51:33 +0000

Any apps you are thinking of in particular, felix?

By: ronin

ronin — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:42:07 +0000

It's too bad they didn't bring back Graffiti. Keyboard is ok and all but it would've been pretty cool to input using finger Graffiti gestures. ;-p

By: felix

felix — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:12:23 +0000

These are great points – I have a longer post brewing on this topic, but my basic thinking is that with the launch of the iPhone essentially came the mainstreaming of the smartphone. The market went from niche to mainstream over the past two years and will is and will continue to grow quickly. Thus, more or less, the market essentially started two years ago – what had gone on prior to that is irrelevant to success in the new market. RIMM had a historical advantage but now they're saddled with a legacy OS ill equipped to meet this new crop of next gen mobile OS's head on, something big is going to need to happen on this front and soon. Android is a real contender – but they are saddled with a consortium of 30 odd partners with conflicting needs, I have a grave fear that the speed of their innovation is going to be hampered by this. Microsoft and Nokia, in my opinion are worse off in this new landscape saddled with both legacy OS's, no impending new ones and as far as I can tell are desperately trying to stay afloat. If WebOS and the Pre come out soon and live up to most of the hype, I think it'll really put Palm back on the map.

By: felix

felix — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:11:51 +0000

I hope that WebOS turns out to actually kick ass and it encourages Apple to make some very significant changes to mobile OSX! Conversely, I'd love desktop OSX to be able to run some of my iPhone apps as apps or widgets or something. Obviously input is problematic, but still…

By: wka

wka — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 08:15:37 +0000

I could see WebOS encouraging Apple to make it possible to run Dashboard-style Javascript/HTML-based quasi-apps on the iPhone. I seem to recall reading some rumors about Dashboard widgets on the iPhone long ago, but they never panned out.

By: mpodrazik

mpodrazik — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 02:24:37 +0000

Palm is definitely back in the race, but I don't know where that puts them in the multi-year race you posit. The new OS looks sweet, but they are missing a key business advantage that the other players have.

Apple obviously redefined the market and are the team to beat, especially when combined with their dominant IPod position and ascendant Mac hardware/software. Everybody loves the brand. They are integrated. Nuff said.

RIM has historically been dominant among business users, the BlackBerry is ubiquitous. This can continue to be leveraged, (the client I'm at, for example, outlaws IPhone access to the corporate Exchange server but BlackBerries are supported). The movement of everybody to more powerful smart phones was inevitable. Their problem is that Apple captured everyone's attention at the critical tipping point with a killer product.

Android's big, while unproven, selling-point is that it's open source. Google is not the hardware maker and anybody can run the damn thing. They don't need to have these exclusive relationships with carriers since potentially many many handset makers will have it on many many devices on many many carriers. It's the Microsoft strategy vs. the Apple strategy, but with a free Windows license. Regardless of the features this is a very attractive option I would think.

Don't count out Nokia and Microsoft either. Windows Mobile sucks but it is impossible that Microsoft will allow all this action to go unanswered for long. The whole Azure/Live/Mesh combination could be a force to be reckoned with, and now that Symbian is open source as well who knows.

Anyway, the Pre appears to be very impressive, but from a one-foot-in-the-grave company exclusively partnered with the distant third-place carrier having their own problems (hemorrhaging customers, me included), its still gonna be tough road for them. They would need a big selling point. Now if they come out with a WiMAX-enabled version...